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Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

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Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#91

Post by rys »

GordonS wrote: post #79
odiroot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you pay to install and maintain AC if we (in Central Europe) literally have 2 weeks of real hot summer (about a month recently though)? It would literally be a waste of money.

I live in Scotland, where the winters are long, and at worst we get a couple of weeks a year of a truely horrible heat/humidity combination. I'm also well travelled, so well used to experiencing the joys of AC in hot countries. Yet for some reason the thought of buying an AC unit (or even a fan!) has never once crossed my mind! If I had thought of it though, I would expect the units to be expensive, and installation…

Brit here, and in 2017 I bought a window venting small ish unit made by Amcor. £199 or so, and worth every penny these last few years. When I don’t use it, it lives in my spare room tucked away and I wheel it to my office for the hot spells.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#92

Post by tzakrajs »

xwdv wrote: post #59
mikeash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re going straight from “we don’t really know if something is happening” to “it’s too late anyway so why bother” without going through the troublesome “we should try to stop this” phase.

If the world were a fine place worth fighting for, maybe you’d have a point. But increasingly, I just look around, see the news, see the social media, and think why bother? Humanity will never be anything more than this. Things seem to be wrapping up, don’t have kids, don’t try to save the world, just savor what is left till it’s gone. In the coming decades we will begin to see a loss in the knowledge of mankind, as…

Thanks for the breath of fresh air. People stumbling over each other trying to foolishly validate the status quo makes me lose hope for this world.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#93

Post by benjamoon »

The range between the min and max temps for the last 100 years is under 1°C globally. For the last 1,000 years it's just over 1°C (from wolfram alpha at least). It's clear that temps are slowly rising, but the constant reports of extreme weather seem at odds with the data to me. Is 1°C over 1,000 years really doing all this? When I read articles about the weather I have to remind myself what the data says. If I didn't check occasionally I'd think we'd increased by 10°C in the last 5 years.

For the record, I drive an electric car and my house is supplied by a purely renewable provider here in the UK. I hate the thought of polluting the planet and I do what I can to live a green life. I really love science and study as much as I can, but reading about global warming is very different to reading about quantum electrodynamics or special relativity. I'll happily watch the oil companies go under and I think dumping tons of crap in to the atmosphere is clearly terrible and shouldn't go unpunished, I just wish I had some better data to back this all up.

Source: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+temperature

Has anyone got good sea level rise data for the last 1,000 years? Again, when I read any article I feel like the sea must have risen by a few meters already as everything is so dramatic, but I can't find a decent dataset that sets out what has actually happened.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#94

Post by skosch »

chrisco255 wrote: post #46
mirimir wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm certainly not getting out alive. And so far, nobody that I know of has. Maybe someday, one day, though. But yes, you likely meant "we're" in the sense of the human race, or modern technological society. I really doubt that the human race is seriously at risk. Although global population could drop substantially. As part of modern technological society crashing. So it goes. It was probably inevitable. Edit: A…

Not getting how that's possible at all. An ice age would be far more devastating to the human race than a warming period. Crop yields are up: 1) https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/cornyl... 2) https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/riceyl... Ok, so food looks safe and secure. Um, lets see, what are the other basic needs? Shelter? Water? We've had the rainiest year in 125 years: https…

You need to look beyond just US corn. Crop yields need to continue increasing globally just to keep up with population growth, which going to be a significant challenge. At the same time, farmland is being lost to urbanization and desertification every single day. On top of that, weeds and pests are developing resistance to chemicals, and pollinating insects are dying off rapidly. Plus, GMO notwithstanding, conventional intensification methods are running into diminishing returns. So: farming ain't getting any easier.

Now, enter climate change. Droughts are bad. Downpours (cf. rainiest year) are arguably worse, because they accelerate soil erosion. Many places have lost half or more of their arable soil over the past half century, and rebuilding soil takes many, many years. No soil, no harvest.

So I don't share your optimism. Perhaps there are high tech solutions to all of the above problems, but they're (currently) too expensive for most of the world.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#95

Post by loup-vaillant »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #56
summerdown2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're implying. You seem to be missing out the bit describing which non-governmental actor can fix this. The first issue is that everyone else thinks only government can solve this. If you say governments can't, but have no other solution, you're essentially saying "no-one can do this." Which, while depressing, isn't going to achieve much. The second issue is that, clearly, governments could actual…

> Resolving global warming is actually possible with our current resources and technology. Really? We'd all love to see a plan. Or by "resolving" did you mean "holding it to only a 2 degree rise"? > They most likely aren't going to. Yeah... I think that's kind of andrewstuart's point. They aren't going to. So, given that they aren't going to, what's the next move? > You seem to be missing out the bit describing which…

> Really? We'd all love to see a plan.

