Not looking for a political argument. I need facts. I am in no way a climate change denier, but I had a conversation with someone who told me the average increase is only 2°F over the past 100 years. That doesn’t seem like a lot and would support the argument that the climate goes through waves of changes naturally over time.
I’m going to run into him tomorrow and I need some ammo to support the climate change argument. Is it the rate of change that’s increasing that makes it dangerous? Is 2° enough to cause a lot of polar ice caps to melt? I need some facts to counter his. Thanks!
Edit: spelling
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Think of most climate events as a stock and flow. The amount of ice in the arctic is the result of a bunch of water freezing every winter and a bunch thawing every summer.
If there are a few more days with the weather above freezing and fewer with the temperature lower, the ice will start melting.
A few more days with warmer ocean temperatures each year means more chances for storms and more severe storms.
I mean, to put it bluntly, when glaciers covered most of the Earth the average temperature was only about 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than today.
So, “average temperature of the entire planet” is *very* different from the ambient temperature you’re feeling on any given day. Heat is energy, and if the *average* temperature of the Earth goes up by 2° F, that’s an *enormous* amount of energy added to the Earth’s atmosphere. In addition to that, the really concerning thing is, like you mentioned, the rate at which that increase is happening, because it bodes very poorly for the future if it keeps going. 100 years is a drop of water in a lake compared to how long these temperature fluctuations usually take. I would recommend taking a look at [this classic xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1732/) to get a sense of just how quickly this warming is happening
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It takes energy to heat a cup of coffee by 1°C
It takes twice as much energy to heat two cups of coffee by 1°C
It takes way more energy to heat a bath by 1°C
To heat THE WORLD by 1°C? That takes an unthinkable amount of energy. All that energy, trapped in the sky.
Considering that everything the sky likes to do with energy can be destructive, we should be mindful about the energy we are giving it.
Now that we’ve given it 1°C worth of energy, will we give it that much energy a second or third time? It’s probably not wise to heat it by 3°C (which is currently the path that we are on).
It would not be the end of the world, but it would entail the sky doing more stuff. Stronger winds, more intense storms, hotter summers. Anything that you’ve know the sky to do, it uses energy to do that. More energy, more doing.
> the average increase is only 2°F over the past 100 years. That doesn’t seem like a lot
Look at the effect of such a temperature change in the human body. Normal human body temperature is 98.6°F = 37°C. Increasing this by 2°F makes the body temperature 100.6°F = 38.1°C, and you know anyone with a temperature like that is considered sick. Ask that other person how he’d feel if his body temperature was 101°F for several weeks, or even permanently. I hope this makes him appreciate that a long-term change of 2°F is very consequential.
You know how sometimes the air temp gets below freezing, but there’s no snow because there not enough moisture in the air in the form of clouds?
If you warm the surface of the oceans two more degrees, there is much more moisture up in the air streams.
It may not come down where it used to come down. It changes patterns, and the extra moisture might cause the rain to form sooner, instead of reaching up into the mountains before it can form rain/snow.
Think of snow as “time released rain”. Its vital for river formation and irrigation. If the rivers only flowed water when it rained in the mountains, the rivers would have less water on any given day, and they would also flow less water over time.
Places that used to regularly get rain will now get less rain. Other places that normally got a little rain occasionally will get rain more often, and heavy rainstorms.
Moisture in the air drives many weather phenomenon. Hurricanes have been around forever, but more moisture means any hurricane that forms will be bigger.
Two degrees *average temperature* change is a scientifically useful measure, but it’s not a very effective way of advertising the problem, because most people think of two degrees as trivial: it doesn’t really feel very different if it’s 22°C versus 20°C out (or if it’s 72°F versus 70°F). But aside from that 2-degree shift in the *average* temperature, the hots are getting hotter and the colds are getting colder (and the wets are getting wetter and the dries are getting drier). Consider: 2 is the average of 1 and 3. It is also the average of 4 and 0. It is also the average of 20 and -16. It is also the average of 40 and -36. And of 80 and -76.
Also, it’s my understanding that different areas of the Earth have different amounts of warming. So while 2 degrees F might be the global average, I read that the arctic has warmed 5.5 degrees F. That’s enough to see major ice melt, etc.
What most people fail to consider is the thermal storage capacity of water. It is the ideal medium for storing heat. It takes 4 times as much heat to warm it up than concrete. That means it’s very slow to increase in temperature, and very slow to cool down. What is most of the earth covered in? Water.
Why do coastal areas have milder temperatures than inland? Because water maintains the temperature stopping rapid changes. It takes a long time to warm up the oceans, but once we do, it’s doing to take a long time to cool them off.
2° might not seem like a lot, but when it’s in the volume of the ocean, that’s a lot of stored energy. That causes expansion of the water and melting of the ice. It takes a lot of energy just to melt ice into water. Until it’s all melted, there isn’t much temperature change. Once the ice caps are melted, the ocean temperature can rise rapidly.
There are a lot of economic reasons to deny climate change. The fact the oceans are buffering any noticeable temperature increase makes it difficult to argue. But the increasing ocean temperatures are already showing signs of change with increased hurricanes and tropical storms. The temperature extremes of climate change are fueled by subtle changes in ocean temperatures.
2° is a small increase but it’s taken an extreme amount of energy to get us there. And it’s going to accelerate.
seems no one mentioned it so here’s a little something for perspective:
there’s roughly 140 million square miles (362 million square km) of water surface area on the earth. that’s 71% of the total surface area of the earth putting water into the atmosphere, and eventually condensing and raining down.
with that much surface area, even a very very small change in average global temperature, up or down, can drastically affect the amount of moisture that gets into the air, and the amount that does or doesn’t come back down. a very small increase means longer lasting, more intense droughts on some areas, and massive storms, flooding, and higher water levels in other areas.
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