10 ms·

Canada Records All-Time High Temperature of 49.5 Degrees: Weather Service

68 points by underscore_ku 5y ago

thewhitetulip 5y ago
I can't believe that people still don't believe on climate change and global warming Still treating these events as "once in 100yrs" If a "once in 100yr" event happens every year then something must be going wrong, right?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I had this discussion with one of them. Their response was that "I am sure it happened sometime in history."
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    It certainly did, like the Eocene, so what's your point? What is your detailed plan, besides being smug about your incorrect superiority? Note that HN was almost entirely wrong about the corona lab leak theory and herd immunity for over a year, as well as the thinking that consumer 10 cent masks worked. Why do you think you know what you're talking about now, instead of simpy virtue signalling?
  - thewhitetulip 5y ago
    Considering that I'm being downvoted to oblivion, I think that there are quite a few climate change deniers on HN, of all places. Wow.
    - swader999 5y ago
      It's changing but not at a rate that will be of any impact to humanity. We've been warming since the last ice age.
      - Tijdreiziger 5y ago
        https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
        swader999 5y ago
        https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Lev...
      - ehsankia 5y ago
        > It's changing but not at a rate that will be of any impact to humanity Yet here we are, with "once in a century" floods, fires, hurricanes and heat waves happening nearly every year in the past decade. Are you claiming these don't have "any impact on humanity"? > We've been warming since the last ice age. It has gone up and done over the centuries, but absolutely not at the rate that it has been (completely coincidentally) since the start of the industrial age. If you look at any graph of average temperature, there's a huge spike in the past few decades. When in history has there been a sudden spike like this in such a short period of time?
        swader999 5y ago
        Look at the USGCRP Climate Science Special Assessment: Volume 1: Chapter 6: Temperature Changes in the United States https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ Scroll down to figure 6.3. You can see that the 1920's to 1940's had more extreme heat events than any time since. Figure 6.4 is also useful to look at.
        ehsankia 5y ago
        What about Figure 6.5? Why do you conveniently ignore that one which completely contradicts your point?
        swader999 5y ago
        And look at the rate of sea level change since the last ice age: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Lev...
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Tech attracts plenty of contrarians.
      - SilverRed 5y ago
        Climate change isn't convenient for the value of their stocks.
    - connectsnk 5y ago
      I feel you. Did my part my upvoting your comment.
      - thewhitetulip 5y ago
        Thank you. I just don't understand how anyone can be blind to this obvious fact. Mind blowing.
    - vardump 5y ago
      Sometimes it's enough just for the link to appear in some particular group on Facebook, Reddit, etc. for similar things to happen. Just give it some time. The reasonable ones will follow.
- G3rn0ti 5y ago
  The thing with these "all time high records" is they have an intrinsic trend to the upside. Consider the following thought experiment: Draw a continuous random number between 0 and 100 and compare it with the previous result. If the new number is higher than before, keep it as the new record value. Draw a time evolution of all the record numbers and you will see a straight line going up. But this is not a statistical trend. So, while I am not saying there is no climate change, the evidence they provide is questionable.
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    What's the distribution over time of the new records? Is it what you'd expect from a random process?
  - tasty_freeze 5y ago
    Here is the counter evidence: count the number of record high days and the number of record low days. For the past few decades, and increasingly so, the number of high days far outpaces the number of record low days, something your example doesn't exhibit.
    - georgeplusplus 5y ago
      I would then say your counter evidence could be flawed if the period you chose was not sufficiently long enough. If your decades period is biased towards record high then the original evidence stands.
      - alpaca128 5y ago
        The temperature change in the last 100 years was larger than in the 5000 years before that. You can cherry-pick time periods however you like, you won't find another with such a drastic change in such a short timeframe.
        georgeplusplus 5y ago
        The OP is about the flaw of using record highs or lows to show a rising/falling trend. Not temperature changes in general. You can indeed cherry pick decades long periods of both cooling and warming which would show a biased in the last 100 years. In the 80s, scientists thought there was Global Cooling. There was also an Ice age that shows temperatures were indeed cooler. At least understand what is being discussed before you make a response and downvote.
