January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service • Hacker News Board

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#41

Post by ramblerman » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

1propionyl wrote: post #6

throwaway5752 wrote: post #5

I've been wondering why TSLA has been trading the way it has. A normal short squeeze doesn't adequately explain it. The volume today alone is more than 2x the last reported shares short. We all know something very, very bad is going on with the climate.

All of us reading this right now are going to die just barely seeing the true extent of the outcomes. And we'll likely all die reasonably content knowing it's not our problem. We're among the last generations that can expect to ride the current peak in human success before the hard bounds kick in and things either become much more difficult or more likely just completely collapse. We all love to rest easy on the fall…

If we do end up a failed experiment, it is more than likely the great filter theory is correct and we are just one in a billion of endless repetitions that reached their critical mass and fizzled out.

Time literally means nothing to the universe. So the idea we can kill all life in the universe, or are somehow responsible for the creation we live in is oddly religious to me.

Yet you place no real import in the demise of humanity so I'm not sure how to parse it.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#42

Post by toupeetape » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #24

They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. The raw data ALWAYS speaks for itself — out of the 50 U.S. state record high temperatures, 23 were set during the 1930s, while 36 occurred prior to 1960. There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmax Edit: I am getting quite a few downvotes even…

> Please let me know what the downvote is for

It's for not knowing what the word "globally" means. That is a pretty big hole in your own data.

Look at the equivalent data where it exists for South America, Europe, Africa or Asia. The majority have records set in the last 30 years.

Of course, none of the Northern hemisphere countries set their all-time record temperature in January so all-time records in the US are pretty irrelevant to the article.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#43

Post by crispinb » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

clarry wrote: post #36

crispinb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. There is very determined political will, across much of the globe, to stoke global heating further for short-term benefit. In my country (Australia) we had a federal election last year. The climate issues were very clearly laid out, and most citizens here accept the science, and have some understanding of the severity of the issue. Yet they voted very decisively against any further action to red…

> Europe is the most realistically ambitious but is too fractious & bureaucratic to rapidly make the necessary big decisions I think EU is the only significant region to have actually decreased CO2 emissions over the past few decades: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo... That's not to say they couldn't have done more, but it's kinda sad that everyone else is drawing a flat line or going up.…

Agree the EU is in better shape than much of the world. There's a lot of technical arguments about how well it's doing in practise. But even the fact that it's at issue shows that at least it has some chance of meeting its 40%-cut-by-2030 Paris target. And it has a fairly solid consensus about the dimensions of the problem, lacking the fake polarisation corruptly injected by the fossil fuel industry into the US and Australia's political systems.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#44

Post by 1propionyl » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

jajag wrote: post #28

1propionyl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of us reading this right now are going to die just barely seeing the true extent of the outcomes. And we'll likely all die reasonably content knowing it's not our problem. We're among the last generations that can expect to ride the current peak in human success before the hard bounds kick in and things either become much more difficult or more likely just completely collapse. We all love to rest easy on the fall…

Widespread crop failure and fisheries collapse due to extreme weather and acidic oceans could be just around the corner. I can't say that with complete certainty (and I really hope it doesn't happen), but I can't dismiss it with any confidence either.

I work in mathematical biochemistry. I'm personally confident everything you've described is around the corner.

That doesn't mean that a total collapse in our food supply is around the corner, but it does suggest a collapse in the availability of certain micronutrients to a large proportion of the population.

What that means is that the outcomes of certain nutritional deficiencies will likely become commonplace diseases societies will now how to cope with. That will of course also affect politics.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#45

Post by ozorOzora » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #24

They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. The raw data ALWAYS speaks for itself — out of the 50 U.S. state record high temperatures, 23 were set during the 1930s, while 36 occurred prior to 1960. There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmax Edit: I am getting quite a few downvotes even…

It's an interesting dataset, but I feel that it lacks one relevant metric, which in our case is Temperature Anomaly.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#46

Post by r_singh » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #24

They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. The raw data ALWAYS speaks for itself — out of the 50 U.S. state record high temperatures, 23 were set during the 1930s, while 36 occurred prior to 1960. There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmax Edit: I am getting quite a few downvotes even…

> They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless.

> There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states

If they were talking about maximum recorded temperatures, your argument would've made sense.

However, they're talking about average temperatures, for which a 30 year range is certainly not meaningless.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#47

Post by throwaway5752 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

rjtavares wrote: post #34

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the current TESLA share prices have to do with the environment situation? It's not like TESLA has some magic pixie dust that can save the world tomorrow. Environmental impact from current ICE cars is fairly small compared to the pollution caused by mass manufacturing with no recycling, heavy industry, coal burning, shipping, etc. People buying more Teslas are a drop in the ocean when it comes to saving the…

It's not that TESLA can save the world, it's that if the world needs an urgent intervention TESLA will benefit from the effort.

Thanks, that was my point.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#48

Post by crispinb » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

rjtavares wrote: post #34

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the current TESLA share prices have to do with the environment situation? It's not like TESLA has some magic pixie dust that can save the world tomorrow. Environmental impact from current ICE cars is fairly small compared to the pollution caused by mass manufacturing with no recycling, heavy industry, coal burning, shipping, etc. People buying more Teslas are a drop in the ocean when it comes to saving the…

It's not that TESLA can save the world, it's that if the world needs an urgent intervention TESLA will benefit from the effort.

> if the world needs an urgent intervention TESLA will benefit from the effort

That's a triumph of hope over experience if ever I heard one. We need an urgent intervention right now. The chances of it happening? Pretty damn close to nil, I'd say.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#49

Post by 1propionyl » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #41

1propionyl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of us reading this right now are going to die just barely seeing the true extent of the outcomes. And we'll likely all die reasonably content knowing it's not our problem. We're among the last generations that can expect to ride the current peak in human success before the hard bounds kick in and things either become much more difficult or more likely just completely collapse. We all love to rest easy on the fall…

If we do end up a failed experiment, it is more than likely the great filter theory is correct and we are just one in a billion of endless repetitions that reached their critical mass and fizzled out. Time literally means nothing to the universe. So the idea we can kill all life in the universe, or are somehow responsible for the creation we live in is oddly religious to me. Yet you place no real import in the demise…

> Time literally means nothing to the universe.

This simply isn't true. I don't know where you absorbed such a dumb and naive idea, but the current theory pretty much completely rules out your completely unsuppported take.

Gravity is to our best knowledge not symmetric in time, and neither is heat. (Every other fundamental force in QCD is though.) The likelihood of the emergence of life decreases as overall entropy increases.

Moreover, the emergence of life at any point in the universe is already vanishingly unlikely.

If we kill life on Earth, the likelihood of life emerging again is strictly less than that of life on Earth existing as it does. And beyond a certain temperature bound, it's simply impossible. The viability of informational molecules like RNA (even silicon based variants) vanishes above around 60-70C.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#50

Post by brozaman » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

lapink wrote: post #12

Najtmare wrote: post #2

There is unfortunately no stopping this as there is no or very little political will.

Maybe Americans could start changing their way of life rather than waiting for « political will » or a never coming technological revolution. UE has started reducing CO2 emissions will keeping a very reasonable and increasing level of life.

USA is certainly a problem, but the elephants in the room are China and India.