Is cold weather making a comeback?

[SiGh]

 WYorksWeather  Yorkshire v South Glos/Bristol. Can be chalk&cheese at times, weather wise. Some of our late 90s/early noughties were often snowless. And the 70s - many a winter's day in mid-70s where we suffered copious amounts of rain, and peeps north of Brum saw snow.

[WYorksWeather]

 SiGh The figures don't lie though - almost everywhere in the country, the 1991-2020 average is much less snowy, much less frosty and in all respects milder in winter than the 1961-1990 average, for instance.

[Methuselah]

 ANYWEATHER

But are we not part of Nature? 

[SiGh]

 WYorksWeather yes, the "averages" spell it out  BUT the statement spouted by some about no lying snow in the South is another example of 'them', well, basically telling porkies. It ranks alongside the "London will be under 10 feet of water" statement nonsense, from a few years back.

[WYorksWeather]

 SiGh I've never seen such a statement from any reliable source. What gets quoted quite often is an article from the early 2000s, talking about the possible climate by about 2050, and that in a newspaper, not a serious scientific source.

I for one don't expect snow to become completely extinct ever - even in a hypothetical 2050 climate another 1-2C warmer than today, if we get the equivalent of a 1962/63 setup it will be cold enough to snow. It will just be rarer, because a more borderline setup like the one we've just had might not be cold enough.

[MP-R]

 Sceptilli0naire Make sure to observe it with an ample helping of tinfoil... 

Back to reality and, it seems we get a decent winter for cold at least every other year, and a decent winter for cold AND snow every three years, sometimes four (there's still time for this one to deliver on the snow front, but there has at least been some notable cold). This hasn't really changed a lot in my lifetime and can't see why it would in the near future either.

There's also no shortage of cold synoptics either throughout the year, it's just a case of getting them to fall more within the winter months!

[Sceptilli0naire]

1 hour ago, ANYWEATHER said:

Nature will always win, just wait and see.....

I mean, at least we sort of agree on that one? In that humans will almost certainly die out long before we could induce an extinction so bad as to exterminate all animal life.

It adds to the absolute stupidity of what we're doing to be honest. The end result of rampant anthropogenic emissions is a K-Pg level event that humans are nearly guarenteed to not survive. We are large predators who depend on a number of other ecological niches to survive; if pollinators go kaput then we're a dead species walking, and it's looking like that'll happen by the end of the century.

[Sceptilli0naire]

1 hour ago, MP-R said:

Make sure to observe it with an ample helping of tinfoil...

Is the observable reality that anthropogenic activites have caused a severe decline in biodiversity since the start of the holocene, and most pertinently since the 19th century, which if continued unchecked is going to result in the seventh mass extinction that humans as large apex predators cannot survive, a conspiracy theory?

What do you think happens if global temperatures rise by 4-5°C (or even higher) in the space of just two or three centuries? That's ultimately where we're headed if we do nothing, which is exactly what we'll do because of the profound arrogance and ignorance of our species.

Pretending that this isn't going to happen, will not prevent it.

 WYorksWeather It's just grifting tactics. Deliberately exaggerate the claims to discredit the actual science. Concern trolling even.

I almost envy those who can afford to live in ignorance knowing they will not live to see things get seriously bad.

[SollyOlly]

 Sceptilli0naire voice of reason, thank you! 

[currents]

 Sceptilli0naire Whilst I agree with everything you've said I think your tone serves only to reinforce the opinions of those you engage with.

[Sceptilli0naire]

2 hours ago, WYorksWeather said:

Probably the next step I expect to see at some point in the next 10-20 years or so is a winter which is completely autumnal throughout, without any recognisable cold spell whatsoever. Something like a winter composed of December 2015, January 2007, and February 2024.

2019/20 is probably the closest we've been to that. Aside from the first week or so of December it was completely devoid of cold conditions whatsoever. It was exceptionally horrific in northeastern Europe where as far east as Helsinki they got a winter more reminiscent of a British winter in the 60s.

2023/24 is also very close as aside from literally the first day or two of December and a week or so in January it was again completely devoid of anything wintry at all. February 2024 is the unequivocal worst of my lifetime.

2016/17 was also very mild here and one of the mildest on record; the only thing remotely wintery all season was that spell in very early January. Some areas at altitude very briefly got snow.

2006/07 is a very forgotten winter for how mild it was; in at least southern England it was the mildest on record at the time and potentially the closest we've come here locally to completely winterless and devoid of anything remotely wintery as it was very mild all the way through with no breaks whatsoever. Freezing nights were exceedingly rare that winter south of Essex, but did occur.

To be honest I think what you define as autumnal greatly affects whether we've seen a completely autumnal winter yet or not; it wasn't exactly uncommon to see freezing nights in November, even in the south, before the mid-2000s (and even now it happens more years than it doesn't at least once).

If you allow that most autumns do feature at least a few freezing nights and some single-digit highs, then all of the described winters above would likely fit the definition of being completely autumnal throughout with nothing particularly wintery.

