[HN Gopher] Guy Callendar, the engineer who discovered human-cau...
___________________________________________________________________
Guy Callendar, the engineer who discovered human-caused global
warming
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 150 points
Date : 2024-04-17 16:26 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| nfriedly wrote:
| 'Callendar' should be capitalized in the title, as it's his last
| name. (I assume HN automatically changed it.)
| tauchunfall wrote:
| I know that last names are capitalized in french writing
| convention, but I never saw it in english.
|
| *Edit:* Ahh I see, capitalized not uppercased.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| I also learned "Guy" is a French name and not another word for
| dude.
| dang wrote:
| No, it was just a typo when I edited the title the other day.
| Fixed now. Thanks!
| sevagh wrote:
| Is the lowercasing of his last name Callendar part of HN's
| automated butchery of titles?
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| This would be clearer if the title said something like, "provided
| 1st definitive evidence of...", in order to distinguish it from
| earlier attempts to propose or prove global warming effects of
| CO2.
|
| Otherwise very cool link.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| what about that blurb from the 1912 newspaper article
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/13/fac...
|
| or the 1896 paper ""On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air
| upon the Temperature of the Ground"
| saalweachter wrote:
| The article does actually mention the earlier work, but says
| they weren't compelling enough/theoretical rather than
| evidence-based.
| zug_zug wrote:
| > he showed [atmospheric CO2] at 315 parts per million in 1958;
| today it is 421 ppm; in the pre-industrial 19th century, it had
| rested around 280 ppm)
|
| Wow, somehow I was unaware that we had raised atmospheric CO2 by
| 50% -- that's impressive in sense.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This is why I am completely, totally baffled that anyone tries
| to still deny the anthropogenic source of climate change.
|
| I _fully_ understand that climate models are mind boggingly
| complex, and that it 's incredibly difficult to predict how all
| the different intertwined factors will play out in real time.
| But at a very fundamental level, we've drastically increased
| one of the primary greenhouse gas concentrations at a rate
| unseen in Earth's history (not to mention many of the other
| major greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide).
| Literally no sane person disputes that fact. How could we think
| that making this major change to Earth's climate system _wouldn
| 't_ have huge effects?
| andrewla wrote:
| Just to nitpick, while commonly accepted, the idea that CO2
| increase is anthropogenic is routinely disputed by climate
| skeptics [1].
|
| The argument generally is that warming temperatures cause
| rising CO2. This in turn is a fact not disputed by climate
| scientists, only that it is not sufficient to explain the
| current rise in CO2.
|
| [1] A pro-AGW debunking of the common argument
| https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
| lainga wrote:
| It's weird to me that there's no mention of silicate
| weathering in that article as the big negative
| CO2-temperature feedback. If anything CO2 levels are
| fighting against a warming/wetting Earth which weathers
| more rock and captures it... although maybe on a very long
| timescale
| sethrin wrote:
| I think the figure I saw was that if human emissions
| stopped tomorrow, silicate weathering would get rid of
| the excess carbon in something on the order of 10k years.
| jfengel wrote:
| We are taking carbon out of the ground and turning it into
| CO2. We know how much and it matches the amount of increase
| in the atmosphere and oceans.
|
| They're not "skeptics". They're not even deniers. They're
| just liars.
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| This point doesn't address warming
| jfengel wrote:
| It is a high school lab experiment to watch CO2 absorb
| infrared and heat up.
|
| There is no universe in which you can dig vast amounts of
| carbon, burn it, and not have things warm up. There are
| lots of hard questions but the fundamental fact that the
| globe has to warm is an unavoidable conclusion.
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| I'm a climate-realist turned denier. Ask me anything.
| Note: this isn't a matter of truth. I'm not reproaching
| you your conclusions but the sloppy way you reach them.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Yeah but your high school experiment has no feedback
| mechanisms, no oceans, water vapor, volcanos, solar
| cycles, plants, and so on. You're also not putting in
| 0.04% CO2 vs 0.0395% CO2 and measuring anything
| meaningful because the scope and scale of the Earth's
| atmosphere is unfathomably larger.
|
| If you've ever owned a Fish Tank or taken High School
| Chemistry, you'd realize that even in the most simple
| environments things don't always add up in a way that
| seems intuitive.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The argument generally is that warming temperatures
| cause rising CO2. This in turn is a fact not disputed by
| climate scientists, only that it is not sufficient to
| explain the current rise in CO2._
|
| It should also be noted that the type of C in CO2 matters:
|
| > _In addition, only fossil fuels are consistent with the
| isotopic fingerprint of the carbon in today's atmosphere.
