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Earth

Global Ocean Heat Has Hit a New Record Every Single Day For the Last Year 130

According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the world's oceans have hit a new temperature record every day since mid-March last year, fueling concerns for marine life and extreme weather across the planet. From a report: Global average ocean temperatures in 2023 were 0.25 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous year, said Gregory C. Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer. That rise is "is equivalent to about two decades' worth of warming in a single year," he told CNN. "So it is quite large, quite significant, and a bit surprising." Scientists have said ocean heat is being supercharged by human-caused global warming, boosted by El Nino, a natural climate pattern marked by higher-than-average ocean temperatures. The main consequences are on marine life and global weather. Global ocean warmth can add more power to hurricanes and other extreme weather events, including scorching heat waves and intense rainfall. [...]

"At times, the records (in the North Atlantic) have been broken by margins that are virtually statistically impossible," Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School told CNN. If very high ocean temperatures continue into the second half of 2024 and a La Nina event develops -- El Nino's counterpart that tends to amplify Atlantic hurricane season -- "this would increase the risk of a very active hurricane season," Hirschi said. About 90% of the world's excess heat produced by burning planet-heating fossil fuels is stored in the oceans. "Measuring ocean warming allows us to track the status and evolution of planetary warming," Schuckmann told CNN. "The ocean is the sentinel for global warming."
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Global Ocean Heat Has Hit a New Record Every Single Day For the Last Year

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  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @02:30AM (#64326949)

    ... is up to us. I so hope the transition away from fossil fuels and bad eco-balances continues to gain momentum, because humanity is decades to late in making that happen. I also hope that we can make the turnaround and establish feasible damage-control as not to lose the progress of human civilization of the last few centuries.

    • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @02:48AM (#64326965)

      Its worse than you probably think. We're experiencing the effects of 1970s CO2 It takes 40-50 years for CO2 to hit the parts of the atmosphere where it does max damage to the Albedo. Then it hangs there for a bunch of hundreds of years. Even if we magically stopped all CO2 today, we've got another 50 years worth of shit getting far far worse.

      And then the Siberian permafrost melts. Theres a reason most climate scientists privately think we're toast as a sepecies. I work in the field (Soil science researching ways for farmers to sink CO2 into the soil, improving soil and getting some much welcome carbon credits) and frankly , I dont regret not having kids. What we are leaving them is a catastrophe and a far far less easy to live in planet.

      • by sonlas ( 10282912 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @02:59AM (#64326977)

        When you see that there are still people on slashdot wanting to be picky about which low-CO2 emitting energy source is good or not (I am sure some of them will reply here), and still stuck on pure anti-nuclearism, you realize those people are basically climate change deniers.

        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @03:43AM (#64327023)

          and still stuck on pure anti-nuclearism

          Slashdotters aren't anti-nuclear. They just realise the solution to a short term problem is not something that would take 20+ years to even commission. Being realistic and promoting solutions that stand a chance of making a difference doesn't make someone a climate change denier, and even if they do flat out hate nuclear for other reasons that doesn't make them climate change deniers either as the two are different concepts only loosely intertwined.

          All you have is insults for people who don't like your pet idea. You can fuck all the way off with that attitude.

          • by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @05:01AM (#64327097)

            This is a case of "don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. New nuclear wouldn't take 20 years to commission if anti-nuclear "environmentalist" didn't spend the last 60 years throwing up regulatory roadblocks to their approval and construction.

            China is building new nuclear at a massive rate, so don't tell me it can't be done.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

              This is a case of "don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. New nuclear wouldn't take 20 years to commission if anti-nuclear "environmentalist" didn't spend the last 60 years throwing up regulatory roadblocks to their approval and construction.

              China is building new nuclear at a massive rate, so don't tell me it can't be done.

              Look up tofu dregs, and then tell me you will happily live next door to one of their reactors.

              • FUD, FUD, and more FUD. We're all gonna be not living next to one soon.

              • This is a case of "don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. New nuclear wouldn't take 20 years to commission if anti-nuclear "environmentalist" didn't spend the last 60 years throwing up regulatory roadblocks to their approval and construction.

                China is building new nuclear at a massive rate, so don't tell me it can't be done.

                Look up tofu dregs, and then tell me you will happily live next door to one of their reactors.

                I'm curious who modded me troll. The term "Tofu Dregs" is one coined by the Chinese. It is a reference to the gunk left in the cheesecloth left after making tofu. It is a particularly Chinese style of humor. Dry, a little sarcastic, and comparative. And at base, pretty serious. It was coined by Zhu Rongji, the former premier of the People's Republic of China.