However, if we give some leeway and go with the definition of essentially no freezing nights at all outside of the far north (an outright zero would be very improbable), no prolonged period of sub-10°C highs at all with only a few isolated instances throughout January and February, and of course significantly wetter than average more in accordance with an average autumn, then I suspect we will have recorded such a winter by the early 2030s or so.

A winter with no freezing nights at all anywhere in the nation >500m asl will probably occur by 2050.

Note: I'm aware that 88/89 is still the mildest on record nationally, however 2015/16, 2006/07, quite probably 2023/24 owing to the excessively mild December and February, and average January, and I wouldn't be surprised at 2016/17 given the mildness, have all surpassed 88/89 in most of lowland England and Wales as far as I can tell. 88/89 remains the mildest on record nationally because of the freakish mildness in the far north. Hell I even think 89/90 beat 88/89 in England.

I have no idea where 74/75 sits in the rankings now, all I know is that one was an absolute freak for the era. December 1974 is the only such month besides Decembers 2015 and 2024 to not record a single freezing night at Stansted.

Suffice to say one of these historic mild freaks repeating themselves will probably be the winters that pass these benchmarks.

 currents Would you mind explaining? I'm not entirely sure what you mean?

[MP-R]

59 minutes ago, Sceptilli0naire said:

Pretending that this isn't going to happen, will not prevent it.

Catastrophising that it’s going to happen, will also not make it happen.

While I’m aware that planetary warming is no myth, I’m also aware that human behaviour has had a negative effect on numerous biodiversity. It’s also no revelation that public attention is steered in the wrong direction vis a vis how to deal with either, and what can and can’t be dealt with. So it’s best not to be hyperbolic about these things, step back, and think critically.

To remain relevant to the thread, my point about cold weather in the UK stands.

[currents]

 Sceptilli0naire You can make the same points without being aggressive. Trust me, I understand your anger, but aggression rarely causes people to reflect; it often just incites a reaction or reinforces opinion. You see it in political discussion all the time.

Having said that if it's a lost cause then I guess it doesn't matter anyway 

Edited January 13 by currents
Missing word

[Lukemcd]

 Sceptilli0naire

I fully accept the statistics on AGW and the fact that the world is warming and I don't deny that but if there is going to be an extinction event on the level of the K-Pg extinction (which is a 1 in 60-70 million year event) within our lifetimes I often wonder why, considering we have been emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere for over 200 years, that concern about global warming was not raised as being an existential threat to humanity long ago.  An example I think of is that in the 1960s - 1980s, nuclear war was often portrayed as being the most existential risk to our species - with its presence in popular culture and political debate and films like Threads and the War Game.  If AGW eventually results in a mass extinction event on a par with the asteroid that resulted in the extinction of the non avian dinosaurs, I do think why not enough effort was put into say research and development on nuclear fusion or if that was not possible advanced fission technology as a stop gap until fusion could be developed.  In fact, back in the 1960s we were in some ways a lot more polluting - coal fired power stations, coal still used for railway propulsion, less efficient jet engines, coal fires still in use but you did not get many things in the media saying that global warming will kill us all.  Obviously scientific knowledge has improved since then but it does make me think when it comes to pondering the existence of life elsewhere in the universe that climate change could be a great filter and a reason why technological civilizations may not last very long on astronomical/geological timescales - civilisations throughout the galaxy/universe will probably go though a fossil fuel burning phase which will be damaging to the biosphere of the planet due to the greenhouse effect unless they can develop fusion technology rather quickly or something that can produce large amounts of energy with emissions - e.g. solar power from Dyson swarms.  Also do you think China could be a problem with them opening new coal power plants which may not be too good for our emissions.

It is frighting however to think how the climate a decade ago can be different from that now - as on a geological timescale that is effectively no time at all - a decade is like less than a nanosecond on that scale so that does seem to put into perspective the rate of temperature change we are facing.   

 Sceptilli0naire

I fully accept the statistics on AGW and the fact that the world is warming and I don't deny that but if there is going to be an extinction event on the level of the K-Pg extinction (which is a 1 in 60-70 million year event) within our lifetimes I often wonder why, considering we have been emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere for over 200 years, that concern about global warming was not raised as being an existential threat to humanity long ago.  An example I think of is that in the 1960s - 1980s, nuclear war was often portrayed as being the most existential risk to our species - with its presence in popular culture and political debate and films like Threads and the War Game.  If AGW eventually results in a mass extinction event on a par with the asteroid that resulted in the extinction of the non avian dinosaurs, I do think why not enough effort was put into say research and development on nuclear fusion or if that was not possible advanced fission technology as a stop gap until fusion could be developed.  In fact, back in the 1960s we were in some ways a lot more polluting - coal fired power stations, coal still used for railway propulsion, less efficient jet engines, coal fires still in use but you did not get many things in the media saying that global warming will kill us all.  Obviously scientific knowledge has improved since then but it does make me think when it comes to pondering the existence of life elsewhere in the universe that climate change could be a great filter and a reason why technological civilizations may not last very long on astronomical/geological timescales - civilisations throughout the galaxy/universe will probably go though a fossil fuel burning phase which will be damaging to the biosphere of the planet due to the greenhouse effect unless they can develop fusion technology rather quickly or something that can produce large amounts of energy with emissions - e.g. solar power from Dyson swarms.  Also do you think China could be a problem with them opening new coal power plants which may not be too good for our emissions.