| Different kinds of carbon-containing material have
| different relative amounts of "light" carbon-12, "heavy"
| carbon-13, and radioactive carbon-14. Plant matter is
| enriched in carbon-12, because its lighter weight is more
| readily used by plants during photosynthesis. Volcanic
| emissions are enriched in carbon-13. The ratio of carbon-13
| to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and the ocean are roughly
| the same. Since carbon-14 is radioactive, it decays
| predictably over time. Young organic matter has more
| carbon-14 than older organic matter, and fossil fuels have
| no measurable carbon-14 at all._
|
| > _As carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have
| risen over the past century or more, the ratio of carbon-13
| to carbon-12 has fallen, which means that the source of the
| extra carbon dioxide must be enriched in "light" carbon-12.
| Meanwhile, the relative amount of carbon-14--radioactive
| carbon--has declined. The record of carbon-14 in the
| atmosphere is complicated by nuclear bomb testing after
| 1950, which doubled the amount of radioactive carbon in the
| atmosphere. After the nuclear test ban treaty in 1963, the
| excess atmospheric carbon-14 began to decline as it
| dispersed into the oceans and the land biosphere._
|
| * https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/how-do-
| we-k...
|
| > _In this "Grand Challenges" paper, we review how the
| carbon isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 has changed
| since the Industrial Revolution due to human activities and
| their influence on the natural carbon cycle, and we provide
| new estimates of possible future changes for a range of
| scenarios. Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and
| land use change reduce the ratio of 13C /12C in atmospheric
| CO2 (d13CO2). This is because 12C is preferentially
| assimilated during photosynthesis and d13C in plant-derived
| carbon in terrestrial ecosystems and fossil fuels is lower
| than atmospheric d13CO2. Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel
| combustion also reduce the ratio of 14C/C in atmospheric
| CO2 (D14CO2) because 14C is absent in million-year-old
| fossil fuels, which have been stored for much longer than
| the radioactive decay time of 14C._
|
| * https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/
| 201...
| burkaman wrote:
| That's not the same argument. Some people claim that CO2
| increase does not cause temperature increase and therefore
| temperature increase is not anthropogenic (which is what
| your link is debunking), but nobody claims that the CO2
| increase itself is not anthropogenic.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I've heard people (seemingly educated and intelligent)
| making arguments like volcanoes emit more (I wasn't sure
| when they said it at the time but I looked it up and it's
| nowhere near the amount - humans win by an overwhelming
| amount in CO2 emitted each year even if you look at the
| biggest eruptions ever).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, the usual denial arguments I hear are on the form of
| "the climate has always been that way", "it's variance on
| the solar output" and "volcanoes are the ones emitting
| most of those gases".
|
| All are patently bullshit, of course.
| bayesianbot wrote:
| It's also quite interesting window to thoughts of other
| people. I find it extremely mind-boggling that we live in
| times of detecting gravity waves, building particle
| accelerators etc. and some people live in reality where
| we don't know how much energy we're getting from the sun
| or co2 from volcanoes.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| We can't predict the weather more than 14 days into the
| future.
|
| It seems like the opposite to me, it's a no-brainer that
| predicting what will happen to an immensely complex
| system, and making all these assumptions about what will
| occur 50-100 years from now is going to be hotly debated.
| biotinker wrote:
| Ya know, I saw this a year ago, and was curious if it
| actually held up. After all, the amount of CO2 released by
| humans is only about 4% of all CO2 released, on an annual
| basis (730 gigatons all sources, ~30 gigatons by humans).
|
| But it's a pretty simple equation. We know the approximate
| mass of the atmosphere, and the number of molecules per
| weight. We know how many molecules are in a unit mass of
| CO2.
|
| Thus we should be able to calculate out "how many gigatons
| of CO2 are necessary to increase atmospheric CO2 by 1ppm",
| and then given measurements of actual CO2 increases, how
| much CO2 is necessary to increase atmospheric levels by the
| amounts seen.
|
| If the amount of CO2 required to yield the observed
| increase is greater than annual human emissions, then
| that's a strong signal that CO2 increase is _NOT_
| anthropogenic and something else is going on. If it 's
| less, then that is a strong signal that humans are the
| primary culprit.
|
| Anyway, I did out all the math and it takes about 8.8
| gigatons to increase atmospheric levels by 1ppm, and we're
| netting an increase of about 17gt into the atmosphere per
| year, for an increase of ~2ppm annually. So it's pretty
| clear that this is anthropogenic.
|
| If anyone wants to check my math I wrote it all up here
| [0]. Numbers are a couple years old at this point but the
| conclusion still stands.
|
| [0] https://biotinker.dev/posts/climate1.html
| triyambakam wrote:
| > we've drastically increased one of the primary greenhouse
| gas concentrations at a rate unseen in Earth's history
|
| I think you need to learn more about Earth's history. Not to
| dispute the fact that it has increased, but it's totally
| false to say this is unseen in Earth's history.
