I was looking at this yesterday and learned the following. A 100 year flood is a flood that has a 1% chance of happening in a given year. A 500 year flood has a 0.2% chance of happening in a given year. I’m not sure if temperature has the same model as rainfall. Anchorage was settled in 1914 according to Wikipedia, so I’m assuming that there are no temperature records beyond that and that 100 years in this case refers to it only having been settled for about 100 years.
So I guess there is no scientific reason, just living memory. For me such articles just lack the scientific merit and the only purpose is trying to cause mass hysteria. Earlier it was about how we all going the freeze to death, nowadays it is how we are all going to die because of global warming. In fact Earth went through several warm and cool periods, even if you look back just few hundred years. I am all for reducing CO2 and I am pretty successfully reduced unnecessary CO2 production in my work by using more efficient solutions and not wasting energy because this is what is under my control to help mother Earth. Writing click baity articles without context and scientific merit is not going to help anybody.
To cause "hysteria" in the way you're implying the general public would have to read the headline any other way than it is meant in the first place. But joe shmoe wasn't ever going to consider that 1000 years ago earth may have been in a different place climate wise so they're going to read the headline exactly the same whether it has the qualifier "in recorded history" or not.
Or maybe it’s only you who considers it clickbait and everybody else immediately understood the article was about recorded history of temperatures, because, you know, it’s kinda common sense?
Sure, whatever. Honestly, I'm tired of arguing with denialists. Really, I do hope that it turns out you're correct and know better than almost every climate scientist on earth.
At this point irrational hope is about the only hope left, so sure. Let's say you're right. Everything is fine. Natural cycles. Whatever.
Nobody sensible says Earth will be incapable of sustaining life. Jellyfish, for example, are predicted to flourish in a warming ocean depleted of fish stocks.
If society does collapse from drought, famine, resource wars, etc., then will we be able to rebuild it without all the free energy from fossil fuels, or was that a one-time cheat code? Maybe we're looking at the Great Filter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
>I don't think that guy is denying anything. He's merely stating that the earth has gone through drastic changes _many_ times in the past.
Bringing with them tons of changes to the climate, the kind which would kill billions from famines, floods, tornadoes, heat, lack of potable water, etc, in our hugely populated modern world.
>What makes this change the final one before earth is incapable of sustaining life?
We don't merely want an Earth "capable of sustaining life". We want an Earth capable of sustaining us, the whole 8 billions, and not a hellhole of environmental disaster, famine, decertification, and so on.
I could not give less fucks if cockroaches and wolves, e.g. survive, but billions of people are wiped out...
