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Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

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Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#201

Post by mr_toad »

timr wrote: post #188
lukeify wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was inevitable we'd get to the point where climate change began substantially disrupting ecology and human livelihoods. Looks like we're ahead of schedule. People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.

> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen. Yeah, people have been "predicting" it, but the fact is that this is currently mostly hyperbole, driven by bad reporting and activist exaggeration. What is happening, right now, is that winters are mostly getting…

Go back and compare some of the earlier IPCC reports and see which bits have been left out. The worst case scenarios keep getting removed, and the best case scenarios are based on projections of CO2 emissions which are highly unrealistic.

Official reports have been downplaying the impact for decades, while countries have been setting climate targets that they had no intention of achieving.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#202

Post by kakacik »

timr wrote: post #188
lukeify wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was inevitable we'd get to the point where climate change began substantially disrupting ecology and human livelihoods. Looks like we're ahead of schedule. People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.

> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen. Yeah, people have been "predicting" it, but the fact is that this is currently mostly hyperbole, driven by bad reporting and activist exaggeration. What is happening, right now, is that winters are mostly getting…

Yeah, ask any european how less intense the heatwaves are during this summer compared to milder winters, you won't hear a polite response

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#203

Post by brookst »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #63
anon7000 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I think you made some good points, but at the same time, humans have become better at handling the climate because we’ve been able to predict it and have found solutions to certain known issues. What happens when it gets less predictable, like when certain regions get much less water for an extended period, is very much unknown. Your last claim makes no sense. Is there actually a widespread political effort to…

> I think energy production would be much more abundant and directly in control of the people if governments stopped... Lots of people pat themselves on the back for (correctly) believing that climate change is real. Why is it so hard for people to also believe that regulatory capture and oligarchy are real, and directly responsible for the lack of action against climate change ? Think of all the for-profit power uti…

Climate change is science: there is evidence, prediction, measurement, all of that.

Oligarchy and regulatory capture are undeniably real, but they are not scientific. They’re social phenomena, and much harder to theorize about and model than e.g. what happens to rainfall in Northern Europe with a 1.5c El Niño.

Worse, while oligarchy is absolutely real and causing great harm, its amorphous nature means some people blame it the way people used to blame demons, or humours. Flat tire? The oligarchs! Sprained ankle? The oligarchs!

So while both climate change and oligarchy are real problems, I don’t see them as the same class of problem at all, and the tools to address are different. They’re entangled (oligarchs who will never feel discomfort short of defenestration are unlikely to allow disruption of their wealth just for feeding people), but different.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#204

Post by dukeyukey »

huijzer wrote: post #97
culi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, we didn't have the World Food Programme in 1877 which lets us anticipate droughts distribution and crop failures months ahead of time. That being said, the existing energy crisis and fertilizer crisis can significantly compound the negative impacts of this El Niño even if we are able to anticipate it.

> lets us anticipate droughts distribution and crop failures months ahead of time. If by “us” you mean big corporations, which will then buy the stuff and sell it at a premium later, then I agree.

I mean do we not want food to be stored for tough times? And the people who do this storing should get paid for it?

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#205

Post by murkt »

dubcanada wrote: post #186
murkt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is dry heat, if you look at it from certain point of view. I once experienced smth like 27-28°C with fog, 100% humidity. Was almost as bad as 40°C with low humidity. And if it would be 42°C/107°F with fog and 100% humidity, lots of people would be dead already. But it’s more like saying “at least this building is not on fire right now”. Or 1km wide meteor is not crashing down. It is not, and anything near 40°C is…

42C and 100% would be a humidex of 81~ that would be every animal at that location instantly dying.

Exactly! Proper wet heat. /s

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#206

Post by ben_w »

WillAdams wrote: post #194
ben_w wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many farmers are subsidised specifically so that food is over-produced in most years, specifically to ensure than in bad years people don't go hungry. Corporations may indeed be taking advantage of this, demanding prices so low that the farmers don't get the benefit of those subsidies. However: > buy the stuff and sell it at a premium later Is the point of a futures market. Futures let people trade a thing before the…

No, the point of a futures market is to have a reliable supply which matches demand and allows everyone who works to produce and use a given commodity to have a reasonable expectation of demand and how production should be matched to it. Goldman-Sachs should _not_ be inserting themselves into profiting on the poor's daily bread. https://theecologist.org/2011/sep/13/how-goldman-sachs-start...

