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The Climate Events of 2020 Show How Excess Heat is Expressed on Earth:
By most accounts, 2020 has been a rough year for the planet. It was the warmest year on record, just barely exceeding the record set in 2016 by less than a tenth of a degree according to NASA's analysis. Massive wildfires scorched Australia, Siberia, and the United States' west coast – and many of the fires were still burning during the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record.
"This year has been a very striking example of what it's like to live under some of the most severe effects of climate change that we've been predicting," said Lesley Ott, a research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
[...] Human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible for warming our planet, adding excess heat to the Earth. Climate events like droughts, hurricanes, and fires are all different ways that we see heat expressed in Earth's system.
[...] Burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas releases greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide – into the atmosphere, where they act like an insulating blanket and trap heat near Earth's surface.
"The natural processes Earth has for absorbing carbon dioxide released by human activities – plants and the ocean – just aren't enough to keep up with how much carbon dioxide we're putting into the atmosphere," said Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist and Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City.
Carbon dioxide levels have increased by nearly 50% since the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. The amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled. As a result, during this period, Earth has warmed by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (just over 1 degree Celsius).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:50AM (4 children)
Eat the Bugs! Live in pods! Overpopulate (Brown and Black people only)! Pay the climate taxes! Ignore China and India! Wear the mask! Shelter in place! For climate change, or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:52AM (1 child)
Ban the plastic! No wait! Wear the MASK.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:00AM
Remember in the early '90's when Bill "Save the Gay Whales" Clinton was in charge, when we were subjected to nonstop video clips of seagulls and sea turtles struggling to free themselves from those plastic 6-pack can holders? Well, in another 5 years, we'll be seeing video clips of seagulls and sea turtles trying to free themselves from all the junk masks that are already being ejected wholesale into the ocean. By then, climate change rather than the COVID hoax will become the primary method of oppression at the personal level, and "carbon-credits" will replace currency as we know it. You will be charged extra "climate taxes" for leaving your house to shop regardless of whether or not you drive.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 20 2021, @09:49AM
This article is about how excess heat is expressed on Earth, not about how excess hate is expressed on the net.
And even if it were about the latter, you didn't need to provide a sample of that.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 20 2021, @07:19PM
You seem to be making sense now.
And it's not called "bugs". It's called delicious, nutritious insect protein supplement paste.
I think, at least in some states, white people will also be permitted to overpopulate. I haven't heard what the official policy will be yet.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:31AM (14 children)
Boy, there's some doom and gloom.
We just spent a painful year with Covid. A side effect is that the price of oil actually went negative due to low demand.
That says we just ran an experiment that should be useful for understanding human caused climate change. (We dramatically cut global fuel consumption.)
Seems like if humans are asked to cut their energy binge, then this experiment might have shown that their would be some benefit.
But we had a record bad climate year, even with the consumption cut.
What gives?
The doom and gloom article makes me want to just turn up the thermostat and give up.
Kind of the opposite of the writer's intent.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:52AM
The gullible majority is.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:20AM
In the best scenario, hysteresis [wikipedia.org]; until you get rid of a good amount of your history, the system will continue to stay a while at the level you pumped it up.
In the worst case scenario, you got the system out of an metastable equilibrium point and the system evolves toward another - you may not like how that other equilibrium point looks like.
Karma is a bitch, but it is what it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:29AM
Shitty NASA authors, no respect for the feelz of AC's posting on S/N.
I will go faster with a cyanide pill.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:37AM
>The doom and gloom article makes me want to just turn up the thermostat and give up.
Please DO give up. Your pathetic contribution warrants it -- say your goodbyes and just end it today.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:38AM (6 children)
It took 2-3 centuries of burning fuels on an industrial scale to get to this point, and you think a subset of the population easing off for part of a year is going to turn it all around just like that? Come on now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday January 20 2021, @09:21AM (5 children)
Most people date the start of the real rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to just after WWII [co2levels.org]. There was some amount of rise in the century preceding that.
