Are We in the "End Times"? (Revelations)

[Jhanon]

It would be cool if we had a site or webpage which lists all the affordable preventative measures as mathematically compared to the statistical likelihood of all known global dangers, and which of these preventative measures are most likely to be needed. I'm referring to individuals, as I highly doubt the government will do anything more than protect itself.

Human life blows.

[Jhanananda]

Well, my answer is, if everyone were a mendicant, then the Sun, earth, and stars can do whatever they want, and all mendicants will be fine.

[Jhanananda]

It would be cool if we had a site or webpage which lists all the affordable preventative measures as mathematically compared to the statistical likelihood of all known global dangers, and which of these preventative measures are most likely to be needed. I'm referring to individuals, as I highly doubt the government will do anything more than protect itself.

Human life blows.

We can start listing some basic survival strategies here, then build a webpage out of our discussion. 

1] It is my premise that the most basic survival strategy is the hunter-gather lifestyle, which the mendicant life compares well to.
2] Therefore learning how to camp, forage, fish and hunt will make one more resilient in any disaster.
3] This means owning a complete camping, foraging, fishing and hunting kit, and knowing how to use it, will make one more resilient in any disaster.

[Jhanananda]

More thoughts on the mendicant life and resiliency. One will need a mode of transportation whether one takes up the mendicant life, or seeks to survive a global disaster, like a direct hit from a coronal mass ejection; or a regional disaster, like flooding, famine, plague, war, tidal waves, earth quakes, and volcanoes.

Modes of transportation for the mendicant life:
4] The most basic mode of transportation is walking, so be able to put your entire survival kit on your back and walk into the wilderness at a moment's notice.
5] A touring bike, or mountain bike, will get one further with less effort. A bicycle that is set up for long distance riding and camping is all too easy to own these days; and having it fully outfitted with panniers and camping gear is possible given the time and money ahead of time to put it together.  The camping gear for tour cycling is not much different from backpacking, so the same kit could be used for both.  The only difference is panniers are made to fit onto racks on a bicycle, and you can carry more on a bike than you can on your back.

I have both kits and could be ready to hit the road in a few hours of packing.  I would go with the touring bicycle first, if I had a choice.

In the case of a coronal mass ejection it is likely that every computer on the planet will be fried permanently, so every automobile with a computer will be dead at the curb.  However, if one had the resources to own more than one auto, then one could have a modern automobile, and have a second auto that is pre-computer.  This would be up to the 70s for most gasoline engines, and up to 1990 for a diesel engine. Thus the advantage of owning a pre-computer automobile following a global disaster, there is likely to be a nearly infinite supply of auto parts, batteries, tires, motor oil, and fuel in those many abandoned dead automobiles sitting at the curb.

If the industrial revolution comes to a grinding halt because of a global disaster, such as a coronal mass ejection, then the entire global transportation system will collapse, along with the global electric grid; and it is not likely to come back.  This means within the first 2 weeks of such an event billions of people will starve to death; and the human population is likely to be cut in half every week following the disaster for the first year.  This is the time to disappear into the wilderness, because people will be desperate, and do desperate things to each other to survive.

A coronal mass ejection is the most probably source of a global disaster.  The solar cycle (see below) will give you some insight into the frequency of coronal mass ejections.  Previous coronal mass ejections caused social problems, such as war, witch burnings, etc.  For instance, the American Civil War broke out 1 year after the 1859 Carington Event.  I do not believe that is a coincidence.

From 1859, when the Carington event took place, and afterwards, we have become increasingly dependent upon technological advancements.  So, it is possible that the human world could fall back to a mid-19th century technology; however, we have left behind those technologies, so it would be very difficult to restore them.  Thus, the Mennonites and Amish are the most resilient social group who is likely to survive a global disaster, because of their simple lifestyle that depends upon community, and 19th century technology.

The solar cycle

List of solar storms
Electromagnetic, geomagnetic, and/or proton storms

    2225 BCE[5]
    1485 BCE[5]
    95 CE[5]
    265 CE[5]
    774–775 carbon-14 spike
    993-994 CE[6] (another significant carbon-14 spike)
    1460 CE[5]
    1505 CE[5]
    1719 CE[5]
    1810 CE[5]
    Solar storm of 1859 ("Carrington event")
    Aurora of November 17, 1882
    May 1921 geomagnetic storm
    March 1989 geomagnetic storm
    August 1989[7]
    Bastille Day event of July 14, 2000
    Halloween solar storms, 2003[8]

Recent coronal mass ejections

On 1 August 2010, during solar cycle 24, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) observed a series of four large CMEs emanating from the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Sun. The initial CME was generated by an eruption on 1 August that was associated with NOAA Active Region 1092, which was large enough to be seen without the aid of a solar telescope. The event produced significant aurorae on Earth three days later.

