suffice to say that none of the information he presents is little known among climate scientists
I was never under the impression that climate scientists didn’t know these things. However I’d been reading editorials and popular science articles about climate change for years before I read Tyler’s post and still didn’t know a lot of the really basic facts Tyler presented. For example, I did not understand the distinction between interglacials and ice ages, or the fact that Earth has usually had zero polar ice throughout its history.
From the pop science articles and editorials I’d been reading, I was really badly informed about the topic—and these are the ways almost everyone learns about climate change issues. Since then I’ve talked to a many people about this, and most people have known very few of these facts.
He’s operating under a largely naive “warmer is better” model which fails to account for the difficulty ecological systems have in adapting to rapid changes.
If you believe rapid changes are bad, that actually is evidence that warmer is better, because warm earth eras are dramatically more stable. Ice ages have dramatic positive feedback cycles, where cooling triggers further cooling and warming triggers further warming. Because of this, there have been repeated “snowball earth” events in which life was driven to near extinction. Regardless of what humans do, these cycles will continue until the ice age ends.
The “danger” of reglaciation is completely overblown (we’ve most likely already broken the ice age cycle, having boosted atmospheric CO2 back up to Pleistocene levels,) and even if we did enter a new glaciation period, it would be such a slow process as to pose relatively little danger to our society.
I agree with you here. Climate change takes centuries or millennia to produce dramatic changes. That just doesn’t seem terribly important in light of exponential economic and technological change that produces dramatic effects orders of magnitude faster.
f you believe rapid changes are bad, that actually is evidence that warmer is better, because warm earth eras are dramatically more stable. Ice ages have dramatic positive feedback cycles, where cooling triggers further cooling and warming triggers further warming.
The warming event we’re triggering is itself a much more rapid change than the warming and cooling events which occur during an ice age. Going back to Pleistocene level stability might have advantages in the long run, but a rapid shift to Pleistocene level climate is itself going to be harmful.
I agree with you here. Climate change takes centuries or millennia to produce dramatic changes. That just doesn’t seem terribly important in light of exponential economic and technological change that produces dramatic effects orders of magnitude faster.
The largest effects aren’t going to show up for centuries or more, but at the present rate, we’re looking at quite a large ecological impact within this century.
I certainly wouldn’t call climate change the top risk to humanity, or even close to it, but a mass extinction event is going to be a significant quality-of-life issue, even if we’re not one of the species lost.
I was never under the impression that climate scientists didn’t know these things. However I’d been reading editorials and popular science articles about climate change for years before I read Tyler’s post and still didn’t know a lot of the really basic facts Tyler presented. For example, I did not understand the distinction between interglacials and ice ages, or the fact that Earth has usually had zero polar ice throughout its history.
From the pop science articles and editorials I’d been reading, I was really badly informed about the topic—and these are the ways almost everyone learns about climate change issues. Since then I’ve talked to a many people about this, and most people have known very few of these facts.
If you believe rapid changes are bad, that actually is evidence that warmer is better, because warm earth eras are dramatically more stable. Ice ages have dramatic positive feedback cycles, where cooling triggers further cooling and warming triggers further warming. Because of this, there have been repeated “snowball earth” events in which life was driven to near extinction. Regardless of what humans do, these cycles will continue until the ice age ends.
I agree with you here. Climate change takes centuries or millennia to produce dramatic changes. That just doesn’t seem terribly important in light of exponential economic and technological change that produces dramatic effects orders of magnitude faster.
The warming event we’re triggering is itself a much more rapid change than the warming and cooling events which occur during an ice age. Going back to Pleistocene level stability might have advantages in the long run, but a rapid shift to Pleistocene level climate is itself going to be harmful.
The largest effects aren’t going to show up for centuries or more, but at the present rate, we’re looking at quite a large ecological impact within this century.
I certainly wouldn’t call climate change the top risk to humanity, or even close to it, but a mass extinction event is going to be a significant quality-of-life issue, even if we’re not one of the species lost.