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July Matched, and Maybe Broke, Record for the Hottest Month Since Analysis Began
- makerofspoons 7y agoThis is to be expected- we will continue to break these records until such a time we deploy carbon sequestration at scale.
- mikepurvis 7y agoWhat is the plan to pay for carbon sequestration? My assumption was always that it would be via carbon taxation or some kind of offset/credits scheme— if you run a business with a conventional emissions footprint, you need to pay for that footprint, and the cost of paying (for someone elsewhere to capture and sequester your emissions) will simultaneously provide the incentive to improve efficiency and reduce your emissions at the source (which is always preferable to having to scrub them afterwards, of course). But... carbon taxes seem to be a huge non starter. The current (centrist) Liberal government in Canada introduced an extremely modest and utterly inadequate one that is revenue neutral (the money for the year came back on our tax returns this spring), and the opposition Conservative party is having a field day attacking it as a "cash grab" that's just ideologues taking money out of the pockets of "everyday Canadians". Check out the parade of last carbon-tax-free fill ups posted on social media the night before it kicked in: https://www.macleans.ca/news/conservative-mpps-fill-up-their-massive-gas-guzzling-tanks-in-protest-of-the-carbon-tax/ https://www.macleans.ca/news/conservative-mpps-fill-up-their... And the keyboard warriors on social media are even worse— they read the word "tax" and their brains just click over into rage mode, despite that carbon taxation is a long time conservative policy, and that similar market-based solutions were openly favoured by previous generations of right wing politicians in Canada: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-if-youre-a-conservative-who-opposes-carbon-pricing-are-you-really-a/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-if-youre-a-c... How do we make progress on this? If a relatively progressive country like Canada can't even collect a tiny payment for incentive purposes (because all the revenue is being returned), how in the heck are we supposed to get to a place where polluters are charged the actual cost of scrubbing their emissions? If we can't get polluters to pay directly, where are the trillions going to come from to pay for this? We can't even seem to find the money to build high speed rail, or get proper running water to our indigenous communities.
- makerofspoons 7y agoA carbon tax and dividend scheme might be more politically palatable, as it wouldn't be as regressive.
- mikepurvis 7y agoThis is exactly what the Canadian system is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend It's almost certain to be repealed when the current government loses power in this fall's election. :( But the larger point is that when you pay back all the revenues as dividends, then you only get the reduction incentives. Where does the extra cash come from to actually pay for sequestration?
- makerofspoons 7y agoThat is unfortunate. Perhaps government contracts to sequestration companies in order to hit emissions targets could be carved out of existing budgets. I'm from the U.S. and there is certainly money to be diverted. Maybe we just need sequestration contractors in the right districts for certain politicians?
- mikepurvis 7y agoPossibly. But the reality is that if we (either Canada or the US) were looking to "spend money on jobs", there are a million things we could have been hiring people for over the past couple decades, even stuff as simple as infrastructure maintenance and tree planting. Looks like there are projections for a bunch of jobs in the carbon capture industry (eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/17/carbon-capture-and-storage-strategy https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/17/carbon-c...), but I'm still hazy on how we're going to find trillions in the general revenue pot to make it happen.
- chris1993 7y agoAttacking a 'carbon tax' worked for the conservatives in Australia to take down a centre-left government. I'm sure conservatives in Canada took note.
- throwaway5752 7y agoCarbon sequestration is a red herring. It won't keep up with emissions and will waste valuable time reducing emissions, which can be done now. I don't know if you've done the simple energy delta math on most sequestration plans, but a lot of them involve emitting a lot of new carbon.
- makerofspoons 7y agoCarbon sequestration is a necessity at this point for many emissions scenarios. BECCS (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage) seems to be the IPCC's favored technology at the moment. It doesn't have to keep up with emissions, we need to cut emissions to the point that sequestration can bring us carbon negative.
- throwaway5752 7y agoThat approach has really serious technical challenges (poor fuel quality and proximity of suitable land to population centers vis a vis the energy necessary to transport it). It's not clear how it's going to scale up to the necessary level.
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoIn November 2020, the 26th COP summit will be held in the UK, where world leaders will agree on the action plans for cutting emissions. When that conference ends, we have one decade to cut global emissions by 50%. Are we going to make it? If so, how?
- melling 7y agoWe seemed to have difficulty with the Kyoto climate deal with a 5% reduction. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093579-was-kyoto-climate-deal-a-success-figures-reveal-mixed-results/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093579-was-kyoto-clima... The United States wouldn't even sign it because it "would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/03/20010314.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20...
