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One thing this latest heat wave is worrying me about is that climate disasters seem like they will happen no matter what happens with CO2. Like, the hottest te
by thehappypm 3y ago
One thing this latest heat wave is worrying me about is that climate disasters seem like they will happen no matter what happens with CO2.
Like, the hottest temperatures from Death Valley are from a century ago.
Tornadoes, droughts, heat waves, monsoons, floods, hurricanes -- not to mention earthquakes and volcanic eruptions -- will all continue even if CO2 goes back to pre industrial levels.
Then what?
- nvm0n1 3y ago[flagged]
- Thoeu388 3y ago[flagged]
- joenathanone 3y agoCO2 isn't the only thing that can and does contribute to climate, just one of the possible gasses that can, and currently is contributing.
- thehappypm 3y agoSure. But, if the point of de-carbonizing is to stop extreme weather altogether, we're not going to achieve that, ever.
- joenathanone 3y agoNot stop in this instance but rather not contribute to.
- sethrin 3y agoIt's also not going to stop meteor strikes, but fortunately no one has ever suggested that was the purpose of decarbonization.
- thehappypm 3y agoI mean, if stopping extreme weather isn’t the point of decarbonization, what is the point?
- sethrin 3y agoReducing it, ideally to pre-industrial norms. Stopping extreme weather is obviously impossible, and so obviously so that it's bizarre you're even trying to prop it up as a strawman.
- api_or_ipa 3y agoThe specific hottest temperature reading from Death Valley in 1913 is far from certain. The reality is we aren't sure how accurate that reading really was (turns out, measuring accurately temperature is harder than one might think). We're a lot more certain about recent temperature readings and aside from Death Valley there are far more records broken nowadays than in the past. For example just 2 years ago, Canada's hottest temperature reading was (121.3f) in Lytton BC. Before that, the record was set thousands of miles away. Lytton usually gets hot in the summer, but never that hot.
- thehappypm 3y agoInterestingly, the list of weather records data shows that the extreme highs are really scattered throughout the last century. It seems probable, though, that these will all fall in the next couple decades. Africa: 1931 Antarctica: 1982 Asia: Tie, 2023 and 2017 Europe: 2021 North America: 1913 Oceania (incl. Australia): Tie, 1960 and 2022 Oceania (excl. Australia): 1973 South America: 1905 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records