
Earth at risk of becoming 'hothouse' if tipping point reached, report warns - helmsdeep
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/07/health/hothouse-earth-warming-intl/index.html
======
rntz
> "hothouse" temperatures could stabilize 4°C to 5°C (39 to 41 Fahrenheit)
> higher than pre-industrial levels.

A change of 4-5°C is a change of 7-9 degrees Fahrenheit, not 39-41.

~~~
0xfaded
Lol, looks like the Google result of "convert 4C to Fahrenheit". In the
authors defence, it isn't their fault the Americans still use Fahrenheit.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Wasn't 100 Fahrenheit the temperature of a chicken on tuesday in the sunshine?
Can't quite remember how that scale was created.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I always heard it was the rectal temperature of a cow, but that's not what
wikipedia tells me, so someone probably made that up. One advantage of the
Fahrenheit scale is that the range from 0 to 100 roughly corresponds to
temperatures people normally deal with.

~~~
Eurongreyjoy
After moving to Europe I am completely on board with the simplicity of the
metric system, however I do prefer the Fahrenheit scale for exactly the reason
you described above.

A human will face winter weather conditions from 0-32F which converts to
negative values on the Celsius scale (not practical).

On the other end of the spectrum for summer time conditions, there is a wider
range of values to ascribe to changes in temperature from 60F-100F or approx
16-38C.

~~~
peeters
> there is a wider range of values to ascribe to changes in temperature from
> 60F-100F or approx 16-38C

And why is that important? Are our bodies so finely tuned that it's important
to know the difference between 104 and 105 F?

Even in the less granular celsius, unless it's just about bragging rights
everything is about brackets anyway.

30+: wear shorts and hydrate

20-30: comfortable in short sleeves

10-20: bring a light jacket

0-10: wear a sweater

n10-0: wear a winter coat

n20-n10: wear gloves and a hat

n40-n20: no exposed skin

~~~
0xffff2
Am I missing something, or are we just adapted for very different climates?
Freezing is "wear a sweater" to you? I don't own a winter coat, but if I did
it would come out of the closet somewhere in the 5-10C range.

~~~
peeters
Yeah I mean it's certainly subjective and I aligned the numbers to fall at 10
degree boundaries. But that's roughly where I fall. Anything above freezing
and I'll usually prefer a sweater with a light jacket to a full winter coat.

------
akuji1993
I'm absolutely certain with governments moving this slow right now, making
small goals for 2050, getting courted by lobbies to not push through massive
restrictions, probably most of these very dark predictions will come true. I,
as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our
society, overruling politicians or outright controlling them directly. We are
probably beyond any point of return. The people that yearn for the next payday
will get their money and probably will be able to save themselves in an
underground bunker or a suite in the mountains, while the rest of the poor and
middle class burn in the ashes they leave behind.

~~~
Shoh3pif
> I, as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our
> society

Defenestrations, torches and pitchforks have been traditional solutions to
rulers not acting in the interest of the populace.

Of course more peaceful means are preferable but the option needs to be kept
on the table to remember why we have and want democratic solutions in the
first place.

~~~
mywittyname
This will happen. It's actually already happening in developing countries.

The disruption of food supplies has been causing annual riots all over the
world. The US has remained insulated from these effects by virtue of being
relatively rich and relying on over-priced, highly processed foods that have
enough margin to buffer against price shocks. But this is clearly an untenable
situation.

Shit goes south really fast when people can't afford to eat. And the
difference between Mexican or Middle Eastern food riots and American ones is
that Americans will come with lots of guns.

~~~
ripsawridge
I actually think this huge block of gun owners in America share a particular
mindset with each other that means they'll become the local arm of the
government in the hinterland.

Just as you always see affinity between police forces and right-wing
activists, you'll see the government put on a face friendly to rural gun
culture, and that group will be installed as enforcers.

