2014 was the hottest year on record--time for a new period of "no global warming"

[Loren Pechtel]

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/17/42364...2014-was-hottest-yet-recorded-on-land-and-sea

 

[arkirk]

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/17/42364...2014-was-hottest-yet-recorded-on-land-and-sea

Time now for you to understand there is such a thing as human caused atmospheric warming. It is time for you to realize that all your hard and fast human judgments and proposed actions have carbon footprints. Global warming is the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

 

[untermensche]

As an individual the best thing you can do is to give up your car.

Short of that get a hybrid.

Hybrids should be mandated.

A huge government research program should be started with the goal of replacing gas burning vehicles on the roads. Then abandonment of US military presence in the Middle East.

Massive reforestation projects need to be started as well.

But like the stupid apes we are we are talking a lot and doing very little.

 

[Blahface]

As an individual the best thing you can do is to give up your car.

The best thing an individual can do is not have children.

 

[Jokodo]

As an individual the best thing you can do is to give up your car.

The best thing an individual can do is not have children.

False. The best thing an individual can do is to nudge their children (if any) towards a sustainable energy research career. 2.5 (average number of children per woman/lifetime globally) more mouths to feed make a negligible impact compared to 2.5 more experts to deal with the situation we already have, and will have whatever lifestyle choices you make.

Feeling smug doesn't help anyone.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/17/42364...2014-was-hottest-yet-recorded-on-land-and-sea

Time now for you to understand there is such a thing as human caused atmospheric warming. It is time for you to realize that all your hard and fast human judgments and proposed actions have carbon footprints. Global warming is the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

You really missed the point.

For a long time now the conservatives have been pointing to 1998 as evidence of cooling instead of warming. Now 1998 has been dethroned, they are going to have to count from 2014 to show cooling.

 

[abaddon]

False. The best thing an individual can do is to nudge their children (if any) towards a sustainable energy research career.

What's not known already that needs yet to be discovered?

2.5 (average number of children per woman/lifetime globally) more mouths to feed make a negligible impact compared to 2.5 more experts to deal with the situation we already have, and will have whatever lifestyle choices you make.

What are experts going to do besides give advice that will go ignored (probably mostly advice about desperately needed lifestyle changes), or that will inspire cynical corporations to adopt "sustainable" as their new motto for selling more shit?

 

[barbos]

In other news scientists predicting pretty severe solar radiation minimum around 2030-2040.
Makes you wonder what is worse, ice age or what we currently have.

 

[bilby]

In other news scientists predicting pretty severe solar radiation minimum around 2030-2040.
Makes you wonder what is worse, ice age or what we currently have.

Well, it would if that wasn't a journalist's misunderstanding of the research.

One team of scientists are saying that their model has a solar magnetic activity minimum in the period 2030-2040.

They also noted that the last such minimum coincided with unusually low temperatures in Weatern Europe, in the 1640s; an event rather misleadingly known as the 'little ice age' despite being nothing at all like an actual ice age.

If (and it is by no means certain) the solar magnetic activity in the Maunder Minimum of the mid 17th century was a major contributor to the low temperatures in Western Europe at the time, then this may lead to a short term - perhaps a decade or two - slow down of the impact of global warming in Western Europe. But probably not.

Sadly, the truth isn't exciting, and doesn't fit in a headline; so we get total bullshit nonsense like "Scienists predict new ice age in 2030!!", which could not be further from the truth.

Of course, the warming deniers will never let this go. My guess is that they will still be using this non-prediction as 'evidence' that climate scientists are wrong in 2080.

 

[barbos]

In other news scientists predicting pretty severe solar radiation minimum around 2030-2040.
Makes you wonder what is worse, ice age or what we currently have.

Well, it would if that wasn't a journalist's misunderstanding of the research.

One team of scientists are saying that their model has a solar magnetic activity minimum in the period 2030-2040.

They also noted that the last such minimum coincided with unusually low temperatures in Weatern Europe, in the 1640s; an event rather misleadingly known as the 'little ice age' despite being nothing at all like an actual ice age.

If (and it is by no means certain) the solar magnetic activity in the Maunder Minimum of the mid 17th century was a major contributor to the low temperatures in Western Europe at the time, then this may lead to a short term - perhaps a decade or two - slow down of the impact of global warming in Western Europe. But probably not.

Sadly, the truth isn't exciting, and doesn't fit in a headline; so we get total bullshit nonsense like "Scienists predict new ice age in 2030!!", which could not be further from the truth.

Of course, the warming deniers will never let this go. My guess is that they will still be using this non-prediction as 'evidence' that climate scientists are wrong in 2080.

I would not trash journalists on this one, I saw their interview and that scientist was pretty certain there would be pretty cold mini "ice" age.
I remember thinking that these little ice ages had been attributed to volcano eruption, but was too lazy to check which ones.

 

[prideandfall]

As an individual the best thing you can do is to give up your car.

Short of that get a hybrid.

Hybrids should be mandated.

how does getting a hybrid help?
something like 80% of electricity production in the US still comes from coal or natural gas, so unless you're farting magical rainbow electricity your hybrid is ultimately causing just as much of an environmental impact as a gas powered engine.
there's a fair argument to be made about using a hybrid in europe where coal and natural gas is only about 10% of electricity production, but in the US it's purely moral masturbation.

