That’s a huge amount of energy being transferred to the atmosphere
twitter.com
twitter.com
It's like, say, someone keeps shooting people in the head, and you keep describing the problem as "sudden death syndrome."
Umm....no. It's not sudden death. It's either guns. Or murderers. Or both.
We don't have a climate change problem.
We have a fossil fuel problem.
We're living in the fossil fuel catastrophe.
And sure, we all benefit from fossil fuels. But it's also a bit having a gun pointed at our heads.
And no matter if you think guns are the problem, or people are the problem....
The symptom (climate change) is not where the solution lies.
Let's put the focus on the actual problem -- fossil fuel.
Fossil fuel is killing us. Not climate change. Fossil fuel.
Edit: replaced the word "oil" with "fossil fuels."
Other than cars (which is not insignificant but we're also headed that way) there's not a whole lot of places to cut unnecessary oil usage. Dropping our oil consumption by a factor of two would be fantastic but also likely not save us in isolation.
Actually, I'm probably wrong.... Too many people might be the root of the problem.
And that might be wrong too... Maybe it's just one more cycle Earth has to go through.
Edit: Maybe my sentiment is unpopular. I read the comment and thought that "oil" clearly was a standing for fossil fuels in general. I don't see how it could be read to be saying "oil is bad but coal and gas are OK" and thought the reply suggesting this was the case wasn't really in good faith. But I may have been mistaken!
The party that keeps insisting on adding these laughable electricity-to-fuel regulations is amenable to nuclear power plants and would undoubtedly have kept them running in a different coalition.
But you can go a step further, the problem isn't oil, but growth. Should we have an infinite supply of "clean" energy, we'd use it to destroy the environment faster (destroy forest, marine life, produce more plastic and so on...).
These types of scenarii are well-explained in the "limits to growth" book.
Yes, we need to find a way to move away from oil. But, we also need to move away from decisions that lead to a stark increase in demand. Avoiding things like Car culture, building cities in deserts/tundra, beef consumption are just as important. This is especially true in the developing world. If per-capita energy demands in Africa / India / China gets anywhere close to Canada/USA/ Norway, then no amount of 'clean energy pivot' will be able to save us. But that change has to begin from USA/Canada/Scandinavia as global thought leaders.
This pans out in statistics [1] too. There is clear clustering around car centric, sprawling & snow-clad regions. Japan, France, & Spain stand out as medium-consumption developed nations simply due to better urban planning & moderate climate. Taiwan and SK are the two headscratchers for me. I would have expected both to have similar consumption to Japan, no clue why they use so much energy per capita. Is it all air-conditioning ?
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
Because we have much more problems than just fossil fuels.
This is just a short (and incomplete) list of impacts of agriculture:
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Deforestation (40% of pastures used to be forests)
- Land degradation
- Water pollution
- Water overconsumption
- Loss of biodiversity
- Antibiotic resistance
- Ocean dead zones
- Inefficient land and resource use
- Ethical concerns regarding animal welfare
- Contribution to zoonotic diseases
- Air pollution
- Eutrophication
- Soil erosion
- High energy consumption
- Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers
- Destruction of habitats and ecosystems
- Inequality in global food distribution
- Public health risks from foodborne illnesses
- Nutrient pollution
- Strain on waste management systems
- Overfishing (40-70% of plankton gone, sharks 90% gone, fish almost gone)
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/06/why-arnold-schwarzenegg...
Because of the trade off nature of this situation your argument is entirely wrong. The main problem is climate changes when we add heat to it faster than we can dissipate it into space. The solution to the main problem is some combination of things that increases our ability to dissipate heat, which will include some amount of fossil fuel consumption decrease. There are secondary problems with the different green house gases that will dictate the optimal decrease mix but that's not that relevant to the main problem with your thought process.
Fossil fuels were a glorious solution to the horror of the average man's existence, they continue to be a large benefit and could be a glorious solution again in the right circumstances so it serves no one to make a "fossil fuel bad!" religion out of it.
