24 ms·

It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

408 points by matsemann 5y ago

vs2 5y ago
Oh crap
omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
Onward and upward... :\
chickenpotpie 5y ago
Someone make a bot to repost this every year
malomalsky 5y ago
so stop mine your crypto
- rvz 5y ago
  so stop train your deep models
  - dexter89_kp3 5y ago
    Both are power supply issues (i.e how the power gets generated) rather than actual bad use cases.
    - recursive 5y ago
      That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, if you know how your power is getting generated, you can try to minimize it until such time as it's not causing negative externalities.
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  Naaa
endisneigh 5y ago
the climate change prisoner's dilemma will leave us all screwed.
orf 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal And this is still a thing.
- echelon 5y ago
  Yeah, these assholes: (Warning: these videos will make you very mad.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5psOvHFIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5psOvHFIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDxjge5hmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDxjge5hmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHmJSsRLgj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHmJSsRLgj4 https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/j1yj0c/trump_supporter_rolling_coal_as_he_speeds_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/j1yj0c/trum... This should be some sort of crime. edit: Sorry, I edited out my comment about this probably giving bikers cancer after I included more videos. This can't be healthy for the lungs. edit 2: Downvoted to -3 for calling out this shitty behavior? y'all are insane.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    “It probably gave the bicyclists cancer” I said this to someone who showed me one of these videos once and they basically told me to wise up and stop being paranoid. How about the whole world stops being a pack of idiots instead?
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Oh, we'll stop alright. But not in the way that you probably intended. Earth is a pretty good self-correcting system that acts with total disregard for pesky little organisms that are along for the ride.
    - cusenses 5y ago
      > How about the whole world stops being a pack of idiots instead? Maybe you can start that?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
lmilcin 5y ago
Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.
- spapas82 5y ago
  About this, what was very puzzling to me was the opinions of the late Michael Chrichton. He was constantly expressing the opinion that the global warming was a frame up, both in his books but also to various talks. He had even written a book on which the bad guys were Greenpeace agents! Now, considering how highly educated (not only he was a great author but he also had studied MD) and smart (this should be obvious to anybody that has read his books and watched over his career) he was, it means a lot to me that this person had these beliefs. Also the fact that he is not related to the field so he doesn't have anything to gain by believing and advocating these opinions makes the fact even more important. As I said I am really puzzled about that. Does anybody has more information to shade a light on that?
  - matthewmcg 5y ago
    Maybe I've spent too much time among lawyers, but I have noticed that there are some very smart people that seem to relish having certain unconventional beliefs. A critical, independent mind is a great thing, but the danger is when the view is held because it is unpopular and not because of any critical investigation of the evidence. Call it "anti-confirmation bias" if you want. Or to put it another way, some people just seem to enjoy smugly dismissing the obvious answer because it makes them feel smart!
    - spapas82 5y ago
      Yes, that's an explantation that could support his behaviour. However I don't think that he was doing it just to present himself as smarter than the other people. He firmly believed that opinions, at least that's what I was getting out of his talks and some of his books.
SimeVidas 5y ago
What was the previous record?
- lhorie 5y ago
  FTA: > the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees F (0.93 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago. It was 0.02 of a degree F (0.01 of a degree C) higher than the previous record set in July 2016, which was then tied in 2019 and 2020
  - black6 5y ago
    What's the error on that measurement? I have a hard time believing that the +- on global mean temperature is less than 0.02 degF.
kersplody 5y ago
/s dupe, already submitted
nanis 5y ago
> Around the globe: the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees F (0.93 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago. If you are curious about where humans were measuring temperatures between 1880 and now, I put together an animation[1] of temperature station locations in GHCNv3 some time ago. With GHCNv4 out, it is due for an update, but still informative. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95uvT67bNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95uvT67bNg
Rijek33 5y ago
Don't think science will save us this time lads
- marcyb5st 5y ago
  Agreed. We are already beyond the tipping point. Positive feedback loops already kicked in (thawing of Tundra, lower albedo due to glaciers melting, ...). We would need to go carbon negative right away and stay at those levels for years. Or go big about engineering the climate until we carbon levels return to normal levels.
- noobly 5y ago
  Science is what got us here in the first place, is it not?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
whall6 5y ago
Why is every other post on hacker news about climate change
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Because it's of interest to hackers. Why? Partly because it's a technical problem, and partly because we care about the environment, because that's where we live.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    >> Why? Partly because it's a technical problem Once the deniers soften this is always their answer. The reality is nobody is prepared to sacrifice to the extent demanded, skeptics and alarmists alike.
    - whall6 5y ago
      Can you explain what the demanded sacrifice is?
      - TremendousJudge 5y ago
        For people in rich nations, the level of consumerism they have been accustomed to their whole lives, has to go. For most people this means no more driving, no more flying, no more eating fancy foods and buying fancy things. People have to live pretty much like hippies. For people in the rest of the world, the promise of the modern industrial rich age (which is mostly a mirage anyway) has to go. Pretty much nobody in the world is willing to accept this sacrifice (remember, covid only lasted like two years and public will was/is really strained by the end -- what's needed here is a permanent change), so since this is a hard requirement for any solution, there's no other except treating it like a technical challenge. That's my view anyway
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Think of it as the next big thing. It is.
threatofrain 5y ago
Parallel discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28171200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28171200
lhorie 5y ago
For the curious, here's a graph showing average temperatures year-over-year from various datasets[0]. Spoilers: yes, it's been going up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record#/media/File:20200324_Global_average_temperature_-_NASA-GISS_HadCrut_NOAA_Japan_BerkeleyE.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_recor...
everdrive 5y ago
Don't worry, next July will be hotter.
blondie9x 5y ago
Lower population by encouraging smaller families and no limits on birth control. Lower consumption through minimalism and right to repair and loner lasting products. These policies must be implemented yesterday.
adam12 5y ago
The current administration has approved more than 2,000 new fracking permits. I'm so glad the US has rejoined the Paris Agreement. "Meet the new boss Same as the old boss"
- cryptoz 5y ago
  I am very left, and despise Biden's refusal to address climate change where it counts, like fraking. But honestly, the new boss is not the same as the old boss, even with climate change. The new boss does in fact acknowledge it exists, rather than insisting that all climate change is a hoax and it is invented by China to hurt the US. Biden is not making the progress I'd like to see, but he is in no way as bad as the last guy.
  - makotech222 5y ago
    Lol he acknowledges it exists. What is the point of that if you continue to make it worse!? By that logic, Biden actually believes we deserve climate change and wants to destroy the world!
  - vkou 5y ago
    I can't say I care very deeply about whether or not he's sympathetic and useless, or antagonistic and useless. The end result is the same. Maybe the EU will one day get it's agenda together, and apply crippling tariffs to all goods and services imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.
  - starik36 5y ago