| axelfontaine wrote:
| You missed the word 'rate'.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thank you - that was indeed my primary point. Was a good
| article yesterday about the "Anthropocene",
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40079014, where if
| you look at graphs of things like temperature, CO2
| concentrations, methane concentrations, etc., that the
| last hundred or so years just basically show a vertical
| line.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I did not. The Earth has warmed and cooled even more
| rapidly before.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| If you have a source or are referring to something
| specific, please enlighten us.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| As the sibling comment points out, the rate of increase is
| important.
|
| Dynamical systems are often sensitive to the value of a
| parameter, its rate of change and/or its rate of rate of
| change.
|
| Eg. You can warm milk to a certain temperature (the
| parameter) on a stove on gentle heat and it will be fine.
| If you warm it to the same temperature on high heat (i.e.
| increased rate of parameter), it will burn. That's because
| the convection process in this system has limited maximum
| speed.
|
| If you look at when previously the Earth's atmosphere had
| high CO2, it took hundreds of thousands to many millions of
| years get there. We did it in a 100 years, so at least a
| thousand times faster.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| I can warm water up slowly or quickly and get the same
| result. So maybe the substance you're heating plays a
| role here?
|
| I'm not denying that the rate is significant in this
| specific conversation, but maybe that wasn't the best
| example?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Seeing as we're being pedantic, if you heated water
| slowly enough it would all evaporate before it boiled, so
| it wouldn't be exactly the same.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The primary difference between a caress of the cheek and a
| slap to the face is simply the rate at which it occurs.
| triyambakam wrote:
| The Earth has warmed and cooled even more rapidly before.
| And again I am not disputing the current cause of
| warning. I am just annoyed with the ignorance of history.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Citations please?
|
| From a cursory look, any such events look like they were
| part of mass extinctions. I'm curious what exact data you
| are looking at so I may better understand your statement.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| We all agree that there is more co2 since 1800. We just cant
| agree over the effects of it.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| No, "we" can all agree for a _reasonable_ definition of
| "we." People who argue that warming is not an effect and
| isn't man-made are being purposely and obstinately wrong,
| and lying to themselves and often others. And there's
| actually very _few_ of them, they just shout really loud.
|
| There are no alternative facts.
| seadan83 wrote:
| The effects can be understood through chemistry.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _This is why I am completely, totally baffled that anyone
| tries to still deny the anthropogenic source of climate
| change._
|
| Ignoring the debate over how much the CO2 impacts the
| temperature, which other comments address, there are likely a
| few things at play. First, "BigBusiness" has a vested
| interest in playing down any risk, so they sink considerable
| money into campaigning against climate change (political,
| media, etc). Second, people are conditioned to absorb quick
| soundbite factoids, not complex models, so "nuh-uh, fake
| science" hits home better than {complex model}. Plus, change
| is scary - either doomsday temperature increases OR give up
| cars and airplanes and cheap hamburgers? Yikes!
| nerdponx wrote:
| > change is scary
|
| This is all that matters at the end of the day. Most people
| are not self-aware enough, and/or willing enough to
| experience their own emotions, to handle ugly truths. It's
| more emotionally comfortable to find reasons to deny them.
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| >How could we think that making this major change to Earth's
| climate system wouldn't have huge effects?
|
| ppm. Parts per million. 0.0421%
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| Downvote as much as you want, this is as stupid as GP's
| point.
| seadan83 wrote:
| The atmosphere is huge and unevenly distributed.
|
| I can't find the exact quote, but to put it in perspective:
| the weight of the extra C02 added in the last 100 years is
| more than the sum total of everything humanity has built.
| The actual quote might be everything from the last 2000
| years, regardless, same point. If you weigh all of that
| CO2, it's an enormous amount.
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| >Wow. huge quantity.
|
| That's still a retarded argument and way below any
| scientific standard. Now that climate change has become
| the dominant worldview we witness the bigotisation of
| this cause, where so called "truth" becomes the target of
| activism as it as it morphs into a form of belief. Not
| because what it points to is wrong, but because, as in
| any politically motivated crusade, any mean, path to
| reach that truth is deemed worthwhile. This noble cause
| has turned into a matter of adolescent rebellion that is
| dealt with absolutism and a way to jump into battle that
| totally disregards strategic considerations. What if the
| phenomenon is overblown by the political movement that
| tries to fight its consequences ? What if the proposed
| solutions are more painful than the problem ? To hell
| with these considerations ! You're either with us or
| against us in our fight against apocalypse itself ! It's
| not surprising that as the hysteria grows and gains more
| and more minds, and as the climate skeptics crowd thins
| out, the figure of the "climate change denier" grows in
| importance. It's important for communities to have a
| malevolent figure against which hateful unanimity takes
| shapes. It allows them to endure the test of time, and
| survive even when the core beliefs are shaken, should the
| "deniers" turn into tomorrow's saints. May the crowd turn
| to them as it even forgets it is changing opinion so as
| to atone its own sins. Isn't it what this all about ?
| Recognizing climate urgency as a way to pay for the sins
| of modern life ? What was the point in abandoning
| religion if it was to repeat exactly the same structure
| then ?
