[HN Gopher] There's a heatwave in the sea and scientists are wor...
___________________________________________________________________
There's a heatwave in the sea and scientists are worried
Author : gardenfelder
Score : 137 points
Date : 2023-07-21 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| danielovichdk wrote:
| The faster humans can get off the planet the better the earth
| will become.
|
| I don't mind all the climate change talk. But I do mind the
| symptoms curing. The best people can come up with are fucking
| electrical cars and artificial meat. Because we too many fucking
| people to serve natural foods.
|
| What the fuuuck is wrong with us?
|
| I might sound pessimistic but I don't have any faith in humanity
| as for saving the world. Absolutely none.
|
| Very few are willing to sacrifice what it really takes to adjust.
| And I get that. It would probably mean we needed to kill a few
| billion in the west, india and far east. Who wants to join that
| lottery?
|
| No way.
|
| I want my car, my fairly big house, two kids, my fridge and my
| flights out when it's cold.
|
| Let it burn for all I care. I hope it will. Because deep inside i
| know the earth will prevail. Its just a matter of how many humans
| it will take along with it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The faster humans can get off the planet the better the earth
| will become.
|
| Long term, the earth will be just fine. The only real question
| is whether or not it will be a good place for people to live
| on.
|
| Or, as I used to put it: we are causing an imbalance that will
| be corrected. If we don't correct it, nature will, and nature's
| methods will be much more cruel than people expect.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The only way any significant fractions will get off the earth
| is in the metaphoric sense: they died. The energy required to
| move any even a trivial population people off the planet is not
| attainable.
| 7952 wrote:
| The best we can come up with is not electric cars and synthetic
| meat but bicycles and vegetables.
| edejong wrote:
| I wish we rephrased stuff by mentioning actors:
|
| "Our careless actions have resulted in an unprecedented and
| alarming heatwave in the sea."
| christkv wrote:
| We are going through a very active solar cycle reaching the
| probable maximum. The sun is pumping out a lot more energy than
| normal. To ignore the sun as a relevant factor for warmer summers
| seems just bad science.
|
| Initially, peak activity was forecast to begin in July 2025. Now,
| experts believe the cyclical peak is more likely to take place in
| mid- to late 2024.
|
| https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/14/world/solar-maximum-activ...
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| It's not ignored. From NASA:
|
| "The amount of solar energy Earth receives has followed the
| Sun's natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs, with no net
| increase since the 1950s. Over the same period, global
| temperature has risen markedly. It is therefore extremely
| unlikely that the Sun has caused the observed global
| temperature warming trend over the past half-century."
|
| Relevant figure:
| https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/polic...
|
| It's not a lot. See also:
|
| https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-chan...
|
| If you have better data, I'd like to see it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think the sun's influence is being ignored.
| christkv wrote:
| Sure it does, just read the article from the BBC, not a
| single place does it mention the current solar maximum.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think a single piece from popular media
| demonstrates the full spectrum of thought amongst the
| experts.
|
| If you look at the actual research, solar effects are
| absolutely being taken into account.
| gfdsgvbcd wrote:
| [flagged]
| kardianos wrote:
| One possible explanation:
| https://theethicalskeptic.com/2020/02/16/the-climate-change-...
| f6v wrote:
| I'm to fried to read it today. Is it based on actual science? I
| mean people measuring natural phenomena and not just
| fantasizing about it?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| No, it's crap written by a clueless arse who doesn't know any
| physics but is trying to handwave over it with philosophical
| pretention.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Isn't this the plot to the movie 2012?
