I’m assuming that’s some kind of logarithm scale and not plain linear? I would imagine hockey stick rate growth somewhere around 1950 or so, which makes the graph even scarier.
Anyway, I’ll be unsubscribing because I only want good news forced into my eyeballs, clockwork orange style.
To be fair, a linear extrapolation of 50kyr is unlikely to be accurate. There could have been temperature spikes that led to extinctions. But I expect the geologic record didn’t preserve that level of granularity.
The graph clearly shows an increase of less than .2 degrees during the mass extinction. The red line is at 1.4 already, and we're all still alive! Something else caused the mass extinction! Temperature changes are fine!
No, I'm not being serious. But this would be my interpretation if I was a dishonest sleazebag like Rogan and had 15 million gullible halfwits following me.
Thanks for the graph. Are you implying that the end-Permian extinction was driven primarily by warming? The most comprehensive thing I've read on this was "When Life Nearly Died" by Michael J. Benton (2003). He cites Paul Wignall's extinction model, which seems to put more emphasis on acid rain and anoxia, with periods of both cooling and warming, which certainly didn't help.
Likewise, current extinctions seem to be more caused by habitat loss and invasive species than by temperature.
I don't want to rain on your "good news" parade regarding renewables for electric generation, but I do want to speak for the poor of the world. 600 million people in Africa currently lack access to electricity, and use wood or dung for cooking, which is the primary source of air pollution deaths in the world, killing millions yearly. To solve this problem, the International Energy Agency sponsors the Sustainable Africa Scenario, which focuses only on renewable energy sources. Because of this, many aid organizations and financial institutions refuse to finance fossil-fuel electric generation, leaving children to die rather than contribute a few more thousandths of a degree of warming. This is the bad news side of your good news.
Also on the bad news side, the Europeans' single-minded focus on renewables and achieving net zero is depressing the standard of living for Europeans and sucking up most discretionary resources, leaving NATO countries unable to contribute enough for their own security, let alone assist Ukraine in resisting Russia.
"I don't want to rain on your "good news" parade regarding renewables for electric generation..."
Oh, yes you do.
"I do want to speak for the poor of the world..."
Now, there's a grandiose claim.
"...many aid organizations and financial institutions refuse to finance fossil-fuel electric generation, leaving children to die rather than contribute a few more thousandths of a degree of warming..."
Citation needed, other than to a site named "CO2balance". You realize that global warming is driven by the aggregate of small anthropogenic contributions, don't you? And that as the globe warms, it does so by thousandths of degrees?
"...the Europeans' single-minded focus on renewables and achieving net zero is depressing the standard of living for Europeans and sucking up most discretionary resources..."
Citation needed. Not that achieving net zero isn't a worthwhile goal, the alternative being open-ended warming, bringing with it open-ended grief and expense (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0).
And so forth... let's see what kind of unsupported BS Brian comes up with next. He's a tar baby: avoid getting stuck!
Our fossil fuel emissions are only part of the rise in atmospheric CO2. The failure of the terrestrial carbon sink in 2023 + 2024 has resulted in an additional 10GT of CO2 going into the atmosphere in each of the last two years. If the sinks continue to fail then Katy bar the door . The boreal forests and peat beds are drying and burning, the Amazon is burning and these fires count in atmospheric CO2 accumulations we are witnessing and frankly they are a sign of how an uncontrolled feedback will negate any small gains of renewable electricity. We are tanked.
The fun fact is, it doesn't matter if we believe it's getting hotter or whether CO2 is the cause, or whether humans are causing it (all true, by the way), physics and climate don't care what puny humans know or believe. It will come.
Love this graph! Do y'all mind if I use it in my upcoming book, "Your Guide to Climate Action"? It would fit perfectly in Chapter 1. Please let me know!
Let's see. 1.4°C warming in 174 years is 0.008 C/year.
So assuming nothing unusual happens, we'll reach the dreaded 10°C extinction number in 8.6° / 0.008°C per year … 25 plus 75, carry the one, and we have …
… the year 3100 AD. A mere 1,075 years from now.
Yep. Everyone panic. Let's destroy our economy out of raw fear of the year 3100 AD.
And hey, there's nothing wrong with extrapolating a linear trend over a thousand years into the future. I'm reminded of Mark Twain, who famously said:
"The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago... Its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past... what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
My best to all,
w.
