UN's Call To Action on Extreme Heat 98
UN: The UN Secretary-General's Call to Action on Extreme Heat brings together the diverse expertise and perspectives of ten specialized UN entities (FAO, ILO, OCHA, UNDRR, UNEP, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, WHO, WMO) in a first-of-its-kind joint product, underscoring the multi-sectoral impacts of extreme heat.
Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. Billions of people around the world are wilting under increasingly severe heatwaves driven largely by a fossil-fuel charged, human-induced climate crisis. Extreme heat is tearing through economies, widening inequalities, undermining the Sustainable Development Goals, and killing people.
The Call for Action calls for an urgent and concerted effort to enhance international cooperation to address extreme heat in four critical areas: Caring for the vulnerable - Protecting workers - Boosting resilience of economies and societies using data and science - Limiting temperature rise to 1.5C by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up investment in renewable energy. From earlier today: Monday Was Hottest Recorded Day on Earth: 'Uncharted Territory'.
Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. Billions of people around the world are wilting under increasingly severe heatwaves driven largely by a fossil-fuel charged, human-induced climate crisis. Extreme heat is tearing through economies, widening inequalities, undermining the Sustainable Development Goals, and killing people.
The Call for Action calls for an urgent and concerted effort to enhance international cooperation to address extreme heat in four critical areas: Caring for the vulnerable - Protecting workers - Boosting resilience of economies and societies using data and science - Limiting temperature rise to 1.5C by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up investment in renewable energy. From earlier today: Monday Was Hottest Recorded Day on Earth: 'Uncharted Territory'.
Re:Hot Air (Score:4, Insightful)
I see the denier propaganda is getting more desperate. Maybe admit you are wrong so we can work together to actually make the upcoming catastrophe less severe?
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There's nothing wrong with cigarettes either.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the data.
These are both preventable deaths. What's increasing? Heat related deaths. Hottest two days on record on planet earth, the trajectory looking quite gruesome, people are dying. But the secondary impact from bizarre flooding, hurricanes, crop failures, still isn't being tallied because these are indirect problems.
Add direct and indirect, and look at the trajectory. The media is not the fault. The fault is the fault.
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The world needs less people.
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It's true that Earth doesn't need people. However, it's not the point. The problem is that humanity itself has reached and passed the point where it doesn't need more people.
The population of Earth is projected to continue growing. This must stop. Rich nations should contribute money, technology etc. to fight the warming, but poor countries still can help - by reducing their birthrates. I know that the major sky fairies won't like that, and many countries and their populations prefer listening to sky fairie
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Without people, everything on our planet goes extinct in a billion years. The world needs people to nudge the orbit when the sun goes red giant.
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Zero wouldn't certainly be less, wouldn't it?
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Yes.
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Sure. But does it make a difference whether we get fewer people by exterminating the unfortunate, or by raising their material well-being to the point where their fertility rate drops? Because both approaches would work.
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Extermination is easier and more cost-effective.
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not get how simplistic these people have to be to not understand that a primary effect of climate change is more extreme weather. In all directions. They seem to still think nothing changes except that it gets warmer.
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You should also read the follow-on article from the one you posted... https://ourworldindata.org/par... [ourworldindata.org]
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Yes. (Score:2)
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More batteries and solar panels then?
Sure, lets do that.
And while we do that we should also get more hydro, wind, and nuclear fission. Batteries on the grid are a good idea, solar on the grid is not a good idea because of the cost compared to hydro, onshore wind, and nuclear fission. If you want solar and batteries on your home then I'm not going to lift a finger to stop you. Where I have a problem is the government subsidies that pay people to put up solar panels, and then on top another subsidy through requiring utilities to buy solar pow
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fuck off macTROLL
Oh my. Such a creative retort. /s
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It's really not worth having nuanced arguments with him.
For example in the comment up the thread here he's arguing that we shouldn't put solar on the grid because it's not the cheapest thing. This is a deliberate distortion of the argument that we shouldn't put nuclear on the grid because it's the most expensive thing. Adding nuclear to solve the [overblown] base load problem costs more than adding solar+storage, let alone wind+storage. But there is also a very good reason to use solar: It produces the most
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More clean coal, as Orange President promised.
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More batteries and solar panels then?
Or just put the sulfur back in ship fuels - until we can find a cheaper and/or cleaner way to modify ship exhaust to increase and brighten cloud cover over the oceans...
