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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

#311

Post by pjc50 »

tomp wrote: post #299
bsdetector wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes if the taxes are raised high enough to actually impact or reverse climate change, will people abide by them? If it costs $100/day to heat your home in the winter are you going to pay that or buy black market kerosene or just chop down a tree and burn it when no government inspector is around? There's a limit to how much can be done with taxes.

> just chop down a tree and burn it That's the goal, no? Burning oil releases CO2. Growing trees and burning them is carbon neutral.

Kind of - this approach works until you run out of trees, then you have a serious problem. Sub-saharan Africa is experiencing this in places http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80918e/80918E0u.ht...

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

#312

Post by mfer »

Not to negate the issue at hand, which is important, there there's an interesting note on perception here.

"ever recorded" is used but how long have we been recording? The last study I checked on that made a claim like this was about 100 years. "ever recorded" sounds more sensational.

In any case, how we treat our planet... our ecosystem... is important. Seeing it go downhill is saddening and motivating. Glad to see things pointing out the change, its direction, and possible impact.

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

#313

Post by semi-extrinsic »

madaxe_again wrote: post #41
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. Many of the countries with the largest emissions per capita are in regions where houses are heated in the winter and cooled in the summer. Given that indoor temperature is ~ 20C, the ∆T for heating can be much greater than for cooling, since cold outdoor temp can easily go as low as -20C, while really hot weather won't go much above 40C. Thus, in a warmer climate where you need less heating in winter an…

Heating is far more efficient than cooling, however, given that the former is a direct process, and the latter uses heat pumps.

That seems very backwards. Heat pumps for heating can have a COP of as much as 4.5 at an external temperature of 7C, i.e. deliver 4500 W of heating using only 1000 W of electricity. An electric heater has a COP of 1.

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

#314

Post by pyrale »

eludwig wrote: post #139
dasboth wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream This has been my conclusion recently too. Sure, we can all do our own bit individually, but I can't realistically see a global shift in conscientiousness taking place.

It's good to remember that "globally" we are a huge collection of individuals. Perfect individual == perfect globe (ideally, of course).

I remind myself that empty collection != null collection.

Even if all humans die, mankind will survive for eternity as a collection :)

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

#315

Post by kalleboo »

codecamper wrote: post #66
fratlas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the power grid cannot accommodate in it's current form. Older substations struggle to do with the load fluctuations that are caused by solar panels, which is why they are discouraging them in Hawaii. A huge investment would be required to upgrade these substations. But yes, soon solar will be cheaper than coal.

well the grid needs to be upgraded. Totally ridiculous that HI discourages residential PV.

Those upgrades cost money. And the main reason people install PV is so they don't have to pay the power company.

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

#316

Post by legulere »

nl wrote: post #174
snarfy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another solution: less people.

I don't understand why people say this like it is some kind of self evident comment. High levels of industrial production without counting the cost of carbon emissions is the problem. Counties with high birth rates (mostly in Africa) aren't the ones causing that. It's really the 2 person family in the West, with 3 cars, a MacManshion and 4 overseas holidays a year.

> Counties with high birth rates (mostly in Africa) aren't the ones causing that.

They are simply on their way to become like us: high population density, high individual environmental damage.

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

#317

Post by mikeash »

caseysoftware wrote: post #296
Angostura wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my bath is overflowing, the only water I have to worry about is the relatively small volume coming over the edge - not the total amount of water in the bath. The ecosystem produces vast amounts of CO2 ... and consumes a similarly vast amount. It is the imbalance that you need to worry about. And that imbalance is largely caused by humans either damaging CO2 sinks or releasing CO2 that ha been sequestered over the…

To continue your analogy: if the goal is to stop the overflow, then we should probably see what the contributors are. If the faucet is on and your kid is dropping pennies in, both are contributing to the overflow but stopping your kid is going to be irrelevant. Do we know which humans are?

The point is that the faucet, in this analogy, is not contributing to the overflow. The natural inflow from the faucet is matched by a natural outflow from the drain. The surplus is the problem, not the absolute inflow.

Of course, turning down the faucet would still help. But in this analogy, the faucet is jammed on, but the kid might stop if you ask him the right way.

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

#318

Post by mikeash »

Retric wrote: post #234
caseysoftware wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "If you reduce CO2 production by 90% by humans " The analysis that I'm waiting to see is "of the global CO2 production each year, how much of it is due to humans?" If we contribute 90% of CO2 production, then reducing it may change things. If we contribute 10% of CO2 production, then even reducing our portion to zero, the overall change is near-negligible.

Suppose net CO2 went up on average by 1ppm per thousand years by natural causes. Well, over the last 2 billion years 2,000,000,000 / 1,000 * 1= 1,000,000 ppm. 2,000,000 ppm wait part per million so 2 parts per part that's meaningless. Thus, net CO2 from natural causes must average very close to 0 on long time scales. PS: If you look into it natural carbon sequestration increases slightly as atmospheric CO2 increase w…

You can also come at it from the other direction: look at how much CO2 humans have released over the past century or so, look at how much more CO2 is in the atmosphere, and compare. I looked this up a while ago and as I recall the result was that about half of humanity's CO2 production was being absorbed somewhere, and about half of it is still around and accounts for the increase in atmospheric CO2.

Which is to say, the natural net contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere is negative. If we somehow put a stop to natural processes involving CO2 and just carried on with human activity, the rate of CO2 accumulation would go way up.

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

#319

Post by pyrale »

goodmachine wrote: post #204
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.

Regarding terraforming, I suggest a quick win may be to trigger a volcanic super-eruption. The cooling effect is known to reduce global temperatures to refreshing and/or bracing levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter I was leaning towards using nuclear weapons to kick things off, but the potential side effects of such an event will probably be tricky enough, without the giant dust clouds soon to enshro…

Volcanic dusts are naturally more radioactive than sedimentary dust, though. So I'm not sure the long term effects of a volcanic super-explosion would be much better without the nukes... :)

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

#320

Post by stillsut »

balabaster wrote: post #199
oliv__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

geothermal cooling. Really? For a private residence north of Toronto?

I have a $50 AC in my bedroom, that I'll turn on at night to get to sleep. That cost maybe $10/month in electricity.

I don't see how the upfront and maintenance cost for something like geothermal can ever breakeven in a place where you only need to use it for a few days a year in one room. Do you?

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