Prioritize. Food, shelter, health. Everything else is expendable. Accept an unprecedented, long term recession on the order of 10% per year, possibly a bit less if we're lucky.

That's the easy part. The hard part is doing that without having a civil war (or just plain war) on your hands. We most probably need to come up with a convincing story where the economy slows down drastically, and we're all happier than we are now.

There's one little snag, though: this plan necessarily involves reducing inequalities. We cannot afford the richest of us. The problem is that they are rich and have a lot of influence. They will throw the army at us (possibly by asking the politicians whose election campaing they funded).

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#96

Post by pier25 »

pulisse wrote: post #15
revscat wrote: post #4

This seems like the perfect time to panic. I just don’t see how we’re getting out of this alive.

> I just don’t see how we’re getting out of this alive. Even worst case predictions for climate change don't imply the human race will be threatened. But what we will see is massive geopolitical disruption as previously habitable regions become uninhabitable. What happens when coastal Myanmar is underwater or southern India experiences 130 degree days on a regular basis? Climate change is going to make itself felt ov…

How can you not think the human race will be threatened by all those factors?

Forget about the geopolitcal issues, which will indeed be massive. What about food production?

In 2010 a single heat wave triggered the Arab spring revolts a couple of months later.

> The wildfires destroyed one-third of Russia's wheat harvest. The Russian government refused to export the rest of its harvest and set a grain export ban to fight inflation. This led to extremely high food prices, which led to panicking on the global markets. Many experts including from the International Food Policy Research Institute say that the Russian wildfires in summer 2010 played a leading role in triggering the Arab Spring starting in 2010, especially in Egypt's case. Higher food prices helped to make oppression, poverty, and corruption under autocratic leaders even more aching for the local population. Also, as Russia was not even a member of the WTO at the time, banning exports was not a problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Russian_wildfires

We are approaching a world were these kind of problems with food production will be globalized and will affect everything but specially the global economy.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#97

Post by tjr225 »

RickS wrote: post #58
odiroot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you pay to install and maintain AC if we (in Central Europe) literally have 2 weeks of real hot summer (about a month recently though)? It would literally be a waste of money.

Window mounted AC units are $100 - $200. It sits in a closet except for the 2 months a year that Seattle requires AC. A proper central air system would be overkill, but the small one is worth it. I wonder if window / removable units factor into the DOE's 75% number. From a real estate recordkeeping perspective, my home does not have AC, despite the previous owner permanently building a window unit into the side of th…

> except for the 2 months a year that Seattle requires AC

Huh? 2 months out of the year AC is required? Even if you can not, somehow, stand a week or two of 90-100 degree weather(with NO humidity!) without air conditioning, to months of required AC in Seattle seems like an insane exaggeration.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#98

Post by krapp »

mikeash wrote: post #34
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #12

IIRC there's around 7m of sea level rise tied up in Greenland ice, and it's already melting remarkably quickly. Now add the wildfires and it seems like it's escalating dangerously out of control. While a tipping point tips, government action is still conspicuously absent, and countries (well Russia and Canada mainly) are trying to nail their continental shelf claims in the Arctic for oil exploration.

We’re going straight from “we don’t really know if something is happening” to “it’s too late anyway so why bother” without going through the troublesome “we should try to stop this” phase.

Because it is too late. We're realizing now that it was too late decades ago.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#99

Post by Scoundreller »

danellis wrote: post #74
Scoundreller wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt like 6% was quite low. A/C is one of the highest wattage circuits that homes have, and it runs for a lot more hours than similar circuits (hot water or cooktops/ovens).

Do you mean that it's rated highest, or that you've measured the consumption as the highest? Perhaps it has a high rating for initial inrush currents.

Usually 3-4 kilowatts demand for continuous operation. Depends on sizing obviously.

Dunno if they even have measurable inrush demand from the mains as they have capacitors and can't turn on when they fail.

Re: Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland

#100

Post by loup-vaillant »

adrianN wrote: post #71
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Resolving global warming is actually possible with our current resources and technology. Really? We'd all love to see a plan. Or by "resolving" did you mean "holding it to only a 2 degree rise"? > They most likely aren't going to. Yeah... I think that's kind of andrewstuart's point. They aren't going to. So, given that they aren't going to, what's the next move? > You seem to be missing out the bit describing which…

Build enough renewables to replace all fossil fuels and then some, use any extra energy to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and bury it. Plant trees and turn them into charcoal. If you're very fancy you can do some more risky geoengineering.

> Build enough renewables to replace all fossil fuels and then some

Might work if you throw lots and lots of nuclear reactors into the mix. It's less dangerous than most people think, and is most likely the most efficient way to amortise the energy shortage induced recession.

(Renewables still need massive investment, I'm just saying they likely won't be enough.)

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