About 10,000 years ago, the world suddenly entered a period of climatic stability the likes of which modern humanity had not experienced before. But thanks to ever-increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, humanity is now bringing this period to an end.
By: Wolfgang Knorr, Senior Researcher Physical Geography and Ecosystem Sciences, Lund University. Translation: Dafna Raviv
Humanity has only recently begun to get used to a stable climate. Throughout most of history, long ice ages punctuated short warm periods. The transition between cold and heat was particularly chaotic.
Then, about 10,000 years ago, the world suddenly entered a period of climatic stability the likes of which modern humanity had not experienced before. But thanks to ever-increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, humanity is now bringing this period to an end.
This loss of stability could be catastrophic. If the corona epidemic can teach us anything about the climate crisis, it is this: our modern and connected world economy is much more vulnerable than we thought, and we must urgently make it more and more ready for the unknown. After all, a stable climate underpins much of modern culture. About half of humanity depends on steady monsoon rains for food production. Many agricultural plants need certain temperature deviations throughout the year to produce a stable crop, and heat stress can be very damaging to them. We rely on undamaged glaciers or fertile forest lands to store water for the dry season. Heavy rains and storms can wipe out the infrastructure of entire regions.
These are the types of climate impacts we know about, and which have already been studied extensively by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But the biggest risk may yet come from a climate-related mess, one we haven't anticipated.
Unbearable heat waves - year after year
In 2018, a very long heat wave and drought hit much of Western and Northern Europe, destroying much of the region's potato crop. Temperatures in Germany reached record highs in a summer that was drier and warmer than in many parts of the Mediterranean. Climate forecasts predicted the most extreme heat increases in Europe in Greece, Turkey and Ukraine, so the chances of this heat wave seemed low to impossible.
Just one year later, in 2019, Western Europe was hit by another "impossible" heat wave. In Germany, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, the previous year's record was broken twice. Even in the Netherlands, known for its cool sea breeze even in the height of summer, the temperature reached a peak of 39 degrees.
The giant fires came decades earlier
A large part of the forests in Australia are concentrated in the south-east of the country. This valuable ecosystem developed with the help of fire and is therefore expected to burn frequently. In these wildfires, typically 1-2% of the area is burned in flames.
The wildfire climate forecasts – including one I worked on myself – predicted a massive increase in wildfires in southeastern Australia. But they expected it to happen towards the end of this century. The models certainly did not expect that the huge fires that destroyed about 20% of these forests would strike so early, already in 2020.
The locust is a climate crisis
In the long term, the IPCC predicts that crops will decrease by 10% or more, but until now they have ignored the possibility of large-scale outbreaks that could wipe out the entire crop.
In late 2019 and early 2020, the Arabian Peninsula experienced much wetter weather than usual, likely due to ocean warming. These conditions allowed several waves of desert locust plague.
After this extraordinary event came another event, a storm that diverted most of this army of locusts, already numbering hundreds of billions, to East Africa. In Kenya, it became the worst outbreak in about 70 years. Then the rainy season came and the seeds were sown for the next season, now it is feared that the continued breeding of the locust will create another wave that will be much worse than the first.
Climate scientists tend to focus on slow changes with their climate predictions. But to what extent the weather becomes more chaotic is difficult to predict with climate models. We have only a very superficial understanding of how vulnerable our modern society is to climate chaos and unpredictable climate-related events.
Instead of seeing the climate problem as one that future generations will experience, we should start focusing on what might happen tomorrow, or next year. To do this, we must better understand, appreciate and acknowledge the vulnerability of modern society - and address the core of this vulnerability.
For an article in The Conversation
More of the topic in Hayadan:
Comments
Man is not particularly evil, despite the consensus among the misanthropic pagan greens. If man was a beautiful vegetarian, as their childhood dream, he would have long since become extinct, and they would not have existed to write their childish ideas. Only the meat (poultry/rodents/reptiles/fish/and mammals) preserved (in salt/wind/smoke) kept the thinking human race alive, during times of famine due to drought, locusts, and ice ages. The most important: it is likely that most of humanity would have become extinct (billions of people die of starvation) if it were not for the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, by humans, which created a greenhouse effect, which brought a huge benefit (many times more than its harm), by increasing the ability of edible plants to grow At an accelerated rate required by the population explosion, and delays the approach of the terrible periodic ice age, which will lead to a terrible famine, and many billions of dead people (and animals)!!
