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Oceans hit highest temperature on record

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Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#41
post #24
post #2

When I was younger, I remember thinking, "a few degrees, what difference does that make?" Then when I grew older I realised that in Climate science a few degrees is the difference between survival and annihilation. A few degrees warmer in the ocean and El Niño becomes an incredible problem for half the world. I am glad that I live far away from the effects but it is sad to think of people losing all kinds of things f…

> "a few degrees, what difference does that make?" Maybe this helps: Think about when we have a fever of "a few degrees", say, instead of 37 degree Celsius, we have 40. It shows that also a few degrees can make a huge difference.

Think even bigger. 1 degrees inside your house? Not noticeable at all. But on a planet-wide scale? A 1 degree difference requires a LOT of energy.

It's like boiling a cup of water vs an Olympic sized swimming pool. The latter is going to take a lot more energy than the former.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#42

This El Niño is going to be interesting come Christmas time. Lot's of weather and climate unpredictability coming to a region near you!

I hope so! The area I live in has been experiencing drought and everyone seems to be predicting a wet period coming from this.

Personally, I don't put much faith in weather predictions that are more than a week away.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#43
post #6
post #2

When I was younger, I remember thinking, "a few degrees, what difference does that make?" Then when I grew older I realised that in Climate science a few degrees is the difference between survival and annihilation. A few degrees warmer in the ocean and El Niño becomes an incredible problem for half the world. I am glad that I live far away from the effects but it is sad to think of people losing all kinds of things f…

This is exactly what I hear from my MAGA relatives: Why should I care if the ocean rises a few inches? I don't own beachfront property in Florida.

I mean they're right, rising oceans will be a drop in the bucket for the majority of us. Unless we act together, human civilization will end through the combination of breakdown of global trade, mass migration due to heat and resource wars, and collapse of our food chain. Ocean levels are just one of the side effects that goes along with rising global temperatures.

Beef production in the US is already down from 30 years ago. At some point you won't be able to raise cows anywhere, less alone feed them. Corn and wheat have seen tremendous fluctuations in the past and will likely continue to fall. Imagine corn yields dropping by more than 80% in the US [1]. Of course MAGA people will probably only notice once the shelves aren't being restocked.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0906865106

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#44
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am glad that I live far away from the effects Are you not on planet earth? Unless you're on Mars, you're not far away from any effects.

There are regions on the planet that will likely fare better than others, though.

And we can tell ourselves that those regions which fare better will be left entirely alone. No one is going to, say, kill all the inhabitants and take the land from them.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#45
post #13
post #7

Meanwhile governments are electing to either do nothing or actively make the problem worse (particularly in the case of the US — expanding fossil fuel extraction, pushing data center build out and attacking renewables like wind).

This has been aided by the fact that energy has been heavily politicized. Fossil fuels are 'murican and renewables are woke. It's horrifying.

Does your hypothesis predict that Texas would be one of the most renewable-energy-heavy states in the U.S.?

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#46
post #9

As someone who works in risk management, I think I have a hard time understanding how anyone can be so blase about climate change. Like, it truly takes a level of willful ignorance to have something so dire happening, and just choosing to either ignore it, or ignore the evidence for it. Like, even if you think the science isn't that accurate, the impacts , the massive potential harms, should outweigh the choice to ju…

> This isn't a personal risk, either, like riding a motorcycle where you're the only one who's going to get hurt when your number comes up. This is literally going to kill millions. Just my personal opinion on why this might be the case. It's perhaps that people have hard time understanding the scale of the issue. They think, few inches so what?? but the downstream effects of it are catastrophic. Even if as you are s…

The thought and consideration is worth the time, I think.

However, in a certain respect this is why government is supposed to exist: we never would have gone to the moon. Or built the highway system. Or train tracks. Or a whole lot of big things which don’t immediately seem to have a benefit.

It takes a large body with power and money to enact regulations and movement and take on big projects which would obviously benefit a majority of people in the long-term.

When this is done, countries can move mountains, literally, but without it? We are just left to boil in our own juices as people running around flailing.

I think your idea is absolutely worth personal consideration, but at the same time my feeling is the answer is somewhat obvious on a societal scale. But we’ve lost all trust in government, and there is no political will left to get almost anything done in North America

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#47
post #9

As someone who works in risk management, I think I have a hard time understanding how anyone can be so blase about climate change. Like, it truly takes a level of willful ignorance to have something so dire happening, and just choosing to either ignore it, or ignore the evidence for it. Like, even if you think the science isn't that accurate, the impacts , the massive potential harms, should outweigh the choice to ju…

> This is literally going to kill millions.

Somebody (maybe Stalin) once said something like one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. A disaster on the scale of millions of deaths doesn't register in a lot of people's brains. It has to be made smaller, more personal.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#49
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been aided by the fact that energy has been heavily politicized. Fossil fuels are 'murican and renewables are woke. It's horrifying.

Does your hypothesis predict that Texas would be one of the most renewable-energy-heavy states in the U.S.?

That’s just economics. That doesn’t excuse what the current admin has done in terms of prioritization.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#50
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I hear from my MAGA relatives: Why should I care if the ocean rises a few inches? I don't own beachfront property in Florida.

Your relatives clearly aren't MAGA if they're not concerned about what rising sea levels will do to Mar-a-Lago.

Careful, that's a pitfall there if we assume MAGA words reflect an internal belief system.

Too often the words are whatever they have to say in order to secure continued membership in the group: The Emperor's New Clothes are a glorious blue today.

P.S: Also, we have always been [about to start|recently victorious] in the [illegal war|undeclared "excursion"] against Irania, and the tariff-free chocolate ration has been raised to twenty grammes per week.

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