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Average Global Temperatures since 1850

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Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#101

Post by read_if_gay_ »

mathgeek wrote: post #73
alecmg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adapting to catastrophes has literally evolved for millions of years. Species that couldn't adapt to change - died. The ones that survived didn't survive because they successfully prevented a catastrophe.

Would you say there has been any other species we know of that was able to cause, perceive, predict, prevent, and react to catastrophes before? We seem to be unique in that we can prevent and react to catastrophes, even ignoring that we can also cause them.

I am not sure whether this is true but aren’t people saying that dogs and other animals can sense incoming earthquakes etc. and will get anxious/try to GTFO?

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#102

Post by NeedMoreTea »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #14
PhilWright wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is obviously not the case that 'humanity seems to do nothing'. The United Nations have the IPCC working on the issue and their reports influence national policy in many countries. There are the Kyoto and Paris agreements that are based on the details from the IPCC reports. Is the world doing enough? No, I don't think countries are doing enough, but to say humanity seems to do nothing is patently ridiculous.

I don't think any nation, not one, will meet Paris commitments. Paris was broadly thought to be far from enough at the time it was signed, and science has moved on markedly since then. IPCC reports are the most optimistic interpretation as necessarily they take a most conservative view on every study. IPCC are all government appointed after all. G20 fossil subsidies just went up, again. Why does fossil need any subsi…

Looks like one nation is on course to meet Paris. Morocco, who emit 0.17% of the world's CO2.

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/morocco/

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#103

Post by Ygg2 »

phaemon wrote: post #79
Ygg2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you break it down, for California (a relatively sunny place) it would take more than $3.63 trillion dollars to be 100% renewable. [1] https://youtu.be/h5cm7HOAqZY?t=709

No it wouldn't. The assumptions made in that video are ridiculous. You don't need to have storage for all your solar; you turn other sources off when you have excess supply. Or you can switch them off simply by covering them . Batteries are not the only form of storage. Hydro exists and is in use already. You are allowed to import electricity. There are other renewables besides solar and wind. etc etc etc...

I disagree. Assumptions made in the video are realistic. You kinda need battery storage for your solar/wind.

Other sources can be hard/impossible to stop.

Batteries are the only form of storage that's scalable. Hydro exist, but you can't expect to just add another hydroelectric dam, whenever your solar overwhelms your current capacity. Hell even storing gravitational energy probably requires frankly massive amounts of development.

You are allowed to import/export electricity, but the assumption is others will have similar power sources, no? When there is the excess sun in one area, it's either going to be excess in nearby areas (because day happens nearby at the same time). Sure, you want to export to countries without sun, but the loses are probably going to be huge (loses mean infrastructure is stressed additionally).

What other renewable resources?

- Hydro? Destructive for the environment kills migrating fish, ruins ecosystems and not available everywhere.

- Geothermal? Only available at a few places can possibly lead to earthquakes.

- Bioenergy? Causes horrible air pollution.

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#104

Post by cam_l »

disordinary wrote: post #40
helenakyso wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think that by the time the government start making changes, it will be too late, as it is too late now. Like humanity must have a dramatic change - from top to bottom. The system is against the world We live in a finite world consuming like it is infinite Every action counts, but it will be hard and it must be super reinforced by law

Well, depending on where you are you can also vote for the local green party. If you're in a proportional election system then that the bigger the green voting block is the better. If you're in a country with a first-past-the-post electoral system like the US, UK, or Australia then things are much tougher and you should also be campaigning for electoral reform to make your country more democratic.

Note Australia is not first past the post. It is preferential.

In practice this probably means you feel more like your vote matters, but eventually goes to one of the major parties.

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#105

Post by phaemon »

Ygg2 wrote: post #103
phaemon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn't. The assumptions made in that video are ridiculous. You don't need to have storage for all your solar; you turn other sources off when you have excess supply. Or you can switch them off simply by covering them . Batteries are not the only form of storage. Hydro exists and is in use already. You are allowed to import electricity. There are other renewables besides solar and wind. etc etc etc...

I disagree. Assumptions made in the video are realistic. You kinda need battery storage for your solar/wind. Other sources can be hard/impossible to stop. Batteries are the only form of storage that's scalable. Hydro exist, but you can't expect to just add another hydroelectric dam, whenever your solar overwhelms your current capacity. Hell even storing gravitational energy probably requires frankly massive amounts o…

> I disagree. Assumptions made in the video are realistic.

Nope, they're the opposite of realistic because they disagree with reality.

> You kinda need battery storage for your solar/wind.

You kinda don't. Here in Scotland, we've gone from around 15% renewables in 2007 to 70% in 2017. We closed our last coal station in 2016. Guess how many battery storage facilities we have? None. There are plans to build one in the near future. And yet we have a perfectly fine and consistent electricity supply. When reality disagrees with your theory, it's your theory that's wrong.

The other obvious renewable in California would be tidal.

Oh, and you can get rid of all your hydro when you no longer have any need for water. I swear sometimes people forget what dams are actually used for.

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#106

Post by southern_cross »

helenakyso wrote: post #2

The increasing of the global temperature is really dangerous and humanity seems to do nothing. It is like a human body if its temperature changes a few Celsius degree from its normal temperature, it is the fever. If the person has a fever and it increases a few degrees, it might mean the death of the person. We are killing The Planet, it is a Climate Crisis.

On a millennium scale level an increase in global temperatures has been occurring for about 15,000 years (give or take), since the start of the last interglacial. On a century scale level temperatures have been increasing for about 150 years, since the end of the Little Ice Age. On a decadal level temperatures have been increasing since the great "Global Cooling" scare of the 1970s.