    This is nonsense. Whether someone virtue signals or not, actions are what's important, not words. The CO2 emissions output has been coming down since the high in 2006. With the old boss and the new boss. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... If anything, fracking helped the environment, since it offset resources being mined by the traditional, more wasteful methods.
    - 5y ago
whytaka 5y ago
Personally, I have lost hope. The ocean temperatures will continue rising, the ecosystem of micro-organisms that provide the majority of the planet's oxygen will collapse, the seasons will become completely undependable for agriculture, the massive reservoirs of methane under permafrost will explode into the atmosphere, forests around the world will burn, and the reservoirs of potable water will dry up. My cynical belief is that amongst conservative leadership, there is already consensus that climate change will take place. The anti-immigrant agenda is advanced preparation to repel the imminent hordes of climate refugees out of Fortress America.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  > ecosystem of micro-organisms that provide the majority of the planet's oxygen will collapse, Citation needed. This is the doomsaying that people see, then see legit science doesn’t suggest this, and assume it’s all as real as the book of revelations. We need to spread real information not act like the world will legitimately end because the temperature goes up to what it was 3 million years ago.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    I think they might be referring to phytoplankton. Their shells are dependent on the ocean being amenable to their development, and it's becoming less so, already causing growing pockets of oxygen-poor ocean waters.[0][1] They happen to be responsible for about half our oxygen, or more.[2] 0: https://psmag.com/environment/global-warming-is-putting-phytoplankton-in-danger https://psmag.com/environment/global-warming-is-putting-phyt... 1: https://news.mit.edu/2015/ocean-acidification-phytoplankton-0720 https://news.mit.edu/2015/ocean-acidification-phytoplankton-... 2: https://newportbay.org/ask-a-naturalist-do-phytoplankton-produce-more-oxygen-than-a-rainforest-if-so-does-the-oxygen-they-produce-go-into-the-atmosphere-or-does-it-just-remain-dissolved-in-the-ocean/ https://newportbay.org/ask-a-naturalist-do-phytoplankton-pro...
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      Funny. The MIT article basically proves my point about doomsaying. >the researchers observed that as ocean acidification prompted some species to grow faster, and others slower > By 2100, the local composition of the oceans may also look very different due to warming water: The model predicts that many phytoplankton species will move toward the poles. That means that in New England, for instance, marine communities may look very different in the next century So basically, yes, the ecosystems will change and some species will die while others blossom and thrive. That paper says nothing about oxygen levels or phytoplankton as a group of species going extinct. As is typical, and actual scientist says something and talks about its ramifications and people turn it into an apocalyptic tale. I particularly like the beginning quote from the researcher himself >”I’ve always been a total believer in climate change, and I try not to be an alarmist, because it’s not good for anyone,” says Dutkiewicz.
kaesar14 5y ago
The coolest July for the rest of our lives.
boplicity 5y ago
If you want to see a very realistic, depressing, and ever-so-slightly hopefully depiction of the possible near-future, read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
- ajdegol 5y ago
  That started out very powerfully, but the author tried to cram way too many disparate things in there. It lost a lot of steam halfway through; god knows why it turned into a love story. What was the point? All that stuff with crypto? The cryptic poem type things interspersed. It was a good effort and started off amazing; shame about the lack of focus.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tzs 5y ago
That will extend the streak to 439 consecutive months with global surface temperature above the 20th century average.
polote 5y ago
Ok global warming is happening we know it for a long time. But is there a place somewhere that explain how could the world works without emitting too much co2, or any gaz which are problematic. How do we replace cars ? trucks ? how many people on earth is possible ? Can we have plane ? Boat ? How do we produce clothes, how do we have electricity at night ... I'm not asking to have a plan for everything, because this is not possible. But a complete description of important areas of life
- syops 5y ago
  As I see things the only solution is that humans need to stop reproducing so much. There are far too many people for the resources of the planet given current technology.
  - mattrighetti 5y ago
    How do you back that statement?
    - syops 5y ago
      Far fewer people means far less environmental destruction.
  - kmlx 5y ago
    this is a myth from the 1970s. it has been debunked countless times (even by history itself), but people still fall back to this.
    - syops 5y ago
      What is a myth? If there were far fewer people less carbon would be used/extracted. Less trees and natural space would be destroyed. Less plastic would be around. Etc. There are not enough resources for everyone to live like we Americans. As the world gets richer we’ll collectively destroy more of the environment. This is not disputable.
Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
We are far beyond being able to fix this by just reducing our emissions. We need to focus on innovations focused on extracting CO2 directly from our atmospheres at scale. An interesting read on the topic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/bill-gates-investment-in-carbon-removal-tech https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/bill-gate...
- ttul 5y ago
  Carbon Engineering [1] seems to be making good progress toward this goal. They even published a paper about their process and its economics in Cell [2]. "We describe a process for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere in an industrial plant. The design captures ∼1 Mt-CO2/year in a continuous process using an aqueous KOH sorbent coupled to a calcium caustic recovery loop. We describe the design rationale, summarize performance of the major unit operations, and provide a capital cost breakdown developed with an independent consulting engineering firm. We report results from a pilot plant that provides data on performance of the major unit operations. We summarize the energy and material balance computed using an Aspen process simulation. When CO2 is delivered at 15 MPa, the design requires either 8.81 GJ of natural gas, or 5.25 GJ of gas and 366 kWhr of electricity, per ton of CO2 captured. Depending on financial assumptions, energy costs, and the specific choice of inputs and outputs, the levelized cost per ton CO2 captured from the atmosphere ranges from 94 to 232 $/t-CO2." [1] https://carbonengineering.com/ https://carbonengineering.com/ [2] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3 https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3
  - sampo 5y ago
    > They even published a paper about their process and its economics in Cell [2]. The journal is Joule. https://www.cell.com/joule/aims https://www.cell.com/joule/aims
  - titzer 5y ago
    Whoa, gasoline produces 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon burned. So 100 gallons per ton of CO2. At $2/gallon, that's $200/t to produce. And then we have to spend potentially more than that to clean up the pollution. Planetarily, we iz a stupid. But for the record, I absolutely don't believe it's that cheap to take CO2 out of the air at scale. So this whole thing is a pipedream.
olivermarks 5y ago
The NOAA currently hosts over over 37 petabytes of 'comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data' and was established in October 1970. It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. I'm not one to use emotional quasi religious terms like 'denier' but that does give pause for thought. The NOAA started out Surveying the US coastline in 1807 as the 'U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey' to provide nautical charts to the maritime community for safe passage into American ports. It's morphed like all giant government bureaucracies into well over 11k people now apparently surveying the entire planet and collecting vast troves of data. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12-10.html https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12...
- syops 5y ago
  Why does it give you pause for thought? Isn’t the mostly likely conclusion is that the reason more data is leading to more gloom and doom is because we are in a gloom and doom situation?
- tstrimple 5y ago
  > It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. Ignorance really is bliss isn't it?
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    Well to be contrarian: lies, damn lies and statistics...the scholarly arguments about the extent to which man is influencing our climate and the extent to which natural cycles and space weather are far more important is essentially a data war. Both sides have a plethora of data and statistics to make their case. I do wonder and worry about the damage this 'you did it' alarmism is very negatively affecting the human psyche, causing substance abuse, depression, suicides etc. https://youtu.be/2ObjtVdsV3I https://youtu.be/2ObjtVdsV3I
