<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="widget-ArticleTopInfo widget-instance-ArticleTopInfo" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial;"><div class="article-top-widget content-metadata_wrap module-widget" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.5;"><div class="widget-items" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><h1 class="wi-article-title article-title-main" style="margin: 0.25rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(29, 27, 27); line-height: 1.25;"><font size="4" class="">The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change </font><span class="icon-availability_free" title="Free" style="font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 1; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; color: rgb(3, 166, 120);"></span></h1><div class=""><font size="4" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class="article-deck-wrap" style="margin: 0.25rem 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.5;"><span class="article-deck" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic;" class=""><b class="">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.</b></span></span></div><div class="wi-authors" style="margin: 0.25rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="al-authors-list" style="margin: 0.5rem 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.25;"><div class="al-author-name" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; position: relative;"><a class="js-linked-name stats-author-info-trigger linked-name" style="margin: 0.5rem 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer; word-break: normal; line-height: 1.25;">Spencer Weart</a></div></div></div><div class="js-metadata-wrap metadata" style="margin: 0.25rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="pub-history-wrap clearfix" style="margin: 0.25rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="clearfix pub-history-row" style="margin: 0px; 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padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">Cite</span></a></div></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="article-body" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px;"><div id="ContentTab" class="content active" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="widget-ArticleFulltext widget-instance-ArticleFulltext" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="module-widget" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="widget-items" data-widgetname="ArticleFulltext" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.75rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.75;"><div class="article-metadata-standalone-panel clearfix" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="content-metadata-taxonomies" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="content-metadata" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="content-metadata-taxonomies-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class=""></div><div class="content-metadata-taxonomies-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b class="">Opening paragraphs</b></div><div class="content-metadata-taxonomies-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class=""></div><div class="content-metadata-taxonomies-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">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.</div></div></div></div><div id="51876700" class=" js-article-section js-content-section article-section-wrapper" data-section-parent-id="0" style="margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.75;" class="">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.”<a data-modal-source-id="c1" class="link link-ref xref-bibr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: underline; word-break: normal; font-weight: 700;"> <sup style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1;" class="">1</sup> </a> </div></div><div id="51876701" class=" js-article-section js-content-section article-section-wrapper" data-section-parent-id="0" style="margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.75;" class="">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.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class=""><div dir="auto" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.58; width: 600px; margin: 0px; clear: both; padding-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(31, 31, 31); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial;"><div lang="en" data-hveid="CBMQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwiUr_OI27CFAxWvODQIHRgWBfIQFSgAegQIExAA" class=""><div class="tF2Cxc" style="position: relative; clear: both; padding-bottom: 0px;"><div class="yuRUbf" style="line-height: 1.58;"><span jscontroller="msmzHf" jsaction="rcuQ6b:npT2md;PYDNKe:bLV6Bd;mLt3mc" class=""><a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1611350" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; word-break: normal;" class="">https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1611350</a></span></div><div class="yuRUbf" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.58;"><span jscontroller="msmzHf" jsaction="rcuQ6b:npT2md;PYDNKe:bLV6Bd;mLt3mc" class=""><br class=""></span></div></div></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;">*********<br class=""><br class=""></div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;">“Things are happening right now with the ice sheets that were not predicted to happen until 2100,” Schlesinger says. <br class=""><br class="">“My worry is that we may have passed the window of opportunity where learning is still useful.” <br class=""><br class="">John Bohannan, ”Trying to Lasso Climate Uncertainty.” <br class="">SCIENCE, 13 OCTOBER 2006</div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><br class="">******************</div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><br class="">“Personally, this is very disturbing to me,” McCarty said, because the fire indicates significant permafrost degradation “sooner than [scientists] thought it would happen.” <br class=""><br class="">Researchers project significant permafrost loss in Greenland by the end of the century. Not 2017, she said.<br class=""><br class=""><a href="https://eos.org/articles/greenland-fires-ignite-climate-change-fears" class="">https://eos.org/articles/greenland-fires-ignite-climate-change-fears</a></div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><br class="">************</div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;"><br class="">"In order to control climate change, a range of radical policies will have to be adopted by the world’s authorities – towns, cities, states, national governments and their agencies, and international organisations.”<br class=""><br class="">Paul Fisher, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership<br class=""><a href="http://www.ethicalcorp.com/how-g20-can-supercharge-green-finance" class="">http://www.ethicalcorp.com/how-g20-can-supercharge-green-finance</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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