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It is having a devastating effect. June was the hottest month recorded in human history: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-experiences

It is having a devastating effect. June was the hottest month recorded in human history: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-experiences-hottest-june-ever-record-2019 https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-e... It crushed the record and July is tracking to break that record. There's not a socially acceptable way of conveying how bad it is. Running around and screaming "we're all going to die" is more accurate that saying things will be fine.

godshatter 7y ago
This last June was the hottest month of June in recorded history, not the hottest month in recorded history. Click on "Global Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Change" to see how it fits in a graph of monthly land and ocean temperatures: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  You are absolutely correct, and I wrote it wrong. Thank you. That said, it's horrible. Not even a strong El Nino year.
assblaster 7y ago
It hasn't been this hot since 1880, per that article.
- karmelapple 7y ago
  The article says it’s never been this hot since 1880, which I believe is when they started recording this data - it didn’t mention it was this hot then. Do you have additional info to claim it was this temp in 1880?
  - assblaster 7y ago
    They didn't have records before 1880 according to the article. So, it could have been warmer, but there is no record of it.
    - itcrowd 7y ago
      There have been many reconstructions of global temperatures before 1880 using a variety of temperature proxies. A nice summary in one image is given on Wikipedia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#/media/File:A...
      - assblaster 7y ago
        They also mix proxies but superimpose temperature records from the last 150 years. A better curve would be using one set of proxy data to maintain consistency.
qserasera 7y ago
Global leadership - 2016-present Crushing it
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
vkou 7y ago
> There's not a socially acceptable way of conveying how bad it is. Running around and screaming "we're all going to die" is more accurate that saying things will be fine. But what solutions are you proposing? Can we afford them, without having to change any of our laws, or our lifestyles one whit? Are they going to raise cost of living for the poor, or reduce economic growth? /snark
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Appreciate the /snark. It's tragic how common that viewpoint is. I mentioned this in another comment, but it's striking how much this resembles all of Earth collectively going through various stages of the Kubler-Ross model of grief. I feel like those types of responses fall between denial and bargaining. Fair number of people still in denial/anger stages.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >But what solutions are you proposing? Can we afford them, without having to change any of our laws, or our lifestyles one whit? No, but without too much inconvenience we can outlaw cattle ranching. Cattle are nowhere near a natural species at this point from millenia of animal husbandry and there are 1.3-1.5 billion alive at any given moment. Under extremely ideal conditions you need 1.5 acres (in other parts of the world you need tens of acres) to feed one cow for 12 months. Imagine if we let even 2 billion acres go wild in the next 2 years (it takes 18 months~ to get a cow to slaughter weight), imagine how much water that saves from land that has to be irrigated, imagine what happens if you start letting grasslands reclaim much of that land. Better, outlaw cattle for beef. Only allow dairy cows to remain, that leaves you 250-300 cattle. Now require those to be pasture fed in months that they can be. This allows them to not only be healthier but to work their own manure back into the soil which will improve the soil quality if they are rotated from field to field. In some places you simply return it to the natural grasslands, in others you actually start replanting forests that were cut decades or centuries ago to use for farmland. Simply removing a BILLION cows makes an immediate impact over 18 months. Some of the land you still have to use for growing crops for feeding humans but only a fraction. The rest can be well on it way to restoration in 1-2 years. ----- Also tackle zoning/city planning. Set up rules for new construction where commercial and retail is evenly distributed throughout residential, with solid grid roads with dedicated bike and walking paths. ----- Then place quite high tariffs on fruits and vegetables to reduce out of season consumption considerably. At one point oranges in the United States, outside of states like Florida, were a special treat you got once a year if your family had some money to throw around - now you can go to the grocery and get oranges, bananas, dragon fruit, tomatoes, peppers, pineapple and coffee beans like you're some kind of Mansa Musa-rich ruler.. Most of the produce you see in stores, most of the year, comes from another country, a notable percentage of the time from another continent. Not only does this result in massive amounts of waste/spoilage, it requires massive amounts of fossil fuels for ships, trains and truck not to mention regional and local warehouses to store the stuff for days at a time before moving to retail outlets. If you buy a piece of fruit, especially one not native to the United States, at the grocery it might have been handled by a dozen people, been in a ship then on a train then on a truck, and traveled thousands of miles (in fact, the average American meal is estimated to have travelled 1500 miles to get to a plate [1]). [1] https://cuesa.org/learn/how-far-does-your-food-travel-get-your-plate https://cuesa.org/learn/how-far-does-your-food-travel-get-yo... ---- These are three fairly simple things to implement. Will you be eating grapes in the winter in Arizona? Probably not. Will people miss hamburgers (I sure as hell will, but chicken sandwiches are good and chicken is an order of magnitude better as far as greenhouse emissions goes per pound of meat). Or we can watch city after city in India and Africa, millions upon millions of people, go without water and say "oh how unfortunate, not my problem" and wake up one day, go to the tap to get a glass of water, only to hear some sputtering only to find, there's no water. We can wait until we go to the grocery and corn is 5$ a cob and looks pathetic, until pork butt is 37$ a pound because the grain crops largely failed from drought or excessive rain cough which we've seen a taste of this year with the rains, there's corn knee high by my home that should already be tasseled cough or until we're paying 100$ for a 20lb bag of black beans, thinking how lucky we were to find them because Dave on Facebook just posted a picture of his grocery selling them for 110$. edit: oh look, within 3 minutes of posting this someone went through and down voted my last few comments, in different threads.
want2know 7y ago
I even believe in ten years the world will be completely different. When a country like India lacks drinking water a huge mass of people will be on the move. In Europe food production is in trouble. This will also cause a lot of trouble and people will start to move to better places. Maybe we will survive but that's indeed different from 'we will be fine'.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  It's hard to imagine an orderly retreat to more habital climates for that number of people. I think you underestimate the synergy between war, famine, and disease. In this case the "royal we" is hiding a lot of death. I'm sure even in a 5 deg C worst case model maybe a couple of hundred million people can survive by the poles. But that means 90-95% population die-off. That's ignoring trophic web collapses and ecological damage to the world that human beings have adapted to for hundreds of thousands of years.
  - truculent 7y ago
    IIRC "worst case scenario"s are more like an 8C Eocene-like equilibrium
  - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
    I think the previous poster is being charitably vague, so that the reader can substitute in their own interpretation whether resulting pressures on people will result in orderly migration, displacement, or warfare. If history is any indication, the answer likely to be a mix of the above. But their interpretation shows a more nuanced understanding than those who seem to suggest masses of people will die in situ, or driven to the fringes of the planet to seek relief from the heat. People and societies are quite adaptable, provided they have the means to modify their immediate environment. Billions of people live in states that will likely fare all right, because they can mitigate impacts with modest effort and resource cost, despite the presence of political movements that are fixated with collective guilt. The other billions who are less fortunate will be subject to intense pressures for their survival. We've seen this before, and should know what to expect. It's just that we're uncomfortable talking about it.
DuskStar 7y ago
> June was the hottest month recorded in human history: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-experiences-hottest-june-ever-record-2019 https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-e... No it was not - it was the hottest JUNE on record. Not the hottest MONTH. Your source even says so. This is very serious. Errors like this make it easier for denialists to find a technical issue and then disregard the entire message.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453568 That being said, "Errors like this make it easier for denialists to find a technical issue and then disregard the entire message" ... it is better to entirely write them off at this point. It has been decades of proven predictions. There is no standard of proof that will change minds.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    The point isn't to change the minds of the denialists. It's to create an environment in which there is no argument by which someone may be convinced to join them. And that doesn't mean "outlaw the arguments" or anything counterproductive like that! It means to counter all of the arguments individually.

