This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in 120k years

Renewables have been the boring, consensus answer to this for about a decade.

There's some obscure academic discussions about the exact makeup of the last 15% of energy needs, but most of those options revolve around how to best reuse the massive amounts of nearly free electricity that a sensible overbuild of renewables will create at other times.

I know the mainstream media flips between it all being a hoax and us all going to die but I still don't understand how it's possible for so many HN posters to have a worldview that so neatly excludes these world shaking tech developments.

> To ask these countries to reduce their energy requirements is to ask their citizens to live a lower standard of life. Hypocritical of those in the West to make that request.

Without a hint of sarcasm or snark, life isn’t fair. We’re on a trajectory of progress (energy transition) and reduction in quality of life (excess heat deaths) for various geographic cohorts, and not much is going to bend either curve.

https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/devastating-worlds-p...

Better to give them solar panels and wind turbines. Even if the third world can't manufacture them they can maintain them themselves.

That's a weird take. The West has colonized the rest of the world, enslaved people, exported cheap product to decimate local industry (sometimes at gunpoint), extracted resources (frequently with indigenous people working like slaves), propped up dictators, you name it ...

(I'm not particularly trying to blame the nebulous "West," as many other countries would have done the same if they had the chance. See what Japan did during WW2.)

... but we draw a line at trying to avert a global climate disaster?

Just this year, America was busy making sure China doesn't get the chips they want, by pressuring its own allies into not making more deals with China. And these things are considered completely normal and part of "business as usual" as long as they support the continued hegemony of America.

But talk about fending off the existential threat against the human civilization, and people are like "Oh no! Won't anybody think about those poor Indians who need their gas-powered cars!!"

2. Which is exactly what dishonest people do with them.

3. Things over the past few years aren't as bad as they seemed now. These past few years are likely going to be the coldest years of the 21st century.

4. The Antarctic sea ice graph is beautiful. We're smashing every record.

If you're already well off (like most HN posters, probably) then you might not care if the leader of your country tells you that you will have to reduce your standard of living for the sake of the environment (and keep in mind that they rarely make those claims based on realistic analyses). If you are barely making ends meet and don't know if you will be able to retire after toiling your whole life like many people it is a harder sell. For example, where I live my electricity provider is harassing me to switch to "clean" energy sources, coyly admitting that the price will be higher in fine print. Turns out they entice people to join only to increase their prices later (see https://www.thedailybeast.com/cleanchoice-energy-is-the-snea...). Can you afford to pay double or triple the price for energy? What if you had to? Some of us cannot afford to run air conditioning at a certain price.

Some still think that this is a mere "conspiracy theory", but the messaging is slowly becoming more explicit about this power grab. I'm talking about some national government figures talking about lowering your standards out loud. Less obvious tells are organizations connected to governments setting lofty "sustainability" goals which involve reducing energy footprints to a level that is impossible to achieve without significantly impoverishing nations. Farmers forced to reduce their use of nitrogen fertilizer are the appetizer.

Phoenix had its longest stretch of 110+ degree days since 74, which is damning to the average person for climate change. Think “if we had a comparable heat wave 50 years ago, why should I assume the planet is heating up?”

Now, do I believe in climate change? Yes, of course. Do I think this one year is the mark of the next year and the year after that steadily increasing in temp? No, not at all, or at least not an amount that is noticeable by humans. Climate change is something that is far more subtle and far reaching than “phoenix is a 5f hotter”

Imagine if our global surface temperature average continues to steadily increase, say over 50 years, and we continue to see dramatic spikes in temperature like we're seeing now? Not only will habitats and the life within them be decimated, but humans will be included. In my small city, the 2021 heatwave in Western Canada killed over 600 people more than a heatwave typically would. That's staggering, and we're just getting started.

the only thing missing is agnostic, post-Christian salvation…

I could see something like a carbon credit for individuals based on their actions that impact the climate such as limiting their power use, not driving their car frequently, or not having pets. This type of rationing also has problems, though, as it starts to become effectively limiting things to wealthy people who can afford a lifestyle in which they can use a car less frequently or own an energy-efficient home for example.

I don't think there is a reasonable way of rationing climate relief in a morally justifiable way.

Are the currently strong going to keep the weak down, will the weak destroy the strong, will power be distributed to minimize the number of weak at the expense of the strong, or will something else entirely happen? My bet is that the strong have quite a lot longer to go getting stronger before the weak can enact meaningful change.

Also worth noting are that there is a large gap between, for example, the American weak and the global weak. The global weak will suffer more and have less avenues to enact change. Americans have the luxury of climate “debate” while Indonesia (not even a super poor country) moves its capital and while others suffer.

EDIT: To be clear, I think this situation is absolutely horrible. Based on how countries have been acting for the last couple decades though, I'm not expecting things to get better before they get much worse.

>It's going to be hard to get people to care about this if the takeaway is going to be "other people have to do what we say" as it usually is with climate stuff.

Eh, more like hold the ultra-wealthy accountable for profiteering off, or at the expense of, the planet? and the (comfortable) existence of lots of people based on how things are going?

(The really cool thing is, most (all?) of the individual climate-shaming is propaganda from corporations who know damn well that individuals contribute very little to climate change compared to corporations themselves and the wealthy capital class.)

> The report finds that these billionaires’ investments give an annual average of 3m tonnes of CO2e per person, which is a million times higher than 2.76 tonnes of CO2e which is the average for those living in the bottom 90 percent.

Yes, I understand that's via investment, but that's still kinda precisely my point. Why shouldn't they be held to account?

The poor collectively decide they want clean air and the rich shriek "stop telling other people what to do!" Then the rich turn around and say "stay off my land, and don't you dare occupy my 3rd vacation home even though it's empty right now!"

The point I'm trying to make here is that telling other people what to do is foundational to many of our most basic rights. Do not kill people, do not trespass on other people's property, do not copy my copyrighted works, do not infringe my patents, etc. These things are so basic they are taken for granted and overlooked. Notably, they benefit those who already have wealth. But then, if the poor say "do not destroy the air" or something like that, suddenly the wealthy are concerned about telling other people what to do.

The unthinkable yet true thing is that there isn't anything we can do to reverse or cure the situation. Best we can do is try to adapt. We're far past the tipping points. Ever heard of Collapse with a capital C?

Not surprised. This topic should go across political spectrum. Unfortunately for several decades, instead of proposing solutions, right spectrum was denying that there is problem.

How do you suggest reducing carbon emissions that aren't profitable? We are lucky that wind and solar cost less than other forms of energy, but at some point we will have to pay people to switch to electric cars and then make ICE cars illegal.

Dealing with climate change means everybody needs to stop producing carbon dioxide and pay to pump it back out of the atmosphere. Only government can do that.

https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3071/the-r...

The only way to deliver this opinion in a non-suspect way would be something like: "I'm aware that all metrics show it's the hottest month on record, and everyone is experiencing that everywhere, but <a detailed reason why for some reason your model of the world invalidates that experience that doesn't just wave your hands and dismiss all the evidence>".

Like, it is obvious in the last fifty years. Your argument is "well maybe 200 years ago was hotter and we forgot". Who cares? People are worried about this because it is bad for humans, now.

One of those rare "have your cake and eat it too" moments.