- cjensen 5y ago
  If you have one hundred cities, then a "once in 100 yrs" event will happen in ~1 city per year. So first lesson is be careful assuming extreme events are necessarily linked directly to a trend. Cliff Mass' Weather Blog has been covering the heat since it was first predicted by the models a over a week ago [1]. His view [2] is that this would be a 100-year (or more!) event regardless of global warming. So the expert analysis is that this is not an indicator of climate change, but that warming is sure not helping. [1] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-greatest-heat-wave-in-northwest.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-greatest-heat-wav... [2] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatures-are-being.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatur...
  - Jyaif 5y ago
    If this were a city-wide record, I would agree. This is a country-wide record, and the second widest country in the world (Canada represents ~6.7% of the world's land surface).
  - thewhitetulip 5y ago
    I live in India and we're either seeing a draught or a flood. And things are getting worse consistently Rainy season was June to Sept.. now it rains 12months, literally.last year it rained in ALL months. It has never happened before. There never were cyclones in Arabian sea, since 2yrs we had 1 cyclone per year. And they had predicted these cyclones, yes. That's happening due to a warming ocean. And that's because of global warming. There was polar vortex in US for 3 or 4yrs now, Texas was freezing just a few months ago The fact that these events are predicted means climate is changing. Else how would we predict a freak accident? A freak accident that keeps happening over and over again Edit: getting heavily downvoted so much that HN isn't allowing me to post comments!
    - tibbydudeza 5y ago
      So there are climate denying cliques here on HN - thought only smart people posted here ???.
- swader999 5y ago
  You need thirty years of data to say anything is a trend. Anything less is just weather.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/eccc/migration/main/sc-cs/439E7F88-2AC6-4617-A24E-BDD4F99AD1F7/CTVB_Annual_2016_temp_graph_e.jpg https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/eccc/migration/main/sc-cs/...
    - swader999 5y ago
      And go back to about 1920 to 1950, you see the same trend.
      - lm28469 5y ago
        I don't get it, 5 minute ago it wasn't a trend and no the trend exist since the 20s? Which is it? The classic "it's not warming" "ok it is but it always has been"
        swader999 5y ago
        Well yeah today is just weather. Your 30 year graph is useful and shows temps rising since industrialization which is expected. But we saw the same kind of rise in the 1920's to 50's (AND THEN FALL 50's to 90's). Climate varies and there's long multi decade cycles in play. Sunspots, earth orbit to name a couple. I think it is fairly clear that we are seeing a .04 C rise per year since the 90's. We are also seeing a 1-3mm sea level rise per year which is a slow rate compared to 20,10 and five thousand years ago. This 1-3mm/year rate will have little to no impact on humanity. If you want to explain this heat wave its probably more useful to look at the La Nina, El Nino cycles and what they are doing right now.
        lm28469 5y ago
        People love to cherry pick parts which have "no impact on humanity" but the truth is that all the effects combined already do have impacts. Of course 1mm rise in sea level doesn't matter but what about warmer ocean creating different currents, which in turns affects storms and hurricanes, marine life, ocean acidification, mass insects/animal migrations &c. If climate change was just about 1mm of water and 1c more it wouldn't be an issue, the problem is that Earth is an infinitely complex system full of inter dependant parts we barely understand and we might very be breaking important sub systems without even realizing it. > its probably more useful to look at the La Nina, El Nino cycles and what they are doing right now. Indeed, and I guess you haven't done it, looks like climate change plays a (negative) role in that too: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/climate-change-is-making-el-ninos-more-intense-study-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/climate-change-is-making-el-nin... https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2685/New-research-volume-explores-future-of-ENSO-under-influence-of-climate-change https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2685/...
- freshhawk 5y ago
  I know you didn't mean to, but amazing job getting HN to embarass itself.
- bserge 5y ago
  Even if it's once in 100 years, you can't possibly tell me all the power plants, mines, factories, ships and cars aren't affecting the weather.
- ehsankia 5y ago