It is frighting however to think how the climate a decade ago can be different from that now - as on a geological timescale that is effectively no time at all - a decade is like less than a nanosecond on that scale so that does seem to put into perspective the rate of temperature change we are facing.   

 Sceptilli0naire

I fully accept the statistics on AGW and the fact that the world is warming and I don't deny that but if there is going to be an extinction event on the level of the K-Pg extinction (which is a 1 in 60-70 million year event) within our lifetimes I often wonder why, considering we have been emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere for over 200 years, that concern about global warming was not raised as being an existential threat to humanity long ago.  An example I think of is that in the 1960s - 1980s, nuclear war was often portrayed as being the most existential risk to our species - with its presence in popular culture and political debate and films like Threads and the War Game.  If AGW eventually results in a mass extinction event on a par with the asteroid that resulted in the extinction of the non avian dinosaurs, I do think why not enough effort was put into say research and development on nuclear fusion or if that was not possible advanced fission technology as a stop gap until fusion could be developed.  In fact, back in the 1960s we were in some ways a lot more polluting - coal fired power stations, coal still used for railway propulsion, less efficient jet engines, coal fires still in use but you did not get many things in the media saying that global warming will kill us all.  Obviously scientific knowledge has improved since then but it does make me think when it comes to pondering the existence of life elsewhere in the universe that climate change could be a great filter and a reason why technological civilizations may not last very long on astronomical/geological timescales - civilisations throughout the galaxy/universe will probably go though a fossil fuel burning phase which will be damaging to the biosphere of the planet due to the greenhouse effect unless they can develop fusion technology rather quickly or something that can produce large amounts of energy with emissions - e.g. solar power from Dyson swarms.  Also do you think China could be a problem with them opening new coal power plants which may not be too good for our emissions.

It is frighting however to think how the climate a decade ago can be different from that now - as on a geological timescale that is effectively no time at all - a decade is like less than a nanosecond on that scale so that does seem to put into perspective the rate of temperature change we are facing.   

[Sceptilli0naire]

2 hours ago, MP-R said:

Catastrophising that it’s going to happen, will also not make it happen.

While I’m aware that planetary warming is no myth, I’m also aware that human behaviour has had a negative effect on numerous biodiversity. It’s also no revelation that public attention is steered in the wrong direction vis a vis how to deal with either, and what can and can’t be dealt with. So it’s best not to be hyperbolic about these things, step back, and think critically.

It's not hyperbolic to suggest that we are on course for the seventh mass extinction if this continues; it's the logical conclusion.

What do you think will occur if we actually do nothing and we continue? In your mind? Explain the timeline for me.

2 hours ago, currents said:

You can make the same points without being aggressive. Trust me, I understand your anger, but aggression rarely causes people to reflect; it often incites a reaction or reinforces opinion. You see it in political discussion all the time.

Having said that if it's a lost cause then I guess it doesn't matter anyway 

I appreciate the feedback.

I try to remain as calm as possible in discussion of this nature. I don't think I have been particularly aggressive here, and if I come off that way that isn't my intention, unless you are a total lost cause and not interested in learning anything.

As for the bolded, the point I'm trying to make in all this is that we can still do something. According to most estimates, we haven't quite veered into mass extinction territory just yet, however we are in a significant extinction that has been ongoing for the duration of the Holocene, and background extinction rates are now at the level of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, which is generally considered to be the last threshold before you reach mass extinction territory.

This threshold is important for us because we can survive a significant extinction. Will it be a particularly pleasant few centuries to be alive? No. Will we survive and eventually adapt? It's quite probable.

However, if outright mass extinction territory is reached where a significant percentage or even majority of extant animal and plant taxa disappear over the next few centuries or millennia, humans will simply not survive as we are apex predators who depend on a complex food web. Where do you think all of our food comes from? Our food sources rely on a healthy ecosystem that will simply cease to exist in the scenario of a mass extinction.

Currently, on January 13th 2025, we can still prevent the latter from occurring. But it would take drastic action that is simply not going to materialise because the people are demoralised and mentally disarmed, and ultimately with the quality of life in most parts of the world for many, a lot of people simply aren't interested in saving what we have. To a large extent I agree with them, we shouldn't try to save what we have. If we're going to address climate change then we also have to address the current state of the world.

I won't bring politics into this, but the state of the world is inextricably linked with why we're in this climatological situation.

To come back to the point, the deadline for doing anything is rapidly nearing. We have about 10 more years; if SIGNIFICANT, and I mean SIGNIFICANT inroads haven't been made by the mid-2030s, then this party is over. What I mean is by the mid-2030s we have to be carbon neutral and have completely halted all further habitat destruction and plastic-pesticide poisoning.

Climate change is ultimately the main factor, but don't be fooled; mass plastic and pesticide poisoning and the relentless manual destruction of habitat are playing their own parts.