    - CyanBird 5y ago
      > lies, damn lies and statistics The first hard data that existed from global warming came from Exxon and a small team of scientists on the 70's or so, when they attached temperature sensors to a couple oil tankers and measured the temperature of the ocean as it traveled If you call for "less data" because things scare you, then I am sorry to say that you are a coward and unscientific
unnouinceput 5y ago
Then the next hottest month will be Dec or Jan because summer in Southern Hemisphere is hotter than the one in Northern one of the same year.
Izikiel43 5y ago
So far.
Koshkin 5y ago
From Wikipedia: The climate of the Jurassic was generally warmer than that of present, by around 5 °C to 10 °C, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely four times higher. Forests likely grew near the poles...
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  ...and mammals were all 3" or smaller. Not a world we'd want to live in.
  - ProAm 5y ago
    Speak for yourself.
  - notdang 5y ago
    who said that the planet needs the mammals?
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    To be fair, mammals just appeared around that time, so no wonder.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  That's great for whatever ecosystem succeeds us, not so great for us, our children, and their children.
- bjoli 5y ago
  Now go read about the Triassic-jurassic extinction event, because the process of reaching those 5-10 degrees is the scary part.
- CyanBird 5y ago
  Yep, yep Wherever happens the planet will continue, same can't be said for modern human civilization on said new climatic landscape, wheat, corn, and other plants staple foods just didn't exist back then and heck knows if we'd be able to keep cultivating them with such different weather patterns and co2 amounts I believe tho, that rsther than you quoting the jurassic, you ought quote the Permian triassic event, that's certainly more apt for how abrupt current atmospheric changes are
tacobelllover99 5y ago
TrUsT tHe ScIeNcE
flowerlad 5y ago
Reducing carbon emissions is no longer enough. Carbon removal is the only hope. YC is funding startups in this space: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/
- xwdv 5y ago
  Carbon removal is not possible in sufficient magnitude to make a difference, sorry.
  - ptkd 5y ago
    source on this? The most important thing right now is definitely reducing emissions, but carbon capture certainly has a significant role to play
    - titzer 5y ago
      Btw, "carbon capture" seems to mostly mean capturing emissions at their source, which, although it's not a bad idea, is not actually removing carbon from the atmosphere. So when you see news articles fly by that say "progress in carbon capture", look closely to see if they are just talking about scrubbing smokestacks or literally pulling carbon out of the air. The former does not un-screw us.
- matheusd 5y ago
  Are there any publicly-traded companies/etfs/funds/prediction markets/whatever that a retail investor can invest in if they believe that carbon removal technology will play a significant role in the future?
throwitaway1235 5y ago
What year does NOAA choose as the beginning for "record"? It's relevant to the discussion. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Humans have existed for 200,000 years. This all comes off as political or quasi-religious because I can assure you that the author knows average people will read that headline and assume "begining of time". Hence I call bullshit.
- cochne 5y ago
  Probably since humans started recording? Doesn’t seem that misleading to me.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  What matters is the climate equilibrium that we and the ecosystems we depend on evolved under. Most of Earth's history would be totally uninhabitable for humans ourselves, nevermind those ecosystems. Using the argument of the total time that Earth has existed or previous climate fluctuations totally misses the point. It doesn't matter what happened millennia ago, what matters is how rapidly things are changing now.
- timeon 5y ago
  Technically true but not really relevant.
- lucky_cloud 5y ago
  You read the headline yourself and went off asking a dumb question that's answered in the article. 'On record' implies 'since we started keeping records' and that length of time is specifically stated in the article. The headline isn't "July was Earth’s hottest month ever" - that's the clickbait headline that would justify your reaction.
- polotics 5y ago
  I call bullshit on your half baked retort. How is the short precarious lives of the very few early humans relevant to greenhouse earth 2021?
SquibblesRedux 5y ago
Assuming the climate continues to change rapidly, which I presume it will, what efforts have been made (in any country) to deal with it? I have seen much about attempting to prevent climate change, but very little planning about how to deal with its consequences. We can and should continue to discuss and explore our options for sustainable civilization, but at some point we need to start mitigating the risks for calamitous outcomes. It feels a little like we are living at the base of volcano, debating about the best way to prevent the volcano from erupting.
qqtt 5y ago
On record meaning 142 years of history. Sometimes people conflate "on record" with "ever since humans were around" but on a species scale 142 years is basically no history at all. Not to say that climate change isn't a very serious issue, but we will likely have to live with the realities of where we are headed, and life has adapted in the past to much larger swings of temperature.
- ajross 5y ago
  "Life" will adapt. Ecosystems won't. It really sounds like you're expressing your feelings about a likely mass extinction event as "shit happens, what're you gonna do?"
  - xwdv 5y ago
    Ecosystems are just a large collection of “Life”.
    - ajross 5y ago
      I don't know where you're going with this. No, that's wrong, they are separate concepts. There was "life" 320M years ago just like there is today. But the carboniferous forest mats that we saw then spanned the globe, with trees growing on tens of millions of years of their undecomposed ancestors. It was an entirely different environment, and we'll never see it again now that bacteria evolved the ability to digest lignin. Closer to home, there is "life" on the deep ocean floor today. And most of it has evolved to exploit the oxygenated water of the environment, which is fed by an arctic downwelling off of Greenland (yes, all deep ocean water is fed from a "spigot" in just one place). Well, guess what, with the reduction in ice cover over the last decade or so and the increases in temperature expected to accelerate that process, that downwelling is collapsing. All those ocean floor ecosystems are going extinct within the next thousand years, and it's probably too late to save them.
- splittingTimes 5y ago
  Yes it has adapted to larger temp swings, but these other swings occurred over 10ks or 100ks of years, not 0.15k years. Life cannot adapt over the span of single or low double digit generations.
k33n 5y ago
Broke the record by a whopping 0.02 degrees. Time to stop eating hamburgers!
frhack 5y ago
I suspect that global warming is growing at an exponential rate. It would surprise me if it weren't so. Every effect of global warming contributes to fueling it. If it is indeed exponential growth, expect the effects to double over the doubling time, probably in the order of years.
csense 5y ago
Shouldn't climate change have both negative and positive effects? For example, people don't want to live in the Rust Belt because the winters are too cold. Could the region's economic viability increase if winters get milder? In some places, climate change makes things worse for growing crops, makes people need to move out, or increases the probability of disasters. Everyone is talking about this. In other places, climate change should be making things better for growing crops, making people want to move in, or decreasing the probability of disasters. Why is no one talking about this? What's up with the asymmetry? Edit: Wow this got downvoted fast. I was hoping to get meaningful answers to a genuine question from knowledgeable people with minimum political agenda, but apparently the HN crowd isn't good at dealing with even slightly contrarian takes on this issue.
- boplicity 5y ago
  If the ocean temperature gets warm enough, it's hard to say what the climate will be in the rust belt. Basically, the natural circulation of water that cycles cold and warm water might stop -- leaving some places extremely cold. The "AMOC" might stop, in other words. Maybe not? Let's hope. But is it worth the risk of pushing things so far that we might just find out?
- fr2null 5y ago
  I'm not even anything close to a climate expert, but I can imagine that this is because most of the world lives in places that are livable in our current climate. Most of us don't live in Siberia or Greenland. Sure these places might become great because of climate change, but it doesn't matter, since barely anyone lives there. In the places were we do live, the temperatures are already (semi) ok, meaning that increasing these temperatures will bother more people than it will help. Furthermore, most people live close to water, which means a rising sea level will be bad for them. Maybe (probably not, but just imagine that) after the sea level has risen we have more viable land that is close to water. However, at that point all the current cities have been ruined by it, because they were built for the old water levels.
