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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

#421

Post by MrZongle2 »

kleiba wrote: post #120
bjourne wrote: post #110

Anyone else who feel that the climate-related news are getting very scary? If for every month for the last year, there was a new sprinter breaking the last months world Record in 100 meters you'd know something was fishy. Like some kind of incredibly potent anabolic steroid runners were ingesting. With new and improved versions of that steroid being released every few months...

I would take it with a grain of salt. In Germany, we had warm summers in recent years, but this year's July has generally been cold and very rainy.

I'm amused that you're being chided for citing your local weather as a source of skepticism....yet if you were citing incredibly hot local temperatures as a reason you're incredibly concerned no one would blink an eye.

The core science of global climate change is surrounded by a cloud of toxic subjectivity and witch-hunting. The hypocrisy is sometimes staggering.

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

#422

Post by daxorid »

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

Naw. See the well-documented phenomenon of the Jevon's Paradox:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

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

#423

Post by savanaly »

spdustin wrote: post #402
ldonley wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is tangential to your point about remaining on this planet, but it is much easier to survive on our planet, polluted or not, than it is to setup shop on a different planet. I am fully in agreement with your view on how messed up things are on our planet due to human action. I just felt compelled to point out that any adjustments to be made on other planets can be done here. Can't breath on mars? Build a dome and…

I guess my line of thought on my kids leaving this world for another has an additional assumption: that they, and the others who would do so, would leave to escape not just the planet's climate, but the people who screwed it up for them to begin with.

Don't you think that the problems with the environment sort of stem most significantly from emergent social phenomena analogous to (but not exactly the same as) such things as tragedy of the commons? It's not like this version of the human race just got lucky and got all the bad 'uns. Humans are humans, no point in bemoaning reality. But the social structures are in a sense an equally root cause.

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

#424

Post by Brakenshire »

ak217 wrote: post #398
James001 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can take all that money if you'd like and plant a few trees?

Absolutely, that should be part of it. Fleets of drones planting forests. But artificial photosynthesis modules in the desert and engineered algae could also play a huge role.

The cost of taking carbon out of the atmosphere by not burning it is going to be far cheaper than taking it out of the atmosphere directly, for a long time. Hell, a lot of the things we are failing to do now are outright profitable through reductions in energy costs even without any costing in of carbon emissions.

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

#425

Post by CWuestefeld »

spdustin wrote: post #374

I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy, in the hopes that the majority of my children's lives will be made incrementally better, should they choose to remain on this planet (and, it is assumed, that they may actually have a choice, but there's no way I can know). We're on…

* the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy*

The projections for increased CO2 emissions and thus warming are predicated on global increases in GDP, because greater consumption correlates to greater emissions.

Thus, we should expect that famine will not be the result of climate change, at least within any foreseeable range of change. Falling into famine would dramatically decrease GDPs, and thus forestall climate change. It seems people fail to realize this connection. The factors creating the problem are symptoms of overall prosperity.

I suppose it's possible for things to go non-linear and mess up that relationship. Perhaps we start to rely more on energy sources that are even dirtier (maybe people burn wood to economize, or misguided environmental regulations won't allow for cleaner natural gas to replace increasingly-dirty coal). Or, as I mentioned above, maybe some threshold is crossed where agriculture suddenly requires vastly greater energy input per calorie harvested. But barring very unlikely events like that, climate change will happen because we're ever more prosperous.

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

#426

Post by throwanem »

spdustin wrote: post #374

I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy, in the hopes that the majority of my children's lives will be made incrementally better, should they choose to remain on this planet (and, it is assumed, that they may actually have a choice, but there's no way I can know). We're on…

I understand your despair, but there's hope to be found in the fact that this, too, shall pass. We've weathered worse crises as a species and come out of them smarter and stronger - and we'll do the same with this one, though it take a thousand years.

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

#427

Post by njharman »

kleiba wrote: post #120
bjourne wrote: post #110

Anyone else who feel that the climate-related news are getting very scary? If for every month for the last year, there was a new sprinter breaking the last months world Record in 100 meters you'd know something was fishy. Like some kind of incredibly potent anabolic steroid runners were ingesting. With new and improved versions of that steroid being released every few months...

I would take it with a grain of salt. In Germany, we had warm summers in recent years, but this year's July has generally been cold and very rainy.

World wide consensus of scientists vs random dudes feeling about his local weather this year.

Whom to add salt to. Yes tough question indeed

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

#428

Post by cromulent »

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

The scientists been taking the heat island effect into account the whole time. See box 2.1 here, it explains it quite well:

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climat...

In relation to the El Nino, sure, it is a factor in the heat every 5-7 years or so, including last year, but it doesn't explain the trend.

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

#429

Post by kristopolous »

James001 wrote: post #387
spdustin wrote: post #374

I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy, in the hopes that the majority of my children's lives will be made incrementally better, should they choose to remain on this planet (and, it is assumed, that they may actually have a choice, but there's no way I can know). We're on…

Thank god for negative feedback loops eh? I'm actually glad we have more CO2 in the atmosphere, because it will increase biodiversity and agricultural yields. I don't see any evidence that climate change is proceeding at a fast enough pace to cause damage.

There's a pretty solid factual case for quantifiable damage here: floods in Louisiana, Texas, India, West Virginia and France and fires in California, Portugal and Canada. There's also decreased crop yield due to droughts and decreased fish yield due to ocean acidification. This is non-zero.

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

#430

Post by mikeash »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #425
spdustin wrote: post #374

I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy, in the hopes that the majority of my children's lives will be made incrementally better, should they choose to remain on this planet (and, it is assumed, that they may actually have a choice, but there's no way I can know). We're on…

* the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy* The projections for increased CO2 emissions and thus warming are predicated on global increases in GDP, because greater consumption correlates to greater emissions. Thus, we should expect that famine will not be the result of climate change, at least within any foreseeable range of change. Falling into famine would dramatically decrease GDPs, and thus for…

I think the problem with your idea is that there's huge lag in the system. Even if all human CO2 production ceased today, there would still be huge changes for decades to come. A global catastrophe due to climate change would eventually put a stop to further climate change, but by then it'll be a little too late.

It's a bit like arguing that you can't die from jumping off a bridge, because then you wouldn't be alive to make the jump. It misses the important temporal relationships.

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