The Strongest El Niño Ever
theclimatebrink.com
theclimatebrink.com
What does all this mean for global temperatures? Because global temperature lags ENSO by around three to five months, most of this event’s warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin
I’m certainly no climate scientist, but if I lived in Europe, I would absolutely be looking into how to get a solar energy system set up and at least one window air-conditioning unit if not a heat pump before next summer
Remember that 1.5 degrees Celsius is a nearly end-of-the-world scenario and we're currently about 1.1 degrees.
All that warming that we caused but didn't actually happen? Turns out the ocean saves it up.
Metaphorically relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnic_eruption
No, it's not end of the world. 3C is where things start getting bad. 1.5C is the target for the 2015 Paris climate agreement to try and avoid hitting 2C.
We are looking at more severe droughts, flash floods, and rising oceans where we are at, but not the worst of it like mass 40C wet bulb heat domes which wipe out all life underneath them.
That's the sort of event that becomes much more likely if not inevitable as the temperatures increase.
Average temperature moves in cycles. By confusing single-year temperatures with the 1.5C target, you're just going to make people think "crisis averted" once 2028 turns out to be cold.
Oh and it effectively doesn't matter: to merely stop global warming we need 99.7% less fossil fuel production (and that needs to include everything from Saudi oil to Japanese coal)
So why would it matter? Because we feel it? We are not willing to implement real policy when we feel it. We are not willing to implement real policy when we don't feel it.
And geoengineering ... while it at least has the possibility for someone to just do that without the agreement of everyone ... so at least there's the realistic option to do something, so many nations, so many people, have their lives utterly dependent on climate change continuing. So nobody's making serious plans for that either (because, realistically, it'll mean war if something like that is implemented. Which is still better than doing nothing imho)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVlRompc1yE
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcxQZ8ub54Y
These are the conversations that get translated into policy. They are literally about directly satisfying people's emotions. No detours. Accuracy? I hope you're joking.
AND there's the problem that the policy the "pro-global-warming" camp wants will not even help. Global CO2 emission reduction is not realistic.
I'm working in AI and hoping that will help. If I had the realistic option (I have a family to support), I'd love to work in Chemistry to make it at least possible, maybe even easy, to do something about that (of course, even Chemistry products are being designed with AI, so ...). Achieving anything in policy seems to me beyond absurd. In fact I find it very hard to defend the viewpoint that even the policymakers pushing global warming action even want to help. Technological solutions at least might achieve something.
Most heat pump installations in Europe are air-to-water systems fitted to use the existing piping in old homes and is used only for heating. Such installations can, in theory, be used for cooling, but very inefficiently.
I've been doing some research into this, because I would ideally like to get this system so I can make use of the existing radiators in my old house, but I do also want to have the option of cooling my home. It does seem like Fan Coil Units (FCUs) are an option for this. Anyone have experience with these? Are they really inefficient compared to standard air-to-air units?
The possible real fixes are either to section off your water circuits in summer, and only run the properly cold water through FCUs, wall or ceiling loops.
Or to get a multisplit heat pump, use a normal refrigerant-air indoor unit to cool and a refrigerant-water indoor unit to heat the water loops.
In that scenario, are FPUs a good option? Are there other drawbacks?
Even then, there is a fair limit in cooling and efficiency you can get from them because of the lack of phase changes occurring.
If you have a balanced mechanical ventilation (both inlet and outlet) that would be one of the best options to condition the whole house without putting air conditioning units everywhere. Having said that, we turn on the air conditioning in the attic during hot days which removes the biggest heat and moisture from the house. Next up is installing more sun blinds to prevent the heat from entering in the first place.
Insulate all piping properly, the outdoor part will freeze in winter, and the indoor part will drip in summer if you don't. The best products for this are foamed rubber based. Make the insulation seamless with the right glue or tape, every opening will drip.
Add manual or automatic valves to shut off the heating loops in summer, so you don't accidentally get cold water in there. Your cold water loop might also need an extra circulation pump, depending on how you run your piping, but that's hard to say without a lot more detail.
FCUs are available in the same form factors as indoor units for refrigerant-based systems, including a thermostat remote control, e.g. https://www.sinclair-solutions.com/files/user-manual-en/fan-... . But get one from the manufacturer of your outdoor unit, so the communication lines work, e.g. so the indoor unit can instruct the outdoor unit to start/stop/regulate.
You just have the added equipment and maintenance for the water/glycol loop vs an air to air system that only pipes refrigerant around. Fan coil units or VAV boxes are the usual terminal units for commercial HVAC systems that have a chilled and hot water loop, VAVs are used in a system with ducted AHUs and FCUs are used for apartments (stacked FCUs with vertical supply/return risers) or spaces not served by ducted air handlers for whatever reason.
I'm not sure thats true.
Most aircon in "warm" europe is standard split aircon
The "heatpump" shit that the UK is sorta looking at is as you describe. However its half the price to install "aircon" over heatpumps (because grants, amongst other things)
Like most recently refurbished offices will use normal aircon (certainly all the one I have worked in)
Seems pretty short-sighted to me.
Edit: We cannot blame people for buildings things that worked when we had a stable climate but are no long suitable for all these extremes. We needed to fix the emissions issue 30-50 year ago to avoid this. We knew it and we collectively ignored it. I get your point, we could've "planned ahead" but if you build something that wasn't suitable / cost effective for the time it was built, you'd be out of business.
50 years ago no one was going to pay extra for a building that might be important in 100 years because we didn't stop burning fossil fuels in time.
Correct. And we'd be "out of business" too as a country if we decided alone to fix emissions. Other economies would have passed ours because burning oil is so damn useful.
Thing is, I don't feel we are changing much in this respect. Now the best idea we come up with is burning more fuel for aircon...
I mean really what else is there? We can't undo the warming, we can't rebuild every building in Europe (even if we could, would it work? Winter will still happen too). We can install solar panels and air conditioners, though.
We can update building regulations so that new building are better.
We can plant trees. It brings shade in summer but lets sun through in winter.
We can stop taking the plane.
I mean, there really are tons of things to do!
If everyone does this, hopefully the problem will be fixed quickly, plus you can enjoy all the guilt-free AC you want!
I know I will need an AC one of those years but for now this is fine for home working.