As it did before the recent international regulation change that removed most of it - and (according to climate scientists noted for being on the "warmist" side of the debate) more than accounted for the increase in ocean water heating in the years since then.
(In other words, we (or whatever) were actuall
UNMGAHTTAHBSHRE (Score:2)
"The UN Secretary-General's Call to Action on Extreme Heat brings together the diverse expertise and perspectives of ten specialized UN entities (FAO, ILO, OCHA, UNDRR, UNEP, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, WHO, WMO) in a first-of-its-kind joint product, underscoring the multi-sectoral impacts of extreme heat."
I think this says, "The main UN guy called an all-hands to talk about how it being so hot is ruining everything."
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Name one of those entities that have done any significant thing to address global warming, what we have is people have diverse expertise in failing to get anything done getting together. I'm hopeful.
Re: UNMGAHTTAHBSHRE (Score:2)
Ask UN - What solar plant did the UN pay for? (Score:3)
Repeating the question we need to collectively ask all of these NGO, research agencies, think tanks, lobbying industry, advocacy groups:
What has your group paid for with its own budget for building solar, wind or other renewable energy projects? Where are they?
If there are none, then will you be paying to build one this year or next year?
We should ask these 'talk only' groups these questions repeatedly until they actually build something with their own budget? Not 'seek donations' and then 'administer fun
Solar Geoengineering... (Score:3)
... is a terrible idea. But at some point in the future, it will be slightly less bad than not solar geoengineering. And when that time comes, we'd better have researched the best (least harmful) way to avert disaster. (Critics will say "postpone" rather than "avert," but that depends on whether we can keep it up while we're addressing the root causes.)
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Re: Solar Geoengineering... (Score:2)
If you aren't aware, heating land up doesn't make it arable.
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I don't have kids, not for AGW reasons, although those are good too.
Healthy soil contains living constituents. It's not enough for it to be organic. It also has to have good drainage for those living elements to be healthy. SOME land will become useful for crops, but there are no credible estimates that suggest we will even have replacement of what we lose, let alone an increase like some people seem to imagine.
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Sure. For permafrost, there are estimates that say >10'000 years wait time until you can do agriculture on it.
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In case you aren't aware, the landmass in the colder parts of the world is bigger anyway.
Not it isn't. Nobody is going to be growing crops in Antarctica, or much of Greenland; that leaves Russia and Canada, which between them make up 18% of the world's land, most of which will be waterlogged swamps if the permafrost melts. You've been staring too long at maps using Mercator projection.
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Yet another thing we should do a "moon shot" for. It's sad that the only time we seem to be able to invest serious effort and stick to an aggressive deadline is what amounts to a dick measuring contest.
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You think disaster can still be averted? Does not look like that to me. It can maybe made a bit smaller and that would be a good thing, but from what I see the usual rich assholes are hell-bent to prevent that so they can get even richer.
Meanwhile (Score:4, Insightful)
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Corporate Greed. The fossil fuel companies (oil, gas, coal) are not going to just shut down and go out of business. They generate too much money.
Corporate greed could mean the fossil fuel companies could go out of business nearly overnight if someone developed an alternative that was cheaper. Greed isn't the problem. Greed is a natural survival instinct that cannot be removed from the human condition. We can moderate this greed somewhat with educating people on the detrimental long term impact on those they care about if greed is taken to excess. Greed is a tool we can use to bring down fossil fuels. I know this might sound like a Gordon Gekko
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You call it "corporate greed" but for CEOs it's just "fiduciary duty" of the company to its shareholders. Fiduciary duty is as essential building block of capitalism. Without it, public companies wouldn't exist.
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Like people who think it's funny to yell 'bomb' in an airport, I'm not particularly inclined to tolerate climate denier trolls any more than I do climate deniers.
They're all assholes who are part of the problem.
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But promoting violence against them is fine, isn't it? https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Ummm... it seems the quote you're talking about is "I tell you, there's a Bond movie to be made about that guy, we just have to decide how exactly the Twitter offices get blown up and where the car chase will take place." I'm pretty sure that doesn't "promote violence" any more than the actual Bond movies promote violence. By your reasoning, day-dreaming or fantasizing about a specific violent scenario promotes violence. If that's really true, then there are two kinds of people in the world - those who prom
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Let's see if you can "up the ante" to Fox News level!
