[barry-cotter]

Humans have been changing the climate for longer than we’ve been farming. We killed off the mammoths, which turned the tundra from grasslands into taiga covered in tiny low growth forest and dramatically reduced the albedo of lots of Northern Eurasia. Humans prefer grassland over forest which is part of why eucalyptus are so prevalent in Australia, they do better with fire than other trees. It has been posited that the Little Ice Age was because when 95% of the American population died there was a great deal less land management and deliberate forest fires, resulting in more than two centuries of above average carbon sequestration and a drop in temperatures.

Humans have been changing the climate for a long time.

[dominicr]

Yes, but it is much, much, much faster now than any previous time. Plus we have the knowledge of its effects upon us directly and the ecosystem that we rely on to survive, combined with the technological knowledge & wealth in order to reduce the effects and mitigate the impact.

[Entropee]

So you are talking about Calculus. 'Much faster' implies 2nd derivative.

What rate of change is your baseline for ‘objective normality’?

[dominicr]

You come across as somebody who's trying to fallaciously prove how smart they are, so can dismiss any argument you think isn't worthy of your esteemed intellect. It's not a good look. Your username adds to the suspicion that you're just a troll.

If you really want to, compare the past 150 years with the previous 2000: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1401-2

[Entropee]

Seeming as you clicked the down-vote button and not the 'reply' button, I am going to just assume you don't know...

Congratulations. You win the argument, and the internet.

Pointing out the problems without offering solutions isn't a very useful thing to do.

[dominicr]

I don’t think I can downvote replies to my own comment on HN. But I’ll take the internet crown anyway, thank you!

Edit: just tried it, I can downvote your original comment but not your replies to mine.

[Entropee]

You come across as somebody who doesn't have an answer to the actual hard question. Yes - it's faster now than 150 years ago.

What should the rate of change be at? What should we be aiming for?

Give me a bounded interval.

[dominicr]

There’s nothing to be gained here so I’ll apply the principle of conservation of energy and move on. When two arseholes blow hard all you get is a smelly room.

[Entropee]

What do you expect to gain from somebody who already agrees with you, Mr Obvious?

Having the last word was a really poor effort at conserving energy.

[taneq]

Uh, “much much faster” is 1st derivative. “Getting faster” is second derivative.

[Entropee]

While you are tripping over semantics ponder on this:

Is it 'getting faster' if 'much much faster' is faster than 'much faster'?

I don't have much patience for linguistic prescriptivists. If you are 'correcting' other people's sentences you understood exactly what they mean.