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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

#131

Post by ericmay »

nemo44x wrote: post #108
flagrant_taco wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Yes and no. I agree that if your approach is to ask people to do this, you aren't going to win the argument.

But instead you can reframe the argument.

Does that $70,000 truck that you have to make payments on while you do back-breaking or soul-crushing work to afford it really make you happy? Do you really get use out of that or are people scamming you with clever marketing?

Do you really enjoy glamping or do you just like the idea and you sit around on your phone posting pictures about how much you like it while not really doing much. Are you honest with yourself?

Etc.

> Cramped trains will rarely win politically but electric cars that go fast and look cool do win.

We don't even have trains, let alone cramped trains. This one is funny though because everyone "loves how walkable XYZ area is" but then they get their mind completely wiped once they leave not realizing they can live like that too if they demanded it or if we had a good market mechanic in place that allows for choice.

For some bewildering reason we don't build more of the most loved homes and neighborhoods and transit experience like we do for every single other product.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#132

Post by jandrese »

yakattak wrote: 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…

If it makes you feel any better, this September may have been the hottest of the past 100 years, but it will probably be the coldest of the next 100 years.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#133

Post by itsoktocry »

netsharc wrote: post #102
mbiondi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

>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?

I think it's all 3. The problem is that, like anything remotely political in our current environment, one side says it's 100% one source, and the other says it's 0%.

The transition is going to be very expensive, and normal people (hardly getting by) aren't willing to get even poorer when they can't be sure it will help in the grand scheme. Our leaders are doing nothing but talk, they're the worst individual offenders. And globally, there's a "tragedy of the commons issue" at the Nation level, where those who continue to burn fossil fuels are going to get ahead.

Until these things are addressed, telling us repeatedly that it's getting warmer falls on deaf ears.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#134

Post by jgreen10 »

nologic01 wrote: post #50

> 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…

One theory is that it's too early in the cycle to attribute the warming to El Nino (which will make things even worse), but that it's due to a reduction in SO2 in shipping fuels causing lower solar reflection and heating up the oceans faster.

However, it's hard to be sure. A discussion: https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/aerosols-are-so2-emissions-...

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#136

Post by londons_explore »

nemo44x wrote: post #108
flagrant_taco wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Asking people to eat less might never win... But when there is a famine, people have no choice but to eat less. It's not that there is no food available in a famine - it's just that prices go sky high.

Tomorrow the government could shut down the oil wells and say "nobody may emit any CO2 unless they pay $1000/ton of CO2 emitted.".

The population may revolt, like they do during famines. But with those oil wells blocked up, they probably wouldn't get what they were looking for.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#137

Post by ljf »

jonhohle wrote: post #127
m_fayer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some time in the next decade there will be a “perfect storm” heat wave combined with a power failure, and millions will die in days. This will jerk the Overton window and popular sentiment in an unpredictable direction, and no one knows what the world will look like on the other side of that.

Where in the world would this event take place? In the hottest parts of the US the temperature gets to 46ºC regularly during the summer and people have lived there for hundreds of years. Do people die of heat stoke? Sure, at a rate of hundreds per year. Elsewhere in the world there are places where people love in the same heat with less means of cooking and less access to water. Millions of people may have to adapt.…

Where would this take place? In places where the wet bulb temperature is already getting close to the limits of human endurance:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need...

People can survive amazingly hot temperatures, as long as they can sweat - once the wet bulb temp gets far above 31c people are in trouble - the theoretical maximum is 35c.

We won't hit these wet bulb temps in places like the US or even much of Europe, but built up China, India etc are at risk of approaching these in our lifetimes, potentially far sooner.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#138

Post by Zigurd »

seanw444 wrote: post #70
brookst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large portion of the US populace wants to maintain/increase fossil fuel usage just to stick it to their perceived enemies. Also not hopeful.

The current alternatives suck. Renewables are unreliable and produce massive waste themselves. What we need is nuclear, but I only ever hear the same people complaining about fossil fuels, complaining about nuclear. It's extremely safe. Like it's not even close. If we can maintain the status quo with better technology, it will be adopted. It's just not there yet. Hence, we stick to what we have. The liberal position…

Energy capex is fungible, and nuclear energy is the most expensive. It is also carries the highest risk of cost overruns and underestimation of decommissioning costs.

Why spend a penny on fission nuclear when renewables are cheaper, have shorter lead times by decades, and are vastly less financially risky?

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#139

Post by sojournerc »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #125
hotpotamus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps those drifting into panic and depression are doing so because we are now clearly seeing undeniable effects and yet denial persists while CO2 emissions creep up seemingly inexorably?

Agreed. Panic is the rational reaction [edited from "response"] to a near term extinction level threat that not enough people are taking seriously. People advocating half measures or not panicking are incredibly irrational. It's a human cognitive bias to try to arrive at intermediate outcomes between extremes (regardless of truth). Extremeness aversion. edit: for instance, IPCC/NCA5 author Zeke Hausfather said, "This…

Panic is never rational - it's an emotion. Giving into it can cloud what action should be taken, or, often, cause actions that make the situation worse.
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