"I Study Climate Change. The Data Is Telling Us Something New."

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/opinion/climate-change-excessive-heat-2023.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/BsOMP


Staggering. Unnerving. Mind-boggling. Absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.

As global temperatures shattered records and reached dangerous new highs over and over the past few months, my climate scientist colleagues and I have just about run out of adjectives to describe what we have seen. Data from Berkeley Earth released on Wednesday shows that September was an astounding 0.5 degree Celsius (almost a full degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the prior record, and July and August were around 0.3 degree Celsius (0.5 degree Fahrenheit) hotter. 2023 is almost certain to be the hottest year since reliable global records began in the mid-1800s and probably for the past 2,000 years (and well before that).

While natural weather patterns, including a growing El Niño event, are playing an important role, the record global temperatures we have experienced this year could not have occurred without the approximately 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming to date from human sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. And while many experts have been cautious about acknowledging it, there is increasing evidence that global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years rather than continued at a gradual, steady pace. That acceleration means that the effects of climate change we are already seeing — extreme heat waves, wildfires, rainfall and sea level rise — will only grow more severe in the coming years.

I don’t make this claim lightly. Among my colleagues in climate science, there are sharp divisions on this question, and some aren’t convinced it’s happening. Climate scientists generally focus on longer-term changes over decades rather than year-to-year variability, and some of my peers in the field have expressed concerns about overinterpreting short-term events like the extremes we’ve seen this year. In the past I doubted acceleration was happening, in part because of a long debate about whether global warming had paused from 1998 to 2012. In hindsight, that was clearly not the case. I’m worried that if we don’t pay attention today, we’ll miss what are increasingly clear signals.

I wouldn’t be making this argument if I didn’t have strong evidence to back it up; the data we’re getting from three sources tells a worrying story about a world warming more quickly than before. First, the rate of warming we’ve measured over the world’s land and oceans over the past 15 years has been 40 percent higher than the rate since the 1970s, with the past nine years being the nine warmest years on record. Second, there has been acceleration over the past few decades in the total heat content of Earth’s oceans, where over 90 percent of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is accumulating. Third, satellite measurements of Earth’s energy imbalance — the difference between energy entering the atmosphere from the sun and the amount of heat leaving — show a strong increase in the amount of heat trapped over the past two decades. If Earth’s energy imbalance is increasing over time, it should drive an increase in the world’s rate of warming.

*snip*

[leftstreet]

1. DURec

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[BootinUp]

3. Yeah, it doesn't look good.

Something about the way the heat is building in the ocean and slowly dispersing. Ill have to read the article above later.

[NoMoreRepugs]

4. Not good - scary in fact.

[Takket]

5. climate change is starting to look like a self-reinforcing/exponential process

[Hermit-The-Prog]

17. It's a positive feedback loop.

[Aussie105]

38. aka 'thermal runaway'.

Mass migration from regions that have rapidly become uninhabitable is next.

[Skittles]

6. bottom line is, this isn't "the new normal"

it can, and will, get much worse

[KPN]

11. It does sound and even intuitively feel that way. Not good.

[2naSalit]

7. K&R

[SunSeeker]

8. Horrible. The world is not treating it like the emergency it is.

[Martin Eden]

9. But Inhofe brought a snowball into the Senate chamber

Doesn't that refute all these climate scientists?

[UTUSN]

10. K&R

[LudwigPastorius]

12. Glad I got to see Waikiki Beach before it disappears.

[mahina]

27. 💧

💧💧

[chouchou]

13. I remember 20 years ago

..from a dear friend. He was a local weatherman.
While drinking coffee one morning he said "The oil companies and the climate deniers are
going to kill us all. I wish he had been wrong.

[Jack-o-Lantern]

14. Well for centuries people have wondered how the world will end...now we know.

[Magoo48]

30. The world will continue on it merry way, it will not end. We and much other life will end.

[soldierant]

34. The planet earth will, yes

The world of humans and many other living creatures will be gone.

