Slight inaccuracy, the data only goes back to 1979 and has not yet been verified by NOAA which has data going back to 1880.
It’s also worth noting that this is based on the Climate Reanalyzer which is intended for forecasting temperatures, not record keeping.
It would be more accurate to say it was the hottest day ever recorded by the Climate Reanalyzer.
Source: https://time.com/6292103/worlds-hottest-day-preliminary-record/
This. It’s also not accurate to say it’s the warmest we’ve been in the past 10,000 years, it was likely warmer during the roman warm period, and potentially a couple of other points. So we can only really say it’s the warmest we’ve seen in the last couple hundred years.
That’s not to say this isn’t concerning, we’re on track to smash the roman warm periods average temperatures within our lifetimes and make the earth the hottest it’s been since the paleoscene, which would have massive ramifications. But we’re not there yet, the problem is that we will likely get there in the next few decades.
in the next few decades.
I appreciate your optimism.
If you want some more optimism, we actually have slowed the rate of warming from what was predicted 20 years ago. The reality we are living in would have been considered an “optimistic prediction” at one point. We are still warming, things are still going in the wrong direction, but the changes that people have been making to mitigate global warming are making an impact. We might still be going over the cliff, but at least we’re doing it with our brakes on instead of full speed ahead. So yes, I do think it will be decades before we truly break temperature records that have been seen by humans, maybe even several decades. That doesn’t downplay the significance of the need to stop it though
From what I’ve heard about our current climate warming situation I’d downgrade the metaphor from using breaks to taking the foot off the pedal a bit.
You can slam the brakes on your Camry but there’s an oil tanker behind you and all they’re doing is laying on the horn and pointing at their green logo while shoving your car off the cliff.
That’s what the oil industry likes to think, but they’re actually with us in the Camry. There is only the Camry, we’re all on the Camry together, good and bad.
Yeah, but the mega rich oil execs have ejector seats and parachutes.
What about tipping points? I hear about ice cover, ocean currents, and other systems where once we get past a tipping point, additional warming is self sustaining. At that point it doesn’t matter if we have our brakes on, we’ve gone over the cliff right?
If we end up triggering a self-sustaining feedback loop, that’s how I understand it, yeah. We still do have some very high risk strategies we could implement, like solar shielding to reduce total light reaching the earth, or bioengineering plants that suck up carbon super efficiently, but it’s hard to say what the impacts of those would be
I don’t see either of those happening because there’s no short-term profit. Also, unintended consequences.
I wouldn’t consider solar shielding high risk, since it would be easy to design fail-safe, but I totally wouldn’t trust bioengineering methods, since life uhh… finds a way.
Too bad there’s a lag time of about 40 years on emissions. We’re only feeling the effects of what was emitted in the early 80s. Imagine how bad it’ll be in 20 years time.
Can you tell me more about this?
Sure. Essentially what happens is the ocean absorbs much of the CO2 that’s released by us. If you’ve ever heard the term “ocean acidification” that’s what causes it.
Water and the oceans change on a much more gradual scale than the atmosphere, so it takes decades for the CO2 to be released back into the air. For example, if you bring a pot of water to an open flame it still takes time for the water to reach the temperature to boil, it’s not instantaneous.
The ocean is far more massive than our atmosphere. It’ll take time for the changes to take effect, especially a noticeable one on our end. But if you take a look at the ph levels of the oceans over the last century it becomes abundantly clear we’re messing things up big time.
Oh that’s crazy I didnt know about that. Does the water just absorb the CO2 somehow or does it have to do with algea?
At least the “medieval warm period” which gets cited a lot, was a regional phenomenon and global temperatures are higher today. The Wikipedia page seems to suggest the same for the Roman warm period.
The Roman warm period was about 2 degrees F warmer than today when you’re measuring global average temperatures, not just in europe, although it was more pronounced in europe. At current rates though, we’ll break that bar in 40 years or so though
Imma need some sources for that claim.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last_2,000_years
You act like you use the word Paleoscene like you know when it was.
I don’t.
I did however hear on the BBC News Podcast that Nerds are saying we should change the name of the period we’re in now to be the “Time of Man” and I realised that I have no idea what Epoch we are currently in.
So I thought I’d ask you. Then I’ll memorise your answer and be less dumb.
Please help.
Edit: I know how to use Google but this way is more fun sometimes.
