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There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)
- doener 9mo agoWhy did the Trump regime not discover and eradicate this heretical sentence?
- rebolek 9mo agoIt will now.
- nabbed 9mo ago>There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. This document was last updated in October 2024, but I am a little surprised to see this still available on a .gov site.
- standardUser 9mo agoIdiocy and incompetency tend to share the same bed.
- 0ckpuppet 9mo ago[dead]
- alt227 9mo agoWhy?
- insane_dreamer 9mo agobecause the Trump admin has been scrubbing gov websites of any evidence in support of climate change; they're even defunding parts of NOAA that research it it looks like this one slipped through the cracks
- johnea 9mo ago> This document was last updated in October 2024 Thank you for the date! When viewing in my default javascript-disabled mode, I couldn't find the publication date. I'm also thankful to the NASA IT team that made this article, including images and formatting, viewable with javascript disabled. > I am a little surprised to see this still available on a .gov site. This was also my main reaction. In agreement with several other replies to your comment, this one must have slipped through the cracks. After the HN affect raises awareness of this article, I wouldn't be surprised if it disappears too. The article has great formatting for lay readers: the points are listed in a straightforward manner, photos illustrate each point, footnoted references are provided, and the conclusion is stated clearly at the top "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.". The refusal to support electrification across the board, in order to support the revenue streams of legacy petro-centric corporations, is the largest physical infrastructure damage being done to the US by the so called "conservative" demographic. IMHO this will form the central cause of the demise of the US empire.
- RIMR 9mo agoOh wow, a true statement on a government website. I'm sure they'll take it down within a day.
- gdulli 9mo agoMaybe a way to game the modern right is to draw attention to something true so that they remember it exists, then they try to censor it, thereby triggering a Streisand effect.
- tim-tday 9mo agoEveryone who can hear this has already heard it. Those who continue to pretend it is not happening are either deliberately deceptive so they can continue to make money from fossil fuels or unable to change their minds when faced by evidence due to identity politics.
- mr_mitm 9mo agoMy impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses. That link is unfortunately much harder to prove than rising temperatures by itself. The proof is there nonetheless, but it's easier to cast doubt on it, and that's what certain groups have been doing.
- tonylemesmer 9mo agoEven the qualification "in the last 10,000" years gives the doubters something else to dismiss global warming.
- Windchaser 9mo agoI've seen the full-court denial: - it's not warming, or not significantly - if it's warming, it's not because of humans, (or) - if it's warming, it's beneficial - if it's warming because of humans and that's bad, there's nothing we can do about it ETA: honorary mention for "what about China?" People I've argued about this with will switch interchangeably between these. Press them hard enough on one issue, and they'll just switch to another. It's a game of whack-a-mole.
- tencentshill 9mo agoOr "Why does 2 degrees matter?" Because when were 4 degrees cooler, NYC was under 1000 feet of ice. We really don't want to find out what 4 degrees hotter is like.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoWait really? 1000 feet is insane.
- Havoc 9mo agoCan’t wait for trump and his gestapo to deport the entirety of nasa for telling the truth
- declan_roberts 9mo agoWhy does NASA even have to do this? Build some cool rockets and get us to mars.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoLiving on Mars long-term is a practical impossibility. Certainly much, much harder than living on even a climate-changed Earth.
- charcircuit 9mo agoHumans have done a lot of things we once thought were impossible.
- k33n 9mo agoI’ve been living on a climate-changed earth for my entire life and it’s not been too difficult.
- retrac 9mo agoNASA launches and operates Earth-observing satellites for measuring the weather and climate.
- Windchaser 9mo agoAmong other objectives, NASA's 1958 mission statement includes conducting aeronautical and space activities of the US for "the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space". So: atmospheric climate science directly falls under NASA's responsibilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and_Space_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and_Space...
- Fourier864 9mo ago
- hxbdg 9mo ago[dead]
- webdood90 9mo agoI've shifted my mindset to abandon this idea that humanity will survive forever, or that we should strive to live as long as we can. Intelligence is a scarcity and it cannot overcome the majority of people that are incredibly stupid or ignorant. So accepting that we are doomed relieves some of the stress. I won't have children to worry about their future, either. I still live my life in such a way that minimizes my impact on the world as much as possible. I still surround myself with folks that want a better world. But there is no stopping the impending doom and I'm trying not to be miserable with the time I have.