                It refers to the many shortcuts taken in recent years as China kicked in the afterburners to modernize. The results have been shall we say, not opti

            • China is building new nuclear at a massive rate,

              China is building new reactors at a continuous rate, not at a quick rate. The average time from inception to power generation for a Chinese reactors is also close to around 20 years. Even some "expansion" projects where an additional reactor is built at existing facilities they take >10 years to get done, and that's if they remain operational. China has now celebrated several new reactor start-ups only to shut them down shortly after to fix quality issues, e.g. Taishan 2 which started late 2018 and was shutdown early 2021 after releasing radioactive gas into the atmosphere. Thanks but they can keep that.

              Incidentally that project looks good as well initially. Foundation poured 2008, criticality 2018. Only 10 years. But we don't measure time starting at foundations being poured. The project was part of a plan initiated back in 2001, so it actually took 17 years to start, and you're back to 19 years when you consider it was down for repairs due to shoddy construction from 2021 to 2023.

              The success of China is not that they can do something we can't. They are just as slow as the west. It's that they have been doing it all along. They have projects in the pipeline (at last count I think there were 23 currently ongoing nuclear projects some commencing in the 00s, some commencing very recently) and they've kept that pipeline full, something that we *should* have been doing, but something there is little point in starting now.

              so don't tell me it can't be done.

              I won't tell you something can't be done. You should listen to the industry itself. The main players such as EDF who said they are incapable of meeting the already long timelines of existing projects across Europe due to lack of qualified construction people for one. Or the Russians who keep missing project deadlines on their reactors.

              The industry itself says it can't be done. When the west shat on the nuclear industry the expertise left. Gone. Off to do other things. We used to have a huge industry of nuclear construction services, this is now a skeleton of its former glory mostly outsourced to whichever contractor is the cheapest at any given day.
              We used to have multiple major technology licensors owned and managed by the best and brightest in the industry. The powerhouse of America was sold to the Japanese, who themselves took a $6bn writedown on that "investment" and what was once Westinghouse is now owned by an Asset Management company. The pride of the French, AREVA was bought out (bailed out) by state owned EDF, who now spend their time crying to daddy government to keep them afloat.

              You can't just build something out of hopes and dreams. You need the supporting systems and capabilities in place. The only people who actually have that functioning right now are the Chinese (who are also building plants in India), but I prefer my nuclear power to have a bit more QA/QC than the plastic trinkets I buy on Aliexpress.

              • The main players such as EDF who said they are incapable of meeting the already long timelines of existing projects across Europe due to lack of qualified construction people for one.

                What EDF is saying is not exactly that. They are saying the lack of qualified construction people comes from anti-nuclear policy which basically killed, or severely maimed, the nuclear industry there. They are also saying that they are rebuilding that workforce, because now, and especially since the Ukrainian war and the Russia gas fiasco, the politics is in line with that.

                In other words: try not building a solar panel for 20 years. You will see that when you want to restart building one, you need to learn

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            It's not just the 20+ years to deploy (the current figure given by EDF, the only company currently building new nuclear in Europe), it's that we need solutions that work for everyone. We can't be telling developing nations to limit their emissions but that they can't have the technology we developed for doing so.

            It needs to be cheap too. Again, we can't expect developing nations to spend far more than we did to bring their quality of life up to our standards.

            Even if both those were solved, we don't want to

            • We can't be telling developing nations to limit their emissions but that they can't have the technology we developed for doing so.

              You are the one saying that. On the other hand, what sensible people are saying is that every country should turn to a mix of nuclear/hydro/solar/wind/storage, which is the only electric mix that has proven track-record of actually decarbonizing an electric grid.

              It needs to be cheap too.

              If you want something to be cheap, just don't have the banks taking advantage of crazy loans to build anything. 70% of the cost of new nuclear plants in the West comes from the financing structure and the interests. This is why it is cheaper in Chin

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @09:54AM (#64327791) Homepage Journal

                what sensible people are saying is that every country should turn to a mix of nuclear

                Really, you think sensible people want *every* country in the world to be operating nuclear reactors?

                Gen IV reactors

                are failed technology, which is why everyone is still building gen 3 even for brand new plants.

                • are failed technology

                  No they aren't. Gen 4 is unproven technology. That's a completely different thing. The timeline for Gen 4 commercial viability was post 2030. Currently only a few pilots of some of the proposed Gen 4 designs have been build, and they have been largely successful.

                  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    Every attempt to build a prototype of one of the technologies expected to be gen 4 has ended in some kind of failure.

                    • No they haven't, several were successful and a couple are in ongoing operation. Also you expect failures in pilot plants. That's the whole point of building pilot plants before scaleup.

            • We can't be telling developing nations to limit their emissions but that they can't have the technology we developed for doing so.

              Which is why they are going to continue using fossil fuels for a long time to come.

          • by dlarge6510 ( 10394451 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @06:20AM (#64327207)

            It only takes it 20 years because we artificially made it that way.

            If we wise up and start reducing red tape, which wont affect safety as the red tape is EXTRA to the inherent safety of the design, then you could roll out plant way quicker.