Paleocene was the time right around when the dinosaurs died, so about 65 million years ago. you’ve heard of Jurassic, and maybe you’ve even heard of cretaceous, this is the one that comes right after those two. Right now we’re in the Holocene. The reason I mentioned it though is because (as far as we can tell) it was the hottest period in earth’s history, with average temperatures 8 degrees Celsius higher than today (which is a ton, the fact that it’s an average makes it seem less insane than it actually is). we’re nowhere close to getting as warm as it was then, but even if we got half that hot in a relatively fast amount of time (like we are) it could still cause mass extinction.
Thanks. I have heard of all of these times I just had no idea where they are in relation to each other.
Holocene is the current geological time it cover from now to a out 11,000 years ago from the last glacial period… The Paleoscene was about 66-56 million years ago.
If I were to pick one, I’d call it the Menocene. Seems apt.
I did Google it though, if you want the actual answer.
the data only goes back to 1979 and has not yet been verified by NOAA which has data going back to 1880.
There’s a whole hot world outside of America who don’t need to wait for its underfunded organizations to get around to validating the data.
But I get it. The news is dire. It’s neat to cling to uncertainty in times like this unless you lived in Lytton
Welcome to the coldest summer for the rest of your life :)
Why would you do that?
😩
Thats a nice way to put it. Thank you.
And just a week ago I was talking to these boomers that were explaining me how “we should all stop being so attached to climate fear” and that “everything will just sort itself out and we’ll live just fine”.
Yea, no shit boomer
They meant that they’ll live just fine. You see, they will be dead before climate change decimates our planet. 🤷♂️
Looks less likely every year, they’re running out of time quick
It won’t decimate the planet, but it will make the planet a lot less habitable for humans.
So yes depending on where they live they will be just fine, but a lot of people will die. Because of this there will be huge migrations and struggels with having enough resources…
but it will make the planet a lot less habitable for humans.
And, unfortunately, for a wide range of other species.
And that is already happening in a small scale. All those natural disasters that are happening all over the world. And especially the poorer country’s on the south half of the globe are struggling with stuff like wood fires, smaller harvests because of the heat. And it’s all just going to get worse. I hate humanity.
Boomers: “We had hot days in the 60’s and 70’s as well and you didn’t hear us complain”
My parents’ go-to is that everyone was freaking out about an incoming ice age in the 60s (they weren’t), and thus climate experts are all completely clueless and have no clue what they’re talking about.
And they wonder why I visit less than before.
So far.
So true it burns.
…enjoy this summer; it’s the coolest one you’ll experience for the rest of your life…
literally…
Vermont just had flooding that was on par with Hurricane Irene.
They’re calling it a 1000 year rarity. It happened 12 years ago. Only this time there was no hurricane.
There are ocean temperatures in the fucking 90s.
This hurricane season is gonna be batshit crazy, y’all.
I think, as individuals; we all need to pick up our game and do our part in polluting and destroying the planet more. We can’t let the corporations do all the heavy lifting after all.
Edit: I don’t think I came across properly here, given the replies. This was sarcasm saying we need to fuck up the planet more to keep pace with the rate the corporations do.
Yes. Our 12% will really make a difference vs corporations’ 80%. And we can get to that 12% if so 8 billion of us work together. I’m doing my 0.0000001% part!
You know corporations build shit people buy, right? It’s not like they pollute for the fun of it. They pollute because we give them money to do it…
Kinda orthogonal but I will say it’s weird that we can still vote with our wallets.
But we are. According to the USDA, food waste makes up 22% of the food industries 26% CO2 emissions. And don’t forget the diseases food waste produces.
That food waste is largely due to arbitrary date labels and grocery stores throwing out literal tons of perfectly good food instead of donating it.
And believe it or not, part of this is because people don’t like to pick up the weird looking tomato, or the banana with a few peckles.
According to the USDA, again, the majority of food waste is at the household level.
Circling back to the arbitrary date labels
How can we sell more without an expiration date?!!! We need to please the profits and shorten expiration dates!
I personally plan on returning my rechargeable AA batteries and going single use from now on. it’s the little things that help
Honestly corporations are only producing what consume. We are using corporations as scapegoats. If we don’t realize this soon and don’t change it ways…
There are more efficient, greener ways to go about producing pretty much everything we use that doesn’t destroy the earth. Problem is is that it’s not as profitable for share holders.
For most categories, yes, but when it comes to something like meat production mentioned in the title here, that’s not really the case. Meat production is massively inefficient in its best case. We are going to have to reduce production which means having changes in consumption in one way or another
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
If it was so efficient, why are not everyone doing it and building it? If it was so efficient, why are energy prices increasing? If it is more efficient, then it would be also more profitable but you say the opposite.