Unfortunately it doesn't take a genius to see that this simply won't happen unless there is a very violent change in direction that can't be foreseen.

2 hours ago, Lukemcd said:

I fully accept the statistics on AGW and the fact that the world is warming and I don't deny that but if there is going to be an extinction event on the level of the K-Pg extinction (which is a 1 in 60-70 million year event) within our lifetimes I often wonder why, considering we have been emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere for over 200 years, that concern about global warming was not raised as being an existential threat to humanity long ago.

Thanks for the detailed response!

Funnily enough, concerns about greenhouse gas emissions have been raised for well over a century.

It has been known that gaseous carbon compounds are greenhouse gases, in that they reflect outgoing radiation back to the surface (and incoming radiation back into space, hence the stratosphere cooling), since the mid-19th century.

As early as the 1910s there was a paper published that warned persistent burning of hydrocarbons could cause a serious global warming over the next few hundred years at then-current rates.

As early as the 1960s, the fossil fuel industry were internally acknowledging that continued use of greenhouse gases would be likely to cause significant climate change into the 21st century and beyond. In fact they even used the term "Ice age termination event", which is a misnomer as they actually refer to the termination of glacials, so they even knew about the positive feedback cycles as far back as then.

As early as the 1980s Carl Sagan begged the US government to address climate change before it got serious. He'd be rolling in his grave.

The fact is, we've known this was all going to happen for the best part of a century, and yet we did nothing.

On another note, you are correct in that on average, we are actually due another major extinction on the scale of the previous "big six" (Ordovician-Silurian, Devonian, Capitanian, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic and Cretaceous-Palaeogene). In fact the current condition of biodiversity is highly correlated to a mass extinction in the near future: We have recently evolved into large successful predators, and our prey are large and numerous. This is true for almost every major extinction that occurs. About 10 million years before the K-Pg, tyrannosaurids began evolving gigantic size, and so did their prey, the cerotopsians and hadrosaurs. They then all perished. In the Toarcian extinction at the beginning of the late Cretaceous, all of the carcharadontosaurids, spinosaurids and the major titanosaurs of the day who had in the last 10 or so million years evolved gigantic size and wide distribution, died out. At the end of the Jurassic, all of the gigantic carnivores and many of the large herbivores all died out fairly quickly. And so on and so forth. In the T-J almost all of the major predators and herbivores of the day, who weren't dinosaurs or pterosaurs and had only recently begun evolving large size again after the P-T, died out. In the Permian itself life had seen a great expansion of diversity, shortly before the two worst extinctions on record. It's so common that the appearance and proliferation of such major predators and herbivores could even be suggested to be responsible for a disruption of the ecosystem that eventually cascades into an extinction. Although of course the K-Pg was at least seriously exacerbated, if not outright caused by the roughly 1/250 million year bolide impact of Chicxulub, the Deccan traps were active at the time and the planet was going through some climatic upheaval, so in common with the other events, it's at least fairly likely that in the next few million years, there would've been a significant extinction and all of the giant tyrannosaurids and herbivores would've gone extinct, although it likely wouldn't have been anywhere near as serious as the actual K-Pg in life.

Were intelligent life to evolve again after the seventh mass extinction (which I dub the "Neogene-Anthropogene extinction"), they would find our fossils and the fossils of our major prey items rapidly spreading all over the world before we all died out in a mass extinction, including animals already extinct like mammoths, and see us as just another example of the cycle I previously mentioned. Other giant predators around at the time like gigantic bears and the sabre-toothed cats were also by far the largest land predators since the tyrannosaurs, and would generally fit into the pattern too.

Anyway, we're off-topic, so back to the point.

2 hours ago, Lukemcd said:

An example I think of is that in the 1960s - 1980s, nuclear war was often portrayed as being the most existential risk to our species - with its presence in popular culture and political debate and films like Threads and the War Game.  If AGW eventually results in a mass extinction event on a par with the asteroid that resulted in the extinction of the non avian dinosaurs, I do think why not enough effort was put into say research and development on nuclear fusion or if that was not possible advanced fission technology as a stop gap until fusion could be developed. 

What you're describing is simply human nature.

Humans on a fundamental level are just like any other animal - Most of the things we do can be traced back to the triad of eat, drink water and reproduce, essentially pleasing our reward system. Without getting too complicated, the only exceptions to that triad have been invented by humans (and some other highly intelligent species) as a way of "hacking" our innate reward system that has evolved to reward us for doing one of the three things in the triad and punish us for not doing so. Whether it be playing, doing something adventurous, taking drugs, whatever, it's all at the end of the day encouraging our reward centres to release dopamine and serotonin which make us feel good, because we're tricking them into thinking we've done something in the triad.

Because of that, human brains as complex as they are, are only designed to deal with things on those scale. Most people aren't really capable of conceptualising 50, 100, 500 years into the future. 50 years ago everyone thought we'd have flying cars, portable houses and that we'd be on Mars by now. None of that is realistic and is a demonstration of how poor our sense of time progression is.

