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A graph that should be front-page news

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Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#381

Post by danielmarkbruce »

jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #299
pdonis wrote: post #264

"Earth is moving beyond the range within which modern human civilisation developed." Way, way, way, way overstated. The graph shows a comparison to an average over a few decades. Human civilization is thousands of years old. Does anyone have a graph of what all the El Ninos since the last Ice Age ended have looked like? Of course not. Nobody has that kind of temperature data.

so do you not know what the word "modern" means? or did you just choose to ignore it?

You can't be serious. Modern civilization is not just the past few decades.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#382

Post by dghlsakjg »

kortilla wrote: post #248
defrost wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does any country care? China ostensibly cares, their five year plans drawn up by committees of Engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical) and Scientists are on an arc to minimise reliance on fossil fuels and transition to renewables (wind, solar), and nuclear. There are strategic reasons for this, of course. > Isnt China far worse thsn the US? "It's complicated" * Historically the US is responsible for a greater mas…

> although they are on the cusp of peaking their use That’s a really nice way of saying “their usage is currently at an all time high and will go up further”. They don’t get to take credit for a potential future action.

Their carbon emissions in 2025 were lower than 2024. The peak was years ago. Same is true of coal usage.

So no, their usage is not at an all time high. It is below the high and on trend to continue falling.

They can take credit for past and current actions that are part of a long term plan that includes future action.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#383

Post by leereeves »

tenthirtyam wrote: post #368
_alternator_ wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, I had to click into the full size (I pinch zoomed on my phone). But now the fact that 1988/1989 are outliers raise a few more questions about the variance calculation. In particular, the title suggests that those weren't included in the variance calculation. A 3.5-sigma event is a 1-in-1000 chance. Yet we have 2 of them in our data set that goes back only 40ish years? Something is suspect. Maybe I'm not account…

I think a 3.5-sigma event being a 1/1000 probability is only under the assumption of random data - a constant climate would deliver more-or-less random data around some mean. The appearance of two 3.5-sigma events suggests that the data is no longer being randomly generated around that mean, but is instead drifting away from that mean. More concretely, if all the data were within 2-sigma, then you could invoke the nu…

> The appearance of two 3.5-sigma events suggests that the data is no longer being randomly generated around that mean, but is instead drifting away from that mean.

Not if the two 3.5-sigma events are in opposite directions, as in this case.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#384

Post by anakaine »

phtrivier wrote: post #187
holowoodman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have quite a similar discussion here in Germany. Back in the day, everyone used fossil fuels to heat their homes. Back in those days, AC was frowned upon as inefficient, wasteful and decadent. Something only Americans did. The greens despised them for ecological reasons. The right despised them for moral reasons. Then the public came to know about climate change and it was decided that people should transition…

> because a heat pump is just an "evil" AC running in reverse I keep hearing that, and then I keep hearing people tell me that you can't just put an heat pump, run it in "reverse" and "pretend" to have AC. That seems to be a case where the theory is here, but in practice the applicances are just optimized for one part, or the other. (Also, heating is often done by heating water in radiators, and cooling by cooling th…

I dont get this.

In Australia we have had reverse cycle air conditioning for decades. These are heat pumps that both heat and cool. I have 15kW of installed heat pump tech at home and run my whole house off grid, despite mainta8ning a grid connection. The systems run as heaters in winter, and air conditioning in summer. They are very efficient, enough so that I dont worry about our solar and battery being able to keep up.

The appliances are very common, and Ive seen them throughout much of Asia, too. Its like Europe and the US are just discovering this tech, yet its been reachable by half the world's population for 30+ years, and continues to improve.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#385

Post by ecshafer »

kypro wrote: post #378
ecshafer wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've pitched this idea before. But instead of something like the Paris Climate Accords which were an agreement for people to self-regulate and reduce emissions. What is needed is an agreement that is a sort of cartel. Nations a,b,c agree on these policies (carbon per person, environmental regulations, etc), and any nation that wants to export services/goods to a,b,c they must enter the agreement or be subject to tari…

Yeah, this is exactly the type of thing I'd support. The UK (where I live) emits something like 0.5% of global CO2, but we're one of the largest economies in the world. If we're going to do anything it seems we should really be doing everything we can to use our economic might to try to do something about that other 99.5%. Where as at the moment we're wasting our time obsessing about how we bring down that 0.5%, and…

Deindustrialization in the west is imo largely due to this. Pollution was bad. Trying to clean things up was good. But you can't increase the cost 10x, and then allow a company to set up shop across the border and ship things in doing those practices still. The local environment becomes cleaner, so you export that toxic part, but the global impacts are still bad AND you hollow out your industrial core.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#386

Post by DoctorOetker »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #380
DoctorOetker wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

confirmation bias, how? they gradually swapped in biased thermometers, or the thermometers were always biased to start showing temperature rise around 2026? what motivates thermometers to commit confirmation bias?

