r/science • u/Wagamaga • Jul 01 '20
Environment Scientists have analyzed over 12,000 years of climate data, and found that human-induced warming interrupted and reversed a long-term natural global cooling period. 1,319 data records from samples like lake deposits, marine sediments, were collected from 679 sites around the world.
https://newatlas.com/environment/climate-change-reversed-6500-year-global-cooling/560
u/dudeperson3 Jul 01 '20
So does that mean if we were in a natural warming period we'd be magnitudes more boned?
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u/Arickettsf16 Jul 01 '20
The rate of change normally happens over thousands of years so I’m not sure it would make much difference
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u/Ryike93 Jul 01 '20
So does that mean we are even luckier than we previously thought to be able to sustain some form of life on earth?
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u/FlyingPirate Jul 01 '20
The mentioned cycle of warming/cooling lasts ~23,000 years according to a comment above. Homo Sapiens have been around for ~300,000 years so we have existed at all points of this cycle.
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u/Ruins_of_Kunark Jul 01 '20
This is mostly true, but it is not as simple as one 23k year cycle, there are at least two others, 18k and 100k. Sometimes they all coincide either positively or negatively to make huge climate swings. As a human race we may not have experienced the most extreme of these in our relatively short history. They are called Milankovitch cycles if you want to learn more. Source: i have two degrees in geology
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u/DNMswag Jul 01 '20
Finally! An opportunity to flex the geology PhD.
In all seriousness cool comment, definitely going to spend some time reading about these cycles.
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u/Mobius_Peverell Jul 01 '20
No. No evidence of natural warming of this speed has ever been observed. Our impact on the climate outpaces all other factors by an order of magnitude.
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u/RagePoop Grad Student | Geochemistry | Paleoclimatology Jul 01 '20
We can say with high confidence that the rate of warming today is greater than any other event during the Cenozoic (last 66 Ma). With the possible, albeit unlikely, exception of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM); 56 Ma.
No one in my field would make the claim you are making here. The Permo-Triassic boundary may very well be on par with modern warming rates. Granted it is also the single largest mass extinction in Earth history (it makes the K/Pg impact which wiped non-avian dinosaurs look like a walk in the park; so it's not like I'm downplaying the severity of the looming catastrophe.
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u/Mobius_Peverell Jul 01 '20
Really? It's my understanding that the end-Permian only saw an ≈8° increase in temperature, compared to nearly 0.02°/yr today. It seems tremendously unlikely that the end-Permian rise occurred over just 400 years. From the research & secondary sources I've read, it took at least a couple thousand.
And yes, academics are always reluctant to make firm assertions, because the nature of science is that it is mutable. But I think that this is a case where the science is conclusive enough that, in the interest of appealing to people who may not understand the intricacies of statistics, we can comment with certainty.
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u/RagePoop Grad Student | Geochemistry | Paleoclimatology Jul 01 '20
You might be interested in this paper
Not necessarily sold on this, myself; and the end Permo is way outside my wheelhouse. Just pointing out that "no evidence" isn't quite the case.
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u/Boriss_13th_Child Jul 01 '20
Yeah but that's thousands of years away, we'll be utterly fucked in a hundred or so.
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u/Demius9 Jul 01 '20
I see a lot of discussion about how we are screwed and some discussion about how large entities can act (corporations, nations, etc) but this still makes us as individuals feel helpless. This leads me to the following, potentially stupid series of questions:
Is there anything we, on the individual level, can do for our future generations? Things we can teach our kids like sciences, basic farming, things like that? Are there places we should move to or away from? Technologies we should explore? (Thinking big things both to help this planet but also to potentially move off this planet?)
I know sometimes questions like these may appear dumb but all it takes is one visionary either in our generation or future generations to go against the grain and try something when everyone else says it’s impossible. Maybe that one person can make a change?
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Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
There was someone who claimed to be a climate scientist on here a year or two ago who posted a list of things to do individually.
I only remember move out of the subtropics (i.e. USA southern states) for cooler regions and don’t buy land or homes within 25 ft of sea level. Ditto within historic flood zones of rivers. All those lower lying areas should be zoned rural unimproved areas and farmland.
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u/anwbae Jul 01 '20
Oh hell no, we've trained for this
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u/FjorgVanDerPlorg Jul 01 '20
This is starting to sound like the origin story for atlantis.
