> This summer is what a 1.2°C-heated planet looks like. But in the future this won’t seem so bad — compared to the 1.5°C-heated planet. If we get to 2°C …
A friend said something to me a while ago that I cannot get out of my head when people are complaining about a heat wave again: Think not so much that this summer is one of the hottest in the last, but one of the coolest in the next hundred years.
I am tempted to replace 100 by 650 to match the article, or just talk about "the past" and "the future". But a hundred years makes it more tangible for me. My late grandparents were born just a little over 100 years ago, and my youngest niece and nephew may live to see the next 100 years.
This is good thinking. My children will be the fourth generation living in the same basic area. My dad went to school with ice on the ground and rare but occasional snow. I saw occasional ice, and only once a hint of snow. My daughter will hope to see some rain, and likely never see any ice in her hometown.
One summer in around 2010, I drove up the pass to see the glacier in Switzerland that melts to become the Rhone river. The viewing spot is a stunning location on a bend in the road, and you can see both down the valley and up the glacier. When I got there, it looked like a frozen waterfall, ice "falling" over the side.
You could also see that the trees in the valley were young. Inside the tourist centre, there were drawings of how the place looked 100 years earlier. Back then the glacier filled the whole valley.
There was also a carved-out ice cave, in the solid part of the glacier visible from the tourist centre.
Each year I'd drive back to the glacier, and each year it would be smaller. The overhang at the cliff disappeared, and the ice cave was carved further and further up.
In the Bay Area in California. I have not seen ice on the ground here for maybe 15 years, but it used to be in January you would see some ice on the edges of puddles in the morning.
650 years shows climate change deniers that this is not a natural cycle but human induced. That's why I'd like to see the 650y data analyzed just like the 1950-present instead of being thrown at the bottom of the article.
Look at december, as an example. During the roughly 50 year period from 1875-1926, 25 times the average temperature was <= 5.0 degrees. The last time that happened was in 1956, which is some 65 years ago.
I’d say that is more than ”no change at all”.
Edit: I looked at february. Seven times in the same period (1875-1926) the average temperature was >= 5. The last time it wasn’t? 1988, 33 years ago.
Without even plotting the data, it seems to be very obvious to me. Starting out at 13-14 degrees annually at the beginning of the recording, it is now pretty solidly 16-17 degrees. The last year under 16 was 1996. If that isn't a dramatic change, I don't know what is.
So this data actually pretty much exactly matches the French data.
Cities have like +2°C than the countryside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island Tokyo grow a lot between 1876 and 2022, so I really expect to see a change in the average temperature there.
While climate changes have always existed, there are now at least 2 important differences, which will make this warming much more dangerous for the terrestrial plants and non-human animals.
One difference is that the rate of warming is very high now, probably much higher than ever before. At least where I live, in Europe, the climate has changed dramatically in less than 1 human lifetime and now it is extremely different from how it was when I was young.
The second difference is that now all larger wild animals and wild plants will no longer be able to react to climate like they did before, when they migrated towards the south or towards the north, depending on the climate evolution.
Now the terrestrial part of the Earth is mostly occupied by humans, crops and domestic animals, while the remaining wild plants and animals are mainly in "islands" scattered over the lands. This will make impossible a gradual retreat of the wildlife towards some more appropriate climate and they cannot make plans like humans, e.g. that they should travel 100 km through some inhospitable land, because at the end there would be a suitable biotope.
Of course, among the terrestrial wildlife, the best chances for surviving a climate change will be for those who can reach far distances through the air, over the man-made obstacles, e.g. plants with airborne seeds, birds, bats, insects, spiders and other very small living beings that can be carried by the wind, or by birds or insects.
In any case, it is pretty certain that this warming will be much more destructive for the wildlife than any other before.
whose conclusions are that, by mass, the humans alone are many times more than all the wild terrestrial vertebrates together, while obviously the domesticated animals exceed a few times the humans, both in number and mass.
Of course the number and mass of animals are only partially correlated with the area occupied by them, because the larger some wild animals are, the less their surface density is, and except for animals as small as rodents or small birds their surface density is much less than that of humans in cities.
There are a few countries with a relatively low density of population, e.g. most of North America, Russia, Australia, the northern European countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway).
I am not familiar with the land status in these countries, but these are the only places on Earth where there is a chance for some areas occupied by wildlife to form a connected mesh, allowing slow migration, but even that must be sectioned by many roads and fences that may discourage the migration of animals from the places that they have inhabited from birth.
Other low human density areas on Earth, i.e. the tropical forests and the deserts, do not count, as they will not be destinations for animals or plants seeking lower temperatures. Of the other areas with low human density, only in the high mountains there would be possible migrations, when the animals and plants adapted to high altitudes and lower temperatures could die and be replaced by animals and plants coming from lower altitudes. Except that in many countries most of the wildlife is already in the mountains, so there might be very few wild animals and plants left at lower altitude, ready to replace the former inhabitants from high altitudes, which will never have any way out.
On the other hand I am more familiar with the status in Western and Eastern Europe and in some parts of Asia, where I have traveled frequently through several countries.
Here, it is enough to fly a plane over several European countries in a sunny day, and you will see only agricultural land, villages and cities, with only isolated and scattered remains of forests, lakes or uncultured land, or isolated parts of mountains that remain wild.
There already is a great difference between how some places were when I was young and I traveled to them and how they are now. Several decades ago, there were relatively large connected wild areas in some mountains, but meanwhile a lot of roads have fragmented the mountains, owners have built fences around land parcels, some forests have been cut and so on, so where there was a larger wild area now there are many disconnected smaller wild areas.
That doesn't mean conditions will be to our liking under those regimes. We built cities along coasts assuming a certain mean sea level. We built farms assuming certain weather patterns.
If we cause large changes to these patterns in a relatively short period of time that's bad. The long-term trends you are talking about happened very slowly - slowly enough in theory a city could move back from the shoreline without anyone noticing it was happening. Slowly enough that species can migrate or adapt to them - slow enough natural selection can produce individuals more heat or cold adapted.
Climate change isn't going to cause humans to go extinct or anything like that. But it is going to have large and sometimes unpredictable effects, most of which are not useful or helpful to us. Many of which are actively detrimental.
Since the oil/coal/natgas will eventually run out anyway and the world so depends on them that gives leverage to people who really really want to hurt us: we might as well just deal with it and move away from burning things as much as possible.
> There were millions of years without ice caps even
In case anyone was curious, this is a significant understatement. It is currently believed that the Earth had no ice caps for its first 2 billion years, before the Huronian glaciation, and then again no ice caps for another ~1.5 billion years.
Why bother? There weren't humans millions of years ago to record climate data or grape picking dates. Writing is 5500 years old. Climate change could have ended the Roman Empire. In wide terms we already know what will happen because it happened before.
At the end of a glacial period the temperature changes rapidly e.g. it took 100 years for the land ice to retreat from the Eifel range in Germany (at 50°N) to above Oslo in Norway (at 62°N), a distance of 1200 km at the end of the younger Dryas some 12.000 years ago:
This just seems off. We always had heat waves. A 1.2C difference in temperature, while a big deal on a global scale, is not noticeable to anyone not keeping meticulous records. A 2C warmed planet will be .8C hotter in the summer.
That's the ecological fallacy, or mereological fallacy more broadly.
What's being described with global mean temperature is not the temperature of any region, weather event, etc. A 2C warming can be a +10C in one region and a -5C in another.
The magnitude global mean temperature rise does not imply anything in particular about "summers" or anything of the kind.
Neat. The thing is that people selected for different things in grape harvests over different eras. The style of wine for Bordeaux "Claret" back in the 17th century for example was a very light ruby coloured wine. Now the typical Bordeaux is a very dark and extracted product. And consumers in general are often seeking out higher alcohol "hotter" wines, partially out of the influence of new world wines.
So there could be more compounding factors in grape picking dates. Though in general seeking out a darker and higher Brix product would mean later picking dates, not earlier.
But grape varieties planted have also changed somewhat overtime, too. Not so much in Burgundy where this article is talking about, though, so TFA's Beaune is actually a good choice as a point to compare.
I imagine viticulture techniques have changed too. France is surely more stable than many places, they place huge value on traditional techniques, but fertilizer, trellis technique, yields could all evolve.
Not that this disproves the data, or global warming, but climate isn't the only thing changing.
The color is due to the amount of time the grapes sit in a barrel after they're crushed and before pressing. Ice wine grapes are picked later but it's niche market.
It is cultural thing (claret/clairet/clairette). Yes, in France it is light-colored wine but english speaking people use the word for very dark wine. In my country, clairet is usually (almost) white wine made of dark wine grapes.
Claret is an anglicisation of the word and is based on it. Somehow the English eventually used that term to refer to all Bordeaux wine and not just Clairet.
But the wine itself didn't change, what changed is just foreigners inappropriately using words to describe one type of wine to describe others.
"Foreigners inappropriately using words" is a ridiculously elitist description of "language use changing over time."
At the time the word "Clairet" (in English use) was adopted Aquitaine and Bordeaux were English possessions. The aristocracy of England spoke a lot of French. The wine they consumed was imported from Bordeaux and the volume of exports of wine drove the expansion of viticulture in Bordeaux, with the draining of marshes and the expansion of the ports, etc. They called the wine Clairet or Claret, because that's the colour the wine was at the time. The wine changed, but the word did not, because it came to mean "Bordeaux wine."
There's no patent, trademark or copyright that can make a word mean anything else. The French language and the French wine industry does not "own" the term, because the word is as legitimately English as any other imported French word in the language as it is several hundred years old. There are thousands of such words in large part due to the Norman invasion but also other reasons.
It's not "foreigners" inappropriately using a word. It's a historical use.
And yes, the wine changed. Bordeaux's exports in the 15th, 16th, 17th century were different. What it is known for now is not what it was known for then.
But you're lucky, there's relief for you. It's only really the British that use this term, and less so every generation. Most of us just say "Bordeaux."
My original point still stands: the predominant style of wine production of Bordeaux changed. From a light wine in the style of a rose to a more extractive, tannic, and higher alcohol wine. That production involves more skin exposure during primary, but it also often involves picking the grapes at higher phenolic ripeness.
(I have a vineyard and grow and make my own wine from it.)
Regardless, the TFA was about Burgundy, which as I pointed out is actually a more useful comparison point for harvest date since AFAIK there's been less change in the grapes grown or style of wine produced.
> which as I pointed out is actually a more useful comparison point for harvest date since AFAIK there's been less change in the grapes grown or style of wine produced.
Sorry for the late reply, but you should check out the underlying paper if you haven't yet: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00069.... Their result crucially depends on assuming a 7 day adjustment in harvest date in the early years to compensate for the change in style of wine produced. Possibly necessary, but I think it greatly undermines the strength of their conclusions.
Have you written anywhere else about your grape growing experience? I've been trying to learn more about the recent short season northern grapes that have been coming out recently.
