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Oceans hit highest temperature on record

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Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#451

Post by olmo23 »

flakeoil wrote: post #429
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…

I think this talk about 1.5C or 2C degree increase is confusing and make the issue look less alarming. Firstly this is a global average, including both land and ocean temperature. The land temperatures will increase much more than the ocean temperatures and the oceans cover a higher surface. So with a 2C incease on average globally could mean 6-8 degrees more on land on average. And we are also talking about averages…

Eurostar has upgraded the technical specifications for its new fleet of double-decker trains to operate in temperatures of up to 55°C (131°F).

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#452

Post by sl-1 »

igor47 wrote: post #363
zero-sharp wrote: post #27

I remember watching a documentary which talked about feedback loops in the climate. It might have been in the context of history. If the ocean warms up enough, it causes the CO2 in the ocean itself (either in the deposits or the gas saturated in the water) to get released into the atmosphere. Maybe I'm not using the right technical words, but there is a certain amount of CO2 that sits within the ocean that is separat…

Warmer water holds less dissolved gases of all kinds, including CO2. You can see this yourself by heating water in your kitchen. Well below the boiling point, you can observe tiny bubbles, which are composed of nitrogen and oxygen dissolved in the water coming out of solution. The oceans will eventually become carbon sources, not carbon sinks, if they warm enough, but that's not projected to happen this century. Howe…

And one scary observation related to this is that warm water will also hold less oxygen for marine life, literally throttling that part of our life-support.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#453

Post by wazoox »

An excellent reminder Jancovici makes in his climate presentations, is that the difference between 1950 climate and the last Ice Age is only 4 to 5°C. Obviously, 8 billion humans wouldn't be able to live in the last Ice Age.

A more indirect analogy is body temperature : having your body temperature 2°C above normal is a pretty bad fever; at 4°C, your life is in immediate danger; anything over that you're seriously harmed or dead.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#454

Post by [deleted] »

nostrebored wrote: post #322
pfisch wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, we need a global consensus for geoengineering. Why? Does china or the us need a consensus before taking existential risks like making ai? Or detonating a nuke that had a tiny chance of setting the atmosphere on fire? Or attacking random countries with almost no rationale or plan? This kind of thinking is why the EU is screwed. No other major power cares that much because they aren't at the same level of ris…

There’s something odd about the concentration of true believers in ai xrisk and climate change catastrophism. They are both technopessimist in a way that is seen as progressive. Stopping progress in AI would make people’s lives immeasurably worse, while stopping fossil fuel consumption would kill billions of people. But it seems like a particular kind of risk aversion that is blind to upside. I’m curious why this cal…

[deleted]

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#455

Post by tpm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #441
tpm wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Yeah the issue is "minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population", but it's not any 5%, it's the powerful 5% who resist the change using any means necessary incl…

> This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Can't speak about EV marketshare (I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read), but large part of population is buying only used ICE cars, or g…

> I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read

no: https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

> only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket.

yes, mostly because new cars are very expensive, and that's exactly the point I was making

> Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations.

Exactly. But it's hard to quantify how much of that hatred is genuine and how much of it is fanned and amplified by fossil interests and reckless politicians. My guess is that around 80% of it is manufactured.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#456

Post by valeg »

tzs wrote: post #368
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…

There are several problems with this. First, you are ignoring gas. The US stopped building coal plants because of the fracking boom. That gave the US huge sources of natural gas which was cheaper than coal. China has little natural gas but abundant coal, so when they need fossil fuel for something they cannot yet do with renewables they use coal whereas the US uses gas. Second, you are looking at number of plants, bu…

It is incorrect, PRC has abundant shale natural gas deposits and there is some work being done to tap them: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-taps-ultra-dee...

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#457

Post by tpm »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #447
sva_ wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is not "most at risk" compared to eg south Asia, the middle east, parts of Africa, etc; and this idea that AMOC collapse will turn Europe into a glacier is a blatant exaggeration that does not root itself in reality.

wrong: EU is the region with the highest acceleration of most climate parameters

Fastest acceleration, possibly, yes. But if another region's climate is for example already close to deadly wet bulb temperature during a large part of the year and only a small change puts them over the threshold, then that regions is more at risk than the EU.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#458

Post by swingboy »

toasty228 wrote: post #444
swingboy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

14 billion years and not a single piece of evidence of a prior civilization.

The universe is vast, both in space and time. You would not detect anything from a past civilization that died a few millions of years ago in the closest solar system, which is really not that far in either time nor space

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Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#459

Post by jeroenhd »

aliasxneo wrote: post #152

I try to do my part to the best of my ability. But obviously it's only a droplet in the ocean (hah). But if I'm being honest, what scares me far more than this is the capability of humans to "force" a solution on the world.

We fixed the hole in the ozone layer. All the countries came together, worked together, and fixed the problem threatening to doom us all with skin cancer and worse. Humanity can come together.

Unfortunately, the threat of total annihilation of human civilisation is currently not outweighing the short-term profit incentives of those in power, and they've turned the issue into fuel for their culture war so I doubt we'll find a real solution before the current generation of politicians is dead.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#460

Post by marcyb5st »

tpm wrote: post #413
consumer451 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone in Central EU farm land, who is currently experiencing desertification... We are actually in the worst place, given realtive population density. My well is drying up. The Danube and many other rivers are drying up. Then, when the AMOC stops, and we join Canadian weather with English-level insulation... we are all truly fucked in winter. At scale in the mid-term, only Sri Lanka is going to get as screwed as…

No we are not in the worst place given relative population density. Look at South & Southeast Asia very carefully - there are countries like Bangladesh with pop. of 177 million in an area of double the Czech Republic (pop. 10 million). They have it much worse than us. > we join Canadian weather with English-level insulation Having lived both in England and here in Slovakia, we are much much better equipped to survive…

But if the AMOC collapses the drought you talk about will become the a year round problem. Climate models predict a drop in rainfall between 20 and 50% depending on the region. So agriculture will be fucked.

And the US will be hit by super hurricanes since all the moisture/hot water will linger there supercharging them.

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