- izzydata 9mo agoUltimately I think it will be a self correcting problem, but there is going to be an extremely long period of absolute hell. Global warming is eventually going to cause food and water scarcity on a level that will wipe out a huge percentage of the Earths population. Then the Earth will recover from there being fewer humans. If in 3000 years we discover humans were completely wiped out to the last person I would be pretty surprised.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoAgree, this is how excesses always get corrected in nature.
- rolph 9mo agoToba catastrophe theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngest_Toba_eruption#Toba_catastrophe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngest_Toba_eruption#Toba_ca...
- wat10000 9mo agoI agree that human extinction is very unlikely on anything like historical timespans. Maybe in a few million years, like any other species. I do think there's a decent chance of civilizational collapse in the near to medium term. It seems like everything is getting very fragile. So much economic activity revolves around extremely sophisticated machines with many critical components that are manufactured in just a few locations, sometimes a single location. A major war could shatter that, or climate change could push us over a tipping point where those capabilities can no longer be maintained, or it might just be a cascading random breakdown due to the modern economy being so complicated. If it happens, then I'm very pessimistic about the ability to ever come back from it. With all the easily accessible fossil fuels gone, getting industry going again is going to be a really tall order. So humanity might survive a long time, but it may consist of life the way it was in prehistory.
- declan_roberts 9mo agoSo what are we going to do about China?
- doug_durham 9mo agoA troll response I presume. Or perhaps sarcasm without the indicator.
- declan_roberts 9mo agoNot a troll comment. China produces as much or more CO2 as much as the next 5 countries combined. It's logical to start with the king of greenhouse emissions if you want to stop global warming.
- laffOr 9mo agoThere is no need for ordering right? All countries can start acting at the same time.
- generj 9mo agoChina is rapidly going green.
- reducesuffering 9mo agoIs the US even more rapidly going green? https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?hideControls=false&Gas+or+Warming=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Territorial&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+country&country=CHN~USA~IND~GBR~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?hideControls=false&... China's emissions were 10 billion tons CO2 in 2017 and have increased every single year to 12.29 billion tons CO2 in 2024. Meanwhile, US decreased from 5.22 to 4.9 in the same time
- michaelmrose 9mo ago1/4 the population. Per capita we are 65% worse not considering how much of China's pollution is on our behalf
- deadbabe 9mo agoI’ve given up. I’ve long assumed for a year now we are heading for warming that is even worse than the worst projections and it’s all over. This has given me some peace, like accepting you’re going to die.
- rolph 9mo agoyou will age, you will weaken, you will cease, no choice or circumstance will change that. endeavor to create something that will persist through the eons, and that part of your mind will live forever.
- deadbabe 9mo agoThe only people who created anything that will persist through eons are those who have launched objects into space, like Voyager 1. There is zero hope I will even be remembered years after death.
- rolph 9mo agoim quite sure im going to remember your post for the rest of my life. thats a start.
- girvo 9mo agoSame, sadly. I’ve done far more than my part, and even my direct family hasn’t, let alone the rest of the country, the world. I only hope I can have a decent life until it ends, and I hope it takes slightly longer than I think it will.
- raddan 9mo agoI still remain optimistic that the clever folks can avoid the absolute worst outcomes. However, I too am very frustrated that almost nobody gives a shit about the future. We are rapidly reaching the point where WE will live through the effects, and our own children will suffer much worse. I basically see it as a moral wrong and a grave ethical failure to use fossil fuels at this point. Except for home heating, I am now close to directly powering my entire life with clean, renewable energy. It was not hard. It was expensive, but only in the short term; I have effectively prepaid for my power needs for at least the next 25 years, and over than span it is very inexpensive. A modern EV is about the same price as any other car, goes about the same distance, and is only slightly more time to fuel in the worst case. In the typical case, you don’t think about charging at all. The fact that I can’t get my supposedly environmentally conscious family of scientists and engineers to care continues to stun me. Somehow saving money while improving the world is “a waste of money” while buying an expensive hobby vehicle or vacation home is not. Frustrating.