- hh3k0 5y ago
  > In other places, climate change should be making things better for growing crops, making people want to move in, or decreasing the probability of disasters. Why is no one talking about this? "Billions of Acres of Cropland Lie Within a New Frontier. So Do 100 Years of Carbon Emissions: Crops grown on this land could feed a growing population. But if these soils are plowed, they could unleash as much carbon as the U.S. emits in more than a century." https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022020/agricultural-frontiers-russia-canada-climate-warming/ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022020/agricultural-fro...
Dig1t 5y ago
Why are geoengineering efforts not more popular? I thought that what Bill Gates and co were doing with the chalk dust in the atmosphere was a good idea. I think there are myriad ideas along these lines that would go a long way towards combating climate change while also not killing a large swath of economic activity.
linuxhansl 5y ago
Imagine an asteroid would be on trajectory to collide with earth in (say) 2025. Possible order of hypothetical events: 1. Scientist discover the asteroid. Calculate risk of collision. 2. Asteroid comes closer, probability of impact is calculated as high. 3. People will start saying that we cannot let our economy be controlled by the specter of an asteroid. 4. The asteroid becomes visible. You can see it with your bare eyes. 5. Still people start claiming it's fake news: The scientists are lying, it's a great conspiracy, it's all just to control us all. 6. Destroying or diverting the asteroid is estimated to be so expensive that it will change our way of life. 7. Anti-Asteroid-Action demonstrations would start all over the planet, to protest any expensive actions against the asteroid. 8. News outlets will be asked to be keep the bias out of their reporting, because they would support "asteroid believers". 9. Countries will create treaties to stop the impact by 2030, or perhaps delay it to 2040. 10. Scientists report new data. Impact is certain. Models about consequences are increasingly accurate and dire. 11. These scientists are labeled as alarmists. 12. The rich countries refuse to take the financial burden, because they feel it's unfair. 13. Impact is now a few weeks away. Nothing happened. Nobody did anything. Update: Layout and spelling.
- bishnu 5y ago
  I believe this is the premise of an upcoming Netflix movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film)
  - linuxhansl 5y ago
    Cool. I'll watch that one! (Case in point that everything I have ever thought of has been thought of already by someone else. :) )
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  Given the experience of the last couple of years, I think this would be a very plausible scenario. And we'd deserve to go extinct like the dinosaurs did.
  - deleted 5y ago
mehal 5y ago
Can we please stop recording … so it would cool again?!
throwaway483284 5y ago
Around 10 years ago when I was telling everyone what will happen soon (floods, wild fires, heat waves etc) people looked at me like I'm some kind of lunatic. These days the same people ask me what I think about the future. Few years ago I believed we can still win with climate change but now I'm certain that we will not. Problem is in the fundamentals of our current economic model that is based on infinite growth, which keeps society stable. General population social hierarchy of values is also a huge obstacle, what's going on Instagram is a huge indicator of that. Most people care but not enough to justify lifestyle change. I was very unhappy and worried a lot about what future will bring and that we are not doing enough to stop it, but now I'm relieved and happy, because I've accepted that this will happen either way and I can't do anything about it more than what I'm doing already. This will be controversial advice on HN but here it goes.. if you are miserable because of climate change and you constantly fear of future just let it go, you can't control the future. Not everyone needs to be a hero, live you life, spend time with your love ones, do what makes you happy, be kind to others, try to not consume too much so you don't contribute to climate change and plan accordingly.
- newman555 5y ago
  I tried that (accept and move on), but when you have kids...I find it impossible. I can’t accept that fate for them. How do you reason about that?
- Guid_NewGuid 5y ago
  Agree and don't really see why this is an unpopular view. I am about to hit 30 and I've never had an opportunity to vote for a winning government. I have been powerless to do anything other than basically pointless personal responsibility actions for my whole goddamn life. Sure I've gone vegetarian and bought green energy, I don't drive and try to avoid flying but it doesn't make any difference. So given we live in democracies where the majority of voters will block any kind of progressive action (or authoritarian regimes) how do you cope mentally? And effectively stoicism is the only course. Don't take liberties with the environment in your personal life and support and promote solutions at a social and fiscal level. But you can't change any of this shit. The next generation is going to blame my generation and that's completely fair but there's nothing I could have realistically done. Acceptance is important to stop the despair, feelings of doom and self hate. It isn't the same as denial.
generalizations 5y ago
For those who are interested in the historical data, 'Paleoclimatology' has been a fascinating deep dive into what seems like very decent long-term data. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Paleoclimatology/paleoclimatology_intro.php https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Paleoclimatology/...
adam_arthur 5y ago
Any policy should be evaluated on the basis of costs and benefits. Too much of the conversation on global warming is either broadly dismissive or exasperatingly alarmist. Fundamentally policy changes to curb global warming will have economic consequence, those of which will be borne disproportionately by the poor. E.g. efforts to curb oil and coal extraction will naturally result in the price of energy going up. I can tell you it makes no difference to me if gas is 3 or 4 dollars a gallon, but it matters a lot to those who live paycheck to paycheck. And especially to those impoverished and living in emerging markets. Im not suggesting a specific policy course of action (at least in this comment), but we'd be a lot better off if there was more of an effort to quantify impact of action/inaction using real numbers. Temperature is projected to be X by year Y (we have varying projections of this), and the cost to humanity is Z. What level of economic sacrifice is justified to address this and how much should we frontload that effort? Should the poor bear the largest burden, or should we normalize the cost somehow? (Energy subsidy, remittances to emerging economies to use cleaner energy) I have no doubt people have run these numbers, but I don't see the connection being made to specific policy proposals.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  This is a fairly western centric view of “the poor.” The poor in the global south are absolutely going to be disproportionately impacted by climate change. If anything it’s the rich who are least impacted by global warming. The rich can afford to buy AC, move to areas that aren’t at risk of fires and floods and famines won’t cause us to go hungry.
  - adam_arthur 5y ago
    You say disproportionately impacted. Can you quantify that? That's exactly the hand-wavey language we should avoid. Water level rises by how many feet, displaces how many people? What is the cost of the coastal real estate lost? It can all be quantified (within range). You'd probably find that for poor areas it's quite cost effective for people to relocate. New York City going underwater is much harder to replace. Obviously due to the level of cost to replicate the construction. You say famine... Why would climate change bring famine? Farming and arable land would just shift to more cost effective areas. Some arable land is lost, others is gained (cold areas becoming warm). Building logistics to transport food to localities that can't support it locally is a good idea, and easy to achieve. That's the power of trade. I don't dismiss the reality or impact of climate change at all, but look at the responses I get. Just people taking hyperbolically without really getting into the details that matter. Or lacking convincing and detailed statements. It's all hand-wavey and vague generalities about flooding or fires.
excalibur 5y ago
Yeah, but it's a dry heat /s
Bombthecat 5y ago
https://i.redd.it/gdra4d4cl5h71.png https://i.redd.it/gdra4d4cl5h71.png 2065, 4 plus Celsius projected by the ipcc. And usually they are very very Conservative to not be labelled alarmists. So.. It's likely going to be 5 or 6.
rapethedang 5y ago
What if you aren't a troll, but have a genuine hatred towards you dang with a genuine desire for your demise?

