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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

#441

Post by jacquesm »

lmilcin wrote: post #402
jacquesm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that if we all just bought electric cars that the problem would be solved. Nobody seems to appreciate the scale at which this is operating. The mass of the atmosphere is 5 x 10E15 tons. To heat that up by 1.5 degrees is off my scale of intuitive comprehension by a couple of orders of magnitude.

There is about 10t of atmosphere per square meter. It is the same mass as 10m of water. A lake with 10m of water is very shallow one and can heat up many degrees C even in a single sunny day. And air is no water, it has much less heat capacity. The global warming is not stalled at all by waiting to heat up the atmosphere. The state of atmosphere is a result of balance of huge flows of energy. The atmosphere itself, a…

> A lake with 10m of water is very shallow one and can heat up many degrees C even in a single sunny day.

Sunlight gives about 1 KW of incident energy per square meter (at the surface), about 70% of which gets reflected over water and about 30% of which gets absorbed. If we assume constant light during a whole 12 hour day and perfect perpendicularity of the photons hitting the surface that nets you 300 Watts continuously to heat up that 10 meter deep body of water. Any deviation from that 90 degree angle and it will be less (multiply by the sine of the angle).

The surface layer will warm up quite a bit but the deeper layers of your hypothetical lake will remain mostly unchanged until they are mixed by the wind or some other means with the surface layer.

Of course the atmosphere isn't anything like a lake, there is far less conduction of heat in the atmosphere than there is in a lake, and besides that the temperature is completely inverted from that lake, the higher temps are at the bottom, not at the top due to pressure and the presence of that handy nearby reflector and giant thermal mass: the earth.

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

#442

Post by UnFleshedOne »

ajross wrote: post #218
api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My skepticism was rooted in the fact that politicians, pundits, and the media were trying to scare me about it. I'm sorry, but this excuse borders on a clear lie. There were "politicians, pundits, and media" lined up on both sides of this issue. And there had been going all the way back to the dawn of the issue in the 70's. What happened was that you chose to believe one side . And it was wrong. But rather than adm…

> you chose to walk away from the people who were telling you the truth.

To be fair, a combination of heuristics that say "distrust people with proven record of lying" and "ability to detach your opinions from reality is a significant advantage when getting and maintaining power" and "lacking external corrections, any ruling system will accumulate exclusively those who spend most of their effort on power games" strongly promotes automatic distrust for any an all politicians.

And I can't say those heuristics are wrong. Then if is up for individual to become an expert in all areas of life or be left to their natural biases...

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

#443

Post by pessimizer »

munk-a wrote: post #237
pessimizer wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a severely underestimated group of religious people who think that only God controls the weather, His reasons for what he does with it are not for you to evaluate, and that saying that humans can change the weather is blasphemy. It's easy to make fun of, but the most direct experience that people have of a God who controls the universe would be the weather. These people need to be approached theologically; s…

I think it's healthy and necessary to make fun of fundamentalists - I think the issue comes when people make efforts at taking them seriously and give their platform a modicum of respect at a national level. The US has a severe issue with fundamentalist entrenchment in media and government at the moment and it's going to take a while to kick them all out. Evangelism is an extremist ideology that is causing ongoing ha…

You can't kick religious people off of the world. And anyway, they're better at organization and mutual aid, so they would win any conflict with you.

The question is whether you want to get stuff accomplished or want to be right. A dead pedestrian who had the right-of-way was right, but it doesn't matter to them anymore.

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

#444

Post by throwaway894345 »

danaris wrote: post #435
throwaway894345 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about broader progressive ideology at all (apart from a belief that climate change is a real existential threat that requires significant immediate action), I'm talking about the priorities of the current crop of progressive Democratic politicians (and/or Democrats more broadly).

I guarantee you the progressive Democratic politicians have climate change as a high priority—and "Democrats more broadly", depending on how you define it, don't have anything remotely resembling a coherent agenda. The progressives don't get to make laws all on their own. Even a single lost Democratic vote on a bill means it doesn't make it past the Senate, and Senators Manchin and Sinema have both made it abundantly…

I'm not sure I agree entirely with your characterization, but the salient bit that we seem to agree on is that Democrats profess a belief in the existential threat of climate change and still aren't organized to combat it. That seems like a bigger problem than Republican obstructionism (what is there to obstruct if Dems don't even have a coherent, remotely realistic plan)?

