8 ms·

To see both the longer trend (graph), a comparison with the value at the same time the previous year, and the current value for CO2, CH4, N2O, and SF6 I occasio

To see both the longer trend (graph), a comparison with the value at the same time the previous year, and the current value for CO2, CH4, N2O, and SF6 I occasionally check the Global Monitoring Laboratory (NOAA): https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ Link to methane, click on one of the four switched at the top for the others. Warning: It always is pretty depressing to visit this site. You can also check out a tab "Growth Rate", for CO2 for example it's https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html -- which is even more depressing. Even the rate(!) increases! . So, I'm mid-life, and I do what many might say is actually interesting and useful software work, no standard stuff, lots of new things to design and plan and implement in a small software company I co-founded in a team that works well together. Currently we do most of our work for the health sector. Still, I can't take it too seriously. I look at that data and I think to myself, in a few decades we will have problems, many indirectly from more and more troubled nations who will bear the brunt of the climate change, that that silly little piece of software I write seems meaningless if I start thinking about the bigger picture. I'm not demotivated or depressed, it's more the opposite, I can't feel excited about any achievements because I think that most of what we do, what people do these days, is just keeping busy to avoid facing the bigger reality. The show must go on. I've developed the feeling that what we have, even in the rich countries, is much more fragile than people realize. Unless there is a full stop of digging up any more carbon from below ground, in the form of oil, gas, and coal, and I mean full stop and not just a reduction, the amount of carbon in the above ground carbon cycle is going to keep increasing. No amount of trees planted or most of he other measures proposed will change that. How likely is that to happen?