On 23 July 2012, a massive, and potentially damaging, Solar Superstorm (Solar flare, CME, Solar EMP) barely missed Earth, according to NASA.[19][20] There is an estimated 12% chance of a similar event hitting Earth between 2012 and 2022.[19]

On 31 August 2012 a CME connected with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow causing aurora to appear on the night of 3 September.[21][22] Geomagnetic storming reached the G2 (Kp=6) level on NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center scale of geomagnetic disturbances.[23][24]

Global catastrophic risk

A global catastrophic risk is a hypothetical future event with the potential to inflict serious damage to human well-being on a global scale.[2] Some such events could destroy or cripple modern civilization. Other, even more severe, scenarios threaten permanent human extinction.[3] These are referred to as existential risks.

Natural disasters, such as supervolcanoes and asteroids, pose such risks if sufficiently powerful. Human-caused, or anthropogenic, events could also threaten the survival of intelligent life on Earth. Such anthropogenic events could include catastrophic global warming,[4] nuclear war, or bioterrorism. The Future of Humanity Institute believes that human extinction is more likely to result from anthropogenic causes than natural causes.[5][6]

Researchers experience difficulty in studying human extinction directly, since humanity has never been destroyed before.[7] While this does not mean that it will not be in the future, it does make modelling existential risks difficult, due in part to survivorship bias.

[Jhanananda]

Asteroid 2004 BL86 to sweep close on January 26

[Jhanananda]

This was a near catastrophic impact. The sad part is NASA missed it.  As a tax payer who supports the sciences, I would like to see NASA find out where this asteroid is, track it, determine its orbit, and keep an eye on it.

Expert explains strange fireball flying over Houston area

[Alexander]

Maybe it is time this place came to an end...

[Jhanananda]

I agree. I expect that a sustainable ecosystem needs to have periodic extinctions to remove species that have dominated the ecosystem too long, and have become unsustainable due to lack of resilience.  The periodic extinction then promotes evolution by removing the dominate species.

[Jhanananda]

Recurring Meteor Shower On Mercury? NASA’s MESSENGER Suggests So. The finding also suggests that there might be a tie between the cyclic Meteor Showers On Mercury and the earth, which suggests that the debris fields that cause these meteor showers are in orbit around the sun.  If so, then there might be larger chunks that may impact us causing some damage and loss of life.

[Jhanananda]

These articles might be worth reading:

North American Drought Atlas, A History of Meteorological Drought Reconstructed from 835 Tree-Ring, Chronologies for the past 2005 years.

U.S. Droughts Will Be the Worst in 1,000 Years.

Two years on, source of Russian Chelyabinsk meteor remains elusive

Russian meteorite sheds light on dinosaur extinction mystery

List of solar cycles

major space weather events in history

Florida Tech Researchers Get Rare Lightning on Video

The Doomsday Clock, which measures the likelihood of global catastrophe, last month ticked a minute closer to "midnight"

Monthly and smoothed sunspot numbers

[Jhanananda]

New Study Reveals Link between Mass Extinction Events and Comet/Asteroid Showers

According to a study that will be published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet/asteroid showers.

For more than three decades, researchers have argued about a controversial hypothesis relating to periodic mass extinctions and asteroid/comet impact craters on Earth.

Dr Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution and Dr Michael Rampino of New York University offer new support linking the age of these craters with recurring mass extinctions of life, including the demise of the dinosaurs.

Specifically, they show a cyclical pattern over the studied period, with both impacts and extinction events taking place every 26 million years.

This cycle has been linked to periodic motion of the Sun and planets through the dense mid-plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Scientists have theorized that gravitational perturbations of the distant Oort comet cloud that surrounds the Sun lead to periodic comet showers in the inner Solar System, where some comets strike our planet.

To test their hypothesis, the team performed time-series analyses of impacts and extinctions using available data offering more accurate age estimates.

“The correlation between the formation of these impacts and extinction events over the past 260 million years is striking and suggests a cause-and-effect relationship,” said Dr Rampino, who is the lead author on the study.

The scientists found that six mass extinctions of life during the studied period correlate with times of enhanced impact cratering on Earth.