[Magoo48]

35. Appears to be the way it's headed.

[markodochartaigh]

15. Of course Berkeley Earth

uses an 1850-1900 baseline. For those of us who have been following anthropogenic climate change since Dr Hansen's testimony before Congress in 1988, and are used to the old "pre-industrial" baseline, add another 0.2°C or so.

[Dirty Socialist]

16. History will judge climate deniers harshly

They are missing the obvious

[Kaleva]

18. I don't think they'll care

[Chainfire]

20. Climate deniers will be screaming, "Why didn't someone tell us?"

[Magoo48]

32. This is not solely on climate deniers. The first world would rather die than be inconvenienced.

Greta endeavored to light a fire under the grassroots, but when faced with the magnitude of the sacrifices required, humanity turned away. Only a courageous few have demonstrated their willingness to adapt. So…

[Kaleva]

19. The time to start preparing is now

Most people, even here, seem to be going about their lives as if everything will be fine. They might give lip service to climate change but their actions, or lack of them, lead me to believe that preparing for the coming catastrophy isn't on the priority list

[Pepsidog]

24. Please expand on your thoughts. What preparations should we be doing to prepare?

Anything other than reducing our carbon footprint?

[Kaleva]

39. Reducing carbon footprint won't provide food or water

Some DUers have moved to locations predicted to be less hard hit by climate change. As I live in the Upper Great Lakes region, an area some experts say will become a mecca for climate change refugees, I've been concentrating on converting my backyard into a vegetable garden and orchard to provide food in times of expected shortages. I've also been working with members of my extended family, about 30 people, in a more expansive effort. Such as the raising of sheep, chickens, the planting of Chestnut trees and plots of Jerusalem Artichokes.

[Pepsidog]

41. Thanks for your response. As I read your suggestions, and being a fan of

Sci-Fi end of humanity shows (The Walking Dead, Invasion etc) the first thought that comes to mind is protecting what you worked and prepared for. Just think about how we react in a snow storm and/or the pandemic when supplies of essentials become scarce, people go into panic mode and do whatever is necessary to hoard essential goods. My hope is that once a shock event occurs that awakens the people to the fact that climate change presents an existential threat to our species, technology will save us. We are starting to see tech increase crop yields with fewer inputs like fertilizers and companies are developing plant based synthetic meats that look and taste like real meat.

[Kaleva]

53. A number of my projects are based on hobbies

I like to garden so I'm just increasing the scale.

I like animals so adding sheep and chickens to the mix is not a problem.

I like to work on projects so building a root cellar, more shelves in the basement and building a waterless toilet for emergencies are fun tasks for me to do

I like to cook so learning how to preserve food that I can use later to make meals is another thing I like to do

[MissB]

54. Determining resilience would be a first step

Last edited Mon Oct 16, 2023, 09:59 AM - Edit history (1)

Where you live, how resilient is your shelter, food and water to the changing climate?

For example, my home is well situated to any change in water level due to a warming climate. The roads that I travel on and the towns that I go to are similarly situated for the most part (roads wouldn't be cut off due to rising water levels). The increase in temperature will likely kill my grove for Fir trees eventually; we hire an arborist to come in every 2-3 years to evaluate the health of all of our trees. Once we have to take down the main grove, we'll look at replacement trees that are better situated to a warming climate. In the meantime, we make sure that our Fir grove has plenty of water during the heat of the summer.

For now, the food system is fairly stable. We do keep chickens and their primary purpose is egg laying. When they're done with their egg laying years, they live out the rest of their lives with the flock (we don't cull). We could add in meat chickens as well, as our coop is set up to hold dual flocks. We don't currently have a rooster although we could, but for now, I really like my neighbors and we all have 1/2 acre to 1 acre lots which is pretty close for a rooster's noise level. I've toyed with the idea of rabbits as well, and setting those up would be relatively easy.

I have a proper vegetable garden that is fenced due to deer. We are expanding it when we revamp the back yard next year. For a home gardener, there is never enough space unless you're talking at least 5 acres. I've crammed food-producing plants, bushes and trees in everywhere I can, given the light and water needs and resources. When we revamp the back, I'll have a bunch of corten metal planters that act as divisions between the grade change in the level of the yard. I'm sure our landscape architect planned on things like boxwood to fill them, but I envision moving my herb garden, onions and garlic to those, and putting in things like dwarf tomatoes in the summer. Again, I cram food plants anywhere I can. I started all of my food-producing plants this year from seed. I also save seed from heirloom plants. These skills took years to hone. Lots of trial and error in both starting and growing plants.