Eliyahu ben David:
The climate crisis is not political and it will strike us all as uneducated idiots.
7 billion are unnecessary on this ball, among them many leftists and rightists, each country and its significance to it and all of them will suffer and are suffering from the irresponsible use of man's resources given to him.
It is possible to control the climate and maintain our little globe over time (until at least we have the technology to reach a planet with suitable conditions for humans) by circulation,
electric vehicles instead of oil,
Electricity that comes from solar panels and not necessarily coal,
Natural gas, etc., there are many ways.
We are getting smarter every year, why not invest in developing new ways to create a better world?
It is true that all these proposals cost a lot, a lot, but if our world was fixed, maybe the ball would have been saved and the living conditions would be better. All because of the people with the money
And on purpose I tell people that money is all paper, wherever you tell it to go it will go.
But I don't like people who don't acknowledge the facts and say "everything is fine" "there is nothing, they are just trying to scare" you have to be stupid to say that.
After all, look around you, millions of cars that drive every day together emit a lot of toxic gas into the air, so even if you are not a scientist, you should understand that it is not good?.
Maybe there is something after all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaTdtogD0EU&feature=youtu.be
We will learn a lot of brilliance, we will attract the light of the purpose of creation that will fix the tools and everything will work out.
Human activity determines the climate. Especially when you put Mentos in a Coke bottle.
Again a cynical attempt to exploit the current crisis to promote a political and social agenda
Corona has nothing to do (including in terms of response and capabilities) to a climate crisis
Climate fluctuations have always been and will be, "really fast" transitions are very slow on a human scale and there is no ability to actually prepare or handle them
"But thanks to the increasing emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases..."
thanks Who exactly should be thanked, and why??
It would have been appropriate to write - 'because', or 'due to increasing emissions...'
But "thanks"??
Whether it's true or not
This article has nothing to do with Corona
Which is typical of clickbite cheap journalism.
The plastic industry and the disproportionate size of the population for this planet have all brought upon us the destruction that we humans bring upon ourselves. Imbalance of nature and extraction of its minerals and resources
The pace of changes in the last two hundred years, with the beginning of the industrial revolution, is frightening, in terms of the reduction of green areas, the extinction of species, a dramatic decrease in natural water sources, and more. Unfortunately, I don't see a real possibility of changing patterns of human behavior to change the situation... It's not as if they will suddenly become vegetarians, fly less or think about the environmental consequences of their actions, by the way even in Midrash Rava it is written "See how many good deeds you do, make sure you don't spoil it because there is no one to fix it..."
It's easiest to dismiss these solid facts with political, gender bias, etc... as they say the best defense is an attack
fresh
How are vegans related to the issue?
As it was said, Pro and multiply and fill the country is no longer in fashion, what needs to be done is birth control all over the world, a voice doesn't exist anymore, nothing will help and we are probably destined for slavery
Tzah, your response is indeed comprehensive, but certainly professional and scientific. especially the last sentence.
I will spare you all, the world has existed for 5780 years.
There is a book called Ha'Mafal where you will get answers, proofs and explanations for all the theories that only contradict each other.
Successfully.
This article is an example of an argument that tries to present a proof from within itself.
False, various human-like species experienced several warming periods between ice ages. They were not chaotic and seem to have been quite similar to the Holocene (current warming period).
However, to call the current warming period "comfortable"? According to what? According to the many periods of drought that have passed through our region? Maybe according to the Little Ice Age of the Roman period? Maybe the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages? Maybe it's the rapid warming at the end of the Iron Age? Or maybe the stopping of the rains which was one of the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire?
It seems that the writer not only knows nothing and a half about the history of the last 10,000 years, but he is also not very knowledgeable in deciphering the aspects of global warming and cooling.
But what's the wonder? The whole science of "global warming" is one big farce. A theory that has already failed dozens of times since the 70s and is still held up like the horns of the altar.
On the other hand, the theory that holds that the climate changes are mainly and possibly exclusively natural manages to bring much better results for explaining the climate changes in the past, for the current climate changes and even for predicting the intensity of the future change.
The apocalypse refuses to come (as is the way of false beliefs) and the researchers continue to praise the cult they founded for themselves as a miracle. What is wrong? The budgets are flowing, the publications are ticking and the media wants more and more of the prophecy that refuses to come true.