- lwansbrough 9mo agoI wonder if we should move beyond this messaging. It’s well known to the smart half of the population that climate change is happening. There is apparently some debate on the cause. But this point is mostly irrelevant, it is problem-oriented thinking. By keeping the conversation in the problem-realm you invite troglodytes into the conversation to insert their bullshit. Instead, if we move forward with “presumption of truth” solutions-based messaging, we can start to talk about what we’re going to do. Climate control is something more people will be on board with compared to trying to have a conversation about climate science to a person who didn’t graduate high school.
- michaelmrose 9mo ago[flagged]
- weirdmantis69 9mo ago[flagged]
- gzread 9mo agoWith this administration? "To get your voting license, click on all the Nazis in this picture" (your click must be Biden and Hillary or your license is denied)
- k33n 9mo ago[flagged]
- michaelmrose 9mo agoWhy do you think that?
- k33n 9mo ago[flagged]
- 0ckpuppet 9mo agowe don't need evidence Earth is warming, because it's happened before humanity, and it will happen after we're gone. We need evidence that we're poisoning ourselves and the planet. Global warming's only accomplishment is giving the poisoners a pass when it was debunked. Private jets and climate change, choose one.
- mempko 9mo agoI'm pretty sure global warming isn't debunked. Yes, we should worry about all the other pollution too. But global warming is happening and we are causing it. What's different than nature doing it is the rate of change. Yes the earth was warmer in the past and would be in the future, but it has never warmed as fast as it is now.
- softwaredoug 9mo agoThey predicted a warming planet based on human activity as long ago as the 50s We’ve known about the mechanisms of CO2 leading to atmospheric warming since the 19th century. We know humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere. We observe higher CO2 and warmer temps The evidence isn’t that complicated.
- Windchaser 9mo agoI know you're getting dogpiled, but global warming has been validated, not debunked. The science behind it really got going in the 1890s, with Arrhenius' paper predicting climate sensitivity to CO2. That was bounced back and forth with rebuttals and counter-rebuttals until about 1950. Major debate points were how much role water vapor played, how this varied with temperature/altitude/pressure. (You can trace each part of the argument if you're so inclined; there's lots of neat science in there. The concept of "pressure broadening" was my favorite; it explores how spectral bands change with pressure). Around 1950, the science started settling out. Spectrometers had improved, we had clearer view that CO2 and H2O don't fully overlap in their spectra bands through the atmosphere, and we had the computing to do better calculations. By the 1970s, we were getting ice core data showing that the world had gone through huge temperature swings, and how this changed with CO2. Enough data had accumulated that a consensus was forming. In the 1980s, scientists were now concerned enough to form a large body to inform policymakers on this issue (IPCC; 1988). And in the 40 years since then, we've mostly sat on our hands, even as the science just gets clearer and clearer. I share all this long history to explain that the science went through nearly a century of rigorous debate even before politicians got involved. This a scientific issue, not a political one. And I'm glossing over 99.9999% of the detail here. There was an extensive literature debate between the scientists, hashing out any point you can think of. You just have to go to your local uni library and start reading. TL;DR: saying that global warming is debunked is about as incorrect as saying that the Earth is flat. We have extensive evidence showing otherwise.
- gaigalas 9mo agoVery exciting to live in an apocalyptical era. I'm looking forward to discover which one of the several global threats to humanity will put us down first.
- excalibur 9mo agoI think the smart money is still on nuclear war, but the competition is getting fierce these days.
- gaigalas 9mo agoI think there's a strong argument for generalized systems collapse. It's a silent civilization killer, could be happening right now!
- gzread 9mo agoBut which system first? Could be climate, could be financial, could be political (as in "politics is the alternative to violence")
- gaigalas 9mo agoI'm talking more about a slow decay that is not obvious to a single generation. One person in one lifetime wouldn't even smell it, but everything would be slowly corroding underneath. Definitely not a big single disaster scenario. More like a "wait, we don't fix things anymore" or "wait, we have way less food variety than before" realization when it hits.
