UN Says Climate Change 'Out of Control' After Likely Hottest Week on Record (theguardian.com) 239
The UN secretary general has said that "climate change is out of control," as an unofficial analysis of data showed that average world temperatures in the seven days to Wednesday were the hottest week on record. From a report: "If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation, as the last two records in temperature demonstrates," Antonio Guterres said, referring to the world temperature records broken on Monday and Tuesday. The average global air temperature was 17.18C (62.9F) on Tuesday, according to data collated by the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), surpassing the record 17.01C reached on Monday. For the seven-day period ending Wednesday, the daily average temperature was .04C (.08F) higher than any week in 44 years of record-keeping, according to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer data. That metric showed that Earth's average temperature on Wednesday remained at the record high of 17.18C.
Climate Reanalyzer uses data from the NCEP climate forecast system to provide a time series of daily mean two-metre air temperature, based on readings from surface, air balloon and satellite observations. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose figures are considered the gold standard in climate data, said on Thursday it could not validate the unofficial numbers. It noted that the reanalyzer uses model output data, which it called "not suitable" as substitutes for actual temperatures and climate records. The NOAA monitors global temperatures and records on a monthly and an annual basis, not daily.
Climate Reanalyzer uses data from the NCEP climate forecast system to provide a time series of daily mean two-metre air temperature, based on readings from surface, air balloon and satellite observations. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose figures are considered the gold standard in climate data, said on Thursday it could not validate the unofficial numbers. It noted that the reanalyzer uses model output data, which it called "not suitable" as substitutes for actual temperatures and climate records. The NOAA monitors global temperatures and records on a monthly and an annual basis, not daily.
They've just noticed? (Score:2, Insightful)
OTOH, it's not "we can't control it", but rather "we don't choose to control it.".
Re:They've just noticed? (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, it's not "we can't control it", but rather "we don't choose to control it.".
Unless you're including geoengineering in your solution space (which I think we should!), we actually can't control what's going to happen over the next years and even decade or so. Even if we halted all greenhouse gas emissions instantaneously, it would take decades for atmospheric levels to decline and warming to reverse.
What we can choose to control, though, is how much worse we make it, and how fast. Not that it's easy. Just shutting off all greenhouse gas emissions is impossible, and even reducing them rapidly is difficult and expensive.
But I think it's clear we need to make more progress, faster. IMO, we need to enact carbon taxes and carbon tariffs. They don't need to take effect immediately to have rapid impact, either. If people know that fossil fuels are going to get significantly more expensive in 5 years, or even 10, that will cause many of them to make different decisions now when purchasing appliances, vehicles and other infrastructure.
Re:They've just noticed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Geoengineering is dangerous. We don't know the side effects. There are lots of proposals, each with their down side. And they're all expensive even if they work as planned.
Carbon capture can never be cheap. Thermodynamics guarantees that we're going to need to pay more energy to recapture the carbon than we got during the process of releasing it. Nuclear power or VAST amounts of solar power might make that doable. But it won't be cheap.
Solar shields in space can reduce the temperatures, but they reduce them most around the equator, which is likely to turn off the jet stream causing effects we can't calculate. Also it wouldn't be cheap.
And the carbon once recaptured, needs to be stored in some permanent way. Forests don't count except as a temporary sink.
All this is doable, but we'd need to choose a path, stick to it, and pay for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:3)
"Forests don't count except as a temporary sink."
This is false. Even if they burn down, not all of the carbon is released. They don't sequester all of the carbon they're made of permanently, but that doesn't make them not carbon sinks.
Re: (Score:2)
They are sinks, and they are temporary. I wasn't assuming that they burnt down, but they recirculate the carbon they hold while they live. And they don't live forever. (Centuries, perhaps. I wouldn't go as far a millennia while people are around.)
Re: (Score:2)
Geoengineering is dangerous. We don't know the side effects
I mean unless the entire premise behind global warming is bogus then the climate is warmer because of excess CO2. If you reduce CO2 then the side effect should be temperatures returning to normal.
Outside of some runaway system where it removed ALL the CO2 (which would make it too cold) though if we had the ability to run a machine that captured excess carbon (and itself didn't generate more than it captured) and then stopped when pre-industrial levels were achieved that would be awesome.
