Talk:1379: 4.5 Degrees

Scary thoughts there... Kynde (talk) 05:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I imagine the Earth's axial tilt wouldn't change even if the temperature changed by +2 IAU. So, would palm trees survive the extreme day/night lengths at the poles? 103.22.201.239 05:31, 9 June 2014 (UTC) P.S. Also, wouldn't the North Pole be underwater, so incapable of supporting palm trees? Also, regarding the IAU, is it a reference to the IAU that named an asteroid after Randall?

"While it says it's "probably no big deal," this is probably a joke, because even half of an Ice Age would be a lot of ice." The article has it wrong. It's a 2 degree increase, not decrease. Ice would melt. 108.162.238.134 07:33, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

-- Fixed 173.245.54.77 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

To prevent global warming, act yesterday! ... or, well, since we already failed to do it, maybe ... just maybe ... we should invest some resources to ADAPTING to the change. Because the USSR communist party wanted to command “wind and rain” and how it worked? ... of course, we SHOULD be trying to lower the CO2 emissions ... not like Germany, which replaced it's nuclear power plants with coal ones ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:03, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

While it is true that we have build more coal plants, the majority part that replace the nuclear power is from renewable energy, see diagram on wikipedia. --141.101.75.89 15:51, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

... note that burning biomass, while renewable, also adds CO2. Not speaking about oil. You shouldn't be closing nuclear plants, you should be closing coal ones if you have exceed energy. -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

While burning biomass adds CO2, the whole point of "burning a biologically-sourced fuel" like biodiesel is that you are merely returning to the atmosphere CO2 that was sucked out of the atmosphere by the biological material in the first place. So you grow an acre of plant material, and that acre of plant material sucks a certain amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. When you then burn that plant material, you are releasing that CO2 back in to the atmosphere. Thus it is a "net zero" operation. While yes, it would be better to do a "net negative" operation (plant more plants while NOT releasing ANY CO2,) a net zero operation is still better than what we're doing now - releasing massive amounts of CO2 that have been locked up for geological-scale lengths of time, all in a VERY short timeframe. If you were to replace all work-generation power sources with "net zero" sources like biodiesel production and biomass generation, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would stop rising immediately. (Well, once they have reached equilibrium from other sources, anyway.) But of course, the difficulty is growing sufficient biological fuel material fast enough to create enough fuel for our needs. (The famous "it would take more farmland than currently exists on all of planet Earth, all of it dedicated to growing corn, to grow enough corn to make enough corn-derived ethanol to fuel every vehicle on the planet" problem.) So obviously energy efficiency and non-bio-fuel renewable energy methods are also needed. But biofuel (burning biomass, ethanol, biodiesel, etc,) is still a SIGNIFICANT improvement over oil/natural gas/coal. 108.162.245.216 07:31, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, this seems like a topic that could generate heated comments. 108.162.208.9 10:09, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Would anyone care to comment on the +200 meter sea rise? I googled "how much would sea level rise" a bit, and I seem to bump into 60 to 70 meters repeatedly for all glaciers melting. I found nothing direct from IPCC. I wonder if Randall really has another view on this. 108.162.254.45 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Cretaceous sea levels are generally accepted to have been 200m above the present level - you have large shallow seas (with geological evidence showing depths of 200m) over many of the continents - e.g. the Eromunga Sea in Australia. This is not from the IPCC, it predates that considerably. 108.162.250.237 11:35, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I hope the explanation isn't that he made a meter/feet mistake. 103.22.201.239 13:04, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I would assert that he rounded for a clean read for a relative scale. Also, the '+' denotes the likelihood of a larger actual amount. 108.162.217.41 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

60 meters is indeed the amount the sea would rise if all the glacial ice melted. However, that figure presumably does not take into account have much the sea would rise by expansion due to the increased heat. That is, after all, the main reason for rising sea levels today. So I would guess that the +200 figure is the 60 meters of added water from glacial ice plus the amount it would rise due to warming and expanding. Calebxy (talk)

