Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

noaa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 578 posts

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

#351

Post by actually_a_dog »

marcc wrote: post #191
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...

Also have heard folks make an argument that it's more economical to plan to live in the post-climate changed world than to stop climate change. See https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/...

That sounds like an argument made by economists. Economists are notoriously bad at estimating the true, human costs of climate change.

See https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-... for instance (skip the political commentary at the top and go straight to the next section).

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

#352

Post by baron_harkonnen »

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.

There is a very prevalent group of people on HN who don't deny that global warming is happening, but strongly deny that it is a serious problem.

This group deeply believes that technology will solve their problems, no matter how large. All that is required is believing in this strongly enough. There is a nearly rabid belief that everything will be fine because "technology" will find a way.

What these people fail to recognize is that technology is a function of energy. This comes across pretty clearly in Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization. Technology has felt magical in the last 250 years because we have had a tremendous amount of energy.

There is a very common myth, one I used to believe myself, that magically in the age of reason man woke up and started creating amazing things. I think everyone in tech has been at least someone seduced by this vision. The cover of SICP has a wizard on it!

What more accurately happened is that we started extracting fossil fuels, and that let to us being able to to magical things, including finding more fossil fuels faster. Even the earliest hunter gathers were able to harness fire and benefit from it. The first agrarian societies learned how to use the sun to build truly solar powered economies. We live in the age of fossil fuels, and as much as we wish it to be true, we are not able to build renewables on a scale and timeline to even begin to replace the magic of fossil fuels. In fact we continue to globally use more of every fossil fuel every year. Renewables are only able to supplement our insatiable hunger for energy.

So technology can't magically save us from our energy problems because energy is the magic that makes technology happen. But for many here such statements border on heresy.

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

#353

Post by hh3k0 »

csense wrote: post #273

Shouldn't climate change have both negative and positive effects? For example, people don't want to live in the Rust Belt because the winters are too cold. Could the region's economic viability increase if winters get milder? In some places, climate change makes things worse for growing crops, makes people need to move out, or increases the probability of disasters. Everyone is talking about this. In other places, cl…

> In other places, climate change should be making things better for growing crops, making people want to move in, or decreasing the probability of disasters. Why is no one talking about this?

"Billions of Acres of Cropland Lie Within a New Frontier. So Do 100 Years of Carbon Emissions: Crops grown on this land could feed a growing population. But if these soils are plowed, they could unleash as much carbon as the U.S. emits in more than a century." https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022020/agricultural-fro...

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

#354

Post by Jtsummers »

bpodgursky wrote: post #315
orf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the act itself, it’s the fact that there is a segment of the population that will spend thousands of dollars to modify their cars to pollute more, so that they can try and humiliate people driving hybrid and electric cars. That’s a symptom of a much, much deeper problem.

I mean, sure, it's dumb, but choosing to take a weekend flight to Vail to hit the slopes emits more carbon than a year of rolling coal, and nobody is seriously trying to crack down on recreational travel. I think the deeper problem is that even "concerned" people have emissions deeply baked into their lifestyles but don't realize it because they check all the right cosmetic boxes.

I think you missed GP's point. Rolling coal itself is not the problem, but it is indicative of a larger systemic and cultural problem. When people are willing to deliberately pollute their local environment to "stick it to the man" or whatever, then there are a lot of other policies and changes that they will never consider or support. And a lot of other, more impactful, actions that they are likely to participate in as well.

Even if we can get the average person to consider emission reducing behaviors and policies, the rolling coal people represent the visible segment of a larger group who would stand to oppose those.

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

#355

Post by CyanBird »

olivermarks wrote: post #295
tstrimple wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

> lies, damn lies and statistics

The first hard data that existed from global warming came from Exxon and a small team of scientists on the 70's or so, when they attached temperature sensors to a couple oil tankers and measured the temperature of the ocean as it traveled

If you call for "less data" because things scare you, then I am sorry to say that you are a coward and unscientific

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

#356

Post by boplicity »

ttul wrote: post #206
Crash0v3rid3 wrote: post #89

We are far beyond being able to fix this by just reducing our emissions. We need to focus on innovations focused on extracting CO2 directly from our atmospheres at scale. An interesting read on the topic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/bill-gate...

Carbon Engineering [1] seems to be making good progress toward this goal. They even published a paper about their process and its economics in Cell [2]. "We describe a process for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere in an industrial plant. The design captures ∼1 Mt-CO2/year in a continuous process using an aqueous KOH sorbent coupled to a calcium caustic recovery loop. We describe the design rationale, summarize perfor…

If I'm doing my (very bad) math right, I think that works out to around a max of 60 cents per liter of gas, if you want to offset it with direct carbon capture using this method. That's not completely insane.

However, How many plants (and at what cost for building these plants), would there need to be, in order to make a meaningful difference? For example, would a $100 billion dollar investment over the next five years make a meaningful impact?

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

#357

Post by ndesaulniers »

linuxhansl wrote: post #303

Imagine an asteroid would be on trajectory to collide with earth in (say) 2025. Possible order of hypothetical events: 1. Scientist discover the asteroid. Calculate risk of collision. 2. Asteroid comes closer, probability of impact is calculated as high. 3. People will start saying that we cannot let our economy be controlled by the specter of an asteroid. 4. The asteroid becomes visible. You can see it with your bar…

Is this a pitch for a script for Idiocracy 2: Electric Bugaloo?

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

#358

Post by anoplus »

linuxhansl wrote: post #303

Imagine an asteroid would be on trajectory to collide with earth in (say) 2025. Possible order of hypothetical events: 1. Scientist discover the asteroid. Calculate risk of collision. 2. Asteroid comes closer, probability of impact is calculated as high. 3. People will start saying that we cannot let our economy be controlled by the specter of an asteroid. 4. The asteroid becomes visible. You can see it with your bar…

Human beings are so bad at responding to intangible threats. The worried minority have no choice but to take the unpleasant role of waking up the others

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

#359

Post by danaris »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #253
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...

Personally I'm more concerned about the absolutely tepid response by folks who allegedly believe in climate change. I don't know how we are going to put a dent in climate change without something like carbon pricing (something that incentivizes us to reduce our carbon emissions). Instead the best case is that we're going to write progressives a check for $3.5T and they'll use a little bit of it to create a "civilian…

You seem to be conflating the broader progressive ideology with the frustrating realities of trying to pass specific policies into law.

The reason what we're getting out of Washington doesn't include enough to fight climate change may not be absolutely 100% the fault of the Republican Party, but it's enough that blaming the Democrats for it to any meaningful extent just smacks of disingenuous both-sides-ism.

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

#360

Post by titzer »

ptkd wrote: post #344
xwdv wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon removal is not possible in sufficient magnitude to make a difference, sorry.

source on this? The most important thing right now is definitely reducing emissions, but carbon capture certainly has a significant role to play

Btw, "carbon capture" seems to mostly mean capturing emissions at their source, which, although it's not a bad idea, is not actually removing carbon from the atmosphere. So when you see news articles fly by that say "progress in carbon capture", look closely to see if they are just talking about scrubbing smokestacks or literally pulling carbon out of the air. The former does not un-screw us.
Post reply on HN