- Brakenshire 7y agoThat assumes keeping temperatures below 1.5C, and no negative emissions technologies. In reality, likely this number will slip to 2C, and some negative emissions will be assumed. That brings us to the Paris emissions reduction pathways, which are very achievable with shared global effort. The more we can eliminate the need for negative emissions, the better. But we shouldn’t assume no negative emissions, and the most stringent temperature pathway, otherwise people will just assume that action is impossible and use it as an excuse to do nothing.
- noja 7y agoHow? Buy less stuff, travel less, eat less meat.
- cableshaft 7y agoBut companies need butts in seats for that water cooler effect, so people might have a good idea once in a blue moon when talking in person! That alone is worth forcing everyone to spend up to three hours a day traveling to and from work!
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
- doubleg 7y agoThe server appears to be down. Mirror: https://outline.com/fqYT2e https://outline.com/fqYT2e
- cojxd 7y agoinb4: thread full of platitudes and pats on the back.
- 867567838694 7y agoUnfortunately, any gains my western countries will just be wiped out by other growing nations. America could cut its emissions by 90% and it wouldn't put a dent in what Chind puts out.
- camelNotation 7y agoUn-industrialized portions of Africa are about to go full tilt into industrialization as well. China is beginning to invest heavily in manufacturing and infrastructure all over the continent. There is zero chance we make it out of this without significant impact to the global climate.
- kjaftaedi 7y agoArctic areas are heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the planet, and the melting permafrost will release enormous amounts of co2 into the atmosphere that will dwarf the emissions of all countries. It's time to stop pointing fingers and start coming up with solutions.
- mikepurvis 7y agoWestern nations have had a 200 year head start. Even if our current status is middle of the pack, we have a lot of climate guilt to atone for. Even moreso because we are outsized in our cultural influence. As we model the lifestyle changes ourselves, and those changes are reflected in the movies, etc that we export. That impacts what lifestyle the rising middle class aspires to in places like China and Africa.
- panzagl 7y agoWell, if they're watching our movies then they won't be surprised when our solution turns out badly for them.
- mikepurvis 7y agoNot sure what point you're trying to make here, but right now the rising middle class worldwide wants to join westerners in doing things like living a suburban, car-oriented lifestyle, eating lots of beef and chicken, and flying to overseas vacation destinations.
- formercoder 7y agoCould anyone who is more informed comment on this WSJ article discussing climate change media coverage? https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-media-corrupted-climate-policy-11562360829 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-media-corrupted-climate...
- Brakenshire 7y agoThe percentage of posters that have access to the WSJ paywall isn’t going to be that high. The rest of us can only comment on the first 100 words.
- melling 7y agoSure. You live in an echo chamber on HN where everyone is worried about climate change. The WSJ is another echo chamber that is almost the polar opposite where people either don't believe in climate change, or that it's greatly exaggerated. I've engaged with commenters in the WSJ hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Basically, you'll talk yourself into one big circle. People have all sorts of standard answers like "the climate is always changing", references to debunked movies, a handful of "scientific names", the Global Warming Hiatus, etc. You can address all of them but they'll simply start over again with the same comments in the next article. Several years ago I was even going to create an FAQ of questions. https://2cco2.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/hello-world/ https://2cco2.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/hello-world/ The only positive is that recently the WSJ stopped letting people comment on most articles.
- Frondo 7y agoAs for why people there might be so reluctant to embrace it, I think Upton Sinclair's words: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- panzagl 7y agoWell, the issue no-one on the climate change side wants to address is that the ramifications of most of the proposed solutions are as bad as the effects of climate change itself.
- aivisol 7y agoIn the meantime in Finland, NE Russia and Baltics: "The average temperature over Europe in July 2019 was just above the 1981-2010 average for the month. It was warmer than normal over western Europe, except for south-western Iberia, but cooler than normal over the east of the continent, particularly the north-east. " [1] [1] https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-july-2019 https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-july-2...
- Brakenshire 7y agoYou could just as well pick out unusually hot regions as well, the article is about a global average, it takes both these fluctuations around the mean into account. What matters is that the mean is increasing.
- aivisol 7y agoI was not trying to deny the average increase. Rather I wanted to point out that there are extremes which are becoming more pronounced on both ends. The July was extremely cold in NE Europe and even the map shows only few degrees below average, in real life it translated to nightly temperatures falling to almost freezing point several days in a row. And the August here is no better so far...
- not_a_cop75 7y agoCould we start framing hot years in the same way we do floods? I mean, everyone knows what a "10 year flood" or a "100 year flood" is supposed to look like. No one has a proper statistical relation for what the likelihood of a broken temperature means, and I find that rather odd. Even if climate change has made it so that the 100 year year broken temperature records are now 10 year temperature broken temperature records, could we at least say that statistically? Is it too much to ask?
