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US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

bbc.com

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Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#171

Post by KozmoNau7 »

tolbish wrote: post #157
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shaming individuals for the crimes of an entire society and corporations, is so disingenuous and lazy, but it pops up in every single discussion on this subject.

Society and corporations are comprised of, and run by, individuals.

Only if you insist on microscopically looking at every single individual action, rather than the collective actions taken by society and corporations.

And some individuals have an extremely outsized effect on climate change a pollution, namely top management of fossil fuel companies and other gross polluters, as well as the politicians who enable them. They carry by far the largest guilt out of any of us. I'll accept my do something about it.

As a shorthand, we refer to these corporations as the entities guilty of gross pollution, rather than name every single individual in management positions in said companies, but we all know that the individuals in top management are responsible.

Similarly, the politicians are generally responsible for decisions and actions taken on a societal level, so they bear significantly more responsibility than Average Joe down the street, who's just trying to stay cool during a massive heatwave.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#172

Post by syops »

peteradio wrote: post #168
syops wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that come to mind? The explanation provided does not explain everything even within the confines of climate science. When massive amounts of energy are added to a dynamical system there will be chaos before a new equilibrium is obtained. This is not controversial. It’s settled science. The heat dome in question is not just a bunch of new local high temps. That’s the wrong thing to look at. It’s a large high…

> before a new equilibrium is obtained Is there any guess as to how long this will take? It seems like the interpretation is weather will become a bit more stable after some time, at a +2* new normal.

I have no idea. I have no expertise on any of these issues.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#173

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #169
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And by using a 1000 year model they are starting their analysis, conveniently, after the peak of the Roman Warm Period. They don't seem to be using a 1000 year model, they are just saying the rate of occurrence. And when do you think the Romans, and their related warming period, were exactly?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22040-tree-rings-sugg... "How did the Romans manage to grow grapes in northern England when most climate studies suggest the weather was much cooler then? We may now have an answer: it wasn’t that cold at all." Edit: oops I did mixup the late Roman and Medieval warm periods. Anyway both the RWP around 2000 years ago and the MWP 1000 years ago are what geologists call interglacia…

I wasn't asking regarding the existence of the period. The Roman Warming period was ~250 BC to ~400 AD - much closer to 2,000 years ago than 1,000. It wasn't anywhere relevant. You're also ignoring that the medieval warming period WAS exactly 1,000 years ago and we're currently beating those temperatures.

Edit to match your edit: Neither the MWP nor the RWP were global phenomenas - they were hotspots at different times for different regions. What we are currently experiencing is a GLOBAL increase.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#174

Post by BobbyJo »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #98
BobbyJo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say alcohol didn't exist. Then, one day it gets invented... Traffic deaths would rise because people would increasingly drive under the influence. In this situation you could say: "This crazy unusual number of traffic deaths near this bar is obviously the result of drunk driving." In this situation you could not say: "My town had the lowest number of traffic deaths ever recorded last year, so alcohol has not in…

Why? Both are just equating correlation with causation. Of course we know drunk driving increases deaths, but if that wasn’t obvious then you couldn’t say either of these statemens.

> Of course we know drunk driving increases deaths, but if that wasn’t obvious then you couldn’t say either of these statements.

And we know that climate change causes more drastic heat waves. If that weren't the case, you'd be correct, but alas.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#175

Post by antiterra »

chrisco255 wrote: post #4

Not only is it possible but the worst heat waves on record were experienced in the 1930s: https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_jul36

The title is referring to a specific heatwave that just occured, not the possibility of any heatwave at all ever happening in North America. That means the specific parameters and temperature variations are part of the discussion. In this case, the temperatures in Canada surpass those numbers both in the absolute and relative to norm.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#176

Post by tolbish »

School-Cotton wrote: post #163
tolbish wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, a problem that isn't clear or easy. Better wash our hands of it and call it a day, huh. If we can convince countries to stop killing their own people, we can convince countries to curb their emissions. We are not doing close to enough, and the measures we have taken so far can hardly be counted as half-assed.