Historically "Claret" or "Clairet" in England referred to a light wine imported from Bordeaux -- which was historically actually a part of the Kingdom of England until the 15th century or so so had favoured trading relationships with England. And that wine was the chief export of Bordeaux.
Over time the term broadened (in English usage) to mean Bordeaux wine in general, even as the wine produced in Bordeaux changed.
It's a bit of an anachronism now, but my point was that at the time this was the chief export out of Bordeaux. The darker rich wine which now predominates in Bordeaux was not as desired.
Aquitaine was, by marriage, property of the King of England for a three-hundred-years period. That territory was still however subject to feudal homage to the King of France, and not "part of the Kingdom of England".
Thats a fallacious argument. Low and no carbon sources of electricity have been available since the 1920s. We could have reduced poverty without relying on the vast (and quite wasteful) quantities of fossil fuels that we did. This future is the result of a series of choices made to the financial benefit of a select few.
Does it help you somehow to believe in this good vs. evil narrative?
It isnt true. Feeding 7bn people today requires the energy density (etc.) of fossil fuels; let alone what the 20th C. required to bring people out of poverty.
The idea that you're going to bring 1bn people in the developing world out of poverty, in the manner of the late 20th C., by building "low carbon" sources of energy in the 60s,etc. in those very poor regions is ridiculous.
What about my statement implied a good vs evil narrative? It is factually true, and given the vastly superior energy density of nuclear fuels, I think it’s odd to tout fossil fuels as distinctly important for power generation.
7bn are fed because of tractors, not baseload electrical generation input into electrical grids which dont exist in many countries, and many many more in the 20th C.
…because we chose to pursue fossil fuels instead of focusing on low carbon sources and electrical distribution. Tractors can run on electricity, so can Haber-Bosch. Wasn’t required to choose the high carbon future, but it was profitable for some people.
That is simply false, and displays a stunning ignorance of history and engineering. The low carbon source of electricity available in the 1920s was mainly just hydroelectric. It was only possible to build such power plants in a few limited locations, and the electricity generated couldn't be transmitted very far. Electricity also couldn't practically be used for most transportation, except a limited set of rail lines or short range vehicles.
The only way to rapidly industrialize and lift people out of dire poverty was to burn fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate. Now that we have built up a sufficient economic surplus we can gradually transition to a more sustainable future.
Even if the electric car cannot replace the ICE one, I cannot think of a good reason to burn fossil fuel for base load generation. We have hydro, we have nuclear, we have solar, and we have wind - at least two of those are dandy at base load generation, the other two act as good peaking sources.
How much energy do islands spend compared to the rest of the world? Of course there will be some places where fossil fuels will be the only alternative. But using that as an excuse for inaction in the parts where we do have alternatives does not make sense.
Only with huge amounts of storage. So far there are no large, industrialized areas which have managed to build enough storage to maintain base load through multiple days of little sunshine or wind. It's a nice idea in theory but costs will have to come way down before we can afford to deploy storage at scale (especially in areas where the geography makes pumped hydroelectric impractical).
Currently we're talking about small islands. But why would an industrialized area built enough storage now if we don't have enough supply? Germany for example gets about 40-50% of its electricity from renewables (averaged over a year), with hardly any storage. Yet only a few percent of the renewable supply are wasted. We're very far away from getting 50% of our primary energy from renewables, so we could plausibly wait with building storage until that goal is achieved. If we had a proper carbon price, we could let the market figure out when it is most economical to start building storage for multiple days...
No, stopping climate change doesn't lower standards of living. Why is it a lower standard of living if I get my electricity from renewable or nuclear power? Why is a lower standard of living if my car is electric? Why is it a lower standard of living if my home is heated with a heat pump?
Stopping climate change is strictly necessary if we want to keep our current standard of living.
Drive electric? Stopping climate change would require massive infrastructure changes at this point. How about no car at all? Creating and improving that infrastructure takes decades.
Same goes for other things. Imports vs eating seasonal and buying local. Frequent (transatlantic) flights vs staying at home. More frugality with what we have, less frequent changes in tech, clothing, household products, etc.
People try to hold onto the status quo for dear life, not realizing that's the very thing keeping us from solving the issue. Or any future issue we can't just get a few scientists to solve for the lazy masses.
> Drive electric? Stopping climate change would require massive infrastructure changes at this point. How about no car at all? Creating and improving that infrastructure takes decades.
You act like gas stations came before cars - they didn't.
As more electric cars enter the market demand for charging increases and the market responds. It won't take decades.
The world transformed itself so quickly the last 100 years it seems dubious to think with all of our advances we can't advance quickly now.
Electricity, heat, and transport is about 70% of our emissions. Another 20% or so is agriculture. We can get rid of the 70% without any change to our lifestyles at all.
We don't have to eliminate electricity, heating and transport. All these things can be powered by renewables. Quite the contrary, as the long term costs of renewables are lower, we can raise our living standards, if we push them forward quickly.
How about replacing fossil fuels with carbon free fuels. You know, like everyone who is talking seriously about climate change is proposing, instead of the strawman of going back to the stone age?
You're talking about the idea of stopping climate change. With nuclear power and Teslas.
The reality of stopping the climate change and environmental concerns in general is expensive fuels, gas from Russia (+ Ukrainians getting shelled), and closing of nuclear power plants.
Yes, fossil fuels have powered the industrial revolution. But for some time already we were at a point, where it is more beneficial to switch to renewable power. Going forward, renewables are the way of preventing poverty, not trying to stick to fossil fuels. It is the people with low income, which get hit worst by climate change.
Fossil fuel has also enabled a population explosion which fuels the coming crisis. Much harder to get inside planetary boundaries when so many people need to share the finite resources.
I.e. populations of any organism grow to consume the available resources unfortunately.
That's true if we continue to insist on squeezing as many billions of people onto the planet as possible. If we aimed at having a sustainable global population we could stop man-made climate change (as opposed to the naturally changing climate that plunges us into ice-ages periodically) without condemning billions to poverty.
Interesting to see the downvotes. Compare wikipedia:
> An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods, during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation.
> geologists describe the entire time period [from 2.58 million years ago] up to the present as an "ice age"
> Since planet Earth still has ice sheets, geologists consider the Quaternary glaciation to be ongoing, with the Earth now experiencing an interglacial period.
I wonder if they should account for evolutionary adaptions in the grape plants. This article doesn't seem to touch on that but it seems like a species of plant could change a lot over 650 years!
Cultivated wine grapes haven't really "evolved", because they're propagated clonally. There are some mutations, but not significant enough to alter their response to the environment really. In fact it's a real problem because the nature around them has changed (new pathogens) but the plants have not.
In fact, Pinot Noir that is grown in Beaune (in Burgundy) talked about in this article is one of the oldest selections and might go back as far Roman times.
The Pinot Noir vines grown by the millions around the world are literally the same individual, cloned for probably 1200 years.
There are new grape varieties being bred all the time (including by myself), including ones with crosses with American Vitis species that are far better adapted for newer fungal pathogens and weather conditions. And not just bred, crosses (inter and intra specific) happen in the wild, too.
But in general they are not permitted in European viniculture, which is very conservative and has laws mandating specific varieties for specific regions, and even forbids genetics from "non-noble" species. In fact even when European breeding programs produce new varieties with inter-specific crosses, they still pretend to be "functionally" pure vinifera, just to get around laws written a century ago.
You know more about this than I do, but I wonder whether the switch to grafting on American rootstocks in the late 1800's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight) might have had an effect on ripening dates. I don't know about grapes, but I think different rootstocks can have a significant effect on ripening dates for tree fruit. A quick search (which I've only skimmed) says this is true for grapes as well: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00069.... Do you happen to know if growers in Beune have switched to more modern faster ripening rootstocks?
Rootstocks definitely alter growing parameters. But there are also dozens of different rootstocks to choose from, each with different characteristics. So I'd imagine it'd be hard to pick out an aggregate trend.
Growers will pick based on a whole number of parameters. Soil pH and moisture being two important ones. Also degree of phyloxxera threat, etc.
Given what's happening with climate, etc. I doubt growers would go for accelerating ripening. Pinot is actually already a fairly early ripening variety for vinifera, usually early October or even late September in my climate (southern Ontario).
If the grape plant changed over 650 years, wouldn't we see a drift in the graph over those 650 years? What we're seeing is a sudden burst of "evolution" since the 1950s.
Dunno, maybe it's the nuclear tests, but I'm a bit skeptical to that explanation.
Nah, that's just a watermelon at a different stage of ripeness. (I eat like five or six watermelons a year) I've gotten one like that, it's rare because we know how to pick em these days.
Wouldn't that be like me painting a bowl of fruit (a common thing to practice painting) full of green oranges and green bananas? Why did this renaissance painter decide to paint an unripened fruit cut and prepared for eating?
From what ive read in the past those patterns can also be cause by just generally poor growing conditions. Which can be cause any number of things like soil composition, water and soil pH, too much shade, weed or pest infestations, lack of water at the right times, etc. All things that today are easily fixed by a quick trip to the store to buy pH up or down, fertilizer, pesticide, or a hose.
Ive seen a similar pattern before in a watermelon before too, and it was in a small home grown watermelon, the only one of many but all from the same seed pack. Although I don't remember the specific growing conditions to say what could have been the cause, it did certainly seem under developed compared to its peers. It got picked because it was obviously not growing any more and would have been at risk of rotting in the dirt if we just let it sit there forever doing nothing for another month.
The surrealist movement grew out of Dada, which was a reaction to WW1 and the introduction of machine guns and mustard gas. "If this is what the pinnacle of science and reason has gotten us, we must undo it"
Clock faces are always flat surfaces- wall clocks, wrist watches, sun dials, etc. The gears and hands require rigid, flat surfaces.
If you're going to put a normal item in a surrealist painting, and choose a clock, making it a melting clock is essentially an obvious choice.
Fair enough. But are we certain that renaissance watermelon were more like current watermelon than this picture portrays? How do we know? (I don't know the answer, but if someone wants to continue the thread, I'd be interested to read more.)
You can if you buy seeded watermelons? Here is a modern picture of a modern watermelon with slightly less dramatic swirls. If you had bought it a few weeks earlier the swirls would be more prominent: http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639...
Nonsense. It isn't just a matter of ripeness, but also how many times the flower was pollinated. I got one from a friend's garden much like it last year.
650 years is not much on evolutionary time. But a lot depends on the selective pressures and the amount of mutation. IDK if much could be attributed to natural evolution, but I'm doubtful.
On one hand, named varieties are propagated via cloning (cuttings, tip rooting, air layering, tissue cultures, etc.)
On the other hand, new fruit varieties are bred all the time. Human breeding programs can produce huge variations in a few decades. I have pluot trees that are hybrid species developed very recently.
And think: 650 years ago, Europeans barely even heard of the tomato and potato!
Human pressure on agriculture can
both speed things up
and slow them waaay down.