            Luckily we have no such red tape with SMR nuclear reactors, so they are what will be built and barring heel dragging from stangnant governments thats exactly what we are doing.

            • No, it actually takes that long to do the job. Even in red-tape free places (China, Russia) the timeline from cement pouring to operation is > 10 years. The feasibility study and citing also takes longer than a day.

              And that's assuming you have the people and processes in place to build it. We don't. Major nuclear contractors have already missed deadlines not because of red tape, but because they simply can't get the job done fast enough due to lack of staff, lack of construction facilities, etc.

          • by Evtim ( 1022085 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @06:42AM (#64327255)

            "They just realise the solution to a short term problem is not something that would take 20+ years to even commission"

            Oh the hypocrisy! 20 years ago people were saying the same for solar and wind....

            • "They just realise the solution to a short term problem is not something that would take 20+ years to even commission"

              Oh the hypocrisy! 20 years ago people were saying the same for solar and wind....

              No they weren't. You are trying to re-write history. At no point ever did anyone say it takes 20+ years to build a windturbine. And in any case you missed my point spectacularly when you said "20 years ago". We don't live 20 years ago. We live in 2024, we have goals for emissions reduction. So even if your scenario was correct and through time alone we can reduce that 20+ years down to the sub 5 years that a wind farm now has, or sub 3 years a larger solar installation has, "time" is the one thing we don't

          • that would take 20+ years to even commission

            The solution is to remove the hurdles that make it take 20 years... There's no reason other than NIMBY's and BANNANA's for it to take so long that it becomes untenable.

          • They just realise the solution to a short term problem is not something that would take 20+ years to even commission.

            2050 is a popular target date for net zero. That is 26 years from now. That combined with the fact you have been saying it will take too long for the last 20 years makes you not helpful.

            Being realistic and promoting solutions that stand a chance of making a difference

            We must eliminate oil and gas, and do it only with wind and solar. Who is being realistic again?

            Carry on. We will watch and laugh.

          • and still stuck on pure anti-nuclearism

            Slashdotters aren't anti-nuclear. They just realise the solution to a short term problem is not something that would take 20+ years to even commission. Being realistic and promoting solutions that stand a chance of making a difference doesn't make someone a climate change denier, and even if they do flat out hate nuclear for other reasons that doesn't make them climate change deniers either as the two are different concepts only loosely intertwined.

            All you have is insults for people who don't like your pet idea. You can fuck all the way off with that attitude.

            I have long said that nuclear power can be made very safe.

            Just not by humans. We have managers who demand schedules be met. We hav accountants who demand costs be met.

            We have people who believe that if only we eliminated regulations, and let the industry have unfettered and no holds barred engineering, that nuclear power would be not only perfectly safe, but really cheap, and take very little time to build and deploy, leading us to that too cheap to meter nirvana once promised.

            In a pig's eye. Then

      • Oh we will survive. The major concentrations of humans will just move towards the poles. For centuries or more. Aajor civilizational upset. But its not like humans never migrated before. You would know that as a scientist.

        For what its worth, the whole âoeIm an intelligent scientist, Im so smart that I chose not to have kidsâ just confirms my own opinion that highly intelligent people can be booger-eating fools at the same time. You might as well be saying âoeIm proud to be doing my part to
        • If you really decided not to have kids based on apocalyptic predictions, you probably made the best choice for them. Good work.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by quonset ( 4839537 )

          The major concentrations of humans will just move towards the poles

          Where the land isn't conducive to farming, lacks resorces to build shelter, where there are no roads, no power sorces, and the land is unstable as it repeatedly expands and contracts.

          • Where the land isn't conducive to farming, lacks resorces to build shelter,....

            It isn't conducive to farming at the moment because the growing season is too short because the temperatures are too low. However, if global warming increases temperatures land nearer the poles will rapidly become much better farmland even as land near the equator becomes worse. The predictions for northern Alberta due to global warming is that land further north will be farmable and more productive warm-weather crops will be able to be grown in land already being farmed.

            However, when that was mentioned

            • Have you been to the far north? Farming isn't feasible there only because the growing seasons are short, but because the soils are generally poor. Because they've generally been frozen, the processes that have built good topsoil (long history of biomatter accumulation, decay, and processing by microorganisms) in historically good farming regions haven't occurred, so any soils present are pretty poor in nutrients. In much of the region, the soil depth on top of bedrock is also quite small, so water retention

              • Have you been to the far north?

                I'm not talking about the far north where there is permafrost, I'm talking about the vast area south of the permafrost and north of the currently farmed areas. That area is currently growing a lot of trees and while that does not automatically mean that all of it will make excellent farmland undoubtedly some of it will.

