Lock her up?
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Between 1965 and 1979, there were 6 times as many papers predicting warming than cooling, measured both in raw count of articles (44 vs 7) and counting # citations by 1983 (1986 vs 325). See https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.pdf
All of the models agree on the basic science, the difference is that the cooling papers expected aerosol use to keep going up and CO2 emissions to be flat, neither of which happened. But the takeaway should be not that some predictions were wrong, but rather that humans were able to stop emissions of some chemicals. We have successfully addressed multiple man made environmental problems (acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, the dust bowl), and it is only a lack of desire that prevents us from addressing warming.
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Given the warming is unstoppable now, I take a lot of comfort that on a geological timescale the earth is actually at a pretty cold point right now.
Now, a lot of people will be negatively impacted by global warming, and a lot of specialist species will go extinct. But the world will come out fine.
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The temperature change isn’t really the problem. The timeframe is.
2 degrees over a couple hundred thousand years? Fine. Over 100 years? Big problem.
The generalist species will come out fine.
We’ve probably specialized too much to get billions of us through, but millions will for sure.
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Wish some of your rain could get deflected 1000+ miles northward. Probably no significant rain in the Western Canada fire zones until October.
I do think it would be great if folks could learn not to be drawn into the speculations of random scientists.
By the way, I don’t know how old you are, but I wasn’t even alive in the 70s.
I was born in the 80s, when scientists came to a clear consensus.
So we’ve been ignoring this huge clusterfuck my entire life.
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Speculating??
Here is the wiki, which should be accurate:
By the 1970s, scientists were becoming increasingly aware that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945, as well as the possibility of large scale warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases. In the scientific papers which considered climate trends of the 21st century, less than 10% were inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming.[1] The general public had little awareness of carbon dioxide’s effects on climate, but Science News in May 1959 forecast a 25% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 150 years from 1850 to 2000, with a consequent warming trend.[2] The actual increase in this period was 29%. Paul R. Ehrlich mentioned global warming from greenhouse gases as a counterforce to the cooling effect of aerosols in 1968.[3] By the time the idea of global cooling reached the public press in the mid-1970s temperatures had stopped falling, and there was concern in the climatological community about carbon dioxide’s warming effects.[4] In response to such reports, the World Meteorological Organization issued a warning in June 1976 that “a very significant warming of global climate” was probable.[5]
You know, when a scientist thinks out loud, it is not always an inarguable fact. when they write papers about it and sign their name, then you can bash those particular scientists for being wrong, but I don’t think general bashing of all scientists (that is how your post reads) is appropriate.
The cooling period is reproduced by current (1999 on) global climate models that include the physical effects of sulfate aerosols, and there is now general agreement that aerosol effects were the dominant cause of the mid-20th century cooling. At the time there were two physical mechanisms that were most frequently advanced to cause cooling: aerosols and orbital forcing.
And some of those papers have extremely important caveats:
The paper of Hays, Imbrie, and Shackleton “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” qualified its predictions with the remark that “forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted … the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate”.[8]
Oh, there is more. A lot more.
Let’s all read it and learn something from somewhere different from the “museums” you can find in places like, say, Kentucky.
1974 Time magazine article[edit]
While these discussions were ongoing in scientific circles, other accounts appeared in the popular media. In their June 24, 1974, issue, Time presented an article titled “Another Ice Age?”
1975 Newsweek article[edit]
An April 28, 1975, article in Newsweek magazine was titled “The Cooling World”,[37]
Fun fact: these two publiocations also did this, but in the same week:
Oh, the earth will be fine, and life will keep going. This is going to be a mass extinction event though.
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I think we’re already locked into a mass extinction event at this point, may as well enjoy it now.
Aside, I’m sick of hearing about the polar bears, I’m not shedding any tears to lose such a specialized species. I’m happy for seals moving up to top predator status. You know the bear you least want to run into? It’s a polar bear, they’ll hunt you for fun. Good riddance.
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But they’re so cute!!!
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I’m assuming worst case mass extinction is quite possible, best case parts of the planet are unlivable and we have a global migrant crisis and famine, and the population gradually dies down to an amount sustainable for perhaps another 500-1000 years before we’ve fully ruined the planet for humans.
Then maybe 50,000 years down the line the planet gets back to its natural state.
That’s the thing, on geologic time, the planet is unnaturally cool right now, getting warmer is a perfectly natural state.
Unnaturally cool? I mean, we’re not in an ice age or anything and ice ages are natural, are they not?
We’re flipping back and forth between ice ages. It’s more normal from a geological time perspective to have no ice ages (hot house phase I think vs current ice house phase)
ETA it’s greenhouse vs ice house earth apparently
As of right now, two inches over a 24-hour period expected in my area (had to add up the hour-by-hour on WU). That’s more than the average for a whole summer. Probably more than the most rain ever recorded over a summer. Just saying, it doesn’t rain much in the summer here.
According to CBS, likely worst will happen in Palm Springs and surrounding deserts, probably the surrounding mountains. No, the infrastructure is not ready for this – not ready in Winter, or ever – so expect some disaster videos.
Nhc.noaa.gov has a projected rainfall map that has over 4" storm total in Death Valley. Tulare Lake might get a couple of inches.
Lots of flowers will pop up in death valley a few weeks later, would be a neat time to plan a trip if you were in the area.
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