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

cnn.com

161–170 of 266 posts

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

#161
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were no nation-states at that time either. It's going to be a meatgrinder this time around.

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…

The Canadian Shield[1] is hard rock with a very thin layer of dirt. There's nothing remotely "agriculturally ideal" going on here. South and west of the Shield are peatlands[2] -- those are dessicating and deflagrating. As hot winds continue to blow across increasingly treeless land, thin topsoils will be stripped from the land. Saskatchewan is already facing a collapse due to farm practices, and a second "dust bowl" seems nigh inevitable. Do not look to Canada, we cannot feed billions in the decades to come.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/wildfires-peat-chall...

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

#162
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…

Wind, solar, and geo haven't really made up a significant enough portion of overall energy generation. Also they don't seem to be scaling up quickly enough. We're still seeing many coal plants operating and new ones coming online in the West.

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

#163
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 (ener…

Yeah, that's without question. Overall energy needs will still continue to increase during that time, global population growth will almost certainly continue as well.

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

#165
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 (ener…

It's been tradition in Algeria to migrate to the coast during the summer-months, since forever. Other locations similarly popular is mountain regions.

That's going to continue to work for many years and degrees to come, so I'm not sure if the problem really is as severe as you think.

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

#166
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…

Fusion is a bad answer for the developing world, it leaves them dependent on first world experts.

Better to give them solar panels and wind turbines. Even if the third world can't manufacture them they can maintain them themselves.

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

#167

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…

> It's going to be hard to get people to care about this if the takeaway is going to be "other people have to do what we say" The poor collectively decide they want clean air and the rich shriek "stop telling other people what to do!" Then the rich turn around and say "stay off my land, and don't you dare occupy my 3rd vacation home even though it's empty right now!" The point I'm trying to make here is that telling…

In my past experience the poor I know are saying, "I would like to be able to afford gas to drive to work, and have a workplace that treats me with dignity and afford a good night on the town a few times a year."

I'd love to know which poor folks you know who have time to worry about global warming.

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

#168
post #159
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But deforestation and the following biodiversity loss is a completely different problem than reducing CO2. And in general, very few things that will reduce CO2 is going to help against deforestation (and contrary to popular opinion, even large scale reforestation will probably not affect CO2 very much either).

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

#169
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.

The abstract question of whether a higher or lower temperature would result in more habitable land (assuming, say, a gradual change over a million years) is completely 100% irrelevant to the issue of climate change. A fast enough change will: - Make places where large numbers of people currently live uninhabitable due to temperature and sea levels - Kill off most plants and animals because the ones in a given place w…

There has been a 15000 thousand year trend, where a warming planet has resulted in more biodiversity on earth.

Where is the evidence that the trend is ending?

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

#170
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Wind, solar, and geo haven't really made up a significant enough portion of overall energy generation. Also they don't seem to be scaling up quickly enough. We're still seeing many coal plants operating and new ones coming online in the West.

> IEA figures shows that it expects global electricity generation to rise by 2,493TWh between 2022 and 2025.

> The IEA expects the growth in renewable generation to cover the vast majority of this total, growing by 2,450TWh. This is equivalent to 98% of the overall increase in global demand.

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