Global warming: Are we doomed? A poll.

[The Grand Nudger]

Like, what do you mean the idea of a family farm is a myth? I read the article. I would call it more of a fossil than a myth.

In that they aren't (and probably never were) what we thought they were, or hoped them to be.  An american analog for the myth of king arthur and the reality of feudal conflict.  All by itself that's an interesting take on the small family farm.  Those unrepresentative or outdated things we think, things I would attach to the myth of agriculture, end up informing our policy and advocacy decisions, and we can see that in the outcomes.  

We see the myth informing where our money goes.  That's a problem for climate action (at least in this sector) in the short term. It's even a problem for how we collect the data that informs us. The small family farm is a testbed. We try things out with private partners and take the health of those partners and the relative health of thier subset of industry as telling us which programs are working and which ones aren't - what's appropriate, and what isn't. That's why there are so many capital intensive programs out there right now, climate facing. The adopter is assumed to be representative of a demographic which may not be representative of the demographics of successful sustainable agriculture. We chase solutions that other people can't buy into. Smaller and more fiscally conservative operations get less focus, less advocacy, fewer extension agents, smaller grants.

[Alan V]

People however tend to be pretty predictable.

It's my suspicion that most of our behaviour is the result of habit, with little if any significant thought. I've long suspected that free will is largely an illusion, but I have no idea to what degree.

So in other words, since people could never have adopted personal computers and smart phones, they will never adopt electric cars and wind energy?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

People however tend to be pretty predictable.

It's my suspicion that most of our behaviour is the result of habit, with little if any significant thought. I've long suspected that free will is largely an illusion, but I have no idea to what degree.

So in other words, since people could never have adopted personal computers and smart phones, they will never adopt electric cars and wind energy?

That's not what I said, nor is that implied.   My comment is about people as individuals, not as a species.

[Rahn127]

My question would be, how will humans survive 180 F (82.2 C) during the summer ?

It's going to get that hot eventually. Maybe 200 years from now and that's going to probably push people underground.

I think that's the main problem with global warming.
We'll all die before it has any real world effect on us.

[Jehanne]

My question would be, how will humans survive 180 F (82.2 C) during the summer ?

It's going to get that hot eventually. Maybe 200 years from now and that's going to probably push people underground.

I think that's the main problem with global warming.
We'll all die before it has any real world effect on us.

You can look in your water heater manual for this one; 150 degrees F has second degree burns in 0.5 seconds.

[Anomalocaris]

My question would be, how will humans survive 180 F (82.2 C) during the summer ?

It's going to get that hot eventually. Maybe 200 years from now and that's going to probably push people underground.

I think that's the main problem with global warming.
We'll all die before it has any real world effect on us.

Eventually, most definitely.    But not 200 years from now.    Possibly 200 million years from now, more like one or two billion years from now.  You are being quite extreme in alarmism.   Such exaggeration and shrillness does not lend credibility to actual good science.

Such a rise will not be possible with currently active means of climate change.   We are currently still in a period that is the amongst the coolest the earth has seen in over half a billion years.   Even the most powerful, once in half billion years, temperature increasing events found in geological record can’t get us more than a fraction there.  It requires the combination of gradual, long term on astronomical time scale, increase in solar radiance, and feed back green house effect resulting from ocean boiling off and filling the atmosphere with water vapor.

Rest assured, before summer temperature gets to 82C over significant areas of the global, unstoppable  runaway greenhouse effect resulting from ocean boil off will have been set irresistibly into motion, and the earth will inexorably turn itself into Venus.

[Brian37]

My question would be, how will humans survive 180 F (82.2 C) during the summer ?

It's going to get that hot eventually. Maybe 200 years from now and that's going to probably push people underground.

I think that's the main problem with global warming.
We'll all die before it has any real world effect on us.

Eventually, most definitely.    But not 200 years from now.    Possibly 200 million years from now, more like one or two billion years from now.  You are being quite extreme in alarmism.   Such shrillness does not lend credibility to actually good science.

Such a rise will not be possible with currently active means of climate change.   Even the most powerful, once in half billion years, temperature change events found in geological record,  can’t get us more than a fraction there.  It requires the combination of gradual, long term on astronomical time scale, increase in solar radiance, and feed back green house effect resulting from ocean boiling off and filling the atmosphere with water vapor.

Between humans, and other forms of life, considering the 5 mass extinction events in earth's 4 billion years, for humans to stupidly think we can survive forever is absurd. All we can do in cosmic time, is try to extend our ride. But even on a daily individual level, the individual human still has to ultimately face their own mortality.

[Jehanne]

My question would be, how will humans survive 180 F (82.2 C) during the summer ?

It's going to get that hot eventually. Maybe 200 years from now and that's going to probably push people underground.

I think that's the main problem with global warming.
We'll all die before it has any real world effect on us.

Eventually, most definitely.    But not 200 years from now.    Possibly 200 million years from now, more like one or two billion years from now.  You are being quite extreme in alarmism.   Such exaggeration and shrillness does not lend credibility to actual good science.

Such a rise will not be possible with currently active means of climate change.   We are currently still in a period that is the amongst the coolest the earth has seen in over half a billion years.   Even the most powerful, once in half billion years, temperature increasing events found in geological record can’t get us more than a fraction there.  It requires the combination of gradual, long term on astronomical time scale, increase in solar radiance, and feed back green house effect resulting from ocean boiling off and filling the atmosphere with water vapor.

Rest assured, before summer temperature gets to 82C over significant areas of the global, unstoppable  runaway greenhouse effect resulting from ocean boil off will have been set irresistibly into motion, and the earth will inexorably turn itself into Venus.

You only need 6 hours on a really bad day to kill the majority of lifeforms in a given area, save the extremophiles. One has the mean global temperature predictions from a 560 ppm CO2 concentration, but then again, there's the variance, which is intrinsically much more difficult to model and quantify.

[Anomalocaris]

Actually, no. It is unlikely an area will ever experience 6 house of 82C in any summer without the area having first experienced many 80C, or 78C hours before. Maximal high does not tend to rise significantly from 98 or 95th percentile high. The gist is where such an temperature excursion could ever happen, the biosphere there would be adopted already unusually high temperature. To adapt to such excursions into 78, 80 or 82 degrees, the biosphere needn’t actually consist of creatures able to survive direct exposure to 80 degree temperatures. Behavior adaption during lesser temperature excursions would allow creatures to survive by finding cool spots, such as shaded areas, or burrows, to survive during such excursions.

[Jehanne]

I was thinking more of 60C, which is slightly above the maximum high ever recorded. Four or five years ago the average temperatures across the US were just under a 0.5 C increase during one summer over the long term value; thousands of individuals here died. I remember that summer well, as I got sick.