The only thing is c
Re: (Score:2)
Geoengineering is dangerous. We don't know the side effects
I mean unless the entire premise behind global warming is bogus then the climate is warmer because of excess CO2. If you reduce CO2 then the side effect should be temperatures returning to normal.
You apparently have not heard of climate "tipping points". If we hit one, "simply" removing all that CO2 will _not_ get us back to where we were before.
Here is a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:They've just noticed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see nowhere in your comments an option of a reduction in the world's population. With fewer people the amount of pollution produced would decline, we would use fewer resources, more green space would be open since we wouldn't need vast sprawling cities and their heat islands or the continual destruction of farmland to build more rowhomes which would mean cooler temperatures, and the standard of living would increase for people since most could then afford to own a home with grass and trees rather than live in said heat island.
Re: (Score:2)
I see nowhere in your comments an option of a reduction in the world's population. With fewer people the amount of pollution produced would decline, we would use fewer resources
That's not true. The "developing world" is still developing.
(and the "developed" world is throwing stones at them from their glass houses for daring to try to live like them)
Re: (Score:2)
but it is true there no single better predictor of environmental degradation that density of the human population.
You are conflating truth with fairness. The inescapable truth is continued growth in the developing work means more natural space gets cleared for human activity. The over all natural system becomes even more less resilient, even slower to recover in terms of sinking carbon etc.
Finally lets look at the current population numbers if the standard of living were allowed to rise to anything close t
Re: (Score:2)
but it is true there no single better predictor of environmental degradation that density of the human population.
Well, not *quite*. While its true the environmental impact of humanity tends to be at least proportional to our total population, for any given population a denser geographic distribution will minimize *net* environmetal impact.
Imagine instead a world where almost everyone lived in one of 5000 cities, each roughly about the geographic size and population of Manhattan -- the densest borough of NYC. These super-cities would altogether take up less than 300,000 km^2, a little smaller than Finland or New Mexi
Re:They've just noticed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see nowhere in your comments an option of a reduction in the world's population.
Population is a solved problem. The number of babies born each year has already peaked and is declining. The only reason total population is still growing is because the global population skews young; we're just filling out the older age brackets, not increasing the number of people added each year by birth. Based on the current trajectory we'll hit a peak population of just under 11B by 2050 or so, and then population will actually begin to shrink... but it will probably happen sooner than that, because the decrease in birthrate is accelerating. This could change if life expectancy is greatly increased.
If you want to get to peak population and into declining population even faster, all you need to do is to accelerate the growth of wealth and education (especially female education) in the developing world. I'm all in favor of doing that, though in the short term it will probably mean increased GHG emissions.
If you actually want to start reducing the global population now, the only way is by slaughtering hundreds of millions of people. I am violently opposed to that.
If you'd like to remove yourself, of course, that's your call. I'd probably try to talk you out of it, but it's ultimately your decision. Do what you think is best.
Re: (Score:2)
Or if it's good enough to start reducing the global population beginning up to 9 months from now, that creates options that don't involve slaughtering anyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Or if it's good enough to start reducing the global population beginning up to 9 months from now, that creates options that don't involve slaughtering anyone.
What is your proposed method of preventing those births?
I proposed increasing wealth and education in the developing world, which will accomplish it neatly. What would you do? Forcible mass sterilization? Contraceptives in the water supply? Forcible abortions? Criminal penalties for childbirth? Do you have an option that isn't almost as immoral as slaughtering people?
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think it will prevent enough births? We may have entered population overshoot long ago, and simply increasing wealth and education may not go far enough in preventing war, disease, starvation and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
I see nowhere in your comments an option of a reduction in the world's population.
Population is a solved problem. The number of babies born each year has already peaked and is declining.
While true, the effect is too small to actually solve the problem in the time-frame it needs to be solved.
Re: (Score:2)
Population wasn't a solved problem at 3.5 billion in 1970... what makes us think it's a solved problem at 8 billion? Or 10?
It wasn't a solved problem in 1970. At all, and no one seriously claimed otherwise. Global birthrates were at 4.9 children per woman, just below the 20th-century peak of 5.3, and more than double the replacement rate of 2.1. The birthrate in 1970, if sustained, would have produced a 2023 population of 33B!