So I don't buy this argument that the wide availability of guns in America in
any way ensures a "Freedman's Paradise." It ensures more oppression, as the
(expensive) arm of Federal power recedes.

~~~
mywittyname
I'm hardly an advocate of the typical right-wing position that guns keep the
government in check.

But I do foresee a situation where there's a clash between the well-fed police
(who want to keep it that way) and the starving poor in the US. The inner city
riots will not be an issue, most metro PDs have experienced and well equipped
riot control departments.

It's the armed, rural uprisings that pose a threat. Think Cliven Bundy-types
leading a group of protestors in sieges of government or office buildings.

------
blondie9x
We all know by now CO2 and CH4 leads to a warmer planet. We also know what's
driving greenhouse gas levels to rise across Earth. Contributors are
deforestation, intensive animal farming, and primarily the combustion of
carbon fossil fuels like coal, tar sands, oil, natural gas etc. But here is
the underlying problem, despite us knowing how bad things are, (97+% of
scientists who study this field agree we are causing the planet's climate to
shift away from the temperate climate we thrived in) not enough is being done
at present to truly solve the problem. What really is disheartening and what
no one in the media and government is talking about is how in 2015 CO2 levels
rose by the largest amount in human recorded history. 3.05 PPM
[http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html](http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html)
We are being lied to and mislead by our governments that uniform actions are
being performed to save the planet for the future of man. Vested interests in
the fossil fuel industry continue to drive climate change. Yes, solar energy
is starting to become incredibly efficient but not enough of it is coming
online in proportion to fossil fuel burning that persists and is also
installed annually. If we do not rally against it, our ability to live on this
planet is at stake. The lives of our posterity are also at risk because of the
burning. It will not be until we take extreme actions not on a country level
but as humanity together that we will slow the burning and save ourselves.
What are these actions you might ask that will actually be effective? These
can range from banning fossil fuels entirely, global carbon pricing system,
banning deforestation, changing human diets, extreme uniform investment in
renewable energy and potentially fourth generation nuclear reactors, more
funding for developing nations to install alternative energy sources, and to
shift the transportation grid towards sustainability.

~~~
spuz
What lies do you think we're being told exactly? The talks of solutions have
been going on for decades it's just very hard to get different governments to
agree to anything even if it's non binding. Have a look at the Paris agreement
and the history of failed agreements that preceded it for more information.

~~~
WhompingWindows
I believe the parent comment is referring to the lip service that politicians
and business-people pay to decarbonizing, while they do very little in
actuality to achieve those goals. For instance, the USA talked of the clean
power plan and used it as leverage for the Paris Accords. And yet, that policy
never went into effect: it was blocked by the courts and then abandoned by the
current administration.

------
jihadjihad
I really wish the more popular phrase were "global climate change" rather than
"global warming." The delta in the mean might not appear to be huge (a few
degrees C over a span of a century or two, perhaps), but the key concept is
the _variance_ or volatility of climate patterns.

As man-made climate change progresses, the average recorded temperature will
likely continue to climb, sure--but the change in variance is far more
significant in terms of the extreme events that will occur with increasing
regularity.

~~~
gonzo41
You make a really good point. I keep seeing once in a hundred year weather
events happening every other year now.

------
m_mueller
I'm worried that this could be just 'the tip of the iceberg' [1]. I have a
suspicion that even J. Hansen is still underestimating the issue. Just looking
at [2] the variability of current estimates of stored methane is enormous -
going from 10E2 to 5x10E4 Gigatonnes! Methane does greenhouse forcing 20-25x
as strong as CO2 over 100 years, or as much as ~160x if you only count 10
years. Depending on how fast methane gets released this really matters - if
the released methane triggers more methane to come out through warming we may
be in big trouble, even without burning all coal, oil and gas reserves
currently known.

Further reading concerning methane: [3], [4].

Reason why dismissing this using PETM boundary is probably invalid: There was
with high certainty less methane around since PETM didn't immediately follow a
cold high-storage period, solar energy was also weaker, and most importantly,
PETM was caused by methane alone, not a combination of fossil fuel burning _in
addition to_ methane [5].

Just to clarify: If we get the effects of PETM alone, this means around +8C
global average _on top_ of what we're doing. But from what I'm reading, PETM
effects are not the whole story as pointed out above. Not that it really
matters, +10-12C global average is almost certainly a global killer alone
(except bacteria), it's just that I don't think it would stabilise there, it
would go on to pressure cook earth's surface until absolutely nothing is left.

This stuff has me worried by far the most, especially for my now 2yo son.

