It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by gmadsen » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #73

cryptoz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a good reminder never to assume malice when plain old stupidity is on the table. We are only in this mess because of this attitude. Don't let evil people get away with evil things just because you think they are stupid. The current groups that believe climate change isn't real all believe that because of decades of misinformation specifically targeted at them, by Exxon and others. Malice is 100% present and 10…

Correct. But the reason they believe it is because they’re stupid. The fossil fuel lobby is malicious. Their audience is gullible. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not even saying being a gullible fool on this issue is acceptable. It’s clearly not. I feel the same about this lot as about the anti-vaxxers, which is “read a book before you get anyone else killed”.

you have to plan for the world we live in not the world you want. Gullible people are a fact of life. Blaming them does nothing productive

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

#292

Post by noobly » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #56

lmilcin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "it's not man made" and "just a natural cycle" is easily disproven by showing historical temperatures change where it does, by pure accident, a hockey stick trick just last century. Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...

A long time ago I leaned that no one wins an argument. When it comes to choosing a side in an argument, people end up defending their side to the end. I think it can get worse when the other side is unfriendly. This is what we have today when it comes to climate stuff. It's not a conversation. It's often not polite. This has the sad effect of pushing many people we disagree with further into their position. Which is…

I think hostage negotiators have a lot to teach here.

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

#293

Post by orf » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

k33n wrote: post #244

underscore_ku wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same rednecks vote for trump...

Proudly! His policy positions resulted in us being energy independent, reformed our prisons, and ended the forever-wars. Then there's the vaccine that Democrat leadership advised their constituents not to take. The Trump haters believe that an election should be a popularity contest, and not a contest of policy and ideas.

There’s a lot I wish I could write here. But it wouldn’t change your mind and no doubt you’ve been told it before.

Trump was a net negative for the USA in a lot of metrics. You can cherry pick some, but ultimately the swamp was not drained, allies where alienated and the pandemic killed more people than it otherwise could have.

Proudly restricting your viewpoint and ignoring objective reality whilst thinking that doing so gives them a superior source of pride is exactly the same condition that causes people to roll coal over cyclists.

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

#294

Post by odiroot » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

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 chuckled at your picking up that part out of this whole (really great) book.

The general story line about the terrorists trying to "deal" with the global warming is ahead of its time. Don't want to spoil it for anyone, but it's funny how the President wasn't the (most) ridiculous one there.

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

#295

Post by olivermarks » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

tstrimple wrote: post #199

olivermarks wrote: post #110

The NOAA currently hosts over over 37 petabytes of 'comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data' and was established in October 1970. It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. I'm not one to use emotional quasi religious terms like 'denier' but that does give pause for thought. The NOAA started out Surveying the US coastline in 1807 as the 'U.S. Coast and Geodetic…

> It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. Ignorance really is bliss isn't it?

Well to be contrarian: lies, damn lies and statistics...the scholarly arguments about the extent to which man is influencing our climate and the extent to which natural cycles and space weather are far more important is essentially a data war. Both sides have a plethora of data and statistics to make their case.

I do wonder and worry about the damage this 'you did it' alarmism is very negatively affecting the human psyche, causing substance abuse, depression, suicides etc.

https://youtu.be/2ObjtVdsV3I

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

#296

Post by splittingTimes » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

qqtt wrote: post #228

On record meaning 142 years of history. Sometimes people conflate "on record" with "ever since humans were around" but on a species scale 142 years is basically no history at all. Not to say that climate change isn't a very serious issue, but we will likely have to live with the realities of where we are headed, and life has adapted in the past to much larger swings of temperature.

Yes it has adapted to larger temp swings, but these other swings occurred over 10ks or 100ks of years, not 0.15k years. Life cannot adapt over the span of single or low double digit generations.

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

#297

Post by mistermann » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

imoverclocked wrote: post #101

api wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. Thanks for sharing it. I think that if we (as a society) can't find a way to communicate basic truths to all of us, we are probably doomed; There has to be a way for everyone to be able to say "1 + 1 = 2" and not have endless debate about it. Trusting the leaders that we elect is probably part of that equation... but that also means those leaders ne…

Here's what I think is just one interesting way to think about it: what if our current forms of government, combined with all other variables in the system that we find ourselves within, are simply insufficient to reach an adequate response to this issue? Or worse: maybe government is just one of many components that are not up to the task.

And if you feel the urge to say something like "No, that's not it", then I would ask: "How do you know?", or "What if we manage to somehow decide and unify on a plan, but the plan is inadequate?"

Whether people like it or not, solving this requires a series of actions that are actually adequate to solve the problem. We all seem to have no problem realizing this at our day jobs, but it seems to me there is something about this problem that downgrades people's ability to execute logic at a high level of comppetency. Perhaps it's that the system is infinitely complex, but it does not appear this way?

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

#298

Post by titzer » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

qorrect wrote: post #260

titzer wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other friends have CS degrees and don't believe it either. I have three CS degrees. Our field has a real problem with hubris and reinterpreting everything through a CS lens, particularly assuming everything is discrete, falls into neat categories, and is not subject to noise. I had a decade long debate with a friend from Chemical Engineering about whether the Universe was continuous or discrete, and also about whet…

> the Universe was continuous or discrete It's both and neither at the same time.

After many years, I realized that's not even the central question of importance. Rather, is the universe representable with finite information? If so, then its description can be written as a series of digits, and all such series are somewhere in the number π, in fact, and infinitessimally small part π, of which is mind-blowing.

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

#299

Post by Terretta » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #127

dleslie wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chan…

I much prefer "climate crisis." It's just more accurate for where we are.

nobody understands slow motion crises, doesn't compute

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

#300

Post by burkaman » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

syops wrote: post #274

kmlx wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a myth from the 1970s. it has been debunked countless times (even by history itself), but people still fall back to this.

What is a myth? If there were far fewer people less carbon would be used/extracted. Less trees and natural space would be destroyed. Less plastic would be around. Etc. There are not enough resources for everyone to live like we Americans. As the world gets richer we’ll collectively destroy more of the environment. This is not disputable.

It is a myth that it is "the only solution". If not everyone can live like Americans (agreed), then we'll all have to find a different way to live. Many of us are working on building that new way of living as we speak.

You may also be interested to know that global population growth has been falling for 60 years and will almost certainly continue to do so. There's no need for anyone to take active measures in this area. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#how-has-t...