useragent86 5y ago
[flagged]
- nosianu 5y ago
  What are you talking about? Where did I make an end of the world prediction? It is you who brought that up. Of course nothing is going to end. Nice strawman. You even try to bring COVID into the discussion? What are you doing, and why?
  - t0bia_s 5y ago
    He just trying to point out what is media agenda now. Keep people in fear. Which is true and last two years are proof of it.
    - breakyerself 5y ago
      The media agenda is the same media agenda that there has always been and that's to make money. Whoever told you there's a media agenda is the one with the agenda that they aren't telling you about.
      - ehvatum 5y ago
        Remember when the media pointed their cameras away from Hillary as she feinted at the 911 memorial ceremony? If not for one man with a cell phone, this copy-selling story be unknown. Do you think Jeff Zucker ran CNN so as to maximize profit?
        breakyerself 5y ago
        Yes Zucker absolutely ran it to maximize profit. CNN broadcast Trump rallies 24/7 in 2016 because it was good for ratings. CNN was a major factor in Trumps nomination and election to president. You just cherry pick events that suit your narrative. All of these companies are businesses and they're in it for the profits. They may put on a liberal or conservative face, but it's just to exploit a niche in the market. They're corporations with shareholders at the end of the day. Which is a strong constraint on what ideas they'll explore and what issues they'll cover.
      - t0bia_s 5y ago
        Then explain why mainstream media spread missinformation about vaccines (immunity) or origin of virus (bat theory) and not cover any other sensations like dying athletes live (it was just fine to spread fear about collapsing people on street in China), massive protests against mandates all around world (politicans call them terrorists, small minority and then declare state of emergency) or alarming increase of myocarditis of young healthy people after vaccination (media trying to point out that this is because of covid or global warming). Looks like obvious agenda. People slowly realise it and will stand against it. Enough is enough.
- breakyerself 5y ago
  ""Before humans burned the first coal to fire the first steam engine, the planet was warmer than this and had much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Both went back down." Yes. That's true and it doesn't in any way mean that it is at all safe for humans to jack up co2 levels in such a short period of time. All of the available evidence from the people who discovered those things in the first place suggests that this is a massive gamble we are taking with bad odds and everything we hold dear is at stake. ""People twice your age lived through the end-of-the-world predictions of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But here we are, more technologically advanced than ever (for better or worse). But this time it's different! We have science!"" That's exactly right. Climate scientists aren't some kooks looking for clues to Armageddon in the bible or hearing voices. Global warming is happening. It's measurable. We know exactly whats causing it and we have very good reason to believe its dangerous to society and ecosystems. This has fuck all to do with doomsday cults. Don't look up is a perfect metaphor. If 97% of astrophysicists agreed that a meteor is on a collision course for the earth you wouldn't complain that you heard similar things from Jim Jones and you don't want to waste your tax dollars to divert some imaginary asteroid. For some reason with climate its socially acceptable to hold such an idiotic view. ""Science is a process carried out by people; people like John Cook, Michael Mann, etc, well-known frauds who were nonetheless widely touted by top journalists at outlets like the NYT and top politicians like Barack Obama."" The findings of both Mann and Cook have been independently verified and expanded upon by a variety of scientific studies following separate lines of inquiry. As in following different lines of evidence using different methodologies. You are a partisan and the partisan media outlets have maligned these guys, but their work stands up. I'm sure theres a conspiracy you can conjure to explain this though. ""We see a constant stream of articles here on HN, highly upvoted, even, decrying the corruption in the peer review process, the research grant process, and confirmed by commenters telling tales of their time in the PhD research world."" There are a number of different problems in academia and the peer review process. None of them have cast doubt on the consensus findings of the field of climatology. Actually one of the problems is predatory journals who accept anything for a fee and that's more really only a problem for climate contrarian scientists since that's the only kind of journal where they can pass "peer review" most of the time. ""These scientists were brought up in the same institutions that brought us COVID lockdowns, don't-mask--now-mask--nevermind-don't-mask, redefined vaccines-that-aren't-what-vaccines-used-to-be-defined-as, etc. And the media touts them just the same."" Jesus next thing you're going to tell me to trust Q ""We see that this whole planet of humans has been kept in a state of panic for two years about COVID, because there exist entities who want to increase their power, and the way to transfer power is to convince people that it's necessary for their own good."" They aren't transferring power. They're expending it. None of the covid measures has made it easier for one party to win an election or harder for the other. Biden hasn't been granted emergency authority to be president for life. No they've implemented measures to try to keep people safe and the backlash from it seems to make it less likely they stay in power. Not more. The whole narrative here is just self serving political hackery. ""But, no, of course, there couldn't be any similarity between these two issues behind the scenes. After all, it's scientific consensus! Which has always been a reliable indicator of objective truth, and is one of the cornerstones of the scientific process!"" There is a similarity, but it isn't behind the scenes. It's right here in these comments. Your narrative. That's what's similar. Conservatives need an enemy to rally the troops and that enemy is mostly democrats and anything they advocate for. Especially if opposing that thing happens to be in the best interests of coporate backers of the republican party. Just claim it's all a conspiracy to give the government power and the rank and file will eat it up. Good governance be damned. Future be damned. ""What's that idea, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."" No it's fool me once shame on you, fool me, we won't get fooled again ""If I weren't such a staunch advocate of free speech, I'd say that it ought to be criminal, how people have been convinced to live a life of fear, to think that there's no point to having a family, working toward the future, etc. How much suffering has been caused by these lies. It's simply evil."" What's evil is downplaying actual dangers as lies and subjecting society to things like global warming and deadly diseases because you've come to associate these things with liberals. All the while banning books and passing anti 1st amendment, anti education laws under the guise of banning CRT in schools. ""Somewhere there must be a book that catalogues the dire, end-of-the-world predictions made by humans throughout the millennia. I'd implore you to find it, read it, be at ease, and live your life to the fullest while you have the health and means to do so. "" Climate science is science. It is not tainted by the false predictions of con men and cult leaders. That doesn't work that way.
- ornornor 5y ago
  See https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ for why the current temperature trend IS a big deal, unprecedented in our planet’s history.
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    That XKCD concatenated data from different studies with different temporal resolution, so it's very misleading. Past data came from Marcott et. al, who said: “the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of about 120 years on average.” “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1,000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2,000-year periods and longer.” Recent data came from yearly measurements, so preserves variability on a yearly basis. In other words, the way past data was determined, sudden changes would be hidden, like the temperature spike that it shows in the 20th century. You also have to wonder why the chart stopped 20000 years in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Overall_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Ov...
jules-jules 5y ago
I found this interview with former chief scientific advisor for climate change to the UK Government and Oxford professor Sir David King both timely and relevant to your point. He now works at the Centre of Climate Repair at Cambridge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLd4EqQywwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLd4EqQywwQ
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  If anyone is interested in an antecedent to our current climate change situation, BBC's In Our Time did an excellent deep-dive into the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hpmmf https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hpmmf The kind of carbon ejection and correlated temperature change we're seeing today hasn't really been seen since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. That atmospheric event happened over the course of 50_000 years, we're looking to replicate it in a matter of 100s of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#Comparison_with_today's_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...
koide 5y ago
On the one hand, capital is flowing into climate tech, and on the other there are several growing communities that are addressing this problem space: https://workonclimate.org/ https://workonclimate.org/ https://www.myclimatejourney.co/ https://www.myclimatejourney.co/ https://climateaction.tech/ https://climateaction.tech/ I volunteer on the first one and am a member on the other two, and there is a relatively good (and growing!) possibility of finding a good match between what you feel and what you end up working on. There you can find incubators and funds to launch your climate startup or job postings to work on the coolest climate tech companies (and the not so cool ones too!)
maCDzP 5y ago
Your post struck a chord in me. I work with civil engineering (water management) which sounds like it could impact climate change. Nope. I work on how to make our processes more efficient so we can build more infrastructure faster. Infrastructure that has to be maintained CO2 emission free in the future - we are building more of it. And I am truly bewildered. When I look at all the graphs the only thing I see is that we have to stop everything now. But what I see at work is that we just keep digging with an even faster pace. This summer I tried to read some old Greek tragedies. The characters have to make difficult choices and it all ends with tragedy despite everyone’s best intensions and efforts. I was saddened by the resemblance on how humanity is tackling climate change. I am afraid we are writing an old Greek tragedy.