408 points by matsemann 5y ago

vs2 5y ago

Oh crap

omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago

Onward and upward... :\

chickenpotpie 5y ago

Someone make a bot to repost this every year

malomalsky 5y ago

so stop mine your crypto

rvz 5y ago
so stop train your deep models
- dexter89_kp3 5y ago
  Both are power supply issues (i.e how the power gets generated) rather than actual bad use cases.
  - recursive 5y ago
    That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, if you know how your power is getting generated, you can try to minimize it until such time as it's not causing negative externalities.
mattrighetti 5y ago
Naaa

endisneigh 5y ago

the climate change prisoner's dilemma will leave us all screwed.

orf 5y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal And this is still a thing.

echelon 5y ago
Yeah, these assholes: (Warning: these videos will make you very mad.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5psOvHFIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5psOvHFIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDxjge5hmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDxjge5hmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHmJSsRLgj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHmJSsRLgj4 https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/j1yj0c/trump_supporter_rolling_coal_as_he_speeds_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/j1yj0c/trum... This should be some sort of crime. edit: Sorry, I edited out my comment about this probably giving bikers cancer after I included more videos. This can't be healthy for the lungs. edit 2: Downvoted to -3 for calling out this shitty behavior? y'all are insane.
- headmelted 5y ago
  “It probably gave the bicyclists cancer” I said this to someone who showed me one of these videos once and they basically told me to wise up and stop being paranoid. How about the whole world stops being a pack of idiots instead?
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Oh, we'll stop alright. But not in the way that you probably intended. Earth is a pretty good self-correcting system that acts with total disregard for pesky little organisms that are along for the ride.
  - cusenses 5y ago
    > How about the whole world stops being a pack of idiots instead? Maybe you can start that?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

lmilcin 5y ago

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

spapas82 5y ago
About this, what was very puzzling to me was the opinions of the late Michael Chrichton. He was constantly expressing the opinion that the global warming was a frame up, both in his books but also to various talks. He had even written a book on which the bad guys were Greenpeace agents! Now, considering how highly educated (not only he was a great author but he also had studied MD) and smart (this should be obvious to anybody that has read his books and watched over his career) he was, it means a lot to me that this person had these beliefs. Also the fact that he is not related to the field so he doesn't have anything to gain by believing and advocating these opinions makes the fact even more important. As I said I am really puzzled about that. Does anybody has more information to shade a light on that?
- matthewmcg 5y ago
  Maybe I've spent too much time among lawyers, but I have noticed that there are some very smart people that seem to relish having certain unconventional beliefs. A critical, independent mind is a great thing, but the danger is when the view is held because it is unpopular and not because of any critical investigation of the evidence. Call it "anti-confirmation bias" if you want. Or to put it another way, some people just seem to enjoy smugly dismissing the obvious answer because it makes them feel smart!
  - spapas82 5y ago
    Yes, that's an explantation that could support his behaviour. However I don't think that he was doing it just to present himself as smarter than the other people. He firmly believed that opinions, at least that's what I was getting out of his talks and some of his books.

SimeVidas 5y ago

What was the previous record?

lhorie 5y ago
FTA: > the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees F (0.93 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago. It was 0.02 of a degree F (0.01 of a degree C) higher than the previous record set in July 2016, which was then tied in 2019 and 2020
- black6 5y ago
  What's the error on that measurement? I have a hard time believing that the +- on global mean temperature is less than 0.02 degF.

kersplody 5y ago

/s dupe, already submitted

nanis 5y ago

> Around the globe: the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees F (0.93 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees C), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago. If you are curious about where humans were measuring temperatures between 1880 and now, I put together an animation[1] of temperature station locations in GHCNv3 some time ago. With GHCNv4 out, it is due for an update, but still informative. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95uvT67bNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95uvT67bNg

Rijek33 5y ago

Don't think science will save us this time lads

marcyb5st 5y ago
Agreed. We are already beyond the tipping point. Positive feedback loops already kicked in (thawing of Tundra, lower albedo due to glaciers melting, ...). We would need to go carbon negative right away and stay at those levels for years. Or go big about engineering the climate until we carbon levels return to normal levels.
noobly 5y ago
Science is what got us here in the first place, is it not?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

whall6 5y ago

Why is every other post on hacker news about climate change

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Because it's of interest to hackers. Why? Partly because it's a technical problem, and partly because we care about the environment, because that's where we live.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  >> Why? Partly because it's a technical problem Once the deniers soften this is always their answer. The reality is nobody is prepared to sacrifice to the extent demanded, skeptics and alarmists alike.
  - whall6 5y ago
    Can you explain what the demanded sacrifice is?
    - TremendousJudge 5y ago
      For people in rich nations, the level of consumerism they have been accustomed to their whole lives, has to go. For most people this means no more driving, no more flying, no more eating fancy foods and buying fancy things. People have to live pretty much like hippies. For people in the rest of the world, the promise of the modern industrial rich age (which is mostly a mirage anyway) has to go. Pretty much nobody in the world is willing to accept this sacrifice (remember, covid only lasted like two years and public will was/is really strained by the end -- what's needed here is a permanent change), so since this is a hard requirement for any solution, there's no other except treating it like a technical challenge. That's my view anyway
jacquesm 5y ago
Think of it as the next big thing. It is.

threatofrain 5y ago

Parallel discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28171200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28171200

lhorie 5y ago

For the curious, here's a graph showing average temperatures year-over-year from various datasets[0]. Spoilers: yes, it's been going up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record#/media/File:20200324_Global_average_temperature_-_NASA-GISS_HadCrut_NOAA_Japan_BerkeleyE.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_recor...

everdrive 5y ago

Don't worry, next July will be hotter.

blondie9x 5y ago

Lower population by encouraging smaller families and no limits on birth control. Lower consumption through minimalism and right to repair and loner lasting products. These policies must be implemented yesterday.

adam12 5y ago

The current administration has approved more than 2,000 new fracking permits. I'm so glad the US has rejoined the Paris Agreement. "Meet the new boss Same as the old boss"

cryptoz 5y ago
I am very left, and despise Biden's refusal to address climate change where it counts, like fraking. But honestly, the new boss is not the same as the old boss, even with climate change. The new boss does in fact acknowledge it exists, rather than insisting that all climate change is a hoax and it is invented by China to hurt the US. Biden is not making the progress I'd like to see, but he is in no way as bad as the last guy.
- makotech222 5y ago
  Lol he acknowledges it exists. What is the point of that if you continue to make it worse!? By that logic, Biden actually believes we deserve climate change and wants to destroy the world!
- vkou 5y ago
  I can't say I care very deeply about whether or not he's sympathetic and useless, or antagonistic and useless. The end result is the same. Maybe the EU will one day get it's agenda together, and apply crippling tariffs to all goods and services imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.
- starik36 5y ago
  This is nonsense. Whether someone virtue signals or not, actions are what's important, not words. The CO2 emissions output has been coming down since the high in 2006. With the old boss and the new boss. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... If anything, fracking helped the environment, since it offset resources being mined by the traditional, more wasteful methods.
  - 5y ago

whytaka 5y ago

Personally, I have lost hope. The ocean temperatures will continue rising, the ecosystem of micro-organisms that provide the majority of the planet's oxygen will collapse, the seasons will become completely undependable for agriculture, the massive reservoirs of methane under permafrost will explode into the atmosphere, forests around the world will burn, and the reservoirs of potable water will dry up. My cynical belief is that amongst conservative leadership, there is already consensus that climate change will take place. The anti-immigrant agenda is advanced preparation to repel the imminent hordes of climate refugees out of Fortress America.

