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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

#221

Post by WorldMaker »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142
NelsonMinar wrote: post #78

It's also likely to be the coolest July for the next twenty to hundred+ years. Enjoy it while you can!

Clearly you're not factoring in the nuclear winters that the third and fourth world wars will provide for us within that timespan if climate change destabilises world politics to the predictable degree.

There's terrifying scientific evidence that nuclear winter is perhaps increasingly impossible as climate change continues and nuclear fallout (and even volcanic ash fallout) move us closer and closer to turning Earth into Venus 2: Electric Boogaloo thanks to the (runaway) greenhouse effect.

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

#222

Post by gottorf »

vkou wrote: post #211
gottorf wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have exactly zero historical precedent to know whether or not climate change will even be a 'net plus'. My point exactly! If you respect Chesterton's fence, we shouldn't make radical changes to the status quo without clear and convincing proof that the change is worth the cost. Fossil fuels, as bad as they are, also brought up living standards for literally billions of people. There are still billions of people…

It takes incredible mental gymnastics, and a massive ideological blindspot to consider flooding our atmosphere with billions of tons of carbon, and causing a climate catastrophe to be 'the status quo'.

Status quo just means the world as it sits now. It has no bearing on whether it is an ideal state to be. Humanity is indubitably better off now than it was prior to the Industrial Revolution, and there's 10x more of us now to enjoy it, thanks in large part to energy unlocked by fossil fuels. Do you dispute that point, or is your point rather that we should go back to the living standards and world population of the 1700s?

At the same time that we've been flooding the atmosphere with carbon with nations around the world industrializing (1970-2019), climate-related deaths around the world shrank to one-third, while the human population doubled[0]. Not one-third in rate, that's one-third in absolute number. Is that the "climate catastrophe" you're talking about? The IPCC released its first report in 1990, and deaths of climate has only decreased since then, mainly due to the improving ability of developing nations to better master their environment -- again, via cheap energy enabled by fossil fuels.

I'm not the one with mental gymnastics and blind spots if you cannot acknowledge the instrumental role that fossil fuels have played in getting humanity to this point, and the inability of current renewable energy technology to replace it wholesale.

[0]: https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=10989

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

#223

Post by ChildOfChaos »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #143
ChildOfChaos wrote: post #59

Meanwhile in the UK summer has been grey, rainy and miserable.

> June's average mean temperature, calculated from the average daytime and nighttime temperature from across the UK, of 15.8C beats the previous record of 14.9C (set in both 1940 and 1976) by 0.9C. It was the hottest June since records began in 1884

Yes, but since summer started which is the 20th of June and until now, it's rained a huge amount.

Early June was warm in the UK.

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

#224

Post by gottorf »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #210
gottorf wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we will only create more heat and will need even more energy to deal with it Yes, that's a thermodynamic certainty. But the moment Homo sapiens left the year-round pleasant high plains of East Africa, we were going to need energy; you can't blame the caveman for lighting a stick on fire to keep himself warm. > a large part of the world is simply not built to withstand such temperatures People live in some truly inh…

I don't think you appreciate what you are asking here. Infrastructure in London was melting last summer, lots of our infrastructure will have to be rebuilt, which is severely inefficient, and will require even more energy.

Then we must adapt and rebuild the infrastructure. What's the alternative, that everyone just abandon London?

Climate scientists agree that if the world stopped all carbon emissions today, at the snap of a magical finger, the planet will continue to warm for the foreseeable future. It seems to me then that the correct path out is through, not backwards. And "through" involves building and rebuilding, using whatever energy sources are economical. By all means, bring renewables in that fold, but renewables alone are far from sufficient.

It's not just a matter of everyone driving Teslas instead of F-250s, or indeed even of everyone cramming into electric-powered city buses or walking instead of using automobiles. The primary industries are all still powered by vast amounts of fossil fuels: the huge mining trucks, farm tractors, and backhoes that produce the real things that real people need to consume to survive, have such high energy density requirements that there are no viable electric alternatives yet.

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

#225

Post by t0bia_s »

slily wrote: post #150
wombat-man wrote: post #90

Cool, well, we just have to wait for enough people on the planet to believe in the problem and then we'll get right on it.

Strawmen notwithstanding, the main controversy today is about governments as well as non-elected organizations (like the WEF) calling for increased central control over ordinary citizens and adopting tyrannical measures to reduce the standard of living and increase the cost of energy, food, travel and so on, using "climate crisis" as a vague excuse to invoke some sense of urgency in the hopes that people are stupid e…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_c...

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

#226

Post by t0bia_s »

wombat-man wrote: post #216
valval wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised that so many highly analytical minds (such as HN posters I’d assume are) mistakenly believe that whatever crisis may or may not be at hand would be solved by individual action as instructed by some vague institutions or organisations. It’s like asking people to drive slowly without introducing and enforcing speed limits, or more tangibly whatever the farce with recycling has been for the past decades. C…

I don't know where you're getting that from my comment. Personally I don't think we can meaningfully change the trajectory without a worldwide, coordinated government effort. I do think that won't happen unless people push for it, and I don't think people are going to push for it because it's going to mean higher energy prices, lifestyle changes and it's going to make it harder for economic growth, especially in deve…

Poor people and new world order should be solution for making planet more cool?

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

#227

Post by t0bia_s »

Timon3 wrote: post #111
europeanNyan wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diffe…

How do you know that?

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

#228

Post by vkou »

gottorf wrote: post #222
vkou wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes incredible mental gymnastics, and a massive ideological blindspot to consider flooding our atmosphere with billions of tons of carbon, and causing a climate catastrophe to be 'the status quo'.

Status quo just means the world as it sits now. It has no bearing on whether it is an ideal state to be. Humanity is indubitably better off now than it was prior to the Industrial Revolution, and there's 10x more of us now to enjoy it, thanks in large part to energy unlocked by fossil fuels. Do you dispute that point, or is your point rather that we should go back to the living standards and world population of the 1…

By your definition, draining down your savings because your expenses far exceed your earnings is 'status quo'. A drug addict upping the dose they take every week, to maintain the same rush, until their heart finally gives out is 'status quo'. Continuing to push on the accelerator, as your car is on its way off a cliff is 'status quo'.

You're also presenting a laughably false dichotomy for an alternative. I have an incredibly hard time imagining that you honestly believe that to be the only alternative for our current trajectory.

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

#229

Post by t0bia_s »

russdill wrote: post #49
explaininjs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Scientists” aren’t a single unit. Some of them are responsible in their methodology, others get endless news coverage for their alarmism.

In this case, it's large groups of independent scientists all coming to the same conclusion on global average temperature.

Might be. But cause of rising average temperature is just hypothesis and vary among them.

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

#230

Post by guerrilla »

glimshe wrote: post #199
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #154

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…

The radical insistence on renewables as the ONLY energy source, and the equally radical opposition to Nuclear is part of why we aren't improving fission and researching fusion more, which would get us out of the woods. No compromise is being pursued from the renewables side, while the nuclear side completely agree that renewables will be a major part of our grid.

There's nothing radical in insisting on using a solution that you have now to a problem you have now. It's called being practical.
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