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Indeed. Scum that is mentally defective or plain into destructive behavior.
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Until the average temperature exceeds 21C, it is not arguably "destructive".
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Well, all you are showing here is that you are dumb and uninformed.
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Am I? I'm asking you to document your assertion, that temperatures below 21C are destructive.
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I do not deny that climate change exists.
I just deny that climate change is automatically bad. Like I said in my original troll- which apparently was too deep for most people to understand- 21C is comfortable for the majority of human beings on the planet. An average of 17.1 C is still cold for human beings.
It's an AVERAGE though, which means there will be places that are too warm for you, and places that are too cold for you.
So move to the places where you are comfortable. If you don't, you simply don't
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The correct answer to a troll is to show your evidence for your assertion.
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Your trolling on the other hand... well, pathetic.
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You are asserting that an average temperature of 21C, 70F, is destructive.
This is not a "feelings fight", which is why I'm ignoring your feelings. I never troll on a feelings level.
The Call (Score:3, Insightful)
"Let's all get together and have America pay for it."
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"we are the biggest polluter on the planet"
Do you actually believe this? Because it's not even close to being true.
CO2: China is DOUBLE the US annually, and is racing to build
China has over 3000 operating coal plants, and approved another 218gw of plants to be built: enough to power Brazil alone.
Plastic pollution? US isn't even in the top TEN: https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com]
Most polluted air? US isn't in the top 100.
https://www.iqair.com/us/world... [iqair.com]
So what the fuck are you talking about?
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They have 4x America's population. That means they get to emit 4x as much. Emissions are cumulative, and the US has a century long head start on China. Plus the worlds single biggest polluter is the US military.
What are you?
braindead ignorant Americans... (Score:1)
"we are the biggest polluter on the planet"
Do you actually believe this? Because it's not even close to being true.
America is the biggest cause of the extra CO2 It's just a fact. [ourworldindata.org]
It's not even considering America is less than 5% of the worlds population.
You'd have to work pretty hard to pollute more than countries 5 times your size.
And then work 10x harder to convince everyone you're not the biggest polluter...
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I actually think this is a large part the problem (I am not American) a lot of it is about assigning blame, figuring out who to punish and trying to make the world fair. Guess what its not fair, never has been probably never will be until we all die, and that will be fair everyone will finally be equal.
No rich country is going to significantly disadvantage itself, we will still be arguing that point in 50 years from now, even more so if life gets harder. We need to move forward and find solutions without ap
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Because the US alone is responsible for 25% of global emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. The next biggest is China at 12.7%. You could include the EU 27 at 22% if you like, and sure enough they are also being asked to pay.
It gets much, much worse for the US if you look at per-capita historic emissions.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask the countries that gained the most from doing the most damage now contribute the most to fixing it.
The UN's call to action on extreme heat verbatim: (Score:2)
"Could someone turn on the A/C? It's stuffy in here man..."
- António Guterres
We passed the goal posts some time ago. (Score:2)
I think somewhere between 2000 - 2010, maybe a little before that even; but certainly no later. I've only got maybe a couple decades left, I won't live to see the worst of it. My kids will - but not for long, I think.
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There is no way our current lifestyle can be supported by electricity alone, and even more if talking only about renewables. But let's keep pretending otherwise.
I would instead say "There is no way our current lifestyle can be supported". I think further qualifications leave too much room for denying to ourselves just how bad the situation is and allow us to keep pretending.
Plan B? (Score:3)
Better figure out geo-engineering because humans won't get their collective act together. They are merely a bunch of chatty bald apes.
De-terraform the planet. (Score:3)
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A horrible idea unless we can make and maintain synthetic closed biospheres, because the natural one has been relatively stable for a long time now and we have no idea how to replicate that artificially on any scale.
Re:Plan B? (Score:4, Insightful)
We can do sequestration right now. We can do closed-loop carbon cycling with synthetic fuels made from air-sourced CO2 and water.
What we can't do is scale those things up beyond the experimental stage, because they're not 100% efficient and we'd have to power the processes with our existing power generation systems. So we'd actually end up ADDING to the problem as we burned even more fossil fuels powering the processes to get rid of fossil fuels...
The course we need to be on is to convert everything we can that burns hydrocarbons to electricity, and build as much renewable power as we can. And since we don't quite have grid storage worked out yet, we still need older systems to carry the load when renewables won't. Or convince everyone to stop using electricity (good luck!).
