
Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016 - jseliger
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/global-warming?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/globalwarmingthestateoftheclimatein2016
======
jamesblonde
The canary in the coalmine for global warming is Arctic sea ice. It is melting
at an alarming rate, and we can expect an ice-free (>1m sq km of sea ice)
Arctic in the summer within a decade or two (or 3-4 years if recent trends
continue!). There's a small active community who follow this. We tend to hang
out here - a HN level of polite discussion goes on:
[http://neven1.typepad.com/](http://neven1.typepad.com/)

~~~
Shivetya
well fortunately the Antarctic is gaining mass, so things happen. We are still
only 12k years out an ice age and learning as we go. Natural variability is
quite boring so it doesn't make headlines as much as it should.

the real reality is that the Paris agreement is a horrid piece of do nothing
legislation that lets the major developing powers do what they want all the
while getting the nod of acceptance from the UN because of the hundred billion
dollar payout. Basically we have what is a one time voluntary agreement to pay
out to certain groups so that developing countries can continue to pollute
provided they plan to eventually slow it

~~~
jackmott
No, there is an Antarctic ice sheet that is gaining mass. As a whole,
Antarctica is losing ice mass. As is the case for global ice mass balance.
Chart of satellite gravity measurements for Antarctica:
[http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.g...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.gif)

~~~
cool_look
so that chart is from 2003 - 2009 ... and that is evidence of what exactly?

6 samples of a multi century phenomenon and you are ringing an alarm bell !

the chart smacks more of searching around for a chart that shows a decline to
prop up the "ice is in trouble narrative".

ice extent ( recovered from 2008/12 ) , ice age ( recovered again from 2012 ),
ice thickness ( recovered ), ice refreeze date ( recovered ), polar bear
population ( highest its ever been )

now its ice mass that is the panic chart of the day. but 6 samples, its just
not enough

~~~
bottled_poe
[https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm](https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm)

What is it going to take to convince you?

Let's just wait a few more decades to be sure though. It would be a waste
spending resources trying to prevent the demise of life on Earth when we
didn't need to.

~~~
flukus
Is there a name for this sort of chart?:

[https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice-
vo...](https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice-
volume#asivds)

~~~
jauco
Spider chart or spiderweb chart

~~~
flukus
Thanks.

------
clumsysmurf
"Convincing Mr Trump of this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge."

By appointing Myron Ebell to lead the transition at the EPA, Mr Trump has made
it clear he's made up his mind.

Personnel is policy.

~~~
blondie9x
It's too bad Americans cannot vote for some of the most prominent cabinet
members the way they vote for President/Vice-President. Many of these
appointees will have a more direct impact on people's lives but yet they have
no say in who will represent them. Democracy?

~~~
mordocai
Representative Democracy yeah. The people voted in Trump who now gets to
appoint those positions.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>The people voted in Trump

Well no. The people voted in Clinton, and the Electoral College upweighted
some votes and downweighted others in a way that favors Trump. The EC once had
a distinct purpose, but right now just seems to give Republicans a structural
advantage, to the ultimate detriment of Democrats and Democrat-leaners in
small or rural states.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
That how our Representative Democracy works. Each system has its own way of
voting and counting; that's ours.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
And if it creates a _de facto_ one-party state?

~~~
mzw_mzw
I didn't hear a lot of Democrats complaining about a "de facto one-party
state" when they were chirping excitedly about gaining a permanent demographic
majority a few months back, so forgive me if this sudden concern over the
topic does not come off as entirely sincere.

------
dharma1
This graph of global sea ice area is kind of alarming:

[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JX41K2UK6Io/WCvyXQ6CFvI/AAAAAAAAW...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JX41K2UK6Io/WCvyXQ6CFvI/AAAAAAAAWBs/1KITPEgbPlgvKjGPLMoXfHfqnnQ84EZXACLcB/s1600/nsidc_global_area_byyear_b-
Nov-14-2016.png)

More info:

[http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/](http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/)

~~~
spacehacker
Fortunately, sea ice does not contribute much to the sea level because it
displaces about the same volume it will add when melted.