edgyquant 5y ago
> ecosystem of micro-organisms that provide the majority of the planet's oxygen will collapse, Citation needed. This is the doomsaying that people see, then see legit science doesn’t suggest this, and assume it’s all as real as the book of revelations. We need to spread real information not act like the world will legitimately end because the temperature goes up to what it was 3 million years ago.
- dleslie 5y ago
  I think they might be referring to phytoplankton. Their shells are dependent on the ocean being amenable to their development, and it's becoming less so, already causing growing pockets of oxygen-poor ocean waters.[0][1] They happen to be responsible for about half our oxygen, or more.[2] 0: https://psmag.com/environment/global-warming-is-putting-phytoplankton-in-danger https://psmag.com/environment/global-warming-is-putting-phyt... 1: https://news.mit.edu/2015/ocean-acidification-phytoplankton-0720 https://news.mit.edu/2015/ocean-acidification-phytoplankton-... 2: https://newportbay.org/ask-a-naturalist-do-phytoplankton-produce-more-oxygen-than-a-rainforest-if-so-does-the-oxygen-they-produce-go-into-the-atmosphere-or-does-it-just-remain-dissolved-in-the-ocean/ https://newportbay.org/ask-a-naturalist-do-phytoplankton-pro...
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    Funny. The MIT article basically proves my point about doomsaying. >the researchers observed that as ocean acidification prompted some species to grow faster, and others slower > By 2100, the local composition of the oceans may also look very different due to warming water: The model predicts that many phytoplankton species will move toward the poles. That means that in New England, for instance, marine communities may look very different in the next century So basically, yes, the ecosystems will change and some species will die while others blossom and thrive. That paper says nothing about oxygen levels or phytoplankton as a group of species going extinct. As is typical, and actual scientist says something and talks about its ramifications and people turn it into an apocalyptic tale. I particularly like the beginning quote from the researcher himself >”I’ve always been a total believer in climate change, and I try not to be an alarmist, because it’s not good for anyone,” says Dutkiewicz.

kaesar14 5y ago

The coolest July for the rest of our lives.

boplicity 5y ago

If you want to see a very realistic, depressing, and ever-so-slightly hopefully depiction of the possible near-future, read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

ajdegol 5y ago
That started out very powerfully, but the author tried to cram way too many disparate things in there. It lost a lot of steam halfway through; god knows why it turned into a love story. What was the point? All that stuff with crypto? The cryptic poem type things interspersed. It was a good effort and started off amazing; shame about the lack of focus.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tzs 5y ago

That will extend the streak to 439 consecutive months with global surface temperature above the 20th century average.

polote 5y ago

Ok global warming is happening we know it for a long time. But is there a place somewhere that explain how could the world works without emitting too much co2, or any gaz which are problematic. How do we replace cars ? trucks ? how many people on earth is possible ? Can we have plane ? Boat ? How do we produce clothes, how do we have electricity at night ... I'm not asking to have a plan for everything, because this is not possible. But a complete description of important areas of life

syops 5y ago
As I see things the only solution is that humans need to stop reproducing so much. There are far too many people for the resources of the planet given current technology.
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  How do you back that statement?
  - syops 5y ago
    Far fewer people means far less environmental destruction.
- kmlx 5y ago
  this is a myth from the 1970s. it has been debunked countless times (even by history itself), but people still fall back to this.
  - syops 5y ago
    What is a myth? If there were far fewer people less carbon would be used/extracted. Less trees and natural space would be destroyed. Less plastic would be around. Etc. There are not enough resources for everyone to live like we Americans. As the world gets richer we’ll collectively destroy more of the environment. This is not disputable.

Crash0v3rid3 5y ago

We are far beyond being able to fix this by just reducing our emissions. We need to focus on innovations focused on extracting CO2 directly from our atmospheres at scale. An interesting read on the topic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/bill-gates-investment-in-carbon-removal-tech https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/bill-gate...

ttul 5y ago
Carbon Engineering [1] seems to be making good progress toward this goal. They even published a paper about their process and its economics in Cell [2]. "We describe a process for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere in an industrial plant. The design captures ∼1 Mt-CO2/year in a continuous process using an aqueous KOH sorbent coupled to a calcium caustic recovery loop. We describe the design rationale, summarize performance of the major unit operations, and provide a capital cost breakdown developed with an independent consulting engineering firm. We report results from a pilot plant that provides data on performance of the major unit operations. We summarize the energy and material balance computed using an Aspen process simulation. When CO2 is delivered at 15 MPa, the design requires either 8.81 GJ of natural gas, or 5.25 GJ of gas and 366 kWhr of electricity, per ton of CO2 captured. Depending on financial assumptions, energy costs, and the specific choice of inputs and outputs, the levelized cost per ton CO2 captured from the atmosphere ranges from 94 to 232 $/t-CO2." [1] https://carbonengineering.com/ https://carbonengineering.com/ [2] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3 https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3
- sampo 5y ago
  > They even published a paper about their process and its economics in Cell [2]. The journal is Joule. https://www.cell.com/joule/aims https://www.cell.com/joule/aims
- titzer 5y ago
  Whoa, gasoline produces 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon burned. So 100 gallons per ton of CO2. At $2/gallon, that's $200/t to produce. And then we have to spend potentially more than that to clean up the pollution. Planetarily, we iz a stupid. But for the record, I absolutely don't believe it's that cheap to take CO2 out of the air at scale. So this whole thing is a pipedream.

olivermarks 5y ago

The NOAA currently hosts over over 37 petabytes of 'comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data' and was established in October 1970. It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. I'm not one to use emotional quasi religious terms like 'denier' but that does give pause for thought. The NOAA started out Surveying the US coastline in 1807 as the 'U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey' to provide nautical charts to the maritime community for safe passage into American ports. It's morphed like all giant government bureaucracies into well over 11k people now apparently surveying the entire planet and collecting vast troves of data. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12-10.html https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12...

syops 5y ago
Why does it give you pause for thought? Isn’t the mostly likely conclusion is that the reason more data is leading to more gloom and doom is because we are in a gloom and doom situation?
tstrimple 5y ago
> It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. Ignorance really is bliss isn't it?
- olivermarks 5y ago
  Well to be contrarian: lies, damn lies and statistics...the scholarly arguments about the extent to which man is influencing our climate and the extent to which natural cycles and space weather are far more important is essentially a data war. Both sides have a plethora of data and statistics to make their case. I do wonder and worry about the damage this 'you did it' alarmism is very negatively affecting the human psyche, causing substance abuse, depression, suicides etc. https://youtu.be/2ObjtVdsV3I https://youtu.be/2ObjtVdsV3I
  - CyanBird 5y ago
    > lies, damn lies and statistics The first hard data that existed from global warming came from Exxon and a small team of scientists on the 70's or so, when they attached temperature sensors to a couple oil tankers and measured the temperature of the ocean as it traveled If you call for "less data" because things scare you, then I am sorry to say that you are a coward and unscientific

unnouinceput 5y ago

Then the next hottest month will be Dec or Jan because summer in Southern Hemisphere is hotter than the one in Northern one of the same year.

