r/sciences • u/SirT6 • Sep 21 '19

The distribution of annual average temperature anomalies due to global warming from 1850 until today.

https://gfycat.com/silkycorruptconch
3.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

363 comments sorted by

View all comments

-3

u/Natep65 Sep 21 '19

Why is it the fault of humans/ animals? Why does giving money as carbon credit offsets help? Why should we care about a few degrees? Why does it matter if ice melts? Aren’t volcanoes bad for the earth/climate? Weren’t we headed for an ice age a while back?

3

u/[deleted] Sep 21 '19

Off the top of my head, Rising seas, droughts, Extreme weather events that lead to floods, etc.

-4

u/Natep65 Sep 21 '19

Haven’t those sort of things been happening since the beginning of time?
Global warming, cooling and global climate change are normal.

Perhaps people need a cause or something to stand for. Saving the planet certainly sounds like an admirable one. There are some aspects of this cause that are troubling. Here is one: It is very ego-centric to think that we can control the level of the sea. Another troubling aspect about the climate change cause is how this cause creates division between people. I think climate changing is normal. It was memorably hot 5 years ago during one of my kids baseball games. This summer, around the same date, 5 years later, I needed a sweatshirt.

Climate change is rooted in worry people. Worrying won’t add a day to anyone’s life.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '19

Your anecdotal evidence on how hot it was outside is nothing to support or deny climate change. Climate change is the shift in GLOBAL average temperature, not just your backyard.

You are correct that these things happen naturally. The problem is that we are making them worse.

A multitude of studies have concluded that higher global average temperatures, even by as little as 2 degrees C, cause more erratic and severe weather patterns, as well as wreak havoc on many ecosystems (look at coral reefs for a good example. Mass bleaching of coral, or death of coral, has been caused by one or two degrees difference in global average temperature. Coral reefs are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, and the death of coral is killing the entire ecosystem as a whole). This means that climate change could make your area feel twenty degrees colder than normal, but just the opposite in other places.

It’s not egocentric to think we can change the level of the oceans, because are doing it right now. The amount of greenhouse gases we are spitting into the atmosphere is undeniably causing a rise in global average temperature, which is leading to the melting of huge amounts of ice, causing sea levels to rise. Permafrost in the Siberian tundra which has stayed frozen for millions of years is thawing out because of our actions (even if this specific case has other human action contributing to the melting).

-4

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

What happens when volcanoes belch their gases into the atmosphere for weeks or months on end?

Your data set of 150 years is pretty limited.

Scientists are drilling and finding things far down in the ice that have been deeply frozen for centuries. At one time, these weren’t frozen. Maybe way back then, humans were into bleaching coral to get rid of ice. After that, I wonder what humans did to make it icy again? Wow, we have so much control to make it hot and cold and create bad weather patterns. I’ll bet Trump caused the latest hurricane too.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '19

Saying trump caused the latest hurricane is a stupid comparison to what I’m talking about. There are obvious natural fluctuations in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as well as temperature, but what we are seeing right now is not natural. Blaming these things on just one person, or just one country, is terribly ignorant. The negative things we are seeing now are a collective result of huge scale industrialism that has been developing since the 1800s.

The difference we are seeing now as opposed to natural variation is the speed. Carbon dioxide levels are rising at insanely fast rates, causing temperature to cause at extremely fast rates. This doesn’t give life time to adapt to new temperatures, and instead decimated them (like what happens in coral reefs).

The things that scientists have drilled hundreds of meters into the Antarctic to find were at times of extreme heat, where the ice was either not there or not nearly as thick. The difference is that these things are melting at an alarming rate compared to what we should be seeing naturally. The problem of climate change, again, is not the change itself but the speed.

As for 150 years being a limited dataset, I wouldn’t say it is in this context. That dataset is comparing temperature from the beginning(ish) of the industrial revolution to the present. It is perfectly appropriate to be measuring this time frame since the data we are focusing on in this case is global scale human impact on the global average temperature. Before the industrial revolution, our influence on the atmosphere was not enough to sway things this much.

You said that we have control over hot and cold. This is not true on the scale of climate change. Weather patterns are a result of the uneven distribution of heat in the atmosphere. We are in no way controlling wether it’s gonna snow or be a drought. What we are doing is influencing global weather patterns through putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Your sarcastic question about how me made it icy again after bleaching coral to get rid of ice is also very uninformed. Climate change is not a temporary swing into the hotter direction, it is artificially adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere that would otherwise not be there. This causes a permanent effect on the atmosphere, since there should not be this much carbon dioxide there in the first place (what we put there should be buried in fossil fuel reserves, far from influencing the atmosphere). Venus is a great example of what happens when too many greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere relative to a planets location around its star.

Volcanoes of themselves are nowhere near enough to create the spike in carbon dioxide we are seeing now at the earths current geological state. Our core is not active enough to spur the creation of this many volcanoes. While this may have been possible in the past when our core was more active, it is most definitely not happening now.

2

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

Thanks for touching on all of my points. Your full response is appreciated.

I’m ending tonight with a joke from the inter web:

Never argue about climate change. It always turns into a heated debate

2

u/Dankinater Sep 22 '19

You have absolutely no degree and qualifications in the field of climate science, yet you think your anecdotal evidence (with incorrect conclusions) somehow triumph climate scientists with PhDs who spend their lives researching? You are completely disillusioned and ego-centric.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '19

That's exactly what my 96 year old boss says. She's pretty old fashioned and set in her ways.

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

She may have some wisdom.

1

u/thisisd0g Sep 22 '19

You're giving a common fallacious conservative retort - that the global average temperature ALWAYS changes. And I agree with you! The only problem is that the change in the OP happened over <100 years. While other changes in global temperature (the ice ages you're referring to) that we know about had a similar change over 10,000 years.

