This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Climate change has been accumulating slowly but relentlessly for decades. The changes might sound small when you hear about them – another tenth of a degree warmer, another centimeter of sea level rise – but seemingly small changes can have big effects on the world around us, especially regionally.
If you can’t get 40%+ of the US population to understand the science of virus transmission and the benefits of wearing masks during a global pandemic, how can we ever expect them to even remotely grasp the documented science behind climate change?
David Keeling’s son, Professor Ralph Keeling, is a climate scientist at the Scripps Institute.
This was a good report especially noting how small changes can make a huge difference over time.
Much of the excess heat from AGW is in our oceans. This obviously causes sea level to rise from heat expansion but something previously unnoticed in Antarctica is the warmer water below the colder surface water is now undermining the West Antarctic glaciers at the base of land fast glaciers and causing their ice to flow and subsequently melt more rapidly.
Similar events are occurring in Greenland with a strong indication that this could be disrupting the AMOC.
“…but seemingly small changes can have big effects…”
Raise your body temperature 3% and see how lousy you feel.
Willful ignorance is the new status symbol to aspire to.
That’s exactly it! For me, the scariest thing about the Co-Vid inundation was that it brought to light the very fact you’ve expressed. If so many Americans can’t get their sh#% together to protect their own bodies from harm, there’s no way in hell they’ll act collectively to protect something as abstract as “the planet” from destruction. (Some) Americans’ response to Co-Vid made that writing on the wall frighteningly clear. But I do find hope in other parts of the globe, where saner social cohesion is driving intelligent responses to both crises.
Excellent article, thanks for getting it. One minor typo: The graphic of oceanic heat content vs time in several depth bands should not have “temperature” in its caption (below graphic), but rather “heat content”.
I met Kevin Trenberth in Boulder, Colorado several years ago. We talked about the rise in Global Average Temperature and that he expects it to reach 2C above pre-industrial levels by or before 2050. I think those projections have been modified somewhat and we could reach 2C by as early as 2030. I’m not entirely sure about that but I expect we’ll get there sooner.
Methane is starting to get the attention it deserves as a more immediate threat. I expect Climate Change to ramp up quickly now. We’ve triggered too many tipping points.
Small changes by millions of people to lower the temperature could also help. GET RID OF YOUR LAWNS, or as much of your lawns as possible, and plant natives. Why? Because they have deep roots, some going down 3 feet, grab and hold moisture, thus cooling the earth. Just saying.
We have done so many things to harm the earth for so long, time to reverse it. Pitch in. You can help.
I’m not at all concerned about the future of the planet.
It’s the danger to the apex predator cohort that I belong to that concerns me.
Lock them in cars with the windows rolled up on a hot day.
Also helps reduce COVID transmission rates.
People will stop denying Climate Change when their house burns down or is carried away in a 500 year flood or all the fish disappear in our plastic filled oceans or their water supply ends or their city heats up to 130 degrees. But the tipping point will be long past.
We Must Crush the Climate Deniers and the anti-vaccine knuckleheads and the racist thugs in 2022 or we are toast. Time to wake up!
Sort of like the way they see the light and quit their anti-vaxx stance when their spouse dies of COVID.
My concern and respect for this (our) cohort is waning rather rapidly these days. Our planet has exhibited an uncanny ability to reestablish its norm in the absence of humanity. In that sense, i agree that our level of concern for this planet is deservingly less than should be our concern for life that inhabits this planet. I suppose it’s just human nature to wist that earth would be better off without us among the life it has generated, along for the ride just to fuck everything up. But, even then, there’d be countless disasters for our creations that, left unattended, would still doom the planet.
Oh, i’m also pleased to see you are familiar with AGW. Not many folk are aware of its true meaning.
Meanwhile, our resident expert PhD UofW Cliff Mass was boasting about our perfect July weather and commenting we were fortunate the smokey haze reduced the latest heat wave a few degrees. We missed setting the all time record for number of days without measurable precip… by 0.01 inch. But yeah, perfect weather if all you do is… tan.
I’ve come to accept that most people mean, ‘life on Earth’ not the physical orb. Planet is used euphemistically.
I feel pretty good after a good work out.
But perhaps the upside is that Greenland will become the next tropical it destination… like Hawaii.
Aren’t they already growing bananas on Iceland?
It has such big consequences because it’s about the entire Earth. Imagine cutting loose an ocean liner from its dock and trying to move it back with a rowboat.
Please correct the article everywhere “watts” are used as a metric for “energy”.
This confusion of units is a disaster in terms of credibilty for reporting like this.
Care to explain, or are we ignoramuses just required to assume your intellectual and expressive superiority to the author?