PS—Comparing modern changes to paleo changes is generally not done for a host of reasons. If you don't know what they are, perhaps you shouldn't do it … anyhow, here are the issues involved:
Comparing the speed of modern temperature change to rates inferred from paleo temperature proxies over 250 million years is problematic due to several key scientific reasons:
1. Proxy Uncertainties and Limitations
Proxy methods have large uncertainties: Paleotemperature proxies (e.g., tree rings, ice cores, marine sediments) have typical uncertainties ranging from ±1.2°C to ±3°C depending on method and environment, and the median uncertainty across all proxies and seasons is roughly ±1.7°C. This is much higher than the uncertainty in the modern instrumental record (usually less than ±0.1°C over annual to decadal scales).
Chronological resolution is coarse: Proxy records spanning 250 million years generally have time resolution no finer than thousands to tens of thousands of years. In contrast, the modern instrumental record resolves temperature at monthly, annual, and decadal scales, allowing for precise quantification of change rates. Chronological uncertainty for proxy records can be several centuries to millennia for these deep time records.
2. Temporal Averaging Masks Rapid Events
Ancient proxies smooth rapid changes: Data for ancient climates are averaged over far longer intervals. Sudden temperature changes (over years or centuries) are blurred or lost in proxies that average over thousands or millions of years. This means proxy-derived change rates will systematically underestimate the real speed of past rapid shifts.
Extreme events may be undetectable: For example, sharp shifts similar to today’s warming (mostly measured over decades) would not appear as such in marine sediment cores or isotope records with thousand-year time steps.
3. Calibration and Signal Weakness
Proxy-to-temperature relationships are statistical, not direct: The correlation between proxies and local temperature is often weak or highly variable, with some proxy types explaining little of the annual (much less decadal) variation in actual temperature. Many proxies are sensitive to confounding environmental factors beyond temperature (e.g., precipitation, local ecology, ocean chemistry).
Instrumental calibration is lacking for deep time: Calibration of proxies is generally grounded on conditions present in the recent past, but the ecological and environmental background of proxies 250 million years ago is very different (e.g., continental positions, solar output, atmospheric composition).
4. Spatial Coverage and Bias
Sampling network is often incomplete and biased: Ancient records disproportionately sample particular regions (e.g., Northern Hemisphere, marine environments), while modern instruments sample globally. This bias can distort patterns and rates inferred from proxies, further complicating comparisons.
5. Differences in Underlying Drivers
Forcings differ profoundly across eras: Rates of change reflect different climate forcings (e.g., volcanism, asteroid impacts, tectonics, greenhouse gases) which are fundamentally unlike the present anthropogenic CO₂ rise. Paleo changes may involve slower or more gradual mechanisms than today’s rapid emissions-driven change.
In summary
Instrumental records (last 150 years) provide precise, high-resolution temperature change rates averaged over years to decades.
Paleo proxies (hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago) have much coarser temporal and spatial resolution, very large uncertainties, and smoothing that prevents detection of rapid events.
Therefore, it is scientifically inappropriate to directly compare the “speed” of temperature change derived from modern instrumental records to that inferred from paleo proxies, especially across such vastly different timescales and contexts.
These cautionary reasons do not mean paleoclimate research is uninformative—rather, they reinforce care in making statements about “unprecedented” modern change rates using ancient proxy data.
Hey David - that's a good point, we were probably being overly conservative on our simple graph. The recordkeeping started in 1880, but we were considering the "late 19th-century (1850-1900) pre-industrial average" - so we stretched the start back to 1850. Starting with 1880 could be more accurate to their data, and give a slightly more severe slope. The point of the chart is the fast relative increase in global average temperature.
That is a good graph. One of the goodest.
I’m assuming that’s some kind of logarithm scale and not plain linear? I would imagine hockey stick rate growth somewhere around 1950 or so, which makes the graph even scarier.
Anyway, I’ll be unsubscribing because I only want good news forced into my eyeballs, clockwork orange style.
To be fair, a linear extrapolation of 50kyr is unlikely to be accurate. There could have been temperature spikes that led to extinctions. But I expect the geologic record didn’t preserve that level of granularity.