- - - Updated - - -

As an individual the best thing you can do is to give up your car.

The best thing an individual can do is not have children.

this has to be one of the greatest one-off comments i have ever seen in the politics forum.

 

[Shadowy Man]

As an individual the best thing you can do is to give up your car.

The best thing an individual can do is not have children.

Certainly the human race's future cannot be in peril if it doesn't have one.

 

[PyramidHead]

The best thing an individual can do is not have children.

Certainly the human race's future cannot be in peril if it doesn't have one.

Should this be the last generation?

Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than [antinatalist philosopher David] Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

 

[prideandfall]

there is a very big difference between what blahface said, which is categorically true as well as philosophically and ethically virtuous, and acting like "stop squirting out so many bowls of crotch fruit, it's a vagina not a clown car" is an equivalent statement to declaring that we should initiate the extinction of the human race.

it's odd how "stop driving a car" can be said and nobody bats an eyelash, despite the numerous logistical problems that can cause for people in both urban and rural areas given the geographic scope of civilization at this point.
and yet, failing to shit out a litter of maggots doesn't hurt anybody on any level, has near a infinite list of benefits to basically every aspect of life, and yet to suggest that one might consider doing that makes everyone clutch their pearls.
did i miss the memo where this is the 1400s and you need to spawn as much as possible because your first 17 kids are going to die of diphtheria? talk about an outdated and archaic cultural bias.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario?

If we could get everyone to agree on universal sterilization, why couldn't we get everyone to agree on finding viable alternatives to fossil fuels?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

did i miss the memo where this is the 1400s and you need to spawn as much as possible because your first 17 kids are going to die of diphtheria? talk about an outdated and archaic cultural bias.

It was attached to a note by a Nigerian prince who wants to transfer his oil money into someone's bank account, so it may have accidentally been flagged by your spam filter. Check your Junk Mail folder.

 

[arkirk]

there is a very big difference between what blahface said, which is categorically true as well as philosophically and ethically virtuous, and acting like "stop squirting out so many bowls of crotch fruit, it's a vagina not a clown car" is an equivalent statement to declaring that we should initiate the extinction of the human race.

it's odd how "stop driving a car" can be said and nobody bats an eyelash, despite the numerous logistical problems that can cause for people in both urban and rural areas given the geographic scope of civilization at this point.
and yet, failing to shit out a litter of maggots doesn't hurt anybody on any level, has near a infinite list of benefits to basically every aspect of life, and yet to suggest that one might consider doing that makes everyone clutch their pearls.
did i miss the memo where this is the 1400s and you need to spawn as much as possible because your first 17 kids are going to die of diphtheria? talk about an outdated and archaic cultural bias.

These are the kinds of hyperbolic responses the do nothings shoot out to the world. If you say we need to stop driving the fossil fuel dinosaurs someone instantly notes that he has to drive fifty miles a day to work. If we say we have to cut down on our rate of reproduction, someone pulls the old extinction argument out of their ass.

It has been more than amply explained that we should be experiencing a huge ramp up of our economic activity IN ORDER TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO QUIT BURNING THE GAS. We are not required to reach the same ends only by the means the Koch bros. or Loren suggests. When we become aware of serious environmental problems, we sometimes need to be able to see ahead a little further than the stock markets and banks want. When dealing with environmental problems, we always get hyperbolic denials. That often is because somebody's gravy train will eventually get stopped and the gravy gulpers simply are terrified of a world full of people with better understandings of what we have to do collectively for our society to survive.

 

[KeepTalking]

how does getting a hybrid help?

It helps a bit by partially shifting the point of carbon emission. Of course, driving a purely electric vehicle does much more in this regard.

something like 80% of electricity production in the US still comes from coal or natural gas, so unless you're farting magical rainbow electricity your hybrid is ultimately causing just as much of an environmental impact as a gas powered engine.

If the point of emission is shifted to the power plants rather than the vehicles then, as we change from fossil fuel power generation to more environmentally friendly power generation, the overall environmental impact decreases that much more quickly.

there's a fair argument to be made about using a hybrid in europe where coal and natural gas is only about 10% of electricity production, but in the US it's purely moral masturbation.

It's a fair argument to be made anywhere. Even in America an individual home owner and EV owner can choose to rely more upon rooftop solar to power their home and EV, thereby relying less on fossil fuel power generation. As more and more people drive hybrids and EVs, more pressure will be put on power generation interests to clean up their act.

 

[ronburgundy]

The best thing an individual can do is not have children.

False. The best thing an individual can do is to nudge their children (if any) towards a sustainable energy research career. 2.5 (average number of children per woman/lifetime globally) more mouths to feed make a negligible impact compared to 2.5 more experts to deal with the situation we already have, and will have whatever lifestyle choices you make.
.

False on your false. Even with "nudging", the odds are less than 1 in a million that any kid you have will make any contribution to sustainable energy implementation that will outweigh his/her own contribution to the problem. In contrast, it is a near certainty that having a kid will increase your impact by about 50%, thus not having one reduces it by that much. Aggregated global stats on kids and impact are meaningless for this analysis because zero people actually live in the aggregate across the globe. They all live within a specific context in which their contribution to the problem is a particular amount, and their kids will live in that context and increase that amount by 50% per kid per couple.