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US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

theguardian.com

21–30 of 160 posts

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#22
post #13
post #5

We have experienced the coldest winter since 2011 in the Southern Hemisphere (at least South Africa) this year. The summer was also warmer than average. I wonder what less conservative global warming forecasts would look like, and whether the winter this year will be average in US and CA.

"Global warming" involves extremes of temperature on both ends of the scale, and "coldest winters" are not inconsistent with that. Think about a pot of hot water vs. one that's boiling. The surface of the water in the boiling pot is not smooth, it has peaks and troughs. The level of some of those troughs will be lower than the level of the water in a less energetic pot. The situation with global warming is similar, a…

HEre on HT it may not necessary, but when talking to people not at ease with sciences, this sentence :

> Basic physics doesn't allow for anything else.

is very important. It means : you do not negotiate with physics. So, you do not negotiate on climate change. When I hear some politics I'm sometimes appalled by their lack of understanding of basic physics laws.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#24

Is there an estimated timeframe for when people will start to experience the impact of the climate crisis instead of only hearing about it?

I think ca 2150 would be a reasonable non-cranky estimate, assuming current trends hold.

At that time, if things don't improve by a huge margin (like in : never before in human history; except maybe at WW2 levels), hundreds of millions of people will have moved away from their birthplace (taking the place of other who may or may not be happy with it, which may lead to "tension" between populations; see what happens today when a few refugees (yes, a few) reach the borders of Europe...)

My understanding is there will be many more losers than winners.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#25
post #4

> “Heat dome over North America, showing high temperatures predicted across the continent.” Such is the caption to a map showing no temperatures, or even potential heat but rather a predicted delta from regional norms. This sort of behavior was exactly why I unsubscribed from the guardian after years of support post Snowden. I have no doubt this summer has been warmer on average. Here in Denver the smoke cover from O…

I mean, the second half of the article is almost entirely quotes from "Michael Wehner, a a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory" Including the section “You expect hotter heatwaves with climate change but the estimates may have been overly conservative,” Wehner said. “With the Pacific north-west heatwave you’d conclude the event would be almost impossible without climate change but in a straig…

Without statistics there is no meat; the Guardian is good at narrative but not so good at objectively reporting on trends. I see only one concrete point in the article; that the heat in certain areas broke records by 5.5 degrees is a relevant factual datum, but to understand what it actually means you have to ask things like: how many standard deviations is that? How long have these records been kept in this many places, and how many record-breakings are "normal" (I'd guess that in any given year the hot and cold temperature records would be broken somewhere).

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#26
post #17
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time this happens in the history of the universe

No effect of global warming will be a historic first. It's about the frequency of events and the rate of change.

That example says nothing about frequency or rate of change.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#27

still, I see no serious action being taken to tackle the climate crisis. Current governments are just putting some dates by which we’ll stop doing x or y, but in really almost nothing concrete is done to stop the worst scenarios.

Whatever current event you're concerned about, have you looked for historical precedent? Suppose you were to discover that the same kind of event had happened in, say, the early 1900s, and/or the late 1800s, before humans had emitted any appreciable amount of CO2. Would that change your opinion about whether we're in a crisis?

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#29

still, I see no serious action being taken to tackle the climate crisis. Current governments are just putting some dates by which we’ll stop doing x or y, but in really almost nothing concrete is done to stop the worst scenarios.

"Nooo, but climate change was all made up by Al Gore, that's what I heard on Fox News" /s

Until their house burns spontaneously due to the heat, of course

This will get worse quickly, because the averages change, but the variance changes as well.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#30
post #26
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No effect of global warming will be a historic first. It's about the frequency of events and the rate of change.

That example says nothing about frequency or rate of change.

Sure, you'd want some actual climate scientist to do a statistical analysis. But just dismissing it with "it has happened before" is too simple too.
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