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September was the most anomalously hot month ever

scientificamerican.com

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Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#101

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2... I think the Overton window needs to shift soon to include the idea that widespread government intervention will be required to avoid 800 million climate refugees

I don’t believe it’s possible to avoid anything anymore, Merely the scale will be determined at best. It’s not just going to be 800 million refugees. I suspect it’s going to be actual deaths in that range. And with no real intervention as is the case now, likely in the billions. Given how the whole world handled the pandemic I have no confidence it’ll unfurl any other way. A sobering thought that keeps me awake for a…

I'll bet you a thousand dollars there will be not even 10 million deaths over current level directly linked to climate change, like drought, heat stroke, etc.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#102
post #45
post #4

Can someone help me understand why when there’s a record cold month, there’s a convo like this > non-believer: “see global warming doesn’t exist” > believer: “you can’t measure this on a monthly scale, it’s too slow of a process” But often when the case is reversed, it’s used as evidence of global warming? I know global warming is real and I am a firm believer in it but this duality seems to cause a lot of issues whe…

For the same reason that in the winter the weather people tell you the temperature, but then are sure to include the windchill factor (which makes it sound worse). In the summer they tell you the temperature and be sure to include the "real feel", which includes the heat index and makes it sound worse. Arguably, in the winter there's still a heat index and in the summer a wind chill, but that would make the news soun…

> Global warming is another made up tragedy to distract us from real issues like wars, poverty, wealth disparity, care for the elderly and mentally ill, etc.

Here I am contemplating whether to "waste" my time trying to tell someone on the Internet they're wrong, or just shake my head at the "deluded idiot" (my point of view, it could be wrong) and go on with my day. I wonder what the dangers are of people doing the latter and people walking around confidently with "false beliefs" (again, my point of view, could be wrong)

But you mention wars, don't you notice how weather has had a big effect? For example there was a bad Russian heatwave in 2010 which destroyed grain yields. Food prices all over the world went up, and in north African countries this contributed to the Arab Spring revolutions [1]. Is it just a freak weather event? Can we attribute it to climate change? Can't we accept digging up carbon/methane and burning it creates an atmosphere/planet that slowly becomes inhospitable to humans?

Well, I also want to talk about refugees fleeing crisis countries, but I'm too lazy to look up the citations right now. I contemplated just abandoning this reply because of that. This sounds obnoxious but consider it a gift that someone is still willing to tell you that you might be mistaken, rather than shake their head at what you wrote and walking away unnoticedly.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221209472...

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#103

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2... I think the Overton window needs to shift soon to include the idea that widespread government intervention will be required to avoid 800 million climate refugees

We do need to urgently discuss the role of the first world towards massive third world calamities. I'm a global warming believer, but I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies. More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. Meanwhile, poor countries will take the brunt of the disasters due to geogr…

The entire biosphere (forests, forest-dwelling animals, ocean life, the crops we grow, us) as well as most human infrastructure rests on an equilibrium so precarious that a couple degrees in mean temperature change is going to have first, second and third order effects we can barely predict. No one and nowhere will be “sheltered” in any broad sense.

Like, increased heat is already causing rails to heat up, forcing railroad delays[1], which will eventually translate into more expensive shipping for everything. And if we start getting Wet Bulb 95 conditions[2] then an afternoon power outage in any American city will lead to a million dead (the homeless will die either way in these conditions).

[1] https://ggwash.org/view/90938/summer-heat-means-longer-amtra...

[2] https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-h....

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do need to urgently discuss the role of the first world towards massive third world calamities. I'm a global warming believer, but I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies. More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. Meanwhile, poor countries will take the brunt of the disasters due to geogr…

> I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies Well this is a fun new twist on climate denial. I have a hard time understanding how you can believe this when we've already seen incredible and costly damage in the US caused by climate change in just the last few years. Insurers are pulling out of Florida because they can't afford the increased risk a…

Louisiana, too, has been suffering the same.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#105
post #4

Can someone help me understand why when there’s a record cold month, there’s a convo like this > non-believer: “see global warming doesn’t exist” > believer: “you can’t measure this on a monthly scale, it’s too slow of a process” But often when the case is reversed, it’s used as evidence of global warming? I know global warming is real and I am a firm believer in it but this duality seems to cause a lot of issues whe…

I think this is a perception issue.

