Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oceans hit highest temperature on record

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 692 posts

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#81

Post by stevenwoo »

nehal3m wrote: post #26
ang_cire wrote: 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…

I do care. I see a species ending disaster hanging over the future. I recycle, I have solar panels, a heat pump, an EV (that I leave on my driveway whenever my bicycle will do the job). But the planet is being ruined by greed on an unfathomable scale and aside from doing what I can and voting for parties that see the problem, I feel like there’s not a god damn thing I can do about it.

I think if you should be able to at least have the peace of mind that you did all you could (within reason, short of pulling a Ted Kaczynski or his modern equivalent Luigi Mangione). Maybe it’s inevitable - history shows tons of species go extinct and maybe unbridled capitalism is how we go, maybe seven million years give or take is all humans will have. Maybe I absorbed too much of Meditations by Aurelius.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#82

Post by horacemorace »

shoobiedoo wrote: post #54
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.

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

Humans simply choose whatever is comfortable and conforming. If their tribal mantra is solar panels, they’ll do that just like they’ll do anything else.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#83

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> A few degrees warmer in the ocean and El Niño becomes an incredible problem for half the world.

Ice age was only 6 degrees less than now, half of Europe was under ice

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#84

Post by groby_b »

charcircuit wrote: post #33
triska wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

The temperature of a fever is not measuring the temperature outside.

This may be hard to understand, but that was an illustrative example on why sometimes a few degree difference have bigger absolute impact than you'd expect from the purely numerical value.

Nobody (well, almost nobody, I guess) considered it an explanation or model of climate change.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#85

Post by shoobiedoo »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #64
shoobiedoo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm sorry, but why is this a surprise?

Besides my saying that it used to be contrary to Japanese cultural expectations (もったいない)?

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#86

Post by asphodele »

With less ice around than there used to be, the same incident energy can do a lot more ocean heating. It takes 80 calories to convert 1 gram of ice at 0C to 1 gram of water at 0C. Once the ice is melted, a further 80 calories can raise the temperature of the gram of water at 0C to 80C

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#88

Post by BarnabyQJones »

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.

How many degrees hotter will it get as a consequence? How many windmills will it take to make the world a degree colder?

Serious question.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#89

Post by cogman10 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #78
conception wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying we could significantly cut energy use globally by limiting data center build outs? 1.5% is a //huge// amount. If it was a “drop” in your bucket, it would only hold 67 more of those drops.

No, I'm not saying that and I don't think 1.5% is particularly large. Moreover many of these projects are built out with on site 0 carbon generation so they're in some ways a net benefit.

The largest projects, like Box Elder County Utah and Pecos County Texas, are using fossil fuels.

In fact, I'm unaware of any new AI data center also being built with 0 carbon generation. Do you have a source?

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#90

Post by TacticalCoder »

abrezas wrote: post #68
burningChrome wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ch…

You are looking at the acceleration but without looking at the initial state. A more fair metric would be Co2 emissions/person and I’m getting USA 14.3 t, China 8.8 t, EU 5.5 t, India 2.2 t

> A more fair metric would be Co2 emissions/person and I’m getting

We don't care about that notion of "fair": the cold hart truth is that China has 1.4 billon people.

Another way to put it: China has one billion more people than there are in the US.

Or another way to put it: 4.1x more people.

Which means China is emitting nearly 3x more Co2 than the US.

Our only hope is that China is using coal and fossil fuels only has a mean to sustain its insane growth while they transition to solar and nuclear (which they also do, at an amazing speed).

Hillbillies and redneck with their gigantic pick-up trucks in the US are really the least of worries.

Post reply on HN