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January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

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Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#51

I've been wondering why TSLA has been trading the way it has. A normal short squeeze doesn't adequately explain it. The volume today alone is more than 2x the last reported shares short. We all know something very, very bad is going on with the climate.

All of us reading this right now are going to die just barely seeing the true extent of the outcomes. And we'll likely all die reasonably content knowing it's not our problem. We're among the last generations that can expect to ride the current peak in human success before the hard bounds kick in and things either become much more difficult or more likely just completely collapse. We all love to rest easy on the fall…

> "Oh but there are extremophiles that survive insane conditions!"

> And what do they feed on?

You are underestimating the diversity of metabolism in bacteria/archaea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea#Metabolism

As a weird example, there is an isolate cave in Romania, with a weird source of energy http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-l... . (If that's all life that all life that will survive, it looks like a nightmary scenario. But killing completely all the biosphere is very hard.)

Also, Cyanobacteria will probably be fine. They almost killed accidently everyone else in the past, but there are not hard feeling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#52
post #46

They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. The raw data ALWAYS speaks for itself — out of the 50 U.S. state record high temperatures, 23 were set during the 1930s, while 36 occurred prior to 1960. There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmax Edit: I am getting quite a few downvotes even…

> They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. > There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states If they were talking about maximum recorded temperatures, your argument would've made sense. However, they're talking about average temperatures, for which a 30 year range is certainly not meaningless.

Here’s the same data for the minimum temperature records broken:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmin

Around 10 were broken in the last 3 decades which is more than the around 7 broken for the max temperatures. If more min records are broken, then I would expect the average to be going down not up.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#53

They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. The raw data ALWAYS speaks for itself — out of the 50 U.S. state record high temperatures, 23 were set during the 1930s, while 36 occurred prior to 1960. There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmax Edit: I am getting quite a few downvotes even…

> Please let me know what the downvote is for It's for not knowing what the word "globally" means. That is a pretty big hole in your own data. Look at the equivalent data where it exists for South America, Europe, Africa or Asia. The majority have records set in the last 30 years. Of course, none of the Northern hemisphere countries set their all-time record temperature in January so all-time records in the US are pr…

My point is that a 30 year period is meaningless when majority of records we see were broken much before that and the number of records being broken has gone down significantly as per NOAA data.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#54
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things that photosynthesize will be able to hang on as long as they can tolerate their local climate and have access to water, nitrogen, and CO2, which are the only building blocks they need. Climate change will destroy a wide variety of intricate networks, and make large parts of the planet uninhabitable, but life will cling to temperate zones.

Surprise! I'm a mathematical biochemist. The necessary reactions to make a photosynthetic carbohydrate production chemical pathway energetically feasible actually only exist within extremely narrow temperature bounds. You honestly don't understand how naive you are. You're disguising hope by what sounds vaguely scientific. Not to mention: exactly where do you think those temperate zones will exist?

> You honestly don't understand how naive you are.

I don't hang around hackernews to get insulted. It's not what we do around here.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#55
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we'll likely all die reasonably content knowing it's not our problem. That's exactly the kind of thinking that caused this mess ( i.e climate catastrophe) in the first place. Had people prioritized their grandchildren and great-grandchildren instead of short-term profits then the effects of climate change would have been mitigated long ago. For example, companies like Exxon knew of what lay ahead. They chose to…

Oh, to be clear, I'm not saying my logic is normatively correct. You're (I think) likely objectively completely right.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. :)

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#56

They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. The raw data ALWAYS speaks for itself — out of the 50 U.S. state record high temperatures, 23 were set during the 1930s, while 36 occurred prior to 1960. There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmax Edit: I am getting quite a few downvotes even…

Interesting. It's definitely not the case in Europe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records#Europe

30 records in the last 15 years vs 18 in the previous 100+

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#57
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are using a 30 year range only which is meaningless. > There’s barely been a handful of record high temperatures broken in the last 3 decades out of 50 states If they were talking about maximum recorded temperatures, your argument would've made sense. However, they're talking about average temperatures, for which a 30 year range is certainly not meaningless.

Here’s the same data for the minimum temperature records broken: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records/all/tmin Around 10 were broken in the last 3 decades which is more than the around 7 broken for the max temperatures. If more min records are broken, then I would expect the average to be going down not up.

> If more min records are broken, then I would expect the average to be going down not up.

You would expect so but the data about temperature anomalies suggests the opposite:

Annual 2019 Average Temperature Anomalies in USA: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201913/supplemental/...

Global Temperature Anomaly Mapping at a glance: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/

Global Climate Summary in 2019 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-201912

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprise! I'm a mathematical biochemist. The necessary reactions to make a photosynthetic carbohydrate production chemical pathway energetically feasible actually only exist within extremely narrow temperature bounds. You honestly don't understand how naive you are. You're disguising hope by what sounds vaguely scientific. Not to mention: exactly where do you think those temperate zones will exist?

> You honestly don't understand how naive you are. I don't hang around hackernews to get insulted. It's not what we do around here.

I don't hang around HN to have every other commenter confirm my existing opinions either.

Being told by someone that they think you're wrong isn't an insult.

If you buy the reassuring yet nonsensical idea that "the humans are fucked, the planet will be fine", you can be adequately classified as cherry-picking a minimally discomfiting worldview, against all evidence. That's not an insult.

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#59

I've been wondering why TSLA has been trading the way it has. A normal short squeeze doesn't adequately explain it. The volume today alone is more than 2x the last reported shares short. We all know something very, very bad is going on with the climate.

What does the current TESLA share prices have to do with the environment situation? It's not like TESLA has some magic pixie dust that can save the world tomorrow. Environmental impact from current ICE cars is fairly small compared to the pollution caused by mass manufacturing with no recycling, heavy industry, coal burning, shipping, etc. People buying more Teslas are a drop in the ocean when it comes to saving the…

"Environmental impact from current ICE cars is fairly small compared to the pollution caused by mass manufacturing with no recycling, heavy industry, coal burning, shipping, etc"

I agree the problem is bigger, but non-industrial transport is about 15% of CO2 emissions in the US. It's nontrivial. There is also the grid storage business.

Anyway, I don't care to make this about Tesla/TSLA but the stock movement has made me wonder if there was material news I was unaware of. That could be a breakthrough in efficiency or that is good for Tesla, or it could be much worse than expected climate forecasts that might direct very large spending their way (among other things).

Re: January 2020 warmest on record: EU climate service

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we do end up a failed experiment, it is more than likely the great filter theory is correct and we are just one in a billion of endless repetitions that reached their critical mass and fizzled out. Time literally means nothing to the universe. So the idea we can kill all life in the universe, or are somehow responsible for the creation we live in is oddly religious to me. Yet you place no real import in the demise…

> Time literally means nothing to the universe. This simply isn't true. I don't know where you absorbed such a dumb and naive idea, but the current theory pretty much completely rules out your completely unsuppported take. Gravity is to our best knowledge not symmetric in time, and neither is heat. (Every other fundamental force in QCD is though.) The likelihood of the emergence of life decreases as overall entropy i…

> This simply isn't true. I don't know where you absorbed such a dumb and naive idea

Lol. The fermi paradox is not my idea, neither is the great filter as one the possible explanations. But the presumption in both is that we are not alone as intelligent life, not to mention simple life.

You mention the goldilocks theory, which indeed states that life probably has an incredibly thin temperature band in which it survives. But that just means life is unlikely on most planets, which means almost nothing in infinite space and time.

The fact life started once, makes it likely it has done so before us and will keep doing so. When I say time doesn't matter, I mean it could take billions of eons, and in the context of the universe that doesn't matter.

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