While that's possible, and desalination of water can also cause it to expand (sea water is more dense than fresh), we shouldn't try to justify the numbers if they are incorrect. If we can find some reliable data to suggest the rise would be 200 ft instead of 200m, we should include that. Or at least include a range of estimates from reliable sources. 108.162.238.134 15:42, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Having just re-read the explanation after posting my comment, I can see that the article attempts to do just that. But the link provided says 110 to 770 mm. Isn't the millimeters? 108.162.238.134 15:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

But the sea level would rise more than 60m if the expansion of the sea is taken into account. If the earth became as hot as the graph indicates, then logically the seas would expand considerably. Calebxy (talk) 16:04, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Cretaceous sea levels seem to have been that high, but this tends to be attributed to the shape of the ocean basins, in particular the mid-ocean ridges, rather than to the temperature. 108.162.219.35 17:01, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

So sad that Randall is pushing the carbon tax agenda long after the AGW myth has been debunked. IGnatius T Foobar (talk) 16:00, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Waitwhat? a) I saw no mention of tax. b) AGW==Anthropogenic Global Warming==debunked? This may not be the place for this whole discussion (despite the relevance), but it's far from debunked. And even if "there was going to be some Global Warming anyway", you can't dismiss the probability that we're adding something to this effect and making it more extreme. If not pushing it over the edge in some way. (I'm actually more optimistic than that, but I do find "it's a myth!" to be annoyingly naive, so excuse me if I try to balance that out. It's really not worth tying this discussion box up in this debate, however.) 141.101.98.232 18:36, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not as sure that it isn't worth it. GCC is fact. GW, might be. AGW, that's where we get into the mythical and unproven range, because it's *really hard* to tell the difference between correlation and causation, and because of other problems I wrote below.Seebert (talk) 19:28, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Randall is a scientist. He follows scientific consensus. 108.162.238.134 20:03, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Randall is a comic artist. While he's a really smart guy, he popularizes science, he doesn't do the experiments himself.Seebert (talk) 19:28, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

No snark intended here, and I am a non-scientist, so I do not speak from a position of authority. However, I thought (one of the) the point(s) of science was that you don't have to do the science yourself in order to understand and interpret the results. In fact, you can read the reports and conclusions of others in order to draw your own. In law, for example, we follow the cases that have been established in similar situations so that we can advise our clients on the best course (and by best, I mean the course that won't land you in court paying outrageous fees) of action. We don't have to experience it ourselves in order to reach the desired outcome. We can draw analogies from similar fact patterns. Right? Orazor (talk) 09:09, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

There is nothing scientific about following consensus. 108.162.215.86 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Of course there is... When 99% of climatologists are reasonably certain (which means "very very sure" for non-scientists) that there is Global Warning and that the primary cause is us (humanity greenhouse gas emissions), I wouldn't say that AGW has been "debunked" and that there is nothing scientific in following this consensus (after having made sure of its existence by reading diverse peer-reviewed studies of the field) ! You may have an agenda to defend but could you at least try to make some sense, please. Note that this doesn't mean that the current political propositions are the right way to go about it and that this comic doesn't say anything about that. Jedaï (talk) 21:47, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

And this is why climatologists playing with models instead of actually examining data from the real world, aren't scientists. It's possible to get so addicted to your models, that you fail to realize that you've fallen into confirmation bias. And consensus, also known as mob-based peer pressure, is only as smart as the lowest IQ in the mob. Which is why climatologists, attempting to top each other's predictions, have a tendency to fall for worst case scenarios, such as Randall's scenario above.Seebert (talk) 02:42, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

There really ISN'T anything scientific about following consensus. Correlation is not causation. The 99% figure will be scientifically relevant if it will be produced by every scientist independently proving it, not by consensus. And even then ... 100% scientists though time is same everywhere ... then Einstein came with theory and models ... and THEN the models were verified. By Sir Arthur Eddington four years later. THAT made Einstein famous. We don't really have the same kind of proof for AGW. We have lot of data which has been tampered with or cherry-picked, even the scientists can't be sure what to believe. What we DO have proof for is that climate is changing (although some of those changes are LOWERING of temperature).