                • I'm not talking about permafrost either. I'm talking about the boreal forests which are 'currently growing a lot of trees.' Ability to grow trees does not correspond in any way with the ability to grow crops. Due to the thin and poor quality soils, trees in those regions take a very long time to grow, and most are pretty short in height compared to those in regions with better soil. Sure, you might be able to eke out some crops here and there, but it will not likely result in anywhere near the yields you'd

                  • trees in those regions take a very long time to grow, and most are pretty short in height

                    Go visit northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. There are lots of areas with really tall trees they are not all stunted and short - that is was happens near the northern edge of the tree line when yes, trees are struggling but even then that's often because of the temperature too. I'm not saying all land will be suitable for farming but your suggestion that there will be basically no land is just ridiculous. Most of Europe's farmland came from chopping down forests.

        • Oh I didnt necesarily choose not to have kids. It just never happened , and I dont really regret it. It'd be *nice* to have kids and I take a lot of joy out of being an uncle. But I also think if I had kids I'd be incredibly worried for their future and yeah.... I'm not convinced kids born now are coming into a world thats going to be good to live in. And not just from climate change. We've got a motherfucker of a recession lined up from automation gutting the clerical middle class. Fascism is on the rise a

        • by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @10:39AM (#64327913)

          We will survive, but we will lose a lot. Just a 10% population loss radically shifted the worlds dynamics due to the Black Plague.

          What is going to come with climate change are wars. Countries at the poles are not going to happily take in refugees, and eventually, wars are going to break out for that turf... only a matter of time, when you have different "tribes", wanting the same area. When people go hungry, they will do anything, even if they have to choose between dying by enemy fire versus starvation. Wars are fires which can completely destroy any possibility of civilization in an area for centuries. For example, a lot of Africa has little to no civilization because of this, and this might be the future of most of the world.

          Don't forget diseases. Between stuff like brain eating amoebae finding niches with warmer weather, more viruses, zoonotic infections, and rogue CRISPR labs looking to find ways to cull people by their race... COVID-19 was just a warm-up. Especially as people are packed more densely.

          Climate change is just the cause... it can create Four Horsemen tier effects which might even be an ELE, especially when nations get desperate and resort to nukes.

      • by Quantum gravity ( 2576857 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @04:43AM (#64327091)
        The time lag to maximum effect of greenhouse gasses is about 10-20 years according to:

        https://earth.org/data_visuali... [earth.org]
      • by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @08:25AM (#64327421)

        Its worse than you probably think. We're experiencing the effects of 1970s CO2 It takes 40-50 years for CO2 to hit the parts of the atmosphere where it does max damage to the Albedo. Then it hangs there for a bunch of hundreds of years. Even if we magically stopped all CO2 today, we've got another 50 years worth of shit getting far far worse.

        And then the Siberian permafrost melts. Theres a reason most climate scientists privately think we're toast as a sepecies. I work in the field (Soil science researching ways for farmers to sink CO2 into the soil, improving soil and getting some much welcome carbon credits) and frankly , I dont regret not having kids. What we are leaving them is a catastrophe and a far far less easy to live in planet.

        We must know different climate scientists. Most I know believe that the temperate zones will shift, that the "breadbasket" zones will shift along with them, that there will be increased rainfall overall, and more intense storms. I know of none who believe that this is an extinction event for humans.

        This isn't remotely to say that we haven't screwed up and will suffer the consequences with the overly rapid de-sequestration of carbon. But did you know that 50 million years ago, the Level of CO2 in the atmosphere was ~ 1600 ppm. And yet, life on earth did not go extinct. It was hella warmer though.

        But altogether too many people seem to be in the mode that we are doomed to extinction, because there is some precise amount of CO2 that is mandatory, and rises are lethal.

        When in fact, there really is no perfect amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We use 1750 as a baseline, mainly because it is the beginning of the industrial revolution when we started de-sequestering Carbon on a large scale. That doesn't mean that it was never higher, or lower, or that it was the proper level.

        So doomers should stand aside and let the rest of us figure out how to deal with the issue - which by the way, is not the attempts to mitigate the issue by further messing with the atmosphere.

        • So doomers should stand aside and let the rest of us figure out how to deal with the issue

          I am rooting for you. Even with doomers stepping aside, you can't do shit because you don't have money or influence. The people who do have money and influence have money and influence by causing the issues we are seeing, so they are heavily invested in keeping the status quo.

          You aren't doing shit, can't do shit, and are disrespecting others while trying to do shit that you can't actually do.

          Have a nice day. Don't forget to smile! :)

          • So doomers should stand aside and let the rest of us figure out how to deal with the issue

            I am rooting for you. Even with doomers stepping aside, you can't do shit because you don't have money or influence.

            Relax homie, have an adult beverage or herb of your choice. I'd buy you a round if we met. AGW is not the worst problem we've ever faced, despite what Greta Thunberg thinks.

            A big problem? You betchya. A lot of planning and work needs to happen, But it's always a matter of lead, follow, or get out of the way.

            • I'd buy you a round if we met.