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| To those who downvote: admit it, if climate justice was
| to be established in your terms, I would pay more for my
| rebellion than someone with a carbon footprint 10 times
| as big as mine. It's an ideological fight far removed
| from measurable facts (even if it pretends the opposite)
| where submission to the ideology overrides any other
| consideration.
|
| Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my
| iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to
| the Lord." And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
|
| Psalms 32:5
|
| ^ You're here. Seethe all you want, you're biggots of the
| kind you hate the most.
| sethrin wrote:
| There are easier "facts" to disprove AGW that don't rely on
| innumeracy. I mean you don't really care, you just want to
| have a "gotcha" and not think past that, but AGW was
| considered disproved for a few decades and you could get
| some "stumpers" that aren't quite as silly as playing
| number games.
|
| The oceans can absorb a practically infinite amount of CO2,
| so there's no way for it to build up in the atmosphere in
| the long run. Also, the atmosphere is already saturated
| with CO2 to the point where adding more will have no
| effect. Also, water vapor's absorption spectrum overlaps
| that of CO2 so there is no way for CO2 to have any
| additional effect. All of these facts were known more than
| a century ago, and consequently AGW was considered
| disproved.
|
| "Skeptics" should not read past this point, because it
| turns out all of those things are misleading. The oceans
| don't mix fast enough to prevent CO2 buildup, and the
| action of CO2 is felt not in the lower atmosphere but at
| the radiative top-of-atmosphere, the point where outgoing
| infrared radiation is more likely to escape to space than
| strike another molecule. Adding CO2 makes the CO2-dense
| region greater in extent, thus the outgoing heat takes
| longer to leave Earth, thus raising the total atmosphere
| temperature and causing a nasty feedback mechanism with
| H2O. Because this changes which elevation energy gets
| radiated at, we can directly measure it. Checkmate
| skeptics.
|
| To tie this back in to the main point, Callendar was one of
| the prime movers in rehabilitating the AGW theory (one of
| his papers amusingly refers to the theory's "checkered
| past"), but it took until Keeling's work in the late 1950s
| to conclusively demonstrate the year-over-year increase in
| atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
| ectopasm83 wrote:
| >Checkmate skeptics.
|
| And you're totally missing my point. GP came up with a
| backwarded way to prove your point so I stooped to that
| level and came up with the equivalent reasoning that's
| held on the other side since he was asking for it.
| Funnily, you're more adamant to address my comment than
| his because you're more attached to the resulting truth
| than the reasoning step that lead to it. Admit it, it's
| not a matter of science anymore, it's entirely
| politically motivated. I wish you good luck with your
| control system challenge, I'm sure it will be very
| nuanced.
| sethrin wrote:
| His comment was accurate, yours was misleading, seemingly
| deliberately. AGW is not in scientific dispute; the
| skeptics are merely unscientific -- politically
| motivated, if you will.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| > This is why I am completely, totally baffled that anyone
| tries to still deny the anthropogenic source of climate
| change.
|
| Few people ever really change their mind about anything; they
| just get older and die and their opinions get removed from
| the discourse.
|
| I'm mostly referring, of course, to the baby boomers, which
| is a bit ironic because they're the ones who actually
| remember that the Jersey River used to freeze every winter
| (mentioned elsewhere in this discussion).
|
| My own father has a degree in geology and had a career in the
| mining industry... his own take drifted from "this is
| ridiculous" to "okay it's happening but there have been
| plenty of similar shifts in the geological record over
| history." I had to actually show him graphs that illustrated
| that yes, the earth has shifted temperature by 2o plenty of
| times in history... over periods of hundreds or thousands of
| years, not a single century. Now his take has drifted to
| "there's probably nothing that can be done about it."
|
| Anyone pushing for societal change and progress needs to get
| themselves out of the mindset of "changing minds," it's like
| swing voters, they're barely real.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| They're the combustion engine generation. In their life
| most of the roads and highways were built and all cities
| became fully motorized.
|
| Most of them in the western industrialized countries could
| never imagine or want another way of living because this
| was the promise and evidence of progress and success since
| they were born.
|
| Unfortunately I wish I shared your optimism that things
| will change after the boomers pass. I am from and have
| family in Alberta, oil country, and there's... just no
| chance. Some of the most vicious deniers (or worse, the
| "don't carers") are young.