Daily (or even monthly) temperature variance doesn't allow you to see the slow but steady increase in the global average. People aware of the impact of the climate crisis probably tend to notice the above-average warm days more than they notice the below-average cold days.

Humans are not thinking machines. We're feeling machines. That's why we need hard data to make good decisions.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#106
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a shame that your comment got downvoted.

Not really. Post-modernism is kind of silly when it tries to deny reality. Good luck deconstructing narratives or whatever when you're starving due to crop failures from climate change.

AFAICS mc42 is arguing that we need more watertight arguments for why we need climate change mitigation, so that deniers can't use the holes in our arguments to deny climate change is happening (or anthropogenic)

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#107

A constant 18C-20C degrees in September here in The Netherlands is absolutely insane. Heck, it's now 18C in the first week of October and at this rate I believe Oktober may not dip below 10C and also set a new record. And we go about our day as if nothing is happening. Yet the people peaceful protesting against fossil fuel subsidy blocking a street (A12) are the crazy people and should be violently removed from the r…

Not sure if I've told you before, but wanted to let you know that your solar-powered blog posts, in particular your DIY larger LiFePO4 battery, finally helped me understand some stuff about domestic solar that I'd previously failed to grasp.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#108

> Two main factors are at play in driving temperatures to such extremes: their inexorable increase from burning fossil fuels and an El Niño event that is shaping up to be a strong one. It would be quite educational to attribute in more detail the impact of these two factors. The degree of "El Nino" influence is presumably known, and if its strength is not related with global warming in complicated and unknown ways it…

The debate over exact causes has always felt misguided to me. The planet is extremely complex, human impact on the planet is largely based on estimates and modeling, and at the end of the day an understanding of why it's getting hotter isn't itself a course correction. There are such obvious first steps we could take without a complete understanding of cause if we really cared. We could easily cut our use of fossil f…

Asking people to have less, experience less, and do less isn’t an argument that can ever win.

The winning argument is to show how you can consume more energy for less money by using sustainable technology. Cramped trains will rarely win politically but electric cars that go fast and look cool do win.

In essence I believe the only politically viable way to reduce carbon is to engineer and tech our way to systems that reliably do more for less and increase the amount of energy people can consume.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#109
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe it’s possible to avoid anything anymore, Merely the scale will be determined at best. It’s not just going to be 800 million refugees. I suspect it’s going to be actual deaths in that range. And with no real intervention as is the case now, likely in the billions. Given how the whole world handled the pandemic I have no confidence it’ll unfurl any other way. A sobering thought that keeps me awake for a…

I'll bet you a thousand dollars there will be not even 10 million deaths over current level directly linked to climate change, like drought, heat stroke, etc.

You are delusional. That could happen in a single event, let alone "ever" as your comment is implying.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#110

There's an interesting theory that surface warming of the Earth is proceeding in a staircase fashion, due to modulation of fossil-fuel-forced warming by El Nino events: http://euanmearns.com/the-staircase-hypothesis-an-alternativ... The driving mechanism for this phenomena would be release of stored heat from the oceans (which have been steadily absorbing much of the energy being trapped by increased atmospheric IR-a…

> assuming that we all agree that civilizational stability is a desirable goal. Sadly this assumption does not seem to hold.

Not if that it requires me to reduce my conspicuous consumption by one cent! I've been trained all my life by media and advertisment to equate the acquisition of cheaply produced, low quality trash with freedom, and you can take it from my cold dead hands.

I need to continue buying all that useless crap to feel I have status!

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