I'd be quite happy with lower temperatures. Winter is more enjoyable with proper powder snow, and summer wouldn't make me stay inside 24/7 if it didn't cause me to sweat all fucking day.
On that note, I've read about an upcoming mini ice age a few times. Is there any recent update on that that confirms or rejects it?
On that note, I've read about an upcoming mini ice age a few times. Is there any recent update on that that confirms or rejects it?
Vast question.
- climate is whether over 30 years. So it's too soon to tell.
- There was a global warming during the last 100 years of about 0.1°C/10years
- No more warming since 1998, once you remove El Nino/LaNina effects (which cancel each other in time)
- Sun is probably having a period of low activity, that doesn't change much the energy it sends to us, but less activity (= less spots) means less magnetic field, means more cosmic rays reaching our atmosphere, meaning more seeded clouds, thus more albedo and then cold coming in... but this is still a theory
- look here for the latest temps : https://moyhu.blogspot.fr/p/latest-ice-and-temperature-data.html#NCAR
- best site ever for these questions : https://wattsupwiththat.com/
- last but not least : cold kills; warm weather makes our life easier.
Also also keeping in mind that it's the left that are going on about the weather.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if industrialization had an impact on global weather patterns. In chaotic system even the tiniest perturbation can trigger massive macroscopical changes.
However, I'm not quite convinced yet about us having any significant impact either for two reasons. Namely, I haven't studied the papers so I can't possibly know if there are any systematic errors, and I see too much bullshit going on in the media to not be heavily sceptical. I do lean towards human emissions of CO2 causing changes in climate, mostly because I've worked with people who study precisely that, but even if that turned out true I wouldn't be all that worried about it. Capitalism will come to the rescue and figure out a way to keep us nice and cozy regardless of weather conditions. With nuclear fusion pretty much around the corner energy won't be a concern and with that sorted out the overall state of the planet should be irrelevant. Things might change drastically (e.g. underground, on- and/or underwater or shielded off cities with indoor farming), but I don't see humans disappearing unless we nuke ourselves to hell or get wiped out by some rogue asteroid.
But more importantly, co2 is not a pollutant. On the contrary, it's plant food. Which is food for everything else. The more co2, the more oxygen, the more life. It might just be a good thing.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with population models, but there could very well be a point beyond which everything tips and triggers a reaction in the opposite direction.
E.g. more CO2 = more life, then at some point there's too much CO2 = less life, be it due to primary (an upper limit on how much can be held or used) or due to side effects (effects of increased CO2 on other parts of the ecosystem) of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
Humans can easily die from drinking too much water at once, so "more oxygen" might not be an unequivocally good thing either (too much of it would eventually increase the pressure which can be fatal even without any other effects on the ecosystem).
If that was not the case however, and oxygen increased indefinitely, pressure would increase, again due to spatial limitations. That would increase the partial pressure of oxygen, which can lead to oxygen poisoning and by extension to death.
Of course there's still fucktons of space to go around on earth, but there's definitely a limit beyond which things could turn bad very quickly. And that's just the most apparent potential consequences that too much CO2 or O2 could have. Regardless of whether or not these are accurate and what the quantitative thresholds would look like, there are a lot more intricate effects to take into account in a dynamic system that is as closely interlinked as life on earth.
We know that oil and coal are essentially condensed co2. We also know that animals used to be way the fuck bigger, not just dinosaurs but also mammals and insects. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that not only was there more co2 in the past, but also more oxygen, not just because co2 turns into oxygen but also because higher levels of oxygen are likely to allow for larger animals, as muscles require oxygen to function.
So it seems that the atmosphere was denser in the past. And as co2 is deposited in the underground, it must become less dense over time, which means less able to support life.
So what is better? That we get less oxygen by way of less plants due to less co2, or that we get more?