It'd be better to block the sun before it hits the window though, so that the window itself does not get hot and heat the inside.
Edit: people generally use emergency blankets, fyi. You can stick them to the glass with water.
Wall-to-wall windows are great.
Floor-to-ceiling windows are stunning when you walk into an empty place that you're thinking about buying or renting, but when you're actually living there, windows that go down to the floor create a few feet of dead space. You can't really put any furniture there without feeling guilty about blocking the view you're paying for, and it's uncomfortable to walk up to the edge and look down - it makes you feel uneasy like you're standing on a cliff with your toes at the edge. It's much better for the window to end around waist high.
They're psychologically fine if both the floor and the ceiling extend beyond the window (e.g. it's on the ground floor, and the roof overhangs), but when they're used on every floor in a high rise apartment building, killing limited square footage and driving up energy bills, it's absolute madness.
Also, it overheated instantly.
But since modern buildings usually have huge windows, we're letting in about 1kw of heat from sunlight per square meter of window. That's 6kw for a 3x2m bay window, or about the equivalent of 6 electric heaters at full power.
Block that heat ouside of your house with all kind of shade you can get: trees, blinds, adjustable shades, rolling shutters...
Also, close every openings during the day, vent at night.
Yes, until you reach that tipping point where once warmed up, you can't cool down anymore.
I only ask because when I moved from the US south to the high desert in NM (about 2KM) I had to learn how to time that transition.
Very few folks here run A/Cs, we generally have homes designed to stay warm and during the summer usually fans go on about bed time and off in the morning, and that's enough to keep things cool because of insulation.
It was not obvious to me how that worked and I spent one very sweaty summer before I got the timing correct.
Of course, if the nights are hot (which sometimes happens) then that doesn't work so well.
Also, all the activity you do inside your insulated home also increases temperature. Human body itself is a small space heater. At some point, you gotta get that energy out somehow, and if nights are hot, there is no way to do that except via a heat pump.
When it is 40C max by day and 22C min by night, for example, the outside is still cooler than the inside at night. So ventilating will have a real impact.
With this you might reach 25-26C inside in the morning and 29C by the end of the afternoon. It is hot but generally OK with fans, depending on humidity.
Then you can turn the AC on during daytime on top of that, which makes more sense than relying only on it.
Though I have no A/C, per se... I have thought about it. I'm 100% off grid, but the only time I would like that is when the sun is so far up that the batteries have all already charged.
This is all the usual advice, which works for a few days, but during a period of over a week of high temperatures, there's nothing you can do.
The sun will eventually heat up every part of the house and turn it into a radiator.
Even when night time temperatures drop to 17c, I have my have windows open at 10pm with a decent cross-wind, my bedroom temperature may drop from 26c to 24c after 2-3 hours, but if I close the windows, it jumps to 25c in ~30 minutes...
The streets probably don't help either - no trees, just asphalt, front yards with paving slabs etc
Was 10C this morning when I went out to walk my dog, in a t-shirt and shorts!
I hope you didn't get heatstroke ! XD
That's pretty nice actually!
I am in a brand new rooftop apartment, so pretty exposed to heat. I can keep 28-29C indoors when it's 38C outdoors. That's hot but workable with a ceiling fan.
At night we open all windows and have a ceiling fan above the bed. We've got about 24C indoor in the morning, with nightime outdoor temperature at about 21C.
Obviously I keep physical activity to early morning and late night.
We also have high humidity which makes 25c to 30c at night very uncomfortable for us Brits.
People often forget about humidity when telling people they don't need AC
And you have to remember we're a country of people used to max summer heat mostly being around 20-22c and many people will sleep with the window partly open in the depths of winter
True that it is not so humid here in the French alps.
But to be clear: do get an AC if you need to. Please dont rely only on your AC though. Turning on the AC (eg just pressing a button, really) is so easy we tend to forget about the rest... and end up burning even more fuel.
Also tangentially many Europeans seem to be confusing insulation with inertia, saying their house is correctly insulated against the heat when in fact it’s just a stone building that is taking more time to heat up. At the extreme you have European churches buildings that are very badly insulated but stay cold most of summer because of all the stone mass.
One thing Europeans have yet to realize is that good insulation only works when the nights are cold enough to evacuate the heat before it reaches the inside, and that during a strong heatwave there is no adaptation possible, AC is needed.
That is true. I heard that many times...
> during a strong heatwave there is no adaptation possible, AC is needed.
At some point, yes, obviously. But in many cases I see people installing an AC without actually trying anything else. And then it is an energy orgy: AC set to 16C with sunlight hitting straight to the middle of the room...
>Seems pretty short-sighted to me.
The same industries that got rich over those 50yr selling BS we didn't need because the government mandated it are gonna get rich over the next 50 installing smart ventilation and heat pump A/Cs and whatnot when the next pile of mandates to undo the ills of the prior ones gets written into the building code.
Seems pretty long sighted to me.
If there had been screened windows that opened wide and faced in different directions, it would have been very comfortable by just leaving some windows open for cross-ventilation. Instead it had unscreened high-end “European” windows that could either crack open a bit at the top or could open wide, swinging inward and banging into obstacles (like the bed or anyone’s head who was trying to sleep!). And bugs would come in while the windows were open.
I found this to be rather disappointing.
No general A/C might be the case in regions that never needed it before (mild summers, cold winters), but their presence is increasing.
If anything, the AC train wreck is caused by the society being incredibly conformist and conservative, trying to cling to the world of the 20th century that no longer exists.
3 per 100,000 is a lot. That's higher than the homicide rates in New England and the upper midwest of the U.S.
The problem with Europe is not El Niño. Our problem is that we are the worse region in the world in how fast the temperature is rising, as you can see in this image/page:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCNv4_ERSS...
We could live without A/C, and many thought that the increase would be bearable. But then we received a slap in the face, with +7ºC (+12ºF) in the western half, +4ºC (7ºF) in the eastern and north. Deaths by heat don't usually happen at someone's house without A/C: they primarily happen either to people in elderly homes without A/C and maybe even impaired to ask for help or to hydrate properly, or people working outside in sun hours. Putting A/C in every room of every home in Europe would do little if elderly homes, many of them public, are not properly adapted.
