[loadingcmd]

Other than a mild winter, there has been no coverage or news on a tangible impact to either agriculture or extreme weather events, merely speculations on what could happen. It would also mean that as far as a real impact, the system is self balancing and we should not worry too much?

[matthewdgreen]

I don’t understand at all what you’re saying. If we’re at the start of some unknown runaway feedback loop, the fact that we had a (relatively, it was quite warm) normal winter means nothing at all. Just because your car is moving slowly when it starts rolling down a hill, does not mean you should be casual about the situation.

[loadingcmd]

Ok, let me try to explain myself.

I think what you’re referring to the possibility of a perturbation that can result in an uncontrolled descent down the hill until it reaches another stable equilibrium (a local equilibrium in a non linear system). I am picturing a ball rolling down from a peak until it comes to rest in a valley

My question is that given the large excursion recently seen in the temperature graph, would we not expect to see large scale effects that would be visible?

The implication is that until this impact is clear enough, strong action that is usually advocated, may not be taken. For instance, the reliance on greenhouse power plants continues to increase worldwide including the US. While renewables have made progress, there is no clear path to net zero over the next decade. So the question remains on the predictions from the models, vs tangible evidence.

[matthewdgreen]

This is a really sudden event. It’s only about a year old. We are seeing effects that are visible — on sea surface temperatures. But it’s likely too soon to know what the implications of this sudden temperature excursion will be on things like land temperatures, storms etc. Similarly, there’s no reason to believe there’s a “valley” or safe equilibrium we’ll wind up in. The world doesn’t fundamentally care about our well-being, that’s up to us.

[NemoNobody]

Yeah, love how you clarified the effects of gravity - the ball rolling down the hill, that totally cleared the confusion I had about a car rolling, whew - almost hurt my head there.

What still hurts my head is this whole concept of like feedback loops and like how nothing about the projections show any like sort of leveling off - like maybe you can help me make sense of that.

What happens if it's just like a really really big hill and there is no valley of "equilibrium" to get to??

Does the ball stop rolling before the car or will they at least stop before we all die??

Maybe I've lost the analogy

[realusername]

there's been plenty of catastrophic agriculture events caused by climate change already, they've just been smoothed out by global trade (for now at least, I don't know how resilient it will continue to be)