              I appreciate the thought. I would even try and participate; however, I am not a beautiful person anymore. I am deeply scarred and about ready to just give up. I am tired. Really really tired. Exhausted doesn't even really convey how tired I am.

        • But did you know that 50 million years ago, the Level of CO2 in the atmosphere was ~ 1600 ppm. And yet, life on earth did not go extinct. It was hella warmer though.

          Sure, but humans weren't around at all back then, much less modern civilization. It also took millions of years for the climate to shift.

          It's the current rate of change that's going to cause the most problems.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by argStyopa ( 232550 )

        "Theres a reason most climate scientists privately think we're toast as a sepecies."
        There's the reason most reasonable people stopped listening to climate scientists: hyperbole.

        Is the climate warming? YEP!
        Should we not shit where we live/eat? We should not.
        Is there any example in the history of the earth where we can find 10,000+ years of stable climate where it's not warming or cooling? No.
        What does, say, the last 5 million years of examples show? Sudden, rapid, extraordinary warming in spikes about every

        • Apparently science and facts scare away the dogma crowd.

          Note that I said the climate is warming. Are you asserting it isn't?

        • heh. Somebody sez "Theres a reason most climate scientists privately think we're toast as a sepecies." and gets modded up. You provide some pertinent facts and your conclusions based on them, and get modded "troll".

      • Theres a reason most climate scientists privately think we're toast as a sepecies.

        Based on what? Climate change is a serious problem but there is literally nothing that suggests it is close to an existential threat to humanity. The amount of CO2 for that is orders of magnitude higher than what we have even the fossil fuel reserves to release. That sais climate change is going to be highly disruptive and impact our quality of living as agricultural zones shift and populations may need to relocate but there is nothing to suggest it is even close to an extinction-level threat for us.

        Not

      • "Theres a reason most climate scientists privately think we're toast as a sepecies."

        Then that worries me. I wonder about their logic about one of the most adaptable species the planet has produced.

        Now, is our current level of civilization toast? Maybe. All civilizations fall, and climate change has been a contributor to many a fall.

    • Were not gonna take any real action until it impacts human life in some really big way. Until then its just a number on a spreadsheet.
      • by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @05:35AM (#64327137) Homepage

        Were not gonna take any real action until it impacts human life in some really big way. Until then its just a number on a spreadsheet.

        We're not gonna take any real action, especially when it will impact us badly, since this is the moment we will need even more energy to do damage control.

        I see no way to convince people to stop burning all the coal, gas and petrol they can get their hands on. It's akin to tell them "hey, here is all this money, but you will let it lay there and try to survive another way".

        Will not happen.

        • I see no way to convince people to stop burning all the coal, gas and petrol they can get their hands on. It's akin to tell them "hey, here is all this money, but you will let it lay there and try to survive another way".

          Will not happen.

          And yet, on the whole we have managed to discourage people from just taking things lying around, from farm produce to cars on a parking lot to newspapers at a news stand. The system is not perfect, but it works well enough that most of us enjoy living in a somewhat civilised society...

          • by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

            Greenland and the north pole are not defrosted yet, and already all major oil producers are already prying to dig as much petrol as they can, they literally cannot wait.

          • by doc1623 ( 7109263 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @11:42AM (#64328109)

            I definitely don't want to get into a flame war. So this isn't meant to be offensive but, I think your looking at it in the wrong way

            We need to start at the top, not the bottom. Governments and International Groups, are where it needs to start. A Government is just a governing body of a society, its literally it's job to make policy and put mechanisms in place to enforce those policies. You can't get every individual to think and/or do the same. Many can't afford to live by their own principles. So, I guess I completely agree with your statement, but there is a way to make change and enforce it

            The way I see it is that neither Government nor Companies exist outside of a legal concept, but where Government is basically directed by the populous, in a true democracy i.e. by the people for the people. Large public Companies are just vehicles for the ultra-wealthy to gain more wealth and power, by throwing the vast resources of those companies into PR/Marketing and direct campaign funding to control the government. Hence, companies will always be "profit over people", "profit over the planet", "profit and power above all else".

            We need to take back the government(s), for the working people (most of us) and have policies put in place that regulate companies/industries. This now requires international cooperation because these corporations are no longer defined or confined to one country. Even if the CEO of a large company was a saint, they can only do so much, because the better they tried to be the less competitive their company would be. If you regulate, you level the playing field and allow companies to be better.

            Neither companies or governments are good or bad, because they don't exist, but their actions can be, because their vast resources are being used by real people. In the case of government, we would hope it would be the majority of the populous but... In the case of companies, it's always going to be the ultra-rich i.e. the largest shareholders, some of which are hedgefunds like BlackRock. Those people control many companies (look it up) and also control too much of our "Democracy"

          • And yet, on the whole we have managed to discourage people from just taking things lying around, from farm produce to cars on a parking lot to newspapers at a news stand. The system is not perfect, but it works well enough that most of us enjoy living in a somewhat civilised society...