This is very different from the situation today. Our population is larger, but our birthrate is barely above replacement, and dropping.
More succinctly, what makes us think it's a solved problem now is
Re:They've just noticed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Controlling it (and thus, fixing the issue) involves a lot of change to how things are done, and will impact a lot of very rich (and thus, powerful) people, who will likely push back or tie things up in court for eons.
For the record, I fully agree that something needs to be done, and the longer we wait, the more drastic measures will be needed to correct things.
Unfortunately, I'm not certain anything can be done without resorting to dictator-like behaviour (irreversible decree that mandates a course correction, stuff like that). I dunno, I"m not a political expert, but I really don't see anything ever happening in any meaningful way.
Re: (Score:3)
Controlling it (and thus, fixing the issue) involves a lot of change to how things are done, and will impact a lot of very rich (and thus, powerful) people, who will likely push back or tie things up in court for eons.
Don't kid yourself "changing how things are done" will impact the poor and the middle class far more than the rich. The rich will still be rich, the poor will have to remain poor, and the middle class will move down, not up.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. The impact to the rich will be on their balance sheets. So what we're really saying here is that the balance sheets of the rich are more important than the lives of everyone else.
We hit an interesting point a few years back. In parts of the Persian Gulf states the wet-bulb temperature got too high for survival. What that really means is that the temperature plus humidity got so high that you can't sweat yourself cool enough to survive. Air condition is necessary for survival, and that means a p
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:2)
Controlling it (reducing extra GHG exhaust) and doing something means becoming technologically and otherwise more advanced humanity. It is crazy how much opposition there is to that.
The Industrial Revolution and supposedly easy and infinite energy got everyone drunk and now is the time of hangover.
On the other hand, a lot of people have not taken part in this, but they have been touched regardless. There is not a single point on earth that has not been manipulated in some way by now.
Time to grow up.
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:2)
The irony is that renewables are cheap and virtually infinite. Their use is only primitive and not advanced because the focus has been elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, it's not "we can't control it", but rather "we don't choose to control it.".
When has the climate ever been in control? I'm pretty sure humans have never controlled the climate and I'm skeptical we ever will.
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:4, Insightful)
We are the dominating force controlling climate. That's why the temperatures are rising -- we are literally already controlling climate.
Re: (Score:2)
While still true, it is slowly sliding into "we cannot control it even if we tried".
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:5, Informative)
It's summer time. It's hot in the summer. Temperatures aren't that different...
Incorrect. Temperatures have been climbing on a consistent trajectory [nasa.gov] and it is a problem. [climate.gov]
When the 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred in the past 12 years, claims that it's not a problem are just living in denial.
Re: (Score:2)
The stat of "more plastic has been produced in a decade that the entire last century" has been printed by several scientific publications (in the past decade).
Plastics are produced from fuel oil production byproducts [bpf.co.uk]. The current model is a shift to bioplastics [nature.com] - as in, plastics produced from plant oils (which have added bonuses in that they can be manufactured for a much more biodegradable composition when desired).
The rest of your rant follows the FUD playbook; equally low on factual validity, even b
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:4, Informative)
They are talking about average temperature worldwide, not just in the northern hemisphere.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me introduce you to the concept of a Southern Hemisphere.
Re: They've just noticed? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And you think that "seasonal amnesia" also applies to meteorologists making long-term measurements and analysing historical data? Are you mentally challenged?
Re: (Score:2)
And where did you find your statistical breakdown on the relative use of air travel between Progressives and Conservatives?
Since when did humans control the entire planet (Score:3)
Once that genie is out of the bottle there's no going back.
We're humans. Let's do what humans have always done — adapt.
Re: (Score:3)
Adapting to my house being underwater? Guess we can live outdoors. Adapt to my fields no longer producing crops? Guess we won't eat. The US and Europe are rich; we'll survive. Elsewhere in the world, not so much. But hey, if it's not me, who cares, right?
Re: (Score:2)
My greatest climate change nightmare is that some segment of earth's population attempts geo-engineering.
It's inevitable, especially a couple of decades down the road when heat waves begin killing people in non-trivial numbers, and climate refugees become a big problem. I think that would be true even if we were doing a better job of reducing GHGs now.