|
| I feel like things are swinging back the other way, and
| quickly.
|
| When things start to fall apart people can have two
| reactions to it... stick and work together to solve the
| problem, or scatter and hoard and everyman-for-himself and
| proclaim "I got mine, now get lost..."
| meindnoch wrote:
| 2 million years ago it was 180ppm.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| You don't have to go back that far. It's fluctuated back and
| forth between 160 to 300ppm over the last 800k years.
| https://science.nasa.gov/resource/graphic-the-relentless-
| ris...
| cocochanel wrote:
| Why does it fluctuate to 300ppm ~300k years ago?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I don't know, I wasn't there. How old do you think I am?!
|
| Just kidding. I suspect that's an interglacial when you
| have warming and melting but before the trees have grown
| back to recapture the co2. But check with an expert if
| you want a more authoritative answer.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think is is pretty obvious: those were previous species
| that tried to become industrial, but were killed by
| Bigfoots. Humans, with our natural tendency toward
| absolutely slaughtering other species of large mammals,
| are the first species to escape the Bigfoot trap.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It looks a little bit periodic before we showed up. If it
| is random with some periodic tendency, I guess we don't
| need a particular justification for the highest peak,
| right? One has to be. It isn't _massively_ higher than
| the previous peak.
| gadders wrote:
| A secret ancient civilisation lost to time that also had
| internal combustion engines. I think Graham Hancock wrote
| a book on it.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _I think Graham Hancock wrote a book on it._
|
| Just popped up on my news feed, "Archaeologist braves the
| Joe Rogan podcast to counter Graham Hancock's nonsense":
|
| * https://boingboing.net/2024/04/19/archaeologist-braves-
| the-j...
|
| Episode in question, "Joe Rogan Experience #2136 - Graham
| Hancock & Flint Dibble":
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DL1_EMIw6w
|
| (Entire episode is 4h26m long: I don't have to
| interest/patience for that personally.)
| sampo wrote:
| > (Entire episode is 4h26m long: I don't have to
| interest/patience for that personally.)
|
| You can watch 70 minutes of another youtuber reviewing
| the debate:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haKFyj-2OVw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1_u8N53utw
| meindnoch wrote:
| Volcanism, most likely.
| moralestapia wrote:
| It gets even worse. Around ~800 ppm you get noticeable
| cognitive impairment in humans. We may get there by 2100.
|
| i.e. in the next generation, unless one's home is equipped with
| a fancy filtration system, _breathing air_ will have issues on
| its own, anywhere in the world.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Cognitive impairment is bad, but probably the least of
| anyone's concerns at 800 ppm. I suspect the interest will be
| more in migrating to the last habitable zones near the poles
| and fighting off the others trying to eke out an existence
| there. Weird to think that a kid born today could easily live
| to 2100.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Weird to think that a kid born today could easily live to
| 2100.
|
| Indeed! It's also quite possible that some of the humans
| that will live forever (or until they choose not to) may
| already be around us.
| onion2k wrote:
| That's possible assuming the pace of medicinal science
| continues. Someone living until 2100 means they'd be 76.
| That only requires they don't have an accident. _Most_
| people born today will live that long.
|
| And, rather sadly, if climate change happens as predicted
| it is going to make for a pretty bleak existence. It's
| one reason I'm fairly happy not to have had kids.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Yes, I feel fortunate to have never wanted children; it's
| something that's actually brought me a lot of peace as
| I've gotten older. It's taken me a long time to come to
| some acceptance of the likely future of humanity and the
| Earth, and I can understand why it's so hard for those
| with children to do so themselves.
| swader999 wrote:
| Why bleak? What effects other than milder winters and sea
| level rising a few mm a decade?
| netsharc wrote:
| This comment feels very out of place in a thread about
| the planet's on-going and rapidly accelerating climate
| decline.
| vondur wrote:
| Heck, go back to the Jurassic and it was up to 2100ppm. Crazy
| how much the environment and the continents change over such
| huge timespans.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Current rate of increase is 2.55 ppm/yr
|
| We will be at 2000 in 640 years.
|
| Previously those rates of change were over the course of
| millions of years.
|
| It is crazy how much things have changed over millions of
| years, perhaps crazier to see those same changes 3 orders
| of magnitude faster.
| seadan83 wrote:
| From yet another perspective, one human lifetime of 100
| years would see as much climate change as would normally
| be seen in 100,000 years.*
|
| Humans only started farming 12,000 years ago (which I
| still find shockingly recent), and humans used to farm
| all over the middle east (thinking if Iraq specifically,
| it used to be largely arable).
|
| All in all, it's getting really spicy for next couple
| centuries.
|
| * except, the earth climate system can't change that fast
| relative to an impulse difference of Co2 levels. It us
| akin to putting 10 blankets on your bed. It takes time
| for heat to build up (the system experiences a latent
| effect)
| seadan83 wrote:
| Fun factoid, at around 1200 ppm, cumulus clouds stop forming.
