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Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years
- jammygit 7y agoI wonder what one could do to help with this as a startup. Most of the green tech is expensive and/or can’t compete with oil and gas subsidies. Education will take too long at this point. Who would pitch in to help me build a giant Mr Burns sun blocker in space?
- f_allwein 7y agoOne thing I thought about would be decarbonisation of the atmosphere. Could be as simple as planting as many trees as possible, or some fancy new technology...
- zapita 7y agoI think we (the tech and business community) need to face the uncomfortable reality: that the world needs us to be better citizens more than it needs us to be genius entrepreneurs. If everyone on this site simply 1) exercised their right to vote fully, 2) invested enough research time to make sure their vote helps fight global heating, in even a tiny way, and 3) made one change per month, no matter how small, in their individual routine in a way that diminishes their contribution to global heating... ... That would contribute more to saving the world than all our “world-saving” startups combined. But that would require admitting that we’re not as special as we think we are, which is hard.
- zaroth 7y agoWhat makes you think this? Can you give even ballpark numbers for how many tones of CO2 your #1/2/3 would save over ten years? Compared to a visionary engineering team raising let’s say $100 million to push forward new methods of sequestration? YC has specifically called for startups in this field. Startups like SKH are pushing to get sequestration under $100 per tonne — compared to US per capita average of 20 tones, of which 8.5 tones is considered “innate” just for living in the US... So while the absolute maximum personal impact an individual can have is around 10 tones, cost effective sequestration is the path forward to pricing and taxing carbon. Once we have a reasonable sequestration cost, we can charge everyone and everything for their own emissions and use that money to actually negate it. At current rates it would be ~$3,000 per capita which is still politically untenable. But at $300 per capital it becomes trivial. Somewhere in the middle in there it becomes economically and politically possible to actually eliminate the entire carbon emissions of the US, without even having to ask anyone to change their footprint. So the question is what’s more important to you? Moralistically preaching to everyone how they should be living their lives, or actually reaching zero net emissions? For example, you don’t need to eliminate international travel in order to eliminate the carbon footprint of international travel.
- zapita 7y agoYour reply is actually a perfect illustration of the problem. Sure, we need to ramp up carbon capture capabilities, and we need to do it fast. That is a great challenge for the tech industry to tackle. However. Carbon capture is not a silver bullet. At best, it is a short-term fix which can buy us time to actually fix the root cause of global heating. To state the obvious: the root cause is unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels. Carbon capture does nothing to address that root cause! In fact, it may end up making things worse in the long run, if we insist on over-selling it as a silver bullet - like you're doing right now. Did you know that when you build more freeways to alleviate traffic congestion, you actually make traffic worse? And did you know that after decades of scaling up "plastic capture" capabilities in the form of consumer recycling, we have basically nothing to show for it? There's no evidence that it has made a dent in the production of new plastic. In fact plastic production has accelerated: we've produced as much plastic globally in the last 13 years than in the 54 years before that. Building more freeways, over-selling plastic recycling, and over-selling carbon capture are all examples of the same flawed reasoning. They are short-term patches to fundamentally unsustainable systems, and when we allow them to become substitutes to an actual solution, they actually make our problem worse down the line. Which brings me to my criticism of the tech industry's priorities. Collectively, we are one of wealthiest and most influential groups of people on the planet. Our resources are immense, therefore our responsibility to allocate our resources wisely is also immense. And we are failing miserably in that responsibility, because although we are investing plenty of resources in short-term fixes like carbon capture, our investment in fixing the real structural problem (again: unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels) are basically ZERO. The reason we're failing is simple: carbon capture can be solved with technology and venture capital. Those are things we understand, and conveniently they allow us to keep doing what we like to do while telling ourselves we are saving the world. On the other hand, solving the root cause of global heating requires dismantling the fossil fuel industrial complex. The biggest obstacle to doing that is political corruption, which no amount of technology or venture capital can solve. The way we fight corruption is by becoming better citizens. That requires things like: voting; researching issues and candidates thoroughly; protesting; calling our representatives; showing up at town hall meetings; informing our friends and family about important political issues; getting other people to vote; etc. Unfortunately, most techies do none of those things. Political apathy is the norm. Even worse, remember that the tech industry played a direct role in Brexit and Trump's election, both of which are catastrophic setbacks in the fight against global heating. I am not "moralistically preaching" as you call it. I am simply describing a pragmatic strategy to solving global heating. Unfortunately it's neither fun not profitable to make the effort to be a better citizen, so techies just don't bother. This makes us collectively part of the problem rather than the solution, and I think that's a shame. PS: for the sake of completeness, here are other catastrophic consequences of fossil fuel emissions which carbon capture won't solve: - rampant plastic pollution (remember, plastic comes from oil) - mercury poisoning of the entire oceanic food chain (did you know that most of the mercury accumulating in the ocean comes from the fumes of coal plants?) - the rise of fascist regimes in the US and Europe, bankrolled in great part by the Koch brothers in the US and Putin's oligarchs in Russia - in both case that is oil money - the rise of violent Salafist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia - also oil money. - countless oil spills; I could go on.
