Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

public.wmo.int

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 591 posts

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#281

Post by dharma1 »

jfengel wrote: post #241
cmews wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we can burn fossil fuels to impact the atmosphere that cause climate change then we can also pump other gasses that will have a cooling effect. We aren’t doing much at the moment because there aren’t economic incentives to do so, but that can change if we have policy changes.

We aren't doing it because pumping gases into the atmosphere does more than just reduce temperature. Sulfur compounds, for example, dissolve in the clouds and make them acidic. So does the CO2 itself. The oceans are getting more acidic already, killing shellfish and throwing off food webs. Throwing additional geoengineering on top of the geoengineering we're already doing will almost certainly cause as many problems…

I read somewhere that fine water mist sprayed into the atmosphere may have the same reflective effect as sulphur from the shipping industry without the negatives.

I’m fairly certain we will resort to this type of geo engineering soon - cutting down energy consumption is not a viable path, it’s just not going to happen. Quite the contrary, humanity’s energy consumption is likely to grow a lot.

I agree with you about keeping carbon in the ground - but it will only happen for economic reasons in reality (ie. solar being cheaper than oil and gas) and the transition will take decades.

I hope we don’t hit irreversible feedback effects in the next couple of decades!

I know every generation feels special - the pinnacle of humanity, a special time - but this time around it really feels like what happens in the next 20-30 years can have make it or break it consequences for later generations (not just climate, also chemical pollution, risk of nuclear/biological weapons use and possibly AI - though that could also solve a lot of our problems)

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#282

Post by wernercd »

jokoon wrote: post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

"if it can"

you have proof that it can and will?

this is the same "it's worth anything" arguments where "maybe" is treated as "it will happen" while ignoring the negative aspects (IE: human suffering, facts that poor people are worse for the economy, green tech is made from worse than carbon and is creating megatons of unrecyclable stuff like windmill blades and solar panels, etc.

Nothing like putting the lives of people on the chopping block for an "if" in response to a religious belief that "carbon is evil".

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#283

Post by briansm »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #230
ricardobeat wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s extremely depressing that you can’t have more than a couple paragraphs’ discussion without extremism kicking in. No, thinking people shouldn’t drive a 2-ton vehicle for 40km to buy 200g of Wagyu every other day is not the same as planning mass murder. Your comment is inflammatory and delusional.

>people shouldn’t drive a 2-ton vehicle for 40km to buy 200g of Wagyu every other day Your example describes a fantasy. The vast majority of people do not travel anywhere close to 40km to buy groceries. Even in a car-centric country like America, the average driver travels just 4km. If someone has to travel 40km or more to get to a grocery store, it's because they live rural. People who travel that far for groceries…

Here in the UK, if I had to travel 'just 4km' then I wouldn't take a car. In any case it's the other 50% of journeys that are 4km+ (20% of journeys are 10+ miles) that are the problem:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-marc...

The USA is a young country, built from the ground up around the automobile. Undoing that both physically and psychologically is just not possible in my opinion.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#284

Post by freen »

pentae wrote: post #258
jokoon wrote: post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

I'm going to guess you've never spent much time outside the bubble of the first world. After living extensively overseas in Latin America & South-east Asia and seeing how its part of everyday life for most people in the rest of the world to openly burn trash, plastics, car tyres.. litter everywhere, cutting the cat converters off their trucks, dumping construction waste straight into rivers.. it's been eye opening. N…

Personal responsibility for environmental issues is a fiction peddled by the biggest polluters.

The moment you think an individual is going to make any sort of a difference through minor changes in behavior, you have already lost the plot.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#285

Post by thomasahle »

pentae wrote: post #258
jokoon wrote: post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

I'm going to guess you've never spent much time outside the bubble of the first world. After living extensively overseas in Latin America & South-east Asia and seeing how its part of everyday life for most people in the rest of the world to openly burn trash, plastics, car tyres.. litter everywhere, cutting the cat converters off their trucks, dumping construction waste straight into rivers.. it's been eye opening. N…

"But it's you reduce the economy, think of what it will do to the poor!" it's incredible how ritch people will happily push the poor in front of them when it's beneficial.

The fact is "emmisions per capita" is heavily correlated with "gdp per capita": https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-vs-gdp

The "educated people in western countries [who] are incredibly eco-conscious" emit way more co2 than "85% of the worlds population".

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#286

Post by jlnho »

renegade-otter wrote: post #263

It seems to me that the "alarmist" scientists have been erring on the side of caution so much that the events have been unfolding faster than even some of their most conservative predictions.

Well, yeah, otherwise those predictions likely wouldn't have been labelled conservative.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#287

Post by acdha »

jokoon wrote: post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

> It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's not that big of a problem.

The thing is, we have no reason to believe halting climate will do anything other than boost the economy. The reason for inaction despite the fact that it’ll make tons of new jobs, and remove major consumer costs and widespread reductions to health & quality of life caused by cars, is that certain specific sectors of the economy will shrink. The fossil fuel industry has spent half a century funding science deniers and consolidating their political power to prevent action on climate change or their pollution. They’re not acting on behalf of the entire economy, just their shareholders.

A simple example: beef is a solid order of magnitude worse than other common protein sources (with the possible exception of lamb in some countries). We could see huge reductions in our food-related emissions simply by eating pork or chicken instead, and almost nobody would say that’s an intolerable lifestyle hit but the beef industry isn’t going to let that happen easily because it’s bad for their revenue even if it’d mean most people save money.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#288

Post by rayiner »

jokoon wrote: post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

> I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's not that big of a problem.

As someone from Bangladesh—average CO2 emissions under 1 ton per person—I can confirm that it sucks and conservation is a stupid way of mitigating climate change.

The anti-development people are just evil. When my dad was a kid in Bangladesh, 1 out of 5 kids died before age 5. Capitalism and development brought us up to similar levels to where the US was in the 1970s in just one generation.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#289

Post by tarsinge »

jokoon wrote: post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

Slashing oil production by 50% in western economies is not a reduction in lifestyle it’s a full collapse with a huge number of collateral death.

But still you have a partial point: health/life expectancy and happiness have already started to decorrelate with the economy in the US, and US people consume more resources than other western economies with obviously better material outcome but no better quality of life outcome. This point to solutions were conversely it should then be possible to maintain standard of living with a decrease in the energy consumption. Red meat and leisure only air travel are indeed good candidates because you can live a very happy, healthy and fulfilled life without them. Same with cars weighting 1000 pounds less, putting a sweater in winter at home, having denser city centers with public transportation, etc…

This is not about left or right, this is about having an open look at some ideologies with data. It’s always hard to accept when people make economical theories a part of their identity and values, this a religious crisis for them not a simple discussion.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#290

Post by ethanbond »

dharma1 wrote: post #281
jfengel wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't doing it because pumping gases into the atmosphere does more than just reduce temperature. Sulfur compounds, for example, dissolve in the clouds and make them acidic. So does the CO2 itself. The oceans are getting more acidic already, killing shellfish and throwing off food webs. Throwing additional geoengineering on top of the geoengineering we're already doing will almost certainly cause as many problems…

I read somewhere that fine water mist sprayed into the atmosphere may have the same reflective effect as sulphur from the shipping industry without the negatives. I’m fairly certain we will resort to this type of geo engineering soon - cutting down energy consumption is not a viable path, it’s just not going to happen. Quite the contrary, humanity’s energy consumption is likely to grow a lot. I agree with you about k…

No one knows what fine water mist sprayed into the atmosphere would do. Good god let's not bank on these ridiculous massive-scale hail Marys that may just as well cause more damage than good.
Post reply on HN