Domestication and breeding/husbandry aren't always done consciously, but even when they are, people produce selective pressures (e.g. selective breeding). Evolution is ambivalent to intelligent, conscious choice or natural selection, as long as the next generation's heritable traits are different.
I thought that Europe experienced sustained cold years in the 1600s? You can see something near the start, but the crop failures where close to the end of the century. Surprised this plot doesn't show that.
Maybe this method is heavily biased by the outliers?
wasn't that about the same time that European diseases wiped out large portions of the population of North America, reducing the amount of forest fires these people set (it was part of their resource management) and concordant reforesting, and thus the amount of CO2 in the air?
Great move in the article to show shifting distributions, not only a plot vs time of a shifting average etc.
Possible confound not discussed: Have there been any changes in market or transportation or harvesting-technology or labor factors which would affect decisions about "harvest date" ? Were any new varieties systematically planted with/after X apparent breakpoint? Have direct effects, if any, of increasing CO2 been removed?
A bit of a shame the kicker is only one chart at the end. I guess thats how "tell the story to bring the conclusion" works sometimes. I think more could be made of how the harvest data works, the chart is .. compelling.
I have the (weak) theory that non-developed countries were such because of the weather. I love reading and thinking... but in summer I cannot do any of that at home, it's just impossible for me to sit and study without sweating and feeling umcomfortable. So, my theory goes like this:
For the people who like thinking/studying: hot weather does not invite you to stay at home and study/think, so you are forced to do something else.
I imagine that as summers get longer and hotter, we'll see a diminishing in new ideas and the like because the people who like to think will be forced to do something else (laying on the cold floor to pass by the day).
I agree with this view that Homo sapiens is smart because of natural selection in the ice age. However, the earlier primitive people in the tropics had easy access to food, which hindered the development of social civilization.
> theory that non-developed countries were such because of the weather
Don’t tell me you actually subscribe to the theory of undeveloped countries are so because of the heat, not colonialism or global exploitation. Your theory is beyond weak, its kindergarten level nonsense.
Yes, of course, colonialism was a curse for many countries, but we need to see further. Colonialism only works if a side has a much better technology than the other.
And the fact is that Europe (subjected to harsh winters, global empires and constant wars) had a much better technology. Period.
And that advances in war and travel, were based in lots and lots of solid science, created much before colonialism. You can't build a big ship or a bridge that stands 1000 years without solid math and skills.
Being subjected to a strong religion that is against science o pro-science also played a huge part.
The idea that when in danger of overheating or freeze our brain stop all machines and concentrates only in how to keep our body alive for one hour more is totally reasonable.
I'd say it was more like Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology too, it's the growth mindset that didn't take over there as much as in Europe.
Anyway too few data points and too much speculation to be able to say that advancement of civilization is casually dependent on the climate.
We have agriculture/cities/empires/writing/some technology that developed independently in many parts of the world, and the rise of Europe from the Reinessance. Very few data point for "civilization advancement events"
> Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology
The irony in this view is that almost everything tech and otherwise is manufactured by developing countries. And in places like Shenzhen, they innovate at an unimaginably rapid pace.
But sure, Europe has “world class” tech and Asia has “pretty good” tech…
Had, not has. I spoke of the '500s more or less. The exponential spike in innovation from that century until these days was something unprecedented in human history and started in Europe.
Of course today Europe is not the central point for technology anymore. Still they have a legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class, something that is less radicated (for now) in the East
> legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class
Where do you get the notion that developing countries don’t have “good schools”? They’ve had formalised education for millennia.
Unless you are measuring wealth purely in post colonial USD/EUR, every single country (developing or developed) clearly has an accumulated wealth class, middle class, and poor class. It’s absurd that you think isn’t the case?
Look at a high level journal and top published papers. Most papers come from certain institutions, mostly from developed countries. Those institutions don't live in a vacuum but have a big cultural and economical environment around them that would take decades to build from scratch.
There are all sorts of different ideas about why Europe developed before the rest of the world- maybe it was because of the scientific method, maybe it was finance capitalism, maybe it was wealth looted from other countries. But I’ve never heard it attributed to a “growth mindset”, whatever that means. That sounds like magical thinking, honestly.
I probably meant what you name as "finance capitalism" - the expectation that if you invest money you get a return on the investment, so you are encouraged to invest more money.
I tried researching “finance capitalism” but it is unclear to me what the innovation is.
It’s wild to me that the definition and your viewpoint presume that somehow non-European countries never considered making profit on investments? That’s… I don’t know what to say. Maybe read a book about history.
I think maybe part of the problem is that for idealogical reasons people lump a lot of things together and call it "capitalism" like the invention of calculus or the steam engine, but those are really separate things. They like to just put anything useful that people do and label it "capitalism" even though communist and other non-capitalist countries have created a lot of science. I don't know a lot about eastern financial structures. What I meant was the way that everything in Europe after a certain point becomes financed with debt, which then has to be paid back with interest, and you get these huge amounts of money owed by everyone, creating this requirement to expand or die, and you see all these expeditions launching and pillaging the rest of the world, and you see the commons privatized and the people living on agriculture are forced into the cities where they are packed together and put to work 16 hours a day, and all of it is to service debts that are instantly flipped around and used as collateral to obtain more debt, and so on. It's sort of a monster that has to grow or die, so maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know.
Really.... how do you explain the cultural differences in work productivity between south Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain) versus North Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland) ?
You do realise that Italy was previously Rome, and along with Greece, they kickstarted European democracy and governance? And they had (surprise) hot climates?
It was warmer actually if we compare e.g. 0 AD to the 19th and early 20th centuries. Climate change you’re talking about resulted in a decrease in temperatures when the “Roman warm period” ended.
> the characteristic warm, wet and stable weather was conducive to economic productivity in an agrarian society
> violent sequence of eruptions triggered what is now called the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age,’ when much colder temperatures endured for at least 150 years.
> This phase of climate deterioration had decisive effects in Rome’s unravelling. It was also intimately linked to a catastrophe of even greater moment: the outbreak of the first pandemic of bubonic plague.
An impressive data fit. It's a bummer we don't have data going even older - the medieval warm period was between 950 to 1250. It would be an interesting comparison point.
Does it even matter anymore? Someone always trying to play devils advocate - the science is clear. The anecdotes are clear. We all know what’s happening. We are warming up and it’s our fault. It’s really simple.
This part is simple, yes: it's warming and it's done by us. I'm a lot less clear on how this is bad.
> This summer is what a 1.2°C-heated planet looks like. But in the future this won’t seem so bad — compared to the 1.5°C-heated planet. If we get to 2°C …
The suspension points are there because trying to put actual words won't be as scary. A literal option would be "... we'll have summers an average 0.8C hotter". Which somehow fails to make me tremble in my boots, especially since it also means we'll have winters 0.8C warmer, which is a very very good thing.
> The suspension points are there because trying to put actual words won't be as scary.
I live in Spain. This summer is being absolutely unbearable. We're constantly hovering around 40ºC. You can't open the windows to go to sleep because at 23:00 it's still 29-30º outside. We've been like this since the beginning of July. And I live in Madrid, which isn't even one of the hottest parts of the country.
And that's just now. I can't imagine how it's going to be in the future. It's going to make parts of the country completely unlivable in the summer. Insulating and protecting from extreme heat is far more difficult from extreme cold, at this point the only alternative we really have is AC, which makes things worse due to the energy usage, and there are zones that aren't equipped with it because they don't usually get a lot of heat. Quite a lot of people will die of heat stroke (those vulnerable to hypothermia in the winter are also vulnerable to heat stroke in the summer, it's not like warmer weather will save any lives). The effect on crops, vegetation and wildlife is going to be devastating. The desertification process of Spain will continue even faster.
So yeah, the prospect of 2ºC heating is really, really scary.
As far as I understand, the medieval warm period is believed to be an anomaly localized to Europe. So it may not be reflected in data specific to Japan.
In Greece, grapes are harvested normally before the feast of the transfiguration of Christ (6 August, tomorrow).
If you harvest earlier, they’re very Aesopian and sour, so farmers are really on the edge around these dates, constantly working to prepare the harvest.
But if they try leaving the grapes on the vines for a few more days, so they ripen more, you might lose the lot in the rain that usually follows a couple days later the feast.
There are few things more enjoyable these days here than taking random walks among the grape fields, chatting with the farmers, and leaving with a big smile and an even bigger bunch of grapes for the rest of your walk to the sea.
Grapes feature at the end: "we can estimate" followed by a graph with a temperature axis. Would like to see the data and the formula for turning it to temperature used.
Regarding your desire for data, a research article referenced on the page: https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/15/1485/2019/ has a section on "Data availability," which seems to be relevant. Possibly the article altogether is interesting to you, I didn't read it (yet).
Those dates are on record, and if we use them as proxy data to predict the summer average temperature, it does a remarkably good job, explaining 60% of the variance of the temperature data:
Say you have some variable you are tracking, which is due to some underlying phenomenon, with some noise. In this case it's the average summer temperature (so each summer gives 1 datapoint).
The simplest model is that the underlying phenomenon has some constant value, and the variations in your observations are all just random noise. You can estimate the true value as just the average of all the data. Computing the variance (the average squared distance from the true value) gives you a sense of how much noise there is.
Now lets say that we make our model a little more complicated and allow that the temperature changes year-to-year. In fact, let's say that we know the true value for each year. Imagine overlaying this "true" plot on top of the noisy observations. We can re-compute the variance, but rather than looking at the error relative to the mean, we're looking at the error relative to this true value. This variance is likely to be lower than the first one we calculated, because some of that variance wasn't actually noise, it was changes in the true value. We've "explained" some of the variance.
Now, rather than having access to the true values, we have some other variable that we think may be a good proxy for the temperature. In this case it's the grape harvest date. The first step is to find some mapping of the proxy variable onto the one that we're interested in (the article doesn't explain what mapping they're using). We assume that explaining more variance means that the (mapped) proxy variable is higher-quality.
Note that the mapping function is essentially learned from the data. In a simple case it might be just finding a scale factor and offset using a linear regression, but it could be more complicated. You need to be a little bit careful that you're not overfitting. It's a good idea to use some of the data to fit the proxy variable, and then compute the explained variance on other data (train/test split).
I missed the part where they explained how they went from harvest date to temperature. I get that earlier harvest dates will imply warmer temperatures, but ...
"Now the interesting part: the record of grape harvest date (GHD) in Beaune, France goes back to the year 1354. If we use the grape harvest dates to estimate summer temperature, and use outbursts of extremely hot summer as indicators of extreme summer heat, we can estimate it going back over 650 years:"
I wonder if newer farmers would farm inside buildings instead of outside.
Seems too risky to plant shit tons, then random (and increasingly common) bad weather fucks everything up. Also, because most people farm outside, when bad weather destroys crops, indoor farmers can hike up the price and make bank.
Some crops are grown indoors, in greenhouses, like tomatoes or cucumbers. It's also done on a commercial scale. Here's an example of a cherry tomato growing operation: https://youtu.be/4arNJoJ98Og?t=867 The editing and the style might be a bit kooky but there's a certain charm to it.
