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It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

noaa.gov

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Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#111

Post by dleslie »

headmelted wrote: post #63
SigmundA wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...

I think part of the problem is that we started talking about global warming (“nice! More sunshine!!”) to climate change (“cool! We get too much snow here anyway!!”). Maybe instead of talking about climate change, which is a symptom and not the problem, we should talk about “destabilising the atmosphere”. I feel like people will find it harder to use nonsense arguments if they’re confronted with the problem rather tha…

Worth noting that it's always been called climate change, and global warming was a term preferred by deniers to sew confusion and deniability.

> Yet the most interesting findings come from looking at data from the Heartland Institute. In fact, the thinktank used the two terms with roughly the same frequency until 2013, when we finally see a decoupling as the use of global warming dropped while the use of climate change remained constant.

> This shows that “global warming” was widely used by climate change deniers over this 30-year period. Perhaps this is because the phrase is relatively specific, which allowed them to contrast it with simple arguments like saying that the planet cannot be warming as it’s cold outside.

https://theconversation.com/there-is-no-evidence-that-global...

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#112

Post by eli »

SigmundA wrote: post #21
lmilcin wrote: post #8

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...

I don't think it's worthwhile to spend much time on the reasons people cite to ignore or deny climate change.

Hardly anybody is making a genuine effort to look at what's going on and concluding it's not a problem at all. People are against it, often, because of tribalism. They don't like the people who complain the loudest about climate change and the political party they're aligned with says not to worry about it (for a variety of reasons). The climate crisis is also genuinely scary and it is much more comforting to believe that it can't be as bad as they say it is.

The number of voters who say climate change is important is growing every year (currently about half say it's a "critical threat") but that increase has come almost entirely from Democrats and Independent in the US.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#113

Post by monocasa »

api wrote: post #22
lmilcin wrote: post #8

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

I was very much a skeptic until I started seeing more and more real world (as opposed to just models) evidence. I am pretty convinced now. My skepticism was rooted in the fact that politicians, pundits, and the media were trying to scare me about it. Any time politicians or the media try to scare me about anything my default response is to assume it's a get out the vote drive or a power grab and to become extremely s…

I've found that a better model is to ignore politicians. They don't care about you, true, but that means that what they're saying is orthogonal to your wellbeing not opposite. Assuming the opposite still lets them define the playfield and works to their advantage.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#115

Post by melenaboija »

whall6 wrote: post #19

Why is every other post on hacker news about climate change

Because its audience seems to be a bit worried that we will cook ourselves taking a look to some statistics, which therefore means (luckily in my opinion) the audience trust statistics

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#116

Post by Jtsummers »

Wohlf wrote: post #39
orf wrote: post #7

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal And this is still a thing.

These people don't matter, a single day of traffic in LA does far more damage than they could ever do.

Their individual contributions don't matter, but they definitely matter. They represent a substantial portion of the population who simply do not care about the environment and believe in its active destruction in their own neighborhoods and cities. This is important to recognize.

They're the tip of the iceberg, as it were, the visible portion of a largely invisible but sizeable community who establish (through direct action, voting, and how they spend their money) a pattern of willful environmental destruction. And this is even without considering climate change. These are the people who think it's fine to toss garbage on the street, which has a much clearer and short-delay impact. If they don't care about that, good luck getting them to think on anything with long-delay impacts.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#117

Post by Bhilai »

lmilcin wrote: post #8

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

You should check the WSJ editorials from a couple of days ago when IPCC report was released.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#118

Post by lmilcin »

redisman wrote: post #75
mc32 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important policy question is what are big and small governments around the world gonna do about it? No, straws and plastic bags won’t abate it. Electric cars are nice but won’t do much to lessen emissions. They need to address industry, shipping and population growth. The last one might be a third rail for some countries. But look, China did it. The west did it (via progress on education, etc).

Population control sure doesn’t seem to have had any positive effect on the west’s greenhouse emissions so why would it be a silver bullet?

So this is the old, false argument.

Population control WOULD be effective at solving the problem. That is if it was humane.

Your arguments seems true because at first sight it looks (and it is true) that it is the first world that emits most of the greenhouse gasses.

But everybody forgets that the third world countries do also experience progress and will also want industry and cars and air conditioning and KFC and AliExpress packages shipped to their doors.

That they don't do it now is just because they don't have means to do so, but they work very hard to get there.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#119

Post by redisman »

api wrote: post #32
imoverclocked wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the plethora of scientists claiming that it was an issue not factor in at all?

The scientists seemed to have a single political leaning, which made me more skeptical. I saw it as religious apologetics for green ideology. The presence of any strong uniform ideology makes me extremely skeptical just like political interest does. I'd summarize as: I assume that strong ideological beliefs or political motives make people irrational, dishonest, and untrustworthy.

> green ideology

Not sure why you’re downvoted so hard. What do you consider the green ideology? I have honestly never heard of such a thing - at least not in something one could describe as a negative thing

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#120

Post by dleslie »

mc32 wrote: post #40
lmilcin wrote: post #8

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

The important policy question is what are big and small governments around the world gonna do about it? No, straws and plastic bags won’t abate it. Electric cars are nice but won’t do much to lessen emissions. They need to address industry, shipping and population growth. The last one might be a third rail for some countries. But look, China did it. The west did it (via progress on education, etc).

Banning plastic straws and plastic bags wasn't to combat climate change, the bans were created because those single-use plastics were overwhelming municipal garbage disposal systems. And then foreign states stop buying it to recycle.
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