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September was the most anomalously hot month ever
151–160 of 439 posts
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The World Meteorological Organization estimates that in the 50 years from 1970 to 2019, deaths from climate dropped to one-third[0]. That's not one-third the rate; that's one-third of the absolute number of deaths, even as the world population more than doubled in that time period and atmospheric CO2 went from ~325ppm to ~410ppm.
In my opinion, this reduction in deaths is mostly due to the increasing ability of the developing world to better master their environment, enabled by technological advances powered largely by cheap energy from fossil fuels. If you have alternative explanations, I'm happy to hear it. But as the evidence stands, it would be more delusional to think climate change will cause rampant mass deaths.
[0]: https://library.wmo.int/viewer/57564/download?file=1267_Atla...
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 em…
So a government that violently suppresses dissent and only wealthy people can emit CO2? Yeah, sounds great! I don’t think eco-fascism is going to get broad support…
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#154Earlier 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.
I think that's setting the bar very low, and I don't think it's necessarily true.
Most of us learn how to manage a finite resource (our own income) and how to maximize results within those constraints. This is not some sort of alien situation that humans can't identify with. We face questions like "Do we really need this?" and "Can we afford it right now?" all the time.
We need to get better at organizing ourselves in large groups/structures to do this at the global level, and make people feel equity in the decision-making and that they can afford this equity, and I'm quite optimistic we can in principle get there.
Whether we can do it fast enough is the worrying bit.
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#155Earlier 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.
What needs to be done is cost the damage from unrestricted emissions. You can't just look at the benefits.
Consider the original Clean Air Act. Economists estimate the value of reducing harmful pollution due to that act exceeded the cost of implementing the reductions by a factor of 40. FORTY! It's like picking up free money. And the same is going to be true of CO2 emissions reduction.
Now, it's not true for those personally benefiting, like oil companies. Well, screw them.
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#156> 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…
The planet is complex but not complex at the same time.
It's easy enough to break the natural environment by very primitive means.
So I agree with your point, it's just not that complex that we can't totally ruin it quite easily.
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#157Can 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…
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Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the portion of the US populace that wants to maintain/increase fossil fuel usage because they think it's the best option they have? Is that not a valid viewpoint?
I think it's an uneducated viewpoint that is supported by the deliberate misinformation of the oil and gas lobby. There are alternatives, there have always been alternatives. Better ones, cheaper ones.
It’s also uneducated to eliminate fossil fuels at the expense of all else. There is real impact to life by destroying economies[0]. This is not a one dimensional problem.
0 - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we ever record record cold months on a global scale? My understanding is that globally, we keep seeing record warm months. Perhaps locally there are some record cold months but that's much less _news_ than the entre global average.
Indeed we don't, monthly average global temperatures are available here: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-gla... There hasn't been a "coldest global average" set since 1917, which was the coldest March.
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Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever
#160Earlier 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…
The planet is complex but not complex at the same time. It's easy enough to break the natural environment by very primitive means. So I agree with your point, it's just not that complex that we can't totally ruin it quite easily.
That opens up a whole apndoras box of whether a reduction is approach can lead to a complete understanding of complex systems. I'll leave that for another thread, that's a deep rabbit whole full of mostly theoretical debate (though an interesting one IMO!)