Because of this, we're just not good at addressing such a multigenerational, century-timescale issue as climate change. Also because our brains are geared towards self-preservation, we're very bad at realising when humanity is in the thick of it and at an existential risk. We don't really comprehend the concept of human extinction very well. Our brains are hard-wired to tell us it won't happen.

Humans operate on daily, weekly, monthly and sometimes yearly timescales. Anything beyond that is either distant future or distant past to us. So when we see a prediction that in 50 years sea levels will have risen by [insert amount], our first instinct is to just think it'll never happen.

It's a lot like how we operate towards homework deadlines. If you're given a project that has to be handed in in four weeks, you don't even touch it for two weeks because four weeks is ages away. And then it's two weeks away which is a bit closer but it's still ages away, right? You still have plenty of time. Eventually it's only a week away and you think "oh, I'll start it in the next couple of days". Then it's two days away and you realise that actually, two days is pretty close and it's going to be a real stretch to get the whole project done. It's going to be sloppy, and you'll only get the bare minimum C grade to pass it, but at least you did it. If you leave it until the day before the deadline, you no longer have time to finish it.

With climate change, the 80s were the "four weeks away" point. The 2000s were the "two weeks away" point. The 2010s were the "week away" point, where it was starting to get closer, but it still feels like there's loads of time left. Now we're in the mid-2020s and there's only two days left to complete the assignment. If we start working on it now, we'll just about get it done. It's going to be very sloppy and nowhere near as good as if we started it a few weeks ago, but it'll get done. If we leave it any longer, we're not completing the assignment and we lose our metaphorical jobs.

Hopefully that rambling explanation made sense, and the assignment analogy was a good demonstration of how generally terrible humans are at comprehending timescales.

The other particularly nasty thing about extinctions is they aren't nice and linear - They are exponential. So for the first 100 or so years it's a very gradual rise in temperatures and background extinction rates, and then after a critical point (which is now), within another 20-30 years the Earth is a complete inferno and half of all pollinators have died. Humans are already bad enough at comprehending linear timescales, we're even worse with more exponential ones like this.

2 hours ago, Lukemcd said:

In fact, back in the 1960s we were in some ways a lot more polluting - coal fired power stations, coal still used for railway propulsion, less efficient jet engines, coal fires still in use but you did not get many things in the media saying that global warming will kill us all.

Indeed, the difference between then and now is the raw level of production is far higher today than then. Because oil and gas are "cleaner" than coal, the fossil fuel industry and governments of the world successfully used it as an excuse to increase usage across the board. Were such an expansion of coal attempted, people would potentially realise how terrible fossil fuels actually are and demand a transition to renewables - Even at peak rates of coal usage the intensely damaging effects on the environment were obvious.

2 hours ago, Lukemcd said:

bviously scientific knowledge has improved since then but it does make me think when it comes to pondering the existence of life elsewhere in the universe that climate change could be a great filter and a reason why technological civilizations may not last very long on astronomical/geological timescales - civilisations throughout the galaxy/universe will probably go though a fossil fuel burning phase which will be damaging to the biosphere of the planet due to the greenhouse effect unless they can develop fusion technology rather quickly or something that can produce large amounts of energy with emissions - e.g. solar power from Dyson swarms.

It's definitely possible and I wouldn't rule it out. However, there are several potential explanations for why humans in particular have ended up this way:

- Earth may be a particularly hostile place for life, and so all life that evolves on Earth is inherently very competitive and violent compared to life elsewhere. As we have absolutely no frame of reference on how easy it is for life to develop in the universe, we use Earth as a basis of perfect habitability, but it's only perfect from our perspective. There is every chance that both the primitive atomsphere of Earth and conditions in Phanerozoic times are actually very substandard for life compared to other places in the universe, and life that has evolved here has to be really tough to scratch out a living. A reason for this could be the oxygen in our atmosphere; the earliest lifeforms on Earth were anaerobes, and to them oxygen is toxic. Current scientific study suggests that free radicals, that is, free oxygen atoms, are a major cause of DNA degradation and ageing. The presence and reliance of complex life on oxygen could significantly decrease the average lifespan of an organism on Earth, which means compared to oxygenless planets, life on Earth has to mature a lot faster and reproduce much more aggressively than the average planet with life. One reason we may have not been visited by aliens or observed signs of their existence is because they all consider Earth to be substandard or even outright toxic to them.

- Homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans, evolved in Africa. Africa is notorious for it's remarkably violent animals. Hippos, Zebras, Water Buffalo, they're all known for being roid rage versions of their relatives on other continents. Africa is probably among the harshest environments in the world, and so competition for resources is very high. This encourages animals in Africa to be very competitive and aggressive. Old world monkeys in general, which evolved in Africa, are a violent group of animals, with several monkeys ranking among the most violent mammals. Humans have been stated to have an average level of aggression for a primate, which suggests that we're pretty violent creatures. It's plausible that evolving in Africa gave us the same level of generational roid rage due to the harsh environment, and that we've taken the same kind of extreme competitiveness and aggression everywhere in the world we went. Studies on the North American megafauna extinction show a notable sharp decline in sabre-tooth cats some time after humans had arrived and begun hunting the native megafauna. This could be taken to suggest we identified the sabre-tooth cats as competitors, and deliberately went out of our way to exterminate them. This isn't all that surprising; over the course of history we have exterminated many, many species we have seen as competitors. Also to note is other species of humans who had been living in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years all rapidly disappeared some thousands of years after we arrived in their environments. Us ending up being the last surviving species of human could very well be down to us being from Africa in the relatively recent past, and the other humans we came into contact with were simply not as competitive or aggressive as we were. This all could be a major factor in us being as destructive and insistent on destruction at the expense of the other guy as we are.