~~~
dharma1
Yep, but it does have other negative effects.
[https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of-
ar...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of-arctic-sea-
ice-loss-matters)

~~~
saosebastiao

        Albedo is a measure of how well the earth’s surface reflects sunlight. Snow-covered sea ice has a high albedo and reflects 85 per cent of sunlight. But the open water revealed as ice melts is darker and absorbs more – reflecting just seven per cent.
    

Yep, that's terrifying.

------
snowwrestler
I don't actually believe this, but it occurred to me the other day as a funny
way to look at a very sad situation:

What if Trump does believe global warming is real, but recognizes that we're
too late to stop its worst effects? What if he expects the world to go to hell
over the next 50 years and is focused on protecting the U.S. specifically?
What would he do?

He'd build a wall across the lower border of the U.S. to keep out southern
populations fleeing extreme heat. But he'd keep the border with Canada open,
so Americans can flee there if they need to. The oceans will protect us from
the rest of the world.

He'd disentangle us from overseas treaty obligations that might draw us into
wars we wouldn't otherwise want to fight. And he'd focus international
relations on the few biggest countries who are most likely to secure and
defend their own societies.

He'd incentivize U.S. companies to manufacture domestically: long supply
chains are a risk.

He'd ramp up infrastructure spending--particularly on the coasts--to be ready
to build sea walls and other mitigating structures.

He'd strengthen law enforcement to deal with internal unrest.

Like I said, I don't actually believe this...

EDIT: Another (and perhaps more likely) way to look at this is that Trump and
his posse are just paranoid nuts, but by ignoring global warming, they will
inadvertently bring about the global calamity that they fear.

~~~
ced
_recognizes that we 're too late to stop its worst effects_

I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it?
If the temperature in my room increases, I'll go from feeling uncomfortable,
to sweating profusely, to fainting, to death. Is there any scientific reason
to believe that, say, a 4C increase gives us horrible outcomes, but a 8C
increase will be "not much worse"?

~~~
burkaman
I think the warming itself is not really the biggest problem, it's the
secondary effects like rising sea levels, increased natural disasters, etc. So
for example if it's too late to stop coastal cities from being flooded, twice
that much sea level rise is not much worse, because all the important cities
and infrastructure are already gone.

~~~
yongjik
However, if it's-too-laters really hold that opinion, they will also oppose
(among other things) development of affected areas, because those areas are a
foregone conclusion. For example, they will oppose any new buildings (at least
major urban developments) in low coastal areas such as Manhattan, (part of)
San Francisco, or Miami. Such projects are a waste of resource in the same way
reducing CO2 emission is, and they will make relocation much more costly when
the inevitable happens.

Funnily enough, I don't hear _that_ opinion often, which makes me suspect that
most people just want an excuse to keep their lifestyle unchanged.

~~~
burkaman
I have actually heard that opinion, for example:
[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-
future...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future-
flooding-climate-change.html)

However, most people I've talked to who say "there's nothing we can do" are
really saying "I think I will be dead before this is a really big problem, so
fuck it".

------
anon1253
My worry is that Trump doesn't deny it (well he does publicly), but rather
privately realizes that it's already far too late. There's nothing we can do,
collapse of global civilization before mid-century is probably inevitable. So
what can you do, well ramp up every dirty trick you can think off … because it
doesn't really matter and it makes you look good with the public (sorry to
say, it does, climate change is still not popular in public discourse).

To stay within the 1.5 to 2ºC bounds, the IPCC already includes massive carbon
sequestering technologies in even its most simple recommendations. This is
technology that does not exist. We're betting life on Earth (and truly, it is
that dire) on tech that might be impossible to build and scale. Even if we
reduce our carbon emissions to 0 today the delayed effects and non-linear
dynamics are so poorly understood, that it could very well be that nothing
truly can be done to avoid our mass extinction. And, this too goes for carbon
sequestering; even if we magically suck the last 5 decades of carbon out of
the air, some stuff that is broken can't be fixed. Thresholds, catastrophes,
oscillations, bifurcations, etc are real. We really have to think in non-
linear systems when dealing with climate, and that is something we're very bad
at. Especially when it comes to the media-voter complex. But picture this, you
are driving your car down some road, and everything is fine. You're minding
your own business. There's nobody else there, so what the heck, let's ramp up
some of the speed. And you go faster and faster. Until bam, unexpected steep
corner, your car flies off the road and you die. At that point going back a
couple of miles is never going to fix you. It's too late.