“One of the craters considered in the study is the Chicxulub impact structure in the Yucatan, which dates to about 65 million years ago – the time of a great mass extinction that included the dinosaurs.”

“Moreover, five out of the six largest impact craters of the last 260 million years on Earth correlate with mass extinction events,” they said.

“This cosmic cycle of death and destruction has without a doubt affected the history of life on our planet,” Dr Rampino concluded.

Big Five mass extinction events

Although the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or K-T) extinction event is the most well-known because it wiped out the dinosaurs, a series of other mass extinction events has occurred throughout the history of the Earth, some even more devastating than K-T. Mass extinctions are periods in Earth's history when abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously or within a limited time frame. The most severe occurred at the end of the Permian period when 96% of all species perished. This along with K-T are two of the Big Five mass extinctions, each of which wiped out at least half of all species. Many smaller scale mass extinctions have occurred, indeed the disappearance of many animals and plants at the hands of man in prehistoric, historic and modern times will eventually show up in the fossil record as mass extinctions. Discover more about Earth's major extinction events below.

Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction
443 million years ago
The third largest extinction in Earth's history, the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction had two peak dying times separated by hundreds of thousands of years. During the Ordovician, most life was in the sea, so it was sea creatures such as trilobites, brachiopods and graptolites that were drastically reduced in number.

Late Devonian mass extinction
359 million years ago
Three quarters of all species on Earth died out in the Late Devonian mass extinction, though it may have been a series of extinctions over several million years, rather than a single event. Life in the shallow seas were the worst affected, and reefs took a hammering, not returning to their former glory until new types of coral evolved over 100 million years later.

Permian mass extinction
248 million years ago
The Permian mass extinction has been nicknamed The Great Dying, since a staggering 96% of species died out. All life on Earth today is descended from the 4% of species that survived.

Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction
200 million years ago
During the final 18 million years of the Triassic period, there were two or three phases of extinction whose combined effects created the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event. Climate change, flood basalt eruptions and an asteroid impact have all been blamed for this loss of life.

Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction
65 million years ago
The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs.

Impact events

Impact events, proposed as causes of mass extinction, are when the planet is struck by a comet or meteor large enough to create a huge shockwave felt around the globe. Widespread dust and debris rain down, disrupting the climate and causing extinction on a global, rather than local, scale. The demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous has been linked to an impact that left a crater in the seabed off the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Impacts have also been blamed for other mass extinctions, but the timing and links between cause and effect for these is still debated by scientists.

[Jhanananda]

An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation. Because the majority of diversity and biomass on Earth is microbial, and thus difficult to measure, recorded extinction events affect the easily observed, biologically complex component of the biosphere rather than the total diversity and abundance of life.[1]

Extinction occurs at an uneven rate. Based on the fossil record, the background rate of extinctions on Earth is about two to five taxonomic families of marine animals every million years. Marine fossils are mostly used to measure extinction rates because of their superior fossil record and stratigraphic range compared to land organisms.

The Great Oxygenation Event was probably the first major extinction event. Since the Cambrian explosion five further major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent and debatably best-known, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In addition to the five major mass extinctions, there are numerous minor ones as well and the ongoing mass-extinction caused by human activity is sometimes called the sixth extinction. Mass extinctions seem to be a Phanerozoic phenomenon, with extinction rates low before large complex organisms arose.[2]

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.

Major extinction events
In a landmark paper published in 1982, Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup identified five mass extinctions. They were originally identified as outliers to a general trend of decreasing extinction rates during the Phanerozoic,[3] but as more stringent statistical tests have been applied to the accumulating data, the "Big Five" cannot be so clearly defined, but rather appear to represent the largest (or some of the largest) of a relatively smooth continuum of extinction events.[3]

    Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (End Cretaceous, K-T extinction, or K-Pg extinction): 66 Ma at the Cretaceous(Maastrichtian)-Paleogene(Danian) transition interval.[4] The K–T event is now officially called the Cretaceous–Paleogene (or K–Pg) extinction event in place of Cretaceous-Tertiary. About 17% of all families, 50% of all genera[5] and 75% of all species became extinct.[6] In the seas it reduced the percentage of sessile animals (those unable to move about) to about 33%. All non-avian dinosaurs became extinct during that time.[7] The boundary event was severe with a significant amount of variability in the rate of extinction between and among different clades. Mammals and birds, the latter descended from theropod dinosaurs, emerged as dominant large land animals.
    Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (End Triassic): 201.3 Ma at the Triassic-Jurassic transition. About 23% of all families, 48% of all genera (20% of marine families and 55% of marine genera) and 70% to 75% of all species went extinct.[5] Most non-dinosaurian archosaurs, most therapsids, and most of the large amphibians were eliminated, leaving dinosaurs with little terrestrial competition. Non-dinosaurian archosaurs continued to dominate aquatic environments, while non-archosaurian diapsids continued to dominate marine environments. The Temnospondyl lineage of large amphibians also survived until the Cretaceous in Australia (e.g., Koolasuchus).
    Permian–Triassic extinction event (End Permian): 252 Ma at the Permian-Triassic transition. Earth's largest extinction killed 57% of all families, 83% of all genera and 90% to 96% of all species[5] (53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species and an estimated 70% of land species, including insects).[8] The highly successful marine arthropod, the trilobite became extinct. The evidence of plants is less clear, but new taxa became dominant after the extinction.[9] The "Great Dying" had enormous evolutionary significance: on land, it ended the primacy of mammal-like reptiles. The recovery of vertebrates took 30 million years,[10] but the vacant niches created the opportunity for archosaurs to become ascendant. In the seas, the percentage of animals that were sessile dropped from 67% to 50%. The whole late Permian was a difficult time for at least marine life, even before the "Great Dying".
    Late Devonian extinction: 375–360 Ma near the Devonian-Carboniferous transition. At the end of the Frasnian Age in the later part(s) of the Devonian Period, a prolonged series of extinctions eliminated about 19% of all families, 50% of all genera[5] and 70% of all species.[citation needed] This extinction event lasted perhaps as long as 20 million years, and there is evidence for a series of extinction pulses within this period.
    Ordovician–Silurian extinction events (End Ordovician or O-S): 450–440 Ma at the Ordovician-Silurian transition. Two events occurred that killed off 27% of all families, 57% of all genera and 60% to 70% of all species.[5] Together they are ranked by many scientists as the second largest of the five major extinctions in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct.

Despite the popularization of these five events, there is no fine line separating them from other extinction events; using different methods of calculating an extinction's impact can lead to other events featuring in the top five.[11]

The older the fossil record gets, the more difficult it is to read. This is because:

    Older fossils are harder to find as they are usually buried at a considerable depth.
    Dating older fossils is more difficult.
    Productive fossil beds are researched more than unproductive ones, therefore leaving certain periods unresearched.
    Prehistoric environmental events can disturb the deposition process.
    The preservation of fossils varies on land, but marine fossils tend to be better preserved than their sought after land-based counterparts.[12]

It has been suggested that the apparent variations in marine biodiversity may actually be an artifact, with abundance estimates directly related to quantity of rock available for sampling from different time periods.[13] However, statistical analysis shows that this can only account for 50% of the observed pattern,[citation needed] and other evidence (such as fungal spikes)[clarification needed] provides reassurance that most widely accepted extinction events are real. A quantification of the rock exposure of Western Europe indicates that many of the minor events for which a biological explanation has been sought are most readily explained by sampling bias.[14]

Research completed after the seminal 1982 paper has concluded that a sixth mass extinction event is ongoing:

    6. Holocene extinction: Currently ongoing. Extinctions have occurred at over 100 times the background extinction rate since 1900. The mass extinction is considered a result of human activity.[15][16]

Patterns in frequency
It has been suggested variously that extinction events occurred periodically, every 26 to 30 million years,[22] or that diversity fluctuates episodically every ~62 million years.[23] Various ideas attempt to explain the supposed pattern, including the presence of a hypothetical companion star to the sun,[24] [25] oscillations in the galactic plane, or passage through the Milky Way's spiral arms.[26] However, other authors have concluded the data on marine mass extinctions do not fit with the idea that mass extinctions are periodic, or that ecosystems gradually build up to a point at which a mass extinction is inevitable.[3] Many of the proposed correlations have been argued to be spurious.[27][28] Others have argued that there is strong evidence supporting periodicity in a variety of records,[29] and additional evidence in the form of coincident periodic variation in nonbiological geochemical variables.[30]

Mass extinctions are thought to result when a long-term stress is compounded by a short term shock.[31] Over the course of the Phanerozoic, individual taxa appear to be less likely to become extinct at any time,[32] which may reflect more robust food webs as well as less extinction-prone species and other factors such as continental distribution.[32] However, even after accounting for sampling bias, there does appear to be a gradual decrease in extinction and origination rates during the Phanerozoic.[3] This may represent the fact that groups with higher turnover rates are more likely to become extinct by chance; or it may be an artefact of taxonomy: families tend to become more speciose, therefore less prone to extinction, over time;[3] and larger taxonomic groups (by definition) appear earlier in geological time.[33]