            It works because most (but certainly not all) people have a standard of living that makes those things unnecessary. There are places where that is not the case. You don't want to live there.

    • > as not to lose the progress of human civilization of the last few centuries

      I'm afraid we cant have our cake and eat it. We are going to have to roll back the clock and FAST as due to dragging heels with solutions like nuclear we are facing an energy deficit nightmare as humans need more and more to use smartphones and cars and the internet (A.I being one of the newest applications).

      As we have created more efficient devices, instead of finding usage of energy goes down, we end up natually seeing the po

    • This is climate porn and the pain is all in your imagination.

      And your sig? It's like you're broadcasting that you are susceptible to fake news.
  • Interesting that we have all these ocean heating problems right after environmental and international authorities go balls to wall to remove sulfur from ships' high sulfur residual fuels in 2020, something like 1/3 of all sulfur content from fuels 50 years ago. The fuel sulfur forms SOx and then sulfates in the atmosphere.

    Further some of political/environmental elite want to be paid to put sulfates back in, as geo-engineering experiments...
    hmmmmm
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @03:12AM (#64326983)

      We know what happened there. Ships emit SO2 clouds which have high albedo (they're bright silver color in visible spectrum). They reflect sunlight. It's banned, more sunlight hits ocean surface, it heats up more.

      • by Stephan Schulz ( 948 ) <schulz@eprover.org> on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @03:25AM (#64326995) Homepage
        Only a very small part of the oceans are near busy shipping lanes. The effect can explain a small part of the increase, not nearly all of it. And even that small effect was only temporarily masked - it's clear that we cannot keep emitting sulfur forever. And of course these sulfur emissions had serious side effects, from acid rain to human health.
        • > Only a very small part of the oceans are near busy shipping lanes

          Funnily enough something called "the wind" exists

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          You genuinely do not understand the scale of marine traffic and just how many busy shipping lanes there are outside Arctic. Have a useful link:

          https://www.marinetraffic.com/... [marinetraffic.com]

          There's a reason why we have lanes and deconfliction rules on almost all seas. We need them. Amount of ships at sea is utterly massive. Winds spread clouds from there.

          You also don't seem to understand the claim being made in the OP. They're not saying there's some massive increase and oceans are about to boil away. Increase in absolut

          • by Stephan Schulz ( 948 ) <schulz@eprover.org> on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @06:59AM (#64327281) Homepage

            You genuinely do not understand the scale of marine traffic and just how many busy shipping lanes there are outside Arctic.

            Funny you should say so. A couple of years ago I actually looked into this to see if we could get a halfway decent coverage of air traffic by installing ADS-B-receivers on ships. The answer was a resounding "no". Sure, we have a lot of traffic routes. But most of the traffic is on a few heavily travelled routes. And the oceans are really big. We have a few thousand container ships on the oceans - but most by far are small ones, only a few hundred go long-distance. If you think these are large numbers, imagine a few thousand people in the continental US - and then imagine how much bigger the oceans are.

            It's just that these temperatures are fairly stable over long periods of time, so even small increases are visible and they can claim "record temperatures" with just a tiny increase.

            "Tiny" is relative. If the temperatures have been stable for a long time (and they have), then even small increases are likely to have a lot of impact. It's only 5 degree C from normal to dead by fever in humans...and human temperature varies a lot more than average sea surface temperature.

            Remember, this sort of news cycle is not about explaining reality. It's about generating ad revenue from clicks.

            That's a nice way to discount any unpleasant news. But then I usually follow the scientific literature, not "the news cycle", and what is published there is not good news.

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Makes sense that a nerd site would mod this to +5 insightful. Heh. Basic chemistry and volumetric spread of clouds? Naaah. We just know IT. We can't do data links, so surely clouds don't spread that far.

              Global warming? More like local warming, am I right?

              • Atmospheric chemistry tells us that sulphur aerosols have a relatively short atmospheric lifetime - especially those emitted by ships, which don't have super-high smokestacks. Hence their spread is limited. It's not as if the QE2 is pushing it's exhaust into the stratosphere, unlike some volcanoes.
                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  And now, we compare it to volcanoes to pretend that modern shipping vessels aren't massive, including in height, and that they were pushing clouds big enough to be seen from ISS without magnification.

                  Ignorance continues.

                  • Even the largest modern ships have a height in the tens of meters - for a variety of reasons, from stability to harbour infrastructure. Yes, they are "massive", but that is relative. Massive relative to a truck, or a human, or a single family home. But many volcanoes are measured in the thousands of meters, and their ejecta often reach the stratosphere. These do indeed spread over much of a hemisphere, in particular (pun alert) because they get above the normal weather layers.
                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      My point of mockery is that your point of comparison from perspective of a long term slow global change... is to compare to something that can with a single emission event push the planet into another ice age, killing much if not most life on the planet. Not "over millenia" that is the pace of global warming today, but a single event.

