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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

#481

Post by ajross »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #442
ajross wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" stron…

> strongly promotes automatic distrust for any an all politicians.

But... it wasn't politicians. It was never politicians, really. It started with scientists! Left leaning politicians got on board only once their electoral base started moving, they are a lagging indicator.

Again, this is excuse-making for having deliberately ignored people who were telling you the truth.

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

#482

Post by eloff »

noobly wrote: post #467
eloff wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tired talking point. The investigation has been done and it's human activity by a country mile. You can Google it if you're curious. Basically all countries have to cut emissions to zero or nearly zero. I think this is actually looking hopeful. Even China and India are on board. The US must do it's part too and demonstrate leadership in this area. There's a massive phase change in the global economy away fro…

>That's a tired talking point. Well, I don't talk about this much so wouldn't know. From what I understand, atmospheric physics is extremely complicated, and it sounds like a _very_ hard problem to develop accurate models for, and we're limited to a relatively small sample size. I just have a hard time seeing it, as a field, arriving at clean conclusions.. I'll have to read into it more later, though.

> From what I understand, atmospheric physics is extremely complicated, and it sounds like a _very_ hard problem to develop accurate models for.

You are very right about that.

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

#483

Post by adam_arthur »

Ma8ee wrote: post #427
adam_arthur wrote: post #367

Any policy should be evaluated on the basis of costs and benefits. Too much of the conversation on global warming is either broadly dismissive or exasperatingly alarmist. Fundamentally policy changes to curb global warming will have economic consequence, those of which will be borne disproportionately by the poor. E.g. efforts to curb oil and coal extraction will naturally result in the price of energy going up. I ca…

I’m sorry, but what kind of hole (or bubble, to use a more popular term) have you been living in the last decade? There are a studies like the one you are requesting coming out regularly. Unfortunately, they can’t tell you exactly how many dollars different policies will cost, but that is due to the nature of the subject, not because of any faults of the studies. But the conclusions are unanimous: it’s going to cost…

Exactly the hand-wavey and vague language I describe. Nowhere do you quantify the cost of this.

Saying there will be floods or wildfires is not meaningful discussion. We've had those throughout all of recorded history. How much worse will those things get? What is the economic cost?

Just saying climate change is bad because X, Y, Z danger and not quantifying the actual impact with numbers is simply a discussion of hysterics.

There's an endless list of bad things in the world, and logically we should address them from most impactful to least impactful. So where is the math justifying policy X with economic cost Y?

And as I said in my comment, yes studies have been done. Where is that in political discourse? To the average American, addressing climate change will have effectively no impact on their livelihood within their lifetime. Economic consequences will have an immediate impact. That's simply a fact.

Will it get hotter by a few degrees with some knock on effects? Yes. But very little actual impact on day to day life. It becomes obvious to see why many people will vote against these policies.

If you can describe to somebody how it will meaningfully adversely affect their life, you will get more support. Hence why I suggest using numbers rather than "scare language" when discussing.

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

#484

Post by eloff »

noobly wrote: post #450
eloff wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Why would you doubt that? People are so much richer in the US, they drive more, they have bigger houses to heat and cool, they consume more in general.

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

#485

Post by macintux »

pdonis wrote: post #476
macintux wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Milder winters will save more lives than will be lost in hotter summers. Ecological collapse brought on by adding stress to a system already stressed the hell out by decades of rapid change, however, would probably kill a lot more lives than any saved.

Humans' ability to adapt to change will save many more lives, if we allow adaptation to happen. The biggest thing preventing that right now is doomsday rhetoric. Humans have adapted to much bigger changes than this in the past. Our ancestors adapted to the change from Ice Age to interglacial with Stone Age technology. The idea that we somehow cannot adapt to this much smaller change with 21st century technology is la…

I’m sure we will. I’m sure the toll was heavy then, and will be heavy again.

