September was the most anomalously hot month ever • Hacker News Board

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#361

Post by aaomidi » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 8:46 PM UTC

sojournerc wrote: post #139

throwaway5752 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something not being `rational` is not an argument against it. Rationality is a subjective matter, not objective.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#362

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 8:46 PM UTC

worksonmine wrote: post #341

jeremyjh wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Do you think there is scientific doubt about the greenhouse effect, or that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, or that for hundreds of thousands of years CO2 concentrations have correlated with average temperature? There isn't any doubt about the problems of greenhouse gases, and there isn't anything we can do about the sun's activity other than use it as an excuse to do nothing "until we understand".

This is the kind of responses I'm referring to. I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything as you assume, I'm wondering why solar activity isn't accounted for in the models. Maybe it can explain something? Trust the science and all that you know, being thorough. I'm curious if the changes we see can be explained by the sun activity yes. I'm not qualified to assess which of the scientists are right and which aren't, and…

[deleted]

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#363

Post by r00fus » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 8:51 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #346

paulmd wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such as things like human rights, standards of living, morality and the role+purpose and limitations of government. Unfortunately, the dustbins of history are full of civilizations that took disruptive events carefully and with grave dignity and solemnity and respected the rights of powerful stake-holders within their society. That the people who make such arguments generally live in the places best positioned to w…

You should run for politics. The level of strawmanning and platitudes that your reply just levied is something typically only seen from politicians.

Actually your content-free ad-hominem retort is more typical of politician-speak.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#364

Post by paulmd » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

worksonmine wrote: post #341

jeremyjh wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Do you think there is scientific doubt about the greenhouse effect, or that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, or that for hundreds of thousands of years CO2 concentrations have correlated with average temperature? There isn't any doubt about the problems of greenhouse gases, and there isn't anything we can do about the sun's activity other than use it as an excuse to do nothing "until we understand".

This is the kind of responses I'm referring to. I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything as you assume, I'm wondering why solar activity isn't accounted for in the models. Maybe it can explain something? Trust the science and all that you know, being thorough. I'm curious if the changes we see can be explained by the sun activity yes. I'm not qualified to assess which of the scientists are right and which aren't, and…

> I'm wondering why solar activity isn't accounted for in the models

why do you work from the assumption that it's not? a trivial search turned up this article from 2011 which says that models already do include approximations of solar activity even at that time.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/grantham-i...

obviously it is something that is constantly being improved, like everything else in the model. but there aren't good direct historical proxies for solar output - you can't take a "core sample" and go back 1000 years of solar activity, so the datasets really only go back 60 or 70 years there, and even rough measurements of sunspot activity/etc will only probably go back less than 200 years. but over the last 15 years this is something that's been actively studied and addressed and they're trying to incorporate more detailed modeling.

https://eos.org/science-updates/better-data-for-modeling-the...

again, this only affects between 7-30% of the total picture, according to most studies. so it's not like this is where global warming is coming from. contributing factor? sure, a small one.

but like, I don't know why everyone works from the assumption that they thought of one thing that all the scientists forgot about completely. One clever trick to explain global warming, climate scientists hate him.

which is why stuff like this is not really constructive or helpful. like if you don't know, why are you so sure about what is being incorporated or not? why isn't the question "how is this being incorporated"? Because it probably is.

> I don't know. But I'm not taking anyones word for it, help me understand or move on. Don't tell me what to think.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#365

Post by sph » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 9:23 PM UTC

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #265

nicbou wrote: post #54

This is just so unbelievably sad. How should one react to their powerlessness as an individual in the face of this looming catastrophe?

Realise what you can change and what you can't. Whether you as an individual go vegan, walk instead of drive, or skip holidays, nothing is going to change. Enjoy life to the fullest because the only thing that can turn this ship around is drastic action by those in power and it's not really in their interest. Also, don't buy into hysteria. You're probably not going to die because of climate change.

> Also, don't buy into hysteria. You're probably not going to die because of climate change

if you're here on HN meaning you are not one of the poorest on Earth. I mean, that's nice, but it's worth sparing a thought of the millions that are gonna die because of climate change within the average HNer lifetime.

I agree with your comment, but this is one of the time to understand our position of privilege, not that the problem doesn't exist.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#366

Post by hotpotamus » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #350

hotpotamus wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you are the passenger and the driver has their foot down on the accelerator while refusing to believe that the cliff lies ahead? What is the appropriate emotion?

Still composure, and the appropriate course of action is still to evaluate your options and choose the best one, even if that's the best option out of a list of bad options. Unless you think that panic will induce the driver to stop accelerating, I suppose. Though I think the closer analogy would be "you're a passenger in a car with a brick on the accelerator and no driver", because I don't think there's any person o…

If doom is certain, then what does your composure or anything else matter?

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#367

Post by londons_explore » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #345

mrguyorama wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what happens to the cost of medical plastics, Plastic production is an insanely small part of oil and gas usage, 4%. Anyone bringing up plastic as a reason to not stop using oil isn't being intellectually honest. We could literally decimate the oil industry and still produce way more oil than the plastic industry needs. It's just not a concern.

The proposal was to crank up the price of oil directly. You couldnt price-curve your way past a $1,000 per CO2 ton tax. While plastic does not drive oil production, it is definitely the case that oil prices determine plastic production costs. Recycling can absorb much of that, but medical plastics cannot be made through recycling today.

$1000/ton is $1/kg. Most medical plastic items are tens of grams - so 1 cent.

Considering the price of medical devices in the US, there is certainly room for a few extra cents.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#368

Post by JoshuaDavid » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #366

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still composure, and the appropriate course of action is still to evaluate your options and choose the best one, even if that's the best option out of a list of bad options. Unless you think that panic will induce the driver to stop accelerating, I suppose. Though I think the closer analogy would be "you're a passenger in a car with a brick on the accelerator and no driver", because I don't think there's any person o…

If doom is certain, then what does your composure or anything else matter?

If nothing matters, in what sense is panic the "correct" response?

Also, it's useful to check whether you're absolutely doomed to lose everything you value, or only probably doomed to lose most of the things that you value, in situations where you appear to be doomed.

I don't think a panic response is generally helpful towards the goal of "make the best you can of a bad situation".

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#369

Post by holbrad » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #228

gottorf wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posit that any deliberate misinformation by the oil and gas lobby can and will be equally matched by deliberate misinformation by the wind and solar lobby. There's no reason to believe that the former is composed of evil people who mislead for the sake of profit, and the latter of good people who just want the best for everybody. If there are "better and cheaper" alternatives available right now, market forces will…

> I posit that any deliberate misinformation by the oil and gas lobby can and will be equally matched The economic and political power of the oil and gas lobby is magnitudes larger than the economic and political power of the wind and solar lobby. We're talking about entrenched interests here. Also, wind and solar didn't spent more than fifty years spreading misinformation and denialism about an existential threat to…

When discussing market forces and renewables keep in mind, Levelized cost of electricity is a largely useless metric because it doesn't take into account the prohibitively high costs of storage and redundant infrastructure needed for intermittent sources.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#370

Post by holbrad » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #138

seanw444 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I always find the framing of these discussions very sad.

Nuclear doesn't have to be expensive, there are many historic examples of safe reactors built for very reasonable costs. (French and earlier American reactors especially.)

Unfortunately there seems to be zero appetite to discuss let alone fix the killing of nuclear power though an absolutely crazy regulatory framework.