  the pseudo-reasonable ones will try to claim that, yes there is global warming, but that it's not caused by humans and is a normal part of climate on earth. Hell I already see a few in this very thread... Forget the fact that there's been a huge spike in only the past few decades (coincidentally since the start of the industrial age), and that we don't see any change anywhere this fast in the history of the planet. I'm still convinced that these are generally older people who want to enjoy their lives as it is and don't give a single fuck about the future of humanity and future generations.
  - Someone 5y ago
    I never understand that logic. Even if it’s not caused by humans we stil would want to do something about it, if we can, like we did something against smallpox, measles, lightning impacts burning doen houses, etc.
  - Hammershaft 5y ago
    > I'm still convinced that these are generally older people who want to enjoy their lives as it is and don't give a single fuck about the future of humanity and future generations. I personally met somebody who, after whittling down his climate arguments, told me as much... :(
- f6v 5y ago
  It’s hard to acknowledge a process while you’re a part of it and it hasn’t finished yet.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    > it hasn’t finished yet Climate is never finished, we will never wake up one day and see "breaking news: climate change is done", it's a continuous process
    - f6v 5y ago
      > it's a continuous process But that's the thing. You have to realise many people can't reason about events that take a 100 years to unfold. It's like when you hear on the news "the sea levels will rise by the end of the century". For an average person it's as far in the future as the thermal death of the universe. People won't wear a mask in the middle of the pandemic, and somehow we expect everyone to forever change their habits for the better future past their lifetime.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  That proves climate change. But you need the trend of the lowest recorded temperature before concluding it is warming
  - sgt101 5y ago
    I've spent many years creating statistical analysis and models about a large business's operations. There is always at least one statistic that someone produces that purports to show the opposite of what a balanced analysis shows. In this case the lowest recorded temperature is not a solid indication of cooling or even of "not warming" because it is a localised measurement; it's about one small area - and one small area in a remote and hard to access place. As our civilization has become more powerful we are able to put sensors in many more places, some of those places were inaccessible to previous generations of sensor programs. Sensors now operate autonomously and the data is collected remotely. This would create a strong bias towards detecting lower temperatures. It would be possible to estimate and control for this bias in the number - but I haven't done that as it's a bit of work! As a not expert (not ever involved in any climate analysis) if I were asked to create a meaningful statistic I would try to do an analysis that tries to see things as they are (rather than supporting an opinion) and would look at the mean and median temperatures recorded at sensor locations over time, and would also look at the evolution of temperature aggregates across representative populations of sensors deployed - which would include sensors in cities and deserts as well as those in Antarctica. For example I would take random samples of 10% of the sensor population that was available at a given time point. I have no idea how the climate scientists do this - but I am confident that they will have methods that are far more reliable than my silly homebrew idea - if you are interested in the topic it would be good to look into how they do it.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    No, if you have an ever increasing number of high and low records, increasing number of drought and flood, &c. People should stop playing on words when discussing climate, what does it matter if your specific region is warming or not, if the highs and lows make life less and less sustainable? Your day to day quality of life doesn't depend on the yearly average temperature Some people act as if it was a semantic game they have to win. "Aha see it's not warming its - 60c in winter and 60c in summer we're perfectly fine"
- tomjen3 5y ago
  If you have 500 events that could be one in a 100 years, then you expect to have 5 events a year on average. Not saying global warming isn't a thing, just that you can't make that argument, and even if you could the argument could still be just as true if global warming was caused by a sun phase. Anyway I don't really care to debate global warming, but I would love to see people debate how to solve this problem, given real world constraints of politics, economics and the rise of China. That might be useful. I still haven't seen any that don't begin with a) if only we could or b) if only everybody would which are nonstarters.
lota-putty 5y ago
