2025 was the third hottest year on record • Hacker News Board

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#121

Post by tmnvix » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #118

tmnvix wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drive less. CO2 output per person in the US (all sources including industry, etc): ~13-14,000kg Average distance driven per year per capita in the US: ~20,000km Average CO2 output of current private vehicle fleet: ~250g/km Therefore, over one third of total CO2 output per person is personal vehicle use. Considering only CO2 output due to personal choices driving has to be well over half. Most people don't - or refuse…

This also means two thirds of emissions are not due to vehicular emissions. Let’s tackle that first, more bang for the buck? Also - does that per capita figure include cargo? If so, how much? Does it matter if random individual takes personal Responsibility and stops driving when all those long haul trucks will still be on the road?

My point is that in terms of personal responsibility nothing comes remotely close to driving but a vanishingly small proportion of people are willing to consider this.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#122

Post by apublicfrog » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

cco wrote: post #113

vaylian wrote: post #28

Whenever you hear a politician say "carbon neutral by 2050", interrupt them. The real goal is to avoid getting too far over 1.5 degrees warming. We need to avoid reaching tipping points that will cause non-recoverable damage to the earth system. The year 2050 is meaningless. Actual global average temperatures is what should be measured.

You're still hearing politicians talk about climate change? This could be an American bubble but I haven't heard talk of climate change from US politicians, or the other global leaders that filter through our news cycle, since 2023.

Of course. Here's the Australian PM 4 months ago:

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/setting-australias-2035-climate-...

Here's the NZ PM last month:

https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-ne...

I would imagine it's a relevant political football in most first world countries. I avoid American news, but the bits I see make me think it's probably still focused on culture war garbage.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#123

Post by melling » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

tmnvix wrote: post #121

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also means two thirds of emissions are not due to vehicular emissions. Let’s tackle that first, more bang for the buck? Also - does that per capita figure include cargo? If so, how much? Does it matter if random individual takes personal Responsibility and stops driving when all those long haul trucks will still be on the road?

My point is that in terms of personal responsibility nothing comes remotely close to driving but a vanishingly small proportion of people are willing to consider this.

A few decades ago we explained that personal responsibility isn’t the solution.

Please catch up. Why we’re having a conversation from the year 2000 now is beyond me.

I also suggest reviewing the “nuclear isn’t part of the solution. Besides it takes a decade” discussion.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#124

Post by NicuCalcea » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:00 PM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #64

foltik wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't some big conspiracy. "On record" is since recordkeeping began in 1880. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/glob...

Ok, so why not just be specific? “On record” usually means since we started recording history , at least 5k years ago. And have you looked into the records? satellite surface temps and high resolution recording have not been around for very long. 1880 methods were very crude and narrowly scoped.

> “On record” usually means since we started recording history , at least 5k years ago.

I'm a journalist who has published "highest/lowest on record" statistics tens, if not hundreds of times, and I've never heard of anyone thinking it means "since Herodotus" or anything like that.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#125

Post by chickenimprint » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:02 PM UTC

shrubby wrote: post #101

chickenimprint wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real practical solutions are trivial, the politics are not. It's a collective action problem, where the US is one of the actors.

Yup. Plenty of solutions, but politicians will never make it happen. We calculated that capping personal emissions (mostly doable via peer pressure should we get this moving as normal people) to some top 1 percent 25 metric carbon ton and going plant based would get us net-zero while additionally getting rid of the zillionaire problem and adding extra 50-100 gigaton rewilding effect to the table. With no bigger than…

No, there's really just a few select politicians standing in the way. Governments around the world have implemented tons of policies to attempt to address the crisis, but unless every country participates, it's economically suicidal. Carbon-intensive industries can simply move to the US, strengthening them, while those countries attempting to carry the burden of preventing climate change will be equally affected by looming disasters.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#126

Post by Freedom2 » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

vaylian wrote: post #28

Whenever you hear a politician say "carbon neutral by 2050", interrupt them. The real goal is to avoid getting too far over 1.5 degrees warming. We need to avoid reaching tipping points that will cause non-recoverable damage to the earth system. The year 2050 is meaningless. Actual global average temperatures is what should be measured.

I don't think it's that easy to interrupt politicians, especially these days as more and more protections are justifiably given to them.

Do you have an example where you personally interrupted a politician effectively?

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#127

Post by foltik » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:13 PM UTC

genewitch wrote: post #104

foltik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. Shall I present it to you on a silver platter then? If you read the NASA page, they explicitly cite GHCNd, a raw surface temperature and precipitation dataset that goes back quite far. There's many other similar datasets you can find if you're willing to look. Check out the readme for the csv format description, and /by-year for the raw rows: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/

picked four stations at random[0] and it's just precip numbers, no temps, no humidity, no insolation, etc. are you sure you linked what you think you linked? [0] /by-station and then unclutched my scroll wheel and spun it for arbitrary amount of time, re-engaged clutch and clicked what was under the cursor. repeated 3 more times. i did a fifth, where the one i was looking at was identical to the fourth one, but had a…

Quite a scientific data analysis you've done there. NASA must be completely mistaken!

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#128

Post by simianparrot » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

misnome wrote: post #120

themafia wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to avoid reaching tipping points that will cause non-recoverable damage to the earth system. Then I'd be far more worried about nuclear war than minor temperature excursions. Aside from that "non recoverable" damage happens every day. What do you think mining is? > Actual global average temperatures is what should be measured. On average it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler last year than it was the previous…

Congratulations, you know the local weather

Local weather is what matters to individuals. So is access to affordable energy.

You cannot coerce someone to ignore their local weather and sabotage access to affordable energy because of some global average. It’s a losing battle that’s fundamentally misled.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#129

Post by chickenimprint » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

themafia wrote: post #106

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #23

Is there a real practical solution to this? It seems like all proposed solutions in last 40 years are a drop in the ocean, or just a money grab scams. Only thing that really worked for such global scale is the ozone layer repair. Global warming/climate change I guess we should just accept it and adapt?

> is the ozone layer repair. Which was, stop using CFCs, and stop venting them into the atmosphere to "dispose" of them. We also stopped lighting rivers on fire for mostly the same reasons, stop dumping industrial waste in them. > I guess we should just accept it and adapt? Ocean shipping produces more pollution than most countries. There are only like 5 countries that produce more carbon than the worldwide shipping…

Ocean freight accounts for 2-3% of global emissions. It is orders of magnitude more efficient and clean than air or road freight per ton-kilometer. It's twice as efficient as rail. The ability to efficiently transport goods enables your current standard of living. A world economy without ocean freight would be minuscule and of course far more polluting, without even considering land use.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#130

Post by deadbabe » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

vaylian wrote: post #28

Whenever you hear a politician say "carbon neutral by 2050", interrupt them. The real goal is to avoid getting too far over 1.5 degrees warming. We need to avoid reaching tipping points that will cause non-recoverable damage to the earth system. The year 2050 is meaningless. Actual global average temperatures is what should be measured.

That goal is no longer possible.