Statistics in France show that 75% of the heat related deaths happen in people 75 and older, over 90% in people 65 and older. As sad as is might sound, it is seen as a new "natural cause" of death. Hopefully those buildings will adapt.
Also, healthcare spend is really spent mostly on elderly: if you look in any given doctors waiting room, people tend to be old.
Do you have a source for this? It seems mathematically unlikely due to family sizes.
In Geneva even some mobile ACs, such as mobile split units, are banned without a permit https://www.ge.ch/rafraichir-climatiser-batiment/installatio.... The only ones which are allowed are monoblock mobile ACs. Which is ridiculous given that they are the least efficient and consume way more energy than split mobile units or fixed ACs.
To be fair - cold air hit (I'm talking about big gaps betweet temperatures) is pretty bad for you.
Ideally you don't want the temperature in a room to be (immediately) lower than T-5°C or so.
In fact we go out of our way to experience these swings with saunas and cold plunges. I have put this up in the same category of "wet hair gives you pneumonia", but I am open to learning one way or another.
While US, China and rest of the world did nothing similar, just stood and let shit hit the fan hard. Gotta milk those petrodollars till the last cent because thats all that counts, fuck our children right. Yeah we are not going to burn ourselves further to the cinder to prove some anonymous yostrovs something he anyway refuses to see.
You've been lied to by your own ruling class. What else have they been lying to you about, I wonder?
* Not aimed at all the wonderful, sane and reasonable people of the USA.
https://usclimatealliance.org/
I don't expect people outside of the U.S. to keep up on state level politics but it is worth noting that many in the U.S. are trying and given our form of government state level action isn't anything to sneeze at.
It was a bullshit agreement, and everyone knew it was, and were knowing in that what they were doing would weaken/damage politics in the USA and adherence to the rules. And they did it anyways. To no productive end but lots and lots and lots of damage.
I'd argue that it's a bit misleading to treat the US as a single entity for this topic.
The population is deeply divided on issues like this one.
The politicians they population elect are not deeply divided, and thus can be considered a single entity that refuses to even try to do something.
The inability to perceive that ones politics is destroying ones societies poorer members and thus in retaliation they destroy the societies structure is monstrous
I am sure both of them appreciate the exception
Also i don't think europeans don't use AC to save the planet. It's just expensive and it didn't use to be a problem.
Pigs are as smart as dogs, and have personalities and emotions. I am absolutely a carnivore, but I still balk at eating meat raised through a system that just about tortures intelligent animals.
Anyways: I eat a lot more chicken and plant protein these days.
Which is hardly air-conditioning country above latitude 49 although obviously climate change may change that, but there was no point having air-conditioning that far north in the past for two weeks of possible hot weather, a resident living in the American southwest who will never have a white Christmas ever and air conditioning was always a must.
we (the EU, not Europe) are indeed phasing out coal (most countries are already done) and EVs are at 24% of the market (June 26) which is about 4x the US EV marketshare and rising fast.
> Europe mostly shifted their dirty work to Asia and North America
There is a carbon tariff (CBAM) for some imports, will be gradually expanded in the next few years.
That' not marginally better, that's way way better.
This is not supported by facts. People won't spend money on equipment they don't need. Most places in France do not need air conditioning (or did not need it).
It makes no sense that a building owner or transit agency would spend limited funds on something that they do not need.
One may argue that the government of France should have imposed some mandate that people install air conditioning, similar to how Texas failed to mandate insulation for its natural gas infrastructure.
Such mandates would not have been popular unless they were funded. And even then I doubt they would have been popular but they also would have come with considerable cost to the taxpayer.
There is additionally a cultural feeling in some parts of Europe (Germany) that conditioned air is stale and unhealthy. This is not "ideology" but it will certainly contribute to the idea that mass spending on rarely used equipment is wasteful.
Finally, the entire world is unprepared for global warning, Including the USA.
If the next massive climate disaster hits the US, say a drought or mega storm will the message be that "US climate denial ideology caused this" or will it be "nobody could have predicted this; random act of God; thoughts and prayers; nothing to be learned?"
I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. 15 years ago, typical summer daily highs made it into the 80s for a week or two, and in 10+ years of being here before that I never saw it hit 90°F. Now we're 90°F almost all summer and we hit 106°F last summer (the forecast says over 100°F by the end of this week). Overnight lows have seen a similar increase. I'm getting older and fans no longer keep me cool enough to function well. As a compromise, I installed evaporative cooling 5 years ago. In our climate (very dry air when it's hot) it works well and takes ~25% of the energy of AC to run (power is only consumed by a large fan motor and a small water pump). But it does consume water, increasing our total water usage in warm months by ~50%. We have plenty of water in our area, but that's been trending in the wrong direction as well, even in wetter years.
Except France very much does need AC. They may keep it off 99% of the time, but anyplace that experiences 38C+ temperatures should have AC systems installed for public safety. The cost benefit ratio is extremely in favor of having AC in France even if they don’t fully cool indoor temperatures to 22C, there’s a huge advantage to limiting temperatures to below 30C.
Paris has hit 42+C before, in places without AC those temperatures result in deaths.
The prevention comes to play with massive restrictions around visibility of the units on facades in order to preserve character of apartment buildings and beauty. In some cases these can apply to private homes, too. Additionally you have the copropriété, where you need the majority of the building to grant you the right to install AC. The cities have rigid enforcement of all these and can mandate clawbacks and of course fines. And we didn't get into what you're even allowed to install - the things installed in the US won't cut it.
Offices and schools. Laws don't mandate AC, but they prevent it from being put too strong. 27C, I believe is as cold as you're going to get.
French people have a sort of cultural revulsion to AC - forget climate change and American influence, it'll make you sick and you'll hurting your health.
Just stating the facts, not defending the US. The US has a religious opposition to climate change actions as strong as the French religious opposition to AC.
And for older people, France sucks. For younger people, arguably the whole situation really sucks.
At least in Germany you have a right to install an AC and the community can't say no. Even if they do the courts can overturn that decision.
2 minute video on the Mcgovern Committee and USDA 1977: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFQc2kxm9c
> Cooking.. frying in high temperature
not the same thing, is it.
You can see the same dolorism in the national media[2]. While using coal-powered AC is indeed polluting and not the only solution, it's not the case in France due to the nuclear and hydro share in the mix.