useragent86 5y ago

[flagged]

nosianu 5y ago
What are you talking about? Where did I make an end of the world prediction? It is you who brought that up. Of course nothing is going to end. Nice strawman. You even try to bring COVID into the discussion? What are you doing, and why?
- t0bia_s 5y ago
  He just trying to point out what is media agenda now. Keep people in fear. Which is true and last two years are proof of it.
  - breakyerself 5y ago
    The media agenda is the same media agenda that there has always been and that's to make money. Whoever told you there's a media agenda is the one with the agenda that they aren't telling you about.
    - ehvatum 5y ago
      Remember when the media pointed their cameras away from Hillary as she feinted at the 911 memorial ceremony? If not for one man with a cell phone, this copy-selling story be unknown. Do you think Jeff Zucker ran CNN so as to maximize profit?
      - breakyerself 5y ago
        Yes Zucker absolutely ran it to maximize profit. CNN broadcast Trump rallies 24/7 in 2016 because it was good for ratings. CNN was a major factor in Trumps nomination and election to president. You just cherry pick events that suit your narrative. All of these companies are businesses and they're in it for the profits. They may put on a liberal or conservative face, but it's just to exploit a niche in the market. They're corporations with shareholders at the end of the day. Which is a strong constraint on what ideas they'll explore and what issues they'll cover.
    - t0bia_s 5y ago
      Then explain why mainstream media spread missinformation about vaccines (immunity) or origin of virus (bat theory) and not cover any other sensations like dying athletes live (it was just fine to spread fear about collapsing people on street in China), massive protests against mandates all around world (politicans call them terrorists, small minority and then declare state of emergency) or alarming increase of myocarditis of young healthy people after vaccination (media trying to point out that this is because of covid or global warming). Looks like obvious agenda. People slowly realise it and will stand against it. Enough is enough.
breakyerself 5y ago
""Before humans burned the first coal to fire the first steam engine, the planet was warmer than this and had much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Both went back down." Yes. That's true and it doesn't in any way mean that it is at all safe for humans to jack up co2 levels in such a short period of time. All of the available evidence from the people who discovered those things in the first place suggests that this is a massive gamble we are taking with bad odds and everything we hold dear is at stake. ""People twice your age lived through the end-of-the-world predictions of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But here we are, more technologically advanced than ever (for better or worse). But this time it's different! We have science!"" That's exactly right. Climate scientists aren't some kooks looking for clues to Armageddon in the bible or hearing voices. Global warming is happening. It's measurable. We know exactly whats causing it and we have very good reason to believe its dangerous to society and ecosystems. This has fuck all to do with doomsday cults. Don't look up is a perfect metaphor. If 97% of astrophysicists agreed that a meteor is on a collision course for the earth you wouldn't complain that you heard similar things from Jim Jones and you don't want to waste your tax dollars to divert some imaginary asteroid. For some reason with climate its socially acceptable to hold such an idiotic view. ""Science is a process carried out by people; people like John Cook, Michael Mann, etc, well-known frauds who were nonetheless widely touted by top journalists at outlets like the NYT and top politicians like Barack Obama."" The findings of both Mann and Cook have been independently verified and expanded upon by a variety of scientific studies following separate lines of inquiry. As in following different lines of evidence using different methodologies. You are a partisan and the partisan media outlets have maligned these guys, but their work stands up. I'm sure theres a conspiracy you can conjure to explain this though. ""We see a constant stream of articles here on HN, highly upvoted, even, decrying the corruption in the peer review process, the research grant process, and confirmed by commenters telling tales of their time in the PhD research world."" There are a number of different problems in academia and the peer review process. None of them have cast doubt on the consensus findings of the field of climatology. Actually one of the problems is predatory journals who accept anything for a fee and that's more really only a problem for climate contrarian scientists since that's the only kind of journal where they can pass "peer review" most of the time. ""These scientists were brought up in the same institutions that brought us COVID lockdowns, don't-mask--now-mask--nevermind-don't-mask, redefined vaccines-that-aren't-what-vaccines-used-to-be-defined-as, etc. And the media touts them just the same."" Jesus next thing you're going to tell me to trust Q ""We see that this whole planet of humans has been kept in a state of panic for two years about COVID, because there exist entities who want to increase their power, and the way to transfer power is to convince people that it's necessary for their own good."" They aren't transferring power. They're expending it. None of the covid measures has made it easier for one party to win an election or harder for the other. Biden hasn't been granted emergency authority to be president for life. No they've implemented measures to try to keep people safe and the backlash from it seems to make it less likely they stay in power. Not more. The whole narrative here is just self serving political hackery. ""But, no, of course, there couldn't be any similarity between these two issues behind the scenes. After all, it's scientific consensus! Which has always been a reliable indicator of objective truth, and is one of the cornerstones of the scientific process!"" There is a similarity, but it isn't behind the scenes. It's right here in these comments. Your narrative. That's what's similar. Conservatives need an enemy to rally the troops and that enemy is mostly democrats and anything they advocate for. Especially if opposing that thing happens to be in the best interests of coporate backers of the republican party. Just claim it's all a conspiracy to give the government power and the rank and file will eat it up. Good governance be damned. Future be damned. ""What's that idea, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."" No it's fool me once shame on you, fool me, we won't get fooled again ""If I weren't such a staunch advocate of free speech, I'd say that it ought to be criminal, how people have been convinced to live a life of fear, to think that there's no point to having a family, working toward the future, etc. How much suffering has been caused by these lies. It's simply evil."" What's evil is downplaying actual dangers as lies and subjecting society to things like global warming and deadly diseases because you've come to associate these things with liberals. All the while banning books and passing anti 1st amendment, anti education laws under the guise of banning CRT in schools. ""Somewhere there must be a book that catalogues the dire, end-of-the-world predictions made by humans throughout the millennia. I'd implore you to find it, read it, be at ease, and live your life to the fullest while you have the health and means to do so. "" Climate science is science. It is not tainted by the false predictions of con men and cult leaders. That doesn't work that way.
ornornor 5y ago
See https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ for why the current temperature trend IS a big deal, unprecedented in our planet’s history.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  That XKCD concatenated data from different studies with different temporal resolution, so it's very misleading. Past data came from Marcott et. al, who said: “the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of about 120 years on average.” “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1,000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2,000-year periods and longer.” Recent data came from yearly measurements, so preserves variability on a yearly basis. In other words, the way past data was determined, sudden changes would be hidden, like the temperature spike that it shows in the 20th century. You also have to wonder why the chart stopped 20000 years in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Overall_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Ov...

