Live data from Hacker News

Oceans hit highest temperature on record

bbc.com

641–650 of 696 posts

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#641
post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would the greens have done anything else if they were in power? This has been their stated policy goal since the 1970s.

That does not matter at all regarding your initial statement, which is simply wrong. You didn't argue that the environmentalists would have done so, you're spreading the false rumor that environmentalists were responsible for closing down all the nuclear plants.

This has been the most pointless discussion I've been apart of.

Congratulations.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#642
post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that every person has just as much right to emit pollution in 2027 as every other person in 2027. Because every person has their own planet?

No. Everyone has an equal right as each other precisely because we all share the same planet! It would seem far more weird to me to argue the opposite: “These people have the right to emit 2x or 10x as much as these other people!” (Or equivalently, “these people are only allowed to emit 10% or 50% of what these other people are…”)

> No. Everyone has an equal right as each other precisely because we all share the same planet!

The issue is that in the current situation, that effectively means we might as well give up on the idea of doing anything about climate change.

Besides, people don't care about CO2 emissions, only factory owners do, governments do. People care about energy available for use for them personally. In fact people generally dislike anything that emits CO2, from cars (somewhat) to coal mines and plants (which people dislike A LOT). If you care about "everyone", there's no need to give people CO2 emission rights, just energy.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#643
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>has played There you have it. My comment was about the current post-industrial west. You are making a disingenuous attempt at shifting blame onto the west. The main problem countries today are China and India.

> You are making a disingenuous attempt at shifting blame onto the west. What makes this disingenuous? I thought I was pretty clear and honest about my belief that the West is to blame for a huge portion of the warming so far -- and this is backed by data -- and I was clear and honest that I think we are not meeting our responsibility today to lead the way out of GHG emissions. And even today, we USians still have a…

What makes it disingenuous is you're using past data to make statements about the current situation. Of course the West / US produced the most Co2 overall, because it's been through industrialization. What matters now is the current net contributors to global Co2, and that is about 60% China and at least 10% India.

This is because we outsource our Co2 to those countries through manufacturing. My main point still is that WE don't make a difference. Saving electricity in Europe changes nothing, not does buying an EV. If we want to make a change we need to stop buying Chinese manufactured products.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#644
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…

> One thing I will definitely not be doing is staying around the Palm Springs area, which I usually do because of the risk for earthquakes if the heavy rain flow into the Salton sea.

Heavy precipitation would have negligible impact on earthquake hazard.

Interestingly, Palm Springs area has considerably higher earthquake risk than most of the US because it sits near 4 major active faults: San Andreas, San Jacinto, Banning, and Garnet Hill.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#645
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has made a difficult problem even worse by switching from pipeline gas to LNG. LNG has anywhere from 10% to 100% more greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who you believe about how much methane leaks during LNG production and transport operations. Most credible estimate IMO is +60%.

Putin turned off the gas, not the EU

Really? Do you have a credible source for this?

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#646
post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin turned off the gas, not the EU

Really? Do you have a credible source for this?

The Wikipedia article cites a long list of reputable news outlets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russia%E2%80...

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#647
post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was only comparing the fact, that because of nuclear phase-out and the future coal phase-out both the previous and current Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy agreed that a large expansion of gas power plants is necessary, this was known already in 2024. If we are now criticizing persons, please remember that German Economy Minister Robert Habeck famously stated in July 2022 during the energy crisis that "we d…

Now please explain: why are you painting environmentalists as responsible for the phaseout, when the vast majority of nuclear plants were shut down under the conservative CDU? And when the Greens were simply following the laws established by the CDU following Fukushima? The Greens, by the way, extended the lifetime of the existing plants beyond what the CDU had planned. Why are you failing to mention that? If you wer…

It's not correct attach the same amount of blame for the nuclear phase out in Germany to both Greens and CDU. I would recommend to read little bit on the history nuclear power in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany

In 2002, under the Red-Green government of Gerhard Schröder, the "Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity" took effect, following a drawn-out political debate and lengthy negotiations with nuclear power plant operators. The act legislated for the shut-down of all German nuclear plants by 2021.

