The Arctic is ablaze: Peat fires are the latest symptom of climate change

https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/08/01/the-arctic-is-ablaze

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

27 1 7 years ago

eledumb• 7 years ago

Everyday we read a new story about how changes are accelerating, and none of these changes are accounted for in any of the traditionally accepted climate models.

I think it's time admit that the climate models that we've been relying on aren't accurately modeling the changes that are taking place.

I remember reading about models in the 80's and 90's that started showing significant change starting to take place in the early 2020's, which means we are running ahead of even those aggressive models. Sort of a hockey stick curve of changes. What I remember about those aggressive models is that things got bad real quick, like 2050 quick and real bad like stuff that the normal models didn't think would happen for a 3 or four hundred years bad.

Those more aggressive models just faded away because no one believed that things could change so quickly. Back in the day most scientists thought it was crazy to think that the permafrost would ever thaw on a large scale, let alone start burning on a massive scale.

Right now everyone is operating on the belief that we can slow the rate of climate change, but the earth and the climate are now locked in a number of positive feedback loops, warming oceans, phytoplankton population crashes, thawing permafrost, thawing glaciers, ocean salinity drops, seal level rise. These systems and feedback loops are much bigger that the fraction of change proposed by the Paris agreement, and usually feedback loops don't stop until resources are exhausted or the loop breaks. These loops have a massive amount of resources and they aren't going to stop anytime, nor be impacted but our minuscule proposed changes.

I think the learned climate scientists need to start scouring paper archives to start looking for those more aggressive models because it's clear the assumptions the current models use are badly flawed.

The Arctic is ablaze: Peat fires are the latest symptom of climate change

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