{"id":12360,"date":"2015-09-17T06:35:41","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T11:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12360"},"modified":"2015-09-17T06:35:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T11:35:41","slug":"anthropocene-climate-part-two-four-degrees-of-devastation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12360","title":{"rendered":"Anthropocene climate, part two: Four degrees of devastation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/climateandcapitalism.com\/2015\/09\/16\/anthropocene-climate-part-two-four-degrees-of-devastation\/\">Anthropocene climate, part two:\u00a0Four degrees of devastation<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"pf-content\">\n<div class=\"printfriendly pf-alignright\"><em><strong>If greenhouse gas emissions aren\u2019t stopped soon, unprecedented and deadly heat waves will become the new normal in most of the world<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/climateandcapitalism.com\/2015\/09\/07\/anthropocene-climate-the-new-deadly-normal-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">Part one of this article<\/a>\u00a0discussed James Hansen\u2019s demonstration that a relatively small increase in global average temperature \u2013 under 1\u00b0C \u2013 has already produced a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of extremely hot weather. Heat waves that were very rare in 1951-1980 became\u00a0ten times more likely in 1981-2010. As one of Hansen\u2019s associates pointed out, this was not speculation about a possible future, but actual experience: \u201cthis is not based on models or predictions, just on a straightforward statistical analysis of measured temperature data.\u201d[1]<\/p>\n<p>Other studies, using other methods, have come to the same conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>A 2012 paper examined the \u201cexceptionally large number of record-breaking and destructive heatwaves\u201d in the first decade of this century. The authors found that, \u201cmany lines of evidence \u2013 statistical analysis of observed data, climate modelling and physical reasoning \u2013 strongly indicate that some types of extreme event, most notably heatwaves and precipitation extremes, will greatly increase in a warming climate and have already done so\u2026. The evidence is strong that anthropogenic, unprecedented heat and rainfall extremes are here \u2013 and are causing intense human suffering.\u201d[2]<\/p>\n<p>A study of extreme weather events between 1997 and 2012 concluded that\u00a0\u201cthe available evidence suggests that the most \u2018extreme\u2019 extremes show the greatest change. This is particularly relevant for climate change impacts, as changes in the warmest temperature extremes over land are of the most relevance to human health, agriculture, ecosystems and infrastructure.\u201d[3]<\/p>\n<p>Others have found that global warming made the 2012-2014 California drought significantly worse than it would have otherwise been, and that in Australia, where hot and cold records used to be set in about equal numbers, all-time hot weather records now outnumber cold records by 12 to 1.[4]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anthropocene climate, part two:\u00a0Four degrees of devastation If greenhouse gas emissions aren\u2019t stopped soon, unprecedented and deadly heat waves will become the new normal in most of the world Part one of this article\u00a0discussed James Hansen\u2019s demonstration that a relatively small increase in global average temperature \u2013 under 1\u00b0C \u2013 has already produced a significant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2648,8834,141,9104,220,288,369,9103,6955],"class_list":["post-12360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-anthropogenic-climate-change","tag-climate-and-capitalism","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-modelling","tag-drought","tag-extreme-weather","tag-global-warming","tag-heatwaves","tag-james-hansen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12361,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360\/revisions\/12361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}