
Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/un-greeland-europe-ice-heat-record-1.5225980
======
pizza
I recall reading a CNN scrolling ticker headline about the current European
heatwave that said ~5% of European homes/offices have AC.

The DOE says 3/4 of American homes have AC, and furthermore, AC uses _6%_ of
all electricity generated in the United States, quite staggering imo and a lot
more than I would have expected. Without AC, a lot of America would just be
too unbearable to support some major communities.

[0] [https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-
systems/air-...](https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-
conditioning)

~~~
odiroot
Why would you pay to install and maintain AC if we (in Central Europe)
literally have 2 weeks of real hot summer (about a month recently though)?

It would literally be a waste of money.

~~~
RickS
Window mounted AC units are $100 - $200. It sits in a closet except for the 2
months a year that Seattle requires AC. A proper central air system would be
overkill, but the small one is worth it.

I wonder if window / removable units factor into the DOE's 75% number. From a
real estate recordkeeping perspective, my home does not have AC, despite the
previous owner permanently building a window unit into the side of the house.
If they're not counted, the real number of American homes with AC could be
well north of 75%.

~~~
tjr225
> except for the 2 months a year that Seattle requires AC

Huh? 2 months out of the year AC is _required_? Even if you can not, somehow,
stand a week or two of 90-100 degree weather(with NO humidity!) without air
conditioning, to months of _required_ AC in Seattle seems like an insane
exaggeration.

~~~
RickS
You're right, I was loose with my language there. It is never "required" in
the way that eg Phoenix AZ would demand. It's a convenience. "Desirable" would
have been a better word.

~~~
tjr225
Right on.

------
NeedMoreTea
IIRC there's around 7m of sea level rise tied up in Greenland ice, and it's
already melting remarkably quickly. Now add the wildfires and it seems like
it's escalating dangerously out of control.

While a tipping point tips, government action is still conspicuously absent,
and countries (well Russia and Canada mainly) are trying to nail their
continental shelf claims in the Arctic for oil exploration.

~~~
mikeash
We’re going straight from “we don’t really know if something is happening” to
“it’s too late anyway so why bother” without going through the troublesome “we
should try to stop this” phase.

~~~
xwdv
If the world were a fine place worth fighting for, maybe you’d have a point.

But increasingly, I just look around, see the news, see the social media, and
think why bother? Humanity will never be anything more than this. Things seem
to be wrapping up, don’t have kids, don’t try to save the world, just savor
what is left till it’s gone.

In the coming decades we will begin to see a loss in the knowledge of mankind,
as people become more dependent on machines and fewer and fewer people know
how to work them. Progress will begin to slow down, wealth will continue to
consolidate, and people will be left working hard back-breaking jobs to
sustain themselves. The world of the future will have more farmers and less
engineers, and even fewer people who even understand code and how to write it.

~~~
crispyporkbites
Do you live on the same planet as me? The world is an incredible place and
gets better every day!

I look at my children and their experiences growing up and it’s far better
than mine ever were. If I had the choice I’d be born today.

~~~
save_ferris
I respectfully disagree here.

The US has seen a sharp decline in children earning more than their parents.
90% of people born in 1940 earned more than their parents, compared to just
50% in 1985, a trend that we simply aren't doing enough to correct[0]. We're
on our way to a new gilded age, but perhaps your kids will among the fortunate
and not of the "useless class", as Yuval Harari would say.

As technology and AI continue to progress, it's going to become harder to
educate and train the workforce, and perhaps more importantly, re-train them
as human skills continue to fall into obsolescence. I look at my baby nephew
and hope that he'll be able to find solid-paying work one day, but that just
isn't a given anymore.

0: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/12/09/504989751...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/12/09/504989751/u-s-kids-far-less-likely-to-out-earn-their-parents-
as-inequality-grows)

~~~
rv-de
what crispy means is that s/he is doing well.

~~~
noir_lord
Or isn’t American, the US standard of living has dropped but for many people
around the world, this is as good as it’s been for them in centuries or
longer.

------
pier25
Greenland's ice sheet has been melting pretty fast for years [1]. Maybe it's
because I'm not a native English speaker, but using "threaten" sounds to me
like until now it had been living peacefully unaffected by climate change.

[1] [https://www.livescience.com/64546-greenland-ice-sheet-
meltin...](https://www.livescience.com/64546-greenland-ice-sheet-melting-
faster.html)

~~~
kwk1
> Greenland's ice sheet has been melting pretty fast for years [1].