So when the Greens first came to power in the Schröder administration of 1998 they achieved their major political goal for which they had fought for 20 years: abandoning nuclear energy in Germany.

The Greens wanted swift abandoning of nuclear energy in Germany already in the 2000s, but the government would have to compensate the nuclear power plant owners for the costs of building the nuclear power plants (multiple bilion DM in the 2000s, most of the nuclear power plants were still new and the costs of construction were still not payed by the electricity). Therefor the Government negotiated with each electric utility company a rest quota of nuclear produced electricity and as a result nuclear electricity production would continue until 2021 (with a planned decrease in production every year).

In 2007 amid fears that Russian energy supplies to western Europe might not be reliable, conservative politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Economics Minister Michael Glos, continue to question the decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.

In September 2010, German government policy shifted back toward nuclear energy and the government wanted to extend the use of nuclear energy in Germany.

After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the conservative German government reversed it's nuclear position and returned back the original 2002 Red-Green nuclear phase-out time table.

The current conservative German government under Merz again reversed it's nuclear position towards a more pro-nuclear stance, but decided that it's too expensive to revive the nuclear industry.

I would not say that the current German Green party are environmentalists, currently they are mostly renewable industry lobbyists. CDU has connections to German heavy industry. SPD had strong connection to coal mining regions and coal unions. FDP connections to German car manufacturing.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#648
post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are these technical problems insurmountable, particularly over 50 years?

We've already been doing it for 50 years, and the pinnacle of achievement in the field is a facility being built in Texas that is planning to sequester 500,000 tons of CO2 annually.

The world produces over 38 billion tons of CO2 a year. Assuming they reach their target performance, we would need 38bn/500k=76,000 of these facilities just to offset our current emissions.

The number of "power generating facilities" in the entire world, for reference, is about 30,000. So we would need more than twice as many capture plants as we currently have power plants. And of course they all need power, ways to actually get rid of the carbon they're collecting, chemicals etc.

So sure, if you want to live in a dream world where we magically just invent a 1000x better way to do it it's totally feasible. And while we're at it I'm sure we'll just make a 1000x more efficient combustion engine and a 1000x more effective dynamo and 1000x more effective ways to grow food and 1000x more effective solar panels, desalination etc. The next 50 years will totally revolutionize all these technologies we've already close to perfected, surely.

In case it wasn't clear that's sarcasm. Nobody is expecting to significantly improve any of these things because we are already closing in on hard physical limits that can't just be technologied away. A 1.2x improvement in any of them would be staggering, and even that is unrealistic for most if not all of the random technologies i mentioned.

Furthermore, 50 years is way too late. In 50 years we will be at like +3-4C or beyond. If things haven't already completely gone to shit at that point I can guarantee you there will be chaos and much more to come. They will have more pressing concerns than building 70,000 carbon capture facilities.

I'm not having kids, I hope my corner of the world stays relatively stable until I'm gone and I pity the people who have to live beyond that.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#649
post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now please explain: why are you painting environmentalists as responsible for the phaseout, when the vast majority of nuclear plants were shut down under the conservative CDU? And when the Greens were simply following the laws established by the CDU following Fukushima? The Greens, by the way, extended the lifetime of the existing plants beyond what the CDU had planned. Why are you failing to mention that? If you wer…

It's not correct attach the same amount of blame for the nuclear phase out in Germany to both Greens and CDU. I would recommend to read little bit on the history nuclear power in Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany In 2002, under the Red-Green government of Gerhard Schröder, the "Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electrici…

Also lets not forget the friendly neo-nazi party AfD, friendly with both Russia Putin regime and US MAGA movement. Its interesting to see how the Russia gas/oil oligarchs have the same interests as US oil/gas tycoons.

Re: Oceans hit highest temperature on record

#650
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's like saying the sea level's altitude is important because if a drone assumes it is off by a few meters it can crash into the ground. It ignores that the altitude of a drone is based off of the output of a control system. If you just ignore the control system and adjust the altitude of the drone to the point where it crashes it is just ignoring what happens in reality and is not representative of what is trying to be discussed.
Post reply on HN