We're pushing the boundaries of Anthropocene. What changes have you made in your life since learning of "Global Warming due to green-house gases"? Turned vegan, started walking, cycling; gave up on pleasure trips?
- Loic 5y ago
  Stopped using the car for everything within a 4km radius from home with an exception for bulk transport of heavy/large stuff. By taking the resolute habit not to use the car for short trips, the side benefits are that my kids now bike everywhere in the city independently and instead of 700km per tank on average, we are at 1000km. We drive less and for what we drive we reduced our per km consumption. It is really a win-win habit.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Recently I have moved to the city and stopped using a car all together. Ignoring the environmental impact, it has been an incredible improvement for my mental health. Life is also massively more convenient without a car. I also do not use public transport and just walk everywhere.
  - voisin 5y ago
    And now what is the likelihood of everyone doing this and if you somehow achieved 100% adoption what impact would this have on climate change? We need to solve these problems upstream.
    - Loic 5y ago
      It is time to solve these problems from both sides, upstream and downstream.
- swader999 5y ago
  Still buying my ski pass every year!
- freshhawk 5y ago
seanwilson 5y ago
For people saying individual action is useless, where does top-level action from governments and big companies come from if it can't be traced to individuals? How is this different from saying voting in elections, organising protests and boycotting companies/products has no influence? How does voting with your wallet not heavily influence supply/demand and company policies? Why would governments feel compelled to make changes if there's little support demonstrated by individuals? Are you saying the beliefs and actions of your friends and family have little influence on you and you personally have rarely influenced anyone you know?
- Isinlor 5y ago
  There is no way you could meaningfully control CO2 emissions of companies as an individual. If you will try to do it, then the companies will optimize for misleading you. There are systemic solutions: European Union Emissions Trading System is quite good system. It sets a limit on emissions and auctions rights to emissions that can be traded later. The limit will go down according to the IPCC recommendations. The current price is ~50 euro per metric tone of CO2 emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Trading_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi... https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/
  - seanwilson 5y ago
    > There is no way you could meaningfully control CO2 emissions of companies as an individual. If you will try to do it, then the companies will optimize for misleading you. You don't think you can have an impact on your personal CO2 levels by avoiding flying and eating less beef for example (which both have a massive footprint)? How is a company realistically going to mislead you into going for a worse alternative there? > There are systemic solutions: European Union Emissions Trading System is quite good system. But why would systemic solutions get suggested or implemented if individuals didn't show they wanted a solution? Where would these initiatives come from if they're not influenced by the voices, voting power and buying power of individuals?
dirtyid 5y ago
Canada projected to be climate winner, so not necessarily a bad thing for Canadian interests.
- Teever 5y ago
  As a Canadian I would strongly prefer that we didn't live in a world where there are climate 'winners' and 'losers' even if that means that I am likely to win.
  - dirtyid 5y ago
    Never the less, I think we need to be pragmatic about the tyranny and blessing of geography, as well as desire for underdeveloped countries to develop. Climate is changing, we need to calibrate with interest in mind.
- voisin 5y ago
  What does climate winner mean even in a local level with temperatures hitting numbers like shown in the article?
  - dirtyid 5y ago
    Overall, change in climate will be beneficial i.e. unlock more resource from permafrost, increase agricultural output, open up new artic transit opportunities, reduce net need for winter heating.
tibbydudeza 5y ago
Well what a surprise climate change is real and it is to late to do anything about it. But we will have to adapt - perhaps the mole people in HG Wells The Time Machine is not so far fetched after all.
- lm28469 5y ago
  > Well what a surprise climate change is real and it is to late to do anything about it. Climate change isn't a boolean that just switched to "true", if we took global actions now we could slow it down, if we give up and consider it's too late we'll only make things worse
ttul 5y ago
I live in a part of the heat bubble that rarely if ever experiences extreme heat. The hottest day of the year is typically 30C or so. This week, we hit 40. People in Arizona are prepared for that kind of heat. But up here, nobody has AC. Many people don’t even own a fan. My house reached 40C and I basically had to leave because that’s unlivable.