                      So this analogy you're pushing is either utterly off topic and you don't event understand why it is, or you're being malicious.

                    • We are not talking about CO2 emissions (which are well-mixed in the atmosphere, and where human emissions dominate volcanic emissions by about a factor of 100). We are talking about sulfur-based aerosols. Just like CO2, these are emitted by humans and by volcanoes. But unlike CO2, they are not well-mixed in the atmosphere, and human (in particular shipping) emissions are emitted into the low atmosphere, have a short atmospheric life time, and mostly have relatively local effects. Some volcanic emissions, on
                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      So talking in context of reflective cloud cover, and then pretending that volcanoes are totally all about CO2 emissions and not reflective and absorptive cloud cover when it comes to significant events.

                      Then you follow with a lot of unnecessary technobabble which is trying to obfuscate the claim of "clouds from ship don't cover globally, so they can't have significant global effect on global warming", while the context is not global warming as a whole, but tiny aspect of it that is heating of the surface of

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Seclusion ( 411646 )

      Interesting that we have all these ocean heating problems right after environmental and international authorities go balls to wall to remove sulfur from ships' high sulfur residual fuels in 2020...

      All this global warming crap is a red herring, some very smart people say that once you exclude temperature readings near airports, nothing has changed. I'm sure this is just global warming alarmists over-measuring the ocean near human activity. /s

  • by jd ( 1658 ) <`imipak' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @04:02AM (#64327047) Homepage Journal

    Humans have been way too slow and the lead time between change and effect can be 20-40 years. We're locked in to worsening conditions until between 2045 and 2065.

    But it'll take until 2060 before meaningful action starts, because humans only act after the disaster. It's a tendency baked in to how we operate and how we think.

    So we need the engineers to act now, so that when we do finally act as a society, it's not too late.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Unfortunately, we are also locked in the mindset of 'technology will save us without us having to change our economy!'. So I guess it is engineering solution or nothing. Better hope there IS one.
      • Unfortunately, we are also locked in the mindset of 'technology will save us without us having to change our economy!'. So I guess it is engineering solution or nothing. Better hope there IS one.

        Don't worry. I'm sure the bazillionaires will spin up a few dozen-dozen newfangled AI processing facilities to suck up more and more resources to help us come up with that engineering solution. Wait, they're only using it to gather advertising data? Oh well. Better luck to the next intelligent species to come along.

    • by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @05:27AM (#64327125) Journal
      The possibility of buying time is long past. We needed to take action 30 years ago, and we still haven't done anything (the existing actions are totally overshadowed by an increase in further destruction of our habitat). Time can no longer be bought. On the contrary, we blasted over so many tipping points that climate change can now do without us. The forest burns in Canada produced way more CO2 than the Canadians, the oceans have buffered a lot of CO2 for us, but are releasing it back into the atmosphere as they heat up, the melting ice sheets are making the planet darker so it traps more solar heat, etc. After closing our eyes for decades, time is the very thing that is no longer available.
    • by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      But it'll take until 2060 before meaningful action starts, because humans only act after the disaster. It's a tendency baked in to how we operate and how we think.

      I don't see that happening in 2060 or any time for that matter. We will burn all the gas, petrol and coal that is underground. All of it. I see no way to convince *everyone* that these riches should not be extracted and burned.

      • by HBI ( 10338492 )

        You are so very right. Energy == national power. Just try convincing leadership that this is not true. They can see the real world very clearly. Military might depends on fossil fuels.

        As a thought experiment, imagine an electric tank. Imagine the battery required to push around a 60 ton vehicle. Envision charging it. What happens when the enemy shows up while it is drained?

    • But it'll take until 2060 before meaningful action starts, because humans only act after the disaster.

      The way we dealt with the hole in the ozone layer shows that to be clearly wrong. Humans will act before a disaster if the science is clear and the fix is not even more disruptive than the problem. The problem with global warming is that subtle climate change is masked by weather variations and it has only been a combination of better climate models and more significant climate change that has made it clear and unambiguous (and even then the scope and degree of the change still has significant uncertainty)

    • so that when we do finally act as a society, it's not too late.

      You are not part of "society". You have neither the money or influence to be a part of society. You are a filthy commoner. Having a million dollars in your hand only gives you the ability to ask to be part of society. They will still deny you. You are part of the rabble and will have everything taken from your family eventually.

  • Non linearity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @04:29AM (#64327083) Homepage

    People seem to assume temperatures would just slowly creep up. Thats not how complex chaotic and dynamic systems like the climate work in the real world - sudden jumps like this are the norm not the exception.

    • People also seem to assume linearity in the affect of CO2, when it's actually logarithmic. The more there is in the atmosphere, the more you have to pump in to make a difference in temperature.

