Since the 1960s each decade has been hotter than the last, exactly as predicted by many climate models. But there has been some debate in the science community about whether or not this rate of warming is accelerating, particularly in light of last year’s climate chaos.

A few months ago former NASA climatologist James Hansen, who published one of the main early papers warning the world about global warming, authored a study suggesting the rate of warming has jumped by 50 percent since 2010.

This was met with skepticism from colleagues, despite a degree of acceleration being predicted in some climate models.

“[Hansen’s study is] not implausible but not particularly well supported by the literature,” Berkeley climate scientist Zeke Hausfather told the Associated Press.

Now, a new study led by environmental scientist Audrey Minière from Paul Sabatier University in France has found signs of accelerating heating in ocean temperatures too.

  • Quokka
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    10 months ago

    People are going to have to start getting extremely radical if they want to see a change, because our institutions have failed us and show no sign of genuine effort to change.

    And I don’t mean gluing your hands to a road nonsense.

    • @CosmoNova
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      2110 months ago

      Anyone acting even remotely drastic gets quickly thrown into prison in a growing number of world‘s free democracies. We‘re in big trouble.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      what do you mean?

      edit: to be clear I totally agree, I just wish I had some clear ideas going forward

  • Pons_Aelius
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    3610 months ago

    Welcome to the age of positive feedback. The ride will not be fun but it will be spectular.

    Sadly children born in the last decaded will look on the 2020s as the good old days and they will be right.

    This quote, the origional souce of which is hard to find, is sadly relevant.

    When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.

  • @[email protected]
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    710 months ago

    I find the article’s quoting of Hausfather deceptive, particularly the part about not being well supported by the literature. I don’t think Hausfather thinks Hansen is wrong at all. I think he wants more data confirming Hansen’s findings. I read a lot of climate literature, and I have not seen any data that contradicts Hansen. If anything, 2023 seems like an even more rapid acceleration over what has been previously observed. This is the chart that scares the crap out of me:

    https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

    It takes an incomprehensible large amount of energy to heat the ocean and in 2023 the amount of heat it is storing jumped to an entirely new level. I think Hansen has to be correct for that to have happened.