So it should be no surprise, then, that right now temps may be a bit on the warm side, comparatively speaking. This situation might be quite inconvenient for us, though.

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#107

Post by southern_cross »

pfisch wrote: post #65
southern_cross wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flooding that is (was?) occurring in Miami was largely the result of a poorly designed rain-drain system, one which was installed with little to no back-flow prevention. This new system, which was put in place into allow rainwater to flow into the ocean more easily and so prevent flash flooding, unfortunately also allowed the ocean to easily flow back into the streets when conditions were right and so caused tida…

New Orleans is itself in a rapidly deteriorating state. I lived there for over 30 years, and it has gotten progressively worse and worse over time. There are now frequent periods where you have to boil your water before you can use it, and it floods in a hard rain which didn't really happen 10 years ago. I guess what I am saying is I don't believe you, and most of New Orleans going into the ocean as well. New Orleans…

> I guess what I am saying is I don't believe you, and most of New Orleans going into the ocean as well.

And why not? You could, you know, lift a finger and go check out for yourself the relevant local news reports about the current and past situation, but you have to go back a few years now to see how it all actually got started.

And pretty much all of coastal Louisiana is naturally subsiding (sinking) anyway. (The same is true for Texas, BTW, including much of its interior.) Flood control projects built on the Mississippi River over the past century have made the problem far more readily apparent today than it would otherwise be.

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#108

Post by southern_cross »

roenxi wrote: post #19
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on HN hate it when you say we have to change our whole society to deal with this problem. I agree with you though. I don’t think we’re willing to do what is necessary to avoid serious catastrophe. We’ve done a good job demonstrating that for 50+ years so far.

> People on HN hate it when you say we have to change our whole society to deal with this problem. We obviously don't have to change our whole society to deal with that problem. 1) I've been told that renewable are now grid competitive in cost and the power system is switching over to them naturally. 2) At any point we could go nuclear - even the most pessimistic anti-nuclear activist would have to admit that the ris…

> I've been told that renewable are now grid competitive in cost and the power system is switching over to them naturally.

These are more lies and half-truths, for the most part. Wind and solar as always quoted on a "nameplate" basis - how much power they can theoretically produce under ideal conditions. But most don't produce anywhere near that, on average, and I suspect that many can't even make their "nameplate" promises either. Add in the fact that they will have to have more traditional power plants as backup for when they fail to produce, and actual costs are easily a multiple of what is currently being quoted, perhaps a relatively high multiple at that.

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#109

Post by maxheadroom »

viraptor wrote: post #93
maxheadroom wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like to add that some countries could contribute more by offering public transit infrastructure (like, at all - looking at you "deep south of the United States", where cities don't have any transit systems, whatsoever) and encouraging/subsidising/what-have-you of far more rail use than plane use. Essentially, you're never going to drive car use down (and, thereby, fossil fuel use), if there are no viable…

> and we're not planting enough trees (anywhere) to counter-act that. Globally it looks like we're not doing that bad. There are areas doing worse (Africa, Latin America), but the trend seems ok even for them. Based on http://www.fao.org/state-of-forests/en/

From the very same link you provided (fetched via WebArchive[0], as FAO seems down right now):

>However, deforestation is the second-leading cause of climate change after burning fossil fuels and accounts for nearly 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions — more than the world’s entire transport sector.

How can we be doing "not that bad" and it be the second-leading cause? These do not equate.

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20190627040941/http://www.fao.or...

Re: Average Global Temperatures since 1850

#110

Post by southern_cross »

gameswithgo wrote: post #88
southern_cross wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was it possible back in 1880, to measure temperature up to the third digit in accuracy? No, not even close. You were probably lucky to get one-degree accuracy, if that. This is one of the first red flags that I noted when I started paying closer attention to climate-related stuff about 15 or 20 years ago. I did a little digging, and it turns out that there is a mathematical theorem (I forget the name of it) that al…

I'm familiar with the blog posts you have been reading on this topic, but its really not so easy to dismiss the data. The hypothesis you would need to accept, to believe the surface temperature record is not accurate, would be the systematic error is consistently measuring things a little bit warmer over time. If you wanted to prove that point you could try to find some mechanism that would explain it. But the proble…

It appears that Berkeley didn't actually do what they claimed to do, though, if you go back and review what they did. In fact, at this point in time I'm pretty much convinced that they were just providing a "false front" - pretending to be skeptical about the situation when they actually weren't so from the beginning. At the very least they used the same questionable data and the same (or similar) algorithms that the other groups were using.

As I believe I've already commented about in this thread, a few years back I did something of a "deep dive" on temperature data, paying particular attention to the temperature records in my own area. What I found there at the time was appalling, and even if I go check Berkeley right now what they show there appears to have little or no basis in reality.

Search my comment history for where I go on at some length about Berkeley (BEST) and the problems I see there. I suggest that you follow the links and go check out some things for yourself.

(Forgot to add) When I reviewed local temperature records myself, dating back to 1870 or so, I did indeed see a real but modest warming trend. But it was nothing like the warming which showed up after you got finished "adjusting" the data, which the climate folks routinely do.

As to deep ocean temps and such, lately those folks have been claiming to measure temperature changes on the order of 1/1000th of a degree per year, if not less. Now I don't know about you, but that just strikes me as BS on the face of it - more "statistical noise" than anything else. There are also claims made about ice melt and such, but if you do the math (the amount of ice claimed to have melted vs. the amount of ice still sitting there), you see that it falls within the same type of range - not even rounding error, just "noise".

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