      I believe it's something like 4 watts per square meter per doubling.

      • Re:Non linearity (Score:4, Interesting)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@earthlinkLION.net minus cat> on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @08:54AM (#64327545)

        It doesn't quite work like that, though I think you're correct about the initial effects. But "it's a complex chaotic system", and there are multiple thresholds. We've passed a few that have led to increased release of methane (e.g. melting permafrost), but there are probably lots more. Probably lots that even the experts haven't noticed. Some will amplify and some will diminish things that EVENTUALLY lead to a temperature increase.

        There are multiple good reasons why the climate models are so gnarly, but even so, they oversimplify things. Which is why they run multiple models and pick the average (in some sense) of their projections. Don't *believe* the models. They are just "our best guess". But they're a lot more accurate than any other way we have of making a guess.

  • > Global Ocean Heat Has Hit a New Record Every Single Day For the Last Year

    Unless you actually think outside of the box you'd think that every day the ocean tempreature has increased.

    When in fact it's more mundane and boring. It increased a little, once, and "every day the record gets broken" simply because thats old data. So it went up a little and unless it magically drops back down again... of course all the last years temperatures are lower. Who'd have thunk?

  • Go here:

    https://judithcurry.com/2023/0... [judithcurry.com]

    A careful explanation of the mechanism. You may feel that the mechanism is caused by global warming. But at least this piece explains what is happening so that you can see what is causing it.

    The mainstream reporting on this so far has by contrast been only a mixture of arm waving and wailing.

    • Not a source of particularly good repute. And the blog post is from July 2023, mostly discussing the North Atlantic. We now observe massive sea surface temperatures for a year, and all over the planet. What she writes may well be not wrong, but she misses the underlying main cause, and the article is very much out of date now.
      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        "Repute."

        She's been maligned because she dared to call them out on their unscientific hockey stick graph for mixing data series to achieve a specific result.
  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @05:48AM (#64327151) Journal

    ... and figure out some carbon sequestering technological solutions. And go fully nuclear.

    Emoting (and pretending that we are going to de-industrialize) doesn't seem to be working.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Carbon sequestration will ALWAYS be more energy intensive than burning hydrocarbons. Perhaps nuclear power could be used for that, but only if we drastically overbuild for what the grid needs. And it will be at a cost, not a profit. (At least for the entity doing it.) Governments could coerce this, but the government would need to act for the benefit of the whole world, not just it's on territory.

      If the UN had any funding or enforcement power, they would be the reasonable group to do this. But my imagin

  • I can't even come up with a definition of average ocean temperature (how do you measure the temperature 500 meters down?). But can someone please tell me how you can measure the temperature of all of the ocean water to a quarter of a degree? Wouldn't that take trillions of samples?

    • Space-born radiometry mostly. We have a large number of satellites with this capability, so global near real time coverage is pretty routine. The are calibrated against independent in-situ measurements. For temperature at depth, you measure a vertical profile by lowering equipment.

      • And we're comparing that data from 2024 to the space-borne radiometry ocean temperature data from the year 1643 right?

        We put up the very first space-based climate asset (a satellite equipped with a low-resolution gray-scale optical camera named TIROSE-1 [wikipedia.org]) in 1960. It could not measure sea temperatures. Every global temperature measurement claim made by the AGW alarmists is based upon one of the most-basic scientific frauds: apples-to-oranges data mixing. They take modern temperature data from instruments whi

    • Bad text. These are of course Sea Surface Temperatures.
      And mainly satellites today.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I'm rather certain they're talking about "ocean surface temperatures", and then only in a distributed collection of places. (But if they're using IR monitoring, those places could be pretty large.)

      OTOH, I haven't read the report. This is based on what earlier pop-sci articles throughout the year have said.

    • Hush, now. The warm mongers want the gullible to believe that the oceans are thisclose to boiling. How else can they sell their "carbon offset credits" snake oil to the masses?
    • Re:0.25 degrees? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @10:17AM (#64327837) Journal

      how do you measure the temperature 500 meters down?

      You put a thermometer there. There are some underwater observatories, like Ocean Networks Canada [oceannetworks.ca] who have undersea power and data networks for various sensors including temperature.

      But can someone please tell me how you can measure the temperature of all of the ocean water to a quarter of a degree?

      Clearly you cannot but if everywhere you have sensors show an increase then it is not unreasonable to assume that the change is reasonably universal since it seems very unlikely that everyone just happened to randomly put their networks only in the places that warmed. However, as with any sampled measurement that does lead to an uncertainty.

    • how do you measure the temperature 500 meters down?

      Argo floats [wikipedia.org]

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Jesus Christ, your mom gets hotter every day.

  • But we've got to have our Bitcoin, our AI stuff!!

    It's funny, they even want to sink their server farms into the oceans to cool them.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. -- Isaac Asimov

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