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The concurrence of three climatic events

climatecasino.net

341–350 of 408 posts

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threshold at which humans can no longer cool themselves naturally varies based on factors like health, activity, clothing and humidity. Typically, a wet-bulb temperature above 95F (35C) poses a severe risk to health, especially with high humidity. It's important to note that such extreme wet-bulb temperatures are relatively rare in most parts of the world

> extreme wet-bulb temperatures are relatively rare in most parts of the world The concern the top-level comment has is that sooner rather than later these cases will not be as rare and so more people will become familiar with this concept.

That context here is so obvious, it almost makes you wonder if the comment you were replying to is a ChatGPT special.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. Doomerism has planet-sized infomercial hands. There is a long and embarassing trail of false apocalypses predicted from extrapolations + assumptions of helplessness, often made by otherwise intelligent and scientifically inclined people. We were all going to starve, but then Haber figured out how to…

> they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on these topics are quite well aware. The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and overcome" has been based on two major things: - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stabili…

We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years.

Humans have been contemplating the end of the world and the promise of a subsequent paradise or judgement for thousands of years, evidenced by ancient religious and cultural texts. The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, Zoroastrian eschatology, etc.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#343

> There is another possible input to this heating worthy of note. Dust from the Sahara typically blows west this time of year, blocking incoming radiation while trapping existing heat. So far this year the dust has not come. The lack of dust is notable and could also be a direct cause of some of the North Atlantic heating. This caught my eye as a potentially much worse catastrophe in the short term than the extreme t…

Fair point, but what if the desert starts greening again? I don't expect it to, but having what nutrients there are NOT blow away would be a start right?

The Sahara has started greening. The desert advanced in the 70s and 80s but more rainfall has resulted in it retreating since the 90s.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on it is that "well presented doomers" [0], if you will, serve to balance the "well presented optimists" [1] in that they are needed in society so we can have some take on how things could actually go wrong and sound warnings for potentially catastrophic failures. Its important though, that I think it needs moderating, like not everything "Doomers" say needs to be taken at face value, its important that other…

"Everything will go wrong whether we do anything or not!!" No, it won't. Because we will act. "Everything will turn out fine, we don't need to worry about anything!!" No, it won't. We need to act. Honestly, both extreme reactions paralyze humans and nations into inactivity. We fixed the hole in the Ozone. We fixed Acid Rain. We stopped the whales from going extinct. We did this through concerted human and governmenta…

> We fixed the hole in the Ozone

y2k too... that could have been awful

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#345
post #266
post #51

Yet another alarmist article. These predictions are so easy to make and nobody cares if you are wrong. From the past (you can google more yourself): https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/18/world/scientists-say-eart... https://nypost.com/2021/11/12/50-years-of-predictions-that-t...

Let's see, you don't want people to be alarmist on events that could remap the world as we know it? Okay, if we aren't alarmist then governments won't take action. It sounds like there is no way to win with people like you, and evidently there are enough people like you that we've done nothing. Regarding your specific complaint, let's look at the AP article. The article is based off an interview with a director, not…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates purchased farms clandestinely on a massive scale Clandestine means secrete and illegal. If it was secret, how do you know about it and if it was illegal, what was illegal about it? Bill Gates famously funded a "mini-nukes" company to make smaller footprint nuclear power plants, and portable nuclear generators. So what? Where is the connection to a smaller nuclear reactor coming from?

pedantic "secrete" means to emit fluids or odor.. if you say so! ; "clandestine" means secret or secretive "especially if illegal" .. not illegal per se.. "so what" is up to you.. maybe it means nothing to you, "so what"

maybe it means nothing to you

It means nothing to me, what was the point you were trying to make?

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on it is that "well presented doomers" [0], if you will, serve to balance the "well presented optimists" [1] in that they are needed in society so we can have some take on how things could actually go wrong and sound warnings for potentially catastrophic failures. Its important though, that I think it needs moderating, like not everything "Doomers" say needs to be taken at face value, its important that other…

"Everything will go wrong whether we do anything or not!!" No, it won't. Because we will act. "Everything will turn out fine, we don't need to worry about anything!!" No, it won't. We need to act. Honestly, both extreme reactions paralyze humans and nations into inactivity. We fixed the hole in the Ozone. We fixed Acid Rain. We stopped the whales from going extinct. We did this through concerted human and governmenta…

You speak with certainty that is not possible. Those were all tiny hobby projects in comparison. You don't have to overhaul all of modern civilization to save whales or the ozone layer.

And... will act? The time to act already has come and passed, probably during the Bush years. We did not act. This is no longer about making it to the runway, this is about deciding which patch of rocks will kill the fewest passengers.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn’t all of technological progress been paying one credit card off with another?

That's an interesting question, and one I've looked at answering in part by looking at technology in terms of its mechanisms. As I see it, it's possible to frame all technologies as being fundamentally based on one of the following mechanisms, interactions, or focus points: - Materials: stuff, its properties, abundance, and sourcing and disposal issues. Wood, stone, ceramics, metals, fluids, chemicals, nuclear materi…

Not disagreeing with your post here but curious about this point:

> Steve Keen (amongst others) shows that economic productivity scales near-linearly with energy consumption, yet we are using fossil fuels at rates millions of times greater than they accumulated.

The only way I can see (without spending more than just a few minutes thinking about this comment) this being true is with 100% efficiency and I wonder if that's the underlying assumption here. I'd hazard a guess that we're using fossil fuels at low single digit percentage efficiency if that and perhaps even putting more in than we're getting out. To your point though, since we're using fossil fuels way faster than they accumulated there's just no way to escape "running out" [1]. Just a matter of when.

[1] I don't think we'll ever run out of course, it'll just be more and more expensive. When I think about running out I think about not having society able to adapt to the cost because of how we've built and designed our infrastructure. The US is particularly screwed here since we rely on them so much.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#350
post #286

A lot of comments deriding this article as alarmist. Excuse me if I'm incorrect in saying so, but even the data seems to tell me that alarmism is where we are at: This articles data. Incredible floods in Pakistan. Heat domes over the PNW. Fires in Australia, Canada, California. And now a warming event in the North Atlantic unlike any other. All of that and this is likely to be one of the coolest summers for the remai…

> Fires in Australia, Canada, California. Please don't use California as an example here. It's supposed to be on fire. Several species of trees and plants here cannot germinate without fire. The loooong known problem [1] is mismanagement, building houses where places burn, and blaming the wrong people, which leads to overgrowth from lack of fire. Fires aren't, by any measure, optional. If you impede them, they will c…

Fires in CA are normal, but not all fires are equal, and the fires that have been in CA recently are worse than they would have been even with the excess ground litter.

The fire season is longer, the droughts are worse, the fires are more intense, fires are happening outside of their historic range, and trees are not surviving the fire assuming they weren't dead already due to drought.

Timely article, "Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California" (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120)

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