When a lay person, including me, sees those studies, even though they are convincing to me, psychologically, there is an after taste of "its complicated" which I believe explains why some people fall in the deny pool.
Ive realized by experiencing this summer in France, which feels like the hottest conditions Ive ever lived in (and Ive lived in Thailand and Morocco) that things are actually dead simple. We've landed on the moon, we've invented vaccines and smartphones; now picture how dead simple this is for us to predict the consequences of injecting CO2 in a test tube.
Can I ask what is it that gives you this taste? What I see in the article is a graph, showing temperature clearly going up towards the end of the graph. I don't find this complicated to interpret.
But I agree with you that some people may find it complicated. I'd like to understand that better, because I'm having trouble putting my head in a space where seeing a temperature graph is complicated. Trying to understand the other perspective, but maybe you can explain what it is that gives you this distaste when you see a graph.
For example, if not a temperature graph, what way could this data be presented that would not leave an "after taste"? I'm trying to think of a simpler way.. to me this graph says, basically "before: straight line, now: going up." I can't think of a simpler way to state it that would be "less complicated" than that.
I'd like to understand that better, because I'm having trouble putting my head in a space where seeing a temperature graph is complicated. Trying to understand the other perspective
For the average Joe, a big explanation gives the impression you dont know.
The point I was making was we could explain it with one simple sentence and simple drawing: pour CO2 in a test tube, its hotter inside. "We've measured it".
That should be what people see because that gives the impression its sure. Short means "it's sure". Long means "you dont know". For most people; even at the top of a company.
You can see them even at that scale. The original experiments by Tyndall that demonstrated the effect were in a tube [1] currently on display at the Royal Institution.
Incorrect. This is a fundamental property of the molecule CO2. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. In the atmosphere this property of CO2 prevents infrared radiation from radiating back out into space.
> While transparent to visible light, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, absorbing and emitting infrared radiation ... Absorption of infrared light at the vibrational frequencies of atmospheric CO2 traps energy near the surface, warming the surface and the lower atmosphere. Less energy reaches the upper atmosphere, which is therefore cooler because of this absorption.
Tamino helpfully linked the underlying paper in his first comment: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00069.... It's a clear and well written paper. While I assume its main conclusions are true (temperatures are hotter today and grape harvests are earlier than the historical average) there is a big hole in the logic used to show causality. Figure 5 and Table 1 show the main issue.
As I understand it (and I applaud the authors for the clarity of their explanation) the original data from the 1600's shows a harvest date about 7 days earlier than the 1700 and 1800's. The decided that this didn't agree with records for neighboring regions where such records existed, so they "homogenized" the data by pretending the actual recorded harvest dates were 7 days later.
Their justification for this is a one-time change in winemaking practice in Burgundy. Oh, by the way, according to the original records the difference harvest between the 1600's and today would otherwise have been just over 7 days. Lest I seem that I exaggerate, here it is in their words (Section 2.6):
In the perspective of reconstructing past spring–summer temperatures, this bias must be taken into account. Otherwise it would have mean April-to-July GHD temperature-based reconstructions with maxima and minima ca. 1 ∘C warmer before 1718 than afterwards on the decadal scale, even though temperature measurements available in France since 1658 do not provide any evidence of such a warming during the period 1658–1718. To homogenise the Beaune GHD series we have then added 7 d to raw data prior to 1718. The Pearson correlation with April-to-July mean temperature in Paris for the period 1658–2018 is stronger with the homogenised Beaune GHD time series (r=0.76) than with the non-homogenised one (r=0.74).
Anthropogenic changes in winemaking are the most likely explanation.
They aren't necessarily wrong to make an adjustment here, but it completely undermines the causal argument they are making (or at least, that Tamino is making). While it is unlikely that there were no changes in winemaking in the last 650 year, assuming that there was one and only one major change and that it can be dealt with by uniform change to a single period of the data is fantasy. The raw data shows an early harvest, they change it to a later one, and then go on to argue that harvests are happening earlier than ever!
Again, I presume their general conclusions are correct: recent temperatures are warmer, and recent harvests are getting earlier. But this paper really doesn't do a good job of showing the extent to which this is true, and it makes almost no effort to convince the reader that other cultural changes (which are almost certain to have occurred) didn't have effects of similar magnitude in unknown directions.
So first, the work is cool from a data analysis perspective, and it's always worth seeing this kind of thing for it's own sake.
Other than that, who cares. We've driven the diminishing returns on new evidence of climate change to zero. There is not a smoking gun that is suddenly going to change perception.
Stop using AGW as a political lever, and start looking for (implementing, because they exist) solutions, both in terms of carbon removal, and adaptation. The burden of proof has been met, we don't need more data. The only cause more data serves is preaching to the choir that wants to use AGW to implement large scale socialism. Stop doing that, and start solving the problem.
There's probably some element of this as well. My point is that we've got lots of "deniers, bla bla" type comments that seem to want to focus on looking down on others (how could they be so ignorant in light of this grape harvest data) instead of realizing that what people are opposed to are the "solutions" being proposed that somehow nicely also promote some kind of political world view. Take the politics out of the equation, and "deniers" are not going to care about the minutia of grape harvests or ice cores.
Or instead I guess we can just keep congratulating ourselves on how airtight the case for AGW is and mocking "deniers", hoping one day we get the political tools to ignore their concerns.
Anyway, I'm happy to be reminded of why i stopped posting here.
If you looked into how nuclear power plants get built you'd probably call it large scale socialism. But you got all your talking points lined up in a perfectly sensible row, I wouldn't want to topple them over.
> This summer is what a 1.2°C-heated planet looks like. But in the future this won’t seem so bad — compared to the 1.5°C-heated planet. If we get to 2°C …
A friend said something to me a while ago that I cannot get out of my head when people are complaining about a heat wave again: Think not so much that this summer is one of the hottest in the last, but one of the coolest in the next hundred years.
I am tempted to replace 100 by 650 to match the article, or just talk about "the past" and "the future". But a hundred years makes it more tangible for me. My late grandparents were born just a little over 100 years ago, and my youngest niece and nephew may live to see the next 100 years.
This is good thinking. My children will be the fourth generation living in the same basic area. My dad went to school with ice on the ground and rare but occasional snow. I saw occasional ice, and only once a hint of snow. My daughter will hope to see some rain, and likely never see any ice in her hometown.
Where is that?
One summer in around 2010, I drove up the pass to see the glacier in Switzerland that melts to become the Rhone river. The viewing spot is a stunning location on a bend in the road, and you can see both down the valley and up the glacier. When I got there, it looked like a frozen waterfall, ice "falling" over the side.
You could also see that the trees in the valley were young. Inside the tourist centre, there were drawings of how the place looked 100 years earlier. Back then the glacier filled the whole valley.
There was also a carved-out ice cave, in the solid part of the glacier visible from the tourist centre.
Each year I'd drive back to the glacier, and each year it would be smaller. The overhang at the cliff disappeared, and the ice cave was carved further and further up.
I biked there (Furkapass) about 20 years ago, and the change is crazy.
Just compare old photos[1] with a more recent one[2]. It’s quite easy to see how much bigger the glacier used to be.
[1] https://www.google.se/search?q=old+photos+furkapass
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@46.5763411,8.3867043,3a,78.6892...
In the Bay Area in California. I have not seen ice on the ground here for maybe 15 years, but it used to be in January you would see some ice on the edges of puddles in the morning.
650 years shows climate change deniers that this is not a natural cycle but human induced. That's why I'd like to see the 650y data analyzed just like the 1950-present instead of being thrown at the bottom of the article.
Climate deniers don't believe in data from thermometers and ship buoys, why would they trust an analysis of grape harvests.
Here's some interesting data from Japan. It's the Tokyo weather record from 1876 to 2022. No change at all to speak of over the entire period.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/obd/stats/etrn/view/monthly_s3_en...
Please avoid any temptation to assume this comment is intended to buttress a 'climate denial' belief. It isn't.
Look at december, as an example. During the roughly 50 year period from 1875-1926, 25 times the average temperature was <= 5.0 degrees. The last time that happened was in 1956, which is some 65 years ago.
I’d say that is more than ”no change at all”.
Edit: I looked at february. Seven times in the same period (1875-1926) the average temperature was >= 5. The last time it wasn’t? 1988, 33 years ago.
That is a significant change. It seems like Tokyo winters are much milder now than pre WW2.
Without even plotting the data, it seems to be very obvious to me. Starting out at 13-14 degrees annually at the beginning of the recording, it is now pretty solidly 16-17 degrees. The last year under 16 was 1996. If that isn't a dramatic change, I don't know what is.
So this data actually pretty much exactly matches the French data.
I only looked at the raw data, but isnt the yearly average clearly increasing from 13-14 to 16ish?
Am I misinterpreting? What exactly did you mean with "no change"?
I think you are right, there is a distinct change - although I don't know enough about the data to properly interpret.
Cities have like +2°C than the countryside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island Tokyo grow a lot between 1876 and 2022, so I really expect to see a change in the average temperature there.
> Please avoid any temptation to assume this comment is intended to buttress a 'climate denial' belief
I'm curious to know what your comment is intended to do, given the bizarrely faulty interpretation you've supplied.
> No change at all to speak of over the entire period
That's not what I read in those numbers. To me there is a clear increase trend of 3 or 4 degrees:
Year Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Annual
1876 1.6 | 3.4 | 8.1 | 12.2 | 17.0 | 18.5 | 24.3 | 26.6 | 22.6 | 14.8 | 9.1 | 4.8 | 13.6
2021 5.4 | 8.5 | 12.8 | 15.1 | 19.6 | 22.7 | 25.9 | 27.4 | 22.3 | 18.2 | 13.7 | 7.9 | 16.6
https://imgur.com/a/WsX7Emw
plot made from octave with:
https://topaz.github.io/paste/#XQAAAQCHIwAAAAAAAAAqCAOiEuDA/...Climate change deniers will just move the goalpost.
Which, unlike public debate, in science this is a good thing anyway.
Healthy scepticism is a good thing. Denialism is by definition not that.
650 years does not show a natural cycle. Pull up a temperature chart of hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
The planet has been +- 10 degrees from here. There were millions of years without ice caps even
While climate changes have always existed, there are now at least 2 important differences, which will make this warming much more dangerous for the terrestrial plants and non-human animals.
One difference is that the rate of warming is very high now, probably much higher than ever before. At least where I live, in Europe, the climate has changed dramatically in less than 1 human lifetime and now it is extremely different from how it was when I was young.
The second difference is that now all larger wild animals and wild plants will no longer be able to react to climate like they did before, when they migrated towards the south or towards the north, depending on the climate evolution.
Now the terrestrial part of the Earth is mostly occupied by humans, crops and domestic animals, while the remaining wild plants and animals are mainly in "islands" scattered over the lands. This will make impossible a gradual retreat of the wildlife towards some more appropriate climate and they cannot make plans like humans, e.g. that they should travel 100 km through some inhospitable land, because at the end there would be a suitable biotope.