- Yizahi 9mo agoNuclear war is overrated. Too focused to really damage distributed systems, too hard to start, too few working nukes. Many of the old rockets on all sides likely won't even fly correctly. Now drop world shipping via blockades and active war zones, and the industry collapse would be worse than anything Sarah Connor saw.
- randusername 9mo ago
- bvan 9mo agoOops, someone forgot to delete or redact it.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- layer8 9mo agoMaybe they shouldn’t have the “Do scientists agree on climate change?” link go to 404. ;)
- legitster 9mo agoEven the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded: "The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more expensive it will be in the future. In a Pascal's Wager sort of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes now is the prudent and financially sound decision." In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen different competing messages.
- aeternum 9mo agoThe problem with Pascal's wager logic is you have to change your behavior based on all kinds of crazy low-probability events. You must worship every god, be an AI-doomer, a climate-doomer, a nuclear-doomer. Pascal's wager is generally agreed to be logically unsound, so it's somewhat insane that we've revived it in all these modern contexts. If you believe in it, at least be consistent and sacrifice a goat to Zeus every couple years.
- legitster 9mo agoYes, and no. I think we actually do this logic a lot in our lives. Do I actually believe whole wheat bread is better for me, or do I just buy it on the chance it is? Do I go with the cheapest toothpaste or spend money on something that might be better? Do I buy an AWD car on the chance I am stuck? Sacrificing a goat, after all, does sound like a lot of work. But maybe I will wear a lucky hat to a baseball game?
- conartist6 9mo agoThere has to be infinite torment in play for the wager to apply too! Thus by conclusion you should only give vengeful gods the benefit of the doubt
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- shoobiedoo 9mo ago[dead]
- chasil 9mo agoReposting a previous comment... What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare. 'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history. 'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58 million years ago.' Modern humans have existed for 60k years, all of which have been in this current icehouse. To cast a different shade on the meaning, this climate period is rare, easily disturbed, and difficult to restore even with vastly more powerful technology. The more common greenhouse state is unlikely to lead to a Venus runaway, but it will be hostile to us. We might very well require the rare climate, and perish in the common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthh...
- jongjong 9mo ago[flagged]
- reverius42 9mo agoThe dinosaurs did great with a bit of difficulty, too!
- 9mo ago
- e40 9mo agoWe've already lost the battle to prevent catastrophic change: https://davidsuzuki.org/story/is-it-too-late-to-escape-climate-catastrophe/ https://davidsuzuki.org/story/is-it-too-late-to-escape-clima... And 7 of 9 boundaries have been crossed? https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... This is starting to look more like the movie _Don't Look Up_.
- 100721 9mo agoWasn’t that film explicitly about climate change denial?
- weirdmantis69 9mo agoWell it was a metaphor I guess but I certainly took it that way.
- netsharc 9mo agoI agree, but it seems most of the "messaging" nowadays is "Well, the outlook is 'we're fucked', but we still need to do something, or the outlook will be 'we're very fucked!'", which still falls on deaf ears... I remember someone saying another form of denial is the denial that "we" will be affected badly. A friend said "Well, I'll turn on my AC, I'll be fine!". Or "I'm sure some technological Deus ex Machina will save us! Any day now!".
- NicuCalcea 9mo agoHaven't heard the "it's fine to burn the planet for AI data centres because AI will eventually solve climate change" argument in a while, it was pretty common in the early days.
- tim333 9mo agoThe biggest entry in their 9 boundaries pie chart is: >Novel entities: Technological developments introduce novel synthetic chemicals into the environment, mobilize materials in wholly new ways, modify the genetics of living organisms... which I'm not sure is really a climate catastrophe thing.
- almosthere 9mo agoI think many people are unwilling to accept "climate change" or "global warming" because of the following: a) china is unwilling to do anything, and if that's the case, America shouldn't empty its pocket books on this issue. b) this climate change alarmist stuff has caused a climate disaster in the US because all the migration to Electric Only is causing us to use generators all over the place, which is crazy. We should instead focus on making clean nuclear and expanding solar. PG&E (in CA) has decided to cancel this migration because CPUC (or whatever their called) is in Newsome's pocket who is in PG&Es pocket. c) climate change extremists are unwilling to both hear yes it's happening and no we're not going to do anything about it, so the people responding are simply saying, no it's not happening.
