[MCN] How fast can climate change? Too slowly for humans to*notice*, according to most scientists of the 20th century

[Lance Olsen]

Physics Today 56, 8, 30 (2003); 
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1611350 <https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1611350>

The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change

Only within the past decade have researchers warmed to the possibility of abrupt shifts in Earth’s climate. Sometimes, it takes a while to see what one is not prepared to look for.

Spencer Weart directs the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics.

 PDF <http://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.1611350> 

Opening paragraphs

How fast can our planet’s climate change? Too slowly for humans to notice, according to the firm belief of most scientists through much of the 20th century. Any shift of weather patterns, even the Dust Bowl droughts that devastated the Great Plains in the 1930s, was seen as a temporary local excursion. To be sure, the entire world climate could change radically: The ice ages proved that. But common sense held that such transformations could only creep in over tens of thousands of years.

In the 1950s, a few scientists found evidence that some of the great climate shifts in the past had taken only a few thousand years. During the 1960s and 1970s, other lines of research made it plausible that the global climate could shift radically within a few hundred years. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, further studies reduced the scale to the span of a single century. Today, there is evidence that severe change can take less than a decade. A committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has called this reorientation in the thinking of scientists a veritable “paradigm shift.” The new paradigm of abrupt global climate change, the committee reported in 2002, “has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policymakers.” 1 <https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1611350#>

Much earlier in the 20th century, some specialists had evidence of abrupt climate change in front of their eyes. The evidence was meaningless to them. To appreciate change occurring within 10 years as significant, scientists first had to accept the possibility of change within 100 years. That, in turn, had to wait until they accepted the 1000-year time scale. The history of this evolution gives a good example of the stepwise fashion in which science commonly proceeds, contrary to the familiar heroic myths of discoveries springing forth in an instant. The history also suggests why, as the NAS committee worried, most people still fail to realize just how badly the world’s climate might misbehave.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1611350 <https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1611350>
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IPCC
“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” First sentence of IPPC Special Report on 1.5C Summary for Policy Makers.

<<https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/ <https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/>>>

Greta Thunberg
"So if we are to stay below the 1.5 degrees of warming limits …, we need to change almost everything.”

"At meetings like these, you love to listen to entrepreneurs' new ideas, new inventions. But when it comes to the climate crisis, the time for those magic new inventions has just about come and gone.

"And even though we need to embrace every bit of new clean technology, we can no longer look away from the obvious fact that we also need to change our behaviour—and some more than others.

"Everyone and everything needs to change. But the bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.

"The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. To make the change required, we need role models and leaders—people like you.

"I'm certain that most of you sitting here will have the courage, the wisdom, and the common sense to take a few steps back. To see the full picture. 

To make the sacrifices that are necessary and to become the leaders we need you to be.

"The question is: will you do it on time? Future generations are counting on you. Don't let us down.

"Thank you."

<<https://www.straight.com/news/1258421/video-swedish-teenager-greta-thunberg-urges-wealthy-people-stop-stealing-others-carbon <https://www.straight.com/news/1258421/video-swedish-teenager-greta-thunberg-urges-wealthy-people-stop-stealing-others-carbon>>>



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