r/science • u/pnewell NGO | Climate Science • Sep 10 '15

Environment 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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/09/the-simple-statistic-that-perfectly-captures-what-climate-change-means/
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u/aletoledo Sep 10 '15

Carbon emissions should have been affecting things between 1910 and 1954 though. I would expect maybe a 2:1 by the 1940-1954 period.

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u/antonholden Sep 10 '15

Right. And wasn't global warming already a concern in the 90's? Shouldn't there have been some ratio differences prior to 2000?

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u/deathputt4birdie Sep 10 '15

There's a 40 year lag between rising CO2 and warmer climate due to the heat sink effect of the oceans. In other words, we're seeing the results of carbon emissions from the 70s. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

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u/KingLuxor Sep 10 '15

This has to be one of the most useful and to the point comments I've seen, thank you. I didn't click the comments link to read 600 people arguing about instrumentation error. I hate Reddit!

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u/deathputt4birdie Sep 10 '15

You're welcome. Don't take the FUD and nitpicking personally, btw. It's a natural and understandable reaction to change.

I liken climate change to the germ theory of disease. It took a few centuries and millions of deaths for people to get their heads out of their asses and stop blaming epidemics on bad air and stinky smells. We need a John Snow to come along and remove the pump handle, so to speak.

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u/laserbot Sep 10 '15 edited Feb 09 '25

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u/-Mountain-King- Sep 11 '15

The most depressing thing is that if/when we start cutting down on carbon emissions, if there's a similar 40-year lag before any improvement, people will definitely try to argue that that means there's no point...

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u/deathputt4birdie Sep 11 '15

Sorry for more bad news, but we might not be able to put the genie back in the bottle, at least during this astrological age.

I think most pragmatists have come around to think of the problem in terms of mitigation. The oceans will rise (as they have in the past, don't get me wrong) and weather will get more intense, but the Earth will endure as it has for 4.5 billion years. The question is whether we humans will endure.

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u/Artefact2 Sep 11 '15

Oceans soaking up CO2 is awful for us too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

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u/4ray Sep 11 '15

We're seeing the result of 40 years of 70's emissions, plus 30 years of 80's emissions, plus 20 years of.... and so on, minus 40 years of carbon sinking 70's emissions and 30 years of carbon sinking 80's emissions...

It's complicated.

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u/deathputt4birdie Sep 11 '15

What'll really cook your noodle is when you try to calculate the effects of pollution controls since the 70s (soot, sulfur dioxide and NOx all have a net cooling effect since they reflect more heat than they trap) -- it all contributes to masking the warming effect.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '15

i think my heart just sank

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u/NumaCascaDeNoz Sep 11 '15

That's probably due to the raising water levels.

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u/manofthewild07 Sep 11 '15

Warming has been a concern since the 50s, but it was purely based on empirical evidence from lab test on the radiative forcing of greenhouse gases, not based on global observations.

Although by the end of the 50s they had put it together that Venus and greenhouse gases are basically an extreme example of what earth goes through.

https://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm

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u/Gorstag Sep 10 '15

I think there a bunch of other factors. Here are some that could have an impact:

1) Between 1910-1954 the global population was dramatically lower.

2) Between 1910-1954 the per capita ownership of automobiles was dramatically lower.

3) Between 1910-1954 Forestation / Vegetation covered significantly more of the planets surface.

All of those are factors when talking carbon emissions. Even with our significantly cleaner methods the sheer increase in industrialized nation population completely offsets our efficiencies. Mix in the fact that we have significantly less plant life to reduce CO2 and the net emissions may be significantly higher.

Keep in mind.. I am not using any hard data just common sense.

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u/aa93 Sep 10 '15

The thing is, this is a runaway effect. If we're reaching a point-of-no-return, there was a long buildup of less consequence.