9 ms·

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature a

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

monero-xmr 3y ago
[flagged]
- petemir 3y ago
  Part of the problem, which you fail to address, is the time frame when these changes take place and the possibility of the ecosystem to adapt. Yes, we've been much cooler and much warmer, with these changes taking place over thousand of years: not a couple of centuries.
- spockz 3y ago
  Although indeed the temperatures and GHG have been lower and higher on Earth before, that was never with the amount of humans we have now. Our economy and society is quite optimised and our infrastructure hubs are largely located on coasts. Our prosperity also relies on a large amount of sophisticated technology that is hard to replace and to bootstrap. So although the human species will probably survive a drastic climate change, many individuals will not due to famine, lack of medical supplies and care, and war over the remaining resources.
- hnhg 3y ago
  It is also because it will result in incredible levels of migration and competition for resources in the short term (ie wars). Yes, humanity will survive but it might make global shocks like the pandemic seem very tepid by comparison.
- shostack 3y ago
  The earth may have survived those changes, but not all its inhabitants may have. So there definitely is still reason to worry as far as humanity is concerned. The major ecological shifts may bring change humanity does not bounce back from.
  - notfish 3y ago
    When the cause for optimism is “some humans will probably survive”, I don’t feel very optimistic
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  >>"The doomsday cult saying we are all going to die, or that every single heat wave and natural disaster can be pinned on extra carbon, are just yet another in a long line of apocalyptic predictors" The problem with this argument is that 'humans' surviving, is different than 'our nice comfortable human society' surviving. Yes, the human species as an animal that can survive by foraging, probably will survive. That isn't a great argument.
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  People worry about accelerating climate change now because we live here now. It’s not a theoretical science thing. We have farms and cities and towns and bridges and dams and reservoirs in particular places, and we are accelerating the depreciation of many of them. The result will be tremendous loss of wealth, movement of populations, and the associated social consequences of those. Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we like ourselves, which is why we are so concerned about what we are doing to ourselves.
  - viscanti 3y ago
    > Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we like ourselves, which is why we are so concerned about what we are doing to ourselves. Yeah. The argument that single cellular life or some small animals might survive and eventually evolve into something else is a bit weird for people who are hoping they don't die out like many species have in the past when there have been major changes to climate and carbon levels.
    - warning26 3y ago
      Exactly. People often get lost in this "we must save the planet" argument, but realistically, the planet is gonna be fine. Preventing climate change is about saving humanity, not the planet.
      - etrautmann 3y ago
        How is this pedantic point useful in any way?
        mikestew 3y ago
        I swear, if one more person quotes an old George Carlin bit, as if it were still clever or useful...or as if said person didn't know what was meant by the statement.
        xp84 3y ago
        > How is this pedantic point useful in any way? Because it forces us to recognize that the risk isn't to "the Earth" as a separate entity, but to ourselves specifically (well, our future descendants). We've already confirmed through our behavior that humans largely don't care about any other part of the Earth ecosystem, so asking people to basically do the right thing as a favor to the Earth are probably wasting their time.
- downWidOutaFite 3y ago
  If you're in the "head in the sand cult" you might be obliviously happier than the the "doomsday cult", but our ancestors will hate you much more.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Please correct me if I'm wrong. The amplitudes of co2 ppm seem to always have been within a certain band though, topping out at 300ppm. Right now, we're at 420ppm and increasing what looks like exponentially. [0] I'm not saying humans won't be fine but we've never been so dependent on the stability of the climate before. People will die, get displaced, suffer economically, etc as far as I understand. [0] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
  - foota 3y ago
    I don't think 800,000 years is that long on the geological time scale. (Not that I don't think global warming is a big deal etc etc)
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      It's not but it's also not much less time than what we consider "humans" to have been around and we're talking about co2 in the atmosphere in the context of whether humans will be fine or not. Of course, for earth it doesn't matter at all.
  - px43 3y ago
    It was over 4000ppm during the Cambrian period 500m years ago, then down to about where it is today in the Carboniferious period, during the 60 million year period where trees evolved to make wood, but nothing had evolved to eat it yet, so dead trees literally just piled up for 60 million years. Then during the Mezozoic it went up into the 2000s again, lots of dino farts or something? Then back under 1000 again and dropping until the last 100 years or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#Concentrations_in_the_geologic_past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at... Of course, there were also mass migrations and extinctions as the environment changed so radically, which seems like something that would be nice to avoid.