- smw 9mo agochina's building solar like _mad_, read a newspaper
- almosthere 9mo agoThat has nothing to do with how much they are putting in the air/water.
- tzs 9mo agoChina is massively building solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear, and also has by far the largest network of UHV transmission lines (and are building many more) so that they can get electricity from the regions with the most solar and wind to the more northern heavy industrial areas. They are also the leader in producing and exporting solar and wind equipment, and in driving the prices down, to make it easier for other countries to address climate change. They are also the biggest producer of EVs in the world, and the biggest exporter of EVs. They are doing better at doing something about climate change than any other country, both due to what they are currently doing for themselves and for the countries they export to and in their ability to make long term plans and reasonably stick to them.
- almosthere 9mo ago
- abcde666777 9mo agoOne of the challenges in doing something about climate change is the significant (and not entirely unfounded) distrust growing between the public and the government. Basically amounting to, "well, you say you're doing X to combat climate change, but is X actually a competent solution (I don't trust your competence), and are you doing it to actually help or just to line pockets (I don't trust your intent)". The other challenge is that we as individual humans are loathe to give up our comfortable lifestyle if such turns out to be necessary.
- lugu 9mo agoThe problem isn't technical in nature. We need a brand-new socioeconomic system that outcompete liberal democracies while reducing CO2 emissions.. We are in deep trouble.
- no-name-here 9mo agoThe existing global socioeconomic systems have been able to solve other environmental commons problems before, even if this one is larger in scale. > We need a brand-new socioeconomic system that outcompete liberal democracies while reducing CO2 emissions. I presume you'd agree that isn't likely? So saying "We need x infeasible thing" seems about as helpful as those pushing climate change denialism?
- grigio 9mo agoI just follow BlackRock if they stopped to fund green tech, it means the global warming is fixed /s
- josh_today 9mo ago[dead]
- kittikitti 9mo agoThank you for sharing this. I think it's important to take a step back and consider the real existential threats that humanity faces like climate change. I am hoping for similar evidence of the doom from AI, but I have a feeling that the AI doomers have ulterior motives.
- metalman 9mo agoMany small aircraft wings are held on with 4 small bolts, one one each spar, and one on each end of the strut, so as you might imagine that with the failure mode involved, they are damn good bolts, and they are, but unfortunately people look at our atmosphere are shrug, and refuse to consider the failure mode, especialy as we have only one atmosphere, which we benifit from in so many ways, like right now it is holding up hundreds of cessena's and everybody is breathing it, but it's like going along in a cessena, while watching the wing bolt stretch, bit by bit, it's only a little cracked. Which to my knowledge has never happened, no one has ever pulled the wings off a 150, simply because good as those bolts are, they get checked, and fussed over, and changed long long before anything gets troublesome, because simply, some things are unthinkable and there are no debates or opinions, something held to be self evident.
- bokohut 9mo agoI am fortunate to have lived on the water for over 20 years in a location, East Coast USA Chesapeake Bay, that has scientifically documented many aspects of the climate changes that my own eyes have witnessed and photographed here at my home. I can walk out in my back yard and see these changes in this moment of time as they now exist and all of these changes have only become visible to me here in the last 10 years. Erosion is a significant aspect of what I have witnessed however the ying always has a yang. Just as significant archeological discoveries are being made around melting glaciers so too are such discoveries also being made along eroding shorelines. The known history of the Chesapeake Bay is extensive and the items washing out of its shoreline are too, both known and unknown. Many of the paleolithic/native artifacts I have found can be explained by experts while some I have discovered cannot. Change is the only thing guaranteed in this life until your life too forces change at its end. Change requires change and that means you but as a species we are wired into our daily pattern and nearly all hate forced change. As the old saying goes: "Nothing stays the same forever." Stay Healthy!
- alt227 9mo agoChange is good and healthy! Trying to keep the planet exactly the same just because we want it to for the benefit of our delicately balanced societies is a futile task which will always end in catasrophe.