[1]: https://www.ademe.fr/presse/communique-national/avis-de-lade...
[2]: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/le-18-20-un-...
It can also be read as health-sensible reminder given the climate warnings. AC units demand is already up 26% year over year in my country (according to our biggest online retailer, a month ago). Will be a highly profitable year for manufacturers.
It also makes perfect sense that the country would put thermostat limits in place. In America we have "coldness wars" in public places where companies crank the thermostat down lower and lower until you have a situation where everyone's sitting around an office or mall wearing sweaters because it's so cold inside the buildings.
None of this is about "ideology" it's about preserving a particular culture. A culture that maybe is being killed by the climate crisis that is rendering the outside uninhabitable, but again the redirection from talking about global warming to talking about the Silly Frogs is quite intentional and in bad faith. And it's not just from OP it's a coordinated media campaign.
Sounds like a ‘mixed-meme’. I appreciate your concern, but confused thinking bringing heightened emotions is counterproductive.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/mixed...
Belief in climate change isn't exactly rare in Europe.
"is it warm due to climate change? just install airco"
That's the neat part, you don't.
Europe has saved on CO2 emissions by moving production to China, and more recently to India and Southern Asia, moving energy generation for factories onto coal power, significantly INCREASING the rate at which climate change occurs.
China and India have made it very clear that, first, they will continue to do this. Also adding solar power, but not lowering coal power. They added that it is "inappropriate" to even ask them to do so (that was China).
Oh and thanks to reliance on Russian gas, and the Ukraine war, the EU is forced to move to coal and LNG supplies, which are even worse than coal. Plus, of course, that means that it's not just coal plants getting worse for climate change but almost all power plants in Europe.
To do something about it, due to Jevon's paradox the only countries that can lower CO2 emissions are the ones digging up fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, US, Norway, the Netherlands, Britain. You have zero chance to convince any of them to stop doing it, burning and selling oil, not even Norway is doing that. And any oil or gas dug up and sold will be burned.
There never was any serious intent, not even on the part of the greens (at least not in Germany, I mean, they even published an article on the subject: eliminating nuclear power was more important than climate change in 2003). And if even they weren't willing to make it a priority, who exactly are you supposing will do it?
Even in 2026, even Germany, increased it's reliance on coal (they're keeping 10GW of additional coal power at the ready, on top of the 20% of Germany's power that's constantly using coal), similar measures have been taken in Japan, Italy, and India has even delayed maintenance on existing coal power plants to increase electricity production from them.
And of course, there's the basic physics part. Aside from a small rounding error climate change is cumulative. Which means once fossil fuels are burned the temperature will rise accordingly. Even if we stopped burning it won't get better.
To merely stop climate change from getting worse, just that, nothing more, we have to cut CO2 emissions worldwide by 99.7 (and some models say 99.97%, there's a surprising range there). That will just stop it from getting worse. It won't make it better. Anything less is not "a good effort" it simply makes things worse.
All policies taken so far to stop climate change have not just made things worse, but increased the rate at which it's getting worse. Doing nothing at all would have been a lot better (because it would have kept factories in the EU going, on much cleaner power).
Oh, and by the way, this was all perfectly clear and known 10 years ago, and nobody changed course. So ...
There is no remotely realistic solution in the current policy directions.
And geoengineering ... is not really allowed to be discussed. Or this argument is being put forward at the UN. Any (successful) geoengineering will have dramatic negative consequences for some states and people. And since that is considered unacceptable, because large portions of the human race are currently dependent on global warming continuing. We won't do that either. People's lives, jobs, work and so on depend on things continuing and we cannot demand they change.
So yeah, I'd get some solar panels and an air conditioner.
Please bring some shade and save energy.
Edit: also, without wind there is a hot and humid bubble around our own body. Fans help a lot with that by bringing fresh dry air right onto the sweat so it can evaporate.
Have an AC if you need to. But please dont have only an AC. Shading and fans pay for themselve in energy savings.
The cost estimates for eliminating Co2 emissions are also not very high. In the range of 1-2x total GDP. Would be doable if 3-5% of GDP is spent over the next 20-30 years.
I agree that all oil will be dug up and sold but there is a caveat: not at any price. If solar and wind continue their trajectory their dominance is inevitable.
But which costs? I can only find a few studies about the truly stupid ideas (spreading sulphuric acid in the stratosphere will cool the earth ... then rain down. Yes I can understand why that would be bad. But any aerosol will work, of course. What goes wrong when spreading Lithium? Phosphate? Natrium? Magnesium?)
Before you do that, do the cost effective thing: shadow and wind. Then you can add an aircon iff thats not enough.
For shadow, reftrofitting adjustable sunshade is pretty effective. Sunlight brings about 1kw per square meter of window. That like having your heater at full power when its already hot.
For wind: fans, preferably ceiling fans. Lowers perceived temperature by about 3.5 °C.
That is not correct. Heat, wind and humidity all contribute.
In a dry air with no wind, your body creates a "hot and humid" bubble around it if you are not moving. A fan helps.
Humid but neither cold nor hot air may not feel great, but not that bad.
Hot and humid air with no wind, now that's bad.
Edit: I know because I added shades and fans.
Edit: you can still use an AC or dehumidifier on top of it. You will consume less energy with shades.
Letting the sun in is like letting your heaters on. You would not turn on both heaters and aircon in summer, would you?
We are entering uncharted waters and I fear that at some point we will get an extreme extreme weather event and the worse thing is that we won't see it coming.
Except those guys throwing soup at the fossil fuel HQs. They did a little.
So we're doing something, but those things are counterproductive to our planet's general well being. Apparently billionaires don't need an inhabitable Earth to live on.
Colossus 1 and 2 still use open loop systems. And with the case of blow down water that's "returned" it's not usable due to the use of concentrated salts (1,200 to 6,000 mg/L).
In your mind this is a closed loop system of clean water. It is not. And as DCs have less and less discharge there is more and more solid waste produced.
Your assertion that "water consumption is a red herring" is utter bull shit. I'd suggest enlightening yourself [0][1][2][3].
[0] https://genesiswatertech.com/blog-post/advanced-blowdown-tre... [1] https://fieldreport.caes.uga.edu/publications/TP121/how-data... [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.21760 [3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/epa-writing-perm...
