
Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change - jajag
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/
======
adrianN
It's long been known that the IPCC reports tend to be too conservative.

Nevertheless politicians take the numbers for the least dramatic predictions
and turn them into promises that they then don't keep.

I guess that it won't be long before some country or other embarks on a
unilateral geoengineering experiment. Perhaps when river basins in India start
reaching lethal wet-bulb temperatures regularly. Let's just hope that it won't
make things worse.

~~~
kgwgk
If they were too conservative why did they need to revise down their
forecasts?

[https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/ipcc-silently-
slashes...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/ipcc-silently-slashes-its-
global-warming-predictions-in-the-ar5-final-draft/)

~~~
addicted
Just based on the url. (After having spent years reading it, I’m not touching
Wattsupwiththat anymore)

“Silently slashes”: So silently that the information is easily available
everywhere and is published publicly.

“AR5 Final draft”: Yes, it’s shocking that drafts change. It’s almost like the
purpose of drafts is for them to be revised multiple times before they are
published.

And finally, it’s almost a 100% that the “slashing” happened to get sign offs
from political leaders of governments, without which they wouldn’t be able to
publish the reports. If anything, this only illustrates exactly why the IPCC
reports are far too conservative.

~~~
roenxi
> “Silently slashes”: So silently that the information is easily available
> everywhere and is published publicly.

On this particular point; organisations do often 'silently' release to the
public. For example, Westminster-styled governments are notorious for
important things happening on Friday when the press is winding down or
legislation never appearing in the talking points.

It is possible to silently do something in the public sphere. Editing draft
predictions does sound quite mundane though, they probably weren't trying to
slip that under the radar.

~~~
mannykannot
"This particular point" is not that it _could_ not be done silently, but that
is _was_ not done silently.

------
arvinsim
No one wants to pay the cost of tackling this problem.

Especially not the for-profit corporations that are responsible for some of
the worst pollution in the world.

Ironically, they own the biggest capital and resources to be able to tackle
the problem that they are creating.

~~~
agent008t
Why? Are there reasons to believe that the shareholders/board members of these
companies would not be negatively affected by climate change? Or are they
ignorant?

~~~
ryanmercer
The vast majority of people, at best, think climate channge is something
that'll be a problem for their grandchildren or great grandchildren. Many
still believe it is a made up thing the news/politicians created.

Many people don't care about long-term stuff either. Look at how many people
have no qualms throwing trash out their car window. Look at how many people
have no qualms about taking vacations flying all over the place racking up
tons of CO2 personally.

Even YC created [http://carbon.ycombinator.com](http://carbon.ycombinator.com)
as they acknowledge it's an issue (to some extent anyway) yet they still fly
hundreds of people out to the Bay Area for in-person interviews each year to
select founders for funding, which could instead be done via video chat and
used kilograms of CO2 at worst instead of many tons (on average, a plane
produces a little over 53 pounds of CO2 per mile. This can be somewhat higher
or lower depending upon the type of aviation fuel).

And then take people that truly realize how much of a problem is like I do.

\- I have to go to work, it is not practical for me to walk to work so I have
to drive a car to work.

\- It is not practical for me to not use electricity, living in an apartment I
have to use it to cook, to dry my clothes even if I chose to wash them by
hand, to run the air conditioning a good chunk of the year to keep the
humidity down to prevent mold, to run the heat in the winter because it gets
down to -12F/-24C a few days of the year

\- I can't walk around naked and both natural fibers and synthetic fibers rely
heavily on oil to manufacture

\- I can't go buy food from my neighbor or grow my own in a garden, so my food
is trucked across the country or even shipped from halfway around the world

So people like me go "nothing I do on a personal level is going to make a damn
bit of difference, why bother" and you sit there watching Netflix knowing that
every gigabyte you stream is probably another 100-300 grams of CO2 into the
atmosphere.

And you sit there depressed - knowing you are breathing in microplastics,
knowing you are eating and drinking microplastics, knowing those microplastics
and other air pollutants are likely increasing your risk of cancer
considerably, knowing that 30 something cities with populations over 1 million
people have run out of clean water (or water entirely) including India's 6th
largest city by population, knowing that it's probably unwise to have children
because sooner or later in their life the world is going to become a largely
shitty and miserable place when food/water wars start, knowing that global
insect biomass has considerably reduced in your short 34 years on earth,
knowing because you are barely in the lower middle class you're probably going
to be one of the ones to starve at some point because you'll lose your job and
have a hard time finding another and a crop failure or three will cause food
prices to go up 200%, 300%, 1000% or more in your lifetime and you'll get to
experience what life is like for people in North Korea when you're eating
whatever you can get your hands on.

