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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

#151

Post by zosima »

sebmellen wrote: post #80
briantakita wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What if it’s all a hoax, and we create a better world for nothing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Pett#/media/File%3AWhat...

You got to explain to me how wrecking our electricity grid and living with threat of exploding electricity prices (so much so, that there has been many reports of poor people not being able to afford heating in the winter) is making the world a better place.

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

#152

Post by version_five »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #114
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?

> Best we can do is try to adapt.

Ok well let's do that then instead scream about the crazy stuff many sibling comments are advocating. All this rearranging the deck chair on the titanic stuff is just transparently political.

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

#153

Post by mcdonje »

gottorf wrote: post #55
mdgrech23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of ignorance in this comment is baffling.

What's baffling is making energy more expensive and less reliable when all of human development has been about spending more energy per capita at less cost. 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 t…

>all of human development has been about spending more energy per capita at less cost

What? No. That makes no sense. Human development includes a lot of things that have nothing to do with that ridiculous and narrow definition.

>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.

Follow the money: https://atomicinsights.com/how-important-has-oil-money-been-...

>Barring [nuclear energy], abundant, cheap, stable, and regrettably unclean energy from fossil fuels is the second best option.

What about increasing renewable energy options? What about increasing carbon efficiency by introducing it as a concept into markets via a carbon tax significant enough to drive innovation and behavior change? What about increasing city density and improving subways and trains? What about reducing meat consumption?

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

#154

Post by ZeroGravitas »

shdh wrote: post #145

Deceleration isn't really an option. Many developing nations are going to continue to have increasing energy needs. To ask these countries to reduce their energy requirements is to ask their citizens to live a lower standard of life. Hypocritical of those in the West to make that request. The only real solution is to make energy ubiquitous and plentiful. Governments should be investing 100's billions of dollars into…

> The only real solution is to make energy ubiquitous and plentiful.

Renewables have been the boring, consensus answer to this for about a decade.

There's some obscure academic discussions about the exact makeup of the last 15% of energy needs, but most of those options revolve around how to best reuse the massive amounts of nearly free electricity that a sensible overbuild of renewables will create at other times.

I know the mainstream media flips between it all being a hoax and us all going to die but I still don't understand how it's possible for so many HN posters to have a worldview that so neatly excludes these world shaking tech developments.

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

#155

Post by myshpa »

listenallyall wrote: post #141
sebmellen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think protecting the climate will destroy the economy and personal freedom, you’re mistaken. The biggest threat to a thriving world economy with high degrees of personal freedom is climate change.

> The biggest threat to a thriving world economy with high degrees of personal freedom I would suggest it is lack of low-cost, easily-accessible energy. Energy has been the driving force behind virtually every technological and economic advance in the past century.

Agree.

But extinction of pollinators or key species, extreme temperatures causing mass crop failures, extreme droughts, several meter sea rise or a cascade of tipping points could certainly make some serious damage too.

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

#156

Post by myshpa »

whatshisface wrote: post #149
adamrezich wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid to ask but… what would the McDonald's Rapture be? and McDonald's Original Sin for that matter. plus, McDonald's Salvation seems pretty straightforward to me… regardless, the Church of McDonald's, for all of their other shortcomings as a Church, doesn't seem to fit the profile of "doom cult", so I'm not too concerned about them.

The McDonalds Armageddon (I think climate change is more of an Armageddon than a rapture) is what happens to you after you commit too many McDonalds sins, which are the menu items. :-)

McDonalds is one of the biggest culprits here, for sure.

Climate change is just a symptom of much bigger problem, and that's ecological overshoot. Climate change, resource depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, overpopulation, soil erosion, and overfishing are all symptoms of ecological overshoot.

Animal ag is the leading driver of deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution and soil erosion.

McDonalds is one of the biggest companies driving deforestation worldwide (5th?), in fact 8 out of 13 biggest deforesting companies worldwide are in the meat industry, one way or another.

https://earth.org/major-companies-responsible-for-deforestat...

Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

Every year the world loses around 5 million hectares of forest. 95% of this occurs in the tropics. At least three-quarters of this is driven by agriculture – clearing forests to grow crops (upto 80% for animal feed), and raise livestock

https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation

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

#157

Post by zosima »

myshpa wrote: post #131
bryanlarsen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite true. 252 million years ago we also had a very quick 8 degree Celsius rise in global temperature. It kicked off the largest mass extinction event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

We're about to outpace that. "very quick" = 60 ± 48 thousand years, we're aiming for 100 years or so > It kicked off the largest mass extinction event Yet. Let's wait few decades. > It is also the largest known mass extinction of insects. We're already 75-80% down. https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-fl... https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-202... https://wwflpr.awsassets.p…

We had a ~10C increase in temperature from 20000 YA - 13000 YA or so and then a yoyo jump back down ca. 6C and up again in a 1000 years, during the younger dryas.

While the 19th-21th century increase of 1-1.2C or so is a bit faster, it's not a magnitude faster.

Humans have definitely changed nature everywhere, and is probably responsible for many species dying. But blaming that on the climate change doesn't really make sense. Deforestation is much more likely to be the cause.

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

#158

Post by zosima »

anigbrowl wrote: post #83
crypot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You climate guys crack me up. 15 thousand years ago Canada was under 3 kilometers of ice. Now it is home to 40 million people and covered in wildlife. The human population went from 2 million to 8 billion during this warming period. All the evidence points to a warmer planet supporting more life, not less.

Now do Sudan

Sudan:

current population 50.000.000 population in 1950: 6 191 000

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

I'd say they've been thriving.

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

#159

Post by myshpa »

zosima wrote: post #157
myshpa wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're about to outpace that. "very quick" = 60 ± 48 thousand years, we're aiming for 100 years or so > It kicked off the largest mass extinction event Yet. Let's wait few decades. > It is also the largest known mass extinction of insects. We're already 75-80% down. https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-fl... https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-202... https://wwflpr.awsassets.p…

We had a ~10C increase in temperature from 20000 YA - 13000 YA or so and then a yoyo jump back down ca. 6C and up again in a 1000 years, during the younger dryas. While the 19th-21th century increase of 1-1.2C or so is a bit faster, it's not a magnitude faster. Humans have definitely changed nature everywhere, and is probably responsible for many species dying. But blaming that on the climate change doesn't really ma…

I'm not blaming it on the climate change. I'm blaming overshoot.

Mainly our agriculture (deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution), misuse of fossil fuels and the structures of our societal and financial systems.

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

#160

Post by toomuchtodo »

shdh wrote: post #145

Deceleration isn't really an option. Many developing nations are going to continue to have increasing energy needs. To ask these countries to reduce their energy requirements is to ask their citizens to live a lower standard of life. Hypocritical of those in the West to make that request. The only real solution is to make energy ubiquitous and plentiful. Governments should be investing 100's billions of dollars into…

A lot of those folks in the developing world are going to die from the new heat normal, and no one is going to do anything about it. Tragic to be sure.

> To ask these countries to reduce their energy requirements is to ask their citizens to live a lower standard of life. Hypocritical of those in the West to make that request.

Without a hint of sarcasm or snark, life isn’t fair. We’re on a trajectory of progress (energy transition) and reduction in quality of life (excess heat deaths) for various geographic cohorts, and not much is going to bend either curve.

https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/devastating-worlds-p...

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