Izikiel43 5y ago

So far.

Koshkin 5y ago

From Wikipedia: The climate of the Jurassic was generally warmer than that of present, by around 5 °C to 10 °C, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely four times higher. Forests likely grew near the poles...

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
...and mammals were all 3" or smaller. Not a world we'd want to live in.
- ProAm 5y ago
  Speak for yourself.
- notdang 5y ago
  who said that the planet needs the mammals?
- Koshkin 5y ago
  To be fair, mammals just appeared around that time, so no wonder.
anyfoo 5y ago
That's great for whatever ecosystem succeeds us, not so great for us, our children, and their children.
bjoli 5y ago
Now go read about the Triassic-jurassic extinction event, because the process of reaching those 5-10 degrees is the scary part.
CyanBird 5y ago
Yep, yep Wherever happens the planet will continue, same can't be said for modern human civilization on said new climatic landscape, wheat, corn, and other plants staple foods just didn't exist back then and heck knows if we'd be able to keep cultivating them with such different weather patterns and co2 amounts I believe tho, that rsther than you quoting the jurassic, you ought quote the Permian triassic event, that's certainly more apt for how abrupt current atmospheric changes are

tacobelllover99 5y ago

TrUsT tHe ScIeNcE

flowerlad 5y ago

Reducing carbon emissions is no longer enough. Carbon removal is the only hope. YC is funding startups in this space: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

xwdv 5y ago
Carbon removal is not possible in sufficient magnitude to make a difference, sorry.
- ptkd 5y ago
  source on this? The most important thing right now is definitely reducing emissions, but carbon capture certainly has a significant role to play
  - titzer 5y ago
    Btw, "carbon capture" seems to mostly mean capturing emissions at their source, which, although it's not a bad idea, is not actually removing carbon from the atmosphere. So when you see news articles fly by that say "progress in carbon capture", look closely to see if they are just talking about scrubbing smokestacks or literally pulling carbon out of the air. The former does not un-screw us.
matheusd 5y ago
Are there any publicly-traded companies/etfs/funds/prediction markets/whatever that a retail investor can invest in if they believe that carbon removal technology will play a significant role in the future?

throwitaway1235 5y ago

What year does NOAA choose as the beginning for "record"? It's relevant to the discussion. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Humans have existed for 200,000 years. This all comes off as political or quasi-religious because I can assure you that the author knows average people will read that headline and assume "begining of time". Hence I call bullshit.

cochne 5y ago
Probably since humans started recording? Doesn’t seem that misleading to me.
knownjorbist 5y ago
What matters is the climate equilibrium that we and the ecosystems we depend on evolved under. Most of Earth's history would be totally uninhabitable for humans ourselves, nevermind those ecosystems. Using the argument of the total time that Earth has existed or previous climate fluctuations totally misses the point. It doesn't matter what happened millennia ago, what matters is how rapidly things are changing now.
timeon 5y ago
Technically true but not really relevant.
lucky_cloud 5y ago
You read the headline yourself and went off asking a dumb question that's answered in the article. 'On record' implies 'since we started keeping records' and that length of time is specifically stated in the article. The headline isn't "July was Earth’s hottest month ever" - that's the clickbait headline that would justify your reaction.
polotics 5y ago
I call bullshit on your half baked retort. How is the short precarious lives of the very few early humans relevant to greenhouse earth 2021?

SquibblesRedux 5y ago

Assuming the climate continues to change rapidly, which I presume it will, what efforts have been made (in any country) to deal with it? I have seen much about attempting to prevent climate change, but very little planning about how to deal with its consequences. We can and should continue to discuss and explore our options for sustainable civilization, but at some point we need to start mitigating the risks for calamitous outcomes. It feels a little like we are living at the base of volcano, debating about the best way to prevent the volcano from erupting.

qqtt 5y ago

On record meaning 142 years of history. Sometimes people conflate "on record" with "ever since humans were around" but on a species scale 142 years is basically no history at all. Not to say that climate change isn't a very serious issue, but we will likely have to live with the realities of where we are headed, and life has adapted in the past to much larger swings of temperature.

ajross 5y ago
"Life" will adapt. Ecosystems won't. It really sounds like you're expressing your feelings about a likely mass extinction event as "shit happens, what're you gonna do?"
- xwdv 5y ago
  Ecosystems are just a large collection of “Life”.
  - ajross 5y ago
    I don't know where you're going with this. No, that's wrong, they are separate concepts. There was "life" 320M years ago just like there is today. But the carboniferous forest mats that we saw then spanned the globe, with trees growing on tens of millions of years of their undecomposed ancestors. It was an entirely different environment, and we'll never see it again now that bacteria evolved the ability to digest lignin. Closer to home, there is "life" on the deep ocean floor today. And most of it has evolved to exploit the oxygenated water of the environment, which is fed by an arctic downwelling off of Greenland (yes, all deep ocean water is fed from a "spigot" in just one place). Well, guess what, with the reduction in ice cover over the last decade or so and the increases in temperature expected to accelerate that process, that downwelling is collapsing. All those ocean floor ecosystems are going extinct within the next thousand years, and it's probably too late to save them.
splittingTimes 5y ago
Yes it has adapted to larger temp swings, but these other swings occurred over 10ks or 100ks of years, not 0.15k years. Life cannot adapt over the span of single or low double digit generations.

k33n 5y ago

Broke the record by a whopping 0.02 degrees. Time to stop eating hamburgers!

frhack 5y ago

I suspect that global warming is growing at an exponential rate. It would surprise me if it weren't so. Every effect of global warming contributes to fueling it. If it is indeed exponential growth, expect the effects to double over the doubling time, probably in the order of years.

csense 5y ago

Shouldn't climate change have both negative and positive effects? For example, people don't want to live in the Rust Belt because the winters are too cold. Could the region's economic viability increase if winters get milder? In some places, climate change makes things worse for growing crops, makes people need to move out, or increases the probability of disasters. Everyone is talking about this. In other places, climate change should be making things better for growing crops, making people want to move in, or decreasing the probability of disasters. Why is no one talking about this? What's up with the asymmetry? Edit: Wow this got downvoted fast. I was hoping to get meaningful answers to a genuine question from knowledgeable people with minimum political agenda, but apparently the HN crowd isn't good at dealing with even slightly contrarian takes on this issue.

boplicity 5y ago
If the ocean temperature gets warm enough, it's hard to say what the climate will be in the rust belt. Basically, the natural circulation of water that cycles cold and warm water might stop -- leaving some places extremely cold. The "AMOC" might stop, in other words. Maybe not? Let's hope. But is it worth the risk of pushing things so far that we might just find out?
fr2null 5y ago
I'm not even anything close to a climate expert, but I can imagine that this is because most of the world lives in places that are livable in our current climate. Most of us don't live in Siberia or Greenland. Sure these places might become great because of climate change, but it doesn't matter, since barely anyone lives there. In the places were we do live, the temperatures are already (semi) ok, meaning that increasing these temperatures will bother more people than it will help. Furthermore, most people live close to water, which means a rising sea level will be bad for them. Maybe (probably not, but just imagine that) after the sea level has risen we have more viable land that is close to water. However, at that point all the current cities have been ruined by it, because they were built for the old water levels.
hh3k0 5y ago
> In other places, climate change should be making things better for growing crops, making people want to move in, or decreasing the probability of disasters. Why is no one talking about this? "Billions of Acres of Cropland Lie Within a New Frontier. So Do 100 Years of Carbon Emissions: Crops grown on this land could feed a growing population. But if these soils are plowed, they could unleash as much carbon as the U.S. emits in more than a century." https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022020/agricultural-frontiers-russia-canada-climate-warming/ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022020/agricultural-fro...

