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Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

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Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#271
post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

What politician would you vote for?

Politician A) The one that promises you more economic comfort in the short term

Politician B) The one that promises you sustainability (i.e.: not necessarily growth)

Most people will vote for Politician A. Because most families in this culture want prosperity so they have more income to have a "better lifestyle" (consume more). The problem is that a better lifestyle means a higher environmental footprint.

That brings us to the realization that at some point in time we became an ecocidal invasive species, and having good historians and a good public relations team won't change that in the actually true and objective historic record: the geological and fossil record, which will be the only one that will remain after we starve ourselves to death. In that record we will see how after the arrival of the behaviorally modern human, especially after the industrial revolution, all species above certain weight started dying.

We look down at tribal peoples with dumb narratives such as "they are not making an efficient use of the land". Well, 200 years after the industrial revolution we are learning that the industrial mindset is collective suicide, and perhaps there was something that the tribal peoples were doing correctly, measured in terms of KPIs such as carbon emissions, topsoil, biodiversity, etc.

And the solution is a) reducing our environmental footprint (which is impossible with a growth-oriented industrial mindset) or b) resist growth or c) reduce our population. b) and c) will never be supported by the population.

We will have to rewrite history and rethink the way we educate people, accepting that the industrial revolution was progress in terms of consumption but it was a massive setback in terms of sustainability. i.e.: it is a progress trap, or in simpler terms, it doesn't fucking work.

We are just immature people playing with a credit card and thinking we can afford everything. But everything you spend you'll have to pay later, with interest, and that time is arriving at an increasingly faster rate. We are living lavish lifestyles at the expense of the future generations.

Political leadership doesn't have an answer, neither do corporations. The media serves those groups, so the solution won't come from them either.

I predict that once strong AI is here, elites will not have a reason to collaborate and share resources with the masses, and will have no incentive to share political representation. Plus, the agriculture supply chain is highly centralized and corporations can cause a famine any time they want.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#272
Clearly we need to solve this problem, climate change is real, and it's here.

However, we can't just stop using oil. It would lead to the death (by starvation) of most of humanity, mostly in the poorer parts of the world.

We need a well managed transition away from fossil fuel inputs. One of the first things that should be shifted, as much as is possible, is from Industrial Farming which uses massive chemical inputs, and burns up the soil.

Regenerative agriculture can eliminate the need for tilling, capture carbon into the soil, which both then improve water retention, and decrease soil temperatures. These reduce the need for irrigation, increase the ability to absorb rainfall without run-off.

The addition of ruminants to the mix produces fertilizer and meat at the same time.

About 20% of the carbon we've dumped into the atmosphere could be recaptured if widespread adoption of regenerative farming were to happen. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a lot cheaper than trying to use machines to do it.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#273
post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

Society would grind to an abrupt halt if you cut oil production by even 20%. Of course, if you did that red meat and cheap air fare would go away on their own.

That this is the most upvoted comment shows just how far most people wander from reality.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If policies don't drastically change. Just imagine norwegian electric car subsidies but happening everywhere decades straight - for solar, wind, tidal, battery, pumped water stations, sand batteries. Perhaps a Sahara -> Europe solar megaproject (I remember a good discussion on HN about that). Do you honestly see them changing in the following years? We had Paris 8 years ago and the only thing that caused a small, o…

It wasn’t deadly pandemic that did that; it was biz owners complying with orders to let workers stay at home and not commute in and work their jobs that depend on it. Society didn’t collapse either. It’s a decision.

And how much did it cost? It didn't collapse because we printed trillions of dollars, but now we have a huge debt and inflation, which has made poor people even poorer, especially in poorer countries where food insecurity has resurfaced. If it were a sustainable solution, we would have already implemented it.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#275
post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

You're right that emissions-per-capita in Western countries are unsustainable, and that consumer demand is out of step with the true cost of fuel, meat, etc.

But how exactly would any country succeed in deliberately destroying their own economy? They would face revolts, civil unrest, and the economic vacuum left behind would simply open the door for any country that doesn't play along to gain a monopoly on forbidden economic growth, and potentially establish their own global hegemony.

No economic system has ever had "fair" or equal distributions of wealth, and no system will ever have a fair distribution of carbon emissions either.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If policies don't drastically change. Just imagine norwegian electric car subsidies but happening everywhere decades straight - for solar, wind, tidal, battery, pumped water stations, sand batteries. Perhaps a Sahara -> Europe solar megaproject (I remember a good discussion on HN about that). Do you honestly see them changing in the following years? We had Paris 8 years ago and the only thing that caused a small, o…

It wasn’t deadly pandemic that did that; it was biz owners complying with orders to let workers stay at home and not commute in and work their jobs that depend on it. Society didn’t collapse either. It’s a decision.

Yes but deadly pandemic was the threat that did it, otherwise it would be business as usual.

In other words: we can't seem to make a change unless given a direct and immediate threat on a global scale.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#277

> It was the hottest August on record – by a large margin – and the second hottest ever month after July 2023, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service ERA 5 dataset. August as a whole is estimated to have been around 1.5°C warmer than the preindustrial average for 1850-1900, according to the C3S monthly climate bulletin. Thinking about getting to 1.5 C averaged over the planet is surreal and we are still 3…

On the other hand, looking at lived experience the story is quite tricky. From the perspective of an individual it is very hard to detect this level of climate change. I can't tell how much warmer any given month was compared to even 20 years ago. We're talking about 28 vs 28.5°C average for a month. (and July and August made news because of pronounced anomalies, other months were probably even murkier stories due to…

I can experience it here in North Texas. We've had a lot more snow events in the past few years than the over a decade preceding. It used to be an every few years kind of thing, now there's a couple big ice storms every year. Massive difference.

And it swings the other way in the summer too. Yeah, it's Texas, its hot. Upper 90s most days in the peak summer time. Every now a bad summer with a lot of 100F days. Now every summer has streaks of well over 100F days. This summer alone has been the hardest one for me to experience here in my over thirty years in Texas.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took my first plane at 28 or so. Before it was just too expensive. I survived, and traveled to many, many countries without it. ( car, buses ) Now, I live between two continents. Take plane at least once a year or every other one. I would still be in favor of plane restriction. It will happen anyway: but by prices purely and the most affluent of us will be the less impacted.

There is no need for it to happen. This weird idea that getting poorer will ensure the long-term survival of humans is in error.

Don’t you think oil will keep getting more expensive?

That what I had in mind. It seems more and more costly to extract it.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#279
post #98

It's odd how everytime somebody mentions slashing oil production by 50 or 75%, people are immediately up in arms. Same for red meat or cheap air travel. Western rich countries have too many really spoiled consumers. It's weird to say, but we should crash the economy if it can slow down climate change. I mean there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's no…

You realize that would cause countless death _today_ if you don’t replace the oil with something else? People will starve, become homeless, and maybe anarchy will reign. Not just in the developed world but globally.

That’s at risk of happening either way.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#280
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanos is that you? Wanting to kill people now, to hopefully save the environment in the future.

The environment will be fine. They want to kill people now in order to hopefully save people from dying in the future. How this is not a parody is beyond me.

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