the average temperature increase in the last 100 years is only 2°F. How can such a small amount be impactful?

Question

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

In: 597

Answer 1

That’s the problem with averages, they don’t tell you what extremes were evened out. The average net worth of an adult in the US is over $700.000. But if you move towards the middle person by person, remove the richest and the poorest, remove the next richest and poorest until you get right to the person in the middle where half the population have more and half have less, that “median” net worth is $120.000

Warming up a whole planet by an average of 2°F is impressive enough, it’s pretty big after all. But it says nothing about how that works out locally. In some areas it can be colder some times of the year, in others a LOT warmer than it ever was. Siberia was 8°F warmer in 2020, and Taymyr island 14°F. It’s never been so hot there, ever. Black heats up more than white. Siberia neatly covered in snow reflects sunlight, but the soil beneath is dark. So nothing seems to happen for a while, but once the snow is melted, the ground heats up very quickly.

Those fast local changes affect the weather much more than the global climate as a whole. We get an almost normal average of rain per year here, just that it now comes down as torrential rainstorms with fast floods, and then nothing again for the next three months. That’s just not the same as calm rain over several days every month.
Just because it’s 2°F hotter large rivers shouldn’t simply evaporate. But the extremes added into this average got more extreme, which already causes a lot of damage. We don’t have to wait and see what the horror scenarios of 2050 might be like. People die already.