- spookybones 7y agoAnd the award for best headline goes to ...
- pier25 7y agoYeah it's pretty confusing. The article explain later what that means: > Europe’s five hottest summers in the past 500 years have all occurred in the last 15 years, not including this summer.
- rrix2 7y agoMore colloquially/informally, a "500 year event" is something which has historically once every 500 years.
- mhh__ 7y agoIt made sense to me? Is it an obscure idiom (Native English speaker, so hard to tell)?
- baal80spam 7y agoI'm confused, how do you know the summers in question have been the hottest, not the coldest for example?
- happytoexplain 7y agoAssumption - corroborated by reading the article. That's often unavoidable by the nature of headlines. The fact that the headline writer successfully communicated the correct assumption means they did their job.
- zeeZ 7y agoI initially parsed it as five summers, each lasting 500 years, in a time span of 15 years. Logic then kicked in and "corrected" it to five summers, each as summer-y as 500 years worth of summers combined, in a time span of 15 years. I had to read the article to finally made sense of it.
- djohnston 7y agoPessimistically, global warming is going to kill us. You might as well install that window unit in Munich and be comfortable for the next few decades.
- asdf333 7y agoi think that is where conservatives will go. denial denial denial...then too late nothing we can do just do what you want.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoWell you can sort of see the point. If the world really can't be arsed to get together and actually try and fix it, may as well go out in a blaze of fire, heat and complex hydrocarbons...
- r00fus 7y agoIt’s make sense if the conservative viewpoint wasn’t continuing to engage in misinformation and denial.
- rootsudo 7y agoSo, if we compare real estate with new weather trend --.. we could find areas both going to be affected adversely and positively. Wonder what sort of change that will bring to countries or regions in the world.
- dougmwne 7y agoBig winners: Canada, Russia, Scandinavia. Big losers: India, Southeast Asia, equatorial regions. Crushed by climate refugees: USA, Continental Europe. Buy a cabin in the mountains, not a beach house.
- mshook 7y agoExcept there's another wide cultural gap when it comes to windows: in Europe you almost never find windows which open by raising a pane vertically... And that means window units are not an option.
- pier25 7y agoThis is a great video that explains how climate change is slowing the jet stream and how that is affecting the climate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQliow4ghtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQliow4ghtU
- edejong 7y agoThis kind of rhetoric is fueling the opposite camp. It really doesn't matter which camp you are in: we should admit to the vagueness this video is full of: "some scientists believe...", "this scientist thinks...", "there is at least some influence of...". It reemphasizes the climate sceptists standpoints. They (most) are not denying there is a problem, but claiming there is widespread misinformation and propaganda around this topic and a strong exaggeration of the scale of the problem. We have a kernel of truth around climate change. Let us cherish the kernel, instead of watering it down by popular media and scientists trying to jump the bandwagon by making vaguely substantiated claims.
- edejong 7y agoPlease, if you down-vote, engage with my arguments. I am intentionally not picking sides, but pointing out flaws which I believe need to be fixed.
- lumberjack 7y agoDo not buy into this stupid nonsense trend of late to attack the legitimacy of science. "Scientists say" is a perfectly legitimate way to convey scientific results. There is neither misinformation nor propaganda in the video. The climate deniers are not acting in good faith and will be intellectually dishonest no matter what you do. No reason to give them heed.
- edejong 7y agoWhere do I attack the legitimacy of science? Could you please quote me? The phrase, 'scientists say...' is often connected to hypotheses scientists have, which are partly backed up by models or proof. Often popular media falls back to "Johnny said X" to dumb down the complex findings for their ignorant viewership. The following statements show that there is a proof: - <person> proved <statement> - <person> discovered <statement> - <person> found <statement> evidence Too many times I've looked up scientific results based on 'X said Y', only to find that the effect was more marginal than claimed, or purely hypothetical based on other findings. This is not isolated to climate change, but all of popular science.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoThe whole idea of normal and the basis on which 1:500 and 1:1,000 events are built is starting to feel well past expiry date. We've had no end of them in the 21st century, whether cat 5 hurricanes, flood, fire or as in this case summers. It's not normal now, it's before we broke it, and normal is starting to sound and feel archaic. After 5 in 15 years, and on course for a sixth, the benchmark looks way off. At what point should it simply become a 1:3 year summer, or just "summer"? How deniers can experience it and keep acting like nothing's happening beats me.