While progressives are aligned on the Green New Deal, that's little more than a slogan (no draft legislation or anything). To the extent that it's fleshed out (e.g., AOC's Green New Deal resolution), it seems to mean "decarbonize energy sector by 2030 + fix racial injustice + implement European social democracy + universal healthcare + affordable housing + stronger union protections + etc". Basically the "Green New Deal" isn't a plan to fix the climate, it's a progressive trojan horse. This doesn't seem like real concern about climate change to me.

To be clear, the point isn't "progressives are the worst", it's that no faction or party is doing a great job here, but we're too preoccupied with figuring out who is the worst to actually move forward.

EDIT: Added the last two paragraphs, apologies for any confusion caused.

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

#445

Post by dotcommand »

iammisc wrote: post #398
dotcommand wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who still believes global warming does not exist? Nobody is denying that the weather has been warming. It's all the political hysterics and nonsense that a lot of people have issues with. And of course the "world-is-ending" chicken little craziness. > 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…

This is my position. I mostly believe that humans are causing climate change, I just don't buy into the hysterics, but i broadly support green tech, less consumption, etc, and invest appropriately in companies seeking this future. I'm just not going to sit here and live in fear. I feel the same way about almost every claim of apocalypse, whether it's global warming or covid.

Or peak oil or y2k or sars or terrorism or ebola or HIV or bad halloween candy or trump or china trade war ...

I'm in agreement with what you wrote. The amount of apocalypses we lived through is astounding when you think about it.

But fear sells and the media/corporations/politicians/etc have to make their money. With hurrican season coming up, it's super-hurricane apocalyse time no doubt.

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

#446

Post by jacquesm »

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…

We're at 13, on a slightly longer timescale.

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

#447

Post by ptkd »

polote wrote: post #376
ptkd wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

high level there's a two pronged path: * Clean electricity generation (solar, wind, hydro with some sort of grid storage/distribution mechanism to handle when sun isn't shining/wind isn't blowing) and * Electrification (EVs, non-gas heating) > Can we have planes Yes, at some point. Electric planes are being explored but have difficulties with battery weight. Another possibility is green hydrogen or perhaps some other…

So basically you say, let's replace most of the energy sources by solar, wind and hydro. And use battery every time we need to get off the grid. As for storage for the grid, are we actually confident that we can transfer that quantity of energy between countries ? Because if everything becomes electricity powered. That means a lot of power over long distance. Do we know if there are enough natural resources to produc…

Grid-level batteries will likely be made of something else -- check out form energy who does iron-based batteries.

> Can we transfer power between countries

Certainly possible, but requires infrastructure build out. Most countires can also provide a lot of their own solar/wind

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

#448

Post by jacquesm »

gambiting wrote: post #348
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…

Honestly, given our track record I don't understand how we've actually managed to ban fluorocarbons globally.

Because it was a very small problem compared to this one. On the order of a broken leg versus having to cure cancer.

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

#449

Post by acdha »

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.

Lots of people — a majority of Americans, even Republicans, believe it's real but that is far from universal and the percentages still mean millions of people:

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-... https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...

The key thing to remember is there was a deliberate decision made around 40 years ago to try to delay actions, by the time companies like Exxon realized it was a real threat[1] — and that was far from the time the risk was first posited: here's someone in the 1920s saying it was probable:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87055779/1918-09-1...

Part of that strategy was to turn it into a partisan issue and there are billion-dollar companies (Fox, Facebook, Google, etc.) helpfully providing communications platforms to ensure that message is constantly available in circles they believe might find a receptive audience. Note that I'm not saying their executives all share that view — only that it doesn't bother any of them enough to turn down the ads and engagement metrics.

Because that was successfully turned into a partisan issue, that means there are many millions of people who are faced with the choice of either admitting both that they were wrong and that this is because people whom they trusted were lying to them or continuing to hope that it won't impact them much and they can just continue to make no changes, which is quite correct given their average age and affluence.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2805576-1982-Exxon-M...

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

#450

Post by noobly »

eloff wrote: post #439
noobly wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy doesn't really apply imo.. Global murder totals don't impact me like murders in America do. Similarly, climate change effects all parties, no matter their contribution. A better analogy, imo, would be something like a leaking ship, where the portion we're responsible for has a pinhole that we're debating on if/how to patch up, while other parties have gaping holes gushing in water constantly with no clea…

I object to the use of the term pinhole. Per capita the United States is one of the worst offenders. It's also up there in absolute numbers too.

The point of the analogy was to represent that our actions may be essentially inconsequential if all holes are not sealed, and that larger holes or offenders should take priority. The hole size wasn't really all that important, but yes, a more accurate description would've involved a larger hole, probably.

How do we even get emission data anyway? Especially for other countries like China. For example this source is telling me our per capita emissions are higher than China, which I very much doubt: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

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