Global warming may have already passed irreversible tipping point

[Corvus]

Today's XKCD is rather topical.



The referenced report, which is also linked from the comic itself.

Its kind of weird. I've been around 10 years longer than him and according to the report I've seen a 1.5C increase in my lifetime, as well as less rainfall. If you'd asked me if it feels any different now than when I was a kid I'd have said no - except the facts don't lie. Its probably like the lobster in the pot - you get used to the slow increase in temperature and don't notice you are boiling.

And that is probably a lot of the problem. Too many people don't really notice the small changes over a long period of time and conclude that nothing is happening as a result. That and memories are very suspect when it comes to remembering things way back when.

[Jessicka]

Its kind of weird. I've been around 10 years longer than him and according to the report I've seen a 1.5C increase in my lifetime, as well as less rainfall. If you'd asked me if it feels any different now than when I was a kid I'd have said no - except the facts don't lie. Its probably like the lobster in the pot - you get used to the slow increase in temperature and don't notice you are boiling.

And that is probably a lot of the problem. Too many people don't really notice the small changes over a long period of time and conclude that nothing is happening as a result. That and memories are very suspect when it comes to remembering things way back when.

On the other hand I can remember winters here being below zero regularly, the phrase ‘too cold for snow’ was banded about. Now it’s rarely below zero and it snows more often.

Couple of years ago, I never even thought it was possible I’d have to take a detour to get to work due to flooding. It’s happened twice in the last two years.

I’ve done annual field work in Iceland for the past decade, each time I go back some of the sites are barely recognisable, and it’s a much longer walk to the glaciers than it used to be.

Different places are effected differently. I’m a couple of years older than the artist of that work.

As for denialists, they deserve to burn in the hellscape they’re creating. They won’t though since they’ll just get bigger air conditioning and bigger SUVs to go drive through the floods.

[postman1782]

Its kind of weird. I've been around 10 years longer than him and according to the report I've seen a 1.5C increase in my lifetime, as well as less rainfall. If you'd asked me if it feels any different now than when I was a kid I'd have said no - except the facts don't lie. Its probably like the lobster in the pot - you get used to the slow increase in temperature and don't notice you are boiling.

And that is probably a lot of the problem. Too many people don't really notice the small changes over a long period of time and conclude that nothing is happening as a result. That and memories are very suspect when it comes to remembering things way back when.

I can tell the climate has changed here in the Midwest. When I was growing up, we never had snow very often til mid November and then had it through February/earliesh March. Now we are lucky if we have snow by mid December and have it for a couple weeks before it melts. It used to rain like clockwork here, almost once a week, now we get rain, if we are lucky once a month during the summer.

Now, you add in the extremes in weather. We had tornadoes once in a while, nothing ever close to us because we have a weird place for a town, half on a hill, half in a lowland of sorts. Then last year, the Derecho, something I have NEVER heard of before, came through, literal hurricane force winds, something you don't see unless there are tornadoes. We had 120 MPH, had cities lost 80% of their trees, farmers lose grain silos, houses blown off their foundations and moved hundreds of feet to in the middle of the road.

We had flooding when I was growing up too. We had a 100 year flood in 1989, then another one in 93, 98, 2004, and 2008. 2008 literally had the worst flooding I have ever seen. Having 100 year floods every 3 or 4 years is exhausting.

[Shadowferal]

This particular denialist...northern rural CA, likely near the mountains. Think....daytime temps no higher than 80 with nighttime temps in the 50s.

[Mihalik]

Ice ages come and go. It would be unnatural to stop them.

Crack is whack.

The above statement is about as relevant to the conversation as your brain fart.

[Jessicka]

Crack is whack.

The above statement is about as relevant to the conversation as your brain fart.

I could show a graph showing how not within natural Milankovic cycles current warming is and they’d still just deny it. There’s no point in engaging with them, because doing so let’s them feel their argument is relevant and has substance. It doesn’t, we know that, we can and should ignore it because the conversation is so far past it.

[JohnBrown1917]

They should negotiate on whether or not they can come and where exactly they could be placed. It seems that you dont really like the word "negotiating" in this context of what may look ljke one-sided deal, should i say "begging" instead? Not to mention it wouldn't be entirely one-sided because the host nation will receive a valueable human resource and a good publicity of benevolent saviors.

Host nations already choose where refugees stay. I can't tell if you're naive or just lack empathy.

Because it is much more cheap and reasonable solution to move small people away from danger than entire mankind go out of their way to reverse irreversible global warming because of bunch of islanders is drowning. It would be even easier to just abandon them, but let's be nice

Entire mankind? Its mostly the richest countries who burn the most shit on a per capita basis, by a huge margin.

And you still seem to be under the missguided belief that climate disasters will only hit islands and not make displace hundred of millions, if not billions, of people.


This is about how the global south is getting fucked by the rich northern countries.
Only problem is it will also fuck with a lot those countries with how high the chances are with countries like the Netherlands and Denmark just sinking by 2100-2150 are. Or entire coastal regions.

Seems Russia will make it out fine though, what a coincidence that is your home-country.

- - - Updated - - -

Good on y'all for freely admitting you have no sense of ethics, I guess? Lol.

Can't wait to see the surprised pikachu face y'all will make during the next refugee crisis. If only there were something that could have been done in the present to prevent it. /s

hard right Russians won't care. they probably benefit the most from it thanks to Siberia.

[Omega10]

This particular denialist...northern rural CA, likely near the mountains. Think....daytime temps no higher than 80 with nighttime temps in the 50s.

Same. I have a friend that lives near Seattle, but on one of the little islands near there. Nice area. His daytime temperatures went no higher than 80 degrees, and he seemed oblivious to the 105 degree days that Seattle just faced.