The shareholders, the C-level employees, don't care because they aren't
feeling the impacts already. They have fancy houses, fancy cars, take fancy
vacations, they wear nice clothes and have more money than they need. The bulk
of them have never filed bankruptcy or worried regularly how they're going to
put food on the table, the majority of them have never known real struggle.
They aren't concerned about climate change because they think the money will
always be flowing in and they'll always have stuff.

Look at the articles over the past few years about the rich buying land in New
Zealand like Peter Thiel did.

~~~
malvosenior
If it makes you feel better, by almost every metric the vast majority of
humanity is living the best they have in all of human history. If you live in
the west it’s even better because we haven’t had any local wars in nearly 80
years. I think a lot of people need to study history a bit more to understand
how great things are now for most of the global population.

~~~
adrianN
It's always best just before the party is over, right?

~~~
malvosenior
No?

------
michlsemn
One of the memes on
[https://reddit.com/r/collapse](https://reddit.com/r/collapse) is "faster than
expected," referencing the frequent articles mentioning how climate change's
effects are kicking in much sooner than expected.

~~~
diveloper
I don't know how to feel about that subreddit. On one hand, they discuss the
daunting reality of climate change in a way you don't see in many other
corners of the internet (besides HN). On the other hand, reading it is
definitely not good for one's mental health and they often don't propose any
solutions, and generally the mood is a very "we lost, the game is over"
attitude. That's not going to help anyone, even if we are too late to stop a
large amount of warming.

~~~
CalRobert
I stop by that subreddit every few months and it is frustrating that the only
places people seem honest with themselves about the real impact of this is
also filled with fatalism. Maybe they're right.

Even so, it's still worth _trying_ to fix it, or barring that, to try to save
as many billions from a horrible death as possible.

The approach taken by Dark Mountain is a little better I think - they don't
focus on false hopes, but a literary response to the catastrophe (apocalypse
might be a better word) on the horizon and how to deal with it on a human
level.

We're all doomed, after all, by dint of our mortality (or our sun's, barring
that). Moments of joy can still be had.

~~~
czechdeveloper
It's just place where you can be pessimistic by default. It's forgotten
everywhere else it seems.

~~~
GatitoLindo
Yeah, it's important for pessimists and pessimistic realists to have a place
to talk about these things without the ever-pervasive prescription to hopium
that seems to be tacked onto the end of every.single.article.

There can be an acceptance that things are too far gone for most people to
impact positively, and that many people have consigned themselves to this. IMO
as long as they aren't going out into public and trying to attack
environmentalists who are trying to make changes, it's a good and healthy
thing for people to have a community of like-minded individuals to talk with.

------
bertil
Not exactly: Scientists have been giving confidence intervals and no one
really paid attention to the wurst case scenario.

~~~
sabertoothed
> the wurst case scenario

Please elaborate :)

~~~
misterdoubt
We're cooked.

------
doe88
I think given the current political climate (sic), scientists tends to be
overly cautious on these subjects. They know they can be berated for any not
fully proven detail or tiny error. All in all I don't think this is a bad
thing, forces against real changes are such that incremental actions are the
norm anyway.

~~~
s9w
It's curious how the situation can be viewed like this. In my experience it's
the exact opposite. Headlines in my country (Germany) are absolutely dominated
by the climate doomsday scenarios. Taxpayers spent hundets of millions of
euros for "greener" energy, entire industries are ruined. We even killed
nuclear because it's somehow not green enough. Heck even fusion energy is too
evil. Fridays for future and the green party are dictating what is allowed to
be said. Dozens of German cities are literally in a climate state of emergency
(no joke). The sky is falling according to everyone.

~~~
std_throwaway
Well, the sky is very likely falling but it is falling so slowly that the
older generation won't see any severe effects. In the great scheme it won't
matter so much what Germany does if the rest of the world continues to burn
the coal. The only direct effect that deindustrializing Germany has is it will
kill the German economy _today_.

~~~
Dumblydorr
Germany is continuing to burn coal, that is why axing their nuclear was such
an unforced error.

~~~
mgoetzke
The unforced error was/is not building out solar/wind/battery storage etc.

Instead they just added a tax for every citizen to pay on electricity and KEEP
promoting coal.

Also WHY don't counties/cities own any solar/wind power stations to increase
independence and lower long-term cost ?

Instead they sell out to companies or rich investors instead and those get
subsidized.

~~~
sitkack
Having a powerwall that can feed your local core infrastructure (hospital,
water treatment, schools, etc) and then solar to charge the powerwall would
mean you could isolate yourself from high spots prices for electricity.

With your own local powerwall, local grid tie will charge local capacity and
be ransomed by the utility.

