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Oceans hit highest temperature on record

bbc.com

211–220 of 696 posts

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#211
post #75

I can feel it. The weather this year up in Canada here has been extremely odd. Constantly. You can tell something is off.

I live in a minivan and drive around the United States every year. I started noticing it two years ago, but last year was really difficult for me to go to the usual places I went. I’m up in the Pacific Northwest right now and I’m not even planning where I’m gonna go this year because I’m definitely gonna just be following the weather. One thing I will definitely not be doing is staying around the Palm Springs area, w…

That's crazy! Are you enjoying the van life? Always dreamed of doing it myself.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#212
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that environmentalists would rather see the world burn than solve all emissions problems with nuclear. Climate change is Schroedingers extinction event. It's only bad when you can solve it with solar panels and wind. It's nothing to worry about when you can solve it with fission and eventually fusion.

Until the incoming administration declares that safely storing nuclear waste is woke and allows their close friends or maybe even their own companies to just dump it in a desert at a premium because the bible never mentions the associated hazards. Or it says facility inspections cause autism and transgenderism so they have to deregulate for their pals. Or that nuclear safety itself is a symptom of low testosterone an…

Still better than climate change. But thanks for making my point for me.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#213
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have. Just because the markets are working and the US bungled its way into another war over oil doesn’t mean we should ignore the absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization.

I'm weird. Just to be fair I'll acknowledge that certain political actors in the US deny there's any man made climate change and fight renewable energy because it conflicts with some narrow business or political interests. I'm not denying that. But... The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here . No…

Why does it matter where on the planet the fossil fuels are extracted in terms of dealing with global climate change?

The US and Canada combined are responsible for 28% and 31% of the global oil and natural gas extraction respectively. If this share were eliminated, then it would force global demand down via the supply/demand price curve especially as there are competitive clean alternatives to burning fossil fuels for energy these days.

We're approaching a global crisis point - and every country needs to reign in fossil fuel extraction and consumption. It's morally indefensible to continue profiting from the sale of products that are f*cking up the planet. Just because there are others that are immoral, doesn't give you an excuse to act without morals. Or claim it's better that you act immorally than someone else.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#214
post #141
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).

Solar energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the US. That's because it's also the cheapest source of energy. So markets are working. https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti... "Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this? Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given th…

I'm in the US and _I_ don't want us to get credit. Even the worst of people do something good every now and then. But if you reward that, they won't change.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#216
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tiny problem with that hypothesis - there are I think at most 3 potentially viable climate reversal options - DAC, sun shield and aerosol injection in the atmosphere. All 3 options are likely cost through the nose and will require sums and efforts on a global scale. Any single country attempting them on its own, would require to set aside double digit amounts of its GDP for decades, effectively crippling i…

Game of chicken. Wait as long as you can because as it starts to get worse for everyone, maybe more and more countries will join in on the efforts. I don't know if any country has the industrial base to do it yourself, as you say, but if any does, it's almost certainly China just due to manufacturing output and expertise alone. They're, what, 30-35% of the world's output? Set aside 30% of that and they can still feed…

Gotta solve the Snowdrift Dilemma[0]

[0]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/snowdrift-dilemma

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#218
post #141
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).

Solar energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the US. That's because it's also the cheapest source of energy. So markets are working. https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti... "Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this? Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given th…

> So markets are working.

> Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem.

Blind faith in the markets is what got us in this mess.

> Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage.

Yes, and usage is not decreasing. As solar is growing, it's only adding capacity, not replacing fossil fuels. 2025 was the record year for global emissions and fossil fuel consumption.

But sure, let's let "the markets" dictate our ecological policy. Maybe they'll mercifully let us stop burning oil sometimes in the 2150s.

> Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there?

Huh? Americans very consistently rank among the biggest emitters, basically only surpassed by citizens of petrostates.

I'll just put this here: as long as burning fossil fuel is profitable, "the markets" won't help at all, quite the contrary. And oil being unprofitable isn't happening anytime soon. Our societies are already suffering from Climate Change immensely, and it will only get worse as the years go by. We should have stopped emissions yesterday, we can't let "the markets" take away our agency on the matter and decide our fate.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#219
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird, rose-tinted view of the US you have. Just because the markets are working and the US bungled its way into another war over oil doesn’t mean we should ignore the absolutely braindead political opposition to energy modernization.

I'm weird. Just to be fair I'll acknowledge that certain political actors in the US deny there's any man made climate change and fight renewable energy because it conflicts with some narrow business or political interests. I'm not denying that. But... The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here . No…

By your own market argument, increasing oil supply depresses prices and boosts usage. And NA oil isn't particularly clean or environmentally-friendly - the benefits of local production are primarily political, with a side of cheaper gas, which again, is not fighting climate change with market forces.

And Tesla is not the only game in town for electrification, and it's been like that for years already. Tesla's EU sales plummeted while overall EV share rose quickly during the peak of the 2025 "boycott". Someone who was going to buy a Tesla but got turned off by the Musk-Trump coalition just bought an electric/hybrid from someone else - there is no movement to buy gas cars just to spite Musk (unlike, say, the "roll coal" crowd).

Pragmatism is better than adversarialism, sure, but when it comes to the environment the locus of adversarialism is more lopsided than you're trying to make out.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to criticize you, but a question: what are you doing in practice to change something? Is your carbon footprint below what is sustainable? Let's look at me: I don't own a car, live in a smaller town, move around mostly on foot, take public transportation, long distance mostly train. I have two kids and for years my electricity total was 1500kwh a year. Last year it was 1100kwh (heating is gas though, that…

> Is your carbon footprint below what is sustainable? What a waste of time this is. Carbon footprint? Zero-emission homes? The climate is global and the balance sheet is spread across all of us. Someone with a disability might have much more use for cars and transporation than someone who is able-bodied. And homes out in the boonies without much sun (for solar power) might need a diesel generator for their three-time…

Honestly the only thing I see here that is a waste of time is trying to communicate with people that don't read and stick to canned tired responses they iterate on like an LLM.

I was replying to a very specific comment that said paraphrasing "I don't get how people can choose to ignore it". The point of what I wrote was, to an extent almost everyone ignores it, even I do, and I asked what is it that you actually DO that makes a difference. Because I don't know a single person that makes a total commitment to fixing this problem. Discussing who's fault is it is for useless people. Solutions aren't done by assigning blame so you can continue on with your day. The world can likely not survive people in every corner of the world eating food grown in some other corner of the world. The "balance sheet" is clearly not okay.

Now continue having fun proposing simplistic snap your fingers it's done solutions to the hardest problem humanity has ever faced, right at the intersection of basic human psychology, needs and desires to lead a comfortable life, and an economic system that by definition doesn't see further than its own nose.

So step one is actually: people do ignore it and this is not going to change. How do we fix the issue with this constraint in mind?

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