A good thing would be to see the graph up to today - am I right that the article only shows the graph from 20 years ago and then some affirmation of the validity of that artefact? If so does anyone have a link to the picture up to 2018?
Much as I agree that fossil fuel burning is a horrendous thing that has sent us on a life-threatening trajectory, I also think this narrative is overly simplified. The fight to minimize fossil fuel would benefit from a more realistic (i.e. humble) approach IMO. Doubting if Thomas Mann will be the person to do that though.<p>To be clear, climate science has come a long way and has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that fossil fuel burning is changing our climate in ways that already is causing damage to the livelihood of millions if not billions of people, something which will accelerate in the short term and put our capacity for adaption and human compassion to a severe test, that we will probably fail miserably.<p>So the core issue is not up for debate. But there are still claims that rubs me the wrong way, for example that is that this is "a fight between science and self-interested industry". Yes, to some extent. But climate science is not a mature science like (some parts of) physics. As a science it is still struggling to explain why things like ice-ages were (are?) a recurring phenomenon.<p>The reason is that climate science is in essence a historical science. What this means: while we can tell that the climate has behaved in a certain way historically, and many times (not always) understand why, we have no way to determine the accumulated future effects of warming beyond a certain, in geological terms, fairly short horizon. It may well, through the combination of various tipping point effects, planetary, intergalactic or even hitherto unknown extra-galactic phenomenon have the exact opposite effect, as far as we know.<p>So part of the drama is in my view caused by climate science trying to establish itself as a mature science with a predictability powers comparable to sciences that can perform reproducible experiments, downplaying its own nature as a historical science. The fossil burning industry (and all the other interests tied in with them) is handed a gift in a way, since they can appeal to the natural intelligence of the average person, and get an agreement that the climate science is making hyperbolic claims.<p>We don't know everything, and it would serve the sane discussion well to delimit what we can and can not predict.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...</a>
So the history of climate change goes something like: confusion about overall sign in the 1960's, mounting evidence for warming due to CO_2 in 1970's, consensus about overall warming caused by human CO_2 emission in the eighties, and then clarifying in the details since then.<p>The fact that there still isn't mainstream discussion about how society must change, but rather eternal growth society is still the default target across the globe is depressing and gives confidence that we are going to see substantial civilisation collapse in the future.
If only the senate could have waited a couple of more days before confirming an AGW "skeptic" to head NASA [1], we could've had some really nice contrast between this essay and the current government.<p>1: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/jim-bridenstine-nasa.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/jim-bridenstine-n...</a>
We should start talking about actions that contribute to global warming in a significant/active/systemic way as crimes against humanity. That is what they are. Executives and politicians need to know that that is how we will judge them in the future.
Regarding ice on Arctic and Antarctic, the extent as we speak extremely low compared to our historical records:<p><a href="https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png" rel="nofollow">https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iq...</a><p><a href="https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iqr_timeseries.png" rel="nofollow">https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iq...</a><p>(from National Snow and Ice Data Center,
University of Colorado)
I was always confused about what people meant by 'hockey stick growth'... until I worked out they mean <i>ice</i> hockey stick growth. A normal hockey stick wouldn't be very impressive growth!