------
GatitoLindo
>"Elsewhere we have documented a pattern we label "erring on the side of least
drama." By this we mean that scientists often have a tendency to avoid
dramatic findings, because drama is associated with emotion, feelings,
irrationality, and even femininity, qualities that have traditionally been
viewed as at odds with scientific rationality. We have shown that in several
domains related to climate change, scientists' estimates of various threats -
CO2 emissions, Arctic Sea ice loss, Sea level rise - have tended to be low
relative to actual outcomes. Scientists considered such underestimates to be
"conservative" because they are conservative with respect to the question of
when to sound an alarm or how loudly to sound it. (It is of course not
conservative when viewed in terms of giving people adequate time to prepare.)
The history recounted here is consistent with this finding: That WAIS
assessments underestimated the threat of rapid ice sheet disintegration,
because most of the scientists who participated were more comfortable with an
estimate that they viewed as "Conservative" than with one that was not."
(Discerning Experts, 2019. Michael Oppenheimer, Naomi Oreskes, Dale Jamieson,
Keynyn Brysse, Jessica O'Reilly, Matthew Shindell, and Milena Wazeck)

------
francisofascii
What about the idea of adding particulates to the atmosphere to block a
portion of the sun's rays?

~~~
Dumblydorr
We could try to simulate a volcanic eruption, which have demonstrably cooled
the planet in the past. Also I wonder with cheaper rocket flights, can we put
sunlight reflectors over the arctic regions to save their ice?

~~~
sitkack
A couple of strategically detonated nukes on a tradwind path should cool
things down. The same super computers that predict the weather can predict
exact placement and yield.

~~~
petschge
May I point you to doi 10.1002/2017JD027331 that concluded "This analysis
demonstrates that while modest, statistically significant differences occur
during the first few years, longer‐term impacts are unlikely, regional in
scope, and limited in scale. None of the simulations produced a nuclear winter
effect."?

~~~
sitkack
I guess that is good and bad news. Hopefully India and Pakistan don't try and
refute the findings.

Since you are now my Oracle, how large of a cold spot can we create using a
space based sun shade? What would it take to keep arctic methane in the
ground?

------
carapace
Dr. Gwynne Dyer gave a talk, "Geopolitics in a Hotter World" – Sept. 2010

> So when the Hadley Centre put these numbers out they were incorporating
> (which the IPCC does not) the early impacts of positive feedbacks, as well
> as just how much carbon dioxide will we put into the air by 2060. First time
> that had been done, but it gives you a really frightening number…and then
> they did the map. Which is again, something that’s not normally done, and
> the consequence is we don’t have a lot of time. We’re in deep trouble. And
> the military know this; the military know this everywhere.

> the rule of thumb is that you lose 10% of global food production for every 1
> degree Celsius higher average global temperature.

> So food becomes the critical issue and the countries most impacted are
> tropical and subtropical and this is where the geopolitics comes from.

> “people always raid before they starve.”

> There’s already a well established pattern: when you’re in deep trouble and
> you can’t feed your family, head north.

> But the dirty secret is that you can only shut a border if you’re willing to
> kill people.

> No government that cannot feed its population survives.

> We’re going to go through the point of no return (and probably a good deal
> further) in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Almost
> certain.

> And there is maybe a way to cheat: and that is geoengineering.

> “we’ve crunched the numbers and we figure we could get one degree Celsius of
> cooling average worldwide just by painting all the roads and the roofs
> white.”

> I talked–actually, the head of the Bangladesh Institute of Strategic Studies
> about this (you didn’t even know that existed, did you?). Well, there is
> one, it’s quite serious–run by a General, bright guy. I said, “have you
> heard about geoengineering?” and he smiled–seraphically–and he said, “Mmm.
> Yes. Your question?”

> And I asked the question, “Do you think that this is something the
> Bangladesh government might want to do a little bit, before, let’s say, the
> US government or the Chinese government?”

> He said, “yes it has crossed our minds.”–and then he stopped talking.

...

Talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY)

Transcribed: [https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-
geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-
in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

------
aszantu
Doesn't water cool when it changes state? Ice melting should be pulling down
temps for the time in that spot? More heat would evaporate more water and thus
cool more?

------
RyanAF7
Except methane is the cause and intentionally so as it will dissapate in less
than a decade but make it appear as if the world is warming more quickly than
estimated.

It's a trick and people eat this shit up hook line and ignorant sinker.

~~~
EForEndeavour
What a sad account.

~~~
RyanAF7
What a pedestrian response.

~~~
mikelyons
If that response is 'pedestrian' would it be 'hipster' to join you in your
self-deceptions and spews of negativity?

------
TekMol
What if humans collectively decided to not have any new kids anymore and
maximize quality of life for the humans that already are living on planet
earth?

I would love to see this thought experiment thought out in detail. What
decisions would we make? Where would we invest? Would climate control still be
an issue?

~~~
malvosenior
Humanity would die out. Doesn’t seem very useful.

~~~
rficcaglia
It would be to the other 99.9999% of species. Maybe E Coli amd Herpes beasties
get the shaft.

~~~
pepega
You should watch the anime Parasyte