68 points by underscore_ku 5y ago

I can't believe that people still don't believe on climate change and global warming Still treating these events as "once in 100yrs" If a "once in 100yr" event happens every year then something must be going wrong, right?

MattGaiser 5y ago
I had this discussion with one of them. Their response was that "I am sure it happened sometime in history."
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  It certainly did, like the Eocene, so what's your point? What is your detailed plan, besides being smug about your incorrect superiority? Note that HN was almost entirely wrong about the corona lab leak theory and herd immunity for over a year, as well as the thinking that consumer 10 cent masks worked. Why do you think you know what you're talking about now, instead of simpy virtue signalling?
- thewhitetulip 5y ago
  Considering that I'm being downvoted to oblivion, I think that there are quite a few climate change deniers on HN, of all places. Wow.
  - swader999 5y ago
    It's changing but not at a rate that will be of any impact to humanity. We've been warming since the last ice age.
    - Tijdreiziger 5y ago
      https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
      - swader999 5y ago
        https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Lev...
    - ehsankia 5y ago
      > It's changing but not at a rate that will be of any impact to humanity Yet here we are, with "once in a century" floods, fires, hurricanes and heat waves happening nearly every year in the past decade. Are you claiming these don't have "any impact on humanity"? > We've been warming since the last ice age. It has gone up and done over the centuries, but absolutely not at the rate that it has been (completely coincidentally) since the start of the industrial age. If you look at any graph of average temperature, there's a huge spike in the past few decades. When in history has there been a sudden spike like this in such a short period of time?
      - swader999 5y ago
        Look at the USGCRP Climate Science Special Assessment: Volume 1: Chapter 6: Temperature Changes in the United States https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ Scroll down to figure 6.3. You can see that the 1920's to 1940's had more extreme heat events than any time since. Figure 6.4 is also useful to look at.
        ehsankia 5y ago
        What about Figure 6.5? Why do you conveniently ignore that one which completely contradicts your point?
      - swader999 5y ago
        And look at the rate of sea level change since the last ice age: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Lev...
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Tech attracts plenty of contrarians.
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      Climate change isn't convenient for the value of their stocks.
  - connectsnk 5y ago
    I feel you. Did my part my upvoting your comment.
    - thewhitetulip 5y ago
      Thank you. I just don't understand how anyone can be blind to this obvious fact. Mind blowing.
  - vardump 5y ago
    Sometimes it's enough just for the link to appear in some particular group on Facebook, Reddit, etc. for similar things to happen. Just give it some time. The reasonable ones will follow.
G3rn0ti 5y ago
The thing with these "all time high records" is they have an intrinsic trend to the upside. Consider the following thought experiment: Draw a continuous random number between 0 and 100 and compare it with the previous result. If the new number is higher than before, keep it as the new record value. Draw a time evolution of all the record numbers and you will see a straight line going up. But this is not a statistical trend. So, while I am not saying there is no climate change, the evidence they provide is questionable.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  What's the distribution over time of the new records? Is it what you'd expect from a random process?
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  Here is the counter evidence: count the number of record high days and the number of record low days. For the past few decades, and increasingly so, the number of high days far outpaces the number of record low days, something your example doesn't exhibit.
  - georgeplusplus 5y ago
    I would then say your counter evidence could be flawed if the period you chose was not sufficiently long enough. If your decades period is biased towards record high then the original evidence stands.
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      The temperature change in the last 100 years was larger than in the 5000 years before that. You can cherry-pick time periods however you like, you won't find another with such a drastic change in such a short timeframe.
      - georgeplusplus 5y ago