- williesleg 7y agoWe've only got until 2012 before the oceans fill
- crispinb 7y agoA species which by dint of evolutionary happenstance has skirted limits on reproduction and consumption goes ahead to strip its habitat. Big surprise (said no ecologist ever). A pity in this case its habitat is a whole planet, but that's life (and death). I wonder if something like this eventually happens on every living world, and if the overrunning species generally comes to harbour a comforting superstition that basic biology doesn't apply to it in its magnificent superior aloneness?
- mAEStro-paNDa 7y agoWith this topic it's important to remind people that while individual actions to address climate change are good, and encouraged, it's going to take serious systemic action and cooperation to address this to the degree it should be. There was a climate scientist not long ago calling for a "world war-like mobilization" in regards to addressing climate change and that's exactly what needs to happen. Buying an electric vehicle and slapping a solar panel on your roof simply isn't enough.
- throwaway5752 7y agoYes, but do both of them. Eat less meat, minimize flying, get the electric car, get the panels. Just know it's not enough and push for coordinated response.
- Brakenshire 7y agoTransport is a third of emissions, most of that road transport, so if everyone bought an electric car it would certainly have an impact. I think people have to bear in mind this is also about industrial scale. One person buying an electric car brings down the price for another, each new person brings down the price more and opens up the possibility to more people, and at some point you’ll get a mass transfer. Electric cars are only something like 0.3% of cars on the road but already have the scale to get quite close to competitive. They're already cheaper for high mileage cases. Although I do agree we will need concerted effort, it’s likely this will be in conjunction with, not opposed to, these kind of individual decisions.
- fulafel 7y agoIt would have an impact alright, a catastrophic impact. Most people don't have cars, and we need to reverse the trend of increased car ownership.
- Brakenshire 7y agoWhy? Electrification of grid electricity is comparatively easy, and may even substantially happen (say, to 60-80%) without government action because of the relentlessness of the learning curves for wind and solar. But that’s only a third of emissions. The core challenge is to electrify transport and heating to tackle the other two thirds. Replacing combustion cars with electric cars might involve a lot of mining (as does all of industrial civilization), but it will almost certainly be a benefit for climate change. Just plateauing the number of cars would be an achievement, reducing them by 90%+ globally, as would be needed without electrification, is cloud cuckoo land.
- jjtheblunt 7y agogenuine question: does that imply that no recent month set a hottest record, or we'd have seen that in the news?
- makerofspoons 7y agoJune broke the record, too: https://www.noaa.gov/news/june-2019-was-hottest-on-record-for-globe https://www.noaa.gov/news/june-2019-was-hottest-on-record-fo... July was hotter than June. May was the 4th hottest ever: https://www.noaa.gov/news/may-2019-was-4th-hottest-on-record-for-globe https://www.noaa.gov/news/may-2019-was-4th-hottest-on-record...
- jjtheblunt 7y agoThanks : I hadn't thought of looking it up there, though should have.
- jakewins 7y agoFor finding where you can have the most impact here, I highly recommend Project Drawdown; it's a data-driven roundup of proposed solutions, ranked by how effective they are actually estimated to be. It takes into account things like cost, timelines and political feasibility as well. There's a summary of the book here: https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/ If you are in the US, consider looking into Citizens Climate Lobby. They are pushing for a carbon tax-and-dividend bill, shown by independent analysis to be enough for the US to surpass the Paris Accord if implemented, it currently has bipartisan support in the House: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ And if you're into graphic design, there's a really small group of devs within CCL working on an OSS project we're using to coordinate calls to representatives - like reminding members to call, helping with talking points and tracking which districts we are making calls in: https://projectgrandcanyon.com/ https://projectgrandcanyon.com/ You can message me (email in profile) if you're keen and I can put you in touch with the maintainers.
- abstractbarista 7y agoWe'll be alright.
- dpatru 7y agoAs a counterpoint, consider this quote from an article [1] by economist Robert Murphy: "In the climate change debate, people often forget that under all but the most catastrophic scenarios, the future generations who will benefit from our current mitigation efforts will be much richer than we are. For example, Nigel Lawson points out that even under one of the worst case scenarios studied by the IPCC, failure to act would simply mean that people in the developing world would be “only” 8.5 times as wealthy a century from now, compared to 9.5 times as wealthy if there were no climate change. [2]" [1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Murphyclimate.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Murphyclimate.... [2] Nigel Lawson, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming (New York: Duckworth Overlook, 2008), p. 36.
- throwaway5752 7y agoNigel Lawson the politician and noted liar and misleader? That Nigel Lawson? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/21/lord-lawson-global-warming-errors https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/21/lord-law...
- esotericn 7y agoWealth? What is this "wealth" you speak of? Can you eat money? Do all the technological advances, smartphones, VR, blah blah, counteract killing off the megafauna, turning the natural landscape into deserts and concrete? Pure insanity.