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

#486

Post by adam_arthur »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #406
adam_arthur wrote: post #367

Any policy should be evaluated on the basis of costs and benefits. Too much of the conversation on global warming is either broadly dismissive or exasperatingly alarmist. Fundamentally policy changes to curb global warming will have economic consequence, those of which will be borne disproportionately by the poor. E.g. efforts to curb oil and coal extraction will naturally result in the price of energy going up. I ca…

Like many pigouvian taxes, most carbon tax proposals make an attempt to offset its regressiveness by distributing some sort of dividend or rebate. The idea isn't to punish the poor for driving to work. Rather, it's an attempt to charge the major carbon-emitters for their pollution of the commons (the atmosphere), then compensate the public with that money.

If there's a direct redistribution of sorts, then the poor can be protected from costs.

But any policy without an explicit redistribution scheme will raise the cost of business, and thus, raise the cost to consumers (as businesses pass these on).

e.g. for demonstration, imagine you sell apples for a 10 cent profit. Government enacts a 10 cent tax on apples. Now you must raise your price to consumers by at least 10 cents to stay in business. Consumer feels the effect of the tax

Market based solutions are still best, though.

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

#487

Post by bena »

User23 wrote: post #431
bena wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is that saying "zealots are zealots" doesn't say anything. Or the people who are zealots are those acting like zealots. Once again, that's tautology. He's asking you what actions are those of a zealot. If I recycle, am I zealot? If I say global warming is real, am I zealot? If I sabotage a petroleum refinery, am I zealot? There are degrees to actions. He knows what he'd define a zealot as, but he wants you…

> Once again, that's tautology. He's asking you what actions are those of a zealot. If I recycle, am I zealot? If I say global warming is real, am I zealot? If I sabotage a petroleum refinery, am I zealot? There are degrees to actions All three of those are entirely orthogonal to whether or not one is a zealot. For example someone could sabotage a petroleum refinery because they’re following military orders without a…

See, your talking but saying nothing.

Most of us understand what "zeal" is and being condescending isn't doing you any favors.

"A is A" has no value. It's not an axiom, it's a tautology. It is true by virtue of being itself. You're saying "zealots are zealots". Which, ok. But it doesn't tell us what zealots are. Or what you think they are.

That's what makes your logic bad. You've replaced it with tautologies. Bad is bad. Good is good. Zealots are zealots.

And it's not a logical error. It's what you did with your edit. If not all who downvoted you and him are zealots, then you can't use the fact that you were downvoted as proof of zealotry. Which you did. Downvotes only go to like -4 around here. So it's not like it takes a lot. Unless you honestly believe you and him were being upvoted way more. Which you have no evidence for. Besides your claim that "the zealots are after you". Of which the only proof we have of their supposed zealotry is downvoting you and the other guy. So is that what being a climate zealot means to you? It's someone who downvotes you on message boards?

You do not discuss in good faith. And the evidence is in your posts. You think using words like axiom and pragmatic means you're making good points. You're not. Because you apparently don't know what they mean.

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

#488

Post by ip26 »

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.

The conspiratorial explanation is that freon was cheap to make & not patented, while new more atmosphere friendly replacements were patented. The new refrigerants were also fairly drop-in.

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

#489

Post by panzagl »

brtkdotse wrote: post #473
panzagl wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we'll charge the Masai the same for their cows that we'll charge a Texan?

That’s the most ill-constructed straw man I’ve seen in a long time.

lol, I don't disagree...

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

#490

Post by syops »

burkaman wrote: post #300
syops wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

Thank you for the clarification on what you meant by “myth”. The rate of population growth has been declining but not the growth of the population. There are far more people now than 60 years ago. There are around 8 billion people and global poverty is decreasing. This means consumption is correspondingly increasing. The pressure on the environment that this causes is enormous. Man made chemicals, plastics, etc. are all over the place. We are shitting on ourselves with our profligacy. The pollution and environmental destruction are getting worse. There are too many people as I see things.
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