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/extreme-co2-levels-could-
| trigger...
| realreality wrote:
| The ~420ppm statistic is considered a global average. The
| concentration is already quite a bit higher in cities. Poke
| around here [1] for yourself.
|
| In indoor urban spaces, concentrations are probably already
| typically 800ppm. It might explain some of our social
| dysfunction...
|
| [1] https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/
| ove...
| saalweachter wrote:
| We've actually burned nearly enough carbon to double the
| atmospheric CO2 levels, but other sinks (eg, the acidifying
| oceans) have taken up enough that only about half stayed in the
| atmosphere.
| barrenko wrote:
| The only thing I needed to find out is that warming of the
| oceans is measured in HIROSHIMAS per second.
| fsmv wrote:
| It sure took us a long time to accept the evidence
| hedora wrote:
| The fossil fuel industry had accepted it by the '70s or maybe
| early '80s.
|
| It is taking a long time for the resulting concerted
| disinformation campaign to fall apart though.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Many people still don't accept it
| a3w wrote:
| And we have the owners of corporations with an influence in
| mass media, and to a lesser extent the internet, to thank for
| that.
| onion2k wrote:
| Some people think the Earth is flat. Theres quite a lot of
| cross over on the Venn diagram of the two I imagine.
| skyechurch wrote:
| The (public) debate is not about the science, and hasn't been
| for a while. It's maneuvering to avoid getting stuck with the
| check.
| VFIT7CTO77TOC wrote:
| It doesn't help that powerful entities use it as a trojan horse
| to further less noble agendas, think of the patriot act as an
| example.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| what does the Patriot Act have to do with global warming?
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| I'm guessing that Need Oil + Need Excuse for War To Get Oil
| + Need Excuse To Create Surveillance Dragnet kind of all
| got amalgamated?
|
| It's certainly not causative, and I don't see the steps
| from A to B.
| stirbot wrote:
| the longer we wait, the more power these entities will have.
| hammock wrote:
| Link to the actual paper:
| https://www.rmets.org/sites/default/files/qjcallender38.pdf
| ecshafer wrote:
| In the 1800s the lakes in New Jersey would freeze solid to the
| point that there were companies who would cut ice in New Jersey
| and store it to be sold in New York in the summer. Nowadays the
| mid atlantic is lucky to get a few inches of snow at a time, and
| I doubt a single lake in New Jersey has frozen enough to walk on
| in 30 years. Even places like Upstate New York, famous for their
| snowfall and long winters, have long stretches of winter with
| above freezing temperatures where all of the snow melts. The
| effects are extremely pronounced and the climate is nothing like
| it was in the 1800s now.
| hackerlight wrote:
| About a week ago there was a freak heatwave in West Africa that
| caused almost 100 excess deaths. These events are going to get
| more common near the equator, and this will drive climate
| refugees.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Out of curiosity: how much of desertification in Africa and
| elsewhere is due to bad land management and how much is just
| due to changing weather as the climate changes?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I'd heard about this being a thing in Massachusetts but I
| didn't realize it went so far south as New Jersey!
| technotony wrote:
| This isn't just climate change though, that period was
| significantly colder than previous periods (google 'little ice
| age'). Not disputing man made climate change at all, but the
| earth naturally goes through warming and cooling phases and we
| shouldn't expect New York to be as cold as 1800 today even
| without climate change.
|
| Of course this kind of natural change is what gives ammunition
| to climate deniers!
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's important to remember that it's really tough to separate
| this stuff out and properly attribute changes.
|
| There could be natural causes for the little ice age
| starting/ending but there's also evidence pointing that
| decreased human activity resulted in cooling and increased
| activity resulted in heating. Aside from CO2 emissions,
| there's deforestation, controlled burns, and other
| terraforming projects on a massive scale around that time
| period that could easily have contributed in a major way.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Agreed. It might have been any of those things, or
| something else entirely.
|
| For example, in 1883, Krakatoa erupted, one of the most
| powerful volcano events in _recorded_ history.
|
| The eruption of Krakatoa had a significant impact on global
| climate, with summer temperatures in 1883 falling by as
| much as 1.2degC (2.2degF) below normal in parts of the
| Northern Hemisphere. It changed the skies to various colors
| like blue, gold, green, and purple, "... more like inflamed
| flesh than the lucid reds of ordinary sunsets... the glow
| is intense; that is what strikes everyone; it has prolonged
| the daylight, and optically changed the season; it bathes
| the whole sky, it is mistaken for the reflection of a great
| fire."