        The OP is about the flaw of using record highs or lows to show a rising/falling trend. Not temperature changes in general. You can indeed cherry pick decades long periods of both cooling and warming which would show a biased in the last 100 years. In the 80s, scientists thought there was Global Cooling. There was also an Ice age that shows temperatures were indeed cooler. At least understand what is being discussed before you make a response and downvote.
cjensen 5y ago
If you have one hundred cities, then a "once in 100 yrs" event will happen in ~1 city per year. So first lesson is be careful assuming extreme events are necessarily linked directly to a trend. Cliff Mass' Weather Blog has been covering the heat since it was first predicted by the models a over a week ago [1]. His view [2] is that this would be a 100-year (or more!) event regardless of global warming. So the expert analysis is that this is not an indicator of climate change, but that warming is sure not helping. [1] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-greatest-heat-wave-in-northwest.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-greatest-heat-wav... [2] https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatures-are-being.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatur...
- Jyaif 5y ago
  If this were a city-wide record, I would agree. This is a country-wide record, and the second widest country in the world (Canada represents ~6.7% of the world's land surface).
- thewhitetulip 5y ago
  I live in India and we're either seeing a draught or a flood. And things are getting worse consistently Rainy season was June to Sept.. now it rains 12months, literally.last year it rained in ALL months. It has never happened before. There never were cyclones in Arabian sea, since 2yrs we had 1 cyclone per year. And they had predicted these cyclones, yes. That's happening due to a warming ocean. And that's because of global warming. There was polar vortex in US for 3 or 4yrs now, Texas was freezing just a few months ago The fact that these events are predicted means climate is changing. Else how would we predict a freak accident? A freak accident that keeps happening over and over again Edit: getting heavily downvoted so much that HN isn't allowing me to post comments!
  - tibbydudeza 5y ago
    So there are climate denying cliques here on HN - thought only smart people posted here ???.
swader999 5y ago
You need thirty years of data to say anything is a trend. Anything less is just weather.
- lm28469 5y ago
  https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/eccc/migration/main/sc-cs/439E7F88-2AC6-4617-A24E-BDD4F99AD1F7/CTVB_Annual_2016_temp_graph_e.jpg https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/eccc/migration/main/sc-cs/...
  - swader999 5y ago
    And go back to about 1920 to 1950, you see the same trend.
    - lm28469 5y ago
      I don't get it, 5 minute ago it wasn't a trend and no the trend exist since the 20s? Which is it? The classic "it's not warming" "ok it is but it always has been"
      - swader999 5y ago
        Well yeah today is just weather. Your 30 year graph is useful and shows temps rising since industrialization which is expected. But we saw the same kind of rise in the 1920's to 50's (AND THEN FALL 50's to 90's). Climate varies and there's long multi decade cycles in play. Sunspots, earth orbit to name a couple. I think it is fairly clear that we are seeing a .04 C rise per year since the 90's. We are also seeing a 1-3mm sea level rise per year which is a slow rate compared to 20,10 and five thousand years ago. This 1-3mm/year rate will have little to no impact on humanity. If you want to explain this heat wave its probably more useful to look at the La Nina, El Nino cycles and what they are doing right now.
        lm28469 5y ago
        People love to cherry pick parts which have "no impact on humanity" but the truth is that all the effects combined already do have impacts. Of course 1mm rise in sea level doesn't matter but what about warmer ocean creating different currents, which in turns affects storms and hurricanes, marine life, ocean acidification, mass insects/animal migrations &c. If climate change was just about 1mm of water and 1c more it wouldn't be an issue, the problem is that Earth is an infinitely complex system full of inter dependant parts we barely understand and we might very be breaking important sub systems without even realizing it. > its probably more useful to look at the La Nina, El Nino cycles and what they are doing right now. Indeed, and I guess you haven't done it, looks like climate change plays a (negative) role in that too: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/climate-change-is-making-el-ninos-more-intense-study-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/climate-change-is-making-el-nin... https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2685/New-research-volume-explores-future-of-ENSO-under-influence-of-climate-change https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2685/...
freshhawk 5y ago
I know you didn't mean to, but amazing job getting HN to embarass itself.
bserge 5y ago
Even if it's once in 100 years, you can't possibly tell me all the power plants, mines, factories, ships and cars aren't affecting the weather.