Seems to me that a big pile of no longer working batteries is actually just a very easy deposit of lithium to mine for material to make new batteries.
The one in the tweet stops at 24th April.
I love my children, but I'm not sure how I will be able to explain the world/my involvement in the world to them once they grow old (both are below 2 years as of today).
As an individual, I feel like I have no way of leaving the "rat race" while still being able to sustain our lives financially...
Everyone tells you you're screwed, but some controversial group of doctors think there's a tiny chance they can cure you with a painful procedure. What do you do?
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century
https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...
The animal agriculture industry is the leading cause of most environmental degradation that is currently occurring.
https://plantbasednews.org/news/plant-based-lifestyles-imper...
Plant-Based Lifestyles Now ‘Imperative’ For Survival, IPCC Climate Expert Says
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/abandon-industrial-agri...
"We are in the middle of the sixth extinction with as many as 274 species going extinct every day—we have lost an average of 68% of all bird, fish, mammal, amphibian, and reptile species in the past 50 years—and the decline is continuing at more than one percentage point per year. Agriculture is the largest cause of these declines—86% of those species threatened—with animal agriculture (60%) the salient perpetrator."
Not having kids and consuming like crazy won't save anything.
https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?
(Don't forget we've outsourced our manufacturing to China)
https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-worst-places-...
Countries contributing the least to the climate crisis are feeling the worst of its effects
That's not so true now, China emits as much CO2 per capita as Europe does, and quite a bit more than the greener European countries (e.g. France, Sweden, the UK). This remains even after adjusting for consumption rather than production.
Maybe not now, I was talking about cummulative footprint. Even now China is a third of EU + UK + US together.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions (see 1950-1980)
It seems obvious that it's US & EU who made the China the polluting giant it is now.
> Not having kids and consuming like crazy won't save anything.
Most of the people on this site are American or European. You are the problem you name.
I wonder when many in those 'rich' countries will learn that they need to embrace that instead of 'build the wall'.
Anyway, I don't think replacement fertility is the right measure here. Replacement fertility could be crashing, but if the ratio of 'modern'* humanity is increasing as it is, then the problem remains ... there's probably a term for this if anyone knows.
* (by 'modern' [super air-quoted] I mean, those who have the wants and desires and ability to get the goods and services of the 'rich' countries).
There are other species on this planet too, you know. What about them?
But seriously, I always see the planet as on a finite timescale anyways with the lifetime of our sun being the limiting factor (which is interesting because it's the sun that gives us all our energy for the most part ignoring nuclear). Once the sun goes kaput that's it, we better be intergalactic by then. So I wonder can we think of perhaps maximizing the number of civilizational hours spent under the sun on Earth. Is that a good framework to go by. Put another way say the sun goes out in the year 10,000, and we are to judge two scenarios
A) humans go extinct in the year 7,500 B) humans go extinct in the year 9,000
All else being equal what scenario would people prefer and why.
7500 - 9000 is just a wishful thinking ... we won't make it there without functioning ecosystems
And it's even more of a tragedy of the commons than simply not eating meat/dairy.
https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2020/
They currently use a tiny fraction of the energy the west does (and pollute a tiny fraction), they'll eventually catch up in "quality of life", with all the comes with it (exploding energy consumption)
I hope to move soon, and being able to walk/bike/take public transit is a priority for where I choose, but it makes me think there are so many places in the US where going anywhere without a car is not a realistic option. Car dependency is a big issue in the US.
Technology let use thrive in places we shouldn't even have lived in the first place, a lot of people just "can't" do anything, that's why we're fucked
It’s certainly possible for another form of transit to exist in this town, but everything was designed with cars in mind and there is little interest in fixing it, because almost everyone has a car (excluding those that can't afford them, but we don't talk about that or the weak economic mobility that lack of proper public transit absolutely contributes to).
There's your answer, yet you hand wave it away. Mass transit for not just intracity but also putting housing close to where people want to go (parks/stores).
My non-US wife often jokes about "US city planning" being an oxymoron, and I just can't defend it.