The graph clearly shows an increase of less than .2 degrees during the mass extinction. The red line is at 1.4 already, and we're all still alive! Something else caused the mass extinction! Temperature changes are fine!
No, I'm not being serious. But this would be my interpretation if I was a dishonest sleazebag like Rogan and had 15 million gullible halfwits following me.
Thanks for the graph. Are you implying that the end-Permian extinction was driven primarily by warming? The most comprehensive thing I've read on this was "When Life Nearly Died" by Michael J. Benton (2003). He cites Paul Wignall's extinction model, which seems to put more emphasis on acid rain and anoxia, with periods of both cooling and warming, which certainly didn't help.
Likewise, current extinctions seem to be more caused by habitat loss and invasive species than by temperature.
I don't want to rain on your "good news" parade regarding renewables for electric generation, but I do want to speak for the poor of the world. 600 million people in Africa currently lack access to electricity, and use wood or dung for cooking, which is the primary source of air pollution deaths in the world, killing millions yearly. To solve this problem, the International Energy Agency sponsors the Sustainable Africa Scenario, which focuses only on renewable energy sources. Because of this, many aid organizations and financial institutions refuse to finance fossil-fuel electric generation, leaving children to die rather than contribute a few more thousandths of a degree of warming. This is the bad news side of your good news.
Also on the bad news side, the Europeans' single-minded focus on renewables and achieving net zero is depressing the standard of living for Europeans and sucking up most discretionary resources, leaving NATO countries unable to contribute enough for their own security, let alone assist Ukraine in resisting Russia.
"I don't want to rain on your "good news" parade regarding renewables for electric generation..."
Oh, yes you do.
"I do want to speak for the poor of the world..."
Now, there's a grandiose claim.
"...many aid organizations and financial institutions refuse to finance fossil-fuel electric generation, leaving children to die rather than contribute a few more thousandths of a degree of warming..."
Citation needed, other than to a site named "CO2balance". You realize that global warming is driven by the aggregate of small anthropogenic contributions, don't you? And that as the globe warms, it does so by thousandths of degrees?
"...the Europeans' single-minded focus on renewables and achieving net zero is depressing the standard of living for Europeans and sucking up most discretionary resources..."
Citation needed. Not that achieving net zero isn't a worthwhile goal, the alternative being open-ended warming, bringing with it open-ended grief and expense (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0).
And so forth... let's see what kind of unsupported BS Brian comes up with next. He's a tar baby: avoid getting stuck!
Rogan's analysis of data. Priceless.
"Analysis"
Ftfy
Our fossil fuel emissions are only part of the rise in atmospheric CO2. The failure of the terrestrial carbon sink in 2023 + 2024 has resulted in an additional 10GT of CO2 going into the atmosphere in each of the last two years. If the sinks continue to fail then Katy bar the door . The boreal forests and peat beds are drying and burning, the Amazon is burning and these fires count in atmospheric CO2 accumulations we are witnessing and frankly they are a sign of how an uncontrolled feedback will negate any small gains of renewable electricity. We are tanked.
The fun fact is, it doesn't matter if we believe it's getting hotter or whether CO2 is the cause, or whether humans are causing it (all true, by the way), physics and climate don't care what puny humans know or believe. It will come.
Love this graph! Do y'all mind if I use it in my upcoming book, "Your Guide to Climate Action"? It would fit perfectly in Chapter 1. Please let me know!
Silly comparison... let the real scientist do the work please..
Let's see. 1.4°C warming in 174 years is 0.008 C/year.
So assuming nothing unusual happens, we'll reach the dreaded 10°C extinction number in 8.6° / 0.008°C per year … 25 plus 75, carry the one, and we have …
… the year 3100 AD. A mere 1,075 years from now.
Yep. Everyone panic. Let's destroy our economy out of raw fear of the year 3100 AD.
And hey, there's nothing wrong with extrapolating a linear trend over a thousand years into the future. I'm reminded of Mark Twain, who famously said:
"The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago... Its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past... what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
My best to all,
w.
PS—Comparing modern changes to paleo changes is generally not done for a host of reasons. If you don't know what they are, perhaps you shouldn't do it … anyhow, here are the issues involved:
Comparing the speed of modern temperature change to rates inferred from paleo temperature proxies over 250 million years is problematic due to several key scientific reasons:
1. Proxy Uncertainties and Limitations
Proxy methods have large uncertainties: Paleotemperature proxies (e.g., tree rings, ice cores, marine sediments) have typical uncertainties ranging from ±1.2°C to ±3°C depending on method and environment, and the median uncertainty across all proxies and seasons is roughly ±1.7°C. This is much higher than the uncertainty in the modern instrumental record (usually less than ±0.1°C over annual to decadal scales).
Chronological resolution is coarse: Proxy records spanning 250 million years generally have time resolution no finer than thousands to tens of thousands of years. In contrast, the modern instrumental record resolves temperature at monthly, annual, and decadal scales, allowing for precise quantification of change rates. Chronological uncertainty for proxy records can be several centuries to millennia for these deep time records.
2. Temporal Averaging Masks Rapid Events
Ancient proxies smooth rapid changes: Data for ancient climates are averaged over far longer intervals. Sudden temperature changes (over years or centuries) are blurred or lost in proxies that average over thousands or millions of years. This means proxy-derived change rates will systematically underestimate the real speed of past rapid shifts.
Extreme events may be undetectable: For example, sharp shifts similar to today’s warming (mostly measured over decades) would not appear as such in marine sediment cores or isotope records with thousand-year time steps.
3. Calibration and Signal Weakness
Proxy-to-temperature relationships are statistical, not direct: The correlation between proxies and local temperature is often weak or highly variable, with some proxy types explaining little of the annual (much less decadal) variation in actual temperature. Many proxies are sensitive to confounding environmental factors beyond temperature (e.g., precipitation, local ecology, ocean chemistry).
Instrumental calibration is lacking for deep time: Calibration of proxies is generally grounded on conditions present in the recent past, but the ecological and environmental background of proxies 250 million years ago is very different (e.g., continental positions, solar output, atmospheric composition).
4. Spatial Coverage and Bias
Sampling network is often incomplete and biased: Ancient records disproportionately sample particular regions (e.g., Northern Hemisphere, marine environments), while modern instruments sample globally. This bias can distort patterns and rates inferred from proxies, further complicating comparisons.
5. Differences in Underlying Drivers
Forcings differ profoundly across eras: Rates of change reflect different climate forcings (e.g., volcanism, asteroid impacts, tectonics, greenhouse gases) which are fundamentally unlike the present anthropogenic CO₂ rise. Paleo changes may involve slower or more gradual mechanisms than today’s rapid emissions-driven change.
In summary
Instrumental records (last 150 years) provide precise, high-resolution temperature change rates averaged over years to decades.
Paleo proxies (hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago) have much coarser temporal and spatial resolution, very large uncertainties, and smoothing that prevents detection of rapid events.
Therefore, it is scientifically inappropriate to directly compare the “speed” of temperature change derived from modern instrumental records to that inferred from paleo proxies, especially across such vastly different timescales and contexts.
These cautionary reasons do not mean paleoclimate research is uninformative—rather, they reinforce care in making statements about “unprecedented” modern change rates using ancient proxy data.
Well it’s one of
Steve Davis
Stephen Hendry
Ronnie O’Sullivan
I’d have to go with Ronnie O’Sullivan.
That said my favourite player was Jimmy White.
Fantastic skill but he always seemed to come up just that little bit short in the big tournaments
Dennis Taylor
Did I just lose my mind, or should Rollie go on Joe Rogan's show, toe-to-toe and BEAT HIM AT HIS OWN GAME??!?!!! 🔥 🤑 💪🏼 🧠👀 🦅 🌳 🌞🐍👏🏼💯
Edit to add: Yes!
The best snooker player is Ronnie O'Sullivan. I know this for a fact because my coworker played snooker as a kid and he said so.
I don't understand your first chart. NASA's data begins in 1880, not 1850.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v4/GLB.Ts+dSST.csv
Hey David - that's a good point, we were probably being overly conservative on our simple graph. The recordkeeping started in 1880, but we were considering the "late 19th-century (1850-1900) pre-industrial average" - so we stretched the start back to 1850. Starting with 1880 could be more accurate to their data, and give a slightly more severe slope. The point of the chart is the fast relative increase in global average temperature.
Here's the link we used: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/?intent=121
I am serious about this: https://exploringhumans.substack.com/p/unleash-your-inner-female-bonobo