> If we can convince countries to stop killing their own people We haven’t actually been able to do this. Not even close.

Actually, we have, but in small chunks. And it's a continuous effort. But we have. Let's not discount their efforts. Examples:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allied-powers-World-War-II

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/yezidis-iraq-syria-genoci...

https://www.npr.org/2017/03/16/520440725/u-s-military-works-...

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#177

Post by mousepilot »

walkedaway wrote: post #142
chrisco255 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is people who deny climate history. Facts are facts.

What I don't understand is HN readers who downvote statements like yours which should be common sense to intellects. Or maybe I do understand and am saddened by the way everything has been politicized here.

Agree here, if someone wants to offer points against majority climate change opinions, I say let them offer the points, and we can take those points and see what others think of them.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#178

Post by aww_dang »

syops wrote: post #164
aww_dang wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it is a bit unfair to more nuanced proponents of climate apocalypse, but in popular discourse, every weather event is attributed to climate change. There is no observation of weather which cannot be construed as a result of anthropogenic climate change. If the conclusion opposes impending doom the popular refrain, "weather is not climate" is employed. >massive amounts of energy are added... Yes, but the claim…

There are lots of examples of where science has gotten it wrong. So what do we do, philosophically, with this fact? It is possible that the 97+% of climate scientists are wrong in their beliefs. Let us ponder this possibility and assign it an unknown probability of X. Let us now ponder the following two facts. Every known example of where science has gotten it wrong is also an example of where science has corrected i…

>Every known example of where science has gotten it wrong is also an example of where science has corrected itself.

That's a bit of survivor's bias isn't it? Where science hasn't "corrected" people disparage dissent or are unaware. If you're game, we might observe that humans are flawed and unable to make perfect observations. Thus empirical knowledge is always flawed and will continuously be "correcting", but never arriving at the zenith of truth.

>Of course more governance is needed. The free rider problem mandates that the solution be enforced by government.

This assumes one accepts the doomsayer's premises. These are the issues being disputed.

1)That men and their CO2 emissions are solely responsible for climate and weather.

2)That there is an optimal climate and fallible men can identify it.

Separate is the issue of "Free riders" and how that relates to the necessity of government mandates. The EPA sets standards for pollution. Those who are within the confines of those standards can do harm with their pollutants. Later they can claim they were within the established guidelines, absolving them of responsibility.

In this case the government regulators have created a scenario where polluters can "ride freely". Consider how this differs from the premises of natural law. If each individual owns himself and his body, those who's industrial factors damage the property of another should be liable for damages - regardless of EPA standards.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#179

Post by CrazyStat »

warlog wrote: post #123
dghughes wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The acidification of the ware is what goes unnoticed. The heat adds to ocean volume but CO2 acidifies water more but it's not noticeable by humans.

Wouldn't heat cause CO2 to bubble out of solution (and elevate pH)?

There are two effects:

1. As the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the partial pressure of CO2 also increases. This tends to increase the concentration of CO2 dissolved in seawater.

2. As the temperature of the seawater increases, the solubility of CO2 decreases.

(1) is much stronger than (2) so far. Atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased much more than CO2 solubility has decreased due to temperature.

Re: US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming

#180

Post by _nalply »

hanniabu wrote: post #71

Looks like I need to move to a cooler area. Is there anywhere that has maps with projected yearly temperatures in different regions of the US? For example right now Boston is miserable in the winter, but it'd be nice to see projections or at least a historical trend of what the average monthly temperatures would look like 5-10 years from now. If they looked better then I'd look to moving up there. If they're too cold…

If you can, move to Scandinavia or UK, I think. An alpine valley would also be nice like Davos in Switzerland, however with climate change alpine regions experience disruptions like mud flows which can be deadly.
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