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

181–190 of 696 posts

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#181

Post by toddy_flogsit »

piva00 wrote: post #178
TacticalCoder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The EU has more people than the USA but emits 1/3 of the USA's, what's the exceptionalist excuse for that?

well, yes we're overfed and over-commercialized. But we also vastly out build, grow and produce Europe. (and you have more people)

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#182

Post by ch4s3 »

rcpt wrote: post #132
jdiff wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~3x the energy of running an LED light for 5 minutes. Why would this not be the energy of running an LED light for 15 minutes?

It's an unspoken rule in the data center debate that every metric is completely batshit. Doesn't matter what side you're on, it's always "enough water to irrigate 27 soccer fields" or "as much energy as 1/5th of the average hamburger"

It comes from Our World in Data, highly reputable, and I included the source link.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#183

Post by infinitezest »

Zambyte wrote: post #110
the_real_cher wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. Banning internal combustion engines is a good first step.

Seriously. People fuss over LLM energy consumption, but I did the math on my rig, and if I were to use my machine at full tilt for all of my waking hours, I would use roughly 1/10th the amount of energy the average American uses driving. By the way, I highly recommend the Priority 600 :-)

I think OP is talking about datacenters which likely use a little more power than your home rig.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#184

Post by edflsafoiewq »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #146
TacticalCoder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Solution to save the environment: China should separate out Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia as separate independent countries. Hong Kong and Macao too. And then split north-south so that Shanghai and Beijing become their own capitals. Continue this process and eventually the population and emissions of each individual country will be low enough that they can be ignored, thus solving the problem once and for all.

That is the opposite of what GP said. The point is only the total emissions matter, the climate does not care about "fair" allocations over either people or nation-states.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#187

Post by bamboozled »

Robdel12 wrote: post #176

I always will think of how everyone laughed at Bernie Sanders' reply in ~2016 to "What is the greatest threat to national security" and he replied "Climate change". It's going to get ugly when large swaths of the human population struggles to get food & clean water.

Last night I had insomnia due to stress, and I was compulsively scrolling social media. The comments section of most videos just made me realize how actually fucked we are.

It might just be a context thing and people are on average smarter than what the comment section makes out but yeah, wasn't filling me with confidence what I saw.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#188

Post by acuozzo »

triska wrote: post #24
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, 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.

Just figure out how many 7-foot-tall persons you'd have to add to your country to increase the average height by 1 inch.

7 feet = 2.1336 meters 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#189

Post by jgord »

convolvatron wrote: post #137
jgord wrote: post #125

Recent studies estimate climate warming is happening faster than it was, ballpark +0.3C per decade. As we are at or nearing +1.5C now, with global emissions at an all time high [ perhaps peaking soon ] theres a good chance we are headed toward +2.6C by ~2060. Keep in mind the CO2 stays up there for a long time, centuries, so when we get to net-zero its max-CO2 and therefore max-heat.

does it stop? the more co2 the more heat is retained. so the relation between co2 and temperature is an integral over time. were we suddenly to stop burning things how far does it go up before infrared emissions equilibrate with the larger thermal flux? that and the lower albedo and other knockoff effects may continue to make things worse even if we were to stop.

yeah, Id actually like to see a reasonable prediction of the trajectory, factoring in recent few years data [ faster warming, current emissions, cleaner air / reduced aerosols and issues like those you mention such as equilibration and ocean heat buffering ]

The graphs I see all have ridiculous ranges, either +1.5C hopium or +6C hellscape - whereas +2.6C within 20 to 30 years seems a most likely [and unpleasant] scenario.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#190

Post by strictnein »

testing22321 wrote: post #168
jimbokun wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could China and India get more electricity by investing the same amount in new solar production instead of coal?

China installed more solar capacity in 6 months than the US has installed in its entire existence [1] To say they’re winning the race implies there even is a race. It’s a super car vs a snail. [1] https://etangonam.com/?p=805

The US has the second most and has 1/4th the population. We're barely behind them in solar watt per capita.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country#Global_...

Many countries on that list dwarf China in a solar watts per capita, so are they winning this hypothetical race then?

But sure, them adding that alongside all of their new coal plants is nice. Also, they waste the most solar energy of any country.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-leads-wave-cle...

Post reply on HN