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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

#531

Post by jacquesm »

polotics wrote: post #246
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.

The sun is doing most of the warming work, we have just tightened our greenhouse! There's the order of magnitude you needed. Also the troposphere, other side of the co2 window-pane, is getting correspondingly colder..

> The sun is doing most of the warming work

What other heat source would there be other than geothermal or fission?

> Also the troposphere, other side of the co2 window-pane, is getting correspondingly colder..

As a result of trapping more heat inside I presume?

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

#532

Post by edgyquant »

eloff wrote: post #482
noobly wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Then how can you say beyond a reasonable doubt that the majority of climate change is caused by man? I think it’s obvious that man is messing up the climate but I don’t know it’s obvious that they are the main cause “by a country mile.”

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

#533

Post by guymcgwire »

yongjik wrote: post #523
guymcgwire wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't personally know any reasonably intelligent people who question the existence of global warming. I do, however, know several highly intelligent people who have looked at the atmospheric carbon and temperature data and wonder (quietly, for obvious reasons) if we might have got the causal mechanism story wrong.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-d... > CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the…

I think the case has been made quite convincingly that humans have dramatically increased atmospheric CO2. I don't personally know anyone who questions this either (but I don't know any oil lobbyists, to be fair). In fact, as someone who worked in climate advocacy for many years, I think that we proved this link quite well, almost to a fault. I say a fault, because so many resources have gone into proving that humans have caused the increase in atmospheric CO2 that we paid less attention to making a convincing case that the rise in global temperatures can only be explained by the reflected heat caused by that atmospheric CO2. (Just consider your knee-jerk reaction to my comment where you automatically assumed that this was a question about atmospheric CO2 without considering the possibility that it might be something/anything else).

When you look at the graphs for atmospheric CO2 and man-made carbon emissions laid on top of each other, it looks perfect. This is the money shot. But, when you lay the 150 year temperature data on top of it, it suddenly doesn't look so good (ignoring the normal 11 year solar fluctuations, just looking at the general trend line). There's a 70 year stretch when temperatures are flat to declining as atmospheric CO2 climbs by almost 20% (in advocacy training we'd be encouraged to skip past this: zoom out and highlight that they are _directionally_ similar and definitely never chart in percent change, of course).

Personally, I still ride with Team Atmospheric Carbon. But I also don't think there's anything unhealthy with good-faith questioning of the new dogma. The Earth's magnetic field has weakened by about 5% over the past 100 years. Global temperatures have risen by about 5.5% over the past 100 years. The magnetosphere protects the Earth's atmosphere from charged solar particles which would otherwise strip off parts of the upper atmosphere, allowing more UV radiation to hit Earth. Is that a coincidence? Maybe. Is increased UV-B penetration just as likely to cause warming as increased reflected infrared radiation? Yeah? So I keep an open mind.

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

#534

Post by m4x »

the_reformation wrote: post #343
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.

It's real, it's because of humans, it's not a civilization threat, and it probably isn't in the top 5 most important problems facing us this century.

OK, I'll bite. You really don't think it's a civilisation threat? It probably isn't an extinction threat (for humans at least) but certainly seems like it could topple modern civilisation. What do you consider the 5+ other more important problems?

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

#535

Post by m4x »

bwship wrote: post #223
rgbrenner wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cold records being broken are less frequent than in the past. Pretending that 1 cold record being broken disproves global warming is just the kind of disingenuous argument that deniers make. Figures 1-4: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... https://www.climatesignals.org/data/record-high-temps-vs-rec... https://www.axios.com/climate-change-warm-cold-temperature-r... https://phys.org/news/20…

What am I denying? That it is a hot summer. Or that I don't believe in climate change. For one, the records for temperature only go back a 100 years or so, so I would call it statistically insignificant. But, secondly, I truly would like to know what us as a people are actually going to do about it? Nobody on HN is going to give up their devices, or stop buying crypto that uses massive amounts of energy to produce. I…

Don't generalise too much. I'm planning not to buy any more devices, and have accepted the idea that my career might change tack (again) in the medium term future when computers are no longer available.