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| The author at the link suggests many possible mechanisms for
| getting heat from within the earth to the oceans and
| atmosphere. I can't comment on the geology, but this from the
| link:
|
| "Abyssal ocean conveyance belts pull novel heat content from
| small-footprint yet now much hotter contribution points exposed
| to the asthenosphere - and convey (not conduct, convect, nor
| radiate) this novel heat content through oceanic advection and
| upwelling systems to the surface of the ocean. Abyssal ocean
| currents (and consequently surface ones as well) speed up from
| the discrete addition of kinetic energy. Arctic and Antarctic
| polar ice sheets melt from the bottom up. Land dessicates more
| quickly and wildfires erupt earlier and out-of-season,
| especially near heat plumes."
|
| I'd have to do the math (actually, a comment above says 10.9
| Zetta Joules), but to get the kind of contribution suggested by
| this, it seems that these hot areas would have to be quite
| large and therefore observable - this would literally look like
| the ocean boiling (upwelling actually). If they were small,
| there would have to be areas of bottom warm-water-to-surface
| heat transfer occurring. As far as I know - as someone fairly
| familiar with the data - this has never been observed.
|
| Meanwhile, we have a very simple, very reasonable model for
| what is going on, that works quite well.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Isn't this more scary? If the earths core was really the cause
| of warming, then it is really unlikely we can do anything to
| stop it.
|
| This is what I don't get about climate deniers justifying we
| shouldn't do anything because it is NOT 'Human-Caused'.
|
| If it is 'Human-Caused' we could possibly do something by
| changing our behavior.
|
| If it is NOT 'Human-Caused' then we really don't have many
| options.
|
| By saying it isn't 'humans' causing this, they are both more
| defeatist, more doom, and also more irrational by acknowledging
| something is happening but we still shouldn't do anything.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If it is NOT 'Human-Caused' then we really don't have many
| options.
|
| I think that's the appeal. If there's nothing we can do, then
| that's a license to keep doing what we as a species clearly
| want to keep doing. If we're all doomed, then we might as
| well party until the end, after all.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I am sure you are right /s - It has nothing to do with this:
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/atmospheric-co2-humans-...
|
| Sorry, but you get the honor of getting my first real down
| vote.
| july21 wrote:
| I've been on this site for years and just created an account
| for the first time to ask if you will please consider that the
| entire body of climate scientists and climate experts and all
| known empirical evidence disagrees with your one possible
| explanation, the "ethical skeptic."
|
| If you would like to learn more, here are some reliable
| resources that will explain how climate change has been
| working, and how it will continue to work.
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/
|
| https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-change
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
| jaynetics wrote:
| Wow, what an amazing page!
|
| I just spent way to much time reading there, much like it can
| be tricky to take your eyes of a terrible accident.
|
| His posts about vaccinations being a genocidal instrument
| designed to destroy the local population and then replace them
| by immigrants are quite gripping as well.
|
| The guy has spent an an amazing amounts of time writing about
| stuff that he does not quite understand (in German we have a
| nice name for this level of understanding: "Gefahrliches
| Halbwissen").
|
| There are some weird and subtle inconsistencies, though. It
| makes me wonder if these are simply the hallmarks of a tortured
| brain, or if it is already possible to auto-generate pseudo
| science at a large scale with good prima facie plausibility.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > "Gefahrliches Halbwissen"
|
| My English version: Articulate idiots.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This may be a bit harsh, but it reminds me of the scene from
| A Beautiful Mind when they walk into John Nash's office and
| it's just magazine clippings pasted all over the wall with
| lines and numbers.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Always a spicy topic here on HN.
|
| I point out to folks that if you look at planets that have high
| heat load in their atmosphere they also have _constant_
| atmospheric storms.
|
| If this planet is typical, what that means is that eventually
| there will be hurricanes in the mid-latitudes that last for
| months. Basically one hurricane (or typhoon) slamming into the
| continent after another. With the higher sea level and hurricane
| induced storm surge, water levels will have 10 - 30' (3 - 10m)
| annual fluctuations. Further north and south its just going to be
| a _lot_ more water during the wet season.