~~~
sqeaky
Carbon sequestering is not as hard as it would seem. We have several
technologies, but we can also just plant trees.

~~~
DennisP
First we'd have to stop the massive deforestation that's happening right now.
A lot of that is for agriculture, so we'd have to find another way to feed
those people.

We might also want to stop clearcutting vast forests in the Southeastern U.S.
to ship wood pellets to Europe, which burns them.

Then we'd have to save the rest of our existing forests, many of which are
struggling due to various effects of climate change, including heat stress,
drought, topsoil loss, disease, and forest fires. Many large forests are net
carbon emitters now.

After we've done all that and finally stopped losing trees, we can think about
having more trees. We'll need space for them, so that means reducing
agricultural area even more. We've been emitting about ten _billion_ tons of
carbon every year for quite a while, so it's going to take a lot of land.

We're also running out of fish in the ocean, so with that food source going
away we're going to need more from agriculture than we get now.

"Just plant trees." Like many, perhaps even most purported climate change
solutions, it sounds great until you work out the scale.

~~~
hnsucks2
>First we'd have to stop the massive deforestation that's happening right now.
A lot of that is for agriculture, so we'd have to find another way to feed
those people.

You say that like we couldn't just let them starve. If their descendants are
going to be wiped out by global warming anyway what's the difference?

~~~
DennisP
There's that word "just" again. The countries where it's happening don't want
to let their people starve; you'd have to make them. You'd have to use
military force to guard vast forests all over the world from hundreds of
millions of desperate people. Good luck with that.

~~~
hnsucks2
Does nerve gas harm trees?

~~~
anon1253
Why not nuke metropolitan areas while you're at it? Most of the population is
in the coastal cities anyway, who cares about New York, Shanghai or Mumbai.
Quick fix. Or force serialization for > 60% of the world population. I mean
sure, there are "solutions" but there is ethics to consider too …

~~~
hnsucks2
For a start, the cities you list contain many valuable people. Places doing
lots of slash-and-burn farming, not so much. My original comment was a bit
facetious, but if it is a civilization-ending threat (and I'm not saying it
is), better to start the killing sooner when we can control who dies than
collapse the whole thing and lose thousands of years of scientific and
cultural progress.

~~~
hnsucks2
By the way, we already do this! We let millions starve to death in squalor
already. Why? For the sake of civilization. Or do you think it'd be smart to
ship them all over here? Amazing how timid we are about weighing life against
life in a controlled fashion when this is already happening every day. We
can't even have a little hypothetical chat on the Internet about it.

------
buckbova
> According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is
> currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes. Decoupling emissions from
> economic growth thus helps both people and planet. Convincing Mr Trump of
> this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge.

How is convincing Trump here the answer? Isn't convincing China more
important? How about convincing the American people? Do this and politicians
will follow.

Perhaps if Trump can bring back more industry to the US, he is on his way to
helping already.

~~~
papercrane
China is convinced.[1] The American public is convinced, although not as much
as they probably should be.[2][3][4]

The problem here is to convince world leaders to actually do something.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-16/china-
tell...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-16/china-tells-trump-
that-climate-change-is-no-hoax-it-invented)

[2] [http://climatepublicopinion.stanford.edu/sample-
page/opinion...](http://climatepublicopinion.stanford.edu/sample-
page/opinions-in-the-states/)

[3]
[https://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/](https://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/)

[4] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/190010/concern-global-warming-
eig...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/190010/concern-global-warming-eight-year-
high.aspx)

~~~
strictnein
China is convinced? Then China should tell China to stop building coal power
plants.

They burn slightly more coal than the rest of the world combined.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-
environmen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-
environment/china-coal.html)

~~~
papercrane
> China is convinced? Then China should tell China to stop building coal power
> plants.

