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This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

cnn.com

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Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#111

Post by Timon3 »

europeanNyan wrote: post #94
ajkjk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? if everyone dies and you say "well it always changes" the answer is still "...and we could have done something about it and we didn't do enough." It has no bearing if it changed in the past if we can do something about it not killing most (non-rich) people in the future. Well it was one bearing if it was like this in the past: it gives people a convenient argument for dismissing it now. So if your goal is…

That wasn't their point at all. The question always is if we can even do something about the climate now or if we should spend the energy and resources into preparing for a potentially inevitable future. Humans have always been champions of handling change. Why should this be different?

> The question always is if we can even do something about the climate now or if we should spend the energy and resources into preparing for a potentially inevitable future.

It's usually easier to stop doing something than to deal with the consequences of doing something.

> Humans have always been champions of handling change. Why should this be different?

Humans have never faced this kind of change. It will be different because it's not just a different temperatures, it's the collapse of the ecosystem which we rely on for food.

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#112

Post by sublinear »

Ugh this sensationalized trash reduces the trust of the public in the science.

The reality of weather should not be reduced down to politics, yet here we are. Living in idiocracy.

We're in a strong el nino at the moment and it's not even the worst one in the last 50 years.

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#113

Post by gottorf »

mistrial9 wrote: post #56
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> low-hanging fruit have mostly been picked by now really? lighting alone is a huge sector for unrealized power savings, in all categories.

> lighting alone is a huge sector for unrealized power savings, in all categories.

Do you have some sources I can read about this? I find it hard to believe that large consumers of light haven't already switched to LEDs given the financial incentive to do so, and on the consumer side, the transition has already been made in most of the world that has lighting.

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#114

Post by Aerbil313 »

version_five wrote: post #42

Ok, so what's the actionable take here? Are people going to use this to try and push wealth redistribution and authoritarian controls which is about the only thing I've ever seen from "climate action" types? Or does this imply those wouldn't work anyway now? Is anyone or any government going to look at actual motivations to help live in a warmer place? And/or to pull carbon out of the air, or get more nuclear, or wha…

> Ok, so what's the actionable take here?

The unthinkable yet true thing is that there isn't anything we can do to reverse or cure the situation. Best we can do is try to adapt. We're far past the tipping points. Ever heard of Collapse with a capital C?

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#115

Post by [deleted] »

gottorf wrote: post #107
vkou wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redistributing the world's wealth by killing all the rich, and taking all their stuff, might[1], just like your opinion of climate change, also turn out to be a 'net plus', yet these kinds of ideas don't currently seem to be in vogue. [1] I say might, because there's uncertainty around this. I do know, with absolute certainty that redistributing - say - your organs to multiple people who need transplants would defini…

The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea. Could explain why it's not in vogue, though it does appear more and more popular among the young.

[deleted]

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#116

Post by vkou »

gottorf wrote: post #107
vkou wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redistributing the world's wealth by killing all the rich, and taking all their stuff, might[1], just like your opinion of climate change, also turn out to be a 'net plus', yet these kinds of ideas don't currently seem to be in vogue. [1] I say might, because there's uncertainty around this. I do know, with absolute certainty that redistributing - say - your organs to multiple people who need transplants would defini…

The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea. Could explain why it's not in vogue, though it does appear more and more popular among the young.

> The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea.

Whereas we have exactly zero historical precedent to know whether or not climate change will even be a 'net plus'.

(I do know that organ redistribution would definitely be a net plus, though. We kill one person, we save the lives of N people, the calculus seems to add up to me...)

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#117

Post by ajkjk »

briantakita wrote: post #93
ajkjk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? if everyone dies and you say "well it always changes" the answer is still "...and we could have done something about it and we didn't do enough." It has no bearing if it changed in the past if we can do something about it not killing most (non-rich) people in the future. Well it was one bearing if it was like this in the past: it gives people a convenient argument for dismissing it now. So if your goal is…

> Who cares? if everyone dies and you say "well it always changes" the answer is still "...and we could have done something about it and we didn't do enough." I don't take a nihlist approach. I take a realistic approach. The changes will occur. What will we do about it? Go into a delusion that we can stop the change or take steps to prepare? > Well it was one bearing if it was like this in the past: it gives people a…

No, you argued that it has happened before, which does not imply that the fact that it is happening now is not anthropogenic this time -- which it obviously is.

