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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

#121

Post by Flockster »

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.

Yes, your upfront cost are expensive, because of course the plants have to be build. But that was the case with fossil plants as well, the only difference is, they are already built. But in the long run, it's cheaper due to the lack of needed fuel.

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

#123

Post by pjc50 »

pjmorris wrote: post #85
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.

How about Lunaforming? If there's enough water, there's certainly enough sunlight to split it for H and O, making habitation and manufacturing possible. Migrating heavy industry off-planet, the old L5 society [0] idea, might be an option. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society

The trouble with heavy industry is that it's heavy. You can't ship e.g. bauxite to orbit and aluminium back down using conventional rockets and have the economics make any sense.

The timeframe is unlikely to work either. We're a decade away at least from the first industrial building on the moon, but we need to change CO2 production now.

Edit: the only sci-fi space solution that might make sense is the solar shade, if you can find a suitable reflective durable thin light material for it.

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

#124

Post by pinaceae »

kleiba wrote: post #120
bjourne wrote: post #110

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...

I would take it with a grain of salt. In Germany, we had warm summers in recent years, but this year's July has generally been cold and very rainy.

and today we learn about the concept of average...

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

#125

Post by sanxiyn »

sevenless wrote: post #79
colejohnson66 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth goes through cycles (to an extent), so I like to believe that if everyone died, given enough time, the earth would return to its former self. However, I could be wrong.

It seems likely. 500 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 was hundreds of times higher than even the worst projections allow humans to create. CO2 eventually weathers into limestone and gets subducted under continental plates. Ultimately, geological activity renews the balance, and stops us turning into Venus.

NPR article is "irreversible in 1000 years scale". Yes, things are different in million years scale. But even immeidately achieving zero emission today will not cool the planet, at least for 1000 years.

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

#126

Post by Flockster »

blahi wrote: post #73
Flockster wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but at this point this gets absurd. I can understand that for some people it is beneficial to deny the idea of climate change. But since you are already acknowledging the self-evidence of it, how is it "not clear at all", that the change is not human made?

The climate has changed many, many times throughout history.

But wasn't that on totally different timescales?

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

#127

Post by pjc50 »

s_q_b wrote: post #108
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.

Possibly, but it's too slow and expensive to build and insure. Even in the UK, how much solar and wind can we put up before Hinkley Point C produces its first watt?

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

#128

Post by runeb »

snarfy wrote: post #115
konschubert wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you trying to say?

That the problem is there are too many people in a world of finite resources. A solution is less people. I'm not suggesting how this is done, but we probably shouldn't e.g. subsidize growth anymore. You shouldn't get a tax break for having kids. It should go the other way.

It gets problematic, because then you'd basically have a system where the government decides who gets to have kids.

A better solution is probably a raised standard of living and more education.

edit: By raised standard of living I'm not talking about AC and other energy-intensive luxuries. I mean not having to have 7 kids because many of them will probably die.

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

#129

Post by Ma8ee »

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.

> As long as they're rick enough to do so you'll never stop them.

This is the key. We just have to start charging properly for externalities. Then two things can happen, either only the very rich eat meat regularly or someone finds the technical solution you are hoping for.

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

#130

Post by throwanem »

Pitarou wrote: post #122
throwanem wrote: post #95

It never ceases to bewilder me that nuclear power isn't taken seriously as a replacement for fossil-burning baseload generation.

Agreed. We no longer have the luxury of being prissy about ionising radiation.

It's not even something we need to be prissy about. We've pretty much had the basic "we don't know everything we don't know yet" accidents. Stopping at this point is as much a waste as giving up on aircraft development in 1965 or so would have been.
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