51–60 of 266 posts
There were no precise instruments 120k years ago. The historical record used is a hodge podge of proxy data. Much modern temperature data was US centric. Also, there is controversy over the placement of temperature stations (e.g. on an urban heat island, next to an airport, near exhaust vents). Factors were added to temperature modesl (there were higher apples to apples temperature readings in the 1930s). Many region…
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Several nation-states will be huge beneficiaries of a hotter world. Russia's tundra becomes arable land, and their fossil fuels become more accessible. Their navy will be able to freely roam the seas when the polar ice caps melt. Canada will receive the same benefits - enormous access to fresh water, ease of navigation, and agriculturally ideal conditions. Greenland will have an increasingly large stake in geopolitic…
Obviously, but you missed the point. The problem is competetion by increased polarity between the haves and have-nots. The latter aren't just going to roll over and die. They're going to go to war to survive because there's nothing to lose in not doing so and everything to gain.
And they'll lose.
If you look at the distribution of power, it's not predicted to change all that much. The superpowers are enormously capable of maintaining their grip.
The complaints of poor nations will be met with meager welfare packages and mostly tuned out by the working class of weather nations. It's how the world already operates.
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Green energy policy in Europe has people replacing gas heat with heat pumps. And since heat pumps are also air conditioning, many European homes are getting air conditioning for the first time. One of those rare "have your cake and eat it too" moments.
Yeah it’s weird, but now suddenly everyone running air conditioning here. Doesn’t that nullify the savings?
At least in Europe, an order of magnitude (or two, depending on country) more people die from the cold than from the heat[0]. Going by the numbers, if green energy policy keeps summer temperatures down but makes energy more expensive[1], it will kill more people. [0]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... [1]: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/10/26/lets-come-clean...
The amount of ignorance in this comment is baffling.
Those who take climate change seriously should have gone all in on nuclear, but somehow there was enough of an overlap between that group and anti-nuclear activists that it never happened. That's what's truly baffling.
More and cheaper energy is quite literally the solution to all of humanity's physical problems. I don't care if the summers get hotter or winters get colder, if we have abundant, cheap, stable, clean energy from nuclear sources. Barring that, abundant, cheap, stable, and regrettably unclean energy from fossil fuels is the second best option. But what some in the developed world has chosen is stasis, degrowth, and decay instead.
I may be ignorant, but you don't seem to be offering any viable alternatives to my ignorance.
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energy efficiency makes the same amount of power, go further. Look into reducing outdoor lighting, wasteful uses of electricity, and improving efficiency for heavy applications, you might find more than enough savings to handle dire, life-and-death situations.
The low-hanging fruit have mostly been picked by now, regulating demand-side is not a solution and will lead only to immiseration and state overreach. Unless you are fine with only flushing your toilet on Wednesdays, this is not a desirable future overall.
really? lighting alone is a huge sector for unrealized power savings, in all categories.
The last time the temperature stayed this hot was 2.5 million years ago, in the Pilocene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Ov...
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The amount of ignorance in this comment is baffling.
It may be ignorant or even insane, but this sort of thinking is also taken seriously in certain places, and even highly rewarded. William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize for a model which predicts that if the planet warms by 6C - an extinction level event!! - GDP will only be reduced by 8.5%. Why? Because most high-value production happens indoors, where we have aircon. [1] [1] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/sep/nobel-…
At least in Europe, an order of magnitude (or two, depending on country) more people die from the cold than from the heat[0]. Going by the numbers, if green energy policy keeps summer temperatures down but makes energy more expensive[1], it will kill more people. [0]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... [1]: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/10/26/lets-come-clean...
Climate change affects both variance and mean of the weather. Which means both colder and hotter weather, and worse large scale events.