Dig1t 5y ago

Why are geoengineering efforts not more popular? I thought that what Bill Gates and co were doing with the chalk dust in the atmosphere was a good idea. I think there are myriad ideas along these lines that would go a long way towards combating climate change while also not killing a large swath of economic activity.

linuxhansl 5y ago

Imagine an asteroid would be on trajectory to collide with earth in (say) 2025. Possible order of hypothetical events: 1. Scientist discover the asteroid. Calculate risk of collision. 2. Asteroid comes closer, probability of impact is calculated as high. 3. People will start saying that we cannot let our economy be controlled by the specter of an asteroid. 4. The asteroid becomes visible. You can see it with your bare eyes. 5. Still people start claiming it's fake news: The scientists are lying, it's a great conspiracy, it's all just to control us all. 6. Destroying or diverting the asteroid is estimated to be so expensive that it will change our way of life. 7. Anti-Asteroid-Action demonstrations would start all over the planet, to protest any expensive actions against the asteroid. 8. News outlets will be asked to be keep the bias out of their reporting, because they would support "asteroid believers". 9. Countries will create treaties to stop the impact by 2030, or perhaps delay it to 2040. 10. Scientists report new data. Impact is certain. Models about consequences are increasingly accurate and dire. 11. These scientists are labeled as alarmists. 12. The rich countries refuse to take the financial burden, because they feel it's unfair. 13. Impact is now a few weeks away. Nothing happened. Nobody did anything. Update: Layout and spelling.

bishnu 5y ago
I believe this is the premise of an upcoming Netflix movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film)
- linuxhansl 5y ago
  Cool. I'll watch that one! (Case in point that everything I have ever thought of has been thought of already by someone else. :) )
UncleOxidant 5y ago
Given the experience of the last couple of years, I think this would be a very plausible scenario. And we'd deserve to go extinct like the dinosaurs did.
- deleted 5y ago

mehal 5y ago

Can we please stop recording … so it would cool again?!

throwaway483284 5y ago

Around 10 years ago when I was telling everyone what will happen soon (floods, wild fires, heat waves etc) people looked at me like I'm some kind of lunatic. These days the same people ask me what I think about the future. Few years ago I believed we can still win with climate change but now I'm certain that we will not. Problem is in the fundamentals of our current economic model that is based on infinite growth, which keeps society stable. General population social hierarchy of values is also a huge obstacle, what's going on Instagram is a huge indicator of that. Most people care but not enough to justify lifestyle change. I was very unhappy and worried a lot about what future will bring and that we are not doing enough to stop it, but now I'm relieved and happy, because I've accepted that this will happen either way and I can't do anything about it more than what I'm doing already. This will be controversial advice on HN but here it goes.. if you are miserable because of climate change and you constantly fear of future just let it go, you can't control the future. Not everyone needs to be a hero, live you life, spend time with your love ones, do what makes you happy, be kind to others, try to not consume too much so you don't contribute to climate change and plan accordingly.

newman555 5y ago
I tried that (accept and move on), but when you have kids...I find it impossible. I can’t accept that fate for them. How do you reason about that?
Guid_NewGuid 5y ago
Agree and don't really see why this is an unpopular view. I am about to hit 30 and I've never had an opportunity to vote for a winning government. I have been powerless to do anything other than basically pointless personal responsibility actions for my whole goddamn life. Sure I've gone vegetarian and bought green energy, I don't drive and try to avoid flying but it doesn't make any difference. So given we live in democracies where the majority of voters will block any kind of progressive action (or authoritarian regimes) how do you cope mentally? And effectively stoicism is the only course. Don't take liberties with the environment in your personal life and support and promote solutions at a social and fiscal level. But you can't change any of this shit. The next generation is going to blame my generation and that's completely fair but there's nothing I could have realistically done. Acceptance is important to stop the despair, feelings of doom and self hate. It isn't the same as denial.

generalizations 5y ago

For those who are interested in the historical data, 'Paleoclimatology' has been a fascinating deep dive into what seems like very decent long-term data. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Paleoclimatology/paleoclimatology_intro.php https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Paleoclimatology/...

adam_arthur 5y ago

Any policy should be evaluated on the basis of costs and benefits. Too much of the conversation on global warming is either broadly dismissive or exasperatingly alarmist. Fundamentally policy changes to curb global warming will have economic consequence, those of which will be borne disproportionately by the poor. E.g. efforts to curb oil and coal extraction will naturally result in the price of energy going up. I can tell you it makes no difference to me if gas is 3 or 4 dollars a gallon, but it matters a lot to those who live paycheck to paycheck. And especially to those impoverished and living in emerging markets. Im not suggesting a specific policy course of action (at least in this comment), but we'd be a lot better off if there was more of an effort to quantify impact of action/inaction using real numbers. Temperature is projected to be X by year Y (we have varying projections of this), and the cost to humanity is Z. What level of economic sacrifice is justified to address this and how much should we frontload that effort? Should the poor bear the largest burden, or should we normalize the cost somehow? (Energy subsidy, remittances to emerging economies to use cleaner energy) I have no doubt people have run these numbers, but I don't see the connection being made to specific policy proposals.

jdavis703 5y ago
This is a fairly western centric view of “the poor.” The poor in the global south are absolutely going to be disproportionately impacted by climate change. If anything it’s the rich who are least impacted by global warming. The rich can afford to buy AC, move to areas that aren’t at risk of fires and floods and famines won’t cause us to go hungry.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  You say disproportionately impacted. Can you quantify that? That's exactly the hand-wavey language we should avoid. Water level rises by how many feet, displaces how many people? What is the cost of the coastal real estate lost? It can all be quantified (within range). You'd probably find that for poor areas it's quite cost effective for people to relocate. New York City going underwater is much harder to replace. Obviously due to the level of cost to replicate the construction. You say famine... Why would climate change bring famine? Farming and arable land would just shift to more cost effective areas. Some arable land is lost, others is gained (cold areas becoming warm). Building logistics to transport food to localities that can't support it locally is a good idea, and easy to achieve. That's the power of trade. I don't dismiss the reality or impact of climate change at all, but look at the responses I get. Just people taking hyperbolically without really getting into the details that matter. Or lacking convincing and detailed statements. It's all hand-wavey and vague generalities about flooding or fires.

excalibur 5y ago

Yeah, but it's a dry heat /s

Bombthecat 5y ago

https://i.redd.it/gdra4d4cl5h71.png https://i.redd.it/gdra4d4cl5h71.png 2065, 4 plus Celsius projected by the ipcc. And usually they are very very Conservative to not be labelled alarmists. So.. It's likely going to be 5 or 6.

rapethedang 5y ago

What if you aren't a troll, but have a genuine hatred towards you dang with a genuine desire for your demise?