Once that genie is out of the bottle there's no going back.
Sure, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Geoengineering is necessarily large-scale, so implementing global controls on it should be feasible. Out-of-control AI is much more problematic that way.
We're humans. Let's do what humans have always done — adapt.
We adapt by modifying our environment. Whether that's
Re: (Score:2)
Small groups have already done "test studies:. I suspect it's going to happen. One can hope the side effects aren't too horrendous. (Sulfur dioxide emission is one of the less harmful ideas. Volcanoes already to that, so we know that, in moderation, the main effects are cooler climate and acid rain.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
All the more reason to not give up our guns. And yes, that's a perfectly acceptable way to deal with the problem, if it comes to that. You come to take all my shit, I defend my shit. That's what war on a national level often times is. War is and always has been acceptable to humans.
Re: (Score:2)
All the more reason to not give up our guns.
No argument there.
If you're going to die, may as well go down swinging.
And yes, that's a perfectly acceptable way to deal with the problem, if it comes to that.
I mean, it's a perfectly acceptable way to not go silently into the night.. but if you think any amount of guns you have are going to save you, you're fucking delusional, and now I question whether you should have guns.
You come to take all my shit, I defend my shit.
Na, you die trying to. But still, I'd prefer to die trying to defend it rather than not.
That's what war on a national level often times is. War is and always has been acceptable to humans.
War is, in almost all cases, a contest between national war economies.
Food/migratory wars are very, very different.
If food supplie
Re: (Score:3)
Eh, I'm quite sure, given the political will, we could bottle neck southern Mexico and defend North America from a swarm of starving people. You wouldn't even need major weapons just a bunch of rifles and ammo with some strategic wall setup.
Morally we won't do that. Instead we just let them all come into the country and join the welfare system. If there as mass famine, it would already be wrecking havoc on the USA anyway since food is a global commodity sold to the highest bidder.
America poor would be just
Re: (Score:3)
I said with political will. You deploy a couple hundred thousand troops and build defenses. These swarms aren't some huge military might and certainly not if the US is actively using it's military might to prevent this from happening. Once again, we morally wouldn't do all this but if you put us into a total war scenario more akin to WW2, we would most certainly be protecting north American from everything south of mexico.
German's could of very well won that war if they didn't have Hilter playing general. H
Re: (Score:2)
I said with political will. You deploy a couple hundred thousand troops and build defenses.
You remind me of Hitler (not in the whole fascist way) but in the utterly underestimating what a country with 5x your population can do to you, even if you outclass it technologically, and industrially in every conceivably measurable way. Believing that political would lead you to victory in a numerically unwinnable fight.
Those 422 million South Americans aren't going to go quietly into the night.
The 185 million Central Americans north of your wall aren't going to identify with you, either.
They have gun
Re: (Score:2)
Geo engineering is inevitable. Some countries already do frequent cloud seeding. It's not a big jump to pumping sulphur dioxide into the air.
There is no scientific evidence that cloud seeding [wikipedia.org] even produces a statistically significant increase in precipitation never mind the much greater levels of increase in precipitation that would actually be to practitioners of agriculture.
Re: (Score:2)
Even the article you cite states that.
The data is inconsistent, and there is debate. Some of the debate in good faith, some of it not, on both sides of the debate (which kind of indicates to me that there's a political aspect to it that I don't understand yet).
But either way, that is not the same as "no scientific evidence".
What there is, is conflicting evidence.
Re: (Score:3)
If you want to avoid being believed, that's a good place to start.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean that acid-rain causing thing we were all terrified of back in the 80's and went through so much trouble to stop? That's supposed to be a solution now?
I'm not an expert but my understanding is depends on the altitude, just like ozone is great in the stratosphere but not so great at ground level. Sulphur dioxide particles very high up cool the planet but cause acid rain when lower.
That being said, those sulphur particles will drop down eventually and I too wonder what happens then.
Re: (Score:2)
Some countries already do frequent cloud seeding.
Really? Which countries? Honestly curious, I thought cloud seeding was never more than a fringe idea which generally doesn't pan out.
Cloud seeding [Re:Since when did humans contro...] (Score:2)
Some countries already do frequent cloud seeding.