|
| Sadly, if you're reading this it is my expectation you will live
| to see it happen.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Unprecedented ocean temps "surpassing model predictions," warn
| experts_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36684146 - July
| 2023 (29 comments)
|
| _New record anomaly for North Atlantic sea surface temperatures_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36433737 - June 2023 (56
| comments)
|
| _Ocean temperatures are off the charts_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36319055 - June 2023 (13
| comments)
|
| _World's oceans at record high temperature for 80 consecutive
| days_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36187203 - June 2023
| (119 comments)
|
| _Ocean Temperature_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35926821 - May 2023 (53
| comments)
|
| _Ocean-surface temperatures are breaking records_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35841748 - May 2023 (125
| comments)
|
| _Ocean Warming Study So Distressing, Some Scientists Didn 't
| Want to Talk About It_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417 - April 2023 (73
| comments)
|
| _Oceans' sudden temperature spike stumps and alarms scientists_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35743531 - April 2023 (5
| comments)
| [deleted]
| myshpa wrote:
| https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/
|
| We've added the energy of 25 billion nuclear bombs to the Earth
| system in just the last 50 years.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-ocean-heat-new-r...
|
| Last year, researchers say, the ocean heated up an amount equal
| to the energy of five of those bombs detonating underwater "every
| second for 24 hours a day for the entire year."
|
| ... the ocean in 2022 was "the hottest ever recorded by humans."
| It increased by 10.9 Zetta Joules, an amount of energy equivalent
| to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and an amount of heat
| about 100 times more than the electricity generated worldwide in
| 2021
|
| ---
|
| This year is off the charts completely.
|
| DATA RELEASED TODAY. North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature
| Anomaly 1982 - 2023 (20/7-2023)
|
| https://preview.redd.it/7ibmzvsi6ddb1.jpg?width=680&format=p...
|
| THE DAY BEFORE (19/7-2023). North Atlantic Sea Surface
| Temperature Anomaly 1982 - 2023
|
| https://preview.redd.it/payaxtpj6ddb1.jpg?width=1080&format=...
|
| Daily Sea Surface Temperatures in the North Atlantic (20/7-2023)
|
| https://preview.redd.it/q9ejy5xl6ddb1.jpg?width=1100&format=...
| postalrat wrote:
| We haven't added anything. The sun did. We need new methods to
| control it.
| Noughmad wrote:
| We prevented it from escaping back into space. The sun didn't
| do anything different, we did.
| happytiger wrote:
| I don't think it's just the scientists that are worried at this
| point.
|
| The question is whether there is a general willingness to accept
| the implications of our currently unsustainable course needing a
| hefty correction in a timeframe that doesn't lead to devastating
| consequences is looking increasingly unlikely.
|
| It's nice that "scientists are concerned," buts it's deeply
| dismissive language that should have stayed in the 90/ and
| genuinely, headlines like these _actively_ contribute to the
| problem.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| >Could warmer ocean temperatures be a sign climate change has
| progressed further than we thought?
| olouv wrote:
| Looks like there is still a lot to discover about climate change.
|
| Some consider it some kind of proof that there are geothermal
| forces that could be stronger than greenhouse gases out there
| (eg.
| https://twitter.com/ethicalskeptic/status/168245895009925120...).
| Pretty interesting.
| bad_alloc wrote:
| This pseudo-intellectual doubt in the face of overwhelming
| scientific consensus is pathetic and part of the problem. What
| is the goal? Laying breadcumbs for climate-change deniers to
| follow to some trap for the gullible?
| bena wrote:
| This is the one thing I dislike about Penn Jillette. The way
| he excuses himself from his former stance on climate change.
| He accepts it now, but he says "there wasn't enough evidence
| back then" and "they didn't do a good enough job to convince
| [me]".
|
| But it's not their job to convince him. They're the ones who
| have spent their lives studying this. And they're convinced.
| The number of people with the education and expertise who are
| convinced far outnumber those who even claim the same level
| of education and expertise who are not convinced.
|
| And this has been true for at least 30 years.
| amateurCoder5 wrote:
| David Attenborough was another skeptic, but he was
| eventually convinced by the weight of evidence. Perhaps we
| should praise them for being willing to change their minds
| when so few people seem able to.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not just being able to change their minds but also to
| speak about it publicly. I'm sure plenty more have
| changed their minds but are afraid to speak up because
| they're afraid it will ding their popularity or cost them
| votes.
