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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

#431

Post by mikeash »

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.

What's the evidence for increased CO2 leading to increased biodiversity and agricultural yields?

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

#432

Post by ewzimm »

bad_user wrote: post #209
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 problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogether…

That idea about all pasture-raised, grass-fed beef isn't even possible. Current pasture-rased beef is 9% of global cattle. Grazing, mostly beef, occupies 60% of the world's pastures. So we would only need to move the grazers to 666% of the world's pastures to build our sustainable future!

One of the main causes of global warming right now is grass-fed beef because it requires so much land. In South America, it's common practice to burn down the rainforest to feed herds of cattle, which is why we end up exterminating thousands of species per year. They're eating straight through some of our biggest carbon sinks and annihilating biodiversity.

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

#433

Post by collyw »

blahi wrote: post #419
collyw wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your qualification is that you read HN? I'll stick with the scientists thanks.

No, my qualification is that I create statistical models for living and I know how flawed they are. What are yours?

I wasn't giving mine, I am leaving that up to the experts in the field and trusting that they will do a better job than me.

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

#434

Post by aqme28 »

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…

>Anyone who cooks can instinctively understand how "carryover heat" works

My thermo professor was fond of re-branding "global warming" as "global heating." Right now we're just melting the ice cubes. If that heat-reservoir ever dries up, things will really start warming.

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

#435

Post by dredmorbius »

gambiting wrote: post #345
dredmorbius wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs of carbon sequestration range from about $20 to $70 per tonne, as part of exhaust capture (CCS). For direct capture from the atmosphere, values are closer to $150/tonne. The world is dumping 38 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. (I'll ignore the additional gigatonnes we've already committed.) That's $2.6 trillion per year for sequestration, just to stay even. (The value's actually lower than…

You also have to keep in mind that it's this expensive because it's not done on a huge scale. If it was, the cost would very likely be much much lower than the quoted $150.

The costs are dominated by the chemical energy requirements, as I understand. They seem unlikely to fall greatly.

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

#436

Post by dredmorbius »

tomp wrote: post #305
dredmorbius wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've got a really good storage medium for energy. Liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons. They can be synthesised, in a carbon-neutral fashion. Other storage methods, including batteries, molten salt (thermal), and CAES are likely to also be used. But there are some things for which bulk liquid fuel still wins. There's over 50 years of research into it. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...

And no production prototype?

Small scale, USNRL, though the lack of anything more does concern me.

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

#437

Post by monk_e_boy »

mikeash wrote: post #431
James001 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's the evidence for increased CO2 leading to increased biodiversity and agricultural yields?

Wasn't CO2 much higher in the past, hence why plants were so massive and could support big dino's.

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

#438

Post by mikeash »

jasonkester wrote: post #249
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.

Technology never ceases to amaze though. Just last week I replaced the 12 50 watt spotlights in my kitchen with 42 watts total worth of LEDs. For twenty dollars. You can't tell the difference except that maybe it's a bit brighter in there. That was something I wouldn't have predicted being able to do 10 years ago. If something changes in the next 30 years that make this whole climate change panic look like a bunch of…

Lighting is pretty small potatoes compared to transportation and agriculture and climate control. Your efficiency improvements, while great, are vastly outweighed by increases in global population and standards of living.

If you were to wave a magic wand and put a complete stop to human CO2 emissions today, the consequences of climate change would still be felt for decades. Never mind some technological change in the next 30 years, we needed something in the last 30 years. It's too late to stop it now, the only question is how much it can be mitigated, and how to deal with the consequences.

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

#439

Post by [deleted] »

kristopolous wrote: post #429
James001 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#440

Post by seiferteric »

mikeash wrote: post #430
CWuestefeld wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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…

Not only that, but it's cumulative, all the CO2 from the past century+ is not going away very fast.
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