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July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

nytimes.com

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Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#101

Post by hawski »

amelius wrote: post #71
harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

> The only solution to this problem is technology. There already exists a "carbon offset market" [1] So the solution is economical, which in turn will lead to technological solutions (carbon-reducing technology directly driven by profits in this market). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset

From what I quickly found it seems that Greenhouse Gas Tax on meat is still missing.

https://www.google.com/#q=greenhouse+gases+livestock+tax

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#102

Post by throwanem »

lallysingh wrote: post #89
snarfy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another solution: less people.

Populations past a certain level of prosperity for a generation or two do seem to drop reproductive rates. Perhaps the answer here is higher educational costs to discourage people from having many kids, and lots of alternative activities instead (Pokemon)?

Are you really suggesting people will play Pokemon instead of screwing? I mean, yeah, if they weren't going to screw anyway, maybe, but the idea of advancing the one as a serious alternative to the other...well, I mean, I know people get really into those games for whatever reason, but that much?

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#103

Post by SixSigma »

guptaneil wrote: post #93
oliv__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before AC, did people not live without it?

Yes, but it wasn't as hot... It's a vicious self-fueling cycle. By using AC, we're making the world warmer, which makes us use more AC.

People in our Florida office have fan heaters running under the desk because the AC keeps it too cold.

The insanity boggles my mind.

I had to go out and buy a sweater and thick trousers to sit in the office while it is 32C/90F outside.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#104

Post by dasboth »

blahi wrote: post #80
dasboth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I've often wondered: apart from wanting to be right, what do climate skeptics have against e.g. transitioning to renewable energy?

It's very fucking expensive. And those articles frequently on the front page of HN are biased and are not telling the whole story. That's the problem. NGOs are framing the public discourse in a very one-sided way. If you raise concerns, you are a "denier" and downvoted into oblivion because people just want to believe the beautiful story of clean energy vs. greedy capitalist pigs.

That's definitely true, it's rare to see a fully civilised discussion where those concerns are addressed without the accompanying rhetoric.

Having said that, surely it's a fact that we'll run out of fossil fuels at some point and will need an alternate source of energy, and that will be expensive no matter when we do it, so why not start early?

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#105

Post by [deleted] »

davidy123 wrote: post #82
goodcanadian wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe this, wouldn't the ethical thing be to not have kids? I see this over and over . . . If you don't have kids, who exactly are you saving the world for?

> I see this over and over . . . If you don't have kids, who exactly are you saving the world for? The billions of people (including kids) who already exist. Whether through adoption or supporting better general social programs. Clearly if that were the focus and the way humans thought the world would be a better place. But of course it's wishful thinking and people have every right to have and enjoy their own childr…

[deleted]

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#106

Post by jbail »

tombert wrote: post #76
harryh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with your slightly lower footprint due to not owning a car you still have a much larger footprint than the world mean. Probably 2-3x. So there are billions of people being "punished" for what you're doing.

Well, considering that I get my power from a combination of Nuclear and wind power, I doubt that I give a particularly high carbon footprint. But you're not wrong, I almost certainly have a higher footprint than most of the third world. I guess what I was getting at is that I think the levels New York has are substantially more sustainable than the rest of the US. Sorry for the confusion.

Do you have any data to back up your claim that New York is "substantially more sustainable than the rest of the US"? I'd be genuinely curious to look at that data

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#107

Post by pjc50 »

harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

Yes and no. You can change the carbon efficiency of people's consumption quite a bit with appropriate nudging and consumption taxes. You can also have global agreements paying countries not to exploit their "unburnable" fossil fuel resources.

Little things like the EU mandate for ending incandescent lightbulbs can definitely add up. You need technology and policy and economics. The market for power plants is never going to be "free", it's always full of political considerations for permitting. So countries need to have energy policies that move towards low-carbon energy.

Terraforming I'm much more skeptical about. I can't see how you can make the economics work for anything other than a tiny bit.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#108

Post by s_q_b »

harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.

I've said this before, and the same climate scientists who first discovered anthropogenic global warming agree, that nuclear fission plants are the only technology that can bridge the gap between fossil fuels and fusion.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#109

Post by WDCDev »

snarfy wrote: post #78
harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

There is another solution: less people.

The good news is that global populations will begin to decline over the next 100 years!

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#110

Post by bjourne »

Anyone else who feel that the climate-related news are getting very scary? If for every month for the last year, there was a new sprinter breaking the last months world Record in 100 meters you'd know something was fishy. Like some kind of incredibly potent anabolic steroid runners were ingesting. With new and improved versions of that steroid being released every few months...
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