In this case the response is warranted. Until people start to see what actually goes on in these data centers with respect to pollution (of many kinds) I don't have a problem being direct.
It also states "Your comment would be fine without that ... bit."
I frequently address poorly-founded comments myself. Just did immediately before this reply, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064763> (
I'm doing so both staying within the guidelines and specifically calling out the idiocy displayed, though without relying on that particular word.
Calling out Guidelines violations does not imply disagreement with what's been said otherwise. It is a call for more substantive participation, and probably strengthening your own arguments.
You've been here long enough that all of this should be quite familiar to you.
(I'm not a mod, which is why I'd initially linked a mod's own admonition.)
...
> (I'm not a mod, which is why I'd initially linked a mod's own admonition.)
Maybe stay in your own lane then, I explained myself and the unfounded lie. My response, in my opinion, is warranted.
The swipe ("I'd suggest enlightening yourself") is not.
The could, and should generate their own electricity as well. And perhaps even provide free power to the surrounding neighborhood to make up for the noise and inconvenience of having one nearby.
AI data centers are what, half a percent of the world electricity consumption, if that, and an even smaller fraction of the total energy?
Data centres generally had been seeing energy use growing at 12% annually, or with a doubling time of 5.8 years (about 5 years 10 months). AI is accelerating that trend.
In the United States, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals. In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them.
<https://www.iea.org/news/ai-is-set-to-drive-surging-electric...>
So that in ~6 years they will account for 1%, and still a fraction of the percent of the world total energy use?
Only if the current absolute present value is enough that the resulting trend matters.
It was only 2 weeks ago when someone posted an article claiming data centers worldwide use 24x less water than golf courses worldwide.
And I mean, you need somewhere to collate all that climate data? You need telecoms to let scientists communicate?
>Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals. In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them.
If horse use trends continue at their current pace, London will be covered in 20 meters of horse manure by the end of the decade.
> In advanced economies more broadly, data centre's are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030
20% of the growth isn't much overall either is it? That's likely assuming that the million and 1 spruiked projects actually get off the ground.
No.
If the trend continues.
Exponential growth, a/k/a constant periodic percentage growth (per day, month, year, etc.), increases rapidly. Differences (or errors) in magnitude measurement disappear rapidly: a factor of two in a single generation, a factor of ten in about three generations, a factor of 100 in less than 7, a factor of one thousand in fewer than 10.
What matters is that the growth rate continue.
Which of course, it usually doesn't. Most growth trends follow a sigmoid rather than exponential curve (initially), or more complex longer-term dynamics.
The point of your infamous horse quote was less to show that the Earth would be covered in horses (or their effluvia), than that the observed current trend could not reasonably continue. And as some of us are aware, it didn't, due to the adoption of ... the petroleum-fueled automobile ... which has some bearing on this particular HN post itself.
Had the automobile not come along, or petroleum reserves proved much more limited as was widely believed at the time[1], large horse-congested cities such as London, New York, and Chicago would likely have seen sharply slowed or even reversed growth under negative hygiene pressures. It was the multiple factors of growth in fossil fuel use (displacing horses, and their effluvia), development of sewerage systems, solid waste disposal, food safety and purity, refrigeration, and public health which turned cities from death zones to attractive living places, rather than merely drawing desperate immigrants through high wages amidst rampant rural and foreign poverty.
But the point remains that the sustained growth rate matters far more than the starting point.
2030 is three and a half years away. That's soon.
________________________________
Notes:
1. It wasn't until the 1930s with the discovery of the East Texas Oil Field in the US and of vast fields in Saudi Arabia that it seemed likely that oil was more than a short-term resource. In marked contrast to, say, the short-lived Indian natural gas boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_gas_boom>. Daniel Yergin's The Prize is an excellent history of the industry's growth, though I disagree strongly with the author's strong allegiance to it.
Exponential Growth in datacenters is extremely unlikely.
I doubt it could be sustained for half a generation before Colo became cheaper than air.
>But the point remains that the sustained growth rate matters far more than the starting point.
If you add "Sustained" in sure, but its unsustainable, leading back to the starting point mattering more than the rate.
Theres not enough RAM for now. You double colo space worldwide, and there's simply not going to be computers to put in there. That's just the canary, there's indicators of other component shortages. But like, pretending this is exponential will quickly burn out other things. Steel. Powder Coat. Fibre.
Not to mention that funding for data center expansion is already drying up and projects are being cancelled. I honestly dont believe in a single local project that isnt branded NextDC or Equinix. Outside of them I wouldnt be surprised if 90% of projects failed to materialise.
I dont know what world you live in where you think theres an exponential Data Centre growth going on but its not this one. We are already up against the wall. I guarantee you will have a new industry you just learned about to get anxious about by 2030. Just how Bitcoin didn't exponentially grow to consume the whole planets energy supply by 2025 as predicted.
And again: it usually doesn't. Most growth trends follow a sigmoid rather than exponential curve.
You're arguing against points I'm not making.
The point I am making is to keep an eye on the growth trend (and whatever might constrain that, you've given some credible concerns here), rather than the starting magnitude.
The question of how much societal resource information services can plausibly consume over a long term is an interesting one. Looking at biological analogues, the human brain accounts for roughly 25% of our own metabolic output, which I suspect is the present record.[1]
I get 8% for total present use in commercial computing, with the US EIA projecting a pretty steady growth to exceed all refrigeration, lighting, space cooling, and ventilation, by 2050, at about 350% of present levels. It looks as if that analysis presumes a 5% annual growth rate. The full report does incorporate AI in its considerations.
<https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65564>
Specifically:
We assume AI servers will increasingly skew more energy intensive, the installed stock of AI servers grows exponentially through at least 2040, and computational efficiency will increase over time. In our High Electricity Demand case, we assume the exponential growth in AI servers will continue through 2050, and the rate of improvement in server computational efficiency will reflect historical trends.
Full report: <https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/narrative/>
Notes: ________________________________
1. Apparently among vertebrates typical metabolic fraction is between 2--8%, though there may be some tree shrews which approach humans as a percentage if not total CNS metabolic magnitude. "Ratio of central nervous system to body metabolism in vertebrates: Its constancy and functional basis" (1981) <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15916066_Ratio_of_c...>.
Socially, our computational energy is on the high side for vertebrate animals.
