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2025 was the third hottest year on record

economist.com

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Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#221

Post by qcnguy »

Rodeoclash wrote: post #190
qcnguy wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It getting hotter since 1996 doesn't imply there is any climate crisis. It's also compatible with regular overlapping cycles, or with natural cycles + a small amount of change from CO2 levels that doesn't rise to the level of being a problem. The temperature records are genuinely fraudulent. Investigate them in detail and anyone will see that it's true. They overstate the amount of warming considerably and try to hid…

These arguments give me the same vibe that the reelecting trump arguments had prior to the last election. Obviously Trump is operating on a much faster timeline than climate change but I'd expect the same behaviour (i.e. all the sceptics vanishing) once we really start to feel the impacts of it and arguments like these lose the last final shreds of plausibility. I can't quite figure out the angle of why either. Are t…

Thinking that anyone who disagrees with you isn't real sounds concerning. You should see a psychiatrist about that, in case it gets worse.

Anyway. You say skeptics will vanish when we "really start" to feel the impact of it. When? Pick a date. Man up, commit. Because everyone who picked a date in the past had their beliefs invalidated. The skeptics win, every single time.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100113183137/https://www.indep...

March 2000. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event". "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

You ask why. How about, because truth matters. How about, because the mitigations climate Kool-Aid drinkers demand are economy-cripplingly expensive. Those two alone are good enough reasons for anyone.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#222

Post by lukasm »

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.

My new conspiracy theory is that Trump wants Greenland, because most of south and central America will be too hot. There are 800mln people south of Colorado. 30% will emigrate north.

:)

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#223

Post by chickenimprint »

Jommi wrote: post #213
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.

why reference US here? All countries are actors here.

Because the US is the only country that defected from the Paris agreement. The US is the only country led by climate change deniers. Tons of countries are led by malevolent and selfish leaders, but none are as incompetent and unpredictable as the US.

Climate change mitigation is a collective action problem in the form of a prisoner's dilemma or a tragedy of the commons. If every agent (i.e. country) refuses to cooperate, every agent will suffer major damage from environmental disasters. If all agents cooperate, they only suffer minor damage from economic policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At first sight, this doesn't seem like much of a problem. The solution seems self-evident, before one considers countries adopting different strategies:

If one country defects, they benefit massively from hosting the world's carbon intensive processes, yet all countries will equally share in environmental catastrophe. Thus, the optimal strategy for any single self-interested agent is always to defect, no matter what the others do. Paradoxically, the optimal strategy for each agent in isolation leads to a catastrophically bad outcome for all agents if they all choose that strategy. Everyone wants to be the parasite, but if no one is the host, we all die.

It wouldn't matter if the US were a tiny island nation, but the US has the largest carbon footprint, the largest economy, and the most capable military. The US led the democratic world. They could have solved the prisoner's dilemma by enforcing global cooperation. If the US and its allies would threaten to sanction those countries who don't cooperate, the payout matrix would shift towards cooperation being a stable Nash-equilibrium. It would no longer be in a country's interest to screw everyone else over, so they'd stop. The US and the entire world would be better off.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#224

Post by tsoukase »

Living in the coldest corner of my country, this is an extension of Siberia and getting hotter and hotter by the year, I amateurly confirm the global observations. Specifically I estimate the average temperature increase of the latest 3 years to be about 2-3C comparing with >20 years ago. A vital decease in heating costs with a whole month without heating is welcome. The future becomes from manageable to fate.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#228

Post by tonymet »

magicalhippo wrote: post #152
foltik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even talking about. They had weather stations with mercury thermometers and wrote down temperatures in a logbook.

For the interested, here[1] is an article on an attempt to recreate and verify measurements made during the HMS Challenger expedition in the 1870s. It was recently done so the full results aren't out, but one aspect they noted was that the traditionally-created hemp rope stretched about 10% so temperatures were taken at slightly deeper depths than expected. This can be used to calibrate the data from HMS Challenger.…

I appreciated your comment because more discussion will better help everyone understand the various tranches of surface temperature observations.

I did a quick review, and appreciated the article because they were clear about how their methods different from the recordings. For one using different pressure sensors, and they mentioned the depth differential they measured would lead to variability in the ocean temp readings.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#229

Post by tonymet »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #202
tonymet wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would readers know the reference point unless you inform them. Of course they will defer to colloquialisms . In some cases 5000 years , some 1000 years . With something as broad and impactful as this, they certainly assume more than 150 years .

They would know by reading beyond the headline. I am not aware of the colloquialism as you describe it.

This is disingenuous given your training in journalism , writing & linguistics.

Re: 2025 was the third hottest year on record

#230

Post by ltbarcly3 »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #70
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what we should do, it's very hard to determine what minimizes harm and maximizes benefits at a global scale. It's certainly not as simple as extremists would like to believe. Certainly it would be much (MUCH) less risky to slow warming as much as possible and maintain constant or slowly reducing CO2 levels. I think from the standpoint of predicting what will happen, my best guess is that people will use…

If we are in overshoot scenario even reducing emissions may not be enough. There are warming gases currently trapped in permafrost, the natural carbon storage capacity is very dynamic, so global warming may target new (worse) equilibrium beyond what we think we can achieve in best case scenario.

And if my grandmother is dead it's too late to ask her to borrow money. It's easy to chain together low probability what-ifs and come up with everything on fire.
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