Of course, among the terrestrial wildlife, the best chances for surviving a climate change will be for those who can reach far distances through the air, over the man-made obstacles, e.g. plants with airborne seeds, birds, bats, insects, spiders and other very small living beings that can be carried by the wind, or by birds or insects.
In any case, it is pretty certain that this warming will be much more destructive for the wildlife than any other before.
We should learn to reject words like mostly, largely and vastly and instead demand percentages, confidence intervals and references.
Can you provide this to back up your statement that land on earth is mostly occupied by humans, crops and domesticated animals?
There are very well known studies, e.g.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
whose conclusions are that, by mass, the humans alone are many times more than all the wild terrestrial vertebrates together, while obviously the domesticated animals exceed a few times the humans, both in number and mass.
Of course the number and mass of animals are only partially correlated with the area occupied by them, because the larger some wild animals are, the less their surface density is, and except for animals as small as rodents or small birds their surface density is much less than that of humans in cities.
There are a few countries with a relatively low density of population, e.g. most of North America, Russia, Australia, the northern European countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway).
I am not familiar with the land status in these countries, but these are the only places on Earth where there is a chance for some areas occupied by wildlife to form a connected mesh, allowing slow migration, but even that must be sectioned by many roads and fences that may discourage the migration of animals from the places that they have inhabited from birth.
Other low human density areas on Earth, i.e. the tropical forests and the deserts, do not count, as they will not be destinations for animals or plants seeking lower temperatures. Of the other areas with low human density, only in the high mountains there would be possible migrations, when the animals and plants adapted to high altitudes and lower temperatures could die and be replaced by animals and plants coming from lower altitudes. Except that in many countries most of the wildlife is already in the mountains, so there might be very few wild animals and plants left at lower altitude, ready to replace the former inhabitants from high altitudes, which will never have any way out.
On the other hand I am more familiar with the status in Western and Eastern Europe and in some parts of Asia, where I have traveled frequently through several countries.
Here, it is enough to fly a plane over several European countries in a sunny day, and you will see only agricultural land, villages and cities, with only isolated and scattered remains of forests, lakes or uncultured land, or isolated parts of mountains that remain wild.
There already is a great difference between how some places were when I was young and I traveled to them and how they are now. Several decades ago, there were relatively large connected wild areas in some mountains, but meanwhile a lot of roads have fragmented the mountains, owners have built fences around land parcels, some forests have been cut and so on, so where there was a larger wild area now there are many disconnected smaller wild areas.
According to the following link, 50% of the earth is relatively untouched while 20% is classified as built up urban areas or cropland.
https://earth.org/half-of-earths-land-surface-remains-relati...
That doesn't mean conditions will be to our liking under those regimes. We built cities along coasts assuming a certain mean sea level. We built farms assuming certain weather patterns.
If we cause large changes to these patterns in a relatively short period of time that's bad. The long-term trends you are talking about happened very slowly - slowly enough in theory a city could move back from the shoreline without anyone noticing it was happening. Slowly enough that species can migrate or adapt to them - slow enough natural selection can produce individuals more heat or cold adapted.
Climate change isn't going to cause humans to go extinct or anything like that. But it is going to have large and sometimes unpredictable effects, most of which are not useful or helpful to us. Many of which are actively detrimental.
Since the oil/coal/natgas will eventually run out anyway and the world so depends on them that gives leverage to people who really really want to hurt us: we might as well just deal with it and move away from burning things as much as possible.
> There were millions of years without ice caps even
In case anyone was curious, this is a significant understatement. It is currently believed that the Earth had no ice caps for its first 2 billion years, before the Huronian glaciation, and then again no ice caps for another ~1.5 billion years.
Why bother? There weren't humans millions of years ago to record climate data or grape picking dates. Writing is 5500 years old. Climate change could have ended the Roman Empire. In wide terms we already know what will happen because it happened before.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ Yes, the planet has seen large changes in temperature. Not this quickly, though.
At the end of a glacial period the temperature changes rapidly e.g. it took 100 years for the land ice to retreat from the Eifel range in Germany (at 50°N) to above Oslo in Norway (at 62°N), a distance of 1200 km at the end of the younger Dryas some 12.000 years ago:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131204090958.h...
This just seems off. We always had heat waves. A 1.2C difference in temperature, while a big deal on a global scale, is not noticeable to anyone not keeping meticulous records. A 2C warmed planet will be .8C hotter in the summer.
That's the ecological fallacy, or mereological fallacy more broadly.
What's being described with global mean temperature is not the temperature of any region, weather event, etc. A 2C warming can be a +10C in one region and a -5C in another.
The magnitude global mean temperature rise does not imply anything in particular about "summers" or anything of the kind.
And, in addition to that, a higher temperature means globally more energy in the system. Which means more extreme events, storms, heatwaves, etc.
Neat. The thing is that people selected for different things in grape harvests over different eras. The style of wine for Bordeaux "Claret" back in the 17th century for example was a very light ruby coloured wine. Now the typical Bordeaux is a very dark and extracted product. And consumers in general are often seeking out higher alcohol "hotter" wines, partially out of the influence of new world wines.
So there could be more compounding factors in grape picking dates. Though in general seeking out a darker and higher Brix product would mean later picking dates, not earlier.
But grape varieties planted have also changed somewhat overtime, too. Not so much in Burgundy where this article is talking about, though, so TFA's Beaune is actually a good choice as a point to compare.
I imagine viticulture techniques have changed too. France is surely more stable than many places, they place huge value on traditional techniques, but fertilizer, trellis technique, yields could all evolve.
Not that this disproves the data, or global warming, but climate isn't the only thing changing.
The color is due to the amount of time the grapes sit in a barrel after they're crushed and before pressing. Ice wine grapes are picked later but it's niche market.
Yes colour extraction is related to skin exposure after crush. It is also related to phenolic ripeness and grape variety.
And pH, and certain enzymes help extract more color.
And temperature :-) Warming or cooling the must etc.
Clairet is a type of rosé, and still is light-coloured.
It is cultural thing (claret/clairet/clairette). Yes, in France it is light-colored wine but english speaking people use the word for very dark wine. In my country, clairet is usually (almost) white wine made of dark wine grapes.
Clairet is well-defined and AOC-protected.
Claret is an anglicisation of the word and is based on it. Somehow the English eventually used that term to refer to all Bordeaux wine and not just Clairet.
But the wine itself didn't change, what changed is just foreigners inappropriately using words to describe one type of wine to describe others.
"Foreigners inappropriately using words" is a ridiculously elitist description of "language use changing over time."
At the time the word "Clairet" (in English use) was adopted Aquitaine and Bordeaux were English possessions. The aristocracy of England spoke a lot of French. The wine they consumed was imported from Bordeaux and the volume of exports of wine drove the expansion of viticulture in Bordeaux, with the draining of marshes and the expansion of the ports, etc. They called the wine Clairet or Claret, because that's the colour the wine was at the time. The wine changed, but the word did not, because it came to mean "Bordeaux wine."
There's no patent, trademark or copyright that can make a word mean anything else. The French language and the French wine industry does not "own" the term, because the word is as legitimately English as any other imported French word in the language as it is several hundred years old. There are thousands of such words in large part due to the Norman invasion but also other reasons.
It's not "foreigners" inappropriately using a word. It's a historical use.
And yes, the wine changed. Bordeaux's exports in the 15th, 16th, 17th century were different. What it is known for now is not what it was known for then.
But you're lucky, there's relief for you. It's only really the British that use this term, and less so every generation. Most of us just say "Bordeaux."
My original point still stands: the predominant style of wine production of Bordeaux changed. From a light wine in the style of a rose to a more extractive, tannic, and higher alcohol wine. That production involves more skin exposure during primary, but it also often involves picking the grapes at higher phenolic ripeness.
(I have a vineyard and grow and make my own wine from it.)
Regardless, the TFA was about Burgundy, which as I pointed out is actually a more useful comparison point for harvest date since AFAIK there's been less change in the grapes grown or style of wine produced.
> which as I pointed out is actually a more useful comparison point for harvest date since AFAIK there's been less change in the grapes grown or style of wine produced.
Sorry for the late reply, but you should check out the underlying paper if you haven't yet: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00069.... Their result crucially depends on assuming a 7 day adjustment in harvest date in the early years to compensate for the change in style of wine produced. Possibly necessary, but I think it greatly undermines the strength of their conclusions.
Have you written anywhere else about your grape growing experience? I've been trying to learn more about the recent short season northern grapes that have been coming out recently.
I mean that's literally the meaning of the word isn't it. "Clair" means light / clear. bleu clair -> light blue
Historically "Claret" or "Clairet" in England referred to a light wine imported from Bordeaux -- which was historically actually a part of the Kingdom of England until the 15th century or so so had favoured trading relationships with England. And that wine was the chief export of Bordeaux.
Over time the term broadened (in English usage) to mean Bordeaux wine in general, even as the wine produced in Bordeaux changed.
It's a bit of an anachronism now, but my point was that at the time this was the chief export out of Bordeaux. The darker rich wine which now predominates in Bordeaux was not as desired.
That "history lesson" is misleading.
Aquitaine was, by marriage, property of the King of England for a three-hundred-years period. That territory was still however subject to feudal homage to the King of France, and not "part of the Kingdom of England".
Is that a stealth James Bond reference?
That depends on variety. White ones like Riesling will suffer with the hotter temperatures / higher alcohol content.
.. and plantations of grape vines will spread further to the north like it was few centuries ago
Very similar chart to this one recording the date of Japan's cherry blossoms blooming since 600 AD. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/03/29/japan-kyot...
Probably just a coincidence!
We probably shouldn't inconvenience ourselves in the slightest amount to mitigate these coincidences.
Anything that might damage profits, impact billionaires, or hurt shareholders of our best gigantic businesses isn't something we should consider.
Hopefully my seething sarcasm came through all of that bullshit.
> Anything that might damage profits, impact billionaires, or hurt shareholders of our best gigantic businesses isn't something we should consider.
You’re unfairly omitting how fossil fuels have lifted billions out of poverty. Stopping climate change also lowers standards of living.
Thats a fallacious argument. Low and no carbon sources of electricity have been available since the 1920s. We could have reduced poverty without relying on the vast (and quite wasteful) quantities of fossil fuels that we did. This future is the result of a series of choices made to the financial benefit of a select few.
Does it help you somehow to believe in this good vs. evil narrative?
It isnt true. Feeding 7bn people today requires the energy density (etc.) of fossil fuels; let alone what the 20th C. required to bring people out of poverty.
The idea that you're going to bring 1bn people in the developing world out of poverty, in the manner of the late 20th C., by building "low carbon" sources of energy in the 60s,etc. in those very poor regions is ridiculous.
What about my statement implied a good vs evil narrative? It is factually true, and given the vastly superior energy density of nuclear fuels, I think it’s odd to tout fossil fuels as distinctly important for power generation.