A "reliable supply" is fundamentally not possible with all the vagaries of the natural world. Even the Code of Hammurabi makes reference to this*, and we still have "acts of god" in modern parlance.

Futures significantly pre-date your link.

* https://ehammurabi.org/law/48

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#207

Post by kakacik »

dgellow wrote: post #177
vrganj wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have come to the same conclusion, but let me ask you, how can you still be a capitalist having had that insight? Why would you support a system that you recognize makes it impossible to do the right thing even as we're dying from its consequences?

I honestly don’t know and feel very conflicted about my own ideology. I recognize how broken it is at scale, but also value the personal autonomy, entrepreneurship, nonconformity capitalism promotes. Though my version of capitalism isn’t the libertarian free market one, libertarianism will always evolve into oligarchy or something fascistic given enough time, it’s just baked into the incentives. My personal ideology…

This is what Europe has, in one way or another. Europe is a huge spread - sort of semi-functional communism/socialism that France has for example, and it has nothing to do with more capitalistic approach of say Switzerland. Economies and their state show this very well over time.

Every system is potentially broken, there is always room for it to go extreme in some way. The last thing I would want in Europe is for of unhinged corrupted oligarchy that US has - common folks are squeezed like there is no tomorrow, crappy healthcare and expensive education, almost no chance to escape their allotted class within system based on income ('american dream' is not really... realistic to be polite and I could easily use a word 'lie' there, just to keep poor desperate masses in check around the elections or during crises). Maximization of pure income to suffer in literally every single other aspect that makes society a well working society long term - no thank you, we can and do get it better overall.

So one has to be realistic, there is no ideal system, Swiss system of minimal centralized power that is frequently changing hands is, as many things Swiss had come up with, IMHO the most resilient for the future. Any counter-argument to that can be easily dealt with the reality of frequent public votes on all major topics. If you follow their politics a bit its lightyears ahead of typical cesspool US or EU politics had become daily. But one can't have this system (or any other) without underlying population making it work, day by day, out in the streets. Swiss have it working, work actively and hard on preserving it as much as possible, again not something I see elsewhere, certainly not in EU.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#208

Post by [deleted] »

epolanski wrote: post #136
deepsun wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason why most countries subsidise their agriculture is because in times of war you don't want your enemy to starve you. That's mostly about high calories foods, not fancy salads though.

It would be just easier to not wage war by the way. Can't think of many countries besides Canada and US that would not starve in NATO if such a necessity arose, and that's because they produce lots of cereals. All the other countries in NATO are major food importers.

[deleted]

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#209

Post by dukeyukey »

youngtaff wrote: post #119
throwaway473825 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars. Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.

Reality is much of Europe hasn’t needed air con until recently mMy phone tells me that the temperature this week has been 15°C above the long term average for this time of year. Don’t really need air con when the peak temperature in the past has been 20–25°C

Europe is a big place. Domestic air con is ubiquitous in Italy, rare in the UK. But even in the UK, places like shops and offices will usually have air con.

Re: Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

#210

Post by lazide »

ben_w wrote: post #175
mapt wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, we have a massive grainfed meat livestock sector that in an emergency could basically all be slaughtered in favor of feeding the grain to people. But we also have recent history demonstrating that this will not be allowed to happen, no matter how much starvation there is in poorer countries, we WILL have our steaks. Not negotiable.

> But we also have recent history demonstrating that this will not be allowed to happen, no matter how much starvation there is in poorer countries, we WILL have our steaks. Not negotiable. Indeed, though given Trump's behaviour I have wondered what will happen when it's poorer *US states*. Fortunately, the farmers had a word and seem to have stopped the deportation of the undocumented (illegal) immigrants who do so…

Anyone who is actually wondering hasn’t been paying attention.
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