|
| And that was just a single volcanic eruption, in the
| southeastern hemisphere, massively affecting temperatures
| on the opposite side of the planet. There have been other
| natural events, like a massive simultaneous triple-
| eruption, possibly in 536, that plunged the planet into a
| short ice age.
|
| Other interesting natural phenomena are things like solar
| storms that can cause a global increase in both wildfires
| and electrical storms (or the cooling effect during less
| active cycles) as well as the significant dust clouds that
| occur when a large meteor strikes the earth.
|
| An interesting one that didn't seem to cause any climate
| changes was the Tunguska event. In 1908 in Siberia, it was
| thought to have been a meteor, except for the total lack of
| an impact crater, and is now believed by leading scientists
| to have been a meteor air burst. (Of course scientific
| consensus always is, until it isn't.) This didn't seem to
| cause a significant dust cloud or changes in weather
| patterns, but there are many other documented cases of
| meteors and volcanoes massively changing the weather. It'd
| be very interesting to map the climate curves (such as they
| may be known) against various known natural phenomena over
| the centuries.
| timschmidt wrote:
| The little ice age was caused by us too:
| https://globalnews.ca/news/4924534/little-ice-age-
| death-55-m...
| bequanna wrote:
| That is an interesting theory.
|
| I think we often forget that most of the indigenous people
| who died from disease never came in contact with Europeans
| directly and disease burned through the population moving
| from tribe to tribe. I'd love to learn more about the pre-
| Columbian population of North America and what that time
| looked like.
| nostrademons wrote:
| This is a fascinating hypothesis, but the timelines don't
| really add up. Global temperatures started decreasing
| around 1100 AD, and by 1300 AD the decline was very much
| apparent [1]. The Little Ice Age temperature low does
| correspond with the period from roughly 1420-1820, but by
| 1492 average temperatures were already close to their lows
| and a full ~0.3C lower than the High Middle Ages. If it
| were caused by the colonization of the Americas, you'd
| expect the temperature decline to not start until first
| contact with the Native Americans.
|
| I think it's more likely that the Little Ice Age was caused
| by a drop of solar output, and that all of the turmoil in
| Europe (Black Death, Hundred Years War, War of the Roses,
| Wars of Religion) that led to the eventual colonization of
| the Americas was a _consequence_ of resource scarcity in
| Europe.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#/media/Fil
| e:200...
| timschmidt wrote:
| 1100AD lines up well with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Norse_colonization_of_North_Am...
|
| It's not my paper, and I'm not a climate scientist, just
| found it interesting myself. This except was striking:
|
| "According to the study, a spike in plant life was
| responsible for up to 67 per cent of a significant drop
| in carbon dioxide levels between 1520 and 1610. Carbon
| had been transferred from the atmosphere to the land
| surface through photosynthesis.
|
| Previously cored Antarctic ice samples were investigated.
| Researchers observed that 7.4 petagrams -- or 7-billion
| metric tonnes -- of carbon had suddenly disappeared at
| that point in time."
| nostrademons wrote:
| The Norse colonization doesn't line up well with the
| Native American disease die-off, though. The Norse
| colonization didn't seem to have a major impact on major
| agricultural populations in North America, perhaps
| because they landed in remote regions of Greenland and
| Canada with low population densities. The Aztec empire
| didn't get started until 1372, for example, and peaked
| entirely during this time of dropping temperatures.
| Smallpox wasn't introduced until 1519.
|
| I found some independent validation of the drop in CO2
| that you cite [1], but the authors have no idea what the
| root cause was. Possibly the Native American hypothesis
| could fit as cause for a secondary climate trend from
| 1600-1800, but it seems like a stretch. Also should not
| discount the possibility of plant growth feedback loops:
| it's known that higher CO2 concentrations cause rapid
| plant growth, and possible that lower solar irradiation
| might encourage plants to grow more rapidly to capture
| more of the available solar energy, and both of those
| lead to the observed drops in CO2 and increased
| vegetation. Perhaps the causality was that lower solar
| output -> increased plant growth -> CO2 drop as well as
| lower solar output -> it's cold and CO2 drop -> it's
| cold.
|
| [1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1
| 029/201...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> The Norse colonization didn't seem to have a major
| impact on major agricultural populations in North
| America, perhaps because they landed in remote regions of
| Greenland and Canada with low population densities
|
| The Norse didn't travel to North America directly from
| Europe. For them to spread smallpox, someone from Europe
| would have had to travel to Greenland shortly before they
| left for North America. Then they would have had to come
| into close contact with Indians before the disease ran
| its course among the crew, which, given the close contact
| on a small sailing vessel, probably wouldn't take long.