- Humans are actually not that intelligent. Another potential explanation could be that on a cosmic scale, humans are actually not very complex, and other intelligent civilisations look at humans a lot like how we look at chimps. We may be the cosmic chimpanzees, having mastered a few of the basics, but we're fundamentally still not very advanced, and we're very much in the "caveman" phase of civilisation on a cosmic scale. To be honest, I find this quite plausible, as life on Earth only very recently evolved high intelligence, let alone intelligence on the level of humans. In the grand scheme of things it's not that unlikely that humans are actually fairly primitive and haven't really mastered an acceptable level of intelligence to truly count as an intelligent civilisation on a galactic scale. In this scenario, we've probably gained control of hydrocarbon pits a bit too early, and we're going to end up killing ourselves like a chimp with an AK-47 would. This could explain why humanity is fundamentally still very emotional and instinctive.

2 hours ago, Lukemcd said:

Also do you think China could be a problem with them opening new coal power plants which may not be too good for our emissions

While China are by no means the good guys, don't be fooled into thinking the developing world is the problem. Fossil fuel usage is certainly still the mark of western civilisation and all of these massive fossil fuel projects that are being announced in the developing world are sponsored and egged on by western fossil fuel companies as they always have been. Not to mention, the US is still the highest-emitting country aside from China, and it's emissions are only going to skyrocket now the orange one is in charge.

This is ultimately why token measures and promises that aren't even met in the first place in the developed world are absolutely worthless: Production is simply moved to the developing world where most people aren't paying attention. It's no coincidence that emissions since 2000 have increased by 52% globally while in the developed world they have fallen by an arbitrary percentage. The increase in the developing world has far outpaced any efforts to reduce emissions in the west, because there is no real motive to actually address climate change. The owning and ruling classes don't care about climate change: They know what's going to happen and they aren't bothered because they've lived a life of luxury and they'll die happy. The reason they'll accept what's going to happen is the alternative involves them losing much of their privileged position in life and having to be treated like everyone else. They'd rather live in luxury for a few more decades and go out in flames than accept being taken down a peg or two. As I said, I won't get political, but the situation with the climate is attached to the way the world is currently working. One cannot be fixed without the other.

I hope this extremely long, rambling post was informative in some way.

Edited January 14 by Sceptilli0naire

[raz.org.rain]

2 hours ago, Sceptilli0naire said:

As early as the 1960s, the fossil fuel industry were internally acknowledging that continued use of greenhouse gases would be likely to cause significant climate change into the 21st century and beyond. In fact they even used the term "Ice age termination event", which is a misnomer as they actually refer to the termination of glacials, so they even knew about the positive feedback cycles as far back as then.

The ice age termination event hypothesis is a particularly scary one for two reasons: observations of atmospheric methane suggest we've been in one for almost 20 years already (Nisbet et al.), and as you say an ice age termination event refers to a termination of glacial maximum conditions and a progression to interglacial conditions. But we're already in an interglacial, so a termination of glacial dynamics at this point is a full icehouse termination. A lot of people won't understand that even in context, but the current icehouse epoch has been ongoing for +30 million years. Not only can it be terminated by geologically abrupt increases in greenhouse gases, but every metric suggests we're heading for that scenario at ten times the pace it took for the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum to achieve a similar dynamic change. I'm not convinced that as a species we can properly contextualise just how absurdly anomalous and delicate permanent glaciations and stable icehouse epochs are in earth's geological record. True cold icehouse states such as the one we're used to probably account for less than 10% of earth's entire geological history. We got absurdly lucky that the present late Cenozoic icehouse was stable and cold enough to allow for our evolution. 

[Sceptilli0naire]

 raz.org.rain Indeed, as I laid out in my post above, humans are just not wired for comprehending timescales or world-altering geographic changes.

35 minutes ago, raz.org.rain said:

True cold icehouse states such as the one we're used to probably account for less than 10% of earth's entire geological history. We got absurdly lucky that the present late Cenozoic icehouse was stable and cold enough to allow for our evolution. 

And herein lies the major problem. Were we already living in a greenhouse period, an increase of a few further degrees would likely not be catastrophic, as the globe would already be very warm and tropical. It definitely still wouldn't be great, and there would be an extinction, but unless temperatures were already high and there was a dramatic increase in temps, say over 6°C, I don't see such a warming in a stable greenhouse world causing an outright mass extinction event. Some taxa would inevitably be lost at higher latitudes as more subtropical and temperate land transitioned to a more tropical state, but most of the world in such a period is already tropical or subtropical. Even during the height of the Eemian, tropical rainforests extended as far north as southern Germany and hippos inhabited the Thames. Imagine what the climate becomes at an increase of 5°C, which is quite likely the end result of anthropogenic warming.