Your link talks about how the rate of ice sheet melting is increasing
(currently 4x what it was in 2003), so I'm not sure how you arrived at this
statement. The whole problem is not that it was never melting in the past,
it's that the melting is accelerating, and that even the rate of acceleration
may be increasing due to feedback loops; that is what is threatening.

~~~
pier25
> _The whole problem is not that it was never melting in the past, it 's that
> the melting is accelerating_

Yes, I'm perfectly aware of that. My point is that we are way past the point
of threats.

------
acqq
The relevant charts ("the daily image update is produced from near-real-time
operational satellite data, with a data lag of approximately one day"):

[https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/05/daily-
image/](https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/05/daily-image/)

Artic Sea Ice:

[https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iq...](https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png)

Antartic Sea Ice:

[https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iq...](https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_iqr_timeseries.png)

------
Zenst
What I would like to see is a country average temperature record, we often see
high temps, some may be a small hotspot, others may well encompass the entire
country. With that, are heat waves becoming larger in size and by that - area
covered? Asking as from my experience in life, they kinda feel like they are.

~~~
ianbicking
It's more vague and visual than what you describe, but this makes pretty
compelling visualizations:

[https://showyourstripes.info/](https://showyourstripes.info/)

~~~
faitswulff
This combined worldwide graphic is far more striking: [http://www.climate-lab-
book.ac.uk/files/2019/06/all_countrie...](http://www.climate-lab-
book.ac.uk/files/2019/06/all_countries_BBC-e1563724721978.png)

From: [http://www.climate-lab-
book.ac.uk/2019/showyourstripes/](http://www.climate-lab-
book.ac.uk/2019/showyourstripes/)

------
benjamoon
The range between the min and max temps for the last 100 years is under 1°C
globally. For the last 1,000 years it's just over 1°C (from wolfram alpha at
least). It's clear that temps are slowly rising, but the constant reports of
extreme weather seem at odds with the data to me. Is 1°C over 1,000 years
really doing all this? When I read articles about the weather I have to remind
myself what the data says. If I didn't check occasionally I'd think we'd
increased by 10°C in the last 5 years.

For the record, I drive an electric car and my house is supplied by a purely
renewable provider here in the UK. I hate the thought of polluting the planet
and I do what I can to live a green life. I really love science and study as
much as I can, but reading about global warming is very different to reading
about quantum electrodynamics or special relativity. I'll happily watch the
oil companies go under and I think dumping tons of crap in to the atmosphere
is clearly terrible and shouldn't go unpunished, I just wish I had some better
data to back this all up.

Source:
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+temperature](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+temperature)

Has anyone got good sea level rise data for the last 1,000 years? Again, when
I read any article I feel like the sea must have risen by a few meters already
as everything is so dramatic, but I can't find a decent dataset that sets out
what has actually happened.

~~~
Oletros
Slowly rising? Have you seen the 100yr graph?

~~~
benjamoon
Yeah, it looks bad, but the y axis on the chart only represents 1 degree. This
is kind of my point, it’s so easy to show a chart with a big uptick and if you
don’t dig deeper you come away thinking we’re about to catch fire.

~~~
Oletros
Because 1dgree is a lot, and the rate of change is the scary thing

------
revscat
This seems like the perfect time to panic.

I just don’t see how we’re getting out of this alive.

~~~
pulisse
> I just don’t see how we’re getting out of this alive.

Even worst case predictions for climate change don't imply the human race will
be threatened. But what we will see is massive geopolitical disruption as
previously habitable regions become uninhabitable. What happens when coastal
Myanmar is underwater or southern India experiences 130 degree days on a
regular basis? Climate change is going to make itself felt over the coming
decades as increases in migrant crises, regional conflicts, and famines. (Not
to mention economic loss as, e.g., the agricultural viability of large areas
changes.)

~~~
jorblumesea
I guess it depends on what you mean by "threatened". Sure, humans will
continue to exist, we won't go extinct, at least not globally. But we're
looking at local and possibly global societal collapse. If we're back 500
years in the past developmentally and technologically, that's a huge deal.
Maybe even if you survive, can you go back to a world without vaccines,
antibiotics and mass communication?

~~~
crispyporkbites
Do you think we can lose 500 years of tech development globally? I can see
some areas becoming challenging and definitely a slowdown in progress but it
seems unlikely that all this knowledge will evaporate

~~~
jorblumesea
I don't have a good answer to that question, I'm not sure anyone does. But if
society collapses, much of that knowledge goes with it. