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

public.wmo.int

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

#371
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 remo…

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> It's absolutely not given that removing beef from our diet would make things much better.

It is - the food input & land requirements are less efficient - and it’s absurd to say that eating pork or chicken instead is so miserable that people won’t abide it.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Those figures that you quote are not wet bulb temperatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature > The wet-bulb temperature (WBT) is the temperature read by a thermometer covered in water-soaked (water at ambient temperature) cloth (a wet-bulb thermometer) over which air is passed. At 100% relative humidity, the wet-bulb temperature is equal to the air temperature (dry-bulb temperature); at lower humidi…

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanos is that you? Wanting to kill people now, to hopefully save the environment in the future.

Why do you think people have to die? Keep the strictly necessary things, get rid of the superfluous. Doesn't seem too difficult to me.

Strong “dropbox could be done in a weekend with rsync” vibes.

Also “If You Can Keep Your Head When Everybody Round You Is Losing His, Then It Is Very Probable That You Don’t Understand the Situation”

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think will happen if the temperatures keep rising, the oceans keep rising, and currently livable areas of land that hold billions of people become inhabitable?

> What do you think will happen if the temperatures keep rising, the oceans keep rising, and currently livable areas of land that hold billions of people become inhabitable? It’s really not so bad. Not compared to killing millions of people today by increasing the price of energy. Estimates are of a rise of [2-4 degrees centigrade by 2100.]( https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/climatechange/science#:~:text=Glob... .) This will…

Rare to see an effortful post so full of citations! Bravo for raising the standard of debate, even if your conclusion is disagreeable!

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

#375
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite this, they also have a huge length of high speed highways with cars going back and forth. The topology is not much different than in the US. Difference is there, but it's quantitative and will not in any way prevent climate change, especially as it also relies on infrastructure that US does not have and will take a huge carbon footprint to build.

They also have huge lengths of high speed and regional rail. The difference shows up in the energy per capita numbers. Nothing prevents climate change unless we get more intentional and scaled investments in renewable energy and circular green economies.

That rail would be nice to have, but it will not yield a decisive difference on the global warming time frame (~20 years).

You could go the Soviet route (had 30 cars per 1,000 people, a lot of train, bus and subway), but do you really want that? Of course, you would want to improve it because Soviet economy was hugely wasteful despite all this. Plus, all the apartment blocks are not going to build themselves, and certainly not without carbon emissions.

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

#376
And this is a good thing! For the most of its history, Earth was much (>5F) warmer than today:

http://www.climate.gov/media/11332

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...

We are still technically getting out of the last ice age.

Warmer climates mean more places are warm enough to grow food. More CO2 means plants grow faster (also more food). Yea, some low lands might get flooded - either build protections or don’t buy / build houses there. But overall for humanity warmer Earth temperatures are good thing. Much better than another ice age.

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

#377
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…

You aren't that far off. Young people today can see the writing on the wall: for the first time in history, we have scientific evidence that continuing with capitalism will bring the end of the world. We'll have to choose between continuing with colonial subjugation of the working class by the owner class for another eon or revolution by spiritual enlightenment to take us to an egalitarian future like Star Trek. Now…

>crony/late-state capitalism

Let's call it what it is: feudalism. The active income era of capitalism has largely subsided. When economic growth comes from active income all classes can see their wealth increase. When passive income dominates you get the opposite: certain sections of the owner class with the most powerful monopolies[0] cannibalize everyone else. And while "feudalism" is a historically complicated term, one common feature was economies dominated by passive income. In that era, wealth went to those who owned the land - a natural chokepoint to economic activity. Today the chokepoints are different but the effect is the same.

I would also disagree that half of HN is "just fine with the status quo" given that this community also likes to talk a lot about right to repair, abuse of copyright and patent ownership, DMCA 1201, platform capitalism, etc.

[0] e.g. copyright ownership over culturally relevant creative works, patent ownership over the most economically relevant inventions, etc

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

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Those figures that you quote are not wet bulb temperatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature > The wet-bulb temperature (WBT) is the temperature read by a thermometer covered in water-soaked (water at ambient temperature) cloth (a wet-bulb thermometer) over which air is passed. At 100% relative humidity, the wet-bulb temperature is equal to the air temperature (dry-bulb temperature); at lower humidi…

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

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, looking at lived experience the story is quite tricky. From the perspective of an individual it is very hard to detect this level of climate change. I can't tell how much warmer any given month was compared to even 20 years ago. We're talking about 28 vs 28.5°C average for a month. (and July and August made news because of pronounced anomalies, other months were probably even murkier stories due to…

This is a fair point. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the temperatures in my area the year I was born. Our highest temperature of the year was 96F ... on September 24! Let me tell you, if we hit 96F two weeks from now, it'll be front page news and evidence of climate catastrophe. I think everyone has now fallen into the trap of mixing up weather with climate. We used to deride the deniers who said a cold…

You can't take the number outside of its context. We know the earth is warming, that's not up for contention anymore. When you hit a 50 year record high temperature, the implication is that it's only going to get hotter.

It's not "doom and gloom because it hit 96F"

It's "doom and gloom because it hit 96F and it's only gonna get hotter"

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's related to the comment I was replying to: > Meanwhile, educated people in western countries are incredibly eco-conscious, have excellent modern waste management, have amazing huge national parks and conservation areas, clean waterways or have nets to prevent plastics entering the oceans.. are 'banning' gasoline cars by 2030.. and the air quality! Amazing. The commenter appears to say that people in western count…

The Chinese emit more per capita than the Europeans.

Yes, if you count the emissions for the stuff manufactured in China for (not only) european customers.

If you look at consumption-based emissions[0], China is at 7 t per capita, which is 8 t less than the US, 2 t less than Germany and about par with Denmark, Slovakia, and England.

0: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

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