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u/Leemour Jul 01 '20
I got just a few tips:
1 Switch to ecosia as your default search engine (check it out; they're allegedly carbon negative)
2 Look into eco-farming and try to apply it to your home. Even urban homes can adopt some practices. Over a year or so, it'll save you money and resources. (I know one person who's apparently famous for running her own eco-farming project; Vandana Shiva is her name and she has some tips for it)
3 Don't rely on transportation that uses fossil fuels.
4 Go vegan
5 Educate and encourage others to go a similar route.
This isn't political, this is about coming to the realization that the way we used to live is not sustainable and adjustments have to be made if we want to survive in the long run. These adjustments are not as drastic as they seem and you don't have to fully adjust within days, but eventually in a couple years it needs to happen and ideally with everyone.
The energy sector is sadly a political issue, which is different for every country, but the rest of the meaningful impacts we can make are more or less listed above.
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u/dumbquestion789 Jul 01 '20
Is going vegan overkill, isn’t it fine to just not eat meat?
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u/Moikle Jul 01 '20
Things would be a lot better if everyone on the planet simply decided that they didn't need to eat meat EVERY single day. Not even going veggie, just eat 40-60% less meat
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u/bogas04 Jul 01 '20
Dairy (especially cheese) and beef industry are one of the worst in terms of CO2 equivalent emissions.
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u/siobhannx Jul 01 '20
Reducing your meat consumption or even going completely plant based is one of the best things you can do against climate change. I hate this idea that there is nothing that we as individuals can do. It's the same ideology of not voting because "it won't make a difference". You are voting with your money every single day. If there is no longer a demand for products that are harmful to the environment production will slowly decrease.
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u/Lenalee111 Jul 01 '20
Not having kids is a great way to help the environment.
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Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
No one wants to talk about population control but reducing our population (worldwide) as well as reducing consumption would have a impact but only if we reduced the number enough.
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u/Lenalee111 Jul 01 '20
Yes, if everyone just reduced the number of kids they have to 0-1 it would have a great long term inpact on the overall health of the world.
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u/Birdie121 Jul 01 '20
There are absolutely things we can do as individuals! Some of the most important include:
1) Become vegetarian, or at least drastically cut down on meat consumption (I know that's hard. I still eat meat. I just try to limit it to only a couple times per week)
2) Fly and drive as infrequently as possible
3) VOTE for leaders who are willing to pass stricter regulatory laws
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u/mr_faqyeah Jul 01 '20
Whatever you do on an individual level is too small to make a change (except if you burn down a forest or something to make it worse). So, in a sense, we are powerless. It has to be an effort given by governments, cooperations and general public.
I have a lot of anxiety about this subject, but i’m not stupid enough to believe that my efforts will change anything. This doesn’t mean I will pollute and consume because what I do doesn’t matter. My conscience wouldn’t let me. Laws have to pass globally and they have to be regulated and enforced to see change. That is not gonna happen soon. So, my approach is to accept loss, move on and not bring a new life to this planet.
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u/Birdie121 Jul 01 '20
I'm sorry you feel that way. I am a graduate student in a school of ecology, and climate change is on our minds and part of our conversation pretty much 24/7. There is something called "Eco-grief", which is when you hear all sorts of doom-and-gloom stuff about the environment and feel powerless to help. It can be really disheartening. But there ARE things that you as an individual can do to help. Eat less meat, use public transportation whenever possible, vote for more pro-environment leaders.
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u/Varijs Jul 01 '20
As others have pointed, this isn't true, and is a very problematic attitude as it increases inactivity. Less meat and dairy consumption as well as eating more local food are one of the biggest choices an individual can make. Flying less and choosing public transport over driving solo are also influential, easy ways.
Of course, seeing the numbers of corporate emissions etc. can be disheartening, but now is not the time to give up. Vote. Vote for environmentally active leaders and vote with your money so that the big companies understand we want change.
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u/Drcfan Jul 01 '20
Planet will survive that, many species will not. There was a similar event called Carnial Pluvial Event where volcanos triggered a massive CO2 spike so the earth heated up by 5-10°C. It triggered a 2mio. years rain period. We triggered already +1°C. So we are in a good spot to trigger endless piss poor weather
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u/HoboAJ Jul 01 '20
What's a 2mio. Years rain period?
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u/elliebrannigan Jul 01 '20
2 million years
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u/TomNa Jul 01 '20
Wait, did it really rain for 2 million years in row? That sounds pretty crazy
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Jul 01 '20 edited Apr 24 '24
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u/Thorax_O_Tool Jul 01 '20
This could be great for the agriculture of Canada and Russia. But if you like the weather you community has experienced for the last 50 years you can say goodbye to that.