ehsankia 5y ago
the pseudo-reasonable ones will try to claim that, yes there is global warming, but that it's not caused by humans and is a normal part of climate on earth. Hell I already see a few in this very thread... Forget the fact that there's been a huge spike in only the past few decades (coincidentally since the start of the industrial age), and that we don't see any change anywhere this fast in the history of the planet. I'm still convinced that these are generally older people who want to enjoy their lives as it is and don't give a single fuck about the future of humanity and future generations.
- Someone 5y ago
  I never understand that logic. Even if it’s not caused by humans we stil would want to do something about it, if we can, like we did something against smallpox, measles, lightning impacts burning doen houses, etc.
- Hammershaft 5y ago
  > I'm still convinced that these are generally older people who want to enjoy their lives as it is and don't give a single fuck about the future of humanity and future generations. I personally met somebody who, after whittling down his climate arguments, told me as much... :(
f6v 5y ago
It’s hard to acknowledge a process while you’re a part of it and it hasn’t finished yet.
- lm28469 5y ago
  > it hasn’t finished yet Climate is never finished, we will never wake up one day and see "breaking news: climate change is done", it's a continuous process
  - f6v 5y ago
    > it's a continuous process But that's the thing. You have to realise many people can't reason about events that take a 100 years to unfold. It's like when you hear on the news "the sea levels will rise by the end of the century". For an average person it's as far in the future as the thermal death of the universe. People won't wear a mask in the middle of the pandemic, and somehow we expect everyone to forever change their habits for the better future past their lifetime.
cblconfederate 5y ago
That proves climate change. But you need the trend of the lowest recorded temperature before concluding it is warming
- sgt101 5y ago
  I've spent many years creating statistical analysis and models about a large business's operations. There is always at least one statistic that someone produces that purports to show the opposite of what a balanced analysis shows. In this case the lowest recorded temperature is not a solid indication of cooling or even of "not warming" because it is a localised measurement; it's about one small area - and one small area in a remote and hard to access place. As our civilization has become more powerful we are able to put sensors in many more places, some of those places were inaccessible to previous generations of sensor programs. Sensors now operate autonomously and the data is collected remotely. This would create a strong bias towards detecting lower temperatures. It would be possible to estimate and control for this bias in the number - but I haven't done that as it's a bit of work! As a not expert (not ever involved in any climate analysis) if I were asked to create a meaningful statistic I would try to do an analysis that tries to see things as they are (rather than supporting an opinion) and would look at the mean and median temperatures recorded at sensor locations over time, and would also look at the evolution of temperature aggregates across representative populations of sensors deployed - which would include sensors in cities and deserts as well as those in Antarctica. For example I would take random samples of 10% of the sensor population that was available at a given time point. I have no idea how the climate scientists do this - but I am confident that they will have methods that are far more reliable than my silly homebrew idea - if you are interested in the topic it would be good to look into how they do it.
- lm28469 5y ago
  No, if you have an ever increasing number of high and low records, increasing number of drought and flood, &c. People should stop playing on words when discussing climate, what does it matter if your specific region is warming or not, if the highs and lows make life less and less sustainable? Your day to day quality of life doesn't depend on the yearly average temperature Some people act as if it was a semantic game they have to win. "Aha see it's not warming its - 60c in winter and 60c in summer we're perfectly fine"
tomjen3 5y ago
If you have 500 events that could be one in a 100 years, then you expect to have 5 events a year on average. Not saying global warming isn't a thing, just that you can't make that argument, and even if you could the argument could still be just as true if global warming was caused by a sun phase. Anyway I don't really care to debate global warming, but I would love to see people debate how to solve this problem, given real world constraints of politics, economics and the rise of China. That might be useful. I still haven't seen any that don't begin with a) if only we could or b) if only everybody would which are nonstarters.