| JohnFen wrote:
| But he changed his position, and that's all that really
| matters. Why he held a different position before isn't
| actually that important, and I'm not inclined to criticize
| or shame anyone for stances they no longer have.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It actually is important. Let me try to explain: the way
| he phrases it is is as though he needed some internal
| level to be crossed before he would change his mind. Even
| though he is _way_ out of his area of expertise. He
| should have said instead "I didn't know what I was
| talking about". That way others who also don't know what
| they are talking about (see some of the commenters in
| this thread) might take the hint that this isn't about
| your personal standards for facts, it is about the
| scientists who have devoted their lives to this subject
| whose standards apply.
|
| So he could have done a better job on the retraction.
| cinntaile wrote:
| It's fascinating to see that there are two mentions of the same
| source in this thread. A bit scary too, as if this random
| internet guy somehow is a more trustworthy source of truth than
| people that research this subject for a living.
| july21 wrote:
| This is the second link to the "ethical skeptic" in this
| thread.
|
| I agree with you, sharing something like this suggests that you
| both really do still have a lot to discover about climate
| change. Here are some reliable resources to help:
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/
|
| https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-change
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Well... No. This is pretty much what scientists have been
| expecting for a few decades now.
| SentinelLdnma wrote:
| Charts
|
| Antarctic Sea Ice:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1jhzeRagAE_lAd?format=jpg&name=...
|
| North Atlantic Sea Surface:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1kbWmLaMAA48AI?format=jpg&name=...
| jmclnx wrote:
| Then there is this:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66256101
|
| >in fact I'm very pessimistic about achieving even 2C
|
| In the US, the GOP refused to do anything and held the US hostage
| so they could cash in by taking bribes from the fossil fuel
| industry. The other party was too afraid to stand up to the GOP
| and fossil fuel industry, so nothing at all was done except talk.
| All the hot air from the pols taking about climate changed,
| probably contributed to the raising ave temp.
|
| So here we are, baking in a pot where temps are raising slowly,
| like a lobster.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| US carbon emissions peaked in 2000 and have been falling since,
| even without a per capita adjustment:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb...
|
| Different politics in the US might have made some difference on
| the margin in lowering them more, but it's not really the main
| issue.
| la64710 wrote:
| Yet all the CEOs are screaming in unison - get back to office
| get on with your commute and pollute the earth more.
|
| Neither the government or the politicians or the CEOS or even
| the common people are willing to reimagine a more sustainable
| way of life. They are more willing to find reasons to
| maintain the status quo.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I would not be so complacent. A lot of that was driven by
| energy efficiency improvements, yet the GOP continues to push
| for watering things down like the CAFE standards.
| dstansby wrote:
| > but it's not really the main issue.
|
| Isn't reducing CO2 emissions as fast as possible the only
| issue in town when it comes to the climate crisis?
| myshpa wrote:
| No, our real problem is "overshoot" (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(population) ) and
| the the "Great Acceleration" ( https://futureearth.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc... ).
|
| 'Overshoot' occurs when humanity consumes bio-resources
| faster than ecosystems can regenerate and waste production
| exceeds nature's assimilative capacity. Overshoot is a
| meta-problem: climate change; plunging biodiversity;
| pollution of land, air and waters; tropical deforestation;
| soil/land degradation etc., etc., are all co-symptoms of
| overshoot. Climate change is an excess waste problem -- CO2
| is the greatest waste by weight of modern techno-industrial
| economies. We cannot solve any major symptom of overshoot
| in isolation. Indeed, the mainstream approach to emissions
| reductions will not only fail to subdue climate change but,
| by promoting material growth, will exacerbate overshoot (ht
| tps://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-10-29/cop-26-stoppin.
| ..).
|
| Almost everything we undertake follows a pattern resembling
| a hockey stick, growing exponentially long after we've
| already surpassed safe boundaries. This has been happening
| for several decades now, at least since 1970. The carrying
| capacity of our environment has been deteriorating for
| decades, and recently, the rate of its decline has
| escalated. It is on the verge of entering free fall, if it
| hasn't already (nicely explained here
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc ).
