September was the most anomalously hot month ever • Hacker News Board

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#281

Post by Projectiboga » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

skepticATX wrote: post #15

yakattak wrote: post #4

Can someone help me understand why when there’s a record cold month, there’s a convo like this > non-believer: “see global warming doesn’t exist” > believer: “you can’t measure this on a monthly scale, it’s too slow of a process” But often when the case is reversed, it’s used as evidence of global warming? I know global warming is real and I am a firm believer in it but this duality seems to cause a lot of issues whe…

Have there actually be any global record cold months in the 21st century? Sure, we have months that are cooler than our (elevated) average, but I don't think we're breaking any records. On the other hand, "hottest month ever" is not uncommon to hear. That plus the fact that we are trending in the wrong direction might be cause for alarm.

Things were slightly cooler 1920s &30s as soot increased in the air, true warming began in the 1980s and has really taken off over the last 25 years. For reference we haven't béen above 380 ppm of CO2 in 100s of thousands of years. Last time the Earth was above 420 ppm (we are now over 425 ppm), global average temperature was 20 degrees hotter. Things are going to get crazy next few years. It won't be a slight warming, it will be devastating to our food supplies.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#282

Post by Projectiboga » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

continuitylimit wrote: post #79

Last week of September in NYC was the coldest I remember this time of year. Rainy, windy and cold.

NYC will and nearby will hold on just a little longer as all the ice water from Greenland is holding our temps down some, more in the spring, early summer but even now in early Autumn. This won't last over the years. Ice takes lots of energy to melt, but it takes much less energy to warm water beyond that.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#283

Post by Engineering-MD » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #261

"ever" is added for sensationalism and actually means "during the (relatively short) period of climate observations starting from 1991". PS. September was quite warm, indeed.

Bit longer than that. BBC has a good graph actually. Goes back to 1940.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67017021

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#284

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

aydyn wrote: post #200

flagrant_taco wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is the path to inevitable collapse. If people will never be able to give up convenience or growth then we really are doomed, tech advantages only slow down that runaway train. I don't actually think it's a fundamental blocker though. People sacraficed quite a bit at home during WWII to support the war effort, we could make similar sacrifices now if we saw our impact on the planet as a similarly…

I disagree. There is more untapped energy and resources in this world than we could ever hope for, We just need to develop the tech to access it. Climate change too could be solved with tech. Theres no other choice.

>We just need to develop the tech to access it

What energy

What "tech"?

Tech isn't magic. We can't just magically stop the greenhouse effect.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#285

Post by rafaelero » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #271

rafaelero wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are such obvious first steps we could take without a complete understanding of cause if we really cared. Have you tried arguing people against eating meat? If we can't even talk them out of the main individual contributor to climate change, I don't think we have a good chance to make a positive impact on other areas that depend on conscious effort.

This doesn't seem to match the data I've seen. Yes, food is a significant portion of energy consumption, but typical transportation and housing (including heat/cool) easily dominate. Going from a daily mixed meat (chicken/fish/beef/eggs) eating diet to a vegan diet saves ~1 ton CO2 per year. Average is about 4-5 tons per year for a person living in a small apartment in temperate climate, who only uses public transpor…

Food corresponds to 10~30% of individual carbon footprint. Dairy + meat amount to 3/4 of total emissions from food production. So going vegan should theoretically reduce from 7.5% to 22.5% total individual emissions[1]. It may not be the largest factor in every situation, but it is still a very important one.

[1]https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability...

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#286

Post by mym1990 » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #71

mym1990 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to convince someone opposite of something they really really believe in has a very low probability of success, you will just ground them more into their belief. There are different pathways, but they take empathy and patience, some traits a lot of people lack when communicating with counter parties.

You can convince people, but you can’t do it with a simple online post. Proselytism covers a wide range of tactics that convince people to change deeply held beliefs independent of how accurate what you’re trying to convince them is. Science has a major advantage here because you can provide actual evidence, but you don’t need to limit yourself to using evidence alone. At the extreme end deprogramming the is often re…

You can get centrists over to your side, or people with loosely held beliefs. You aren't getting 99% of the extremists.

Proselytization likely works most effectively on the above groups, and while it might be a big win to convert 1 X believer to a Y believer, you could probably just convert 10 non-believers into Y much more effectively.

Deprogramming sounds exactly the opposite of 'empathy and patience'.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#287

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #150

londons_explore wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Asking people to have less, experience less, and do less isn’t an argument that can ever win. Asking people to eat less might never win... But when there is a famine, people have no choice but to eat less. It's not that there is no food available in a famine - it's just that prices go sky high. Tomorrow the government could shut down the oil wells and say "nobody may emit any CO2 unless they pay $1000/ton of CO2 em…

- which government? - did I emit a ton of CO2 when I cut down a tree? - what happens to the cost of medical plastics, etc? Did you just kill millions in poor countries because the cost of care went up so much? This stuff is hard. Pretending it is simple stops us from working on the hard parts.

>what happens to the cost of medical plastics,

Plastic production is an insanely small part of oil and gas usage, 4%. Anyone bringing up plastic as a reason to not stop using oil isn't being intellectually honest. We could literally decimate the oil industry and still produce way more oil than the plastic industry needs. It's just not a concern.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#288

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:45 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #251

gjulianm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are such obvious first steps we could take without a complete understanding of cause if we really cared. That's the issue, a lot of people just don't care or refuse to believe it. Questions like the one in the parent comment are starting to seriously annoy me because they're demanding an unachievable level of evidence before doing anything, a level that's never asked for in any other kind of intervention (for…

Everyone leaves out a large cohort - people that believe it, but don't want the solutions you're selling. We typically put forth constructive solutions like nuclear, which get shouted down / laughed out of the room instantly.

Unfortunately it's hard to tell the difference between people suggesting expensive and slow solutions because they're ill informed about the alternatives and the people suggesting expensive and slow solutions because they don't want to solve the problem.

And practically there's little difference, especially if the former are getting their information from the latter.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#289

Post by tutfbhuf » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

This sounds like another instance of Eternal September.

Re: September was the most anomalously hot month ever

#290

Post by ramesh31 » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #276

useless999 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and absence of edvidence is not edvidence of absence. Which is why you need to posit a causal mechanism. To say current climate models are overly narrowing the problem domain as to exclude purely natural factors (assuming humanity is not part of nature, but that’s an ontological discussion) you would need to provide an alternative one which can predict past and future pathways. It would also need to be at least…

[flagged]

>Prove that the earth has never warmed faster than it has in the last 100 years. Obviously, you cannot, the data lacks that sort of granularity.

This is silly. We know the precise chemical makeup of earth's atmosphere, and by extension its' climate, going back hundreds of thousands of years through antarctic ice core samples, which can be dated to a resolution of less than a hundred years. We are in an absolutely unprecedented time of change right now in the entire history of our species existence.

https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...