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      I was just responding to parent who said > On the positive, the earth has been much warmer and much colder, and has had more carbon and less carbon in the atmosphere. the way I read it suggesting that it'll be fine. But it won't be, if co2 increased to 4000 ppm quickly enough, humans would not be fine. There were no humans during the time you were describing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  Quick changes in climate generally lead to extinction events. And indeed we are in the middle of one. And it's caused by us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction Life will go on. Humans? Maybe. Human civilization will be disrupted for sure Also: here's a visualization of how fast the climate changed in the last 20000 years vs today https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ The short term effects are all about the slope. And the short term is all that matter to us, because if we don't pass through this bottleneck we won't have a long term (it may well be our "great filter" preventing us from spreading through the stars)
- btilly 3y ago
  More at issue is that rates of change matter. When temperature rises slowly, ecosystems adapt in parallel to the change. When temperature rises fast, ecosystems don't. And so we have major die-offs of coral and trees, without corresponding colonization in places where they could now live. When CO2 rises slowly, the ocean's pH is buffered by large deposits of calcium carbonate on the bottom. When CO2 rises fast, we get ocean acidification, which is on track to be the most extreme shellfish extinction event in the last 50 million years. Therefore larger absolute past climate changes were less likely to have extreme impacts than faster present climate changes.
- dakial1 3y ago
  Not all natural disasters can be pinned into global warming (earthquakes for example), also some weather related disasters are caused by cyclical patterns (e.g. El Niño), but certainly the higher frequency (and potency) of some weather related disasters are already linked to human influence: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1098662 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1098662 Is not doomsday as the world won't change overnight, but some areas of the globe will suffer a lot from the higher intensity of the weather and this will probably create a lot of global challenges and might bring (mostly) overcome tragedies, like widespread famine, back to the news
- mariuolo 3y ago
  It's true the Earth has been much warmer and much colder, but it's also true we haven't always been there.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  The doomsday cult Oh shut it. You can't have any knowledge at all about this issue and not appreciate that the problem is not temperature as such but the rapidity of the change - over 150 years rather than 15000. Your troll post is an insult to intelligence. Folks, don't waste your time trying to reason with such bad-faith arguments. It's a form of theft, because the time cost to refute bullshit is about 10x that to spew bullshit. And the above post is just that - bullshit. Before someone invokes the HN guidelines and talks about curious conversation, recognize that throwing phrases like 'doomsday cult' into a discussion of a serious scientific project that has hit a milestone after many years of effort has only one purpose, and that is to derail. Flagging and downvoting are all very well, but there are also times when it's necessary to call bullshit.
  - briantakita 3y ago
    You seem angry, so I'm going to try to explain (from my perspective) why someone may have the perception that you reacted to. There is plenty of criticism over relying on mathematical models that fail to accurately predict the future (all of the glaciers were predicted to have melted 3 years ago, snow was supposed to have been a thing of the past, etc.), cherry picking data, questionable measurement & sampling, not considering other forcing inputs, etc. It's a complicated claim that has valid criticism on it's foundational pieces If any foundational premise of the claim is invalidated, the entire model is invalidated. The consensus models are complicated so I'm not surprised that it has a difficult time standing up against scrutiny & needs to be adjusted frequently. There is also dissent among scientists, including from Nobel Laureates (who had opportunities cancelled after dissenting). "The doomsday cult" reference comes from the doom & gloom sensationalism. For example, I a heard chorus of "we are fucked" from coworkers in the office about 15 years ago in response to some news back then. I don't agree that "we are fucked". Humans have been through more environmentally challenging times with less technology & global knowledge. The climate is changing...always has changed & always will change. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to pretend that we can stave off the inevitable, taxing/restricting the population which weakens their ability to adjust to these inevitable changes...while wealth is concentrated to the elites? There is a widespread perception that is happening. When the issues reach it's crescendo later in this decade & the fallout in the 2030s (winter occurs after the Solar Solstice, solar exposure increases during winter), there will be many who will not buy the APGW narrative as the reason for their problems. The peaceful solution is a decoupling from systems that don't benefit the person/group, which I expect to happen. Others, such as Peter Turchin think there is a high probability of violent uprising & he seems to think addressing APGW is a unifying force...I disagree on both premises but I think his analysis is valid & worth getting into. I think the animus generated by climate alarmism putting the blame on the population reduces effective cooperation among people & will be exasperated as the climate does change, as the Geomagnetic wander deepens in it's cycle, as magnetic fields fluctuate in our solar system, etc. A spirit of cooperation will unify humanity while the blame game will cause conflict. Doom & gloom is unhelpful. The "doomsday cult" will increase in their doom & gloom as people walk away from their petulance & their social leverage wanes.
- toss1 3y ago
  Yes, there have been warm and cold intervals in the past. NONE of them happened at anything approaching the RATE of today's anthropogenic warming. Our climate is warming literally orders of magnitude faster than any previous change. This is overwhelming the ability of ecosystems to adapt. Moreover, this is entirely preventable — we're doing it, we can stop it.
- sleet_spotter 3y ago
  A critical piece is the speed at which the climate is warming. The Earth has had much warmer and colder periods in its history that (most) life adapted to. However, life was only able to adapt happened because those changes happened at a sufficiently slow pace. To perhaps put the current trend in the context of geologic time, there have been 5 mass extinctions in the fossil record of life on Earth. These are associated with rapid changes in climate (e.g. asteroid impacts, large volcanic eruptions). Anthropogenic climate change is driving Earth's 6th mass extinction event. To be clear: what is happening now has not happened often in Earth's history. Life has survived, but it has not been pretty. Some alarmism is warranted from the ecosystem collapse alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
- alberth 3y ago
  > "On the positive, the earth has been much warmer and much colder" The concern is, during these hotter/colder periods of earth's existence - what happened to life on earth during that time? Did populations decline? Was life nearly run into extinction (dinosaurs, etc)?
- bparsons 3y ago
  My whole country being on fire since May has been pretty apocalyptic.
newfonewhodis 3y ago
I'm not a scientist so I'm curious why this is interesting.
- downWidOutaFite 3y ago
  It's not scientifically interesting, the glacial-interglacial cycles are pretty well established. I'm guessing they're trying to insinuate some climate change minimalism argument.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    It’s interesting to know how far back in time the ice will allow them to analyze once they get to the base.
- p1esk 3y ago
  Presumably because we can find well preserved organisms from that time.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  I think people who are not already familiar with the known history of the Earth find it interesting that there have been higher CO2 levels and temps than there are now. And I agree: the history of the Earth is interesting. Which is why so many people study and work in the field of geology.
- rolph 3y ago
  the drilling allows sampling of environmental components over extended period of time. this meas a historic record of, gases, ash, soot, pollen, spores, silt, insects, plant animals, metals, salts.....
- detourdog 3y ago
  It's interesting because the whole ice cap as we know it is around 120k years ago which I don't consider the long ago on human development scale. This also appears to mean that in the past 120K there wasn't a polar ice cap. I read that as the worst case scenario we should be using for long term planning. This also may help determine how fast the ice was built and how fast it will melt. I'm completely an armchair ponderer.
robertlagrant 3y ago
[flagged]
- WhitneyLand 3y ago
  I’m not aware of any data that supports humans 120k years ago having a significant impact on the earths climate. I think even our ability to start fire at will is conclusively known to be only ~50,000 years ago.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_hum... You don't need to be able to start a fire, when you keep the fire burning all the time. And you can do that, once you control the fire and figure out the difference between dry and wet wood. Also humans are the dominating species on land since quite a while. Hunting certain species to extinctiom has certain effects on the local ecosystem and globally on the global climate. It all adds up. But things surely changed in dimension since industrialisation.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      People had fire in those times but it's extremely unlikely they produced enough CO2 to have an anthropogenic impact on the climate leading to large-scale temperature changes. I'm not sure what your perspective on this situation is but I think the case for modern anthropogenic climate change with deleterious effects is based on a wide range of different evidence, and a careful accumulation of facts and analysis. Simply pointing out that humans had fire 2Mya doesn't change the general conclusion about today.
      - londons_explore 3y ago
        I suspect gr main change caused by humans >100 k years ago will be wiping out various species and starting fires in seasons and places where fires wouldn't normally start (eg. In places without dry lightning or volcanoes - the only two other ways fires naturally start)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
adolph 3y ago
