A 3°C world has no safe place • Hacker News Board

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#131

Post by wahern » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #84

ardit33 wrote: post #3

Canada and northern part of the US will be fine (north of the mason dixon line). Places like Albany, NY, or Minesota, or most of Canada, appart from the occasional crazy swings, are going to be more lovely places to live, with slightly milder winters. The southern part is toast, both from water level rises, and lack of fresh water. In this country, the ones that are going to be the most affected by global warming, se…

> Canada and northern part of the US will be fine (north of the mason dixon line). I highly doubt that, given the heat we saw in the PNW and Canada this past month, but even if true, the 3C is average over the planet . So other places in the world will have to be even more than 3C for that to be the average. They aren't gonna like that one bit.

Based on current climate models and global average temperatures (1.2C above pre-industrial baseline), the recent PNW heat wave was judged to be a 1-in-1000 year event. The same models suggest a further 0.8C increase would make such a heat wave a 1-in-10 year event or greater.

Source: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/prelimin...

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#132

Post by mulmen » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

nnamtr wrote: post #11

mulmen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but even 1°C is pretty bad? Even 1°F is bad. If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin, or a temperature scale that is designed specifically to scare the public? Something where 3°C is 20°Scare? E: Kelvin doesn't work for scaring the public unless it is reported as an absolute temperature. TIL.

FWIW Celsius and Kelvin have the same scale, they're just shifted.

Yeah, brain fart. Thanks for reminding me.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#133

Post by ClumsyPilot » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #46

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

You could live in 200 square feet. You could bathe with one bucket of room temperature water. You could use no air conditioning whatsoever. You could eat only vegetarian food. Etc etc. You won’t, (and I won’t either) but if it comes down to human survival, forces will find a way to make you do it.

"You could live in 200 square feet."

The house is already a sunk cost, so I am not sure how much point there is

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#134

Post by Swizec » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

A recent Freakonomics episode about America absolutely blew my mind and cemented this idea I've been trolling friends with that suburbia should be banned.

Americans use 2 trillion gallons of water per year ... for lawns. Nice green lawns. In the desert, in the south, in the north, between highways, friggen' lawns everywhere. No consideration for grasses that naturally enjoy the local environment. Only a perfect British green lawn will do. Nature be damned!

By comparison, America uses only 3 trillion gallons of water for all of agriculture.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#135

Post by bmitc » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

tkiolp4 wrote: post #108

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

> It’s surreal. I would say it’s human nature. We, humans, learn by making mistakes. There may be small differences among countries in the way we address, let’s say, climate change (e.g., Amsterdam is full of people riding bikes while Madrid is not), but at the end we all behave the same, whether in NY, Athens, or Santiago: we, as a world-wide society, only care about our immediate future, about our needs right now.…

> We, humans, learn by making mistakes.

I don’t think that’s true, although you address a similar point of mine later. We often make the same mistakes over and over again. There’s a reason why we say history repeats itself.

What humans really do is react to mistakes and other events based on consequences of our actions. This reactiveness has gotten us into this mess. We often view intelligence as being able to predict things, but as a society and species, we’re absolutely awful at prevention and conservation. We’re excellent at consumption.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#136

Post by betterunix2 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

trentnix wrote: post #87

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

I've given up hope that this will be solved. The buried lede is that, if the prophets of climate doom are correct, you need to substantially reduce your standard of living . And all those third-worlders that are trying to improve their standard of living? They need to stop doing so, yesterday, and learn to accept their impoverished standard of living. But do it cleaner! But they won't want to do that, predictably. An…

You do not need to reduce your standard of living, you need to alter your lifestyle to achieve the same standard of living in a more energy-efficient way. Many American cities are set up to encourage car use; we can change that. Many Americans live in detached homes that require more energy to heat or cool; we can change that, and in fact we would likely reduce the need to drive a car everywhere in the process, while also reducing the amount of coal being burned to power all those ACs.

Really though, "alarmists?" You might have been able to accuse scientists of being alarmist 30 years ago, but they predicted increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and for the past decade we have watched the trend do exactly what was predicted. Now instead of talking about how we can avoid this outcome we are sitting here talking about how to not make things worse while we learn to live with floods, hurricanes, heat domes, and polar vortexes.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#137

Post by mulmen » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #9

mulmen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but even 1°C is pretty bad? Even 1°F is bad. If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin, or a temperature scale that is designed specifically to scare the public? Something where 3°C is 20°Scare? E: Kelvin doesn't work for scaring the public unless it is reported as an absolute temperature. TIL.

> If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin A difference in 1K is equivalent to 1C difference. The thing is, when Celsius scale was invented, they didn't have a concept of "absolute zero" yet. Once "absolute zero" was known, then Kelvin units were invented, which were equivalent to C except that 0 means absolute zero.

Whoops. Well, my point remains. 1, 3 and 5 all seem like pretty small numbers. I don't think C to F would change public perception.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#138

Post by ip26 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #57

ardit33 wrote: post #3

Canada and northern part of the US will be fine (north of the mason dixon line). Places like Albany, NY, or Minesota, or most of Canada, appart from the occasional crazy swings, are going to be more lovely places to live, with slightly milder winters. The southern part is toast, both from water level rises, and lack of fresh water. In this country, the ones that are going to be the most affected by global warming, se…

Parts of Canada, sure. I imagine places like Newfoundland not changing much. The north will see big changes from permafrost melting, the west will see more smoke, more floods, and water shortages as the glacier melt is replaced by rain. BC will be on fire more, and the forests will die off / need to be replanted with different species of trees

I imagine places like Newfoundland not changing much.

Alaska, at least, is allegedly one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#139

Post by streblo » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

Apparently, a reasonably sustainable level of CO2 production is about 3T per person per year. The average in the US is about 17.5T pp/yr. But ... 5.3T pp/yr of that amount is caused by the existing coal fired power plants in the USA. So one thing you could do is to write to your elected representatives to specifically petition for the abandonment of this form of power generation and its replacement with renewable sys…

Source? Genuinely curious to read more about this.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#140

Post by Nursie » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

trentnix wrote: post #87

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

I've given up hope that this will be solved. The buried lede is that, if the prophets of climate doom are correct, you need to substantially reduce your standard of living . And all those third-worlders that are trying to improve their standard of living? They need to stop doing so, yesterday, and learn to accept their impoverished standard of living. But do it cleaner! But they won't want to do that, predictably. An…

This has always been nonsense, I’ve seen it get trotted out for 20 years now.

We have technology, we can work on reducing carbon output without sending ourselves back to the Stone Age. We just need the political will to actually drive it.