Really? Which countries? Honestly curious, I thought cloud seeding was never more than a fringe idea which generally doesn't pan out.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/17... [cnn.com].
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Isn't that a bit overblown? (Score:2, Troll)
This is what they want us to believe is "out of control"?
No, the UN weather-watchers may be out of control, but then the UN and reality have never had much to do with each other.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm about 50, so I don't have any worry. I have no kids and the planet will last the 20-30 years I have left, so to hell with it afterwards.
What's your excuse?
Re: (Score:2)
Three days, less than a tenth of a degree warmer than any on record.
When records are broken it is almost always by a small margin.
stand outs (Score:2)
Ask not for whom the bell tolls (Score:4, Interesting)
Doubtful (Score:2)
Aught 2023: "Hottest week on record?
Hold my beer..."
Re: (Score:2)
Did you travel back in time? I still have July on my calendar.
Re: (Score:2)
He's a weather reporter. Just predicting the near future is all. Probably correct as well.
I don't think we should be worried (Score:3)
XKCD - Climate Change (Score:5, Informative)
https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
If you can't understand it from this, you never will.
If that's true.. (Score:2)
Then when do we cut this globalist nonsense out? Stop shipping things halfway around the world. Things should be made locally whenever possible.
How about all those cars? When are we going to stop letting people drive cars, since all of them are terrible for the environment? Yes, even EVs. Developing batteries is horrible on the environment.
What about letting people take all these unnecessary airplane rides around the world? For such a small thing, it sure does pollute a great deal and no one HAS to travel b
Then I don't need to worry about it (Score:2)
If it's "out of control" then I don't need to worry about it. Have you noticed that they never seem to comment on climate change unless the temperatures during one tiny sliver of the timeline are going up?
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, they'll stick with "natural fluctuations" right until the food runs out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Have you ever been to the boreal forest? At least in Canada, it's mostly on the Canadian Shield, with very little soil on top of it. All our soil got scraped off and deposited in the Midwest by the last glaciation period.
If the large grain growing regions of the US, Europe, China, and India get too hot to grow crops, there is nowhere to replace that quantity of food.
And that's not even starting to talk about water issues.
All of agricultural civilization has existed within a narrow temperature band. We have
Re: (Score:2)
IIUC, there was an agricultural civilization in New Guinea that was based around tropical trees. It never got very large, though.
Re: (Score:2)
If your country doesn't have the capacity to feed its own population, then YOUR country is clearly overpopulated. It's just that simple. USA is a net exporter of food. If we grow less food, it's still enough to feed our own population.
Of course with globalism, everything goes to the highest bidder so rich people regardless of country won't be going hungry but poor USA people will (already do). No different then poor people half way across the world.
Re: Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We need industry to make fertilizers.
Let's clarify that shall we? We REQUIRE the fossil fuel industry to make fertilizers. And all the other things you listed, like solar. At the end of last year, over 10% of GLOBAL electrical production was wind or solar. Go ahead and take a stab at what happened to GLOBAL emissions last year. Now go ahead and square that circle. All your hand waving has resulted in more emissions. So again, how would building industry solve anything please explain.
Re: (Score:2)
No.
Arable land doesn't just depend on temperature but also on soil quality. What soil quality do you expect from something that has been permafrost for a couple millennia?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:2)
Re: Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:2)
Arable land depends on weather, which depends on climate. If the weather is too chaotic then you can't bring in a crop as it will be ruined first, or just won't grow. You cannot look only at average temperature, which is what you are doing. That's willful ignorance.
Re: Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:2)
Read more about carbon fertilisation. The main point is that accelerated growth reduces the amount of nutrients per weight unit.
This has direct consequences to hundreds of millions of people who rely on crops for their main staple. Malnutrition is already a big killer, so things are not getting better.
I do not know how this affects the nutrients in the ground - I would guess more growth more nutrient use so less nutritious land faster?
Re: (Score:2)
We could always stop growing corn for ethanol...Then we would have plenty of food. Can't have that though. Profit over everything!
Re: Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:2)
We are currently in the process of taking the ethanol back out of our fuels in the USA and IIRC the corn ethanol subsidies are either already over or soon to sunset
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. You cannot just change climate in a place and still expect things to grow. What typically happens is loss of most former plants, loss of topsoil due to floods and wind and then desertification. Sure, if you hold this up for, say, 10000 years, enough fauna will adapt, but that is not realistic.
