Other than "numbers go up" it's unclear to me what the consequences are, as I'm not extremely familiar with El Niño events. Hurricanes, maybe?
The Strongest El Niño Ever
91–100 of 370 posts
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#92The buried lede: What does all this mean for global temperatures? Because global temperature lags ENSO by around three to five months, most of this event’s warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin I’m certainly no climate scientist, but if I lived in Europe, I would absolutely be looking into how to get a solar energy system set u…
So we've been stupid "solar oven" buildings for 50 years while climate scientists were warning against extreme weather events and, now that said extreme event arrives, the best we find is to rush to aircon. Seems pretty short-sighted to me.
Don't worry it will even out when the Gulf Stream chokes out /s
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if we don't do anything about emissions and climate change picks up, lives in 2126 will be unmistakably better than ours in all dimensions that matter.
I really believe this is corporate propaganda. "Don't worry, we have the solutions". You don't.
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Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#94Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#95I wrote to Alan Kay over 8 years ago about my fears of global warming and how tech seems to dismiss it as a concern on the whole.
A little known fact about Alan Kay is 17 years ago he was part of a group of "systems people" who published for the NFS about various systems including the climate. He helped write "Transitions and Tipping Points in Complex Environmental Systems" (https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2022-12/Transitions-and-ti...). He wrote to me that "This, along with many other warnings from many other sources over many years, fell on deaf or disbelieving ears."
He agreed with my concern saying "And, yes, you are right that things will likely be really bad if the climate is allowed to crash past the tipping point."
But what he said following that shook me to my core. Kay said "If you think of a system as an upside-down coca cola bottle, it is easy to see that a little nudge can topple it, whereas considerably more energy is then required to put it back.".
What this means is to get CO2 back down to 350 ppm (we are at 428 ppm), we would need to expend more energy than we did getting it to 450 ppm. That means, we would have to expend more energy than humans have produced IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY in the next 10-20 years (30,000-45,000 EJ range) just to put the system back to where it's safe.
Ask yourself, where are we spending our energy right now as a species? On putting the system to a safe level or something else?
Do we even have the capability to do it? As we continue to expand our industrial capacity, we also use non-renewable resources like oil and metals we can't recycle. As we exploit them, we degrade our industrial capacity for the future. For a deeper analysis read Limits to Growth and work related to it.
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#96The buried lede: What does all this mean for global temperatures? Because global temperature lags ENSO by around three to five months, most of this event’s warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin I’m certainly no climate scientist, but if I lived in Europe, I would absolutely be looking into how to get a solar energy system set u…
I don't mean to be divisive, but this meme-like stream of news articles and comments about Europeans being silly about air conditioning, from the drill-baby-drill nation that refused to even try to do anything about climate change, really grates on me.
It would be one thing if Europe immediately stopped using coal, drastically reduced airline usage, quit building gasoline cars, but if anything it is only marginally better than the US. Europe mostly shifted their dirty work to Asia and North America, while restricting themselves from using air conditioning as some kind of virtue signaling. That's the problem as I see it.
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#97The buried lede: What does all this mean for global temperatures? Because global temperature lags ENSO by around three to five months, most of this event’s warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin I’m certainly no climate scientist, but if I lived in Europe, I would absolutely be looking into how to get a solar energy system set u…
I don't mean to be divisive, but this meme-like stream of news articles and comments about Europeans being silly about air conditioning, from the drill-baby-drill nation that refused to even try to do anything about climate change, really grates on me.
It's clearly an op by people who don't want the story to be about a historic heatwave ravaging Europe, so instead they make it about dum Europeans without air conditioning (which they didn't need before).
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#98What's interesting to me is that almost all models underestimated the ocean temperature. We are entering uncharted waters and I fear that at some point we will get an extreme extreme weather event and the worse thing is that we won't see it coming.
Well, we can see it coming, but we are doing very little about
We are doing a lot. Almost 90% of electricity capacity added last year was renewables. Nearly 1 in 3 cars sold are now EVs. The world is spending over $2 trillion every year on low‑carbon energy investment. Solar and wind have already avoided more than 2 gigatons of C02 being added to the atmosphere. In the US, the IRA will drop emissions 40% to below 2005 levels.
What do you mean we are doing very little?
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#99The buried lede: What does all this mean for global temperatures? Because global temperature lags ENSO by around three to five months, most of this event’s warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin I’m certainly no climate scientist, but if I lived in Europe, I would absolutely be looking into how to get a solar energy system set u…
> I would absolutely be looking into how to get [...] at least one window air-conditioning unit if not a heat pump before next summer
Before you do that, do the cost effective thing: shadow and wind. Then you can add an aircon iff thats not enough.
For shadow, reftrofitting adjustable sunshade is pretty effective. Sunlight brings about 1kw per square meter of window. That like having your heater at full power when its already hot.
For wind: fans, preferably ceiling fans. Lowers perceived temperature by about 3.5 °C.
Re: The Strongest El Niño Ever
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
DC water consumption is a red herring. That water is returned back to its source but warmer.
If you think that every data center is now a closed loop system enjoy your propaganda. Colossus 1 and 2 still use open loop systems. And with the case of blow down water that's "returned" it's not usable due to the use of concentrated salts (1,200 to 6,000 mg/L). In your mind this is a closed loop system of clean water. It is not. And as DCs have less and less discharge there is more and more solid waste produced. Yo…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48055532>