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

#536

Post by jgwil2 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #369
Jtsummers wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, and I'm not sure it's worse than the people who think they've already done enough (but in practice have comparable emissions to those who don't care).

Because those who erroneously believe they've done enough are more likely to change their behavior when confronted with new information.

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

#537

Post by lhorie »

SigmundA wrote: post #526
lhorie wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question seems to be framed from a christian/abrahamic perspective, and is about God's omni-benevolence property. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a sufficiently simple/satisfactory explanation for that question. In some flavors, the view is that there is no omni-benevolence (think in the tradition of Roman gods, for example), other views include the position that God is not an entity per se and that the notion o…

I have studied much of it and enjoy Joseph Campbell quite a bit, this discussion was focused on abrahamic religions though. I find it interesting from a study of human behavior but overall all religions seem to lack rigor, they leave me unsatisfied due to their lack of even internal consistency, unlike mathematics and science. Questions of determinism or free will are at the root of the mechanics of the universe and…

> If you believe some god to have created all things then how can there be free will, that would denote something from the outside, some source of entropy not under the control of the creator. If it is under control of the creator the it is not true entropy and everything is determined ultimately by the creator.

Yeah, that's one way to look at it. There's also philosophies of what exactly is "self" and where its boundaries lie. One take is that if "God lives within us" then even if the universe is entirely deterministic, our decisions are governed by our own internal mechanisms (hence it's "free will" in the sense that we exclusively "own" those mechanisms, as opposed to them being influenced by outside factors). Another related view is the notion of relativity (i.e. "my reality is not your reality and definitions are inherently tied to each person's relative consciousness because without consciousness there are no definitions". This second notion cuts pretty close to the heart of why arguments between christians and atheists often break down: if they are talking about two completely distinct, mutually-exclusive realities (as it is perceived by each individual), there's really no way to reach a compromise.

There's a variety of interpretations of free will in that context, some simple and fatalist (e.g. immutable, inescapable fate), some quite a bit more creative ("God gave us free will because He loves us and He weeps when we use it to do bad things, yet everything is part of His grand plan"). I don't always see these interpretations as necessarily internally inconsistent. Some definitely are literally nonsensical or highly metaphorical, but some just take a bit more effort to appreciate. At times, it's an exercise in realizing whether I'm being overly pedantic over some philosophical minutia and extrapolating aversion to the entire belief system.

Rather than rejecting entire ideologies at face value, I enjoy looking for common ground between different ideologies or ways to reconcile ideas because religions come packaged w/ moral frameworks and I think the moral aspect is an ignored but key thing if one hopes to talk to religious people about controversial topics in a productive manner.

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

#538

Post by eloff »

edgyquant wrote: post #532
eloff wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Then how can you say beyond a reasonable doubt that the majority of climate change is caused by man? I think it’s obvious that man is messing up the climate but I don’t know it’s obvious that they are the main cause “by a country mile.”

That's the consensus view. If you want to present evidence to support your contrarian argument, I'll discuss with you.

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

#539

Post by noobly »

eloff wrote: post #538
edgyquant wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how can you say beyond a reasonable doubt that the majority of climate change is caused by man? I think it’s obvious that man is messing up the climate but I don’t know it’s obvious that they are the main cause “by a country mile.”

That's the consensus view. If you want to present evidence to support your contrarian argument, I'll discuss with you.

The key phrase in the question was 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. I'm not versed in atmospheric physics, so of course I can't present an educated counter arguement to the consensus, but it's complexity alone makes me skeptical of any consensus that's reached. It was only so long ago that an ice age was eminent, right?

If you have any quality sources (books, videos, etc) I'd be interested in reading up more, it's an interesting topic that unfortunately developed a polarizing and polemic dialogue.

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

#540

Post by Bombthecat »

slg wrote: post #426
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…

The difference is that an asteroid is an existential threat to humanity while climate change is just short of that. The rich and powerful are always going to be protected from experiencing the worst aspects of climate change. They won't be the ones working outside when the air quality is dangerous from wildfires. They aren't going to be the ones who can't sleep because it is 90 degrees in their home. They won't be st…

We will hit 4 plus in fifty years. They will be affected, no matter where they live or how rich they will be.
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