godshatter 7y ago

This last June was the hottest month of June in recorded history, not the hottest month in recorded history. Click on "Global Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Change" to see how it fits in a graph of monthly land and ocean temperatures: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/

throwaway5752 7y ago
You are absolutely correct, and I wrote it wrong. Thank you. That said, it's horrible. Not even a strong El Nino year.

assblaster 7y ago

It hasn't been this hot since 1880, per that article.

karmelapple 7y ago
The article says it’s never been this hot since 1880, which I believe is when they started recording this data - it didn’t mention it was this hot then. Do you have additional info to claim it was this temp in 1880?
- assblaster 7y ago
  They didn't have records before 1880 according to the article. So, it could have been warmer, but there is no record of it.
  - itcrowd 7y ago
    There have been many reconstructions of global temperatures before 1880 using a variety of temperature proxies. A nice summary in one image is given on Wikipedia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#/media/File:A...
    - assblaster 7y ago
      They also mix proxies but superimpose temperature records from the last 150 years. A better curve would be using one set of proxy data to maintain consistency.

qserasera 7y ago

Global leadership - 2016-present Crushing it

dang 7y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

vkou 7y ago

> There's not a socially acceptable way of conveying how bad it is. Running around and screaming "we're all going to die" is more accurate that saying things will be fine. But what solutions are you proposing? Can we afford them, without having to change any of our laws, or our lifestyles one whit? Are they going to raise cost of living for the poor, or reduce economic growth? /snark

