[Discussion] Climate Change

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This thread is just to post interesting news, thoughts, opinions about climate change.

Huge comic that does a very strong job of explaining how the current climate change is a big deal.

IMAGE(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth_temperature_timeline.png)

I literally wept for humanity when I first saw this.

I love that comic, but Greg Laden points out it gets too much of the prehistory wrong. It makes one very good point about climate change, but in the process makes too many mistakes about prehistory.

One might argue that in a simplified version of reality (like in a cartoon) it is ok to overstate things as facts where we really don’t know. No, it isn’t. There are ways to speak briefly, and in an interesting way, of a past that we understand more vaguely than some DK book for five year olds. So let’s do that.

The oversimplification of prehistory contributes to the co-opting of intelligence, innovation, rights over various things like landscapes and cultural phenomena, by the dominant cultures who have condensed the relevant prehistories to centralize and privilege themselves. The prehistory presented here mostly privilages what we sometimes refer to as “Western Civilization” with its middle eastern roots and its simple, linear, one way, always improving, progressive history. A very inaccurate history.

Rhetorically, I think the moments flagged in prehistory are there as things the reader might have heard of, so that they can roughly contextualize/visualize.

Gravey wrote:

I love that comic, but Greg Laden points out it gets too much of the prehistory wrong. It makes one very good point about climate change, but in the process makes too many mistakes about prehistory.

One might argue that in a simplified version of reality (like in a cartoon) it is ok to overstate things as facts where we really don’t know. No, it isn’t. There are ways to speak briefly, and in an interesting way, of a past that we understand more vaguely than some DK book for five year olds. So let’s do that.

The oversimplification of prehistory contributes to the co-opting of intelligence, innovation, rights over various things like landscapes and cultural phenomena, by the dominant cultures who have condensed the relevant prehistories to centralize and privilege themselves. The prehistory presented here mostly privilages what we sometimes refer to as “Western Civilization” with its middle eastern roots and its simple, linear, one way, always improving, progressive history. A very inaccurate history.

The whole "rebuttal" feels a lot like nit-picking. It also feels like he's missing the point, even though he mentions that right out of the gate - "My answer to that: This comic makes one point about climate change and dozens of points about archaeology. It is about archaeology." I think he's dead wrong about that; the comic would work almost as well as a statement about climate change without having any of the factoids scattered about. It's like complaining that a painting of a tree in a field at night is about astronomy because there's only one tree and hundreds of stars (and by the way, they're in the wrong spots and now people are going to learn the wrong things about our starfield because of this painting).

The comic uses history to make a point about climate science. If the climate science should be true, why shouldn't the history? It's not just about the facts listed unnecessarily reinforcing biased conceptions of prehistory; there are plain old errors too like the Industial Revolution starting in the 19th century, among others. How would the climate projections illustrated in the comic persuade someone when they can see the rest of the comic is riddled with historical errors?

Exactly. If one piece a position is flawed then the whole position is completely invalidated!

farley3k wrote:

piece a position

Invalidated.

I, like many people, have absolutely zero brain-space devoted to remembering trivia about trivial things. I will certainly not be referencing a vague bulletpoint in a web-comic when it comes time to 'remember' the start of the Industrial Revolution. Google assures me that it's somewhere around 1760 and spans till somewhere in the 1820-1840s. Pinning it to the 1900s, on a scale that encompasses the full six thousand years the earth has been around means an error of a really tiny percent. I forgive, and forget what I just looked up.

Gravey wrote:

The comic uses history to make a point about climate science. If the climate science should be true, why shouldn't the history? It's not just about the facts listed unnecessarily reinforcing biased conceptions of prehistory; there are plain old errors too like the Industial Revolution starting in the 19th century, among others. How would the climate projections illustrated in the comic persuade someone when they can see the rest of the comic is riddled with historical errors?

I don't think it indicates that the Industrial Revolution started at any date at all, but rather it associates the IR with the early 19th C.

But Laden's complaint regarding the western focus of the selected events would seem to be a point in favor of a broader IR, and especially a 19th C. tag. After all, only a handful of nations participated in the 18th C. IR—fossil-fuel-generated steam power didn't become a global phenomenon until the 1800s.

Gravey wrote:

The comic uses history to make a point about climate science. If the climate science should be true, why shouldn't the history?

It doesn't, though.

The only "use" of history is to attempt to provide context, but the point stands with no history at all. The comic uses history to make a point about climate change like my car uses orange paint to accelerate.