lota-putty 5y ago

We're pushing the boundaries of Anthropocene. What changes have you made in your life since learning of "Global Warming due to green-house gases"? Turned vegan, started walking, cycling; gave up on pleasure trips?

Loic 5y ago
Stopped using the car for everything within a 4km radius from home with an exception for bulk transport of heavy/large stuff. By taking the resolute habit not to use the car for short trips, the side benefits are that my kids now bike everywhere in the city independently and instead of 700km per tank on average, we are at 1000km. We drive less and for what we drive we reduced our per km consumption. It is really a win-win habit.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Recently I have moved to the city and stopped using a car all together. Ignoring the environmental impact, it has been an incredible improvement for my mental health. Life is also massively more convenient without a car. I also do not use public transport and just walk everywhere.
- voisin 5y ago
  And now what is the likelihood of everyone doing this and if you somehow achieved 100% adoption what impact would this have on climate change? We need to solve these problems upstream.
  - Loic 5y ago
    It is time to solve these problems from both sides, upstream and downstream.
swader999 5y ago
Still buying my ski pass every year!
freshhawk 5y ago

seanwilson 5y ago

For people saying individual action is useless, where does top-level action from governments and big companies come from if it can't be traced to individuals? How is this different from saying voting in elections, organising protests and boycotting companies/products has no influence? How does voting with your wallet not heavily influence supply/demand and company policies? Why would governments feel compelled to make changes if there's little support demonstrated by individuals? Are you saying the beliefs and actions of your friends and family have little influence on you and you personally have rarely influenced anyone you know?

Isinlor 5y ago
There is no way you could meaningfully control CO2 emissions of companies as an individual. If you will try to do it, then the companies will optimize for misleading you. There are systemic solutions: European Union Emissions Trading System is quite good system. It sets a limit on emissions and auctions rights to emissions that can be traded later. The limit will go down according to the IPCC recommendations. The current price is ~50 euro per metric tone of CO2 emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Trading_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi... https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/
- seanwilson 5y ago
  > There is no way you could meaningfully control CO2 emissions of companies as an individual. If you will try to do it, then the companies will optimize for misleading you. You don't think you can have an impact on your personal CO2 levels by avoiding flying and eating less beef for example (which both have a massive footprint)? How is a company realistically going to mislead you into going for a worse alternative there? > There are systemic solutions: European Union Emissions Trading System is quite good system. But why would systemic solutions get suggested or implemented if individuals didn't show they wanted a solution? Where would these initiatives come from if they're not influenced by the voices, voting power and buying power of individuals?

dirtyid 5y ago

Canada projected to be climate winner, so not necessarily a bad thing for Canadian interests.

Teever 5y ago
As a Canadian I would strongly prefer that we didn't live in a world where there are climate 'winners' and 'losers' even if that means that I am likely to win.
- dirtyid 5y ago
  Never the less, I think we need to be pragmatic about the tyranny and blessing of geography, as well as desire for underdeveloped countries to develop. Climate is changing, we need to calibrate with interest in mind.
voisin 5y ago
What does climate winner mean even in a local level with temperatures hitting numbers like shown in the article?
- dirtyid 5y ago
  Overall, change in climate will be beneficial i.e. unlock more resource from permafrost, increase agricultural output, open up new artic transit opportunities, reduce net need for winter heating.

tibbydudeza 5y ago

Well what a surprise climate change is real and it is to late to do anything about it. But we will have to adapt - perhaps the mole people in HG Wells The Time Machine is not so far fetched after all.

lm28469 5y ago
> Well what a surprise climate change is real and it is to late to do anything about it. Climate change isn't a boolean that just switched to "true", if we took global actions now we could slow it down, if we give up and consider it's too late we'll only make things worse

ttul 5y ago

I live in a part of the heat bubble that rarely if ever experiences extreme heat. The hottest day of the year is typically 30C or so. This week, we hit 40. People in Arizona are prepared for that kind of heat. But up here, nobody has AC. Many people don’t even own a fan. My house reached 40C and I basically had to leave because that’s unlivable.