I preserve as much of our garden as I am able to each year. I pressure and water-bath can, pickle and dehydrate food. We don't grow all of our food, so we keep a deep pantry including short term and long term food storage. I have enough canning jars to process the amount of food that we grow each year and then some, as well as lots of canning lids (I'm still working through 2017 lids this season). If we grew our own meat to process, I'd be fine with pressure canning chicken and/or rabbits. Even without that, growing beans for dry beans is fairly easy and those are a nice protein source. I'm getting a greenhouse as part of my backyard remodeling, which will allow me to move my seed starting out of the house as well as growing some items year round. I do have some tunnels for some of my raised beds, but being able to have a heater in the greenhouse will be nice.

I live in an area served by a water system that gets water from rainfall, not snow melt and serves the water via gravity. Our winters are predicted to be warmer and more wet, so it shouldn't affect our water supply near term. I do keep rain barrels connected to our roof downspouts for watering parts of the yard. I just had some concrete installed along the backside of our coop, which has a metal roof. The rain barrels that we will install there can provide more potable water that could be used in a pinch (our house has a composition roof, and I'm not comfy drinking that water). Longer term, we *could* drill a well. There are few properties here that use a well, and most of them that I can find well logs for are quite deep so it would be a huge expense. The aquifer isn't tapped into a lot around here, so there would be water. But if everyone switched over to private wells, that would change.

Since we live in a forested area, our house is somewhat vulnerable to forest fires. The maps that I can see that predict near term (20+ year) impacts show a minor increase in vulnerability. We try to keep all of our forest carbon on site, not removing leaves from the deciduous trees in the forested part of the lot. That helps keep the moisture in place. I really don't like the mow-and-blow folks that scrape every bit of debris off their properties, but that's a choice they make. We rake the leaves off the grass and compost them on-site by having the hens break them down. We try to compost most of the debris that we clean out of our perennial beds and veg garden, as well as debris that falls during storms. Our household scraps go into Bokashi bins and when those are ready, they go into our compost piles outside. I don't compost bones, so those go in our curbside green bins. Each spring, I add the contents of two of the bins to our veg beds (the two that have been fully composted for a year using a cold process or a few months if I've done a hot pile). Any scrap paper gets shredded and put under the roosts for the chickens to poo on, and then that gets scraped into the compost bins.

[Pepsidog]

55. Great suggestions and quite a lot of work.

[tclambert]

46. Space colonization.

We decided a few decades ago to go ahead and ruin the Earth.

[dalton99a]

21. Kick

[CousinIT]

22. Humanity is getting to the FO phase of FAFO. n/t

[homegirl]

23. The Neanderthals

disappeared within three generations (100 years) due to rapid climate change. How much time do we have? Maybe double that as our life span is closer to 80 than 40!!!

[Lunabell]

25. I'm a baby boomer and I have to say, some of us tried.

My deepest symapathies to younger people who have to love in our aftermath. I probably won't be on this earth long enough to see the most deadly consequences of my generation. I knew this was happening, tried to be a responsible and respectful steward of this earth but failed miserably in convincing others. This is the one main reason I never had kids. I'm so sorry we failed to leave you a better world.

[senseandsensibility]

37. Convincing others that don't want to be convinced

(especially when they are brainwashed by corporate propaganda) is a thankless task. Impossible, really, for an individual. So don't blame yourself and keep doing the positive things you've been doing.

[twodogsbarking]

26. Should have listened to the scientists at the start of the disaster movie.

[Quixote1818]

28. I'm glad I didn't have kids. The world is going to be a mess in 50 years. nt

[Uncle Joe]

29. That's one thing about war; it burns a lot carbon.

Thanks for the thread Nevilledog.