|
| We should have stopped using fossil fuels yesterday and
| started changing our diets, reforming agriculture,
| reforesting, restoring habitats and biodiversity, reforming
| financial systems, promoting degrowth and implementing UBI
| to address inequality, etc., etc. Many things need to be
| done urgently to halt the environmental crisis.
| Unfortunately, we are not even making significant progress
| on the changes we have announced.
|
| We are acting too late, our efforts are insufficient.
| Nobody's truly taking charge. COP is a farce, the IPCC has
| been bought by interest groups. Politicians are not taking
| decisive action, economic growth remains an obsession.
|
| We are now hurtling down the cliff at full speed.
| srgpqt wrote:
| Like the boiled frog, perhaps we have not even realized that we
| are already cooked/doomed.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Nah we realise. But there's nothing that you can do about it.
|
| Reminds me of Dutch Jews in WW2 who tried to live a normal
| life until the police came to collect them.
| paganel wrote:
| We weren't cooked/doomed for about two years recently.
| Sometimes I miss the pandemic and those two years only
| because that apocalypse at least had an end in sight when it
| came to the "educated" public's reaction to it, this climate
| thing is the new year 1000 hysteria [1], it's just
| unfortunate that it will spread over the next decades.
|
| [1] https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2011/10/11.Fear-of-an-
| Apoca...
| anon25783 wrote:
| The ten hottest summers on record happened in the last
| fifteen years. The number one hottest is this summer we're
| experiencing right now. And you call this "hysteria"?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't know, I feel like it's already pretty obvious that
| we're "cooked/doomed", with some caveats:
|
| 1. Even in the worst case I haven't seen any level-headed
| scientists argue that the Earth will be uninhabitable a la
| Venus. We'll get a hotter planner, sea levels will rise
| considerably inundating coastal areas, the current
| anthropocene extinction event will accelerate, storms will be
| a lot more intense, etc. Obviously a major set of problems,
| but I think it's important to be specific about what those
| problems will be as opposed to "we'll all be dead".
|
| 2. Whenever someone even remotely argues that we'll be able
| to stick to some reasonable emissions targets I like to show
| this graph, https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#global-
| co2-emission.... That is, it's good news that global
| emissions have largely stabilized over the past decade, but
| we're _still_ pumping out over 35 billion tons of carbon
| every year. We need to find a way, somehow, to bring that to
| near 0, and while tech may get us there eventually I don 't
| see that happening in my lifetime (I'm middle aged).
| mullingitover wrote:
| The vast majority of human history has been the Stone Age.
| It's the stable state. What's doomed is this temporary blip
| that has resulted from the explosion of free energy.
|
| The human species will survive and will simply go back to
| the Stone Age and stay there another million years, this
| time without the risk of stumbling onto vast amounts of
| easy, free, dangerous carbon-based energy.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Depending what all the other effects you describe do to
| food production and communicable disease spread "we'll all
| be dead" may be only a moderate exaggeration of the effect
| over say a century or two.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's my point, without more information that doesn't
| make sense:
|
| 1. I don't doubt disruption in global food production
| will likely cause some famines, but again, plenty of
| places will still be able to grow food, and in fact many
| places will open up to food production.
|
| 2. I don't see how any increase in communicable disease
| spread leads to anything close to "we'll all be dead".
|
| Yes, _lots_ of people will die due to the impacts of
| global warming, but nothing I 've seen says there is any
| reason to think it will be a species ending effect.
| jlarocco wrote:
| It seems pretty optimistic to say it's "stabilized over the
| past decade".
|
| If I'm reading correctly, between 2011 and 2021 (the last
| year in the graph) there was an increase of 5 billion tons,
| and that was certainly helped by the big drop during the
| pandemic...