But as we're in an icehouse period, a warming of even just a few degrees in a very geologically abrupt amount of time has huge impacts on the ice sheets of the world and very rapidly changes climates from temperate to subtropical or tropical. As you point out, what we call "temperate" climates don't usually exist during greenhouse periods, or at least they are restricted to the poles. This is how quickly the climate changes during icehouse periods. The level of abrupt change that will occur from the increases likely to be seen over the next couple of centuries will be nothing short of devastating for the ecosystem.

Currently we also have the major problem of the global food web being extremely interdependent. The vast majority of extant plant species are angiosperms, and many of these plants use pollinators to reproduce. Yet more of them use animals to spread their seeds. Such a beautifully interdependent system can be beneficial in the short term, and interdependent systems emerging could even be the mechanism by which giant allosauroids, tyrannosaurids and humans (and all of their prey items) evolve in the first place. However in the mid- to long-term they become highly vulnerable to sudden ecological upheavals. If even one of these components is disrupted then the entire food web is upended overnight as a massive die-off occurs. This would lend some credibility to the idea that another mass extinction is due anyway and would've happened in the next few tens of millions of years even without humans, but without our activity there is also a chance that it wouldn't have escalated to a mass extinction and instead there would simply be a turnover of species and a reversion to something less interdependent.

To bring this all together, right now with Earth's ecosystem being so vulnerable, between us endlessly burning pits of hydrocarbon, triggering positive feedback loops (If I remember correctly, the massive Canadian wildfires in 2023 and 2024 both released more carbon into the atmosphere than all but the most polluting few countries on Earth and the Amazon carbon sink has now completely failed) and manually destroying every last environment on Earth, we are going to trigger a mass extinction at least as bad as the K-Pg, if not even worse. Were it to surpass the K-Pg in severity, the "Neogene-Anthropogene" mass extinction would be the third worst on record, behind just the Capitanian and P-T exinctions.

Edited January 14 by Sceptilli0naire

[richie3846]

 Sceptilli0naire

'I won't get political, but the situation with the climate is attached to the way the world is currently working. One cannot be fixed without the other.'

In a broader sense, humanity is unlikely to be 'fixed', therefore rendering it impossible to do something significant to reduce our impact on the planet. Things started to go wrong for humans when we started living in villages and towns which grew larger than the tribe we're adapted for. Sadly, it seems that the human brain hasn't adapted or changed much since leaving tribal life, and therein lies the problem which underpins this entire discussion. 

[currents]

10 hours ago, Sceptilli0naire said:

I try to remain as calm as possible in discussion of this nature. I don't think I have been particularly aggressive here, and if I come off that way that isn't my intention, unless you are a total lost cause and not interested in learning anything.

For the most part I think you explain your points clearly and without aggression, but quotes like the below can definitely come across aggressive and are most-definitely misdirected.

16 hours ago, Sceptilli0naire said:

And the pro-extinctionists such as yourself have won said debate with money, propaganda and grifting. I will now observe catastrophic ecological failure and the start of a K-Pg level event in my lifetime, which will undoubtebly lead to the extinction of humanity too, and nothing can be done about it at this stage without drastic, violent action that very few people seem to be willing to take. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Pat yourself on the back.

No (or at least very few) deniers are actually pro-extinctionist, and you're well aware of that. It's in our nature to survive. Denial for the most part stems from the usual bullsheet associated with wildly-out-of-control capitalism, i.e. propaganda fed by powerful entities who serve their own interests. Individuals are pawns.

In light of this, is labelling deniers pro-extinctionist helping the cause, or is it more likely to whip up conflict? And who does that conflict serve best? This particular community is relatively peaceful, but rapid polarisation is rife on the cesspits elsewhere. Denier viewpoints become reinforced and this distracts attention away from the problem, thus playing into the hands of the propagandists. Anger and frustration is best directed towards powerful entities and not pawns.

Hope that makes sense.

[Sceptilli0naire]

 richie3846 Unfortunately I've come to think that you're right.

We've been destroying things even before we started living in villages. The migration and activity of humans in Europe has been suggested to have had a serious impact upon the ecology of the region even in early Holocene times. Over in the Americas we hunted megafauna and at least seriously contributed to their extinction, before the last glacial period had even ended, and it's thought the loss of megafauna across much of the world has drastically reshaped the landscape and the climate itself.

Ultimately humans are just way too competitive for their own good, and even if we were to do what was required to stop a mass extinction now, given another few hundred years I'm not sure we wouldn't just do the same all over again with something else. As you mention the habitat destruction alone is a major cause of extinction and at current rates it's not sustainable hundreds of years into the future.

Nobody likes talking about it but ultimately the human population very likely has to significantly drop for us to reach a new equilibrium that could last for millennia into the future. Of course if everything was perfect then there is enough land in the world to sustain tens of billions of people, but sadly life is far from perfect and not only will there never be the international cooperation necessary to sustain this many people, farming practices degrade land over time and we would eventually face a situation where a large percentage of the world's arable land is becoming useless.