[1] [https://www.kairoscanada.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/12/PBP2...](https://www.kairoscanada.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/12/PBP29-ArcticIce.pdf)

[2]
[http://oceanrep.geomar.de/30683/1/GasHydrates_Vol1_screen.pd...](http://oceanrep.geomar.de/30683/1/GasHydrates_Vol1_screen.pdf)

[3]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021830136X)

[4]
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1246](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1246)

[5]
[http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exagger...](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exaggerations.pdf)

~~~
fallingfrog
This is indeed worrisome, but the evidence I've heard suggests that it won't
be as bad as +12C. Also the Earth was at +14C with respect to today at it's
hottest point during the PETM, which was very bad for the earth, but life
survived.

The earth will one day reach a true runaway greenhouse when the sun brightens
by 10% in about 1.1 billion years. But according to J. Hansen in 2013 a
complete greenhouse runaway can't happen unless the high temperatures are
maintained for several million years, long enough for all the oceans to
evaporate, and our own forcing will only(!) last a few tens of thousands. So
my understanding is that we won't cause all life to go extinct, if that makes
you feel any better.

~~~
m_mueller
Didn’t Hansen state that burning all coal and oil sand would do it? I‘m always
wondering how much methane is assumed to be mixed in, as the amount of methane
to be released is poorly understood as pointed out above.

~~~
fallingfrog
Sorry, I should clarify: Hansen's paper indicated that burning all fossil
fuels would create a 16 degree C warming, which would definitely be the end of
the line for us, for reasons of heatstroke if nothing else, but in the same
paper he does say that the temperature can't go up to Venus levels. So nature
would eventually recover.

~~~
m_mueller
Yes Venus isn‘t possible afaik, but I think around 125C is an equilibrium.

------
thegrasshopper
[dupe]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17705018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17705018)

~~~
rement
Interesting how the more sensational title has garnered more attention

~~~
refurb
The media has known this for a long time.

------
patrickg_zill
I have been hearing this since the mid 1980s.

I wouldn't have heard of it before, because before then scientists were
telling us that the climate was going to get a lot cooler...

~~~
PaulAJ
Back in the 70s there was indeed a concern (no stronger than that) that we
_might_ have been heading for a new ice age over the next few centuries. That
concern was based on the fact that we are in an interglacial period and ought
to start thinking about how and when it might end, and what we might do about
it. Ice ages and interglacials are caused by variations in the Earth's orbit
and tilt, and calculations suggested that the current interglacial is coming
to an end.

However it then turned out that global warming due to CO2 was happing way
faster and way more than any potential cooling. The scientists weren't wrong:
the cooling effect is still there. Its just completely swamped by all the
things we are doing to the atmosphere.

~~~
patrickg_zill
Only a "concern"? This "concern" seems rather definitive and is on official
letterhead.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkAo-
sWUwAAmZa7.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkAo-sWUwAAmZa7.jpg)

------
i6mi6
I don't know, I've seen what temperatures have been in the past decade in
Europe and I can tell that it doesn't get any hotter, in fact, it could be
getting colder. Can anyone show some statistics supporting the global warming?

Edit: I know how to google myself but I am asking people to get a little more
involved and not lay out facts out of memory. I thought I could make a good
discussion on the topic but kept getting hostility for some reason.

~~~
mapleoin
[https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/global-
an...](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/global-and-european-
temperature-8/assessment)

> According to different observational records of global average annual near-
> surface (land and ocean) temperature, the last decade (2008–2017) was 0.89
> °C to 0.93 °C warmer than the pre-industrial average, which makes it the
> warmest decade on record. Of the 17 warmest years on record, 16 have
> occurred since 2000. The year 2017 was one of the world’s three warmest
> years on record together with the years 2016 and 2015.

> The average annual temperature for the European land area for the last
> decade (2008–2017) was between 1.6 °C and 1.7 °C above the pre-industrial
> level, which makes it the warmest decade on record. In Europe, 2017 was
> colder than the previous 3 years.

~~~
i6mi6
But 100-200 years is very little time for comparison isn't it? Is there any
presumed data on what it was before that?

~~~
AndrewDucker
Loads:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record)

Do bear in mind that most of the costs of global warming are based around:

1) It is happening much faster than we can cope with. If it was happening over
10,000 years then we'd slowly adapt. Or die out. One or the other.

2) Our cities are mostly built on coastlines, and will therefore be hit
dramatically by severe weather and by sea rises.