He is 100% behind Al Gore being Ozone Man (from the 2000 election), the Green New Deal being a socialist hoax, and Global Warming being a conspiracy theory designed to destroy freedom in America. Decades of propaganda from basically the oil companies means we can not reason with them, we have to defeat them, and they will fight as hard as they can to preserve their fossil fuel culture.

For the most part, they are still winning And the whole world is paying a huge price.

[Endus]

I could show a graph showing how not within natural Milankovic cycles current warming is and they’d still just deny it. There’s no point in engaging with them, because doing so let’s them feel their argument is relevant and has substance. It doesn’t, we know that, we can and should ignore it because the conversation is so far past it.

Really, you can start with the claim that "ice ages come and go".

No they don't. Not like they think, at least.

We're in an ice age right now. The Quaternary. It's been going on for like 2.5 million years. What they're calling "ice ages" are just glacial periods within the Quaternary; we're in an interglacial period.

It's not even that complicated. Are there ice caps at the poles? Yes or no. If "yes", then you're in an ice age. That's the definition.

While there's possibly a cycle of ice ages now, we'd only be in the third of that cycle. And to put that in scale, the second of those ice ages ended before the dinosaurs emerged. It's not what they're thinking of.

And yes; in natural terms, the Quaternary is nowhere close to being over, and we should be chilling down into a new glacial period (a process that takes tens of thousands of years; you wouldn't notice anything over the span of human lifetimes, or even civilizations). But, this global warming thing is likely to kick us out of the Quaternary a few million years before it might naturally come to an end. We've already pretty much eliminated the Arctic sea ice, at this point, we're waiting on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. Sure, that might take a few centuries of melting (it's a lot of ice), but that's stupidly fast, on geological scales.

[Unholyground]

It passed the irreversible phase about 10 years ago.

[jonnysensible]

dont worry lads we will fix the problem capitalism created with even more capitalism

[PC2]

It passed the irreversible phase about 10 years ago.

Except ACC isn't irreversible. That was just based on an arbitrary boundary that some people did not want to cross.

[MoeSzyslak]

It passed the irreversible phase about 10 years ago.

We have passed some tipping points but by no means the really bad ones. These are the ones we need to prevent. Read the recent report, please.

[beanman12345]

It passed the irreversible phase about 10 years ago.

I think everyone with an IQ north of 80 is in agreement, yeah we're proper fucked.

[PC2]

His logic is flawless science will solve all our problems

I never said science can solve all our problems. That's similar to scientism.

so we don't need to do anything now

We should be doing everything we can every day. It's always been like that. Nobody has the final solutions for ACC yet though, society needs to advance STEM to find them.

at the same time science is useless and can't predict anything in the future.

Yes for economics, if science could reliably predict the future then we would simply switch from a liberal democracy to a science-based technocracy. Which makes zero sense because science can't tell us the future of civilization. Science can't determine whether civilization will be better off or worse off in X years in the future. Science is about testable explanations and it's not a crystal ball for civilization.

[Orange Joe]

Its kind of weird. I've been around 10 years longer than him and according to the report I've seen a 1.5C increase in my lifetime, as well as less rainfall. If you'd asked me if it feels any different now than when I was a kid I'd have said no - except the facts don't lie. Its probably like the lobster in the pot - you get used to the slow increase in temperature and don't notice you are boiling.

And that is probably a lot of the problem. Too many people don't really notice the small changes over a long period of time and conclude that nothing is happening as a result. That and memories are very suspect when it comes to remembering things way back when.

I've definitly noticed a difference where I live. Our winters have gotten much shorter. They used to start late October, it's not not uncommon for no snow til December.

used to last up til almost April it now goes away in early March.

[Shadowferal]

We have passed some tipping points but by no means the really bad ones. These are the ones we need to prevent. Read the recent report, please.

You mean the report that says "If we reduce emissions to net zero by 2050, we can keep temperatures close to 1.5C,” Adopt clean energy alternatives...that humans could avert the worst ravages of climate change by planting a forest roughly double the size of the United States...cut down on air travel...
And from the link; "there are still 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress, including 109 representatives and 30 senators, who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change.”

[jonnysensible]

I never said science can solve all our problems. That's called scientism.


We should be doing everything we can every day. It's always been like that. Nobody has the final solutions for ACC yet though, society needs to advance STEM to find them.


Yes for economics, if science could reliably predict the future then we would simply switch from a liberal democracy to a science-based technocracy. Which makes zero sense because science can't tell us the future of civilization. Science can't determine whether civilization will be better off or worse off in X years in the future. Science is about testable explanations and it's not a crystal ball for civilization.

cmon surely you know what predictive models are, and why we have them. We also know how to stop ACC already just a lil thing called capital accumulation stands in the way.

[PC2]

cmon surely you know what predictive models are, and why we have them. We also know how to stop ACC already just a lil thing called capital accumulation stands in the way.

How? If we've passed an irreversible tipping point like the people here claim, then how do we stop ACC according to you?

[Endus]

How? If we've passed an irreversible tipping point like the people here claim, then how do we stop ACC according to you?

The issue has literally not ever been a lack of technological knowledge or infrastructural options.

The issue has always been the willpower to make changes, politically. Obfuscated by deliberate disinformation campaigns intended to produce confusion and uncertainty in the political sphere where little was to be found in the scientific.

We could have dropped emissions to zero and forestalled AGC being a problem at all a good 30 years ago, had politicians ignored oil-company propagandizing and bribery and focused on the science. It wouldn't have been free, but it was absolutely possible.

You're also pushing your own disinformation, again, shifting from your old Stage 3 denial of "it's not a problem" to Stage 4/5 denial; deny we can solve it/claim it's too late to solve it.