| snarf21 wrote:
| Agreed .. A lot of people will die as places become
| uninhabitable for a very very long time .. Access to clean
| water will become a major issue and the poor will lose
| (even more than they already are) .. Humans are a greedy
| species and this planet just can't support 8B+ (and
| counting of us) .. I don't know what it can support but
| we'll soon find out .. We are still decades away from near
| zero fossil fuels globally and yet we are still growing
| crops in the desert and watering it so people can have fun
| hitting a white ball .. Even if we can get to near 100%
| wind/solar/battery, we'll be busy polluting anything and
| everything with rare earth minerals as we churn through
| batteries like candy .. I don't see life being very fun in
| 50 years, even for the richest people
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Humans are a greedy species and this planet just can't
| support 8B+
|
| This seems like a pretty bold statement.
|
| Let's assume the only constraints on population are
| energy, water, and space. If you do a back of the napkin
| calculation on much Uranium exists on Earth, how much
| power we could produce by fissioning it, then how much
| water is in the oceans, and then assume everything else
| is an engineering problem?
|
| I think the number wouldn't be 8 Billion, but much more.
| That's not even getting into mining asteroids, space-
| based energy, vertical hydroponics, living underground or
| in the oceans. I think the limits could be
| extraordinarily high
| ericd wrote:
| On your last point, lithium ion battery packs are
| supposedly extremely recyclable, and it's cheaper to
| recycle them than to make a new one, so it seems likely
| that they will be recycled.
| JohnFen wrote:
| They'll have to be, because there isn't enough lithium on
| the planet (that we know of) to meet the expected demand.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| We know who is doomed. Luckily some of us can afford AC.
| nancyhn wrote:
| [flagged]
| V__ wrote:
| Why do people always try to equate climate-neutrality with
| poverty? Or that escaping poverty has to be co2 intensive?
| Those aren't related at all.
| nancyhn wrote:
| Because they are focused on fossil fuels, which are
| responsible for both CO2 emissions and increasing standard
| of living, including reduction of climate related deaths.
|
| The real solution is to use a better base load fuel source,
| which would be nuclear, but they're not pushing for that.
| That necessarily means they are advocating poverty.
| mxkopy wrote:
| When did anyone disavow nuclear?
|
| I think the OP's point was that fossil fuel and co.
| caused climate change and should be held responsible. How
| you could infer that they want the U.S. to be poor from
| that, I have no clue.
|
| The only reasonable explanation is a pro-fossil fuel
| agenda.
| [deleted]
| V__ wrote:
| It is a solution. Just like
| wind/solar/hydro/geothermal/batteries are ones. None of
| which require poverty. I agree, that fossil fuels
| increased the standard of living, but that doesn't mean
| that it's/was the only way or that other countries have
| to follow suit to increase their standards of living
| right now.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > None of which require poverty
|
| Quite the opposite they require a great deal of money
| V__ wrote:
| Kinda. As an example, oil nearly everywhere gets huge
| subsidies. Just the industry in the US, gets about $10 to
| $50 billion per year [1]. But those costs somehow don't
| seem to matter much because oil is the default. At the
| same time, solar/wind is often the cheapest energy source
| (even without subsidies). Replacing/rebuilding
| infrastructure is always expensive, but infrastructure
| which is already in place isn't free either.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-
| target-...
| willcipriano wrote:
| If solar is cheaper why aren't you building solar plants
| in China and India right now, you'd make millions
| undercutting the coal plants they are currently building.
| I guess everyone involved in energy there is a idiot?
| V__ wrote:
| If I had the money I would. But don't worry other people
| (idiots apperently) are. China and India are both some of
| the leading countries in added solar and wind capacity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_by_country
| willcipriano wrote:
| Also coal and that lead is expanding, why?
| V__ wrote:
| Multiple factors. The grid infrastructure isn't always
| there, the upfront cost is often higher (even if it is
| cheaper in the long run), production capacities as well
| as the fact that battery storage is just starting to
| catch up.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > battery storage is just starting to catch up
|
| Wait a minute. I thought solar is cheaper. Now you are
| telling me they need batteries? I would've assumed that
| the batteries are part of that cheaper claim, otherwise
| you wouldn't have power at night at that claim would be
| very disingenuous.
