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Oceans hit highest temperature on record

bbc.com

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Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#571

Post by wat10000 »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #567
wat10000 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It's 2026, why are humans dumping freshwater into the oceans?” They’re called rivers and they do that naturally.

As long as there is no shortage of freshwater locally, it would be fine. They are throttling Panama Canal traffic to conserve water during El Nino drought, as posted by @evil-olive: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/08/21/panama-...

I understand that it’s a problem that sometimes restricts the capacity of the canal. I just take issue with this incredulous “they dump fresh water into the ocean” phrasing. You make it sound like they’re depriving thirsty people of precious water so they can inefficiently float their boats.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#572

Post by DoctorOetker »

wat10000 wrote: post #571
DoctorOetker wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as there is no shortage of freshwater locally, it would be fine. They are throttling Panama Canal traffic to conserve water during El Nino drought, as posted by @evil-olive: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/08/21/panama-...

I understand that it’s a problem that sometimes restricts the capacity of the canal. I just take issue with this incredulous “they dump fresh water into the ocean” phrasing. You make it sound like they’re depriving thirsty people of precious water so they can inefficiently float their boats.

> You make it sound like they’re depriving thirsty people of precious water so they can inefficiently float their boats.

I make it sound like that, or Le Monde?

There is so much conflicting information, all I care about is that while it's possible to operate a lock by consuming freshwater, it's only a marginal increase in knowledge to operate a lock without freshwater consumption... But for some reason every country with continent-bypassing canals is modulating traffic for flex...

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#573

Post by lovich »

0xy wrote: post #543
lovich wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the government is still paying billions of dollars to end renewable projects because they dont like said contracts, right?

Cool, I prefer hard energy data rather than anecdotes.

Did I not link data showing the government is currently spending billions of dollars to ensure that renewable energy projects are cancelled?

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#574

Post by sfn42 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #569
sfn42 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will not. Carbon capture is a joke. It does not work anywhere near the scale it's needed. We would need many times more capture facilities than we currently have power plants. And to run them we would need many times more power plants, not to mention all the construction emissions etc. Carbon capture is completely infeasible. It's already too late anyway, our civilization is pretty much doomed barring some miracle…

We should take a glance at what all the tech we take for granted today looked like in 1976.

It's not about tech. It's about the fact that the atmosphere has like 0,00something% CO2, so you need to process like a thousand tons of air to theoretically extract one ton of CO2.

You basically need to suck the entire atmosphere through a factory, it's not about tech it's just a big fan. And then of course you need something to process all that air as fast as it comes in.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#575

Post by vkou »

Mawr wrote: post #402
vkou wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And despite that, this is what Germany achieved in the past 35 years. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/GHG%20em... Over a 60% reduction in emissions from the electrical sector. --- Compare that to the US, where environmentalists haven't been allowed anywhere near any influence in the federal government... And you'll very quickly see that they are just a convenient boogieman, and not the actual prob…

So are you saying Germany achieved a greater reduction due to shutting down nuclear than they would have otherwise? If not, your argument is moot.

I'm observing that a country with an actual environmentalist political presence achieved a greater overall reduction than one without. Maybe they aren't the problem, as popular as they may be to bitch at on this forum.

Even if one of their policy points is counterproductive, the rest more than made up for it.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#576

Post by autoexec »

lmz wrote: post #518
RugnirViking wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that might make sense in a world where the US has been chugging along emitting at a constant rate for many years, to maintain a certain standard of living.- but the reality is the US emissions has been going down for many years, while increasing their standard of living (arguable, but difficult to say that US standard of living is less than half of what it was in the 90s), while china is going up in emissions. I also…

There's a phrase for that "do as I say, not as I do" (see also: "pulling the ladder up"). This is rightly viewed as hypocritical by those on the receiving end.

There's also the phrase "Now we know better". When the industrial revolution came to the US we were ignorant and we polluted the world like crazy because of that. Today, we've learned from that mistake. We now know that you can and must control the pollution factories spew out into the world, even though doing that cuts into corporate profits.

China doesn't get a pass to pollute at historic US levels for their industrialization because they have the benefit of having learned from our mistakes. Rejecting the "No Fair! It's my turn to needlessly destroy the planet just to make myself richer!" argument isn't hypocrisy, it's just acknowledgement of history and the progress we've made in dealing with the problems we ran into while we were industrializing without the benefit of anyone else's past experience.

China and every other developing country has already been benefiting enormously from the example of developed nations, but they want to cherry pick the things that maximize their wealth while ignoring everything else at the expense of every living thing on Earth. They want to point to the damage we caused while we were stumbling around in the dark with no idea where we were going, even though today the sun is shining and they've got all the maps we made and GPS to guide them.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#577

Post by onraglanroad »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #184
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's exactly what the GP said: per capita doesn't matter, it's just the size of the country.

So split the country up fixes the problem. Yes, it's dumb, but you agreed with it...

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#578

Post by RugnirViking »

lmz wrote: post #518
RugnirViking wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that might make sense in a world where the US has been chugging along emitting at a constant rate for many years, to maintain a certain standard of living.- but the reality is the US emissions has been going down for many years, while increasing their standard of living (arguable, but difficult to say that US standard of living is less than half of what it was in the 90s), while china is going up in emissions. I also…

There's a phrase for that "do as I say, not as I do" (see also: "pulling the ladder up"). This is rightly viewed as hypocritical by those on the receiving end.

if the mafia boss tells his sons that they should avoid a life of crime, that doing it makes things worse for society and ones self, is he a hypocrite? should the boys follow his advice?

my read is yes and yes

are you suggesting it should instead be yes and no? that because the sons want to be rich they are morally in the right for going into a life of crime, even knowing the consequences?

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#579

Post by RugnirViking »

sokoloff wrote: post #522
RugnirViking wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

china's historical total emissions will also surpass the US's pretty soon, on account of their nearly 3x as large population combined with their per capita emissions being nearly as high. and as mentioned, theirs is likely set to grow way faster. I agree extrapolating isn't always the best way to assign historical blame (for whatever that might mean), I do think it makes sense to use when thinking about what policies…

I believe that every person has just as much right to emit pollution in 2027 as every other person in 2027. What that person emitted in 2025 has no bearing on their 2027 “allowance”. We can certainly discuss how much is an appropriate, sustainable, or defensible per-person amount, but I’m only interested in the 2027 amounts, not the increase in their amount versus a prior period, nor in allowing past large emitters t…

right. I agree with this for a large part - I do think though, that chinas current level per capita 10.81 tons (higher than EU 7.14 tons, less than america 17.34 tons) is not sustanable, and they do not seem to be taking it seriously enough by my estimation. I also think that US emissions are far too high and must be reduced

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#580

Post by autoexec »

ColdStream wrote: post #264
pfisch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eu is stupid for not engaging in active climate engineering right now. They are the most at risk and should take decisive action before they end up living in a glacier. All the downvotes are just showing why no action is being taken even though right now we are literally terraforming the planet with no plan, and it is going to stop the transatlantic currents that keep Europe from becoming arctic. But sure, just d…

I suspect that unless there is a consensus or at least a large majority in favor of it, nothing will be done. Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year. Their fault or not, they are going to get blamed for it and actions taken. The EU would become the scapegoat for any kind of weather/climate issues in future. This is the trolley problem done at a global scale.

Geoengineering is just a gamble corporations want the world to take on their behalf. There's a chance that doing it would fuck things up way worse than they are now, but there's also a chance that it makes things a little better and if that happens it will reduce the pressure on those corporations to make the changes we already know with 100% certainty would improve things, but which would also directly eat into their profits. They're willing to risk screwing over the planet and/or large populations just to keep business as usual and profits sky high for a little longer when we all know that it was their irresponsible and clearly unsustainable practices that caused this mess in the first place and any success geoengineering might have would still only delay the inevitable changes to their business practices that need to be made. I don't blame people for not wanting to roll the dice just so that corporations can rape and pillage a little longer.
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