You realise you're source says they're doing exactly that?

"In guidelines released on Monday, China halted plans for new coal-fired power
stations in many parts of the country, and construction of some approved
plants will be postponed until at least 2018."

They've also gone all in on solar, having more installed capacity than any
other nation. They're far from perfect, but they've started to acknowledge the
problem at least.

~~~
problems
Not only that, but they've taken all these steps while they're bringing
hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty doing sustenance farming
and into cities. Cities where they want things like electricity and cars. Look
at the history of the world, development like that is usually fueled by
burning as many hydrocarbons as possible. It's very good to see a country able
now to at least start to break away from that. The rapidly dropping price of
solar, thanks in large part to China plays a big role in that.

------
CptJamesCook
The conclusion of this article is not that global warming is dangerous but
that local air pollution is bad for public health: "According to research
published last year, spending a day in Beijing is currently akin to smoking
almost 40 cigarettes. Decoupling emissions from economic growth thus helps
both people and planet. Convincing Mr. Trump of this fact is now an urgent and
daunting challenge."

Why should Donald Trump worry about local air pollution in Beijing? This has
nothing to do with climate change. I highly doubt Donald Trump thinks thick
smog is a good thing.

~~~
acqq
It's mentioned at the end of the article but it's not the main message. The
reason it's mentioned is to give the argument why China will have to reduce
their own emissions, no matter what other countries do. Then it concludes that
Trump should understand the same that China has to understand: "Decoupling
emissions from economic growth thus helps both people and planet."

------
lossolo
I've read interesting post couple of days ago about Global Warming on reddit:

"Hey guys this research isn't really finding out anything that wasn't already
known. RCP 8.5 scenario, which they assumed in their modelling, has long been
known to be effectively Armageddon. Any temperature rise past 5.5 degrees is
probably irrelevant because there wont be any humans left to deal with that
outcome.

However it's looking increasingly likely that we aren't on the RCP 8.5
pathway. RCP 8.5 calls for steady continued growth in emissions of around 3%+
per year, which is what we were on in the early part of this decade. The last
three years emissions have been effectively flat in spite of ongoing economic
growth, and the Paris pledges that will keep warming to about 2.8 degrees call
for the emissions peak to be in 2040~ (RCP 4.5). Based on trends in
renewables, the downturn in the coal industry, and emissions growth halting,
it's increasingly hard to see how we could possibly get back on track to an
RCP 8.5 scenario.

2.8 degrees will still be terrible for environment, the economy, and poorer
nations of course, and we should really be aiming for the RCP 2.6 scenario,
where emissions peak no later than 2020. It's possible emissions have peaked
already, but we will need more than three years of data to determine that. Of
course, than comes the hard part of taking offline the carbon intensive
elements of the world economy (i.e Coal)"

source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5cz4a7/new_climate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5cz4a7/new_climate_change_estimate_predicts_global/da0sfad/)

------
codecamper
What about the Elon Musk <-> Peter Thiel <-> Trump connection?

Trump respects Peter. He's young & rich.

Peter is an engineer. He must believe in global warming. He wants to live
forever, so he'll need a good planet for that.

Musk is a firm believer in green tech.

Peter respects Musk?

The future of the planet depends on how Peter Thiel explains the role of clean
tech to Trump! (I'm starting to be very happy about that $1 million Peter
handed over to Trump)

~~~
grzm
_" He must believe in global warming."_

While I understand what motivates your thinking so, I don't think you can
assume this. I haven't looked for anything that addresses Thiel's opinion on
this btw, so I'm agnostic on the issue.

