July on course to be hottest month ever, say climate scientists | Hacker News Reader

July on course to be hottest month ever, say climate scientists

theguardian.com

31 pointsForHackernews30 comments

I believe the climate is changing.

I believe humans are contributing to the acceleration of that change.

I believe how we discuss a problem affects how we are able - or not - to solve it.

I __do not__ believe hyperbol-y headlines are going to help. That is, using the word "ever" as a proxy / synonym for "recorded history" or "human history" should not be acceptable. We need accuracy. We don't need exaggeration.

I honestly believe that this is one of the main reasons why there is so much push back on climate change. Every time scientists say something catastrophic might happen (even though it might be true), I think people look at it and think that it must not be possible. If we were a little better in choosing the words we used to convey its urgency, I think it would reach a lot more people.

Well, first, we need to decide if the average person is expected to have to take personal initiative (i.e. over and above what is actually required of them by society / law) in order for this problem to be solved. If that's the situation, we can safely assume a solution won't be forthcoming because, on the whole, most people will not do more than they need to.

If we do need people to step it up, we have to ensure that we're not losing credibility. July has been a cool, wet month where I live, certainly not as warm as last year, so when we get articles saying "IT'S A CLIMATE EMERGENCY, HOTTEST MONTH EVER", and meanwhile I'm sending my kids off to school / daycare with sweatshirts in case the cloud cover sticks around... yeah. I can recognize the data, and I can believe that overall things are hotter, but it's not meshing up with personal experience, and so it makes it bloody difficult to, say, leverage my finances in order to buy an electric car (when my reasonably-efficient gas car is working fine and has decades of useful life left), and so forth.

"Climate emergency" rhetoric is simply going to burn everyone out and get laughed at, even if it's true.

I think we should focus more on changes that don't require individual action over and above the norm. Legislating a new normal is hard, but more productive than voluntary change.

> "Climate emergency" rhetoric is simply going to burn everyone out and get laughed at, even if it's true.

To your point, it doesn't help that the weather - for local and national "news" - is used an attention and sensationalism tool.

The threat of couple inches of snow is The Rapture. The possibility of an above average rain storm is Armageddon. When these things don't live up to that hype the public subconsciously loses faith. Add in a complete lack of leadership (to get the public involved) and most ppl just consider it another "what can I do?" issue.

I don't blame them. I don't necessarily agree. But I understand why they feel that way.

I'm sure you realize that this is why the term "fake news" exists today, and isn't even wrong.

> and so it makes it bloody difficult to, say, leverage my finances in order to buy an electric car (when my reasonably-efficient gas car is working fine and has decades of useful life left)

This is tangential to your point, but given the carbon footprint of manufacturing a car, this would almost certainly be counter-productive.

That's what I think, too. We could see much better environmental gains long term from a real serious push to make things more repairable so that we don't have people buying new cars as often as now.

Obviously, the incentive structure isn't set up to make that make sense for auto manufacturers, of course. Look at a Tesla, it's even less repairable than a normal car!

Human civilization happened during recorde history though. So it's the hottest temperatures our civilization has ever had to deal with.

It's a perfectly sensible use of the word in that context. Anyone who went through grade school knows the earth was much warmer in the distant past, before humans existed.

At one point the planet was nothing but a hot 230 °C ball. How much pedantry do you want to get in to?

"Ever" vs "human history" almost seems like a nitpick. _We_ have never seen it this hot, ever.

Why is it hyperbole if it's true? You're asking them to not report on the facts and instead downplay it. Is it to appease people who already don't believe in climate change?

I don't believe anything is going to help.

The average person can make no meaningful difference and even if they could the majority wouldn't. As a whole we just like things too much to inconvenience ourselves and change.

I've done more than 99+% of Americans and recognize it's completely hopeless:

1. Never ever having kids

2. Live in a small apartment

3. Never driven a car

4. Do not take plane flights

5. Eat a plant-based diet

The good thing is that I'll be long dead before things get truly heinous.

I'd like to hear HNs opinions on carbon offsetting. Do any of you regularly purchase offsets voluntarily? If not, what would it take to convince you that offsetting your flights, vacation, or monthly lifestyle is a worthwhile expense?

Recently there was an article that topped both HN and Reddit, saying something like "planting 1T trees could be a cheap solution to climate change". It seemed like people at found the idea attractive, for whatever reason.

Yet I've hardly ever seen any mention of offsetting... a big segment of the voluntary offset market is certified forest restoration and protection.

Would love to hear more opinions on this.

Disclosure-- I am working on launching a company that aims to drive the purchase of offsets.

I buy carbon offsets, because it helps me feel better about the fact that I believe we are doomed. At least it won't be (as much) my fault personally.

This article has been [flagged] for "sensationalism", apparently. The situation is extremely dire, and getting worse, but people don't want to hear it.

They want a quick fix geoengineering, or magic nuclear (about 30 years too late for that, guys), or just to bury their heads in the sand and assume it won't be that bad.

I agree. I have seen enough HN climate discussions to say that a "tech will save us" mindset is quite common around here.

Where do you buy your offsets from? Any problems or complaints about your offsetting "experience" so far? I'm trying to come up with creative ways to add value and make it a more attractive investment for people.

I got them here https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissio... I think because some research I did a while back led me to consider that site reputable and not just greenwashing.

I think the biggest thing you could do would be to bundle them in automatically to the purchase of things like airline tickets or gasoline, and make them opt-out, not opt-in. Imagine if when you booked a flight, the last page said "The price of your ticket includes $15 to help stave off environmental disaster. Click here to kill adorable baby penguins and save fifteen bucks."

I think most educated people now days are aware that the earth is "getting hotter". Articles like this seem to just monger fear and not really encourage steps we can take to continue improving the environment and adapting renewable and reasonable sources of energy like nuclear.

There are an awful lot of educated people whose livelihoods depends on us not taking those steps. That's why disinformation and denialist propaganda like this study get funded.

Leaving those lies unchallenged would be journalistic malpractice.

It still boils my blood that there are wealthy families in New York (politics and religion aside) who actively fund anti-vaccination rhetoric and associations who make issues of vaccination religious...

As it should. My point is that there are also wealthy families(and companies) in NY/Houston/DC/etc that know that climate change will cause wide-scale human suffering but purposefully spread misinformation and sow doubt because addressing that problem would cut into their wealth.

> and not really encourage steps

What do you think would be a more efficient way to encourage those steps?

There are a small percentage of flat out deniers. They are fringe. Their numbers overestimated.

On the other hand there is a large group of "I don't believe humans are a major contributing factor." Given what we know about the planet's history it's foolish to consider these ppl deniers. They believe. It's the cause they don't agree with.

This is becoming a classic case of too many people being worried about the wrong problem. Deniers aren't the issue. It's the "it ain't because of humans" cluster.

> On the other hand there is a large group of "I don't believe humans are a major contributing factor."

I think that group is much smaller than the group of people who don't want to make significant lifestyle changes and are hoping that things won't get bad until after they're dead. Unfortunately there isn't a good way to break that cycle without confronting the problem — just as is the case for anything else where the feedback is substantially delayed. The thing which will probably move the needle on climate change will be insurance skyrocketing or disappearing and governments choosing not to rebuild in high-risk areas, because that will make the risk real enough not to downplay.

I don't think the difference between those two groups is particularly significant. Both groups unapologetically ignore an area of well-established science. Both groups are philosophically equivalent (humans can keep burning fossil fuels with no adverse effects), both are influenced by the same (or functionally equivalent) propaganda, and both will oppose policy solutions. One group ignores a bit more science than the other, and arguably, might make worse real estate purchasing decisions.

Can someone comment about this recent study: "Effect of human activity on climate change insignificant"[1]?

1. http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/16...

"The paper has been criticised for not being peer reviewed and other climate scientists have refuted the conclusions reached by Kauppinen and Malmi. Critics have said that in addition to not being peer reviewed, Malmi and Kauppinen fail to provide correct physical explanation, have not linked to- or sited to enough sources to support their claims and although they denounce climate models, they use one themselves to prove their own points." FTA you linked but didn't read.

> The paper has been criticised for not being peer reviewed

Not defending the content of the paper (haven't read it), but it's really stupid to criticize a paper that has recently been submitted to a preprint server for not being peer reviewed.

> it's really stupid to criticize a paper that has recently been submitted to a preprint server for not being peer reviewed.

Isn't the entire point of the peer review process to have experts in the field review the methodology and reasoning? It seems reasonable to note that although something may appear to be an academic paper it has not yet been reviewed and thus is more likely to have problems.

Pretty much all physics papers/manuscripts are first available on the arXiv server, while the authors are waiting for the journal peer review process, which takes several months, to go through. That's how physicists have worked for over 20 years already.

You could take any physics paper/manuscript in its pre peer review state, and criticize it for not being peer reviewed.

It certainly seems like lots of people have already

https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/non-peer-reviewed-ma...

I guess it seems important to say I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusions of the paper, I just saw it starting to circulate and wanted to know HN thoughts on it.

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