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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong (NYT)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/sunday/science-climate-change.htmlHow Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong
Few thought it would arrive so quickly. Now were facing consequences once viewed as fringe scenarios.
By Eugene Linden
Nov. 8, 2019
For decades, most scientists saw climate change as a distant prospect. We now know that thinking was wrong. This summer, for instance, a heat wave in Europe penetrated the Arctic, pushing temperatures into the 80s across much of the Far North and, according to the Belgian climate scientist Xavier Fettweis, melting some 40 billion tons of Greenlands ice sheet.
Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are now realities.
So far, the costs of underestimation have been enormous. New York Citys subway system did not flood in its first 108 years, but Hurricane Sandys 2012 storm surge caused nearly $5 billion in water damage, much of which is still not repaired. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey gave Houston and the surrounding region a $125 billion lesson about the costs of misjudging the potential for floods.
The climate change panel seems finally to have caught up with the gravity of the climate crisis. Last year, the organization detailed the extraordinary difficulty of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), over the next 80 years, and the grim consequences that will result even if that goal is met.
More likely, a separate United Nations report concluded, we are headed for warming of at least 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That will come with almost unimaginable damage to economies and ecosystems. Unfortunately, this dose of reality arrives more than 30 years after human-caused climate change became a mainstream issue.
The word upended does not do justice to the revolution in climate science wrought by the discovery of sudden climate change. The realization that the global climate can swing between warm and cold periods in a matter of decades or even less came as a profound shock to scientists who thought those shifts took hundreds if not thousands of years.
hatrack
(59,439 posts)Next comes the Climate Clown Chorus shouting "See!?!! See!!??!! See??!!"
They don't need to actually read the article, which they'd never do anyway.
The fact that the article is right on target in terms of the degree of underestimation is immaterial.
Great job, Gray Lady.
I bet 90% of people read no further than the headline and now think climate change was a hoax all along.
My dad, and I wish I was making this up, is convinced we are in global cooling. Dont make me go into why. Your head will explode.
Delphinus
(11,808 posts)is not the only one. I have run across them myself. Never have I received a satisfactory explanation.
CrispyQ
(36,226 posts)VOX
(22,976 posts)Like its tailor-made for the Fox News chiron: NY Times: Scientists admit theyre wrong about climate change!
WhiteTara
(29,676 posts)Rachel Carson raised the cry in the 70s and the only good thing Nixon did was start the EPA; but money and politics shut the scientists up and that's how we got here.
Big Oil. Rex Tillerson, et.al
Blues Heron
(5,898 posts)catastrophic global warming caused by coal, oil and gas burning by humans.
I think we should start by banning gas powered landscaping equipment. Talk about frivolous. The leaf blowers are the worst - pure unmitigated frivolous pollution right there in your face.
TheFarseer
(9,308 posts)Whats wrong with a rake? On another topic but whats up with people painstakingly hosing off their driveway? Much quicker with a push broom and not wasting gallons of water!
hatrack
(59,439 posts)triron
(21,915 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)Seas were about 100m higher than today.
Then came an asteroid or comet. A repeat would probably be the best thing for Earth.