Look at that graph more closely, though. The axes are typical of its breed, designed to make things look much worse than they actually are. The Y-axis does not start at zero, but rather at a value just below the CO2 levels of earlier centuries. A glance at the graph, and you think CO2 levels have been multiplied by a factor of four. In fact, they have gone up by around 50%. While that's not nothing, it's also not hugely dramatic.
In fact, because the CO2 increase is not that large, it causes only a very small amount of warming. The premise of climate panic relies on positive feedback between CO2 and water vapor. Of course, more water vapor also leads to more cloud cover, which is a negative feedback cycle. We aren't allowed to mention that, because without positive feedback, there's no need to panic, which would remove lots of money from lots of pockets.
Anthropogenic global warming is real, sure, but it is also minor. According to NASA, global temperature has risen about 0.8C since 1950 [nasa.gov], and some portion of that is natural variability. We have enough other serious, long-term problems to deal with - this is not one of them. In any case, the root cause of most of our serious problems is human overpopulation. Fixing that would, just coincidentally, would also reduce CO2 emissions.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 20 2021, @10:01AM (3 children)
Yes, it is hugely dramatic. Just like your body's absolute temperature going up by merely a percent is hugely dramatic.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by bradley13 on Wednesday January 20 2021, @01:38PM (2 children)
Um...no. Compared to historic CO2 levels, which have been more than an order of magnitude higher [duckduckgo.com], the current levels are basically noise.
If today's CO2 level of 420ppm were going to lead to some sort of runaway feedback cycle, turning the planet into another Venus - well, just imagine what 2000ppm or 3000ppm would do. Oh, the planet has already been there. Multiple times.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:06PM
Your point is a good one. Here are some more graphs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-records.svg [wikipedia.org]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Vostok_Petit_data.svg/1280px-Vostok_Petit_data.svg.png [wikimedia.org]
(not independent dat sets)
which show a bit more correlation than yours, but with no error bars shown. Your graph shows temperature variations of 10-20 degrees C following factor 10 change, this one is more like 3-4 degrees C following factor 2 change. Maybe they are consistent, if one allows that the change in temp is non-linear (this is what you argue, I think).
Question: If the earth's temp changes by a few degrees C, and hopefully there is no runaway feedback, what are the implications for humanity?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 21 2021, @09:01AM
That's a misuse of the word “historic.” That word refers to recorded human history. The diagram is about Earth history. The times with high CO2 levels (and correspondingly high temperatures) were times long before any humans came to Earth.
And yes, we won't get a Venus-style runaway greenhouse effect. But just because we don't completely sterilize Earth does not mean we do not have major problems. We will not make Earth unsuitable for life, but we may make Earth a pretty nasty place for humans. And being humans, that is what should matter to us.
Of course you might come to the conclusion that a world without humans (or a world where humans struggle so much with surviving that they don't have the ability to do much further damage) is better for life as a whole. But to me (and I suppose most humans) human life matters more than life in general.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @11:53AM
bradley floored his tesla up to 78mph and set the autopilot. haven't got a ticket or hit a car yet, so this action must be entirely safe for the near future, and he can worry about more important things like where all the vids went on the onboard screen.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by unauthorized on Wednesday January 20 2021, @08:36AM (1 child)
Imagine you're lying under a pile of blankets. You've started with just one, but every 5 minutes you add an additional blanket you measure your temperature. At the 1 hour mark, you don't add an additional blanket, you measure your temperature and you realize that strangely you're still warmer than 5 minutes ago. You conclude that obviously scientists have lied to you and that additional insulation doesn't actually affect heat accumulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @09:32AM
Good analogy, but I doubt a reasonable argument will help parent with anything...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 20 2021, @09:44AM
Wait, so you say I got ripped off when I still had to pay for my oil, instead of getting paid for taking it?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Wednesday January 20 2021, @06:53PM
Relatively upbeat compared to this :
https://www.sciencealert.com/humanity-is-hurtling-into-a-ghastly-future-it-doesn-t-comprehend-scientists-warn [sciencealert.com]
with the co-author none other than that guy we should have listened to 50 years ago; Paul R. Ehrlich (Population Bomb)
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Wednesday January 20 2021, @07:12PM
Is that the new euphemism for weather? Or just the New Speak term for it?