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Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

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211–220 of 401 posts

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern 1877 scale event would probably immediately fuel (pun intended) a furious climate change debate, even though attributing the existence of the El Niño itself to fossil fuels would not be scientifically justified... or maybe was the 1877 El Niño caused by fossil fuels (so many Wars happened in those years) ?

Nobody in planet modelling has ever suggested that the 3 phase El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) exists because of fossil fuel usage. An extreme swing, here and there, has always been part of its nature. The observed change is more and more extreme swings, greater amplitude, higher frequency.

> Nobody in planet modelling has ever suggested that the 3 phase El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)

We saw already around 2020 or so that specialists opinions didn't really matter. Feelings and politicians opinions were more relevant... so "nobody in planet modelling" means nothing if Politicians and Activists tries to create this link..

Al Gore, if I remember correctly, and António Guterres, i think last month, tried to create this link already.. probably others too?

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#212
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Communally" and "through a big corporation making a tidy profit" are at odds. Not really. Corporations are social by essence, and on a much bigger scale than anything that came before. That’s precisely what makes socialism possible.

>Corporations are social by essence, and on a much bigger scale than anything that came before. Corporations are transactional by essence, not social. Any relationship within or with a corporation has the singular goal of making the corporation money. Food deserts exist because corporations aren't social. Supermarkets and stores aren't there feed the community, they sell food only to those who can afford it, and only…

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Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#213

All we needed to do was stop burning fossil fuels we really are fucking dense.

One positive is that solar (and probably other renewables too) prices are plummeting and are now the cheapest way to generate power - so in economic terms, I hope this trend continues and accelerates even more to the point where even fossil fuel addicts can't resist putting a solar panel on their roof. In the UK and other European countries, I see every month we're breaking records on the percentage of power generate…

I hope it continues but I hope we make it too.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#214

All we needed to do was stop burning fossil fuels we really are fucking dense.

I’m a capitalist, but the only conclusion I can arrive at is that neo liberal capitalism makes it impossible to « do the right thing ». What we have is the logical result of the incentives at play

Actually private equity have been accumulating stakes quickly in renewables lately. Makes sense. Talk bad of a future tech to own most of the cake early for cheap...

https://www.cfainstitute.org/insights/articles/private-equit...

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#215
post #114
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have been doable if we could have switched to nuclear, but no.

It would've helped a ton but it's not like electricity generation is the only source of emissions. You can't run a car or a plane on nuclear power. You can technically run a cargo ship on nuclear power but that's also not gonna happen. Yet transport is the second largest source of emissions. Batteries have only recently-ish gotten energy dense and cheap enough for electric cars to be competitive, completely different…

It would indeed have helped a ton. It's important to not let perfection be the enemy of good.

If we just wait around forever for a perfect solution to appear, then we'll simply be waiting around forever. That's not the path of progress.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#216
post #215
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would've helped a ton but it's not like electricity generation is the only source of emissions. You can't run a car or a plane on nuclear power. You can technically run a cargo ship on nuclear power but that's also not gonna happen. Yet transport is the second largest source of emissions. Batteries have only recently-ish gotten energy dense and cheap enough for electric cars to be competitive, completely different…

It would indeed have helped a ton. It's important to not let perfection be the enemy of good. If we just wait around forever for a perfect solution to appear, then we'll simply be waiting around forever. That's not the path of progress.

I agree. I just wanted to point out that to "stop burning fossil fuels" requires more than green electricity generation. Green electricity generation is 100% necessary, just not in itself sufficient, as was implied by "Would have been doable if we could have switched to nuclear".

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#217
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point of a futures market is to have a reliable supply which matches demand and allows everyone who works to produce and use a given commodity to have a reasonable expectation of demand and how production should be matched to it. Goldman-Sachs should _not_ be inserting themselves into profiting on the poor's daily bread. https://theecologist.org/2011/sep/13/how-goldman-sachs-start...

A "reliable supply" is fundamentally not possible with all the vagaries of the natural world. Even the Code of Hammurabi makes reference to this*, and we still have "acts of god" in modern parlance. Futures significantly pre-date your link. * https://ehammurabi.org/law/48

How come acts of god only seem to ever benefit insurance corporations and never individual humans?

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are fishing boats doing that could cause so much emissions in a single day?

You're dragging heavy nets on the sea floor releasing heavy amounts of carbon dioxide and destroying ecosystems that are net contributors to decarbonization like seaweed, seagrass, etc. A single boat with a single net can do insane damage in a single day. The problem is: when it comes to industrial food production, both fish and meat are insanely taxing on the environment. But people, we, *don't want to accept that h…

Interesting, thanks for explaining. I'm vegetarian and thereby don't eat fish, but I didn't know fishing had such an impact on the environment.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#219
post #217
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "reliable supply" is fundamentally not possible with all the vagaries of the natural world. Even the Code of Hammurabi makes reference to this*, and we still have "acts of god" in modern parlance. Futures significantly pre-date your link. * https://ehammurabi.org/law/48

How come acts of god only seem to ever benefit insurance corporations and never individual humans?

Because tail-risk events are very unlikely, and the average person does not have enough money to diversify widely enough to smooth out their effects. Big entities can launder high variance into low, and they can afford to do this by taking many more positions than an individual. Second, insurance companies directly cannot hold as much risk as they once did. Just like banks don't hold loan books like they once did, insurance tends to reinsure heavily and much of the risk now bottoms out with cat bonds. Third, this is the entire reason we created insurance. It's like asking "why does blue look blue", or when people ask "why does poop happen to smell bad to us". It's tautological.

If what you're upset about is claim denials those are occasionally illegitimate because insurance, like literally everything else, has the occasional bad actor. There's also a massive industry of attorneys who will work on contingency and provide legal representation to resolve that. Much more commonly, it's someone who didn't read his policy, or did but decided post-hoc what it "should" cover. He "shouldn't" have to bear the cost despite not taking out a more comprehensive policy beforehand. This isn't a "capitalism" problem; single-payer systems, generally agreed to be socialistic in nature, still don't cover some things and generally require coverage specifically to avoid people deciding they "deserve" coverage after they get sick. The other major category is things like business insurance in 2020; most policies wrote out plague after the SARS outbreak in the aughts. This isn't "insurers are evil" so much as bio risk is massively correlated which breaks a lot of things about underwriting.

Lots of "acts of god" are, in fact, covered and pay out all the time. Hail and wind and such. Things like flood aren't, because a relatively small number of people live in floodplains and they tend to not want to bear the entire risk. People who live outside of floodplains, on the other hand, don't buy flood insurance, because they don't need it. So you have a lot of adverse selection that makes it hard to insure.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attachment being the cause of suffering really is core to Buddhism. It's not for everybody though.

Then why didn’t the Buddha kill more people, thus removing the cause of their suffering? Because you can’t remove someone’s attachment to themselves… terminating them isn’t the same thing. What you must terminate can be found only in yourself, nowhere else. And it isn’t your life that you must terminate, but your self . Get off HN if you care about spirituality.

No he’s right, personal attachment is the cause for suffering. That is why you’re supposed to renounce the world. That being said, it puts great emphasis on empathy and ethical behavior so there’s no conundrum here.

In simple terms the Buddha was saying if you like things you’re going to have problems. The only way to end suffering is to completely detach yourself from the world.

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