|
| Sounds like the developing world still needs fossil fuels
| to escape poverty.
| V__ wrote:
| Depending on what type of battery you use or how long you
| want to store it, it can be cheaper or cost competitive.
| But the same factors apply as well, production capacities
| are not catching up fast enough. Still, The end of fossil
| fuels is inevitable, as renewable sectors keep growing.
| Also, the potential for small nuclear reactors or maybe
| even fusion could change this even faster.
|
| If politics had backed renewables a few decades ago just
| as much as they back fossil fuels, we wouldn't even need
| to have these discussions.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| > Even if you plunged the entire US back into poverty, that's
| not going to solve anything
|
| weird change of subject there
| g8oz wrote:
| Your skepticism needs better metrics. And you are greatly
| underestimating the intensity of American/Western emissions
| and greatly overestimating the increase of those in
| developing nations. Sweden plus Norway, total population 16
| million, have greater emissions than that of Bangladesh, a
| nation with 169 million people.
| [deleted]
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, all the oil/gas not used by USA/EU will be used by
| other, poorer countries, probably at lower prices than we are
| paying now for that gas while switching to even more
| expensive alternatives.
|
| We still have nuclear as an option, but the 'greens' are
| somehow too stupid to even think of nuclear as a solution to
| many of our problems.
| megaman821 wrote:
| The best thing the US can do is make sure developing nations
| have the capability to manufacture, deploy and support
| carbon-free technologies. That's billions of people that can
| skip the polluting part of the industrial age.
| nancyhn wrote:
| Yes, exactly, that should be the focus.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I heard Mayor Pete say the same thing from his private jet.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| It's not the GOP, its an entire economic system, defended at
| nuclear gunpoint, by the one of the world's largest carbon
| emitters, who both parties reward with ever-expanding, fraud-
| ridden budgets, while their citizens starve and die on the
| streets, go bankrupt from illnesses, etc.
|
| I'm sorry to tell you, but there is no one in the halls of US
| power steering the ship away from the worst outcomes of climate
| change because the entire thing is bought and sold by the
| people profiting from it.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Yeah the GOP is like the useful boogeyman, but most Dems are
| no better. Hell, the most powerful parts of the Dems include
| folks like Joe Manchin, who's right in the bag of coal. Even
| in a world where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election and
| followed through on her policy goals, they were still too
| timid to turn the tide.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why is Joe Manchin's vote more powerful than the other
| Senators' votes?
|
| If you need 50 or 60 votes to do something, and you do not
| have it, then is the 50th or 60th vote more powerful than
| the other 49 and 59? And what about the other 49 and 39
| votes that will not compromise?
|
| Kind of ridiculous to pin this on a party that has not had
| enough votes to make a change. Especially when the states
| making the most progress towards reducing carbon emissions
| are Democrat led.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Manchins vote matters more because it is the tiebreaker
| that matters.. we have to live in the real world. Here's
| some questions: Have Democrats never had the political
| power to make change? Did the Obama presidency not exist?
| Let's be real.. the Dems have explicitly made it a policy
| to move towards the right in order to appeal to GOP
| voters. This isn't just some conspiracy theory, it has
| been explicitly stated by dem officials at conventions,
| in interviews, and covered at length in liberal venues
| like the infamous Pod Save America episode on the Clinton
| campaign strategy.
|
| If democrats were as militant about their positions as
| the GOP, maybe they'd have more than one major liberal
| policy win made through legislation in the past 50
| years.. but they're not, and they don't.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not a tiebreaker. There are 49 other votes that
| could also be a tiebreaker.
|
| > Have Democrats never had the political power to make
| change? Did the Obama presidency not exist?
|
| Correct. They had the votes for 6 months in 2009 in which
| they passed the most comprehensive reform that I have
| seen in my adult life, the Affordable Care Act.
|
| > If democrats were as militant about their positions as
| the GOP, maybe they'd have more than one major liberal
| policy win made through legislation in the past 50
| years.. but they're not, and they don't.
