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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

#191

Post by Retric »

nilved wrote: post #183
dash2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulation has never fixed anything. That's just silly. Regulation guarantees the safety of the food you eat, the buildings you live in and the car you drive.

Plenty of people are dying from unsafe food, unsafe buildings and unsafe driving. Nobody can fix these problems because lobbyists are increasing the barrier to entry under the guise of safety. After all, check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340694

The least safe new car in 2016 is vastly safer than the absolute best car produced in 1980. Remember, seat belts are a direct result of regulation mostly from US airforce testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

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

#192

Post by RubyMyDear »

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.

I really don't want to be "that guy" but....

I have a big problem with what you said. It should be "fewer people."

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

#193

Post by mseebach »

nilved wrote: post #160
pjc50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

> 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. No, you really can't, or we wouldn't have year-after-year record breaking temperatures. Regulation has never fixed anything. And especially when it comes to science, we need t…

A simple carbon tax at $X/ton and a little patience would go along way by simply making carbon-lighter solutions more competitive.

The problem with pretty much any regulation actually implemented is that politicians have been way too eager picking winners (massively subsidising specific approaches instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom) and protecting losers (assigning emissions trading credits to existing big polluters, essentially shielding the organisations that need them the most from incentives, while burying newcomers in cost and red tape), creating an opaque web of perverse incentives and an orgy for lobbyists.

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

#194

Post by CalRobert »

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.

Live in a multi-unit building in a city where you can commute and do errands by walking or cycling (electric bikes are fine and get around that whole pedaling bit). Source your energy renewably and use little of it (80-300kwh per month isn't crazy depending on your climate). Don't buy much stuff. Eat very little meat.

I mean, it doesn't take it to 0 but even if you DO want a comfortable life it doesn't mean living in a hovel.

I'm as guilty as anyone though. I love to travel, and I live on an island, so I fly a lot. Offsets only do so much (though they'd be really helpful if we had a functional carbon market).

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

#195

Post by nilved »

Retric wrote: post #191
nilved wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are dying from unsafe food, unsafe buildings and unsafe driving. Nobody can fix these problems because lobbyists are increasing the barrier to entry under the guise of safety. After all, check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340694

The least safe new car in 2016 is vastly safer than the absolute best car produced in 1980. Remember, seat belts are a direct result of regulation mostly from US airforce testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

That doesn't matter unless you're arguing that it wouldn't have happened without a government and regulation. Most of the responsibilities of a government would be better handled and implemented by the private sector.

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

#196

Post by Merad »

SixSigma wrote: post #103
guptaneil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can beat that one. My school was in the mountains and had cold winters (temps 90F/30C) due to being in the southern US.

The school had a campus wide steam heating system to deal with the winters, but according to what I heard they were terrified to ever turn it off because parts of it were approaching 100 years old. So, all summer long the heat was running on low in the same buildings that were being air conditioned.

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

#197

Post by TheCondor »

tombert wrote: post #21

The part I find especially frustrating is that, on average, a New Yorker has a lower carbon footprint than the typical American, probably due to the heavy use of the train. So even when I do the (I think) eco-friendly thing by not having a car and using public transit, I'm still being punished for what the rest of the US (and the rest of the world) does.

How much Carbon did it take to make New York into New York? That's "your Carbon" too if we are going to talk about "punishment"

That's just the wrong language and maybe the wrong perspective, we are all in this together when it comes to climate change, we all pay for the sins of others.

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

#198

Post by viach »

Roritharr wrote: post #58
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.

I see this actually as a nice plot someone could turn into a book. 1. Build a machine that pulls significant amounts of CO² out of the atmosphere. 2. Go to the UN an straight up tell them "we can make this problem go away, give us 1tn$ and 20 square kilometers of land in these countries, over this schedule with these milestones". 3. Profit.

And what if this machinery starts taking out CO2 too fast? Who will stop it, taking into a count the beaurocraty level in UN and lobby behind such a money making machine?

Indeed, worth a book.

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

#199

Post by balabaster »

oliv__ wrote: post #62
redwood wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree: you can't go "back to nature" when you have 8 billion people running around, a larger and larger portion of which want to live like those of us in developing countries do (especially in the basic sense of having AC to escape this increasing heat). AC is a great little allegory for the whole thing... would you rather have AC and deal with hotter and hotter days, or forego AC and wait a century, have n…

Before AC, did people not live without it?

I live just North of Toronto, it's definitely gotten above 30 degrees a few times this year and I think above 40 (Celcius), but I can't be sure.

We have no air conditioning. There are days it's downright uncomfortable and you're walking around shirtless and sitting by a fan because even warm air flow is better than no air flow.

There are a lot of cold showers and cold drinks consumed. I have to say though, it's only seemed to be 2 or 3 days at a stretch and then a storm or cold front comes in and breaks it up. So is it unlivable? No. Is it uncomfortable? Sure.

If it were my house, I'd definitely have caved and had AC installed; and if I had it, I'd most likely abuse it more than I should. If I'm honest with myself and asked "do I really need to have the AC running right now?" I'd have to say, I could count on 2 hands the number of days this year where the answer was yes (although, I did make it through without it, so is that even true?) vs. just (ab)using it because it's there and 18C is comfortable in summer.

When I build a house, it's definitely having geothermal heating/cooling to take the edge off.

... and a dehumidifier takes the edge off too. Dry heat is a lot easier to suffer than wet heat.

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

#200

Post by jpadkins »

Retric wrote: post #189
nilved wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, you really can't, or we wouldn't have year-after-year record breaking temperatures. Regulation has never fixed anything. And especially when it comes to science, we need t…

If you reduce net CO2 production by 90% you still get record temperatures year after year, but the rate of increase is dramatically smaller.

maybe, maybe not. methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas. So if you reduced CO2 90%, but methane went up by 2X then you would have stronger warming. My point is CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas.
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