| aetherson wrote:
| The Norse had no major impact on North America, certainly
| nothing even remotely close to causing major worldwide
| temperature changes. They had like a few seasonal
| outposts, plus Greenland.
| reaperman wrote:
| Crediting someone in 1938 with "discovering" anthropogenic global
| warming might be misattributing a bit?
|
| Climate change due to industrial emissions of CO2 has been known
| and published in mainstream news articles since at least 110
| years ago.[0][1]
|
| It's been known and discussed in public by professional
| scientists for over 140 years[2].
|
| The great inaugural Nobel Prize winner, Arrhenius, wrote a paper
| on the topic in 1896[3] which cited Fourier's publication from
| 1827[4].
|
| More generally, global greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known
| for at least 185 years[4], a decade before the last founding
| father of the United States died.
|
| ----------
|
| 0: The Rodney and Otamatea Times (Aug 1912)
| https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-cen...
|
| 1: Popular Mechanics (Mar 1912):
| https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=...
|
| 2: Nature (1882): https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0
|
| 3: Journal of Science (Apr 1896)
| https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846
|
| 4: M emoire sur les Temp eratures du Globe Terrestre et des
| Espaces Plan etaires, M emoires d l'Acad emie Royale des Sciences
| de l'Institute de France VII 570-604 (1827):
| https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pd...
| (English Translation)
| baxtr wrote:
| Excerpt from your second citation Nature (1882) paper:
|
| _From this we may conclude that the increasing pollution of
| the atmosphere will have a marked influence on the climate of
| the world.
|
| The mountainous regions will be colder, the Arctic regions will
| be colder, the tropics will be warmer, and throughout the world
| the nights will be colder, and the days warmer.
|
| In the Temperate Zone winter will be colder, and generally
| differences will be greater, winds, storms, rainfall greater._
| verisimi wrote:
| Pollution is not co2, right? (The OP says co2, not
| pollution.)
|
| We also have both claims here - global warming _and_ global
| cooling.
|
| Can't we also say, from broad claims such as the ones you hi
| light, that a sort of generic scientific alarmism has existed
| a long time?
|
| Scientific alarmism in itself justifies the valuable work
| those scientists raising the alarm do, of course...
| Retric wrote:
| Both global warming and cooling happen, just at different
| timescales. In the early Industrial Revolution when coal
| use was exploding exponentially due to cheaper mining and
| transportation the sort term net effect was cooling due to
| particulate emissions having a larger short term impact
| than CO2. However, the exponential growth slowed down as
| people didn't need unlimited heating for their homes so the
| cooling leveled off as CO2 accumulated.
|
| Thus people in 1900 saw net heating from the exact same
| coal burned in 1800 that produced cooling back then.
|
| The same thing happened again with the explosion of
| automobile use globally before that growth curve slowed
| down. And it's even part of climate models where if you
| stop all fossil fuel emissions you get a few years of
| additional warming before things stabilize.
| reaperman wrote:
| For that passage the authors were talking about hydrogen,
| marsh gas, and ethylene. They state "those have the
| property of a very high degree of absorbing and radiating
| heat, and so much so that a very small proportion, of only
| one thousandth part, had very great effect."
|
| Whether CO2 is referred to as "pollution" or not depends on
| the context. In this case they were talking about other
| industrial greenhouse gases.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| No true Scotsman would say anything like that @verisimi
| verisimi wrote:
| I know the fallacy, but I'm confused! Whose is the
| fallacious reasoning then, in your opinion?
|
| Is it the OP who interprets pollution to be co2, or mine
| as you interpret me to be narrowing the scope somehow?
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I upvoted the OP so your comment
| would get more views!
| graeme wrote:
| The article mentions Arrhenius
| perrygeo wrote:
| I hadn't seen the Fourier paper before, nice. He doesn't really
| go into CO2 but focuses more on general atmosphere heating. I
| really appreciate the translator's notes.
|
| Eunice Foot (1856) and John Tyndall (1859) independently
| characterized how CO2 absorbs radiant heat, and both postulated
| on the potential climate impacts. Tyndall is often given the
| credit as the founder of climate science but Foot was first.
|
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.006...
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| Peer review was broken back then too. It is just too perverse and
| dismissive. Peer reviewers have a bias to discredit novel results
| that are true. I feel terribly for Callendar not being
| recognized.
| NHQ wrote:
| LOL this fake persona is named Calendar! The global warming
| charade is a schedule for other plans or events. You have been
| warned.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| If I was reading a fiction novel and the character making
| predictions for decades in the future had a last name "Callendar"
| I would chuckle and think the autor was unimaginative, over-
| literal.
|
| Alas, reality is often more on the nose than one would expect.
|
| See lithium batteries, a technology with many problems but
| probably our best bet for the energy transition, being invented
| by a guy named Goodenough.
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