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Oceans hit highest temperature on record

bbc.com

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Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#51

Post by jibcage »

twothreeone wrote: post #43
jimt1234 wrote: 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.

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 ye…

US beef production is actually slightly higher than 30 years ago. What has fallen is the cattle headcount (now the smallest since 1951) but heavier animals have kept total output up. The recent herd shrinkage owes more to drought economics and the normal boom and bust cycle of ranching than to cattle becoming unraisable.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#52

Post by smt88 »

virissimo wrote: post #45
pstuart wrote: 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.?

It’s not a hypothesis. It’s an observation of reality. The current administration canceled massive renewable projects and has incentivized reopening coal plants, subsidized fossil fuels, and opened government land to oil drilling.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#53

Post by beej71 »

virissimo wrote: post #45
pstuart wrote: 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.?

The almighty buck wins at the end of the day. But how long the day is, that's political.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#54

Post by shoobiedoo »

jimt1234 wrote: post #6
lbriner wrote: 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.

Well, at least they are honest about their stupidity. I live in Japan and am constantly shocked how many raised SUVs with the oversized max-grip tires in cities. Japan used to be a "doing it right" country in terms of not going overboard with waste. If you asked them why, they would probably say "it's cool!".

Turns out humans will always choose status symbols and vanity over facts. Oh well

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#55

Post by ch4s3 »

cdrnsf wrote: 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).

Data centers use no more than 1.5% of electricity globally[1], and a long LLM query uses only a little more than 5 minutes of general laptop use ~3x the energy of running an LED light for 5 minutes.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-a...

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#56

Post by cb321 »

The "scatter line plot" in TFA is all same shade of red on white with no year labels. This seems like a missed visualization opportunity. Using some kind of color scheme/gradient to represent the 1979-2026 years in a way that can show long-term "trend". (A 50 frame movie at, say, 5 fps with same axes or maybe "all years" as faded background as the current year pops around in bold is another possibility, but a scientific paper format doesn't let people do .mp4s.) I know I've seen multi-colored "scatter lines" in IPCC reports. Seemed worth asking rather than doing it myself.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#57

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

bix6 wrote: post #49
virissimo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That "just" is really doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Economics is what makes this country work. If converting to renewables makes more money, that's what will happen and the people making the money will find a way to justify it politically.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#58

Post by maxdo »

smt88 wrote: post #52
virissimo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s not a hypothesis. It’s an observation of reality. The current administration canceled massive renewable projects and has incentivized reopening coal plants, subsidized fossil fuels, and opened government land to oil drilling.

China is doing it the right way : use fossils but pouring that money into renewables. Use economic forces to cut the dependency . Everything else is just pipe dream building never happened utopian communism 2.0 .

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#59

Post by stevenwoo »

elorant wrote: post #22

Meanwhile, canned sardines went 20% up in the last month in Greece. And that's while we have plenty of local production. I can't imagine what it would be in countries where they import everything. Give it a few years and all fish food prices could go up substantially.

It hasn’t gone up yet here in California but I see from the boxes I usually eat that these are sourced from Vietnam (in spite of Monterrey being a short trip away) so these could come from China (one of the usual tariff bypass mechanisms) and hence anywhere in the world (ghost fleets) and possibly not reflect real world ecosystem pressure until multiple fishery collapse.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#60

Post by burningChrome »

cdrnsf wrote: 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).

The US isn't expanding fossil fuel extraction, its quite the opposite. They're funding the modernization of existing plants in order to take older plants offline:

June 2026: New coal-fired plants in Anchorage, Alaska, and Mt. Storm, West Virginia, would total 2.85 GW. They would be the first new U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-announces-850m-moderniz...

Meanwhile in China (from 2023):

China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.

"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

Meanwhile in India (2026):

India plans to increase its coal production by nearly 100m tonnes to 1.15bn tonnes in the 2025-26 fiscal year to help meet the country’s rising demand for electricity to support economic growth and contend with heatwaves, which have become more severe and more frequent because of the climate crisis.

The planned increases come despite signs that the world is beginning to turn its back on coal in favour of renewable electricity, Global Energy Monitor said.

The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.

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