I think a much more important issue with the comic is where it says "when people say 'the climate has changed before,' these are the kinds of changes they're talking about." It then goes on to present only changes since the end of the last glacial period, focusing only on the tiniest fraction of geologic time. This makes for a nice point, but that often isn't what people are talking about in my experience. They're usually referring to something they heard indicating that there are periods in the past when the earth was much warmer than today (there are), and when there was more CO2 in the air (there was). The implication is, I guess, that the earth survived it before, and it will survive it again so why should we worry.

For the record, I think the comic is doing a good job of addressing a timescale of much greater relevance to humans and providing difficult-to-understand information in an easily understood visual format. The earth was warmer before is a bit silly, especially given that changes to a different climates often coincided with mass extinctions that I'd rather not deal with despite the fact that climatic changes sometimes occurred slower than what we're seeing now.

Nitpicking the history of the comic seems to entirely miss the point of it. I suppose it contributes to perpetuating some perception problems and misconceptions people have about history, but I like to think that readers know that the history here is provided just for context, and it's really the temperature curve that's important. I mean, they're just stick men saying silly things. If you want solid information about the historical events, it seems pretty clear to me that you'd need to look it up.

Yeah, I'm sure an archaeologist will find the history annoying, but that's like complaining about the paint colour on a building that's burning down. The inclusion of Pokemon facts and a Spinal Tap joke are a clue not to take the history part over seriously.

I also thing the Western focus is a feature, rather than a bug. It's mainly in the West that denialism has taken hold, Westerners need familiar context. People in the rest of the world are preoccupied with extreme weather and their homes disappearing underwater, the comic isn't for them.

I love Randall, but I don't really think that comic is very effective. Notice how our current temps aren't much higher than the temps around 3300 bce were - which happened naturally without any human intervention. That's exactly what climate change deniers are saying.

It should've focused more on the alarming spike and what might happen after we hit +2, 3, or 4 c.

PaladinTom wrote:

It should've focused more on the alarming spike and what might happen after we hit +2, 3, or 4 c.

I think that that sort of "conjecture" is far more likely to turn off deniers.

As for the fact that "it's gotten this hot before" (the current temperature is the max on this graph, so we've already surpassed the ability to say that for the entire time period of civilization) is put into great context here.

The story of global warming ISN'T whether it's gotten this hot before. It's the rate. This chart shows that. The actual temperature is important too, but the rate is what is unique here.

IMAGE(http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/files/2016/09/tempanoms_gis_august2016.gif)

PaladinTom wrote:

I love Randall, but I don't really think that comic is very effective. Notice how our current temps aren't much higher than the temps around 3300 bce were - which happened naturally without any human intervention. That's exactly what climate change deniers are saying.

It should've focused more on the alarming spike and what might happen after we hit +2, 3, or 4 c.

Except that you're not seeing the scale. Look at 5000BC; that's about the high point for the temperature range you mentioned. It crosses back down 0.5 degrees around 250BC (so about 4750 years to change half a degree). In contrast, we've increased about 0.8 degrees since 1991 - 25 years.

If we started in 5000BC and increased at that rate, by 250BC the average surface temperature would have increased by 120 degrees...

That's the scale of the change involved. It's not the relative heights the dotted line hits, it's how long it takes to change a temperature increment.

Put it another way. We're 80 floors up in a building and the elevator goes into freefall. While most people are panicking, working out the force of impact (hey, it's a physics department) or picturing their loved ones, waiting for the impact, the climate deniers are saying "Hey, every other day we went down 80 floors and nothing happened, why worry now?".

Rate of change, it matters.

Robear wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

I love Randall, but I don't really think that comic is very effective. Notice how our current temps aren't much higher than the temps around 3300 bce were - which happened naturally without any human intervention. That's exactly what climate change deniers are saying.

It should've focused more on the alarming spike and what might happen after we hit +2, 3, or 4 c.

Except that you're not seeing the scale. Look at 5000BC; that's about the high point for the temperature range you mentioned. It crosses back down 0.5 degrees around 250BC (so about 4750 years to change half a degree). In contrast, we've increased about 0.8 degrees since 1991 - 25 years.

If we started in 5000BC and increased at that rate, by 250BC the average surface temperature would have increased by 120 degrees...

That's the scale of the change involved. It's not the relative heights the dotted line hits, it's how long it takes to change a temperature increment.

Put it another way. We're 80 floors up in a building and the elevator goes into freefall. While most people are panicking, working out the force of impact (hey, it's a physics department) or picturing their loved ones, waiting for the impact, the climate deniers are saying "Hey, every other day we went down 80 floors and nothing happened, why worry now?".

Rate of change, it matters. :-)

And now I have the example that makes the most sense in my head and is easiest to explain to others. Awesome.