What I would like to see is excess renewable generation (just as it sometimes doesn't produce sufficient power, sometimes it makes more than we need) used to create synthetic fuels and close at least part of our carbon loop.
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Yeah, CO2, while a huge problem, is still just a trace gas, around 420 parts per million at present. It's a lot cheaper and more effective to let fewer genies out of the bottle than to try to stuff genies back into the bottle on an industrial scale.
I think grid storage is a lot further along than you apparently think. The price for existing technologies has dropped dramatically even in the last five years. The main challenge right now is new technologies, which are almost all privately funded and are cu
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We don't need processes to be 100% efficient, we need them to work intermittently. Then we can just use vast amounts of solar to power them.
Okay, we do need them to be more efficient to be effective enough, but there is actually a bigger issue. We need to pay for them somehow. Those fuels are going to be more expensive than getting oil out of the ground, and sequestration generates no profit at all. Carbon credits are an option but don't seem to be working as well as we need them to.
The good news is that it
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I think geoengineering is likely in the cards, but it would be a bad idea to rely solely on future geoengineering technology breakthroughs to undo *all* our mistakes. Because they probably won't.
When we are forced finally to deal with this problem seriously, it will be so late that we'll be forced to do an "all of the above" approach, including migration, damage mitigation, better-late-than-never conservation and alternative energy schemes, and geoengineering -- which will be a very expensive and speculati
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Yep, pretty much my prediction also. Also note that "all of the above" may well not be enough.
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The human race is a few centuries (at the very least) removed from being able to do that.
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This planet is done - but hey, let's move to another planet !!!
I detect an air of both factual appreciation and sarcasm. Do you have a better idea? Perhaps another planet nearby suits you more? Takes nine fucking months just to get your ass to Mars, so I hope you got those warp drive plans in your lunchbox.
Re:Hotter is actually safer (Score:5, Informative)
Fact: Every year more humans die from cold exposure than heat exposure.
Context: Under anthropogenic global warming, there will be more of both: extreme heat AND extreme cold. Remember, we're talking about only a 2-4 degree increase in the average temperature of the Earth over the entire year and entire planet. That's not much, but hidden in that average is an increase in extreme weather events on both ends of the temperature scale as weather patterns that, for example, confined cold polar air to the Arctic Circle during winter break down.
Reducing carbon fuel actually increases warming due to more IR transmission with cleaner air.
Context: burning fossil fuels has both warming effects through the greenhouse effect and cooling effects due to soot and aerosols. In fact the cooling effect was stronger than the greenhouse effect from roughly 1940 to 1980, but in the 1970s more accurate models of vertical heat transfer in the atmosphere *successfully predicted* that greenhouse effects would overtake cooling. This is because aerosols and soot are short lived but CO2 added to the atmosphere remains for centuries.
So hotter is actually safer overall, and you are actually encouraging that outcome. Well done.
Context: Global warming actually increases the frequency of extreme cold events in mid-latitudes; this isn't paradoxical because these events are accompanied by extreme warm events in polar regions. You can see an example of this by looking at this image [climatereanalyzer.org] representing the distribution of temperature anomalies. Look at Antarctica: fingers of extreme warmth are intruding into the content while fingers of extreme cold are extending from it. This kind of weather pattern is more common under AGW.
Nobody of consequence cares (Score:1)
The US is only looking for ways to make money from this and tax the consumer for it. They never regulate anything and they never enforce anything substantive that might actually meet these goals so why is there this constant hand wringing on the web over it? Your part is to pay taxes so high that you have subsistence living. That's what this is all about for you. You won't have time to worry about saving any planet when you can barely afford food. You will work only to pay taxes and get what you are given.
Let's get hot then ... (Score:2)
... and figure out how to scrub carbon, reflect more solar energy, etc.
Beats just emoting about it, and trying to make political hay from it.
Cracked Rice Bowls (Score:2)
These people at the UN only get money and work when there is a disaster. So they will continue to whip people into a frenzy over anything that pays them for as long as they can. Next they will declare a "Tidal Emergency" when the tide is particularly high or particularly low. It's all just a political grift. Even if the emergency is real, there is nothing that they will be doing to change anything except their own bank balances.
I have an idea (Score:2)