7bn are fed because of tractors, not baseload electrical generation input into electrical grids which dont exist in many countries, and many many more in the 20th C.
…because we chose to pursue fossil fuels instead of focusing on low carbon sources and electrical distribution. Tractors can run on electricity, so can Haber-Bosch. Wasn’t required to choose the high carbon future, but it was profitable for some people.
That is simply false, and displays a stunning ignorance of history and engineering. The low carbon source of electricity available in the 1920s was mainly just hydroelectric. It was only possible to build such power plants in a few limited locations, and the electricity generated couldn't be transmitted very far. Electricity also couldn't practically be used for most transportation, except a limited set of rail lines or short range vehicles.
The only way to rapidly industrialize and lift people out of dire poverty was to burn fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate. Now that we have built up a sufficient economic surplus we can gradually transition to a more sustainable future.
Even if the electric car cannot replace the ICE one, I cannot think of a good reason to burn fossil fuel for base load generation. We have hydro, we have nuclear, we have solar, and we have wind - at least two of those are dandy at base load generation, the other two act as good peaking sources.
Cheaper is no longer good justification.
Small islands far from continents/big islands? Maybe no space to hydro, nuclear isn't an option, solar and wind is not stable.
How much energy do islands spend compared to the rest of the world? Of course there will be some places where fossil fuels will be the only alternative. But using that as an excuse for inaction in the parts where we do have alternatives does not make sense.
Yes fair point.
Solar+wind+storage is stable.
Only with huge amounts of storage. So far there are no large, industrialized areas which have managed to build enough storage to maintain base load through multiple days of little sunshine or wind. It's a nice idea in theory but costs will have to come way down before we can afford to deploy storage at scale (especially in areas where the geography makes pumped hydroelectric impractical).
Currently we're talking about small islands. But why would an industrialized area built enough storage now if we don't have enough supply? Germany for example gets about 40-50% of its electricity from renewables (averaged over a year), with hardly any storage. Yet only a few percent of the renewable supply are wasted. We're very far away from getting 50% of our primary energy from renewables, so we could plausibly wait with building storage until that goal is achieved. If we had a proper carbon price, we could let the market figure out when it is most economical to start building storage for multiple days...
You needing an amputation after an accident also lowers your standard of living. But guess what: the alternative is even worse.
No, stopping climate change doesn't lower standards of living. Why is it a lower standard of living if I get my electricity from renewable or nuclear power? Why is a lower standard of living if my car is electric? Why is it a lower standard of living if my home is heated with a heat pump?
Stopping climate change is strictly necessary if we want to keep our current standard of living.
Everything you named is a drop in a huge bucket.
Drive electric? Stopping climate change would require massive infrastructure changes at this point. How about no car at all? Creating and improving that infrastructure takes decades.
Same goes for other things. Imports vs eating seasonal and buying local. Frequent (transatlantic) flights vs staying at home. More frugality with what we have, less frequent changes in tech, clothing, household products, etc.
People try to hold onto the status quo for dear life, not realizing that's the very thing keeping us from solving the issue. Or any future issue we can't just get a few scientists to solve for the lazy masses.
> Drive electric? Stopping climate change would require massive infrastructure changes at this point. How about no car at all? Creating and improving that infrastructure takes decades.
You act like gas stations came before cars - they didn't.
As more electric cars enter the market demand for charging increases and the market responds. It won't take decades.
The world transformed itself so quickly the last 100 years it seems dubious to think with all of our advances we can't advance quickly now.
Electricity, heat, and transport is about 70% of our emissions. Another 20% or so is agriculture. We can get rid of the 70% without any change to our lifestyles at all.
I don't think eliminating electricity, heating, and transport would have no impact on my lifestyle. Or anyone's lifestyle.
We don't have to eliminate electricity, heating and transport. All these things can be powered by renewables. Quite the contrary, as the long term costs of renewables are lower, we can raise our living standards, if we push them forward quickly.
How about replacing fossil fuels with carbon free fuels. You know, like everyone who is talking seriously about climate change is proposing, instead of the strawman of going back to the stone age?
You're talking about the idea of stopping climate change. With nuclear power and Teslas.
The reality of stopping the climate change and environmental concerns in general is expensive fuels, gas from Russia (+ Ukrainians getting shelled), and closing of nuclear power plants.
The reality of stopping climate change is that we're not trying to stop climate change in any meaningful way.
Whereas not stopping climate change will also lower standards of living. Deadly so!
Sounds like you bought into the fear mongering.
Yes, fossil fuels have powered the industrial revolution. But for some time already we were at a point, where it is more beneficial to switch to renewable power. Going forward, renewables are the way of preventing poverty, not trying to stick to fossil fuels. It is the people with low income, which get hit worst by climate change.
Yeah? Let’s tell all of Africa to switch to renewables. I’ll let you deliver the news and see how that goes.
Fossil fuel has also enabled a population explosion which fuels the coming crisis. Much harder to get inside planetary boundaries when so many people need to share the finite resources.
I.e. populations of any organism grow to consume the available resources unfortunately.
That's true if we continue to insist on squeezing as many billions of people onto the planet as possible. If we aimed at having a sustainable global population we could stop man-made climate change (as opposed to the naturally changing climate that plunges us into ice-ages periodically) without condemning billions to poverty.
> man-made climate change (as opposed to the naturally changing climate that plunges us into ice-ages periodically)
We're in one of those ice ages right now.
Interesting to see the downvotes. Compare wikipedia:
> An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods, during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age )
> geologists describe the entire time period [from 2.58 million years ago] up to the present as an "ice age"
> Since planet Earth still has ice sheets, geologists consider the Quaternary glaciation to be ongoing, with the Earth now experiencing an interglacial period.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation )
Until the polar ice caps have disappeared, we're in an ice age by definition.
There is of course an obvious implication that the naturally-changing climate periodically takes us out of ice ages, too.
Technically correct but deceptive; we are in an interglacial period in a larger ice age
An interesting conclusion.
Wow very similar graphs
what do you mean by a similar graph if the original post only goes back to 1950 but japans goes back to 600?
The original post goes back to 1354.
Yes one of the graphs is from back then, so then I’ll ask again since 650 is not 1354 …
im asking because of the medieval warm period and subsequent little ice age which occurred prior to the more recent big uptrend
Read the rest of TFA :)
^^^ Didn't read the article
I wonder if they should account for evolutionary adaptions in the grape plants. This article doesn't seem to touch on that but it seems like a species of plant could change a lot over 650 years!
Cultivated wine grapes haven't really "evolved", because they're propagated clonally. There are some mutations, but not significant enough to alter their response to the environment really. In fact it's a real problem because the nature around them has changed (new pathogens) but the plants have not.
In fact, Pinot Noir that is grown in Beaune (in Burgundy) talked about in this article is one of the oldest selections and might go back as far Roman times.
The Pinot Noir vines grown by the millions around the world are literally the same individual, cloned for probably 1200 years.
There are new grape varieties being bred all the time (including by myself), including ones with crosses with American Vitis species that are far better adapted for newer fungal pathogens and weather conditions. And not just bred, crosses (inter and intra specific) happen in the wild, too.
But in general they are not permitted in European viniculture, which is very conservative and has laws mandating specific varieties for specific regions, and even forbids genetics from "non-noble" species. In fact even when European breeding programs produce new varieties with inter-specific crosses, they still pretend to be "functionally" pure vinifera, just to get around laws written a century ago.
You know more about this than I do, but I wonder whether the switch to grafting on American rootstocks in the late 1800's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight) might have had an effect on ripening dates. I don't know about grapes, but I think different rootstocks can have a significant effect on ripening dates for tree fruit. A quick search (which I've only skimmed) says this is true for grapes as well: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00069.... Do you happen to know if growers in Beune have switched to more modern faster ripening rootstocks?
Rootstocks definitely alter growing parameters. But there are also dozens of different rootstocks to choose from, each with different characteristics. So I'd imagine it'd be hard to pick out an aggregate trend.
Growers will pick based on a whole number of parameters. Soil pH and moisture being two important ones. Also degree of phyloxxera threat, etc.
Given what's happening with climate, etc. I doubt growers would go for accelerating ripening. Pinot is actually already a fairly early ripening variety for vinifera, usually early October or even late September in my climate (southern Ontario).
To piggyback: most berries, and fruits in general, are grown from clones.
If the grape plant changed over 650 years, wouldn't we see a drift in the graph over those 650 years? What we're seeing is a sudden burst of "evolution" since the 1950s.
Dunno, maybe it's the nuclear tests, but I'm a bit skeptical to that explanation.
To be fair, there has been an explosion of evolution since the 1950s due modern agricultural practices and cultivation.
For a striking example, look at the changes in chickens since the 1950s.
https://miro.medium.com/max/639/0*hwEcw5y6Ky1vQkBi.jpeg
To be fair, humans have gone through similar visual change, but that's probably more to do with what we eat and how we live than genetics.
Like the watermelon https://images.app.goo.gl/8miHX48hfcHZ3rGQ7
Or the chicken
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/2/6875031/chickens-breedi...
Nah, that's just a watermelon at a different stage of ripeness. (I eat like five or six watermelons a year) I've gotten one like that, it's rare because we know how to pick em these days.
Wouldn't that be like me painting a bowl of fruit (a common thing to practice painting) full of green oranges and green bananas? Why did this renaissance painter decide to paint an unripened fruit cut and prepared for eating?
From what ive read in the past those patterns can also be cause by just generally poor growing conditions. Which can be cause any number of things like soil composition, water and soil pH, too much shade, weed or pest infestations, lack of water at the right times, etc. All things that today are easily fixed by a quick trip to the store to buy pH up or down, fertilizer, pesticide, or a hose.
Ive seen a similar pattern before in a watermelon before too, and it was in a small home grown watermelon, the only one of many but all from the same seed pack. Although I don't remember the specific growing conditions to say what could have been the cause, it did certainly seem under developed compared to its peers. It got picked because it was obviously not growing any more and would have been at risk of rotting in the dirt if we just let it sit there forever doing nothing for another month.
I don't know, why did Dali paint melted clocks?
The surrealist movement grew out of Dada, which was a reaction to WW1 and the introduction of machine guns and mustard gas. "If this is what the pinnacle of science and reason has gotten us, we must undo it"
Clock faces are always flat surfaces- wall clocks, wrist watches, sun dials, etc. The gears and hands require rigid, flat surfaces.
If you're going to put a normal item in a surrealist painting, and choose a clock, making it a melting clock is essentially an obvious choice.
Fair enough. But are we certain that renaissance watermelon were more like current watermelon than this picture portrays? How do we know? (I don't know the answer, but if someone wants to continue the thread, I'd be interested to read more.)
Another Renaissance watermelon painting https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abraham_Brueghel_-_A...
Some people disagree with this, but for more information look at https://imgur.com/a/zN8Kv
The seeds are dark brown/black, so it's ripe. And you won't find a watermelon these days with swirls in it.