throwaway5752 7y ago
Appreciate the /snark. It's tragic how common that viewpoint is. I mentioned this in another comment, but it's striking how much this resembles all of Earth collectively going through various stages of the Kubler-Ross model of grief. I feel like those types of responses fall between denial and bargaining. Fair number of people still in denial/anger stages.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>But what solutions are you proposing? Can we afford them, without having to change any of our laws, or our lifestyles one whit? No, but without too much inconvenience we can outlaw cattle ranching. Cattle are nowhere near a natural species at this point from millenia of animal husbandry and there are 1.3-1.5 billion alive at any given moment. Under extremely ideal conditions you need 1.5 acres (in other parts of the world you need tens of acres) to feed one cow for 12 months. Imagine if we let even 2 billion acres go wild in the next 2 years (it takes 18 months~ to get a cow to slaughter weight), imagine how much water that saves from land that has to be irrigated, imagine what happens if you start letting grasslands reclaim much of that land. Better, outlaw cattle for beef. Only allow dairy cows to remain, that leaves you 250-300 cattle. Now require those to be pasture fed in months that they can be. This allows them to not only be healthier but to work their own manure back into the soil which will improve the soil quality if they are rotated from field to field. In some places you simply return it to the natural grasslands, in others you actually start replanting forests that were cut decades or centuries ago to use for farmland. Simply removing a BILLION cows makes an immediate impact over 18 months. Some of the land you still have to use for growing crops for feeding humans but only a fraction. The rest can be well on it way to restoration in 1-2 years. ----- Also tackle zoning/city planning. Set up rules for new construction where commercial and retail is evenly distributed throughout residential, with solid grid roads with dedicated bike and walking paths. ----- Then place quite high tariffs on fruits and vegetables to reduce out of season consumption considerably. At one point oranges in the United States, outside of states like Florida, were a special treat you got once a year if your family had some money to throw around - now you can go to the grocery and get oranges, bananas, dragon fruit, tomatoes, peppers, pineapple and coffee beans like you're some kind of Mansa Musa-rich ruler.. Most of the produce you see in stores, most of the year, comes from another country, a notable percentage of the time from another continent. Not only does this result in massive amounts of waste/spoilage, it requires massive amounts of fossil fuels for ships, trains and truck not to mention regional and local warehouses to store the stuff for days at a time before moving to retail outlets. If you buy a piece of fruit, especially one not native to the United States, at the grocery it might have been handled by a dozen people, been in a ship then on a train then on a truck, and traveled thousands of miles (in fact, the average American meal is estimated to have travelled 1500 miles to get to a plate [1]). [1] https://cuesa.org/learn/how-far-does-your-food-travel-get-your-plate https://cuesa.org/learn/how-far-does-your-food-travel-get-yo... ---- These are three fairly simple things to implement. Will you be eating grapes in the winter in Arizona? Probably not. Will people miss hamburgers (I sure as hell will, but chicken sandwiches are good and chicken is an order of magnitude better as far as greenhouse emissions goes per pound of meat). Or we can watch city after city in India and Africa, millions upon millions of people, go without water and say "oh how unfortunate, not my problem" and wake up one day, go to the tap to get a glass of water, only to hear some sputtering only to find, there's no water. We can wait until we go to the grocery and corn is 5$ a cob and looks pathetic, until pork butt is 37$ a pound because the grain crops largely failed from drought or excessive rain cough which we've seen a taste of this year with the rains, there's corn knee high by my home that should already be tasseled cough or until we're paying 100$ for a 20lb bag of black beans, thinking how lucky we were to find them because Dave on Facebook just posted a picture of his grocery selling them for 110$. edit: oh look, within 3 minutes of posting this someone went through and down voted my last few comments, in different threads.

want2know 7y ago

I even believe in ten years the world will be completely different. When a country like India lacks drinking water a huge mass of people will be on the move. In Europe food production is in trouble. This will also cause a lot of trouble and people will start to move to better places. Maybe we will survive but that's indeed different from 'we will be fine'.

throwaway5752 7y ago
It's hard to imagine an orderly retreat to more habital climates for that number of people. I think you underestimate the synergy between war, famine, and disease. In this case the "royal we" is hiding a lot of death. I'm sure even in a 5 deg C worst case model maybe a couple of hundred million people can survive by the poles. But that means 90-95% population die-off. That's ignoring trophic web collapses and ecological damage to the world that human beings have adapted to for hundreds of thousands of years.
- truculent 7y ago
  IIRC "worst case scenario"s are more like an 8C Eocene-like equilibrium
- temp-dude-87844 7y ago
  I think the previous poster is being charitably vague, so that the reader can substitute in their own interpretation whether resulting pressures on people will result in orderly migration, displacement, or warfare. If history is any indication, the answer likely to be a mix of the above. But their interpretation shows a more nuanced understanding than those who seem to suggest masses of people will die in situ, or driven to the fringes of the planet to seek relief from the heat. People and societies are quite adaptable, provided they have the means to modify their immediate environment. Billions of people live in states that will likely fare all right, because they can mitigate impacts with modest effort and resource cost, despite the presence of political movements that are fixated with collective guilt. The other billions who are less fortunate will be subject to intense pressures for their survival. We've seen this before, and should know what to expect. It's just that we're uncomfortable talking about it.

DuskStar 7y ago

> June was the hottest month recorded in human history: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-experiences-hottest-june-ever-record-2019 https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-e... No it was not - it was the hottest JUNE on record. Not the hottest MONTH. Your source even says so. This is very serious. Errors like this make it easier for denialists to find a technical issue and then disregard the entire message.

throwaway5752 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20453568 That being said, "Errors like this make it easier for denialists to find a technical issue and then disregard the entire message" ... it is better to entirely write them off at this point. It has been decades of proven predictions. There is no standard of proof that will change minds.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  The point isn't to change the minds of the denialists. It's to create an environment in which there is no argument by which someone may be convinced to join them. And that doesn't mean "outlaw the arguments" or anything counterproductive like that! It means to counter all of the arguments individually.