It has also been suggested that the oceans have gradually become more hospitable to life over the last 500 million years, and thus less vulnerable to mass extinctions,[note 1][34][35] but susceptibility to extinction at a taxonomic level does not appear to make mass extinctions more or less probable.[32]

Causes

There is still debate about the causes of all mass extinctions. In general, large extinctions may result when a biosphere under long-term stress undergoes a short-term shock.[31] An underlying mechanism appears to be present in the correlation of extinction and origination rates to diversity. High diversity leads to a persistent increase in extinction rate; low diversity to a persistent increase in origination rate. These presumably ecologically controlled relationships likely amplify smaller perturbations (asteroid impacts, etc.) to produce the global effects observed.[3]
Identifying causes of particular mass extinctions

A good theory for a particular mass extinction should: (i) explain all of the losses, not just focus on a few groups (such as dinosaurs); (ii) explain why particular groups of organisms died out and why others survived; (iii) provide mechanisms which are strong enough to cause a mass extinction but not a total extinction; (iv) be based on events or processes that can be shown to have happened, not just inferred from the extinction.

It may be necessary to consider combinations of causes. For example, the marine aspect of the end-Cretaceous extinction appears to have been caused by several processes which partially overlapped in time and may have had different levels of significance in different parts of the world.[36]

Arens and West (2006) proposed a "press / pulse" model in which mass extinctions generally require two types of cause: long-term pressure on the eco-system ("press") and a sudden catastrophe ("pulse") towards the end of the period of pressure.[37] Their statistical analysis of marine extinction rates throughout the Phanerozoic suggested that neither long-term pressure alone nor a catastrophe alone was sufficient to cause a significant increase in the extinction rate.
Most widely supported explanations

Macleod (2001)[38] summarized the relationship between mass extinctions and events which are most often cited as causes of mass extinctions, using data from Courtillot et al. (1996),[39] Hallam (1992)[40] and Grieve et al. (1996):[41]

    Flood basalt events: 11 occurrences, all associated with significant extinctions[42][43] But Wignall (2001) concluded that only five of the major extinctions coincided with flood basalt eruptions and that the main phase of extinctions started before the eruptions.[44]
    Sea-level falls: 12, of which seven were associated with significant extinctions.[43]
    Asteroid impacts; One large impact associated with a mass extinction; there have been many smaller impacts but they are not associated with significant extinctions.[clarification needed]

[Jhanananda]

The above article suggests that we have 11 million years more before the next major extinction; however, there are likely to be many smaller impacts in the intervening period, which could cause a major disruption of the habitable zones of earth.

The article below reports that it has been found that comet Love-Joy contains alcohol and sugar molecules which would certainly be the building blocks for life.  While I reject the hypothesis of an Oort cloud, and a belief that comets are "left over from the formation of the solar system;" and consider it far more reasonable that comets are frosty asteroids with highly elliptical orbits, which allow them to collect free-floating molecules from the cooling solar wind at the edge of the solar system, much like a vacuum cleaner; nonetheless, I do find it quite reasonable that comets can carry the building blocks for life, as well as protecting the odd micro organism under a thick sheet of frozen volatiles, whereby it eventually might be deposited on a world where the conditions for life may allow it to come to life, reproduce and even evolve into more complex organisms, as long as the conditions for life are sustained long enough.

Ingredients for Life Were Always Present on Earth, Comet Suggests
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer   |   October 23, 2015 03:10pm ET

[Jhanananda]

Ice cores confirm colossal solar storms

Evidence that Earth was hit by two solar storms – 10 times larger than those observed recently – 1,000 years ago. If they occurred today, they’d have devastating effects on power supplies, satellites and communications.

This week – October 26, 2014 – scientists in Sweden published a study in the journal Nature Communications suggesting that solar storms – streams of charged particles from the sun – could be much more powerful than previously assumed. Researchers at Lund University say they’ve now confirmed that Earth was hit by two extreme solar storms more than 1,000 years ago. These storms were at least 10 times larger than those observed in recent decades. The evidence for these storms is trapped in ice in Greenland and Antarctica.