120k years ago in context: * 170,000 years ago: humans are wearing clothing by this date. * 125,000 years ago: the peak of the Eemian interglacial period. * ~120,000 years ago: possibly the earliest evidence of use of symbols etched onto bone * 75,000 years ago: Toba Volcano supereruption that may have contributed to human populations being lowered to about 15,000 people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory The Eemian climate is believed to have been warmer than the current Holocene. Changes in the Earth's orbital parameters from today (greater obliquity and eccentricity, and perihelion), known as Milankovitch cycles, probably led to greater seasonal temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere. During the northern summer, temperatures in the Arctic region were about 2-4 °C higher than in 2011. The hippopotamus was distributed as far north as the rivers Rhine and Thames. . . . The prairie-forest boundary in the Great Plains of the United States lay further west near Lubbock, Texas, whereas the current boundary is near Dallas. . . . Sea level at peak was probably 6 to 9 metres (20 to 30 feet) higher than today . . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
- orangepurple 3y ago
  This raises a very critical point. Nuclear is the only dependable energy source. Fossil fuels will run out or go out of favor. Solar and wind on the other hand will become victims of the next major volcanic eruption as ash destroys them or renders them ineffective.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Deep drilling based geothermal can fill this role too though - and does have the substantial benefit over nuclear that it leaves no surface-supply chains for resources (uranium). Given that we're so close to being able to do it, we honestly need a Manhattan project initiative to push it through to reality (with the outcome being the machine and process to do the drilling).
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
    Nuclear facilities seem pretty fragile / demanding, I doubt one would survive any kind of apocalyptic event. The infrastructure supporting it will be gone.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
Iirc, the CO2 concentration now as been pumped up higher than it was then, which is in part what is worrying because temps might then potentially shoot even higher. Bottom line: we need large scale carbon capture quickly because even if we reach net zero CO2 will take millenia to drop back to the level it was pre-industrial revolution. Edit: I wouldn't focus on "pre-industrial levels" specifically, the point is that there is too much now so we most likely want concentration to drop as soon as possible.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Why do we need to get back to the levels pre-industrial revolution?
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    The point is that net zero is most likely not going to stop warming with 400+ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 concentration most likely has to drop but naturally it does so very slowly. Arguably at this point we already need cooling because 40+C every summer in half of Europe (for instance) is getting annoying...
    - gottorf 3y ago
      > at this point we already need cooling A colossal volcanic eruption could do the trick, and those seem to happen rather unnervingly frequently.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Yeah it would be pretty silly for humanity to invest so much time and effort into lowering CO2 levels only for a Yellowstone or equivalent to erupt and send temperatures plummeting into a new ice age levels. When if humanity did nothing the eruption would only have taken us back to pre-industrial age temperatures.
  - sleet_spotter 3y ago
thomasahle 3y ago
See also this timeline of the last four inter-glacial periods: https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/104-400000-years-of-temp.jpg https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/104-4000... It also shows how crazy it would be if we get the projected 2-3 degrees average temperature increase. Even in a period where we'd expect to be going into a new ice age; instead shooting to a previously unseen high temperature.
- slashdev 3y ago
  On the other hand if we only have 2-3 degrees of warming, if that’s enough to prevent the next ice age, didn’t we just dodge a massive icy bullet? Might we not one day thank ourselves for doing something reckless and stupid that actually worked out? Yeah a warmer climate brings all kinds of horrible changes. But food still grows in the northern hemisphere. A colder climate is arguably even worse for us. By the way, that’s no excuse to keep doing what we’re doing. Limiting warning at 2-3 degrees will be nice. Things get really horrific above 4. At some unknown point feedback cycles really kick in and we go to 5-10 degrees and get completely fucked. We really have to not find out where that threshold is.
  - kuprel 3y ago
    I didn't realize that the vast majority of the time Earth is in an ice age. What causes it periodically like this?
    - slashdev 3y ago
      It’s mostly caused by Milankovitch cycles. Which are cyclic variations in our orbit around the sun. The earth varies in distance to the sun and axial tilt and precession. Like waves, there factors can either overlap and somewhat cancel or they can stack for a larger effect.
    - autokad 3y ago
      ice ages didn't happen until after the asteroid strike. Antarctica moving into the south pole is likely a large part of it, but they don't really understand ice ages that well TBO. Anyhoo, the Earth was a lot warmer prior to the strike and we have been going through extinction events every 100k years.