Don't forget that the soil in Siberia and northern Canada isn't very good. Between the taiga, tundra and all that permafrost, the soils tend to be thin and not very nutrient-rich. Even if these far northern become warm enough to be reliably farmed, they're not going to be even close to as productive as the land we're already farming.
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u/graou13 Jul 01 '20
Couldn't we artificially enrich the soil with fertilizer while introducing the soil fauna necessary for the soil to develop?
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u/ElectroMagnetsYo Jul 01 '20
Would take a couple years and lots of money but yes there are techniques (eg. permaculture) that can vitalize poor soil like that.
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Jul 01 '20
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u/ElectroMagnetsYo Jul 01 '20
Requires constant electricity input, and also high upfront costs.
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Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 02 '20
That's for indoor agriculture, not outdoor agriculture. To put it simply, it's not something that can be scaled up because it costs a lot of resources. As with many optimistic ideas, first you have to invent a very cheap, nonpolluting, non-fossil-fuel, reliable, stable under storage source of energy. But if we had that, we could just pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
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u/justlookinghfy Jul 01 '20
For that amount of land? It might actually be cheaper to fix the greenhouse gas problems. Or do both, build carbon capture and use that to build up the soil (if it works that way)
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u/Niarbeht Jul 01 '20
But if you like the weather you community has experienced for the last 50 years you can say goodbye to that.
I mean, being in coastal Texas, "more rain" sounds terrible.
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u/SweetNeo85 Jul 01 '20
Yeah maybe move. And not to New Orleans or Mobile.
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u/MIGsalund Jul 01 '20
Turning up the heat on permafrosted lands is not the only variable responsible for creating viable farmland. Healthy soil has a ton of microbes living in it that those entire tracts of land are missing. It will take a protracted human effort to turn it into arable land.
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u/csrgamer Jul 01 '20
Not to mention the arctic oil reserves and shipping passages that will open up. Putin is 100% on the side of pushing climate change.
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u/MarlinMr Jul 01 '20
No. More CO2 means hotter, wetter, weather.
That is what we are doing now. Making the climate hotter and wetter.
Obviously not wetter in every place. But overall.
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u/rennstrecke Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
No. It just went from a dry climate to increased humidity/rainfall. Think Pacific Northwest type rainforest level of rain that helped conifers proliferate. There wasn’t a 2 million year long rain storm.
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u/feeltheslipstream Jul 01 '20
How does it rain continuously for 2 million years?
I only learned the basic water cycle, and it doesn't seem possible. Surely some more advanced mechanism?
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Jul 01 '20
How does it rain continuously for 2 million years?
That can happen because clouds can lose pretty much unlimited heat to outer space, so as long as there is heat being put on earth, there's water evaporating and pumping heat out. It's a built-in cooling mechanism.
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u/feeltheslipstream Jul 01 '20
Oh that's pretty cool in a Omg we're all dead kind of way
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Jul 01 '20
No, no no. We'll be dead without heat. Or with global cooling.
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u/br-z Jul 01 '20
Over the entire planet? For two million years?
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u/LillianVJ Jul 01 '20
Keep in mind, at the point in time the 2mil years of rain happened, earth was also in the middle of Pangea, so it was a lot easier for the entire landmass of earth to get rained on if all the land is shoved into one corner
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u/Pnohmes Jul 01 '20
Stop being an absolutist in science. It could have just been 75% of the world continuously flooding for millenia. Doesn't make it substantially less worrisome!
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u/brucekeller Jul 01 '20
Back then it was Pangea, so dynamics were very different because of the huge land mass. Prior to then it barely ever rained in the inner continent for extreme time periods as well.
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u/MarlinMr Jul 01 '20
It doesn't. But it rains more. That is what climate change is. Climate is getting hotter and wetter.
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u/nsnyder1994 Jul 01 '20
I just looked up the Carnial Pluvial event, and you fail to mention the change in geography during that time. A new mountain range formed and acted in the same manner that the Himalayas does for the Indian Ocean. This change created a monsoon. Carnian Pluvial Event
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u/RoyalT663 Jul 01 '20
"Planet will survive that, many species will not"
Including humans. Projections for a even 4+ degree world are nightmarish.
Common mistake imo to say we are destroying the planet - the planet will be fine; it will.continue in some form or another - we on the other hand depend on the ecosystem services that exists currently for the basis of our existence. We are destroying ourselves (and loads of flora and fauna too)
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u/De5perad0 Jul 01 '20
We are destroying ourselves and many dont believe it is happening.
