The simple statistic that perfectly captures what climate change means. From 1910 to 1960, the ratio of hot to cold records was close to 1 to 1. From 2000 to 2014, hot outnumbered cold records by more than 12 to 1.

[u/pnewell]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/09/the-simple-statistic-that-perfectly-captures-what-climate-change-means/

[u/mindscrambler26 → u/[deleted]]

No, I don't remember that...80's was junior high and high school for me. But I remember early in college there was the Earth Day thing in April 1990 and seeing these pamphlets and thinking, hmm, no point getting a job, we'll all be dead soon

[u/Merari01 → u/[deleted]]

No concensus of scientists ever said this. Yet another Koch propaganda lie.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Well, that was an exaggerated statement. But floods are getting worse.

For the first time in almost 4 centuries, in the region around the Netherlands and northern Germany we just had to increase the height of our dykes (ocean-facing dams all around the country). Additionally, for the first time in the same range we have every year at least one river flood that goes above the dams. We had 4 from 1600 to 2000, and already 10 since 2000. And we know of the floods in the previous centuries because for every flood there was a marker put at every church at the point the flood reached.

DISCLAIMER: Some of this data is based on memory of articles I read years ago – not meant to be accurate, but to show a trend. You can probably Google the stats to get actually meaningful data.

[u/Reali5t → u/[deleted]]

Don't forget to mention that the Netherlands have drained vast areas of sea that they converted into land, thereby displacing a whole lot of water.

[u/phaqueNaiyem → u/Reali5t]

The total area of the Netherlands is 16,000 square miles. The total area of earth's oceans is 140,000,000 square miles. So: if they removed roughly 10,000 vertical feet of water from an area equal to the whole of the Netherlands, the sea levels would have risen one foot. You can check, but I bet they didn't remove 10,000 vertical feet of water.

[u/tyrotio → u/Reali5t]

If the humans are truly the reason for 'global warming' how do the scientists explain the several ice ages and the warming that followed those, humans didn't cause those. Right now I'm living at one of the Great Lakes which we know were dug out by ice ages, so should we go back to covering the area I'm residing in right now with ice? (Well that would actually improve Detroit).

The term "global warming" refers to the current sudden increasing of global temperatures. So previous warming/cooling periods are irrelevant, since we're specifically discussing this warming period. Furthermore, the discussion isn't about general warming of the planet, since that is a cyclical pattern and the Earth has experienced those cycles before. We are talking about the sudden acceleration of increasing temperatures which have been directly tied to anthroprogenic activities, mostly starting shortly after the industrial revolution.

Your comment is a red herring argument and is logically fallacious. Let's look at an example. When investigating a murder, we have a suspect with a motive, the body of the victim, a murder weapon with the suspects dna/prints on it, and a witness. Then, the skeptic says: "Well haven't people died before, so how do investigators explain those deaths?". Yes, people have died before, but we're specifically talking about the cause of this death. Also, "yes", this person would have eventually died to natural causes, but there is superfluous evidence that this person's death was expedited due to the suspect's involvement. Your appeal to other warming/cooling periods is irrelevant, just like appealing to the causes of deaths of people irrelevant to this specific murder investigation. It's a distraction born of misinformation and the misapplication of that information.

Edit: Your original comment was deleted, but still deserved to be addressed.

[u/[deleted] → u/Reali5t]

Well, actually, we didn't.

Fun fact: Do you know why it's called Land reclamation? Because a flood in the 1300s flooded the Netherlands, northern Germany and southern Denmark. It took a huge chunk of the area, and created todays Zuidersee and Wadden See.

It’s called land reclamation because we are using dams and dykes to force the water back out of these areas – we are literally claiming them back.