monero-xmr 3y ago

[flagged]

petemir 3y ago
Part of the problem, which you fail to address, is the time frame when these changes take place and the possibility of the ecosystem to adapt. Yes, we've been much cooler and much warmer, with these changes taking place over thousand of years: not a couple of centuries.
spockz 3y ago
Although indeed the temperatures and GHG have been lower and higher on Earth before, that was never with the amount of humans we have now. Our economy and society is quite optimised and our infrastructure hubs are largely located on coasts. Our prosperity also relies on a large amount of sophisticated technology that is hard to replace and to bootstrap. So although the human species will probably survive a drastic climate change, many individuals will not due to famine, lack of medical supplies and care, and war over the remaining resources.
hnhg 3y ago
It is also because it will result in incredible levels of migration and competition for resources in the short term (ie wars). Yes, humanity will survive but it might make global shocks like the pandemic seem very tepid by comparison.
shostack 3y ago
The earth may have survived those changes, but not all its inhabitants may have. So there definitely is still reason to worry as far as humanity is concerned. The major ecological shifts may bring change humanity does not bounce back from.
- notfish 3y ago
  When the cause for optimism is “some humans will probably survive”, I don’t feel very optimistic
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
>>"The doomsday cult saying we are all going to die, or that every single heat wave and natural disaster can be pinned on extra carbon, are just yet another in a long line of apocalyptic predictors" The problem with this argument is that 'humans' surviving, is different than 'our nice comfortable human society' surviving. Yes, the human species as an animal that can survive by foraging, probably will survive. That isn't a great argument.
snowwrestler 3y ago
People worry about accelerating climate change now because we live here now. It’s not a theoretical science thing. We have farms and cities and towns and bridges and dams and reservoirs in particular places, and we are accelerating the depreciation of many of them. The result will be tremendous loss of wealth, movement of populations, and the associated social consequences of those. Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we like ourselves, which is why we are so concerned about what we are doing to ourselves.
- viscanti 3y ago
  > Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we like ourselves, which is why we are so concerned about what we are doing to ourselves. Yeah. The argument that single cellular life or some small animals might survive and eventually evolve into something else is a bit weird for people who are hoping they don't die out like many species have in the past when there have been major changes to climate and carbon levels.
  - warning26 3y ago
    Exactly. People often get lost in this "we must save the planet" argument, but realistically, the planet is gonna be fine. Preventing climate change is about saving humanity, not the planet.
    - etrautmann 3y ago
      How is this pedantic point useful in any way?
      - mikestew 3y ago
        I swear, if one more person quotes an old George Carlin bit, as if it were still clever or useful...or as if said person didn't know what was meant by the statement.
      - xp84 3y ago
        > How is this pedantic point useful in any way? Because it forces us to recognize that the risk isn't to "the Earth" as a separate entity, but to ourselves specifically (well, our future descendants). We've already confirmed through our behavior that humans largely don't care about any other part of the Earth ecosystem, so asking people to basically do the right thing as a favor to the Earth are probably wasting their time.
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
If you're in the "head in the sand cult" you might be obliviously happier than the the "doomsday cult", but our ancestors will hate you much more.
barbazoo 3y ago
Please correct me if I'm wrong. The amplitudes of co2 ppm seem to always have been within a certain band though, topping out at 300ppm. Right now, we're at 420ppm and increasing what looks like exponentially. [0] I'm not saying humans won't be fine but we've never been so dependent on the stability of the climate before. People will die, get displaced, suffer economically, etc as far as I understand. [0] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
- foota 3y ago
  I don't think 800,000 years is that long on the geological time scale. (Not that I don't think global warming is a big deal etc etc)
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    It's not but it's also not much less time than what we consider "humans" to have been around and we're talking about co2 in the atmosphere in the context of whether humans will be fine or not. Of course, for earth it doesn't matter at all.
- px43 3y ago
  It was over 4000ppm during the Cambrian period 500m years ago, then down to about where it is today in the Carboniferious period, during the 60 million year period where trees evolved to make wood, but nothing had evolved to eat it yet, so dead trees literally just piled up for 60 million years. Then during the Mezozoic it went up into the 2000s again, lots of dino farts or something? Then back under 1000 again and dropping until the last 100 years or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#Concentrations_in_the_geologic_past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at... Of course, there were also mass migrations and extinctions as the environment changed so radically, which seems like something that would be nice to avoid.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    I was just responding to parent who said > On the positive, the earth has been much warmer and much colder, and has had more carbon and less carbon in the atmosphere. the way I read it suggesting that it'll be fine. But it won't be, if co2 increased to 4000 ppm quickly enough, humans would not be fine. There were no humans during the time you were describing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nextaccountic 3y ago
Quick changes in climate generally lead to extinction events. And indeed we are in the middle of one. And it's caused by us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction Life will go on. Humans? Maybe. Human civilization will be disrupted for sure Also: here's a visualization of how fast the climate changed in the last 20000 years vs today https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ The short term effects are all about the slope. And the short term is all that matter to us, because if we don't pass through this bottleneck we won't have a long term (it may well be our "great filter" preventing us from spreading through the stars)