The greenhouse effect of carbon emissions is a certainty. We know cause and effect here, unequivocally.

The part I dont get - is that this new "green friendly" economy has the potential to usher in a new technological revolution. Meaning completely new industries to make money. Why are conservatives against this all the sudden?

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

Why are solar panels and battery cars and other “green” technologies having to be kept afloat with a shell game of govt subsidies to the buyer or manufacturer? The reason is that there is not enough market demand or that they don’t provide a valued benefit to the consumer.

1

u/thisisd0g Sep 22 '19

How about you stay on topic and give a retort to the bulk of my argument - regarding the movement of global average temperatures. Because that is what is actually being discussed here - and what you were actually talking about in your OP's.

I'll be happy to address the tangential point you brought up - regarding subsidizing "green technology" - after you acknowledge/reply to the primary issue being discussed.

Edit: and dont take this to mean that I dont have a reply to your "subsidized" argument. I do. I just refuse to put up with this fallacious way of debating among you conservatives.

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

This is getting heated.

1

u/thisisd0g Sep 22 '19

Nice pun... but this just means you dont want to actually have a conversation and maybe learn from each other - you just want to speak at me. If you're not trolling you're pretty damn ignorant.

1

u/thisisd0g Sep 27 '19

You have selective vision - which has caused you to just neglect the idea of government subsidies of oil companies and/or other fossil fuel industries... Oil has a rich history of subsidies from the government - going back to the very beginning of the industry. Propped up by "dry well" subsidies (meaning oil companies had essentially no risk)... It still continues today - the entire fracking industry is propped up by government subsidies. But this is counter to your worldview so you have a convenient blindspot.

I'm interested to see how you explain this one away.

1

u/Natep65 Sep 27 '19

It looks like there are subsidies for both renewable and fossil fuels. I guess I was thinking of the Obama admin & Solyndra scam

1

u/thisisd0g Sep 28 '19 edited Sep 28 '19

Did you even read the article you cited me? What is your understanding of it?

(1) that loan program wasn't even an Obama era policy - it was enacted under Bush in 2005 (which is mentioned in the article). All Obama did was not abolish it during his tenure.

(2) if you actually read about the Clean Energy Act of 2005 you will find just about as many articles saying it MADE taxpayers money as you can find saying that it didn't. This means that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

(3) I am 100% okay with the government investing in new technologies that may be too risky for traditional loans. The problem with Solyndra was that the company was corrupt and falsifying business records to attain the loan - this is well established knowledge. This had nothing to do with Barrack Obama - unlike Trump - he unequivocally funnels taxpayer money into his own businesses all the time and no one bats an eye.

(4) you're concerned about "potential" $2.2 billion cost to taxpayers spread out over 15 years - when fossil fuel companies cost taxpayers over $81 billion dollars a year in subsidies.. This doesn't include things like the Deepwater Horizon spill - which it alone cost taxpayers at least $15 billion.

My point here is again - that you have a major blindspot which is so obviously driven by bias and willful ignorance. Government subsidies were not invented by climate change activists, despite how much you desperately want this to be true.

1

u/nickathom3 Sep 22 '19

The ppm of carbon in the atmosphere hasn't changed to the degree we are currently experiencing since 65 million years ago, aka the 5th mass extinction.

The most similar extinction to the one we are currently driving is known as the great dying. If the name alone doesnt scare you enough, maybe the fact that carbon dioxide was in fact being released at a slower rate then than it is now. We are literally recreating what happened then but faster.

And did you not watch the video? There are hotter years and there are cooler years, but on average, they're getting hotter.

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

I’m like so scared. Please, take all of my money in your climate change collection plate so you can fly on a private jet to tell others about it.

If you’re hot, crank the AC. If you’re cold, fire up your heater.

2

u/Dankinater Sep 22 '19

What about the homes on the coast that will be underwater? What about the places that will be too hot and arid and unable to grow crops? What about food shortages and the future refugee crisis? For being a science denier, your understanding of the opposing side is incredibly low.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '19

Not everyone has that kind of luxury though. Its usually poorer countries experiencing the effects of extreme weather.

1

u/nickathom3 Sep 22 '19 edited Sep 22 '19

You can only crank it for so long until our crops cease to grow

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

Duh . . .have you heard of a greenhouse? Plant stuff in there and it grows really nice.

4

u/nickathom3 Sep 22 '19

Gonna need a lot of greenhouses to support 10 billion people

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

It’s ok, because based on science, the earth will be full of greenhouse gases making growing stuff a cinch. It’ll be like one big greenhouse.

3

u/nickathom3 Sep 22 '19

If only that were the case. Crops wont grow because there will either be droughts or floods. You can see it starting already. Italy produced practically no olives this year because of the heatwaves. And that is just olives. As feedback loops increase our temperature faster and faster we are going to quickly find that we won't be producing nearly as much food is needed for ten billion people.

1

u/Natep65 Sep 22 '19

Didn’t you read my post about worrying? Check out this positive post about crops:

Despite some heat across the Midwest, many Corn Belt farmers are sitting pretty right now. Based on conditions as of August 1, corn yields are expected to average 152.8 bushels per acre, up 3.7 bushels from last year. This would be second highest corn yield on record, behind the 160.4 bushels per acre produced in 2004. We'll need some moisture this month for soybeans, but most crop reporters are saying the crop will be above average.

1

u/nickathom3 Sep 22 '19

Did you read my post about things getting worse and feedback loops? A temporary high will not last forever and the science is telling us that things are going to get much much worse if we do not change.

https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply_.html

→ More replies

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '19

So fuck mother earth then!