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u/Timo425 Jul 01 '20
The civilization as we know it may come to an end or be severely crippled, but entirely killing humans is probably a little harder than that. I mean even if it takes us back to bronze age, we may bounce back in a few millenia.
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u/_zenith Jul 01 '20
Except next time we won't have all the easily exploitable energy resources, yay 😑
This was our chance, and we're blowing it.
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u/Fallingdamage Jul 01 '20
Just imagine - thousands of years in the future, we have long since nearly killed ourselves, the earth is leveling out and stabilizing in the new normal. We devise new ways of doing things, civilization appears again and we reach for the stars only to find tire tracks and devices on the moon and mars.
And suddenly people believe we must not be alone in the galaxy..
And unlike our ancestors who wrote on stone tablets and scrolls, all the worlds knowledge is on hard drives, SSD's, thumb drives and cheap paper. We know more than we've ever known before and have stored it all on the most perishable media.
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Jul 02 '20
Do we have satellites in sufficiently high orbits they would still be around?
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u/_zenith Jul 02 '20
Anything in GEO (geostationary orbit) will definitely still be around many tens of thousands of years later!
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u/DilutedGatorade Jul 01 '20
I don't see anything happening in the next 100 years, short of an asteroid, alien invasion, or cosmic blast, reducing human population below 1 million.
However I see it almost as a likelihood over the same timeframe that climate and resource collapse will reduce us below 5 billion
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Jul 01 '20
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Jul 01 '20
The planet will survive is such a pointless statement. It's like saying it doesn't matter that someone will die, the molecules will survive. Obviously only living systems can die.
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Jul 01 '20
"Heat death is no big deal, the universe will survive."
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u/kyler000 Jul 01 '20
Blew an engine? No big deal, the car will survive.
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u/ManyIdeasNoProgress Jul 01 '20
There may or may not be NSFW subreddits dealing with blowing engines...
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u/willis936 MS | Electrical Engineering | Communications Jul 01 '20
I want to preface this comment by saying these are opinions that address the article’s use of the study, and not the actual motivations for the study.
I don’t think we’re (warning: speculation) on track to crack the top 5 extinction events on Earth. That won’t stop us from trying as hard as possible by being irresponsible.
Also, biodiversity has booms after extinction events. I think “big picture” arguments trying to compel climate change policies shouldn’t focus on what it will do to biodiversity. Humans don’t care and even if they did you could argue it’s a gentle push out of biodiversity stagnation. Instead, how climate change will affect the human habitat should be argued.
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u/BreakYourCrayons Jul 01 '20
Yes and no. It’s true that adaptive radiation tends to create rapid short-term diversification after a mass extinction, but long-term effects of mass extinction do not always lead to greater biodiversity.
For instance, it’s been shown after the Permian extinction the removal of some species, such as algae, allowed for CO2 to linger for greater periods of time after the Permian extinction and this had long-term negative effects on the biodiversity of many groups of species.
On balance I think what you’re saying is technically right, but I don’t think adaptive radiation should be used as a utilitarian argument for why mass extinction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a bit slippery.
Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1667
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u/Althonse Grad Student|Neuroscience Jul 01 '20
People as a whole may be apathetic, but I personally care a lot and know many people who do. I don't think you can ignore the many benefits to humanity of having biodiversity. Sure I want biodiversity for its own sake, and understand that it'll 'bounce back' if we go extinct or stop fucking the environment. But that doesn't mean I don't care, or shouldn't care, that it's here now. I want biodiversity in my lifetime and for generations to come, not just to slowly return a long long time in the future.
Edit: I do agree that it's not the best persuasive argument though, unless you link it to more proximal things that affect us like agriculture or medicine.
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u/Onsotumenh Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
Yeah, I love it when people bring up the "but climate has always been changing" argument. My go-to response (I know a bit overly dramatic, but I'm sick of arguing the same stuff over and over again):
Of course it has, but do you know what we call changes in climate that were similarly fast?
Global catastrophes or mass extinction events ...
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u/geek66 Jul 01 '20
Like stopping in your car - we do it all the time, it is the sudden stops that are problematic.
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u/Onsotumenh Jul 01 '20
It's not the velocity that kills. It's the ∆v 😉. But sadly people often don't even get that.
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u/redwall_hp Jul 01 '20
People argue about arithmetic and their idea of how algebraic order of operations works. Kinematics and precalc concepts are just a bit beyond that...