btilly 3y ago
More at issue is that rates of change matter. When temperature rises slowly, ecosystems adapt in parallel to the change. When temperature rises fast, ecosystems don't. And so we have major die-offs of coral and trees, without corresponding colonization in places where they could now live. When CO2 rises slowly, the ocean's pH is buffered by large deposits of calcium carbonate on the bottom. When CO2 rises fast, we get ocean acidification, which is on track to be the most extreme shellfish extinction event in the last 50 million years. Therefore larger absolute past climate changes were less likely to have extreme impacts than faster present climate changes.
dakial1 3y ago
Not all natural disasters can be pinned into global warming (earthquakes for example), also some weather related disasters are caused by cyclical patterns (e.g. El Niño), but certainly the higher frequency (and potency) of some weather related disasters are already linked to human influence: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1098662 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1098662 Is not doomsday as the world won't change overnight, but some areas of the globe will suffer a lot from the higher intensity of the weather and this will probably create a lot of global challenges and might bring (mostly) overcome tragedies, like widespread famine, back to the news
mariuolo 3y ago
It's true the Earth has been much warmer and much colder, but it's also true we haven't always been there.
anigbrowl 3y ago
The doomsday cult Oh shut it. You can't have any knowledge at all about this issue and not appreciate that the problem is not temperature as such but the rapidity of the change - over 150 years rather than 15000. Your troll post is an insult to intelligence. Folks, don't waste your time trying to reason with such bad-faith arguments. It's a form of theft, because the time cost to refute bullshit is about 10x that to spew bullshit. And the above post is just that - bullshit. Before someone invokes the HN guidelines and talks about curious conversation, recognize that throwing phrases like 'doomsday cult' into a discussion of a serious scientific project that has hit a milestone after many years of effort has only one purpose, and that is to derail. Flagging and downvoting are all very well, but there are also times when it's necessary to call bullshit.
- briantakita 3y ago
  You seem angry, so I'm going to try to explain (from my perspective) why someone may have the perception that you reacted to. There is plenty of criticism over relying on mathematical models that fail to accurately predict the future (all of the glaciers were predicted to have melted 3 years ago, snow was supposed to have been a thing of the past, etc.), cherry picking data, questionable measurement & sampling, not considering other forcing inputs, etc. It's a complicated claim that has valid criticism on it's foundational pieces If any foundational premise of the claim is invalidated, the entire model is invalidated. The consensus models are complicated so I'm not surprised that it has a difficult time standing up against scrutiny & needs to be adjusted frequently. There is also dissent among scientists, including from Nobel Laureates (who had opportunities cancelled after dissenting). "The doomsday cult" reference comes from the doom & gloom sensationalism. For example, I a heard chorus of "we are fucked" from coworkers in the office about 15 years ago in response to some news back then. I don't agree that "we are fucked". Humans have been through more environmentally challenging times with less technology & global knowledge. The climate is changing...always has changed & always will change. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to pretend that we can stave off the inevitable, taxing/restricting the population which weakens their ability to adjust to these inevitable changes...while wealth is concentrated to the elites? There is a widespread perception that is happening. When the issues reach it's crescendo later in this decade & the fallout in the 2030s (winter occurs after the Solar Solstice, solar exposure increases during winter), there will be many who will not buy the APGW narrative as the reason for their problems. The peaceful solution is a decoupling from systems that don't benefit the person/group, which I expect to happen. Others, such as Peter Turchin think there is a high probability of violent uprising & he seems to think addressing APGW is a unifying force...I disagree on both premises but I think his analysis is valid & worth getting into. I think the animus generated by climate alarmism putting the blame on the population reduces effective cooperation among people & will be exasperated as the climate does change, as the Geomagnetic wander deepens in it's cycle, as magnetic fields fluctuate in our solar system, etc. A spirit of cooperation will unify humanity while the blame game will cause conflict. Doom & gloom is unhelpful. The "doomsday cult" will increase in their doom & gloom as people walk away from their petulance & their social leverage wanes.
toss1 3y ago
Yes, there have been warm and cold intervals in the past. NONE of them happened at anything approaching the RATE of today's anthropogenic warming. Our climate is warming literally orders of magnitude faster than any previous change. This is overwhelming the ability of ecosystems to adapt. Moreover, this is entirely preventable — we're doing it, we can stop it.
sleet_spotter 3y ago
A critical piece is the speed at which the climate is warming. The Earth has had much warmer and colder periods in its history that (most) life adapted to. However, life was only able to adapt happened because those changes happened at a sufficiently slow pace. To perhaps put the current trend in the context of geologic time, there have been 5 mass extinctions in the fossil record of life on Earth. These are associated with rapid changes in climate (e.g. asteroid impacts, large volcanic eruptions). Anthropogenic climate change is driving Earth's 6th mass extinction event. To be clear: what is happening now has not happened often in Earth's history. Life has survived, but it has not been pretty. Some alarmism is warranted from the ecosystem collapse alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
alberth 3y ago
> "On the positive, the earth has been much warmer and much colder" The concern is, during these hotter/colder periods of earth's existence - what happened to life on earth during that time? Did populations decline? Was life nearly run into extinction (dinosaurs, etc)?
bparsons 3y ago
My whole country being on fire since May has been pretty apocalyptic.