This is an issue I’m pretty passionate about and while I’ve put a lot of effort in locally to change this, I’ve come to realize it’s not something that’s gonna be fixed in my life time. This is why I intend to move to a place that already has good public transit and good walkability.
I would hope that the demise of gas powered cars would lead to a surge of focus on non-car transportation and improved city/suburban design, but I fear that car dependency will continue on as it seems most people in the US greatly prefer the idea of electric cars to anything else. It’s a shame, as I believe cars themselves to be problematic for a whole host of reasons and I feel our society is missing out on a good opportunity to transition away from them. I’ll keep fighting the fight, but there is only so much one can do.
Quick google shows that a Hyundai Ioniq gets around 4 miles per kWh. An average US household uses 886 kWh per month. You’d have to drive 3,500 miles a month to have the electric car use more energy than the entire household.
Yes, there is an energy cost in building the car, but there’s also an energy cost in building the refrigerator and dryer and washing machine etc in the house.
I’m sure some electric cars are worse than the Ioniq, but they’d have to be considerably worse to equal the energy used by a household.
Oh wow. The average German household of three uses 2500kwh in a multi-tenant and 3500kwh in a single family home PER YEAR.
PER YEAR
> I wonder what it would take to get German energy consumption up to a better level.
Jokes aside, you're describing a correlation. America does not seem "more civilized" to me, you guys are just wasteful. Wasted energy does not lead to more civilization.
No; It's completely consistent with my model. America is more advanced by a huge margin. It's also evidently a more desirable place to live; the Germany-to-USA migration rate is something like 3x the other direction.
That's a good question. Prices are a good start. Consumer prices seem to be twice in G as in the US. Don't know where you get the "wholesale price is 4x in G". Most of what I can find is that wholesale is usually pretty close.
My guess of what G could do to increase consumption and thus moneys:
- Lower prices (duh). End user power is taxed heavily to subsidize industry power
- Remove mandatory energy labels on all electronics. Who really needs to know how much a TV or fridge is going to consume in power?
- Mandate "power-included" in rents. If you pay a fixed sum, you might as well leave the fridge open to cool the kitchen
- Mandate central heating and cooling. If you only pay a share of what you consume, might as well go full blast on everything
- stop subsidizing energy efficiency for new single and multi-tenant homes.
- stop building solid houses. Plywood walls are fine
Nice comparison on power prices: https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-market-report-decemb...
I can't find any "average kwh for heating" numbers though. If the US number of roughly 10.000 kwh per year included heating, that could be roughly comparable to what the German average could be. Numbers that I find range from 14.000kwh for old homes with Gas usage to 3000kwh for modern homes with heat pumps.
Would make more sense than the US average being 4x while roughly using the same electronics.
I don't think you can really hand wave away that cost. My instinct is that battery, aluminum, and steel production should be very energy intensive.
The 3500+ pounds of "stuff" in your car is over an order of magnitude more "stuff" than a household appliance just by weight alone.
(Maybe we should forego the other luxuries as well, of course).
All that said I imagine the biggest direct end user energy usage would be the cost of HVAC systems running nearly continuously in inhospitable climates.
When you look at it further, you find even an electric car uses 20-30kWh/100km at highway speeds. That basically a constant 20kW. Driving a car is just stupidly energy intensive and very little can be done about that. Trains and public transport have a huge benefit in energy use per person
I grow my own food and meat. I think growing your own food is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth. All that industrial farming and transportation required to feed people. So many people living in single family homes could turn their lawns into gardens and produce _surplus_ vegetables. Several times what their family can eat.
And even people in dense urban areas could have community gardens ie rooftop gardens.
It seems popular to want solutions that doesn't involve any sweat equity. Which I find unfortunate, at best.
When do I Start planting chicken eggs? Ive not had any sprout so far and my garden smells awful.
No it isn’t. The single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth is so unpalatable as to be literally unthinkable: don’t eat meat and dairy, avoid having children that have children that have children that all want to eat meat and dairy.
Avoid having children that take airplanes and eat almonds.