From the dawn of the earth to Japan about 4.54 billion years ago the earth went through all kinds of different climatic changes and in the history of the earth there were 2 extinctions that affected the life of the earth. The 1st extinction is called the Perm Triassic extinction in which about 90 percent of the earth's invertebrates disappeared from the world, and over 90 percent of the earth's marine organisms and about 70 percent of the terrestrial vertebrates disappeared from the world at that time. The same extinction took place in Japan about 252 million years ago. The 2nd extinction is the Cretaceous Paleogene Tertiary extinction, the same extinction took place in Japan for about 66 million years and apparently wiped out about 80 percent of the population of animals and creatures living at that time, including the dinosaurs. It allowed mammals and birds to evolve from small creatures that lived in ecological niches and fed on dinosaur eggs and small arthropods to what exists today. Today, birds are the closest creatures to dinosaurs, although there are lizards such as crocodiles and Komodo dragons that are also close to dinosaurs and even survived the extinction. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that the earth will return to being the way it once was with climatic conditions that change every few million to tens of millions and even several tens of thousands of years since it has already happened in the past, so why shouldn't it happen now as well, in my opinion, with the fact that the gases of the sun are inhibited by the greenhouse gases destroy the earth's mantle, which is the atmosphere, stay in the earth's area and cause abnormal and strange climatic conditions, so most likely there will be another global extinction that will wipe out most of the earth's population and allow other creatures to evolve from an evolutionary point of view, I call this extinction the extinction of the modern age because it calls At the time when humans are the dominant race in the world and it is developed, that time is called the time of the modern age.
As a cow breeder, I know that if I add more details to the defined breeding area and cause overcrowding, diseases and increased mortality begin, the same goes for the man who spawns himself knowing that in one ball he is limited in resources, nature simply cleans us, it's hard to blame him, man is actually a cancerous tumor on the surface of the ball ……Also the vegans by the way
Wait, wait, so what happened 12000 years ago, for example, when humanity contributed nothing and yet the climate went 'crazy'.
This is just another article - which adds nothing - about global warming. And to be honest, I'm already tired of such articles. Those who wanted to understand - understood, and those who didn't - won't understand even if they bombard him with hundreds more articles.
Climate change has happened, is happening and will happen, and it's time to stop being afraid of it. Not everything can be controlled, and when there are people who don't even control themselves - what do you want from the climate.
A populist propaganda article from a leftist propaganda website.
Locust attacks and forms appear even in the Bible. This is an article for a brainwashed flock of sheep. Even during the time of the dinosaurs it was warmer and now is the period between the ice ages
.
If the corona epidemic is an example, then the same will be prepared for climate change
When it arrives they will respond, what will happen is shooting while moving,
The reasons for this human reaction stems from several reasons, one,
The time intervals between events such as climate change, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. were larger than a human life, another reason that in the past, widespread preservation and access to information were not exactly the Internet, and that we are talking about permanent climate change. A giant that is made up of many pieces of information that in the end also needs to be interpreted and there are also debates because it is a prediction of the future relying on the interpretation of a huge puzzle of pieces of information,
In addition to this, in many of the human economic systems, their return is expected, their economic horizon is about 5 years beyond that, they do not raise a project and these economic systems have a great influence on the way that politicians will choose, their goal is to profit now, not in another 20-30 years, so that an economic society will make efforts to prevent decision making that will harm their profitability,
Into this cauldron also enters the issue of political camps, today a large part of the people who are associated with a certain camp immediately dismiss the opinion of the other
And on the other hand sometimes we also see a certain opinion even if it is well founded
On logic under what kind of defense and camping becomes a kind of religion and there is an attempt to strengthen it while connecting it
For topics that are not at all related to the original topic, which is even more profound
the lack of agreement and the ability to respond and treat long-term effects,
And there is also a hostile attitude towards science, and also a basic lack of care for nature that for some people it is seen only as a resource with biological machines to exploit,
Despite the cynicism, there is always the possibility of change in humanity due to projecting our worldviews on the past and our short lives. Human worldviews, like nature, only seem fixed to us, like economic models that are good for predicting up to the extreme points where we are always surprised anew.
Such nonsense in tomato juice. There is no connection between the corona outbreak and climate change and stability is a fiction. There was never stability. There are always fluctuations in the temperature of the world. There are periods of heat and there are periods of ice. Just a drone.