And about the political propositions ... most of them fail to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions itself, not speaking about global temperature - but their economic effect would be huge. -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Where is he speaking about carbon tax? "Acting now" does not equal one possible instrument. There are plenty of ways for climate change mitigation.--Ojdo (talk) 07:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I *think* (haven't confirmed) that the 200 m figure is the difference between the peak of the last ice age (sea level low—"-1 IAU" in the strip) and if everything melted. We've already come up 140 m, so we can't go up 200 m from here. 108.162.215.86 20:16, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

There are several troubling things with this comic (including the sea level figure), but the most basic is the opening statement: "Without prompt, aggressive limits on CO2 emissions, the Earth will likely warm by an average of 4°-5°C by the century’s end." This is probably from the latest IPCC report, but it takes the worst of several proposed scenarios, and claims it to be the likely one. RCP8.5 projects 2.6C-4.8C, and I suppose that's what getting averaged *up* to "4.5C" for the temperature line in the comic. The second most troubling thing is that mouse-over text, regarding the 2C lid if we "enact aggressive emissions limits now"—this is an entirely arbitrary (unscientific) number based on largely unspecified changes to what the world is doing now. It gives me the sense that Randall didn't look too deep... 108.162.215.86 20:43, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, the polar forests during the Ceretaceous period were temperate, not tropical. Thus Firs in the North and Evergreens in Antartica, not Palm trees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_forests_of_the_Cretaceous Seebert (talk) 21:17, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh wait, did he really say "Palm trees at the poles"? The north pole is already 4,261 meters under water. The nearest land is 700 km away. 108.162.215.86 05:14, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

It's hyperbole. 108.162.238.134 05:46, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Not completely. It's refering to a specific time, the ceretaceous period. When there where forests above 85 degrees in both north and south poles. The forests where temperate though, so palm trees are hyperbole. 141.101.80.217 12:18, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

No, it's not hyperbole at all, actually there were tropical-climate trees in polar latitudes in the northern hemisphere during parts of the Cretaceous. 108.162.250.237 11:26, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Citation please- everything I could find was Temperate Rain Forests (kind of like still exist in Washington State and British Columbia).Seebert (talk) 12:28, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Independent of everything else, I'm having a tough time reconciling the fact that sea level was apparently 6m or more higher during the Roman era. E.g. the roman settlements and their harbors in places like Caister and Burgh Castle in Norfolk, England? I'm not aware that England has risen 6m. Seems to me that if see levels were to rise as much as 6m we'd just be back to where things were 1600-1700 years ago. 103.22.201.239 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'd like to research that, so [needs citation]Seebert (talk) 17:22, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Things can be complicated by the likes of 'rebound' of the local area of the Earth's crust after the removal of the weight of glacial ice from various landmasses (although I'm not sure whether that was still producing such measureable effects to those particular locations in Roman times) and other effects. 141.101.98.232 11:07, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

1600-1700 years ago there were 6+ billion fewer people (a large proportion with dwellings near shorelines, or economically dependant on them somehow) on the planet! 108.162.250.237 11:38, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

According to the Scientific Forecasts from 1986, this should have had already happened by the year 2000: http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/24/movies/earth-s-climatic-crisis-examined-by-nova.html 108.162.246.217 01:18, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Since I used to live next to Burgh Castle, can I point out that the castle is indeed now c6m higher than the current estuary level. The nearby town of Great Yarmouth is built on land that first appeared above the waves around 1100AD. In Roman times it was possible to sail from Burgh Castle to the castle at Caistor - that's why they were built, to defend the mouth of the estuary between them.If you look at map very roughly all the green was under water circa 300AD --141.101.98.251 19:04, 1 November 2014 (UTC)