Avoid having children and your impact on the Earth rapidly zooms out to nothing.
That’s not the only reason or the main reason to avoid having children. But it’s as good a reason as any.
Nobody will mention it at the top of articles though. Children are a joy and a treasure and not having them would be a slight against human nature.
I'm for all sorts of radical action to stop climate degradation. But "just don't have kids" really is tantamount to saying "just don't exist or be human." It isn't just a tough sell, it isn't even what is being discussed.
It’s incredibly simple for me to use birth control methods, barely an inconvenience.
I have lots of reasons to avoid having kids, but it doesn’t hurt that a side effect is I automatically become a top-1% environmentalist in any crowd I’m standing in, without even really trying.
But it would reduce your carbon output, even though as with all things someone else would just consume more to make up for it.
And no, "don't have kids" and "kill yourself" are really not actually the same.
“I’m gay”
Hn: so what, everybody’s something
“I’m an atheist”
Hn: yes and?
“I embed sensors under my skin”
Hn: cool!
“I’m childfree”
Hn: why don’t you just kill yourself then?
Tongue in cheek: obviously not all of HN. But this is one of the few alt views / lifestyles that HN doesn’t easily rally behind.
What I object to is the suggestion "just don't have kids" is a viable political path forward on the question of the environment. It isn't a viable path of any kind, political or otherwise.
I'm not really advocating anything here, just lamenting the seeming (and somewhat assumed) immutability of it all.
(random but I really appreciated these subthreads, definitely some good stuff for me to chew on)
Carbon taxes/credits are probably possible. Huge public works (build enough solar panels and energy storage station to meet most of our power needs). Big taxes on carmakers for making high emission vehicles, etc. There are lots of policies which can work, and I think the market will, eventually, also probably get there eventually. But just telling people not to have kids is silly.
Why not? It's appropriate to dictate and even advise on lots of things that are personal/private.
We have laws and social norms to keep people from being horrible to their own children, even behind closed doors, but only after those children are born.
My suggestion is for those bits of advice, backed by the government's monopoly on force, to kick in just a year earlier than that.
"Stop being an omnivore" is sound advice for the modern furless ape.
My carbon footprint, or footprint of other kinds, doesn’t constitute a blip on the radar, because mine ends between now and a few decades from now, and doesn’t grow at all into the future, much less geometrically.
Or put "eat meat" in there.
"Biological imperative" at the peril of the planet. Idk. It's probably ironic for me to have any opinions of the biological imperative of heterosexual sex but it just strikes me as odd.
I'll go do my own research but now I'm quite curious about this. I guess for some reason I expect people to be better than their urges, but maybe that's foolish of me.
Not having children is not effective at perpetuating the human race, and thus not usually considered as an ecological solution.
That being said, you don't have to have children to be an ecologist either, but you certainly should realise that your efforts are directed towards future humans, not towards the planet which does just fine anyway.
Unless you are cooking up ideas on how to wipe the human race out like some kind of mad scientist, and presumably kill yourself afterward, the fact is, people need to be convinced to modify their lifestyle/culture somehow. Telling them to simply die without children ain't gonna do it.
I essentially don't care about the state of the planet if there are no humans around to enjoy it.
The larger long-term risk to sentient life is that anti-energy people get their way, humanity never reaches the productive output required to become spacefaring, and we get wiped out by an engineered virus or something.
This number is not based on evidence. I clicked through the links on this number, and it traces back basically to guesses that say if there are 100 million species on earth and if 0.1% of them go extinct every year then, well, that divides into that number. If you try to look up specifics - birds, for instance - you'll find that far fewer bird species have gone extinct in this century so far than the pace of the last century[0]. Which is actually encouraging! We are up against big odds but the immense efforts put into conservation are not hopeless - it's working!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bird_extinctions_by_ye...
Global study of 71,000 animal species finds 48% are declining
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12974
More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/april/almost-half-o...
Almost half of all UK bird species in decline
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-current-mass-extinction-is-...
The Current Mass Extinction Is Already Far More Dire Than We Realized
https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-fl...
