Earth's Temperature Could Increase by 14C: New Research in Nature Communications | Hacker News Reader

Earth's Temperature Could Increase by 14C: New Research in Nature Communications

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12 pointsOutOfHere17 comments

We are at some point of the rising trend, we don't know how high it may get, and how fast we will reach some uncomfortable point. But what we do know is that global average temperatures are rising extremely fast, and the valid precedents of such rate might be associated with some mass extinctions.

In any case, global averages is not the same as how bad it could get at some point where you are, never cross a river 4-feet deep on average.

Well if true, that will surely end our civilization, maybe even more. But I wonder about the time-frame. If I had to guess, maybe 150 -- 200 years ?

It could possibly end civilization, but it wouldn't be guaranteed. Humans live in the Sahara and the Arctic. With temperature controlled greenhouses we can grow food anywhere.

If we co-operated instead of fighting over the diminishing resources civilization could survive. But if we were that good at co-operating we could mitigate the climate crisis in the first place...

In the strict sense, "civilization" will be over, and 99% of human life would be over. But sure, it won't end humanity with one CO2 doubling, although more than one doubling is quite possible.

Afaik, greenhouses usually concentrate heat rather than expel it. To expel heat, substantial air conditioning is required, which requires an industrial civilization, perhaps even some computing capacity for feedback control, and a powerful source of energy. I don't see these prerequisites being met. The few remaining humans could perhaps survive on Antarctica if they can shield themselves from the ozone hole and UVC radiation.

Why would 99% of human life be over? If we covered the world with greenhouses we could feed trillions of people. We don't need to do that, we only need to feed 9 billion.

> requires an industrial civilization, perhaps even some computing capacity for feedback control, and a powerful source of energy. I don't see these prerequisites being met.

The powerful source of energy could be solar panels which we are currently producing at the rate of TW's per year. Solar panels are very resilient to disaster due to their highly distributed nature.

Climate change is not just global warming. It adds storms that keep destroying infrastructure and killing people. It also adds acid rain.

Solar panels are great but are easily impacted by hail and dust.

Not even Russian missiles can completely take out Ukrainian solar farms.

Hail affects a much larger area than a missile. Cluster bombs would be effective, but they were banned.

And why would anyone waste a missile on a solar farm when they could target a transformer station or a transport line that distributes power from lots and lots of power sources?

Solar farms are generally hardened to withstand once-in-a-decade level of hailstorms, and are only susceptible to once-in-a-century level hail. Once-in-a-century level hail will take out infrastructure too, so your argument about missiles again applies -- better the distributed nature of solar than the concentrated nature of infrastructure.

We can't feed billions of people from greenhouses. Humans doesn't work like in a videogame, where "all tribes have united to build a starship!..". If our crops will start to fail we won't start building tech. Will start war(s). Big ones, to simply take whatever other countries have. Think "migrants - bad" bogeyman but x100 and you are starving now.

2ppm per year, so 200ish years is accurate, assuming a linear relationship (but is more likely to be slightly exponential, so 150 could be right.)

Slightly exponential? Do you mean geometric?

The part that bothers me is that other forecasters have been feeding us mild predictions for a long time. They have in effect basically lying to us about how manageable things are going to remain. Slowly the forecasts have been catching up to reality.

As for the timeframe, the rise by 7.2C can come within a few centuries. Feedback loops can then slowly carry it to +13.9C over a longer timeframe of many hundred to a few thousands of years. This is for a single CO2 doubling.

Being wrong about predictions is not lying.

And we don't yet know that these new predictions aren't the ones that are wrong.

The point is that the predictions by others have been getting higher over time. It is the basis for calling them mild.

The IPCC predictions have been getting lower over time, not higher. The upper bounds of the IPCC predictions used to be 6-8 degrees, now it is 4.5 degrees.

According to some popular science bloggers the IPCC models even now include so called "hot models" which predict around 5.5C temperature increase as compared to the 3-4C increase of other models in the same suite. (I forgot over which timeframe was that number, but anyway it's the same for all models) And these "hot" models are currently ignored by IPCC, not counted into the final prediction. But according to that same blogger there are some measurements which match "hot" models in the recent years.

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