jules-jules 5y ago

I found this interview with former chief scientific advisor for climate change to the UK Government and Oxford professor Sir David King both timely and relevant to your point. He now works at the Centre of Climate Repair at Cambridge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLd4EqQywwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLd4EqQywwQ

h0l0cube 5y ago
If anyone is interested in an antecedent to our current climate change situation, BBC's In Our Time did an excellent deep-dive into the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hpmmf https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hpmmf The kind of carbon ejection and correlated temperature change we're seeing today hasn't really been seen since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. That atmospheric event happened over the course of 50_000 years, we're looking to replicate it in a matter of 100s of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum#Comparison_with_today's_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...

koide 5y ago

On the one hand, capital is flowing into climate tech, and on the other there are several growing communities that are addressing this problem space: https://workonclimate.org/ https://workonclimate.org/ https://www.myclimatejourney.co/ https://www.myclimatejourney.co/ https://climateaction.tech/ https://climateaction.tech/ I volunteer on the first one and am a member on the other two, and there is a relatively good (and growing!) possibility of finding a good match between what you feel and what you end up working on. There you can find incubators and funds to launch your climate startup or job postings to work on the coolest climate tech companies (and the not so cool ones too!)

maCDzP 5y ago

Your post struck a chord in me. I work with civil engineering (water management) which sounds like it could impact climate change. Nope. I work on how to make our processes more efficient so we can build more infrastructure faster. Infrastructure that has to be maintained CO2 emission free in the future - we are building more of it. And I am truly bewildered. When I look at all the graphs the only thing I see is that we have to stop everything now. But what I see at work is that we just keep digging with an even faster pace. This summer I tried to read some old Greek tragedies. The characters have to make difficult choices and it all ends with tragedy despite everyone’s best intensions and efforts. I was saddened by the resemblance on how humanity is tackling climate change. I am afraid we are writing an old Greek tragedy.