" That the Gulf Stream is responsible for Europe's mild winters is widely known and accepted, but, as I will show, it is nothing more than the earth-science equivalent of an urban legend."
Not an expert, but taking these side by side...it seems reasonable to conclude that AMOC is (as that source states) one of several factors?
Iceland, e.g., is warmer than Alaska, and that might change. Northern Europe in general is warmer than the PNW, despite the North Atlantic being smaller (and thus less buffering) than the North Pacific.
Seems unreasonable to expect the UK to end up like Newfoundland, or Labrador, if the AMOC shuts off, but "colder" seems in the cards.
Of course, all of this is completely armchair on my part.
Wow, thanks for that link. Super interesting, and somewhat reassuring after reading the other article! What would make it even more convincing is a good explanation for the cause of the previous ice age and how it affected north west Europe.
There was an article in Nature the other year about AMOC periodicity across a long term timescale. Apparently you get high temperatures, then instability, then a gulf stream reversal every few thousand years, followed by glaciers coming south.
Long term temperature increase due to complex systems like AMOC could explain why we see measurable linear temperature increases starting in the 1880s, instead of the 1940s as CO2 forcing might predict, have historical evidence of extremely cold weather in classical Europe (frozen Rhine, etc.), and have evidence of warmer temperatures than today with the Holocene maximum about 8,000 years ago.
> measurable linear temperature increases starting in the 1880s instead of the 1940s
Could you cite your sources on this one? Every graph I can find shows the linear increases starting in about 1920 (plus or minus a bit, depending on how you squint your eyes), and correlating very neatly with atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
The lake next door to my house has had ice-in ice-out dates measured by the local university using the same procedure for the past 170 years. Lake ice is an extremely good way to determine average temperature for a season, of course, as it's just a big mass that gets cold and warms up again.
When you plot my lake, it's a solidly linear trend of fewer days of ice coverage ever since they began measuring it.
The neat atmospheric CO2 correlation is presumably the same thing that has caused that same correlation to exist in pre-historic times: CO2 has been a correlated trailing indicator of global temperature through the entirety of Earth's history.
If there has been a long-term global trend for Earth temperatures, like my little (not so little actually) lake seems to indicate, some of the assumptions that establish CO2 radiative forcing as a cause rather than an effect go out the window entirely.
But don't take my word for it. Read this Nature paper, and add in the postulate that global temperature since the 1860s is some linear trend similar to my lake's temperature, and watch what comes out:
I can be of no help to anyone who only reads the first sentence of a paper and stops, especially when I asked him to read the whole thing. Also anyone with minimal necessary background on temperature proxies for 1850-1890, or a good background on the temperature proxies or models that generate the links you have provided, will immediately see the comedy in "my little lake." But if you want to polemics rather than breadcrumbs from me, you are interacting with the wrong person.
To put it very simply: our evidence for a high feedback factor for added CO2 in the atmosphere and evidence for the forcing effect is entirely dependent on the assumption that temperature was not increasing much before 1940s.
> Long term temperature increase due to complex systems like AMOC could explain why we see measurable linear temperature increases starting in the 1880s, instead of the 1940s as CO2 forcing might predict
What predictions would this hypothesis suggest (that aren't also shared with CO2 forcing)?
To save others from reading pages upon pages of fluff:
The siblings spent two years refining their approach, doing more tests. Across a thousand runs, the model cranked through the temperature data and settled on a year. Sometimes the model spat out later dates. Sometimes earlier. The two scientists made a plot of the numbers and a neat cluster emerged. Yes—2057. But that’s just the middle point: In 95 percent of the model’s simulations, the AMOC tipped sometime between 2025 and 2095.
> Climate change doubters have a favorite target: climate models. They claim that computer simulations conducted decades ago didn't accurately predict current warming, so the public should be wary of the predictive power of newer models. Now, the most sweeping evaluation of these older models—some half a century old—shows most of them were indeed accurate.
The last two items of your list are interesting. I’ve seen people exhibit all the previous items but I’ve never seen anyone exhibit the last two of your list.
I have however seen many people (online) state a “doomer” or an “optimist” view that goes like this:
> “Climate change is real but there’s nothing we can do about it”
> “Climate change is real but it’s being handled so we don’t need to worry about it”
I think those two would better fit your list of “stages of climate change denial”
> The last two items of your list are interesting. I’ve seen people exhibit all the previous items but I’ve never seen anyone exhibit the last two of your list.
> > > How about the psychological damage done by the fear mongering caused by these type of news regarding climate change?
> > What about it?
> You're not concerned about how having such a large percentage of population becoming basically useless due to psychological problems can trouble the future of mankind?
> > I have however seen many people (online) state a “doomer” or an “optimist” view that goes like this:
> > “Climate change is real but there’s nothing we can do about it”
> > “Climate change is real but it’s being handled so we don’t need to worry about it”
> I think those two would better fit your list of “stages of climate change denial”
Ah, nice addition. Thanks ! I'll think about it before adding them. Originally the list displayed progressive steps (it's a process) but maybe there are some branching to illustrate.
And then there's me: "Climate change is absolutely real and there's a lot we could do / have done / be doing about it, but we won't do it, because too many of us worship the filthy-rich monsters who created the problem (and then lied to keep it going), and will defend their right to destroy us all for "shareholder value" right up to the very end."