By choosing what data to show. There is a lot of data to choose from in climate science. How do you think we end up with such strong arguments on the issue? Cherry picking is as big a problem in climate science as anything else.

a lot of those thermometers have been operating for years or decades, in order to cherry pick each year again, you'd have to censor traces that were still used the year before, so at least such cherry picking should leave measurable traces

can you identify cherry-picked "retired thermometers" from this dataset and earlier ones by the same source(s)?

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#387

Post by RetroTechie »

qsera wrote: post #206
RetroTechie wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is 'calibrated' against other research like fossils (indicating which species were living where & when) & probably more. It's called science for a reason... (not back-of-a-napkin stuff)

But those are unreliable as well... See, since it seems that you are convinced yourselves, can you tell me how accurately the past temperature can be assessed by using this method? I mean +/- how many degrees?

> But those are unreliable as well...

Can you tell me how many research papers on this specific subject you have read, before coming to that conclusion?

Hint: chances are you're correct (!). Size of the error bars, timeframe(s) talked about, how data was gathered, how results were processed etc, that is what such papers are about. Educate yourself! (Wikipedia is usually a good start)

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#388

Post by burnt-resistor »

pluralmonad wrote: post #132
constantius wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd push back.on blaming the populace for this: the widespread belief in general polls is that the climate situation is dire and that drastic measures need to be taken. However, the constraints that most people have to contend with do not allow them to be more radical in their calls for change. You saw it in the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests uprising in France, that was motivated not by the passion for IC engines but by…

Throwing everything animal under the bus is not warranted. CAFOs and grain heavy operations certainly. Regenerative ag using animals on pasture is an amazing carbon sink. I agree that the factories using petroleum grown grains as feed are terrible.

Animal ag creates unnecessary risks of (viral) pandemics, antibiotic resistant bacteria, air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, deforestation (for silage and feeder crops), caloric inefficiency, and animal cruelty. There are plenty of alternative plant-based protein and nutrients sources that could be grown instead.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#389

Post by phtrivier »

anakaine wrote: post #384
phtrivier wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because a heat pump is just an "evil" AC running in reverse I keep hearing that, and then I keep hearing people tell me that you can't just put an heat pump, run it in "reverse" and "pretend" to have AC. That seems to be a case where the theory is here, but in practice the applicances are just optimized for one part, or the other. (Also, heating is often done by heating water in radiators, and cooling by cooling th…

I dont get this. In Australia we have had reverse cycle air conditioning for decades. These are heat pumps that both heat and cool. I have 15kW of installed heat pump tech at home and run my whole house off grid, despite mainta8ning a grid connection. The systems run as heaters in winter, and air conditioning in summer. They are very efficient, enough so that I dont worry about our solar and battery being able to kee…

To be honest I suspect the tech has been available here too, but the marketing is just confusing. But again, "cooling your house to survive summer" is, for real, a pretty recent concern to have in Europe, as opposed to "heating and insulating your house to survive winter".

It's almost as if the climate is warming in accordance to what physicist have been saying for 30 years.

"Qui aurait pu prévoir ?", as the other one would have said (sorry for the franco-french reference. And I know we'll "regret" the guy next year...)

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#390

Post by fhackenberger »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #302
mbgerring wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to tell you, as a person whose path went from journalism to activism to engineering in climate tech and climate justice: persuasion isn’t going to get the goods. Changing the reality on the ground through R&D and deployment moves the needle. There are a lot of very good, very smart people who have been heads down since the 70s building the infrastructure for decarbonization, and we’re winning, even as we co…

Yup. If solar panels are good enough and cheap enough, if grid storage and battery density improve fast enough, the economic costs of staying on fossil fuels will create huge pressure in the political space and economic competition. You can overwhelm the issue. We shouldn’t HAVE to do this, our politicians should represent our desires and our long term necessities. But that’s clearly not an easy problem to solve, and…

Hmmm, I remember what happened when we all got more 'free time' by using computers to do things that took us long doing manually.

Making electricity more 'green' is of course necessary but on the backdrop of the current capitalistic system, it will simply lead to more electricity being consumed. See current uptake by LLM data centers.

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