It requires a front-loaded investment in infrastructure, which means lower returns for a few quarters.
Most companies wanted people to use horses for as long as possible because that meant they had to adapt, change, and invest. Why do something that’s difficult when you can just do the same thing? This works out when you don’t really have competition because the cost to enter the market is so high due to decades of mergers and acquisitions, consolidating all means of production and materials to a select-few companies.
If you haven’t seen it, The Good Place is a great show and they discuss this basically. Should we be responsible for tracking the output of every company before we buy any product?
(The answer is: of course not. We don’t have enough time in the world for that. The correct solution is regulation and taxing for negative externalities during the production process. If the cost of negative externalities is built into the cost of the product, then it will be less benificial to purchase a product with a dirty supply chain.)
Not sure how to edit a post but will add this. I agree with you. We absolutely should be adding the cost of externalities. The only way to do this effectively is to add that cost at the consumption level. We should pay twice the cost for conventional fuel at the pumps. Heating your home should be far more expensive. Something that would also encourage people to take on roommates and fix housing issues. Taxing only or corporations simply means Russia or Saudia Arabia will increase their output while they laugh at us.
How do you tax Saudi Arabia corporations? How do you tax Russian corporations? They just make up the difference we don’t produce. Is it wise to send all that money to those countries because we won’t stop consuming? How is taxing our corporations helping them be competitive on the world market? We give everyone else a free pass but bill our corporations.
Well, we kind of have to get basic necessities, so often buying stuff from corporations is necessary. Yes, we shouldn’t buy useless shit, but why are we making useless shit in the first place?
I do agree that we as inviduals should take some responsibility, such as not littering and trying to minimise our waste, but we have to hold corporations accountable for their actions.
Also there are a lot of more ethical and responsible ways for corporations to produce their goods, but they choose to not to. Why? Because it would take more money, and they don’t give a shit about anything else than their money.
Thanks humanity, I’m sure that this will cause no long term issues and we can just keep using the same economic and political systems while not worrying about it at all.
My fault. I like plastic straws in my scorpion bowls.
Damn, why’d you go and cause all of climate change? Not cool.
Nope, not cool, def hot! Getting hotter.
Shipping? Shipping is about 2 % of global CO2 emissions.
Large ships emit a lot of sulphur oxides (SOx). E.g. cruise ships emit more than all cars of Europe. SOx is not a greenhouse gas, but it’s a nasty pollutant nonetheless.
They emit a lot, but they transport … a very lot. Trucks are higher emitters per comodity.
Still both should be powered by something else like hydrogen (more interesting for ships I guess) or batteries…
And cruise ships should be IMHO taxed so high (the tax should probably directly go to countermeasures), such that only very rich people are able to (not that I grant them the fun, but they should finance this climate disaster in every possible way…)
Based on what a reasonable carbon price should be, I don’t think you would need to tax them to oblivion. They would just need to pay their fair share.
This website suggests that it is about 0.4 tonne of CO2 per passenger per day. Canada’s current carbon tax is $65 per tonne. So a 7 day cruise would be $182 per passenger in carbon pricing. This is just ballpark and yes you can argue that carbon prices should be higher.
We are quickly arriving at an unpayable bill.
For whom though? I think if your product is going to be very expensive because of that you,ll try to find ways (less carbon emissive) to make it cheaper, and for others, who have low emissions already, they get an advantage. Also rich people generally emit much more carbon than poor people.
I’m a little bit tired of the argument, that everything gets expensive, like the money just goes to nirvana, it’s a tax and a tax should steer industries (mostly) to do the right thing (in this case emit less CO2). The money can go directly to people e.g. in the form of a universal basic income.
For the ability to produce enough food. It’s not the tax that’s the issue it’s that the climate will make industrial food production unviable. We will rapidly exit the conditions that underpin the viability of the modern economy. The only work of value will be making food and related tools in a volatile climatic environment. The bill will not be payable in money, is my point. That is, a tax will be woefully inadequate.
