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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

#331

Post by __jal »

pjc50 wrote: post #107
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.

Yes and no. You can change the carbon efficiency of people's consumption quite a bit with appropriate nudging and consumption taxes. You can also have global agreements paying countries not to exploit their "unburnable" fossil fuel resources. Little things like the EU mandate for ending incandescent lightbulbs can definitely add up. You need technology and policy and economics. The market for power plants is never go…

The people who make me crazy are the ones who argue that everything will be fine, there's on need to change behavior because we'll fix it in post, I mean, geoengineer our way out of any problems.

I always want to suggest to these people that they should start smoking, because clearly, the future's so bright there will be a cancer cure soon.

And, not to be too crass, but that admittedly snarky reply is about one body. The geoengineering proposals are about intentionally influencing a hugely complex system we still don't fully understand, and that is undergoing changes with implications we don't fully understand. All the talk about ecological engineering seems to assume that the worst that happens is it doesn't work. That sort of naive optimism would be cute if we weren't literally talking about the planet. And if at least some of it weren't duplicitous.

This isn't the reason I chose not to have kids, but it sure does reaffirm that choice. Perhaps the Drake pessimists are correct, and intelligent life can't get off-planet before offing itself.

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

#332

Post by bluehazed »

mikeash wrote: post #323
tomp wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't price. The problem is consistency. Nuclear is a complete (day & night) power solution. Solar/wind isn't.

Energy storage solves that problem. The technology exists, the only potential trouble is cost, so it comes back to price again. Storage costs are also dropping rapidly. A proper comparison of nuclear to wind/solar needs to account for the cost of storage as well, but even if you add that in I suspect it's approaching parity.

"Energy storage solves that problem"

Yes, but we don't have that solution.

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

#333

Post by MrZongle2 »

triangleman wrote: post #245

El Nino + urban heat island effect. According to satellites, July 2016 is the 2nd hottest July since the 70's when satellite records began. The hottest is July 1998, also El Nino. Take a look at weather stations that have been situated in the same place for 100 or more years, far from cities: http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm

I'm surprised you haven't been called a "denier" yet.

Edit: my comment was originally made tongue-in-cheek, but it's clear that some acolytes are highly offended. I'll take it as vindication.

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

#334

Post by alanwatts »

hellofunk wrote: post #293
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.

I disagree. There are advanced cultures in the world without this ambition you speak of (I'm looking at you, Holland), where convenient life in a local environment that is all accessible by bike, eating lots of fish, and caring less about immense wealth and impressions and more about quality of life.. it is attainable.

I'd be interested to see a comparison on the amount of advertising done per capita in Holland vs. the United States.

Once I stopped watching television, I was no longer exposed to such incessant advertising.

As a result, I stopped caring so much about impractical consumption. I.e. buying the new car they show every 10 minutes in such persuasive and skillfully crafted multi-million dollar targeted advertisements.

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

#335

Post by CalRobert »

joshyeager wrote: post #247
CalRobert wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in a multi-unit building in a city where you can commute and do errands by walking or cycling (electric bikes are fine and get around that whole pedaling bit). Source your energy renewably and use little of it (80-300kwh per month isn't crazy depending on your climate). Don't buy much stuff. Eat very little meat. I mean, it doesn't take it to 0 but even if you DO want a comfortable life it doesn't mean living in…

All of that sounds reasonable, except "Live in a multi-unit building in a city". Being that close to that many people sounds like hell.

Well, you certainly don't _have_ to. If you desire access to friends, goods, and services without using carbon-intense forms of transport it tends to make things easier. It also means you're not converting wild land to lawns, asphalt, parking, et cetera. Finally, one of the best ways to improve delivery efficiency is to decrease the last-mile distance (probably poorly named) from a distribution point, like a grocery store, to the site of consumption.

Living in a small residence in wild land without the need for automobile-scale infrastructure to support it would address most of the issues I raised above (a small cottage accessible primarily via mountain bike perhaps? I think I'm selling myself on this idea...)

Then again subsistence farming in a manner that doesn't remove wild vegetation, or better yet uses it without drawing too much from the population, is probably even better. It could be a lonely life though.

Or just live in the country and ride your bike to the city a lot.

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

#336

Post by chr1 »

guptaneil wrote: post #93
oliv__ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before AC, did people not live without it?

Yes, but it wasn't as hot... It's a vicious self-fueling cycle. By using AC, we're making the world warmer, which makes us use more AC.

Use solar panels to power the AC to break the vicious cycle!

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

#337

Post by stillsut »

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.

In the same way that PG showed us how startup = growth, AGW = continued exponentially growing emissions.Since the effect of CO2 on temperature is logarithmic, there can only be marked warming in the continued exponential growth scenarios.

Europe and even US have negative emission growth recently, even though our populations are slowly growing, our emissions efficiency is outclassing our increased consumption for a net small retreats in emissions. 1st world alone, and at their current and projected rate we'll continue to increase CO2 concentration and warm but second derivative of temperature will go strongly negative, and we will never hit a crisis.

There are no scary AGW that show this 1st world emissions plateau, instead they show continued exponential growth coming from increased wealth and high population growth (e.g. projected 6 billion people in Africa by the end of the century) in the developing world.

This doesn't me to "blame" anyone, simply to point out that if we "froze" the consumption levels and population at today's levels there is no scary AGW. Only with inexorable population and economic growth do we get +2C scenarios.

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

#338

Post by clarkevans »

JustUhThought wrote: post #300
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.

I staunchly agree with your first point. I staunchly disagree on the second point. Technological solutions generally "solve" one problem at a time. Desalination solves the fress water problem. Carbon sequestration solve one part of the greenhouse gass problem. Electric cars solve another part. Green energy production and batteries mitigate another part. Next we need to solve pollution from ocean freightliners. Then t…

Why is this voted down? In the end, balance is a global political issue that we must address in addition to the specific concerns.

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

#340

Post by subtenante »

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.

> The only solution to this problem is technology.

Or taxes.

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