Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe

They aren't as bad as the Republicans, but let's not try and pretend that the Democrats are particularly great either. If the Green New Deal is what they'd actually attempt to do, we're fucked.

Citation needed. I don't know of many 90- to 100- year old people collecting pensions.

There are some professions, mainly police/military, that permit retirement after 20 years of service. Those pensions are managed to expect longer payout periods albeit using the actuarial stats of their members which are not the same as the general population.

86% of CO2 emissions are created by people in upper-middle income and high income groups.

It would often only have been really impactful for one or two weeks a year. Not really worth the investment.

With temperatures climbing this high, and being maintained for longer periods, I recently bought my first mobile AC unit and am thinking about installing a permanent one after the summer.

I don't have AC at home in the Bay Area -- when it gets hot I just go to a public air-conditioned space for the day.

This is a serious opportunity for mankind to learn from its mistakes and become a sustainable society. Let's hope it doesn't take more than 100 years and half the population to do so.

The climate change issue in the long-term is gripping me. What are we — as mostly programmers — doing about it. Why isn’t FAANG doing something? For pure problem solvers this seems like a juicy problem to sink your teeth into.

I keep saying that ocean acidification needs to be the forefront of the argument more. The data is so much clearer and dramatic that it's so much harder to deny the harm being done by greenhouse gases. "It's hot today" is a terrible way to start a discussion with someone who doesn't believe in global warming, just like "it snowed today" is a terrible counter-argument from them.

https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/the-10-hotte...

It's devastating to think about, very negative, and it almost always means that people need to quit doing things they've come to love.

It's like trying to get someone who's addicted off their drugs and telling them that even if they are successful with quitting, it won't protect them unless all others stop doing drugs simultaneously.

Here's a clue:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

Lifestyle choices won't affect climate change as long as we keep fueling the machine that's chewing through the resources. "It's the economy, stupid" - the modern economy doesn't just depend on consuming many resources as possible, its tenets are fundamentally based around it. Every call for more jobs is a call for more waste. Every push to lower interest rates is a judgment of valuing the present over the future. We've figured out how to make more stuff than we can actually ever use - now we need to figure out how to dial it back instead of throwing the excess away.

Edit: This is what I was trying to remember:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-risks-as-...

It’s probably quite a good lesson for everyone, a lot of our beliefs aren’t reached through some process from first principles, they are accepted from what appears to be normal. Our understanding of the world is really not much better than the sources for news and analysis we and those around us expose ourselves to.

Suppose Iceland were to win the World Cup. Would people be saying that Iceland had spent a bunch of effort training players, or would they be saying that it's natural for different teams to win, and that it had to happen eventually?

One major issue is that probability and statistics are very far down the pecking order of what is considered part of a good education. A huge number of people think "it varies randomly" means the same as "there's no way to know any more".

For example, crops like wheat benefit from a hot dry period when they get close to harvest time. Same for some vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

The challenge isn't so much that high heat (to an extent) and agriculture is incompatible, it's that unexpected high-heat, or high heat at unexpected times can be damaging.

Don't think that I'm downplaying the risk of climate change to agriculture, there are plenty of very serious negative effects that climate change will have on agriculture, but warmer temperatures on their own, at least at this range, aren't directly a huge issue if they're expected.

This isn't necessarily an immediate problem for plants, because plants store extra calories generated from photosynthesis for future use, and when the temperature is too hot they can switch from photosynthesis to respiration, consuming their stored sugars for energy. During this time, plants become net producers of CO2 instead of net consumers, taking in oxygen, burning their sugars (in the same slow chemical burn we use) and releasing the CO2 at the end.

This is an immediate concern for us, because those stored calories are what we wanted to eat. Plants may survive higher temperatures, but they produce fewer stored calories in the form of delicious fruits, vegetables and grains for us to eat. Climate change is complicated for agriculture, but extra days above (or close to) 40C is just bad, bad, bad.

I know, I know - I don't want to soapbox here. But we're spiraling towards disaster in our lifetimes and I can't help but think that hundreds of millions are blissfully unaware.

Unfortunately, I fear that it is too late to turn things around. Climate change has been a known serious problem for at least three to four decades. But politicians do not want to bring the bad news that we need to change our lives drastically in order to get their votes the next election.

But we should still try for future generations. No more holidays by plane. Switch to renewable energy. Live close to work and travel by bike or work remotely. And yes, perhaps eat a little less meat.

- Industrial regulations will take years if not forever to be reformed to offset the damage in that sector. You also have big money in keeping things "business as usual", so good luck with that. Things need to be made.

- Transportation: it will take years to get all the gasoline-fueled vehicles off the road, although there are some good strides being made here. However, the biggest issue is that electric cars are prohibitively expensive, and people still need to get to work.

- Production of electricity: again, good strides being made in this department but it's still years away. We need electricity.

- Meat eating: you, the people next to you, _everyone_ can immediately decide this very second to do their part. Here's the thing about food though - human beings don't need to eat meat. There is plenty of plant-based food out there and at this day and age and depending on your location, highly restricting your meat and dairy use is the easiest it's ever been.

Out of the list of issues you described contributing to climate change, the one you are annoyed at me for bringing up is the only one that you personally can fix, entirely by yourself. Yet, you choose not to, and I don't really understand why.

tl;dr: All those other issues require change at a massive level that the "average Joe" can't do a whole lot about. But eating no or less meat requires minimal effort, everyone can do it starting right this second, and it has a huge payoff. Not just on a climate impact scale, but on a global health level.

If people won't even make that first step that can be done for no effort, how do you think any of those huge issues will get figured out?