|
| Makes zero sense given the numbers of votes needed, but
| okay. Even the ACA barely had the numbers, which is why
| it has to be watered down to attract the Republican-lite
| members to vote with the rest of the Democrats.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| [dead]
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > I'm sorry to tell you, but there is no one in the halls of
| US power steering the ship away from the worst outcomes of
| climate change
|
| The folks who went hard on globalism since the 1990s
| certainly are. There were (and still are) a lot of
| politicians on both sides who support unchecked
| globalization, the ecological and human consequences be
| damned.
|
| This is the cause of Climate Change, not the US, which is
| ramping down. If China had to meet the same absurd standards
| as the US and Europe we would be hitting climate goals no
| problem.
| mmyu_tawahashi wrote:
| At what point should we start to optimize more for climate
| robust infrastructure than carbon reduction. There's less
| willingness to invest in the robustness power grid than to
| get people into electric cars.
|
| Robustness of infrastructure could also be aided by
| lifestyle changes, driving less...
| cma wrote:
| > If China had to meet the same absurd standards as the US
| and Europe we would be hitting climate goals no problem.
|
| China's per-capita emissions are far lower than both during
| the time period, even with net manufactured exports.
| veave wrote:
| I am pessimistic too. In 2020 all the glaciers melted, in fact.
| Oh wait they didn't.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| "if you set off a rube goldberg type death trap to kill someone,
| if its a long enough machine, it ceases to become your fault if
| somebody dies at the end."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not a great analogy. It doesn't matter how big the rube
| goldberg machine is if there was only one input to begin with,
| it would still trace back to that input. The problem with
| climate is that there are billions of inputs spanning
| centuries. Trying to assign blame is a waste of time anyway,
| time that we don't have.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| It's a great analogy for what they were pointing out. The
| point is not that these issues are traceable and thus
| inarguably someone's fault. The point is many times people
| don't have to take responsibility for these issues because
| they are indirect. The more indirect (the larger the Rube
| Goldberg Machine) the higher chance of avoiding
| responsibility.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Then perhaps we need to reframe the issue from one of
| "taking responsibility" to one of "this is what we need to
| change in order to survive".
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| That's a much harder problem :)
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| "If you want something to sound profound, put it between
| quotation marks"
| fluoridation wrote:
| Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
| plonk wrote:
| Yeah Latin works too.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| if it would help that i would be more direct for you, i mean
| to say i think those who both knew and continued to make
| extreme profits off of oil extraction at the expense of a
| planets worth of people should be considered murderers.
|
| and lacking judicial means for justice due to those same
| murderers control of most governments, i predict they will
| probably be executed by small vigilante groups in the middle
| of the night, though mobs with torches and pitchforks are
| also a possibility.
|
| but that kind of statement and that rising sentiment behind
| it is generally scrubbed off the internet. who knows why,
| maybe its not profound enough.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| No they are not.
|
| This articles doesn't appear on bbc.co.uk/news homepage so it is
| of little interest.
|
| "Scientists" are not worried. If "Scientists" were worried theyt
| would be marching in the streets.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/05/2...
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-stage-w...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/us/private-jets-climate-p...
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| The last month I've thought about this clip at least twice a
| week.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SYpUSjSgFg
| [deleted]
| sillywalk wrote:
| "Once and for all!"
|
| I think of this.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes! And that's what is so interesting about all this (in a
| very morbid way): it's not as if we didn't know, and it's not
| as if we do not know. But nothing changes. Massive storms?
| Check. Maybe not _quite_ at the level alluded to but we 're
| getting there Wildfires out of control? Check. Depending on
| where you live already too much to deal with, migration is
| your only option. If you're lucky you can still ignore this
| one. For now. Global diseases? Check. And that won't stop as
| habitats dwindle further. But electric cars will surely save
| us...
| myshpa wrote:
| Wow, spot on :)
| silisili wrote:
| This is the clip that got me to watch the show. Let's be
| honest, the premise was pretty boring.
|
| So glad I did. Some great acting and really clever writing.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I think about this clip regularly:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Just imagine how much worse it would be if climate change was
| real. </snark>
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