[czarjak]

31. Texas A&M scientists predicted this would happen in 20-25 years. That was less than five years ago.

[Old Crank]

33. The doom spiral is in action

We may not like it but we can't change course unless we make imediate massive changes. Right Now!
No personal cars/truck sold unless they get over 50 mpg. 70 mpg in 5 years.
Cut two car households perhaps by limiting family miles driven.
Drive up the gas tax especially in cheap fuel states.
No added fees to install solar/wind at your home.
Ban all new gas or heating oil in houses and provide incentives for home owners to switch to electric.
No new drilling for gas or oil.
We have to slash emmisions.

Since Al Gore said we needed to do something every prognosis has been much too conservative. We have hit the tipping point.

[MLAA]

36. Agree and promote/incentivize a plant based diet or heavily tax livestock.

I’ll probably get a few harsh replies for this suggestion 😉

[Old Crank]

42. Maybe

I need to do the same.
I'm here in Germany and our, and most EU, meats aren't as subsidized as in the US. Generic meat costs more. We have cut down, to some degree, on the amount of meat we eat. Especially beef.

[oldsoftie]

45. And how will you make that happen in China & India?

As hard as it would be to make happen HERE

[Old Crank]

49. Yuo

Humans have screwed the pooch.
There wont be enough change soon enough.
Look at England where the Torries just tore up their own plans.

[MLAA]

51. About 30 percent of India's population is already vegetarian and has a meat consumption of

4kg per person. China is about half the US at 60kg pp. China’s figures have grown a lot in the last 20 plus years as a more affluent class has developed, so prior it was well under 60kgs These figures should be used as relative figures since they are calculated using the whole animal and after bones, waste etc the actual eaten numbers would be half for all countries listed. Both the US and China have about 4 percent of the population being vegetarian, though the Chinese eat meat, they eat half as much as we in the US do.

Anecdotally, I lived in China for 4 years and travelled to India on business the menus in both places had many more vegetable entrees than in the US. I always found wonderful options. So I’m guessing it would be much easier to get both India and China to eliminate or reduce meat consumption than it would to get the US to.

Hope you find this all interesting and thanks for the question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country

[oldsoftie]

52. But coal is a much bigger problem than meat.

Their emissions are at record highs while ours is 1/4 lower than 15 years ago.
Chine is opening 100 coal plants in just ONE YEAR. We haven't opened one in almost ten.

And of course, how much "crap" is russia putting into the atmosphere with their 600 days of war against UKR? Its HAS to be a lot. I wonder if anyone is trying to quantify that

As for food, I AM seeing more vegetarian options now than ever before. Will it be a bigger trend? Only if Taylor Swift & the Kardashains announce that they have become vegetarian.

[bdamomma]

40. Climate change is real

and remember, we, humans are the cause of it all. Remembering the pandemic, the whole world was suffering from this deadly disease, our environment, nature and wildlife were in charge again, and breathing a sigh of relief.

[Aussie105]

43. Doomsday scenario:

The global heating will pick up pace.

Weather extremes will get worse.

Large parts of the globe will slowly become uninhabitable.

Wars will be fought over what we take for granted now - the basics, like living space, reliable water and food sources.

Humanity will look back at how things were 50 years ago and realise that then was the pinnacle of civilization.

100 years from now: only small groups of humans remain.

You have all seen the disaster movies and imagined yourself amongst the survivors . . . the reality will be different.

The planet will go 'Ho-Hum, I can fix this with most of those pesky human parasites gone. Give me a few million years to get all that carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere again.'

[misanthrope]

44. That's exactly what will happen.

The evidence is there to see, scattered throughout the history of our species.

Except the planet won't "fix" it by magically returning to what we now know as pre-industrial revolution environment. Life will adjust.

[alfredo]

47. There was a book called "The World Without Us."

It shows that the planet will rebound. I have trust in the power of mushrooms to do the dirty work.

[Martin68]

48. Sounds like the hockey stick rise that Al Gore tried to warn us about.

[Old Crank]

50. Disturbing number

From this weeks Economist.

In Canada, Australia, Sweden and Germany, 23-44% ofvoters on the left think climate change is a real problem.

In the US the gap is 63%.