newfonewhodis 3y ago

I'm not a scientist so I'm curious why this is interesting.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago
It's not scientifically interesting, the glacial-interglacial cycles are pretty well established. I'm guessing they're trying to insinuate some climate change minimalism argument.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  It’s interesting to know how far back in time the ice will allow them to analyze once they get to the base.
p1esk 3y ago
Presumably because we can find well preserved organisms from that time.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 3y ago
I think people who are not already familiar with the known history of the Earth find it interesting that there have been higher CO2 levels and temps than there are now. And I agree: the history of the Earth is interesting. Which is why so many people study and work in the field of geology.
rolph 3y ago
the drilling allows sampling of environmental components over extended period of time. this meas a historic record of, gases, ash, soot, pollen, spores, silt, insects, plant animals, metals, salts.....
detourdog 3y ago
It's interesting because the whole ice cap as we know it is around 120k years ago which I don't consider the long ago on human development scale. This also appears to mean that in the past 120K there wasn't a polar ice cap. I read that as the worst case scenario we should be using for long term planning. This also may help determine how fast the ice was built and how fast it will melt. I'm completely an armchair ponderer.

robertlagrant 3y ago

[flagged]

WhitneyLand 3y ago
I’m not aware of any data that supports humans 120k years ago having a significant impact on the earths climate. I think even our ability to start fire at will is conclusively known to be only ~50,000 years ago.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_hum... You don't need to be able to start a fire, when you keep the fire burning all the time. And you can do that, once you control the fire and figure out the difference between dry and wet wood. Also humans are the dominating species on land since quite a while. Hunting certain species to extinctiom has certain effects on the local ecosystem and globally on the global climate. It all adds up. But things surely changed in dimension since industrialisation.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    People had fire in those times but it's extremely unlikely they produced enough CO2 to have an anthropogenic impact on the climate leading to large-scale temperature changes. I'm not sure what your perspective on this situation is but I think the case for modern anthropogenic climate change with deleterious effects is based on a wide range of different evidence, and a careful accumulation of facts and analysis. Simply pointing out that humans had fire 2Mya doesn't change the general conclusion about today.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      I suspect gr main change caused by humans >100 k years ago will be wiping out various species and starting fires in seasons and places where fires wouldn't normally start (eg. In places without dry lightning or volcanoes - the only two other ways fires naturally start)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