You can if you buy seeded watermelons? Here is a modern picture of a modern watermelon with slightly less dramatic swirls. If you had bought it a few weeks earlier the swirls would be more prominent: http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639...
Nonsense. It isn't just a matter of ripeness, but also how many times the flower was pollinated. I got one from a friend's garden much like it last year.
There have been changes in watermelons but that watermelon in the painting is in part an example of starring, which happens today: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-renaissance-p...
Watermelon is grown from seed, so there can be variation with every single generation. Grapes are clones, grown with cuttings.
That's when they're not getting enough water... https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8w7lke/i_guess_its_th...
650 years is not much on evolutionary time. But a lot depends on the selective pressures and the amount of mutation. IDK if much could be attributed to natural evolution, but I'm doubtful.
On one hand, named varieties are propagated via cloning (cuttings, tip rooting, air layering, tissue cultures, etc.)
On the other hand, new fruit varieties are bred all the time. Human breeding programs can produce huge variations in a few decades. I have pluot trees that are hybrid species developed very recently.
And think: 650 years ago, Europeans barely even heard of the tomato and potato!
Human pressure on agriculture can both speed things up and slow them waaay down.
Evolutionary adaptations? As this is a domesticated plant, shouldn't any changes be considered the product of intelligent design?
Domestication and breeding/husbandry aren't always done consciously, but even when they are, people produce selective pressures (e.g. selective breeding). Evolution is ambivalent to intelligent, conscious choice or natural selection, as long as the next generation's heritable traits are different.
I thought that Europe experienced sustained cold years in the 1600s? You can see something near the start, but the crop failures where close to the end of the century. Surprised this plot doesn't show that.
Maybe this method is heavily biased by the outliers?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
wasn't that about the same time that European diseases wiped out large portions of the population of North America, reducing the amount of forest fires these people set (it was part of their resource management) and concordant reforesting, and thus the amount of CO2 in the air?
https://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html
Great move in the article to show shifting distributions, not only a plot vs time of a shifting average etc.
Possible confound not discussed: Have there been any changes in market or transportation or harvesting-technology or labor factors which would affect decisions about "harvest date" ? Were any new varieties systematically planted with/after X apparent breakpoint? Have direct effects, if any, of increasing CO2 been removed?
A bit of a shame the kicker is only one chart at the end. I guess thats how "tell the story to bring the conclusion" works sometimes. I think more could be made of how the harvest data works, the chart is .. compelling.
I have the (weak) theory that non-developed countries were such because of the weather. I love reading and thinking... but in summer I cannot do any of that at home, it's just impossible for me to sit and study without sweating and feeling umcomfortable. So, my theory goes like this:
For the people who like thinking/studying: hot weather does not invite you to stay at home and study/think, so you are forced to do something else.
I imagine that as summers get longer and hotter, we'll see a diminishing in new ideas and the like because the people who like to think will be forced to do something else (laying on the cold floor to pass by the day).
This completely ignores many of the major empires in history.
The Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, Babylon, the Egyptian empire, the Persian empire, all were in relatively hot weather.
Needless to say some of these empire are famous for studying and thinking (e.g. Ancient Greece?).
I agree with this view that Homo sapiens is smart because of natural selection in the ice age. However, the earlier primitive people in the tropics had easy access to food, which hindered the development of social civilization.
> theory that non-developed countries were such because of the weather
Don’t tell me you actually subscribe to the theory of undeveloped countries are so because of the heat, not colonialism or global exploitation. Your theory is beyond weak, its kindergarten level nonsense.
Yes, of course, colonialism was a curse for many countries, but we need to see further. Colonialism only works if a side has a much better technology than the other.
And the fact is that Europe (subjected to harsh winters, global empires and constant wars) had a much better technology. Period.
And that advances in war and travel, were based in lots and lots of solid science, created much before colonialism. You can't build a big ship or a bridge that stands 1000 years without solid math and skills.
Being subjected to a strong religion that is against science o pro-science also played a huge part.
The idea that when in danger of overheating or freeze our brain stop all machines and concentrates only in how to keep our body alive for one hour more is totally reasonable.
I'd say it was more like Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology too, it's the growth mindset that didn't take over there as much as in Europe.
Anyway too few data points and too much speculation to be able to say that advancement of civilization is casually dependent on the climate.
We have agriculture/cities/empires/writing/some technology that developed independently in many parts of the world, and the rise of Europe from the Reinessance. Very few data point for "civilization advancement events"
> Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology
The irony in this view is that almost everything tech and otherwise is manufactured by developing countries. And in places like Shenzhen, they innovate at an unimaginably rapid pace.
But sure, Europe has “world class” tech and Asia has “pretty good” tech…
Had, not has. I spoke of the '500s more or less. The exponential spike in innovation from that century until these days was something unprecedented in human history and started in Europe.
Of course today Europe is not the central point for technology anymore. Still they have a legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class, something that is less radicated (for now) in the East
> legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class
Where do you get the notion that developing countries don’t have “good schools”? They’ve had formalised education for millennia.
Unless you are measuring wealth purely in post colonial USD/EUR, every single country (developing or developed) clearly has an accumulated wealth class, middle class, and poor class. It’s absurd that you think isn’t the case?
Look at a high level journal and top published papers. Most papers come from certain institutions, mostly from developed countries. Those institutions don't live in a vacuum but have a big cultural and economical environment around them that would take decades to build from scratch.
I want to clarify that this is a tangential point to by our previous comment and my reply, which you did not address.
Regardless, I don’t have the energy to debate your random points and why there are issues with your understanding of them.
I’d like to end with the fact that “developed” countries don’t have the ability to actually manufacture most of their “genius” inventions, so…
There are all sorts of different ideas about why Europe developed before the rest of the world- maybe it was because of the scientific method, maybe it was finance capitalism, maybe it was wealth looted from other countries. But I’ve never heard it attributed to a “growth mindset”, whatever that means. That sounds like magical thinking, honestly.
I probably meant what you name as "finance capitalism" - the expectation that if you invest money you get a return on the investment, so you are encouraged to invest more money.
I tried researching “finance capitalism” but it is unclear to me what the innovation is.
It’s wild to me that the definition and your viewpoint presume that somehow non-European countries never considered making profit on investments? That’s… I don’t know what to say. Maybe read a book about history.
I think maybe part of the problem is that for idealogical reasons people lump a lot of things together and call it "capitalism" like the invention of calculus or the steam engine, but those are really separate things. They like to just put anything useful that people do and label it "capitalism" even though communist and other non-capitalist countries have created a lot of science. I don't know a lot about eastern financial structures. What I meant was the way that everything in Europe after a certain point becomes financed with debt, which then has to be paid back with interest, and you get these huge amounts of money owed by everyone, creating this requirement to expand or die, and you see all these expeditions launching and pillaging the rest of the world, and you see the commons privatized and the people living on agriculture are forced into the cities where they are packed together and put to work 16 hours a day, and all of it is to service debts that are instantly flipped around and used as collateral to obtain more debt, and so on. It's sort of a monster that has to grow or die, so maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know.
> Colonialism only works if a side has a much better technology than the other.
> You can't build a big ship or a bridge that stands 1000 years without solid math and skills.
I refuse to engage with someone so woefully misinformed about the non West world. I’ll leave it to you to read and learn more. Open your mind…
Really.... how do you explain the cultural differences in work productivity between south Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain) versus North Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland) ?
You do realise that Italy was previously Rome, and along with Greece, they kickstarted European democracy and governance? And they had (surprise) hot climates?
Do you realise that the fall of the Roman empire (west side) was mainly triggered by climate change?
Perhaps the climates 2000 years ago were not as hot as we might think.
It was warmer actually if we compare e.g. 0 AD to the 19th and early 20th centuries. Climate change you’re talking about resulted in a decrease in temperatures when the “Roman warm period” ended.
You literally didn’t even try to research this hot take, did you? Climate change is not the same as global warming, though related.
TL;DR - Warm weather good, cold weather bad. Plague much worse.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...
> the characteristic warm, wet and stable weather was conducive to economic productivity in an agrarian society
> violent sequence of eruptions triggered what is now called the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age,’ when much colder temperatures endured for at least 150 years.
> This phase of climate deterioration had decisive effects in Rome’s unravelling. It was also intimately linked to a catastrophe of even greater moment: the outbreak of the first pandemic of bubonic plague.
Protestant work ethic.
What exactly drove the apparition of this work ethic ? or of Protestantism in general ?
Go the 5 whys route and you'll end up at the environment.
An impressive data fit. It's a bummer we don't have data going even older - the medieval warm period was between 950 to 1250. It would be an interesting comparison point.
Does it even matter anymore? Someone always trying to play devils advocate - the science is clear. The anecdotes are clear. We all know what’s happening. We are warming up and it’s our fault. It’s really simple.
This part is simple, yes: it's warming and it's done by us. I'm a lot less clear on how this is bad.
> This summer is what a 1.2°C-heated planet looks like. But in the future this won’t seem so bad — compared to the 1.5°C-heated planet. If we get to 2°C …
The suspension points are there because trying to put actual words won't be as scary. A literal option would be "... we'll have summers an average 0.8C hotter". Which somehow fails to make me tremble in my boots, especially since it also means we'll have winters 0.8C warmer, which is a very very good thing.
> The suspension points are there because trying to put actual words won't be as scary.
I live in Spain. This summer is being absolutely unbearable. We're constantly hovering around 40ºC. You can't open the windows to go to sleep because at 23:00 it's still 29-30º outside. We've been like this since the beginning of July. And I live in Madrid, which isn't even one of the hottest parts of the country.
And that's just now. I can't imagine how it's going to be in the future. It's going to make parts of the country completely unlivable in the summer. Insulating and protecting from extreme heat is far more difficult from extreme cold, at this point the only alternative we really have is AC, which makes things worse due to the energy usage, and there are zones that aren't equipped with it because they don't usually get a lot of heat. Quite a lot of people will die of heat stroke (those vulnerable to hypothermia in the winter are also vulnerable to heat stroke in the summer, it's not like warmer weather will save any lives). The effect on crops, vegetation and wildlife is going to be devastating. The desertification process of Spain will continue even faster.
So yeah, the prospect of 2ºC heating is really, really scary.
Look at how the graphs accelerate. 0.8c? At the rate things are going it will be considerably more, and fast.
We do - https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/03/29/japan-kyot...
Same result.
As far as I understand, the medieval warm period is believed to be an anomaly localized to Europe. So it may not be reflected in data specific to Japan.
See the Japanese cherry blossom data mentioned by someone else. It has blooming data since 600 AD.
Anecdotal tidbits you may like:
In Greece, grapes are harvested normally before the feast of the transfiguration of Christ (6 August, tomorrow).
If you harvest earlier, they’re very Aesopian and sour, so farmers are really on the edge around these dates, constantly working to prepare the harvest.
But if they try leaving the grapes on the vines for a few more days, so they ripen more, you might lose the lot in the rain that usually follows a couple days later the feast.