Re: Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:2)
I expect them to blame it on El Niño.
While fact is, too, past couple of years the weather was surpressed cos of La Niña. Not that anyone noticed, on the contrary.
Regardless of solar cycles, we're still putting more and more co2 out. This looks bleak.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, both are correct, of course. Those are periodic weather patterns (within the current climate model). It is hotter now because we're in the hotter branch of the pattern. If the model continues to work, this will be followed in a few years by another cooler cycle.
Saying that one is normal and the other suppresses it is just wrongly interpreting what the model says. The oscillation is one of several in the current climate model. Those two have names that people recognize, but there are several other
Re:Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't wait until now. They've been using it for a while.
There are three pillars to denialism, all of which have one goal - to absolve people of the need to do "anything". That is the starting objective, and any suggestions that don't support it are non-starters.
1 - "It isn't happening"
This is the kind of thing that manifests as a politician taking a snowball inside of a governmental building and holding it up. It's toddler logic.
2 - "It's happening, but it's not us."
Slightly more nuanced, this view manifests in people doing things like pointing to an outlier year (or century/millenia/epoch) and saying, "See, this stuff cycles and it has nothing to do with people." It requires stripping "rate of change" from the discussion, but it's a little easier to defend. It doesn't take much work to build the counter-argument, but it takes some effort. However, confirmation bias (admittedly on both sides) makes arguing this point meaningless.
3 - "Doesn't matter - the ship has sailed"
This argument disregards cause, but makes the erroneous assertion that there's simply nothing that can be done, so don't worry about it. But you should absolutely question intensely the conclusion that everybody is powerless in the face of the problem. I have seen nothing to demonstrate that as an irrefutable truth.
Re: (Score:2)
3 - "Doesn't matter - the ship has sailed"
This.... is the one that amazes me most.
There is always something to be done. And if part population carrying capacity events are indicative, it will include those who engaged in 1) and 2) being put against a wall and removed from further consideration.
We're shifting into "You arrogant ass, you've killed us", to "You know they're going to come for you first, right?"
Re:Well, this is what they've been waiting for! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is always something to be done.
Yes, but I'm afraid it's not going to be done in the way you'd hope.
If you look back in history, shortages (of pretty much any kind, varying from severe to perceived) were a direct cause of war. (Note: wars had other reasons as well, but we digress.)
Not enough food to eat? Go plunder, wage war, come back with food.
Population too large? No worries, we're going to make this neighbor go extinct.
Our river went dry? There's another river nearby. Ah, yes, there's a village there, we'll take care of them.
The problem is, we're no longer limited by distance, weaponry and/or manpower.
And with 4 out of top 5 nations by population are nuclear powers... My sad bet is on nuclear warfare being that something to be done. It's a bet I'm desperate to lose, and very afraid to win.
Re: (Score:2)
North hemisphere nuke exchange might cool off the world enough for some southern enclaves of people to survive.
Re: (Score:2)
If you look back in history, shortages (of pretty much any kind, varying from severe to perceived) were a direct cause of war. (Note: wars had other reasons as well, but we digress.)
That's exactly what I mean.
However, I think you underestimate the power that the 600 million people living south of the world's (likely) most dangerous nuclear armed superpower.
I'd be willing to bet the nuclear powers are utterly destroyed by migratory warfare long before there's a reason to fire at each other.
This isn't some anti-immigration rant. It's just simple extrapolation of what happens when people start starving.
When I said, "they're going to come for you first", I meant on a global scale. Th
Re: (Score:2)
"So long as "everyone" has to abide by those rules, I'm all on board.
So you're not on board. You've placed an insurmountable barrier in the middle of it. And yes, you even said that, as in "It will NEVER happen though."
You're making the classical mistake of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, thus absolving yourself of the need to do anything. This is just a subtler version of point 3 - "The ship has sailed".
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, I have a hybrid car, no children, use less then 8 Kilowatts a day for energy and don't eat overly lavish food. I'm a renter, so I can't get solar or water catchment, though the condo I sold did have solar. I'm already more green then a huge portion of people living in the USA.