A 27-year study found the amount of insects flying in the air has declined 75% — but no one knows why
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/18/a-wake-u...
‘A wake-up call’: total weight of wild mammals less than 10% of humanity’s
https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/xrml3d/alarming_re...
Alarming report warns 1 in 8 bird species now facing extinction
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/2...
As many as one in six U.S. tree species is threatened with extinction
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7...
Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals
Also the 'single biggest way' to become unhealthy, weak, and scrawny. There is no conceivable way that the (putative, but questionable) negative externalities of healthy food consumption outweigh that.
Also, given that anti-meat activism tends to be either quasi- or literally religious (in the case of groups like Seventh-day adventists), of course my prior is that any anti-meat activist can dump a huge pile of link spam saying "hey, check it out, every problem is actually caused by that thing I don't like". This has little bearing on my posterior distribution, because every time I've looked into specific claims about emission equivalence or deforestation, they are methodologically very dishonest (typically by tricks like falsely equating protein quality or assigning revenue in bizarre ways).
That's a fair point. Another athlete I do follow who is ripped[1], has been reportedly Vegan since he was 2. Generally speaking when I think of building muscle in the gym, I think of protein powder and supplements as opposed to eating ever larger quantities of meat; I don't think that's controversial? AFAIK the only thing you need if you are vegan is a Vitamin supplement.
I'm not a Vegan promoter or anything -- I'm not even sure what a Vegan eats for most of their meals (but would love to learn). But having some background in nutrition I'm skeptical there's any shortcoming to being Vegetarian, Vegan, etc, that a very simple supplement (i.e. like one regular vitamin) wouldn't overcome.
Most protein powder is whey-based (not vegan). Whey protein is generally inferior to muscle, connective tissue, etc. but it's typically a lot cheaper. It's better than plant-based alternatives though. Plant protein efficiency is terrible compared to animal protein efficiency, so any moderately muscular vegan is likely eating prodigious quantities of mediocre protein sources like peanut butter.
> AFAIK the only thing you need if you are vegan is a Vitamin supplement.
This is what some vegans will tell you, but you only need to look at the ones saying this to know it's not true. I know some vegans who could be mistaken for non-vegans from a fitness standpoint, and they put quite a lot of work into maintaining their diet. More than just taking a few vitamin pills.
OTOH, you can achieve better results by just eating a lot of steak...
BTW, famous vegan athletes almost never start vegan, and tend to quickly retire due to increased injury rates and slowed recovery.
Otherwise it's just a load of bull ;)
> 'single biggest way' to become unhealthy, weak, and scrawny
https://old.reddit.com/r/veganfitness/
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
- American Dietetic Association
A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age.
- NHS UK
A plant-based diet is based on foods derived from plants, […] with few or no animal products. […] Well-planned plant-based diets can support healthy living at every age and life-stage.
- British Dietetic Association
> they are methodologically very dishonest (tricks like falsely equating protein quality)
For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate.
- WHO
> anti-meat activism tends to be either quasi- or literally religious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vWbV9FPo_Q - Melanie Joy, The psychology of eating meat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7JE8j5Ncmw - James Wildman, Think
> every problem is actually caused by that thing I don't like
Plethora of studies has confirmed that (animal) agriculture is one of the biggest destroyers of our environment. It's mostly animal products consumers who reject latest science and choose to be ignorant of those problems.
I've had my mind changed (sometimes in significant ways) many times on HN. I would love it if vegans were correct on this topic, but unfortunately their epistemic rigor tends to be extremely bad and as far as I can tell they are pretty uniformly incorrect when they make claims like this.
I think if you understood my objection, you wouldn't have bothered trying to convince me with links from organizations that exist solely to transmit low-quality information to midwits, like the WHO or random advocacy/lobbying group websites.
The types of information that would convince me are e.g. epistemically sound research papers, and I can almost guarantee that I've read more of those than you have if you think random quote clippings from the WHO should have any impact whatsoever on anyone's priors.