I will be, mostly to add it to the bucket of trends that didn't continue forever as predicted.
>The question of how much societal resource information services can plausibly consume over a long term is an interesting one.
I dont know if biology is a really good model?
>You're arguing against points I'm not making.
No I think I am right on the money.
Small thing increases exponentially compounding every other week, for 2 weeks. Still a small thing.
Small thing increases exponentially for a decade. Now a big thing.
Datacenters increasing at the current rate for a couple more years before hitting several very hard walls. Still a small thing.
If they go from 24 times less water consumption than golf courses as far as 15 times less water consumption than golf courses I would be surprised.
I don't either, but it's an extant one, and one in which we can collect a fair bit of largely-unbiased data reasonably immune to short-term manias, unlike, say, stock markets or technology hype cycles.
Over about 4 billion years, and under immense selective pressure, maxing out energy expenditure (biology's chief currency) at roughly 25% of the whole to information processing (input, storage, processing, output) seems to afford maximum benefit. It's also quite possible that genus homo's brain size has decreased over the past 200,000 years or so; h. sapiens neanderthalensis had slightly larger brains than modern h sapiens sapiens, though that size may not have been as intellectually or linguistically capable.
The other possibly interesting data series is of the magnitude of impact of information technology on social capabilities given rates of improvement of the former. Robert Solow, "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics". Computer capabilities have increased roughly 33 millions-fold since the 1950s, but productivity hasn't followed that same curve. Even looking at information technology spend vs. growth shows limited gains (computer capacity has become vastly cheaper over the same period, the same outlay buys far more capability than financial values would indicate). It seems likely that AI will follow a similar trend.
Though there've also been some marked transitions where capabilities have exceeded some limit or new applications / formats have become possible. Business computing beginning in the late 1950s, small businesses and universities by the 1970s, personal computing by the early 1980s, general networking in the 1990s, mobile devices in the aughts, algorithmic ad-tech / fin-tech / social media in the 2010s, and AI in the 2020s. There've also been capability-based advances including precision machining, automated equipment and systems controls, digital media (audio/video), accounting, navigation controls (marine, air, rail, land), re-usable rockets (largely from the ability to re-land boosters), massive satellite swarms, and LLM / gradient descent / synthetic annealing artificial intelligence. What the net societal and economic impacts will be isn't clear, and a fair bit of that is already clearly negative, as is the question of how those fruits will be distributed.
All of which affect the question of how big AI's energy footprint can grow. Though I'll note again it's growth rate and duration which matter, not present magnitude.
(Hope for clarity and accessibility that's both sufficiently nuanced and insufficiently verbose, though I've my doubts on the last.)
> TSMC’s manufacturing success comes at an ecological cost. The company accounts for around 150,000 tonnes of water per day and 6.4% of the national electricity consumption.
https://taiwaninsight.org/2025/11/05/water-nexus-can-semicon...
[0] https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
What is myopic is chasing social media "evil of the month" trends, instead of looking at the actual data.
Maybe you should try providing some data given your comment, I'd be interested in hearing about all of these refineries and steel mills being produced!
[0] https://news.constructconnect.com/march-2026-data-center-rep...
What do you mean we are doing very little?
New capacity being electric is fine but we need to be actively removing fossil fuels from existing capacity, which isn't actually happening. We're just building new capacity on top of old existing fossil fuels. So sure, it's nice that a majority of new capacity is green, but we're still burning more fossil fuels year over year
They don’t really understand it in a factual, measurable way, but just are interesting in what the overall story is, and what it says about humanity failing.
That core problem won't end this year or the next one, and it will keep disrupting global climate. And with it, agriculture, settlements, economy and civilization as we know it.
And the scariest part is what we do about it. Keep doing activities that rise global temperature and power up positive feedback loops, weakening or abolishing climate policies, and when things start to feel urgent will try things by the fast way with unclear outcomes.
I dont get this. I would regret having a kid maybe if he turns out to not be resilient and up to the challenges posed by the changing climate and the shitty political situation. But those are things I can work with him on. Opsec can be taught. Political dissent can be taught. This thing can be turned around when the political class has been disposed of.
- There is a global scale issue, but no consensus on this being a problem. Not at the global, continental, local or individual level. FFS, there are idiots proudly rolling coal.
- Leadership - in the rare places on earth where it is somewhat accountable - reflects this lack of consensus.
- Acknowledging the problem does not equal acting even on an individual level.
- There's lots of cognitive dissonance. Why am I even flying to the other side of the world next week?
We are cooked. Not so much us old farts, but the children.
I mean, predicting the climate must be one of the hardest numerical simulations you can run. Climate models are famously incomplete. But the results turned out to be way more accurate than I would have thought. That's some impressive modeling, and I would assume that models have only improved since then.
The most chilling thing (and not in a good way) about it is that popular science type repotrs for the general public usually indicate an interval between a good case and a bad case, with a nice line in between. In retrospect we have been pretty much perfectly tracking the bad case line ever since.
N=1 Mind, but I remember reading a spread in Australian Scientist that predicted Australia would become something of a rainless desert, storms bringing only lightning, by 2020 or so. Leaving only Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania somewhat habitable. Article went on to discuss how to calmly migrate the population south over the 13 or so years remaining, and what the government might do to dissuade climate refugees from pacific islands.
Since then I have a read a lot of people walking back the absolute death and destruction stuff, but "Extremier Extremes" seems to be the closest to a consensus position, one that the strongest El Nino ever supports completely.
We're pushing ourselves into absolutely untold suffering the longer do nothing. I truly fear a famine like that and the more we go down this road, the closer we're getting.
Obviously its too late to avoid the worst, the only hope we have is to collectively cooperate to help each other get through it. Not sure that will happen but I believe that's the only way through.
A little known fact about Alan Kay is 17 years ago he was part of a group of "systems people" who published for the NFS about various systems including the climate. He helped write "Transitions and Tipping Points in Complex Environmental Systems" (https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2022-12/Transitions-and-ti...). He wrote to me that "This, along with many other warnings from many other sources over many years, fell on deaf or disbelieving ears."
He agreed with my concern saying "And, yes, you are right that things will likely be really bad if the climate is allowed to crash past the tipping point."