There are few things more enjoyable these days here than taking random walks among the grape fields, chatting with the farmers, and leaving with a big smile and an even bigger bunch of grapes for the rest of your walk to the sea.
That "probability density function for summer temperature" is scary.
It's a pity it probably isn't going to be easy to communicate to laypeople because it is undoubtedly the correct way to talk about climate data.
Grapes feature at the end: "we can estimate" followed by a graph with a temperature axis. Would like to see the data and the formula for turning it to temperature used.
Regarding your desire for data, a research article referenced on the page: https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/15/1485/2019/ has a section on "Data availability," which seems to be relevant. Possibly the article altogether is interesting to you, I didn't read it (yet).
Thanks much!
Those dates are on record, and if we use them as proxy data to predict the summer average temperature, it does a remarkably good job, explaining 60% of the variance of the temperature data:
What exactly is meant by explaining variance? I can't really make sense of that term.
Say you have some variable you are tracking, which is due to some underlying phenomenon, with some noise. In this case it's the average summer temperature (so each summer gives 1 datapoint).
The simplest model is that the underlying phenomenon has some constant value, and the variations in your observations are all just random noise. You can estimate the true value as just the average of all the data. Computing the variance (the average squared distance from the true value) gives you a sense of how much noise there is.
Now lets say that we make our model a little more complicated and allow that the temperature changes year-to-year. In fact, let's say that we know the true value for each year. Imagine overlaying this "true" plot on top of the noisy observations. We can re-compute the variance, but rather than looking at the error relative to the mean, we're looking at the error relative to this true value. This variance is likely to be lower than the first one we calculated, because some of that variance wasn't actually noise, it was changes in the true value. We've "explained" some of the variance.
Now, rather than having access to the true values, we have some other variable that we think may be a good proxy for the temperature. In this case it's the grape harvest date. The first step is to find some mapping of the proxy variable onto the one that we're interested in (the article doesn't explain what mapping they're using). We assume that explaining more variance means that the (mapped) proxy variable is higher-quality.
Note that the mapping function is essentially learned from the data. In a simple case it might be just finding a scale factor and offset using a linear regression, but it could be more complicated. You need to be a little bit careful that you're not overfitting. It's a good idea to use some of the data to fit the proxy variable, and then compute the explained variance on other data (train/test split).
Correlation between the first derivatives of the date and temperature data, I believe.
I missed the part where they explained how they went from harvest date to temperature. I get that earlier harvest dates will imply warmer temperatures, but ...
Because they correlated well during 1950 — present
That is not what I meant. For example, did they fit a linear regression model, or, what?
Wow, you can see temp drops right near important historical events. The drop near the end of the 1700s is so close to the French Revolution.
"Now the interesting part: the record of grape harvest date (GHD) in Beaune, France goes back to the year 1354. If we use the grape harvest dates to estimate summer temperature, and use outbursts of extremely hot summer as indicators of extreme summer heat, we can estimate it going back over 650 years:"
I wonder if newer farmers would farm inside buildings instead of outside.
Seems too risky to plant shit tons, then random (and increasingly common) bad weather fucks everything up. Also, because most people farm outside, when bad weather destroys crops, indoor farmers can hike up the price and make bank.
Some crops are grown indoors, in greenhouses, like tomatoes or cucumbers. It's also done on a commercial scale. Here's an example of a cherry tomato growing operation: https://youtu.be/4arNJoJ98Og?t=867 The editing and the style might be a bit kooky but there's a certain charm to it.
Here's a satellite photo of a cluster of smaller greenhouses in Spain: https://i.redd.it/5w3jvyq5nx811.png
I wonder if there is a reason why most people farm outside?
What would it take to put a wheat field indoors?
When a lay person, including me, sees those studies, even though they are convincing to me, psychologically, there is an after taste of "its complicated" which I believe explains why some people fall in the deny pool.
Ive realized by experiencing this summer in France, which feels like the hottest conditions Ive ever lived in (and Ive lived in Thailand and Morocco) that things are actually dead simple. We've landed on the moon, we've invented vaccines and smartphones; now picture how dead simple this is for us to predict the consequences of injecting CO2 in a test tube.
People fall in the "deny" pool because of a longrunning PR campaign by the oil industry which leverages the "its complicated".
You can train people "its complicated, so trust the experts" or to "its complicated, don't trust the experts"
See some of these ads from big oil:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forg...
> there is an after taste of "its complicated"
Can I ask what is it that gives you this taste? What I see in the article is a graph, showing temperature clearly going up towards the end of the graph. I don't find this complicated to interpret.
But I agree with you that some people may find it complicated. I'd like to understand that better, because I'm having trouble putting my head in a space where seeing a temperature graph is complicated. Trying to understand the other perspective, but maybe you can explain what it is that gives you this distaste when you see a graph.
For example, if not a temperature graph, what way could this data be presented that would not leave an "after taste"? I'm trying to think of a simpler way.. to me this graph says, basically "before: straight line, now: going up." I can't think of a simpler way to state it that would be "less complicated" than that.
I'd like to understand that better, because I'm having trouble putting my head in a space where seeing a temperature graph is complicated. Trying to understand the other perspective
For the average Joe, a big explanation gives the impression you dont know.
The point I was making was we could explain it with one simple sentence and simple drawing: pour CO2 in a test tube, its hotter inside. "We've measured it".
That should be what people see because that gives the impression its sure. Short means "it's sure". Long means "you dont know". For most people; even at the top of a company.
It's been obvious to me since I spent the summer of 1976 in France, and I was an 11 year old kid.
33,4°C in Paris the 25 of june 1976
Around the 25 of june 2022 near Bordeaux at 23:30 (you read it well, 11:30pm), it was 36°C.
The closest Ive experienced was in Las Vegas Nevada, which is in the middle of what qualifies as a desert.
It was my understanding that at the test-tube-scale we aren't able to demonstrate CO2 increasing the heat. Is this correct?
You can see them even at that scale. The original experiments by Tyndall that demonstrated the effect were in a tube [1] currently on display at the Royal Institution.
[1] https://www.rigb.org/sites/default/files/styles/original/pub...
Incorrect. This is a fundamental property of the molecule CO2. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. In the atmosphere this property of CO2 prevents infrared radiation from radiating back out into space.
> While transparent to visible light, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, absorbing and emitting infrared radiation ... Absorption of infrared light at the vibrational frequencies of atmospheric CO2 traps energy near the surface, warming the surface and the lower atmosphere. Less energy reaches the upper atmosphere, which is therefore cooler because of this absorption.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#In_Earth's_atmo...
Or if you would rather Futurama explain it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cjx4gJFME0
No, you can replicate the effect easily in a high school classroom.
https://youtu.be/kwtt51gvaJQ
It’s literally that easy to demonstrate.
Good stuff. Still it's worth to look at the the ice core data from Greenland drilling.
Page is unreadable on iPhone because of a full screen popup ad that redirects me away
Would better weather forecasting move the relationship between weather and GHD?
Tamino helpfully linked the underlying paper in his first comment: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00069.... It's a clear and well written paper. While I assume its main conclusions are true (temperatures are hotter today and grape harvests are earlier than the historical average) there is a big hole in the logic used to show causality. Figure 5 and Table 1 show the main issue.
As I understand it (and I applaud the authors for the clarity of their explanation) the original data from the 1600's shows a harvest date about 7 days earlier than the 1700 and 1800's. The decided that this didn't agree with records for neighboring regions where such records existed, so they "homogenized" the data by pretending the actual recorded harvest dates were 7 days later.
Their justification for this is a one-time change in winemaking practice in Burgundy. Oh, by the way, according to the original records the difference harvest between the 1600's and today would otherwise have been just over 7 days. Lest I seem that I exaggerate, here it is in their words (Section 2.6):
In the perspective of reconstructing past spring–summer temperatures, this bias must be taken into account. Otherwise it would have mean April-to-July GHD temperature-based reconstructions with maxima and minima ca. 1 ∘C warmer before 1718 than afterwards on the decadal scale, even though temperature measurements available in France since 1658 do not provide any evidence of such a warming during the period 1658–1718. To homogenise the Beaune GHD series we have then added 7 d to raw data prior to 1718. The Pearson correlation with April-to-July mean temperature in Paris for the period 1658–2018 is stronger with the homogenised Beaune GHD time series (r=0.76) than with the non-homogenised one (r=0.74).
Anthropogenic changes in winemaking are the most likely explanation.
They aren't necessarily wrong to make an adjustment here, but it completely undermines the causal argument they are making (or at least, that Tamino is making). While it is unlikely that there were no changes in winemaking in the last 650 year, assuming that there was one and only one major change and that it can be dealt with by uniform change to a single period of the data is fantasy. The raw data shows an early harvest, they change it to a later one, and then go on to argue that harvests are happening earlier than ever!
Again, I presume their general conclusions are correct: recent temperatures are warmer, and recent harvests are getting earlier. But this paper really doesn't do a good job of showing the extent to which this is true, and it makes almost no effort to convince the reader that other cultural changes (which are almost certain to have occurred) didn't have effects of similar magnitude in unknown directions.
So first, the work is cool from a data analysis perspective, and it's always worth seeing this kind of thing for it's own sake.
Other than that, who cares. We've driven the diminishing returns on new evidence of climate change to zero. There is not a smoking gun that is suddenly going to change perception.
Stop using AGW as a political lever, and start looking for (implementing, because they exist) solutions, both in terms of carbon removal, and adaptation. The burden of proof has been met, we don't need more data. The only cause more data serves is preaching to the choir that wants to use AGW to implement large scale socialism. Stop doing that, and start solving the problem.
(I still think the analysis is neat)
> wants to use AGW to implement large scale socialism
I would argue the problem is the hyper-vigilant anti-socialists since they have sabotaged all proposals, including market-based ones.
There's probably some element of this as well. My point is that we've got lots of "deniers, bla bla" type comments that seem to want to focus on looking down on others (how could they be so ignorant in light of this grape harvest data) instead of realizing that what people are opposed to are the "solutions" being proposed that somehow nicely also promote some kind of political world view. Take the politics out of the equation, and "deniers" are not going to care about the minutia of grape harvests or ice cores.
Or instead I guess we can just keep congratulating ourselves on how airtight the case for AGW is and mocking "deniers", hoping one day we get the political tools to ignore their concerns.
Anyway, I'm happy to be reminded of why i stopped posting here.
How many posts does it take this chain for someone to say nuclear doesn’t work, and then mock free market too?
Aren’t you tired of it? We’ve all seen it a thousand times.
I certainly am, It's just the same old echo-chamber reverberating across themes
If you looked into how nuclear power plants get built you'd probably call it large scale socialism. But you got all your talking points lined up in a perfectly sensible row, I wouldn't want to topple them over.
>If you looked into how nuclear power plants get built you'd probably call it large scale socialism.
Are you saying that is why it's been an overall failure?
Maybe. But nuclear power wouldn't exist at all without some large scale socialism to prop it up