I wish I'd thought of that example years ago.

I wish we hadn't floundered for years calling the "Global Warming" so people were easily duped every time the temperature dropped. Nitwits could bring a snowball to the senate floor or complain about long winters.

That's what it is, and for years it was accepted by most of the politicians who now oppose it (probably on behalf of their constituents and lobbyists). They'd be doing the same stunts if it had been called "global climate change" all along.

The planet will be fine... it's the inhabitants that should worry.

Robear wrote:

Except that you're not seeing the scale.

No, I get that. It's why the comic is so long. My critique is just that after all that scrolling the end wasn't as frightening as I expected it to be. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where even when people acknowledge a one or two degree change they don't understand the consequences of that change. "Pfft. One degree warmer? Big deal."

At least the environment has been cooperating and proving what some of those changes will be.

Robear wrote:

I wish I'd thought of that example years ago. :-)

That's a great example. I'm totally stealing that.

PaladinTom wrote:

At least the environment has been cooperating and proving what some of those changes will be.

What would be examples of not cooperating?

I feel that climate change has affected the rate and intensity of 'events'. Sadly, I feel this weather on steroids is the new normal:

Washington DC's 2010 Snowmaggedon
Russian Heat wave 2010
Superstorm Sandy 2012
Supertyphoon Haiyan 2013
Colorado Floods 2013
Louisiana Floods 2016
California Drought (ongoing)

While events like these are always going to happen, I feel they will occur more often and be more extreme.

brouhaha wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

At least the environment has been cooperating and proving what some of those changes will be.

What would be examples of not cooperating?

The short term up swings show the new highs. The short term downswings let stupid and/or dishonest people say things like "If global warming is real then how come it was warmer two years ago than it is today?".

Yonder wrote:
brouhaha wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

At least the environment has been cooperating and proving what some of those changes will be.

What would be examples of not cooperating?

The short term up swings show the new highs. The short term downswings let stupid and/or dishonest people say things like "If global warming is real then how come it was warmer two years ago than it is today?".

I was Yonderhaussered, but I'll just add that I try to show those people the climate vs weather video:

I can't remember who it was, but a few years ago someone on GWJ (maybe Paleocon or Robear) gave a real simple to understand explanation. Global warming means more heat in the atmosphere. Heat is a form of energy. More energy in the atmosphere results in more intense weather. I've had a pretty good rate of understanding when I explain things that way, particularly when people try to cite big snowstorms as evidence against global warming.

Yonder wrote:

The short term up swings show the new highs. The short term downswings let stupid and/or dishonest people say things like "If global warming is real then how come it was warmer two years ago than it is today?".

A trend I see proving that any level of cognitive dissonance is possible if you are stuck in your beliefs. When the weather is abnormally colder a couple days a year, the comments sections are flooded with people saying "So much for global warming!". When it is abnormally hotter for the far more many days of the year? Silence.

Still remains one of my favourite political cartoons ever, especially since it calls out another political cartoonist:

IMAGE(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/kevlarcardhouse/836.jpg)

kuddles wrote:

Still remains one of my favourite political cartoons ever, especially since it calls out another political cartoonist:

IMAGE(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/kevlarcardhouse/836.jpg)

That's really good.

Robear wrote:

That's what it is [i.e. global warming], and for years it was accepted by most of the politicians who now oppose it (probably on behalf of their constituents and lobbyists). They'd be doing the same stunts if it had been called "global climate change" all along.

As best as I can remember (and my brain is a treacherous bastard), this is what the Right does: they define the terms, forcing the Left to play by their rules (e.g. "pro-life" and its opposite which must by definition be anti-life). So it really is global warming, since it's a rise in global average surface temperature—which causes wild swings in weather, up and down, what we now call extreme weather events. But the climate science deniers reframed it as climate change: if it's so cold today and right here, how can it be global warming? It's just climate change, and the climate has always changed so nbd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Climate change is a symptom of the real problem. It should be, and always should have been, global warming (including this thread title, if I had my druthers).

Republican strategist Frank "Death Tax" Luntz did promote the use of "climate change" over "global warming" among Republicans because the latter was perceived as being a less urgent and threatening issue.

But the scientific community has used--and continues to use--both terms. Global warming refers to long-term increase in the average surface temperature and climate change refers to the changes in the global climate which result from the increasing average global temperature.

OG_slinger wrote:

But the scientific community has used--and continues to use--both terms. Global warming refers to long-term increase in the average surface temperature and climate change refers to the changes in the global climate which result from the increasing average global temperature.

That's true—it's the IPCC after all—but for getting across to the public and politicians what the real issue is, I'd prefer "global warming".

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