- point78 7y agoYou have to consider a majority of deniers either believe it's a "phase" the earth goes through, it's a scam by the liberals or God will fix it.
- faissaloo 7y agoI don't know if all Abrahamic religions believe this, but in Islam at least we believe that as we near the end of the world natural disasters will increase greatly, so it seems that the end of humanity and eventually this reality entirely is how God will fix this.
- dwaltrip 7y agoUnless I am misunderstanding something, I would argue that belief is incredibly harmful if it is not true, as it will lead people to avoid trying to solve problems that they may actually be able to solve.
- mjibson 7y agoAs a former Mormon, this is exactly correct and scary for that reason. I am ashamed that I used to think this way.
- faissaloo 7y agoI disagree, death for example is inevitable but nonetheless we are commanded to protect life. The inevitable does not exempt a person from doing their best, everyone will be held to account for their actions.
- point78 7y agoOverpopulation is not helping either. Would it be this bad if there were only 500million people?
- Para2016 7y agoProbably not. If we could get rid of everyone except subsaharan Africa and Amazon people then that would really help.
- f_allwein 7y agoDepends on which 500 million... Wealthy people in industrialised countries tend to produce much more CO2. Compare e.g the us versus India at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_... . With China, I guess a lot of the CO2 comes from making stuff for everyone else.
- bpfrh 7y agoIf think there was a calculation that one 300g steak produces as much CO2 as somebody living in kenya. It's not really about the population it's about usage and greed. edit: sorry, wrong calculation: 2 Steaks a week produce about 300Kg Co2 per year, which is the same as 7 People living DR Kongo produce
- FreeFull 7y agoIt feels like we're at a point where simply dropping emissions down to 0 wouldn't be enough, we need to outright start pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and have negative emissions. Given the way politics is right now, catastrophe feels inevitable.
- bamboozled 7y agoFrom what I understand, the best course of action recommended by scientists a long time ago was: - Step one: _stop_ polluting (in like 1995). - Step two: Work out ways to get the genie back into the bottle or co2 back into the ground. It seems like we forgot to enact step 1 and now step 2 will pretty much be pointless because we are still spewing out co2 faster than ever. If we're too survive we need to do both steps as of yesterday, unfortunately I don't think there are very efficient says to sequester enough carbon yet, so I think we might be in some trouble.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago>> If we're too survive we need to do both steps as of yesterday, Huge supporter of climate change action, but scientifically is there any basis for the idea that current models point to human extinction? (Don't answer if you don't have a hard source, but I'd like what the projected point is for that)
- ForHackernews 7y ago"The good news is that humans [probably] won't go extinct from climate change. The bad news is that was the good news."
- hombre_fatal 7y agoEventually, you need to leave the theater for the next group to enjoy the show.
- undersuit 7y ago
- sytelus 7y agoI am really starting to worry about climate change but not because of sea level rising or other popular reasons. The big issue that no one is talking about is that the world’s densely populated areas closer to equator are having agriculture yields starting diminish due to high temperatures and land becoming more and more dessert like. In places like North America, Europe and even Siberia, the weather is becoming much more pleasant longer parts of the year and farms are appearing on scene where it was unimaginable few centuries ago. The most productive agriculture band is moving more north up leaving massive population it previously helped grow behind. This is certain to create crises we have never seen before.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- A2017U1 7y agoAlso a schism between those who benefit somewhat and those who don't. For many countries this is also a domestic divide rather than the traditional nationalism soaked debate that most people or news orgs focus on. Southern US stands to lose a lot more from the charts I've seen. Surprised it isn't raised a lot more by their representatives.
- pas 7y ago"Charts" don't matter much in politics.
- yostrovs 7y agoThat's probably because when those reps were in high school, they were told that by now entire cities would be under water and storms would rule the world. It didn't happen because the panic is much more intense than the reality. So they're not going to panic this time. It's the fault of those who tried to "raise awareness".
- KyleOS 7y agoIt's scary seeing the evolution of the effects of climate change over time. How anybody can continue to deny it is unbelievable. This [1] plots out global average temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, month by month. [1] https://kyso.io/KyleOS/temperature https://kyso.io/KyleOS/temperature
- Proven 7y agoFake measurements from airport based weather stations