Certainly, it will be really “interesting” how to produce food for ~10 billion people in this uncertain future. But if we finally learn to accept that e.g. cattle isn’t the way forward, I think it may be possible with plant-based food. Although something like vertical farming etc. is definitely not viable today, it may be in the future. And at least currently it’s totally possible to sustainably produce enough (plant-based) food. I think we’ll learn to adapt, that much I trust in agricultural-technological advancement etc. But it will be “meaty” for most people and conflicts will arise (as they already are, see e.g. the conflict in Sudan that is indirectly related to climate change already, similarly as Syria previously (there were quite a few droughts the years before))
The odds that the adaption is rapid and doesn’t cause extreme changes in the daily conditions of everyone are vanishing.
We are quickly arriving at an unpayable bill.
I looked into carbon offsets of shipping containers from China to the US as part of my job. I was shocked at how little was emitted per container - Probably cost around $40 of offsets for one 45 footer.
Like you said, the bigger issue is the trucks needed for last mile / between distribution centers.
shipping is also trucks dude… and all the other nasty ways we move products around the world…
Sure it is, but I think that’s still better than if every individual needs to drive their own car through half the country to buy coffee. Shipping needs to happen in any way. Sure we could order less stuff from the internet, so individual house door shipping would be less, but that’s a drop in the ocean, compared to the other named factors
Trucks, like cars are on a transition to become EVs, with Tesla leading the industry there as well. Of course people will then complain regarding lithium and other bullshit, hence why I think we should stop listening to extremists.
Lol, trash reasoning. “Extremists” that want to start building communities that dont require you to drive everywhere. Just because evs are slightly better then gas doesnt mean its good to keep making cars a centralizing point we build our society around.
So… what’s your solution? Everyone using public transportation?
It ain’t that hard,
High density places:
lower parking availability, increase public transport availability and frequency.
Low density places:
They need their cars, they can keep them.
Remove zoning restrictions, and parking requirements
so there is more mixture of commercial and residential places shortening transport distance, allowing for even avoiding public transport and just walking/biking replacing this.
More biking infraestructure.
Fair taxes to car owners,
that means, othe people not having to support the huge car projects that cost more than they can get from the taxes they do on cars.
Also regulations on environmental design of cars, basically gaining back the progress we had done on car efficiency that was taken back by everyone wanting an SUV instead of a turismo.
:)
Figure you also believe Santa.
yea yea but you won’t answer to me mate, loss of time to talk with u :)
Everyone walking or biking.
So… you have no solutions?
My guess would be for EV everything. Plant trees in the city roads to lower the average temperature, the countries themselves should create tax incentives for people to move out from overcrowded cities as well.
But sure, easy to just end personal vehicles all together right? People like you are the reason our politicians are so shit.
Realistically, EVs are useful as a stopgap solution. They could be used to cover the transition as we expand public transit like EV busses, trains, subways, etc.
Really not a choice, carbon emissiosn have to stop. EVs dont do that. Urban trees are not going to revese climate change. Wow, you’re saying people need to keep lowering denisity.
more people the better yeah
With modern open-loop scrubbers large ships don’t emit SOx anymore…
…instead they just dump it into the sea. Science!
The oil, meat and shipping industries: “It’s called a streak, baby”
Thanks, now I got the song stuck in my head. Could be worse though
We can break this record, do like me, burn tires !
Wait, is this true?
Yeah, it’s been in the news 😩 We broke the global average temperature record something like 3 times last week. The graph that accompanies the articles is actually quite scary
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/climate/climate-change-record-heat.html
Here’s a mirror to the chart you mentioned.
And here’s a mirror to the article you mentioned.
You weren’t kidding about that chart, it’s mighty scary and depressing.
Especially seeing the part that we’re not even at the typical hottest part of the year yet.
The real G right here
Fuck yeah setting records lads, high fives all round, good work, good work!!
Have you been living under a rock?
What kind of news are you following to be so so surprised about this?
If only we had deflation people would not overconsume so much
bu… buut economic growth > everything else …?
How else are they supposed to assuage the feeling that they’re not some immortal magical beings living some divine simulation/game as the chosen
onesplayers?We can’t deflate form 8 billion people and counting
Malthus was wrong about this too. It’s not the population that’s a problem, it’s miles of strip malls, filled with cheap trash, and meat and dairy every meal of the day.
And why are those being built? Because the consumer population doesn’t care and continues consuming the cheapest dirtiest shit imaginable.
Okay? That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the lifestyle of people in rich countries, not the number of people that is the problem.
Germany tried it once … I mean twice
Don’t forget about the Chinese. They tried too and they were much more efficient.
Don’t forget steel. quick stats
Global temps can’t melt steel beams…
Let’s do a klimatekatastrophe any% speedrun