Many skywatchers at high latitudes look forward to solar storms, because the particles they release may interact with Earth’s magnetic field, resulting in spectacular displays of auroras, or northern and southern lights. However, while solar storms aren’t harmful to us on Earth’s surface – because our atmosphere protects us – they do pose a risk to our earthly technologies.

In extreme cases, solar storms have caused major power outages, such as the one in October 2003 in Sweden and in March 1989 in Canada. They could also lead to breakdowns of satellites and communication systems. Raimund Muscheler of Lund University, speaking of the two enormous solar storms discovered by his research group, said in an October 26 statement:

    If such enormous solar storms would hit Earth today, they could have devastating effects on our power supply, satellites and communication systems.

[Jhanananda]

The Discovery of Global Warming

Earlier scientists had sought a single master‑key to climate, but now they were coming to understand that climate is an intricate system responding to a great many influences. Volcanic eruptions and solar variations were still plausible causes of change, and some argued these would swamp any effects of human activities. Even subtle changes in the Earth’s orbit could make a difference. To the surprise of many, studies of ancient climates showed that astronomical cycles had partly set the timing of the ice ages. Apparently the climate was so delicately balanced that almost any small perturbation might set off a great shift. According to the new “chaos” theories, in such a system a shift might even come all by itself — and suddenly. Support for the idea came from ice cores arduously drilled from the Greenland ice sheet. They showed large and disconcertingly abrupt temperature jumps in the past...

One unexpected discovery was that the level of methane and certain other gases was rising, which would add seriously to global warming. Some of these gases also degraded the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer, and the news inflamed public worries about the fragility of the atmosphere. Moreover, by the late 1970s global temperatures had begun to rise again. Many climate scientists were now convinced that the rise was likely to continue as greenhouse gases accumulated. By around 2000, some predicted, an unprecedented global warming would become apparent. Their worries first caught wide public attention in the summer of 1988, the hottest on record till then. (Most since then have been hotter.) An international meeting of scientists warned that the world should take active steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions...

The response was vehement. Corporations and individuals who opposed all government regulation began to spend many millions of dollars on lobbying, advertising, and “reports” that mimicked scientific publications, in an effort to convince people that there was no problem at all. Environmental groups, less wealthy but more enthusiastic, helped politicize the issue with urgent cries of alarm. But the many scientific uncertainties, and the sheer complexity of climate, made room for limitless debate over what actions, if any, governments should take...

There were some things that virtually all experts agreed on as of 1988.  A rather straightforward calculation showed that doubling the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere... which would arrive in the late 21st century if no steps were taken to curb emissions... should raise the temperature of the surface roughly one degree C. However, a warmer atmosphere would hold more water vapor, which ought to cause another degree or so of warming. Beyond that the calculations got problematic. Cloudiness was likely to change in ways that could either enhance or diminish the warming, and scientists did not understand the complex processes well. Moreover, humanity was emitting ever increasing amounts of smoke and other pollution; again scientists were not sure how this might affect climate. Only better observations and computer models could attempt to project the outcome...

Meanwhile striking news came from studies of ancient climates recorded in Antarctic ice cores. For hundreds of thousands of years, carbon dioxide and temperature had been linked: anything that caused one of the pair to rise or fall had caused a rise or fall in the other. It turned out that a doubling of carbon dioxide had always gone along with a 3°C temperature rise, give or take a degree or two — a striking confirmation of the computer models, from entirely independent evidence...

 Since 2001, greatly improved computer models and an abundance of data of many kinds strengthened the conclusion that human emissions are very likely to cause serious climate change. The IPCC’s conclusions were reviewed and endorsed by the national science academies of every major nation from the United States to China, along with leading scientific societies and indeed virtually every organization that could speak for a scientific consensus. Specialists meanwhile improved their understanding of some less probable but more severe possibilities. On the one hand, a dangerous change in ocean circulation seemed unlikely in the next century or two. On the other hand, there were signs that disintegrating ice sheets could raise sea levels faster than most scientists had expected. Worse, new evidence suggested that the warming was itself starting to cause changes that would generate still more warming.

In 2007 the IPCC reported that scientists were more confident than ever that humans were changing the climate. Although only a small fraction of the predicted warming had happened so far, effects were already becoming visible in some regions — more deadly heat waves, stronger floods and droughts, heat‑related changes in the ranges and behavior of sensitive species. But the scientists had not been able to narrow the range of possibilities. Depending on what steps people took to restrict emissions, by the end of the century we could expect the planet’s average temperature to rise anywhere between about 1.4 and 6°C (2.5–11°F).

Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago

Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.