Sadly, your response is unfortunately quite typical of veganism enthusiasts on this website. Very condescending, but completely devoid of any kind of useful information.
Your towering intellect, armed with an exclusive collection of "epistemically sound research papers," surely eclipses the feeble influence of organizations like the WHO.
How foolish of us to think their information could impact anyone's priors.
Your insightful critique of veganism enthusiasts, while devoid of substance, certainly showcases your unmatched condescension. Thank you for gracing us with your profound wisdom and invaluable lack of useful information.
1. Nuclear physics
2. Robotics and automation
3. Space engineering and rocketry
4. Materials science
5. Biotech
Even if you can’t reskill to work directly on the tech you can still contribute using your existing skills. If you want your kids to have a future then you need to build it for them.
That's like.... the root cause of our issues
We could live completely on renewable energy if we lived like our grandparents, we don't do it, because we want more, more food, more gadgets, more services more entertainment, more tech, more money, more health, &c. it never ends, because we don't have a goal. "get healthier and richer", the vaguest goal you can come up with
Pumping heat out of the ocean and capturing it as energy
Food itself is a luxury for many people/countries.
Imagine asking for poor people to go vegan or to buy electric cars.
The most important and impactful decisions are confined to the hands of a few billionaire families around the world.
Are you asking us, or are you asking yourself?
I'm less happy to explain why we own two ICE vehicles (even if the one doesn't see many miles), or why we take a plane on 1,000 vacations, or why we run the air conditioner in summer. Why we choose to live on a multi-acre lot on a cul-de-sac far from public transport, why we buy produce in single-use plastics when the farmer's market is closed. Why, in spite of all these choices, our lifestyle costs more than $50,000 per year with commensurate energy usage, when the global average necessary to avoid global warming is far less than that.
I'm happy to explain how the project I recently did at work is saving a local foundry upwards of 50 kWh, every hour, for some 16 hours per day 6 days per week; that industrial-scale energy savings eclipses all the efforts I've put into our home. I'm less happy to explain how I kind of defaulted into this job that only incidentally occasionally helps out with reasonably important problems, rather than explicitly aiming to be involved in solutions to what a reasonable, rational person would conclude are the most important problems facing our world today. (There's an LG Chem EV battery plant going in 45 minutes away, should I spend an additional 1.5 hour commute per day away from my son and sacrifice my comfy family-oriented job, to contribute to an important industry?)
Said 6yo just spent the weekend 'helping' me install some off-grid solar at the homestead my wife's cousin and her husband just bought in northern Michigan. She just retired from the military at just over 30 years old after saving money fanatically, and is farming a few acres. They have a carbon impact that's a fraction of my own, which is a fraction of my parents'. She's a great example. But that may still not be enough, and it's not particularly realistic to take 9 million plus down-state residents and have them all move north to a couple dozen wooded acres; her plan only works because there's a city of 40,000 people with a Menards, Meijer, and Farm and Fleet half an hour away.
I think that all the small choices I make, even if they come from good motives, are disingenuous greenwashing if you reasonably forecast required emissions and hypothetical global development/equality. Our current capitalist, globalist system only works if there are growing populations of billions in poverty, working for the American dream, and industrial externalities being ignored. GDP and carbon emissions are tightly correlated, and achieving carbon neutrality or going carbon negative requires rejecting our financial targets. I fear that rejecting that option will paint us in a similar light as we view non-participants or opponents of the civil rights movement that our parents and grandparents represent - choices that were a product of our times, but which were wrong then and are wrong now.
If we’re doing it wrong, we’re all doing it wrong together. Might as well make the best of it.
Just a shallow reading seems to indicate that this effect might be the opposite -- that the removal of certain particulates has resulted in the ocean absorbing a greater fraction of solar energy rather than reflecting it into the atmosphere. This seems like a net removal of heat from the atmosphere.
[1] https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1667907696333340673
[2] https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1668164600460636161
Except we lit them ourselves, left the car without pulling the handbrake, then walked in front the car, which is now rolling toward us while we gasp at the strangeness of it all...