If you can do work now to make "the planet getting very hot and messed up everyone's lives" take thousands of extra years, during which time it is more livable, why would you not? Obviously you would balance this against other economic and policy concerns, which everyone is, and it comes out way ahead because warming is very bad for everyone.

"It has happened in the past, therefore turn your brain off and tell everyone else to stop thinking also." is not a "realistic" approach, it's a delusional one. It doesn't involve a realistic model of the present or the future. It's profoundly unconcerned with any sort of causal model of reality that makes predictions about the future and therefore analyzes what we ought to do based on their expected outcomes.

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#118

Post by dbingham »

briantakita wrote: post #36
ajkjk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be aware that dismissing very-overtly-obvious climate claims out of hand makes you sound very dubious, right? Super "merchants-of-doubt"y. The only way to deliver this opinion in a non-suspect way would be something like: "I'm aware that all metrics show it's the hottest month on record, and everyone is experiencing that everywhere, but ". Like, it is obvious in the last fifty years. Your argument is "well m…

The climate always changes. Always has & always will. No political movement, economic paradigm, or technology will make the climate static. The geomagnetic field fluctuations, Sun, the solar system's current cosmological coordinates, cosmological effects are too big of a driver of the climate. Geologically speaking, we have just left a mini-ice age. Our efforts are better invested in adjusting to these inevitable cha…

The rate of change is what matters here. We are causing the climate to change at a staggering rate. Faster than anything ever seen in nature except during cataclysmic events (massive volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts, etc).

The biosphere will not be able to keep up with these changes and we already know that we are causing a mass extinction event and destabilization of the biosphere. Our food system depends on the biosphere.

Our society also depends on the conditions that have been relatively stable for the last several millennia. Sure, there was a mini ice age, but we're talking about a smaller change in climate and far more gradual in that ice age, than what we are currently experiencing and causing. And that mini ice age was enough to cause mass disruption to human societies in areas most impacted by it.

Our current human caused climate change - if allowed to continue unabated - is likely to cause disruption on scales that lead to the death of billions of humans and the likely collapse of societies. We cannot ignore the cause of it (us) and simply adapt to the new reality. The way we adapt to this is by changing the behaviors that created it in the first place: We stop burning fossil fuels. That way it stops getting worse, then we work to return the climate to what it was previously, or we work to adapt to our new (now, hopefully, stabilized) reality.

We're quickly losing the window to even do that, however, because we're triggering feedback mechanisms that make this change self-replicating. So we likely need to go heavily into carbon removal and fast as well.

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#119

Post by ajkjk »

europeanNyan wrote: post #94
ajkjk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? if everyone dies and you say "well it always changes" the answer is still "...and we could have done something about it and we didn't do enough." It has no bearing if it changed in the past if we can do something about it not killing most (non-rich) people in the future. Well it was one bearing if it was like this in the past: it gives people a convenient argument for dismissing it now. So if your goal is…

That wasn't their point at all. The question always is if we can even do something about the climate now or if we should spend the energy and resources into preparing for a potentially inevitable future. Humans have always been champions of handling change. Why should this be different?

All evidence points to it not being inevitable on the timescales it is happening on. On some timescale, obviously the planet melts from the sun. Doesn't mean we want it to melt soon.

Re: This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

#120

Post by esalman »

briantakita wrote: post #74
esalman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists use tree rings, coral reefs and deep sea sediment cores to measure historical temperature from a long time ago. These methods are based on the principle that the growth and chemistry of these natural archives reflect the environmental conditions that they experienced. Tree rings show the annual variations in temperature and precipitation on land. Coral reefs show the sea surface temperature and salinity in…

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Mathematical models with curated inputs & ever changing factors are not extraordinary evidence.

What alternative do you suggest?
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