> They claim that computer simulations conducted decades ago didn't accurately predict current warming, so the public should be wary of the predictive power of newer models
That's a neat way to twist the criticism. You're taking what is a very sensible position of "the public should be wary of published headlines which make extreme predictions" and then narrowing it into some specific claim about computer simulations, which "the public" almost certainly has no experience or knowledge of.
> Now where are you on my list:
If your goal is to inspire people to care more about the climate, I would suggest to you that this is precisely the opposite way you would best achieve it.
> That's a neat way to twist the criticism. You're taking what is a very sensible position of "the public should be wary of published headlines which make extreme predictions" and then narrowing it into some specific claim about computer simulations, which "the public" almost certainly has no experience or knowledge of.
> If your goal is to inspire people to care more about the climate, I would suggest to you that this is precisely the opposite way you would best achieve it.
I am past trying to convince climate change deniers to care more about climate.
Quoting myself again:
> With climate deniers and complotists I always suppose they hide their real stance and it is revealed through small hints they let out. I strongly believe these small hints are baits to see if the other party has the same beliefs. They will be lying until they think there are in like-minded company (or are too drunk and let it out).
> Yeah, I have been burned hard before by climate and covid deniers who lied right out to my face. They are dishonest and advance in disguise (with loaded questions and fake scepticism and the whole arsenal of arguments coming from fabricated doubt factories).
If people acknowledge climate change (all but first example) how can you label them a denier (from your link)? They agree change is happening.. what are they denying? Your solutions or your panic? Why should someone who answered like above answer the way you want. Prove your case.
> They agree change is happening.. what are they denying?
That the change is anthropogenic. That its consequences are not mild, etc., etc. They've moved from climate denial to climate change consequences denial to obstructing climate action.
“We can’t know anything perfectly, and we’ve been wrong before, so why bother modeling anything” is the stock response from the anti-science propagandist.
Argue for better models, argue for other models that reproduce similar results, but don’t argue for solipsism.
So many of these models are so unreliable for predicting anything (due to the complexity of the problem, lack of precise enough measurements, computing power, and 1000 other valid reasons) that as an individual, I'll treat them as tarot reading with some scientific handwaving. And even if this model is great, how can I tell it from all the other garbage articles?
I find it strange that when we talk about replication crisis, It's all fair game and everyone sees that "science" is made up of fallible people and corrupt institutions, but when I don't schit my pants because Wired published a post about the siblings (omg, who cares), then suddenly I'm a anti science propagandist. I'm just a regular guy who disagrees with you on something.
That's insulting to the work of thousands of people who have been putting their lives into researching how to improve models with more and more detailed information over the last 3-4 decades.
A very close friend of mine is a physicist, dedicated his PhD on modeling how clouds form at a molecular level, then his post doctorate studies further into modeling other aerosols, his work improved many general models accuracy.
All of those models validate their output with empirical past data, this is not fucking tarot.
Nobody is suggesting you “schit [your] pants.” The point of this isn’t to scare you, but to share information about a new model that predicts new effects. Nobody ever said it was “the most accurate model that exists.”
But without even looking at or understanding the model (did you?), you’ve already written it off as “tarot reading.”
Certainly not the way I’d approach it, especially as the facts of the last decade or so (not models, but actual recorded data) indicate that the globe is definitely warming and sea levels are definitely rising and glaciers are definitely melting.
How do I know? Well, data, but also talking to experts in Iceland (as an example). All of them, every single one, without exception, agreed global warming was happening. Not all of them agreed as to why it was happening, but that it was is no longer a question at all. They are out on these glaciers all the time. They have data going back many decades. Time lapses of the changes in the glaciers over the last 50-100 years. There isn’t really a question, anymore, as to whether the globe is warming; it is.
What we do about that is entirely a different discussion, as is why it’s happening.
But, you know, facts suck in the face of conspiracy theories and “doubt at all costs,” I guess.
That’s my main issue with folks who show up and start yelling that we don’t know anything. We do. We know the globe is warming, significantly. Denying that solves nothing.
For me, one of the best arguments that climate change is real is because insurance companies are jacking up insurance rates everywhere they might have exposure to more risk as a result of climate change.
I think the floors of actuaries at the insurance companies know more than I do.
That's a pretty recent innovation. Hurricane Katrina was something of a wake up call in terms of claim severity. P&C reinsurers afterward really had to challenge the standards under which they developed their models.
Sorry, I must've been mistaken, it does indeed turn out the deeply alarming future dangers of global... um, climate change... have never been reputably published anywhere.
The referenced article states the alarmist view presented in An Inconvenient Truth is scientifically valid.
The claim made by Al Gore, well over a decade ago, was that all arctic ice would be gone within five years. If you can't reason about how that much could claim to happen in five years and now fifteen's elapsed, I'm not sure what to say.
The question was Which models told us we'd be underwater by now?
You claimed knowledge and have yet to name a single one.
Al Gore is not a geophysical scientist and has published no peer reviewed papers in any GeoPhys | Climate journals so whatever a second rate US VP may have claimed in a film I certainly haven't watched is hardly relevant.
Can you back your claim or not?
Can you even name one climate model used in an IPCC report?
it's really great being a reality denier, you can just pick one unqualified person's worst mistake and use it to dismiss an entire field of thousands of people who've spent their entire adult life investigating and understanding something.
it's like quoting those scientists who believed that heavier than air flight was not possible and deciding that you don't need qualified engineers to build them - afterall somebody somewhere got something wrong, didn't they!