- jeisc 9mo agopessimistic view point worst case scenario: humanity will survive in plexiglass domes with underground bunkers and we will send out AI robots into space to seed humans on other likely planets
- Whatarethese 9mo agoI honestly expect this article to be taken down in if the wrong people see it.
- TiredOfLife 9mo agoIs posting about global warming during the coldest winter in recent history intentional?
- roryirvine 9mo agoWhere "recent history" means "last three years"?
- TiredOfLife 9mo agoNo. Last 45 years.
- roryirvine 9mo agoDecember 2025 was the 5th warmest December since records began in 1850, with an anomaly of +1.05°C above the C20th baseline : https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202512 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/g... January 2026 was the 5th warmest January since records began in 1850, with an anomaly of +1.12°C above the C20th baseline: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-202601 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-202601 The anomaly for the first two weeks of February 2026 was greater still, at +1.69°C. Perhaps the last few days have been incredibly cold, but until then we were on course for it to be the third warmest February in recorded history.
- TiredOfLife 9mo agoI live in parts that in this map https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/inline-images/map-percentile-mntp-202601.png https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/inline-images/... are marked as cooler than average.
- roryirvine 9mo agoYou were talking about "global warming" in a thread explicitly discussing how "Earth is warming". Variations in regional weather are something else entirely.
- tim333 9mo ago>There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. I agree it's warming but unequivocally at an unprecedented rate is iffy. For the article they cherry picked a stable period but if you look at the full temperature history as shown here https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/05/05/can-make-better-graphs-global-temperature-history/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/05/05/can-make-b... there has been loads of instability and heating and cooling. Also while CO2 levels are up from about 280 ppm in 1600 to about 430 now, for most of the history of life on earth they were more in the 500 to 5000 range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_atmosphere_of_Earth#Concentrations_in_the_geologic_past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_atmosphe... I don't believe climate denial as in saying its not warming but I'm also skeptical of exaggerating the problem by ignoring most climate history. I guess the idea is to panic people into changing behaviour but it doesn't seem to work very well - co2 emissions are higher than ever and a lot of the population think we are doomed when we are not. Unbiased science is better in my opinion.
- panarchy 9mo agohttps://thecottonwoodpost.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/emissions-rate-1.jpg https://thecottonwoodpost.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/emi... https://thecottonwoodpost.net/2019/12/10/modern-climate-change-is-10x-faster-than-historic-global-warming-mass-extinction-events/ https://thecottonwoodpost.net/2019/12/10/modern-climate-chan...
- Windchaser 9mo agoThere's some truth to what they're saying. Simply on a factual basis, the data we have from previous extinction events does not have the temporal resolution needed for us to determine how quickly the temperature increased/decreased. E.g., "how quickly did the atmospheric temperature change after the Chicxulub event?" We don't know. Decent-quality global paleoclimate proxies only extend back ~15k years or so. It's possible that there was rapid global climate change in the past outside of major extinction events; we genuinely don't have the data to tell. This also doesn't really tell us much about how the modern Earth and its ecosystems would handle those old climate shifts, because there is much much less wild lands (and so, less resilience within natural ecosystems). It's true from a climate science perspective, but not useful for assessing the damage that climate change can cause to modern society. And: to the best of our knowledge, the current rate of warming is fast enough to cause major issues. Civilization only arose once we had relatively stable and moderate temperatures, and stable temperatures may be needed to maintain civilization under present technology. Ecological and glaciological studies back this up. And no, scientists are not looking to just scare us into action; the evidence itself should be alarming.
- insane_dreamer 9mo agoFuture humans (if we survive) will look back at climate denialists (or who agree it exists but don't want to do anything about it or refuse to believe it's accelerated by CO2 emissions or burning fossil fuels), the same way we look back at the Catholic Church during the inquisition era who stupidly refused to accept a heliocentric world (and imprisoned and sometimes burned at the stake those who did). Except that today's denialists, and the politicians/governments who enact their policies, are much much stupider, and dangerously so, because 1) we have much more evidence than the Church had, and 2) while there was relatively little harm in believing the Earth was the center of the solar system, there is great harm in believing that burning more fossil fuels doesn't accelerate global warming.