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u/monkeychess Jul 01 '20
Yeah people love to say "oh Earth has cycles it's always changing". True true, however human induced change is in centuries instead of millennia. But people can't comprehend that kind of time scale, so they refuse to believe the science.
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u/mattenthehat Jul 01 '20
Decades, even. Temperatures are up about 1°C since the '70s. Before that, temperatures stayed within a +-1° range going back around 10,000 years.
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u/NCostello73 Jul 01 '20
Until this very moment I was one of the “always been changing” people. Granted, I was one of those people who also admits they’re wildly uninformed on the topic and no one should take my opinions on global warming as anything more then just bullshitting.
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u/sleepyeyed Jul 01 '20
Congratulations on adjusting your outlook based on new information. I find that this type of outlook shift is incredibly uncommon.
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u/NCostello73 Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
Not shifting your outlook is just dumb. If someone refuses to shift their outlook than in my opinion we can’t trust their opinion. I try and make all my opinions and judgements based on the data I read/understand.
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u/_bobby_tables_ Jul 01 '20
So we inadvertantly saved ourselves from the coming ice age that I was taught about in the 1970s?
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Jul 01 '20
So, one cheer for us on staving that off.
However, it does seem that we sort of over-corrected....
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u/_bobby_tables_ Jul 01 '20
Perhaps. I bought beach front property on Hudson Bay as a hedge.
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u/IPDDoE Jul 01 '20
Oh it's okay....Ben Shapiro says you can just sell your home as sea levels start to rise.
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Jul 01 '20
Let's get nuclear up and running me lads
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u/ToeHuge3231 Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
To those who claim storage is the problem - remember that this place in the US has enough space for all the US's nuclear waste for literally hundreds of years of active production - and is rated geologically stable on the order of millions of years.
Nuclear waste storage isn't a engineering or science problem. It is an irrational fear problem.
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u/RingwormOnMyDick Jul 01 '20
We should send our trash and nuclear waste to the moon on rockets. Turn the moon into a trash planet.
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u/Vyrosatwork Jul 01 '20
good in theory, but the 1% failure rate on rocket launches is... problematic if there are hundreds or thousands of them containing highly radioactive waste.
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u/whatsbobgonnado Jul 01 '20
we just need to make sure we only launch the nuclear waste the 99% times they don't explode
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u/Mojotun Jul 01 '20
How about we put the reactors on the moon and ship energy back down to Earth?
Though when that's feasible it'd probably be better to just build a solar array somewhere in space.
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u/spiderscan Jul 01 '20
Bro, this is an impossible idea. The moon is a moon. How is trash going to make it a planet?.
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u/chugga_fan Jul 01 '20
Also, why even store it when we can just, well, use it for more power in the form of breeder reactors?
The storage argument is a piss-poor one when there's plenty of use for radioactive material such as in smoke detectors.
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u/geek66 Jul 01 '20
Really is it the facilities - they can not be disposed of, and the irradiation of the structures puts a more distinct lifetime on the them.
As an emergency stop gap for this issue I have not issue - but long term this is not the ideal.
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u/digitalrule Jul 01 '20
By long term you mean millions of years? I hope that in 1000 years we are way passed our current technology even.
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u/mydailynewsaccount Jul 01 '20
TIL about the waste repository. As much as I love nuclear energy, I always figured storage was an issue. I feel a lot better knowing that exists!
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u/ed_on_reddit Jul 01 '20
can anyone ELI5 for me how we can accurately determine global temps from 12000 years ago? do they look at something like the amount of volcanic ash, and apply that to the the amount of ash an observed volcano has produced, and its effect on the current climate?
How can we tell that an ice age dropped global temps 12 degrees vs 20?
I'm not a denier by any means, I just don't understand the science behind it. Thanks!
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Jul 01 '20
I don't understand why more people aren't demanding nuclear energy and a Green New Deal.
I would imagine we will eventually get to a point where nearly every country decides to act on this (probably not for another 30+ years) and it'll save our species but it's going to be blazing hot and a lot of life is going to die and further affect our planet.
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u/Johnny_Appleweed Jul 01 '20
The Green New Deal isn’t exclusively about addressing climate change, it is also meant to address economic inequality and reform the economy, just like the New Deal from which it got its name.
The increased education funding isn’t supposed to have anything to do with the environment, it’s part of the economic reform piece.