~~~
codecamper
Peter has invested in clean tech before. He's a technologist. He wants to live
forever (on a stable climate planet). We can assume he believes in global
warming.

~~~
grzm
I could be cynical and view his clean tech investments as a capitalist
assessing the market, independent of his beliefs in global warming. If enough
people want clean tech for whatever reason (including false beliefs in climate
change), investing in clean tech can be a smart move. That said, I did find a
quote that indicates he cares about the environment.

 _Thiel told the TechCrunch Disrupt crowd that "one potential route for
cleantech energies is to work with something that’s slightly more
environmentally friendly than current sources — natural gas. It's a cheaper
form of energy that's much more ubiquitous, and has less of an environmental
impact than most energy sources today, but has not been harnessed."_

[http://www.thegreenskeptic.com/2011/09/peter-thiel-
cleantech...](http://www.thegreenskeptic.com/2011/09/peter-thiel-cleantech-
disaster-well-not.html)

Concerns about the environment don't necessarily mean belief in global
warming.

His NYT editorial "The New Atomic Age We Need" talks about other's concerns
about climate change, but never his own position on climate change, just on
nuclear energy.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/opinion/the-new-atomic-
age...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/opinion/the-new-atomic-age-we-
need.html)

An interview he did with Glenn Beck for the Blaze quotes him as calling
climate science pseudoscience.

 _Thiel: I do think that having a space where you can think for yourself and
where it doesn 't always get second-guessed is very important. We have a we
have all these monolithic debates about science or pseudoscience. Like there's
the climate change debate.

Beck: Is that science or pseudoscience?

Thiel: I think it's more pseudoscience. Whenever you can't have a debate I
often think that's evidence that there's a problem. When people use the word
science, it's often a tell like in poker that you're bluffing. We have social
science, we have political science. We don't call it physical science or
chemical science, we just call them physics and chemistry because we just know
they're right and you can debate the periodic table of elements. No one will
be upset if you ask questions about that. We call it climate scicence. It's a
tell like in poker. It's telling you that people are exaggerating, and that
they're bluffing a little bit.

But I think this monolithic culture is breaking down. People are asking
questions. You know the weather has not been getting warmer for the past 15
years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted in the early 2000s on the
climate has not happened for the last decade. I think as this monolithic
culture breaks down you can have more real debates and I think that would be a
good thing on net._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxxGhLFbw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxxGhLFbw4)

I just did the transcript myself, so there are very likely mistakes. I also
tried to clean up the language a bit. I won't quibble if people point them
out. If someone feels I've misrepresented what he said, please do correct me.

There's a lot of language there that sounds like that of climate change
skeptics.

I'm not trying to be obstinate here. I've been surprised by many of the
opinions shared by HN commenters that I would think are incongruent (and I'm
sure some think the same of mine).

I guess I'm a "Peter Thiel Believes in Climate Change" skeptic. Happy to be
shown I'm wrong.

Edit: I realize I'm equating "global warming" and "climate change". I don't
think that changes what I've written, but if it does, please let me know.

~~~
codecamper
Thanks for posting this. I guess I was wrong to think he believes in global
warming. He has made investments into clean tech along with Vinod Khosla
however & did found that personal payments thing along with Elon. So. Maybe
there is a chance for discussion?

I'm hoping.

~~~
grzm
Me, too.

------
intrasight
I believe that it is already too late. Here's my proposed solution. Send a
robot into space. Pickup an asteroid and bring it to Lagrangian L1. Have it
begin weaving a solar curtain.

~~~
anon1253
doesn't fix the ocean acidification

~~~
intrasight
you got me there

------
pmarreck
Can someone point me to a URL with an arguably good prediction of how these
increasing temperatures would negatively effect the ecosystem specifically?
Are we talking mass extinctions? More powerful storms/more extreme weather
events? And/or something else?

~~~
cbennett
[http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/](http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/)

------
dcgudeman
_" According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is
currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes."_

Wow

~~~
greeneggs
There have been a number of studies on how many deaths can be attributed to
air pollution. It seems to be ~1 million deaths a year in China. Here's a
typical source (a press release with good graphs, the original paper is linked
in it):

[https://www.healtheffects.org/system/files/HEI-GBD-MAPS-
Chin...](https://www.healtheffects.org/system/files/HEI-GBD-MAPS-China-Press-
Release.pdf)

------
meganvito
If it is truely a big problem, it will be more strengthful to let the denying
end to fully deploy their defense. The hope may the system resilient enough
not on an irreversable track which has a penalty not bailable.