adolph 3y ago

120k years ago in context: * 170,000 years ago: humans are wearing clothing by this date. * 125,000 years ago: the peak of the Eemian interglacial period. * ~120,000 years ago: possibly the earliest evidence of use of symbols etched onto bone * 75,000 years ago: Toba Volcano supereruption that may have contributed to human populations being lowered to about 15,000 people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prehistory The Eemian climate is believed to have been warmer than the current Holocene. Changes in the Earth's orbital parameters from today (greater obliquity and eccentricity, and perihelion), known as Milankovitch cycles, probably led to greater seasonal temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere. During the northern summer, temperatures in the Arctic region were about 2-4 °C higher than in 2011. The hippopotamus was distributed as far north as the rivers Rhine and Thames. . . . The prairie-forest boundary in the Great Plains of the United States lay further west near Lubbock, Texas, whereas the current boundary is near Dallas. . . . Sea level at peak was probably 6 to 9 metres (20 to 30 feet) higher than today . . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian

orangepurple 3y ago
This raises a very critical point. Nuclear is the only dependable energy source. Fossil fuels will run out or go out of favor. Solar and wind on the other hand will become victims of the next major volcanic eruption as ash destroys them or renders them ineffective.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Deep drilling based geothermal can fill this role too though - and does have the substantial benefit over nuclear that it leaves no surface-supply chains for resources (uranium). Given that we're so close to being able to do it, we honestly need a Manhattan project initiative to push it through to reality (with the outcome being the machine and process to do the drilling).
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  Nuclear facilities seem pretty fragile / demanding, I doubt one would survive any kind of apocalyptic event. The infrastructure supporting it will be gone.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

Iirc, the CO2 concentration now as been pumped up higher than it was then, which is in part what is worrying because temps might then potentially shoot even higher. Bottom line: we need large scale carbon capture quickly because even if we reach net zero CO2 will take millenia to drop back to the level it was pre-industrial revolution. Edit: I wouldn't focus on "pre-industrial levels" specifically, the point is that there is too much now so we most likely want concentration to drop as soon as possible.

elzbardico 3y ago
Why do we need to get back to the levels pre-industrial revolution?
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  The point is that net zero is most likely not going to stop warming with 400+ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 concentration most likely has to drop but naturally it does so very slowly. Arguably at this point we already need cooling because 40+C every summer in half of Europe (for instance) is getting annoying...
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > at this point we already need cooling A colossal volcanic eruption could do the trick, and those seem to happen rather unnervingly frequently.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Yeah it would be pretty silly for humanity to invest so much time and effort into lowering CO2 levels only for a Yellowstone or equivalent to erupt and send temperatures plummeting into a new ice age levels. When if humanity did nothing the eruption would only have taken us back to pre-industrial age temperatures.
- sleet_spotter 3y ago

thomasahle 3y ago

See also this timeline of the last four inter-glacial periods: https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/104-400000-years-of-temp.jpg https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/104-4000... It also shows how crazy it would be if we get the projected 2-3 degrees average temperature increase. Even in a period where we'd expect to be going into a new ice age; instead shooting to a previously unseen high temperature.

slashdev 3y ago
On the other hand if we only have 2-3 degrees of warming, if that’s enough to prevent the next ice age, didn’t we just dodge a massive icy bullet? Might we not one day thank ourselves for doing something reckless and stupid that actually worked out? Yeah a warmer climate brings all kinds of horrible changes. But food still grows in the northern hemisphere. A colder climate is arguably even worse for us. By the way, that’s no excuse to keep doing what we’re doing. Limiting warning at 2-3 degrees will be nice. Things get really horrific above 4. At some unknown point feedback cycles really kick in and we go to 5-10 degrees and get completely fucked. We really have to not find out where that threshold is.
- kuprel 3y ago
  I didn't realize that the vast majority of the time Earth is in an ice age. What causes it periodically like this?
  - slashdev 3y ago
    It’s mostly caused by Milankovitch cycles. Which are cyclic variations in our orbit around the sun. The earth varies in distance to the sun and axial tilt and precession. Like waves, there factors can either overlap and somewhat cancel or they can stack for a larger effect.
  - autokad 3y ago
    ice ages didn't happen until after the asteroid strike. Antarctica moving into the south pole is likely a large part of it, but they don't really understand ice ages that well TBO. Anyhoo, the Earth was a lot warmer prior to the strike and we have been going through extinction events every 100k years.