Quote:
Originally Posted by d2_e4
Without looking at the data and taking your numbers as given, surely an acceleration of anything above 0mm/year squared would imply that there is in fact an acceleration, thereby voiding NewOldGuy's point? Am I missing something here?
I didn't say zero, and my original comment of "not much at all" meant not much. I then gave you the study that shows we expect the actual rate (not the acceleration) to change from the current 3mm/year to about 11mm/year in 100 years. 11 mm is about the width of your pinky finger or less. Then I said we'll adapt.
But there is also no reason to think this increase is boundless and will go in that direction for hundreds of years. We'll lose some coastline (and probably gain some in other places), but that happened in our parent's lifetimes, and in our grandparent's lifetimes. Coastlines change. Climate changes. Old maps are different than today. Older ones are different from those.
Put this together with the real facts on extreme weather, which are that those events are decreasing in recent years (yeah they are variable too), and you see why I think the problem is overblown. There's been talk about how it's politicized. It is, and being exaggerated to meet policy goals. The former head of the IPCC said they were not a science organization, but were a political organization. A moment of honesty.
Someone made what I thought was an excellent point earlier, which was that even if the variability in climate is not new and has always fluctuated (it has) it could still be a useful goal to try to learn to control it. Perhaps, but I don't think mankind will be capable of it for a long long time. Climate is a chaotic system that we truly don't understand at all. We don't even know for sure if increases in atmospheric C02 are the direct cause of the slight warming we've had. Studies show a very weak correlation or none, depending on who you listen to and what their politics are. Sure that theory makes sense on paper and the science is logical, but we can't even prove it happens. Much of the record shows reverse correlation, so there are other factors at work that we can't comprehend.
Last edited by NewOldGuy; 02-01-2019 at 08:31 AM.
Reason: elaboration