Extreme heat in the West could break 200 records and produce temps up to 127 deg | Hacker News Reader

Extreme heat in the West could break 200 records and produce temps up to 127 deg

nbcnews.com

23 pointsindigodaddy18 comments

This follows a long term trend. The last 5 years have been the warmest in the past 170 years of measured temperature [1].

Like it or not, the earth is hotter and will continue to get hotter. This will have consequences for civilization in the form of declining agricultural output and mass migrations of people.

There are somethings we can choose to do to minimize these consequences, such as eliminating carbon emissions and geoengineering (blocking sunlight with sunlight reflecting pollutants and sequestering carbon) and there are things we will have to do to adapt, such as reducing meat consumption, building sea walls, and changing how we grow food.

Regardless, we’re looking at an expensive future.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51111176

It's not about eliminating carbon emissions, or geoengineering, or reducing meat consumption or changing how we grow food.

The underlying problem is over population. We have about 7 Billion people too many, if the earth had only 1 Billion we wouldn't have human induced global warming.

We have 7 billion people now that all need food and shelter. I absolutely oppose any action to bring that number down.

If we do nothing about global heating, that number may drop to 1 billion regardless through tremendous suffering.

i would argue that would be a signal the population was too high. nature has a way to force a balance. it would be horrible, the amount of suffering, i totally agree, though.

ultimately, there are a lot of other variables involved too, but the sheer scale of our impact on this earth is directly correlated with population.

yes, there may be other ways to tackle the problem and i hope we find at least one of them.

If we paid $1/gallon of gasoline into a carbon recapture fund, that would be more than enough to offset the emissions burning the gasoline would create.

The real crime is that all the things you’re talking about are far more expensive than such a tax, yet politicians still refuse to act.

How do you ensure the fund sinks carbon back into the ground, and doesn’t simply evaporate into pockets and pet projects? It’s a fine idea, but needs to go directly to funding carbon sequestration with as much transparency and oversight as possible.

Re politicians, you’re absolutely right. They have no spine or will to drive the change necessary, whether out of beliefs or self preservation.

There is policy that can be enacted based on the idea of putting a price on carbon to account for the externalities it generates. You can 1) cap and trade, 2) tax it.

California has gone with the cap and trade system, and has basically put a price on emitting carbon. It also has an offset program, which incentivizes carbon and greenhouse gas sequestration. This of course has the problem that you need to account for how much carbon a particular land use pattern in a particular region reduces. Regardless, California has the lowest carbon emissions per capita in the US [1].

Carbon taxes will result in less carbon emissions. They will disproportionately affect the poor because it is a flat tax. Canada gets around that by returning carbon tax revenue to tax payers [2] so you benefit financially if you emit less carbon. Contrast this with Australia, where the party that enacted a carbon tax was voted out of power and the tax repealed in 2014 [3].

Regardless, these are incentive structures to support reducing carbon emissions. What we really need is to eliminate the emissions and they way to do that is by making considerable and necessary changes.

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/21/california-way-ahead-...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia

It would? How does that work then?

It seems counterintuitive to me that collecting carbon from the atmosphere, at a density of 400 ppm and chemically bound to oxygen, could possibly be economical compared to extracting pure unbound carbon from a big hole in the ground. We burn carbon for the energy. Where does the energy come from to un-burn it?

If you have a chance to visit a scenic overlook in Silicon Valley, you’ll see a large number of brown/red redwoods.

In the last few years the Pacific coast of CA lost the underwater kelp forests, which were the same biomass as the redwood forests.

I wonder what percentage of redwoods will survive this decade.

:-(

Those aren't redwoods. They are mostly native oak species.

Kelp forest depletion was largely a result of sea otters being hunted to near extinction, resulting in urchin barrens (otters keep urchin populations in check).

In combination with the Sea star pandemic that essentially wiped out the other urchin predator.

Even better go for a (challenging) bike ride or drive up Kings Mountain and down Tunitas Creek. It's one of my favorites due to the redwoods. Big Basin Park is also one of may favorites but most of it burned last summer.

I wonder if we’ll oscillate between extreme heat killing populations off and reduced emissions from mass death allowing populations to grow again until the retained greenhouse gasses we generate put us on a Mars-like runaway temperate scenario.

  Mars-like runaway temperate scenario

Mars got cooler over time. Perhaps you meant Venus?

Yes, thank you.

The situation is absolutely chilling and should give you goosebumps of fear. Watching the thermometer rise toward 100F today, I randomly thought about how terrifying it is to be an atheist. There is no entity watching out for us. No divine entity who will tip the scales in our favor and make sure things turn out okay. It's literally just us, out here on our own. Some days I'm not sure we can do it... and other days the nihilist in me doesn't care.

It’s almost like people have been saying this would happen for, what, like 50 years now?

Yikes. Salt Lake City hit 107F (42C) today, setting a new record.

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