But what he said following that shook me to my core. Kay said "If you think of a system as an upside-down coca cola bottle, it is easy to see that a little nudge can topple it, whereas considerably more energy is then required to put it back.".
What this means is to get CO2 back down to 350 ppm (we are at 428 ppm), we would need to expend more energy than we did getting it to 450 ppm. That means, we would have to expend more energy than humans have produced IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY in the next 10-20 years (30,000-45,000 EJ range) just to put the system back to where it's safe.
Ask yourself, where are we spending our energy right now as a species? On putting the system to a safe level or something else?
Do we even have the capability to do it? As we continue to expand our industrial capacity, we also use non-renewable resources like oil and metals we can't recycle. As we exploit them, we degrade our industrial capacity for the future. For a deeper analysis read Limits to Growth and work related to it.
Hey Claude, enter plan mode
So the answer to your question is it could be either or both or neither. Whatever happens is going to be on average more extreme than what you're used to.
So get some sturdy shade structure and an heat pump.
If it's useful to the conversation (and objective + with sources) post the key findings - IMO I think it's AI generated prose / subjective posts that will get blasted.
No need to fix the root cause, I’ll just fly somewhere cold during the summer /s
In the medium term, summers in Paris WILL be worse than this year
It will come a day that good years are the ones that are as mild as 2026
Considering the situation going into the 2015-2016 El Nino we were also in a multiyear drought with a rainfall deficit accumulated from 2010-2014 of over 31" (787 mm). That is just under the 20 year average annual precipitation total for my place - 36.3" (922 mm). We were missing almost a full year's rainfall over that 5 year period. I use a NOAA manual rain gauge of the type that can handle up to 11" (279.4mm) of rain before needing to be dumped. I have recently added a digital tipping gauge unit beside the manual gauge so I can have a clear comparison and track rain rates.
Anyway, if it works out like 2015 did then we went into the year with a deficit but it quickly began raining well above normal so that by mid-June we were already above the normal 20-year average rainfall total. Then it dried up with below normal rainfall from mid-June to late October. There was no rain at all between the first week of September and the last week of October. For the year though we were still 3" (76.2 mm) above the 20 year normal annual total when it started raining again.
Between the last week of October and the end of the year it rained an additional 28" (711 mm) and then it stopped and we fell behind again until finally catching up to normal accumulation in the second week of March 2016.
Currently our accumulation to date is almost 1" (25.4 mm) above the 20 year average annual total for this date. So, just as in 2015 we are a little above normal during summer. I expect that if it works out like 2015 then we can expect a lot more rain beginning in the fall, probably by October.
If I look back over the previous 5 years from 2021-2015, we are again running a rainfall deficit of 26.2" (665.5 mm). That is about 72% of rainfall expected in a normal year using my 20 year average accumulation. Nearly 3/4 of a year's rainfall behind at this point over a 5 year period. Interesting.
I suspect I will need to have some more rock hauled in to repair the driveway by the end of the year since it will all wash down the hill again.
<https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/elnino/impacts-of-el-nino>
Those include: hydrology (floods, drought), sea-surface temperatures (hotter or cooler, both of which impact local ecologies and fisheries), storms (weaker hurricane season in the Atlantic, due to high-altitude wind shear, stronger in other areas), and others: economic, fisheries, military, human health, marine life, and specific regional impacts.
That's why.
Edit: Also, as some other comment said, thermodynamics tell us that it would take an inordinate amount of energy to bring carbon back to safe levels. More than what we get from burning oil. It's about entropy and all that. So there's that.
Carbon capture technology would have to artificially replicate these millions-of-years-long processes, and do it on a scale of years to decades. The scale of carbon capture we need is entirely unfathomable, requiring processes that don't exist, because they have to work against entropy itself.
Carbon capture at the point of burning fossil fuels to abate further emissions might be economical. Capturing already released carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (concentration of ~0.04%) is a fiction pushed by fossil fuel companies to muddy the debate and distract from the urgency of immediately stopping the burning of fossil fuels.
We needed to reach zero emissions 20 years ago and today we should have strong negative emissions.
At this rate I don't think humanity will reach zero emissions before 2050. It's going to take a couple of very bad years for humanity to take this seriously.
I've lived in a hot subtropical climate most of my life. The best modes of cooling are, in order of comfort: shade, clothing, breeze, fans, A/C.
Our rather large home didn't have A/C when we bought it. But it did have a huge attic fan that kept the air moving throughout the entire house on hot days. That worked fine from the time the house was built in about 1930 to present (yes, it's still there). At one point we installed a few window units in designated rooms but they were never necessary.
shade - Even on a hot day it's very comfortable in tree-shaded areas. The trees cool the air.
clothes - wear light-colored clothes with fabrics that wick perspiration.
breeze - if you live in an area with a constant breeze, you'll be more comfortable. Sometimes that comes with a caveat: watch out for storms associated with coastal breezes (such as hurricanes).
fans - sometimes a small room fan is just right. Or if you live someplace where you can pay someone to wave a palm frond around you all day, so much the better.
A/C may seem to be the best but imo it isn't b/c it is not transparent: other people are always messing with the controls, there are insufficent/incorrectly-demarcated "zones" in a building, the humidity varies unsuitably, condensation forms in unexpected areas (even inside walls and under floors) and you don't find out for 12 years, etc.
You’re also losing a lot of water to evaporation from sweating if it is doing anything at all.
There is a reason why Singapore switched to AC pretty much everywhere except old hawker centers, and why it’s not alone.
That would be related to the wet-bulb temperature. If the wet-bulb temperature is more than about 30°C, then I'd consider the area to be uninhabitable. (A wet bulb temperature of 35°C is considered lethal).
Fans are surprisingly effective as most people are stationary and thus produce almost a bubble of high humidity around themselves. Fans disperse that localised high humidity and allow people to effectively reduce their temperature through sweating/evaporation.
And getting worse.
Back in the 2000's, it was fine - maybe a few hot days in the summer, but bearable with shade, fans, proper clothing like you said.
But the last ten years or so, the summer has gotten to be more and more brutal. Heatwaves where it's 70-80% humidity and 100+F outside for more than a few days in a row. We have a portable A/C and find ourselves hooking it up more and more often.
Personally, I much prefer this solution than ACs, because ACs sometimes affect my throat and make me feel tired.