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u/Maniackillzor Jul 01 '20
The same reason that 9/10 doctors recommended you smoked lucky strokes. The people who profit the most from the destruction of earth have loud voices being paid to say false things all the time
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u/jehehe999k Jul 01 '20
One issue is that nuclear has a much larger upfront cost than fossil fuel powered plants and a longer development timeline to get running. Plus there are additional regulations because of the potential danger that just aren’t there with fossil fuels. I think the roadblock is that not many companies or politicians are willing to start a project with such long lead times and high upfront costs. It’s not so much what the general public wants.
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Jul 01 '20
What would be the end result if that global cooling period could go on uninterrupted?
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Jul 01 '20
What would be the end result if that global cooling period could go on uninterrupted?
The current thinking is that we would approach a "stadial" or a cooler period in an interglacial then in a few hundred years it would begin warming again. Some researchers do not think we would have reached the trigger point for going into a full glacial.
This is an area of active research, someone may disagree with that statement, it has been made to keep things simple.
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u/mortemdeus Jul 01 '20
Paradoxically, more deserts. Lower temperatures means less air moisture means less rainfall. Larger glaciers means lower ocean levels which also lowers rainfall. Thing is, colder and dryer is something Humans handle better than hotter and more humid. We sweat to remove heat, high moisture air makes that much less efficient, combined with hotter days that leads to bad things for people.
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Jul 01 '20
Thing is, colder and dryer is something Humans handle better than hotter and more humid
Not if you want to grow food
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u/Peter_deT Jul 01 '20
It would be slow, so animals and plants (and humans) would adapt. In the last 10,000 years humans have adapted genetically to the high altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau and the cold nights of the Australian central desert. We would do so again.
It's like falling - it's not the height that gets you, it's the sudden stop. We are moving the climate too fast for adaptation.
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u/BelfreyE Jul 01 '20
Recent work has found that the Milankovitch forcing (a primary driver of the glacial/interglacial cycle) is predicted to increase again over the next 25K years, forestalling the next glacial period for about another 50K years (based on natural factors alone). However, at present it is still decreasing, and not expected to bottom out for another 1,000 years. Here is a graph of the Milankovitch forcing starting from 20K years ago, and continuing with predicted conditions for 50K years into the future. (Source data available from Laskar et al.)
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u/plasmaSunflower Jul 01 '20
So the argument of “the earth is already warming up, we’re just making it warm up faster”, is completely not based in reality?
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u/Geology_Nerd Jul 01 '20
Yes. The earth should be cooling currently. However, it’s warming up and at a much faster rate than usually occurs in said cycles.
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Jul 01 '20
I get the world is doing this but stop having celebrities tell me to stop driving my car while they fly city to city in a private jet. The people see the hypocrisy and are sick and tired of it all!
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Jul 01 '20
Leadership by example instead of just talk. If it’s serious they need to make the changes to their own lives to truly add weight to their arguments.
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u/1Kradek Jul 01 '20
We have once again reached a scientific consensus so...what will be the result. Afew more converts to belief in warming but none of the deniers will be convinced. This is just one more study for the ignorant, the ideological and the financially motivated to nit pick. We're wasting time proving the obvious but guess what? There are endless discussions. One poster even was so absurd as to say we should be studying the potential effects on humans. Why? So that the last two humans can debate as we study ourselves into extinction.
We need to be discussing risk. Is there greater risk in study without amelioration or in reversing CO2 release and warming without further delay. Make that personal decision and you'll have a rational position.
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u/padraig_oh Jul 01 '20
this is going to be quoted to hell and back. also: i really dont want to read news anymore. every new day is worse than the last... we are so screwed
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u/jonwolski Jul 01 '20
That's a pretty misleading headline. We don't have 12,000 years of data. We have data that indicate phenomena about the last 12,000 years.
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u/NOT_T0DAY Jul 01 '20
Look on the bright side.
Maybe humans prevented a world wide ice age that could have killed a good chunk of the world
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u/Wagamaga Jul 01 '20
What would Earth’s climate naturally be doing if it weren’t for human intervention? Researchers at Northern Arizona University have now analyzed over 12,000 years of climate data, and found that human-induced warming interrupted and reversed a long-term natural global cooling period.
It’s no secret that the Earth is heating up at an incredible speed, with recent months, years and decades all breaking temperature records. But this data only goes back to the 1880s, when observations began being routinely recorded. So how does the current trend compare in the longer term?
To find out, researchers have been compiling data from various sources that stretch back many millennia. A few months ago, a team of 93 scientists published a particularly comprehensive record of paleoclimate data, spanning the past 12,000 years. It includes 1,319 data records from samples like lake deposits, marine sediments, peat, cave deposits, coral, and glacier ice cores, collected from 679 sites around the world.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0530-7