I still feel version 3 is about where we are and unless we do BIG changes, which are politically unlikely to ever happen, we aren't going to save ourselves anyway. You disappear USA tomorrow and those frozen tundra locking
Re: (Score:2)
I'm describing behaviours, and pointing out some intellectual dishonesty. I restricted my point to "denials" - I did not address informed, well-researched debate.
People push assumed views on others a LOT - but I've noticed it the most in climate discussion. Even when there's no good logical reason to ascribe a position based on the content, but rather on an assumption based on an emotional reaction.
As for uncertainty among scientists, I would point out that, to my knowledge, there isn't a single thing I can
Re: (Score:2)
For example, two posts down from yours I see this:
Nobody is denying climate change. Climate change has been happenning since the Earth exists. It's just the effect of man on climate change is close to nil.
The effect of human produced greenhouse gas on climate is no longer controversial. It is not "close to nil."
This is what I call denial.
Re: (Score:3)
That's the beauty of it, no matter how obvious it gets, they always have an excuse to not get off their lazy ass.
First stage, "there is no climate change".
Then, when the facts become impossible to deny even if you deliberately go out of your way to ignore them, we'll get to "ok, we see a change in the climate, but it's no reason to worry, it's just the normal fluctuation".
When you manage to show that it ain't, the next stage is "ok, we're past the normal fluctuation, but it ain't caused by us, so we don't h
What good will money be? Strife takes the fun out. (Score:2)
When your spending it all on rebuilding the life that will be destroyed when you house burns or is flooded or destroyed by high winds and giant hail? Or building fences to keep out all those to whom you say "don't live there, then" come and live where you "smartly" (accidentally? inertially?) located. When on top of all this you feel the need to protect and provide for your family when you job's gone because you can't work in the constant smoke or the markets are gone for your manufacture? Feeding said fami
Re: (Score:2)
On what basis do you make your claim?
When the climate scientists say "hottest day" they mean the average temperature over the entire earth, not at one special location.
OTOH, reading down to the bottom of your post, I suspect I may be responding to a troll.
Re: (Score:3)
Randy's no troll. He believes that shit. And he votes for it.
Re: (Score:3)
We don't have records from all over the planet reaching back millennia. This is correct. Especially the temperatures in Africa have only been collected for a couple decades.
But we do have temperature records from permafrost places and ice cores that date back millennia. We also have temperature records reaching back a couple 100 years in Europe and, to a lesser degree, North America.
It's not just the 1980s. We're reaching back half a millennium at least.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see climate deniers "infesting" this site. Quite the opposite in fact. Lots of plebs that appease to billionaires who travel around the world in private jets and lecture us about how WE are destroying the planet
2006 just called and wants its argument back...
Re: (Score:2)
What do you need? A whole degree every single day?
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you don't eat food based on the same mindset.
Re: (Score:2)
So, since they're talking about Earth is crossing 1.5C of climate change, the volcanic contribution would be 2% of that. And lasting for at most 7 years (while the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we're emitting has a lifetime in excess of a hundred years).
Re:Never let a crisis go to waste (Score:4, Informative)
A semi-valid point. They're pointing at unprecedented disruption of the jet stream, so that MIGHT count as weather rather than climate. OTOH, the slowing of the jet stream that is due to the lessened degree of temperature variation between the poles and the equator seems more like climate than weather to me...and that's what enabled the "unprecedented disruption of the jet stream".
P.S.: The slowing of the jet stream is not a one-time phenomenon. It's been progressively slowing for over a decade. Sounds like climate to me.
Re: (Score:2)
According to An Inconvenient Truth, we are already a decade past the tipping point. Hell, Manhattan has been underwater for years.
Neither of these statements are in An Inconvenient Truth.
You know, transcripts are online; it's possible to check assertions like this. But, of course, anonymous cowards never do.
No, they don't (Score:3, Insightful)
REAL scientists (the sort who adhere to the mast basic rules of science and do not manipulate data, the paper publishing process, the peer review process, etc) do not, in fact, have ANY valid means. It used to be the case that a first year science student would get an "F" on a paper if he did what the "climate science" guys do routinely. namely: mix data from different sources that lack a common calibration.
Can you put data on one chart that is a mix of temps taken with a digital thermometer and temps take