1) return to preindustrial level of pollution, possibility less than 1/10000
2) make radical changes suggested by scientists, less than 1/100
3) continue with the current pace
The pyramid of pollution, which is directly proportional to the pyramid of wealth, is almost impossible to shrink as the latter is also inevitable.
Just brace for impact.
We also have one of the more advanced waterwork system in the US to support Central Valley agriculture, so a lot of the worst aspects can be somewhat managed.
It's bad that such dramatic climate change is happening, but we're definetly lucky to live in the West Coast because we won't face the brunt of some of the worst aspects of the El Niño comparatively and have the infrastructure to deal with it.
Sadly, the brunt of climate change will be felt by the poorer half of the world.
The Lima Prieta Quake and the 1990s floods led to a lot of future proofing in Californian infra. The last major thing left is transmission weathering, which PGE and Sac are fighting over.
Also, most of our infra is state funded which gives us a lot of leeway.
Like I said before, it's bad that we're in this position and it's only going to get worse, but we're in one of the better places that can survive these kinds of shifts.
Next year a super bloom then the following year massive wild fires.
rain -> fuel -> fire
Other states seem a lot worse off. Water table is closer to where people live, there's a lack of topology to actually run water out in a lot of cases, there's been little investment in managing water for stormwater for property damage abatement or power or irrigation like in CA where the topology really incentivized massive investment in all of that over the last century.
El Niño is the “warm phase” of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and features warmer than average ocean surface temperatures off the coast of Ecuador and Peru in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean.... Historically, the presence of El Niño conditions tilts the odds in favor of wetter than normal precipitation across the southern third of the state. The relationship between El Niño and cool season precipitation is weaker in the central and northern parts of the state.
Flooding is possible, particularly if dams exceed capacity, perhaps exacerbated by earlier snowmelt and peak runoff. Landslides are a more widespread, and less manageable problem, particularly as loose-material slopes are waterlogged. The deluge -> high growth -> heavy fuel load -> large wildfire -> landslide cycle is one that's become fairly well-known in California.
Levee failures within the Sacramento Delta or Central Valley could result in very large-scale flooding, affecting agriculture or communities.
The San Francisco Bay Area may see "king tides" and general flooding throughout the bay and delta region, particularly during December and January, and all the more so if high tides coincide with heavy river run-off. Remember that the entire Central Valley of California, nearly 500 miles long north-to-south, drains out through the Bay. Prevailing winds may create a wind setup or seiche which can result in flooding along a some but not all shorelines, or alternating across a body of water.
Aquifer fill rates are slow, and are generally predicated on large-scale flooding. Prior to modern flood control (dams, river channelisation, levee construction), in which much, and occasionally effectively all of California's Central Valley (as well as large riparian valley systems in Oregon and Washington) would flood.
See the Great Flood of 1862: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862>.
Reservoirs provide parlous slim protection against landslides of elevated slopes. Those are affected by upslope water saturation (the stuff that's on its way to fill your aquifers in coming months or years), not floodplain innundation. It's exacerbated by fire-cleared hillsides, particularly those which burn ferociously hot, killing plant roots and baking soil. Those fires are not historically typical, but have been the conditions experienced with greatly increased frequency since the 1990s.
Cattle don't graze chaparral, oak woodlands, or ponderosa or Douglas fir forests. Those have been what's been burning.
Your suggestions / assessments are at a far remove from reality.
The steering of the jet stream seems to have some qualitative changes in these conditions but also more chaos. It could steer storms anywhere along the coast, so different parts of CA, OR, and WA get different impact. Just in my lifetime in CA, I've witnessed some very wet El Niño winters but also some drier than average.
The biggest precipitation threat on the west coast seems to be a repeat of some of the biggest flooding events known historically or geologically. But, these are relatively infrequent and most of the record predates any understanding or tracking of the El Niño oscillation. So the correlation cannot be stated so clearly. These are atmospheric river events which seem to stall, producing heavy rains over the same area for a much longer period.
Just in the recent centuries of CA history, there have been massive floods in northern and southern regions in different month-long rain events. There have been improvements to flood control infrastructure since then. But, the only reason those events aren't known as the most costly is because there wasn't as much economic development here back when the floods happened.
Our usual storms sweep through an area the heaviest rains over just part of a day. Our varied terrain means that each individual storm also has very uneven rainfall amounts due to orographic intensification. Prominences with the right aspect towards the wind will get far more accumulation. Our watersheds can absorb quite a bit of this, but even those brief rains can cause localized flooding.
If the rain continues for many days in a row, we will see widespread mudslides and flooding of larger rivers, basins, etc. Some of the historically extreme events had rain persisting for over a month!
Edit: along with these "mega storm" scenarios, we also have evidence of "mega droughts". It's worrisome to imagine what challenges may come from a more energetic and chaotic climate.
I hope we have something more to show than dozens of to-do apps when our children and grandchildren ask which important things made the massive use of AI necessary.
You don't.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
For example some scientists suggested installing sunshades but... Literally a sunshade: deploying an umbrella of sort, in space, so that less heat reaches the heart.
Now of course as we've been ruled by luminaries since decades, bringing us to the situation we're in now, I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to fuck up that too: for example by fuxxoring the sunshade and killing another sizeable percentage of the population by creating a new ice age.
But really I wonder: at what tipping point shall desperate measures be taken to try to fix things and what could those be? That sunshade doesn't seem that crazy or is it?
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/01/white-house-cautiou...
Due to the chaotic nature of these systems we are incapable of predicting the effect of our actions.
It could very well be that by artificially increasing cloud cover we cross a different tipping point with grave consequences (e.g. flooding, ecosystem collapse from lack of sunlight, or who knows what)
At that point, won't it be too late?
The fact that you see record breaking more often than log of time implies a drift in one direction.
Surely we’d see random hot years all over the map.
>If you give any regularly-occurring event that varies in intensity enough time, it is guaranteed to break the records of its previous intensities.
I don't even have to add emphasis myself, you already did.
Someone then named a regularly-occurring event of varying intensity (summer is hot), and pointed out that the data shows the opposite of your explanation (i.e. this isn't random variance causing random spikes; this is a continuous increasing trend).
You then said, effectively, "not that regularly-occurring event of varying intensity!"
Kinda seems like you're moving the goalposts a bit.