This is of course already happening and will be significantly accelerated by climate change damaging every environment on Earth. Eventually it'll become a leading factor in loss of arable land. With that the human population will rapidly go kaput as famines and their associated complications break out. Once the pollinator die-off hits the party is well and truly over and even if humanity did somehow survive, we would just never get back to anything beyond the stone age with the practice of agriculture being absolutely redundant.

As an aside, arable land will NOT increase as Siberia, Canada etc. warm up and permafrost melts; this land has been largely abiotic and under ice for millennia and is completely devoid of nutrients. It would not be remotely useful land for agriculture. This is a fallacy that deniers use as a get out of jail card.

20 minutes ago, currents said:

No (or at least very few) deniers are actually pro-extinctionist, and you're well aware of that.

Oh I'm not so sure of that. I've met quite a few deniers in my time who are well aware that climate change is real and serious, but they just want to watch the chaos unfold. David Frost is one such cynical denier. For whatever reason they are so miserable that they'd rather see the world burn and people suffer. It's either that or they simply don't care, are well aware of what's going to happen but just want to live a life of luxury and die happy in their ignorance. Wealth inherently makes you ignorant, and generational wealth just squares the effect.

28 minutes ago, currents said:

In light of this, is labelling deniers pro-extinctionist helping the cause, or is it more likely to whip up conflict? And who does that conflict serve best?

I frankly don't care anymore, because denying climate change is not a rational position to have. Most deniers will never realise the error of their ways for the same reason most Trumpers/MAGAs won't: You can't reason yourself out of something you didn't reason yourself into. Nobody denies climate change because they genuinely believe there is a significant counterargument unless they are completely uninformed. It's a basic denial of observable reality which automatically makes it a bad-faith position to have for the same reason flat Earth is - It's factually wrong.

As the end result of ignoring climate change and continuing as we are is a mass extinction that humanity won't survive, being a denier is tantamount to being pro-extinction, even if the denier doesn't acknowledge it.

29 minutes ago, currents said:

Denial for the most part stems from the usual bullsheet associated with wildly-out-of-control capitalism, i.e. propaganda fed by powerful entities who serve their own interests. Individuals are pawns.

29 minutes ago, currents said:

thus playing into the hands of the propagandists. Anger and frustration is best directed towards powerful entities and not pawns.

As you correctly point out, those in power who do nothing, or at worst actively propagate the lies and disinformation such as big oil, are the real targets. Common deniers are not worth engaging with. They should be ridiculed and derided for having such idiotic beliefs and allowing themselves to be bottoms for people who don't even care about them. It's about time as a society we saw denial of anthropogenic climate change on the same level as denial of evolution or the Earth being a globe. We're at the point where we have to accept a basic nature about humanity, and that is the loudest person is generally seen as the correct one, not the one with the most logical or factually correct argument. While scientists, politicians, online figures etc. try to remain civil, deniers, disinfo agents and the far right are free to shout with no opposition. It's time we embraced the shaved-chimp nature of humanity and started shouting louder than the deniers, far right, capitalists etc.. That's the only way anything will change.

If you're a zebra in Africa and a lion attacks you, you don't try to reason the lion out of the attack; he just wants to eat you. You fight back until you force the lion to stop attacking you. You will never reason bad-faith actors out of what they're doing. You simply shout louder than them until people stop listening to to them and listen to you instead.

[reef]

Being low lying and only 7 miles from the East coast, there's been a steep decline of cold and especially snow over the last few decades. We've gone from a 1961-1990 average of around 10 days of snowfall lying at 0900 annually to just 2.4 days on average in the last decade. Cold spells have continued to occur, but they are frequently snowless here now. The occasional marginal snow events we used to get in most years are almost extinct. It generally takes a potent event now to give us anything noteworthy. Warmer SSTs mean we frequently have rain or sleet here now when inland get plenty of snow. I can't help but feel that without that extra 1-2C increase in SSTs, we might have got snow instead. Obviously if the air source is cold enough snow will still happen, its just it becomes rarer - especially as the cold sources themselves warm up.

Considering we got -18C 850hPa air just back in 2018, it would take a lot of warming to rule out snow even here at any point. As to whether cold is "making a come back", well, it never left - its just not as cold and doesn't deliver as often any more.

We'll always get below average weather as the average shifts upwards, so we'll always have "cold spells". If you mean prolonged spells below the 1961-1990 average? That one is more tricky and getting harder to achieve. One only has to look at the CET and see how hard it is to get a month below 1961-1990 average these days.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 Sceptilli0naire Cryoraptor, is that you?

[Sceptilli0naire]

 In Absence of True Seasons Who knows?

[Methuselah]

 Sceptilli0naire

I don't think deniers are necessarily pro-extinctionists per se; but, 'couldn'tgiveasheetist' they most definitely are. . . Just so long as the money keeps flowing into their offshore bank accounts? 

Edited January 14 by Methuselah
Missing half-a-word!

[Sceptilli0naire]

 Methuselah Something along those lines.