What a species.
The fact is, we all need to be more hand-wavy about this in terms of drastically different personal decisions AND mega corps need to change their ways (which happens when people refuse to work for them and refuse to buy their products and services) AND governments need to take COVID-like action to limit civil liberties and force change. We need to throw everything we’ve got at this, but instead we’ll do the bare minimum and pretend like the heat and pollution only affects other people.
I would like to see that substantiated by some historic data. If you look at the other gray lines, they're a couple that would stand out like the 2023 one in their respective year.
What happened in those years? Did we see extreme temperature and storm records?
PS: Unfortunately there is no way to say which gray line is which year.
The point of the tweet being: expect unprecedented events in 2023.
I would suggest that an involuntary geoforming experiment on one's own home planet - which so far is slowly but steadily making it less habitable - may not be the smartest thing a species should be doing.
A subarea of Antarctica, where they expected ice to decrease, gained ice. Antarctica as a whole lost ice.
One reason could be that this subarea is an area where ice is lost from, but also an area where ice from Antarctica moves to. So as ice in general melts, some of it also gets relocated to this area.
Like, you can ignore all sorts of science under the guise that it was bad science. Anything biology and beyond has some sort of issue with methodology.
However, a physical ship, bringing products/oil, in a previously frozen area, was undeniable.
Who would have thought it was a logistics person that flipped me rather than a scientist.
Maybe I have a deep seeded conservative bent(my parents are...), but a different environment in my lifetime sounds scary AF.
The one line which is also very high in the beginning of the year is from 2016.
This is what I found about that year: "In 2016, 342 disasters triggered by natural hazards were registered, below the 2006-2015 annual average."
2015 was a "peak" disaster year with a relatively "normal" line.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
Raspberries to the Tweeters for not properly citing sources. The two grey lines you're talking about are 2016 and 2020. One of those years had the worst California fire season ever recorded. 2016 was not quite record-smashing but did have the worst blizzard in the northeast US since 1978.
This is good for the earth and organic matter but maybe not good for humans.
There is. If you want to see reality, click on the "hide all" button, then pick a few years. 1984, 1990, 2022 and 2023 are good. Then try to get the people whose job depends on pretending everything is fine to explain how this is normal.
However, now we are saying its going to make a big difference in rainfall on the east/northeast. I don't understand why the wikipedia article and this year's articles agree.
Changes at the speed of man-made global warming (or faster) do happen, but they are uncommon and tend to be associated with catastrophic events and mass extinctions.
Something humans are famously tolerant of each other doing? No, the other thing.
> Storing more heat in the ocean is another.
This is also part of the problem; storing CO2 in the ocean has adverse side effects too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
But change the timing a little, and you have eggs hatching weeks before the caterpillars that the chicks eat appear, and lots of them die. They co-evolved for a fixed time at which spring appeared, now that timing is off and evolution isn't quick enough to move along with climate change.
Things are changing fast and large population clusters will have to be displaced as a result which is ... less than optimal
Rapid change in any direction is for sure detrimental, you (country level) have to reorganise your supply chain for everything that's weather/climate dependant, and guess what, there is a lot of that (food, energy, &c.)
Random example; train tracks are engineered with the local temperature in mind because they contract/expand with heat, which means we'll have to replace a shit ton of tracks, is this something the average joe could have imagined no ? Well there are hundreds of other scenarios you don't know about that will kick your ass real soon
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bwb3/why-the-uks-trains-ca...
Was 1800 the optimal best weather for everything, everywhere ? No, but we definitely built our entire infrastructures and supply chains based on that.
Essentially we've been able to rely on things being a particular way for ~10,000 years or so, and if things keep going the way they are everything will (a) be different from what we've grown to expect and (b) be changing unpredictably for a while to come, meaning we can't just set ourselves up for a new configuration.
This is the way I understand it, anyway.
So if you have a good argument that extreme summer heat and flooding is actually good, go ahead and make it. But the benefit should be global. The people in Bangladesh shouldn’t lose their homes and livelihoods.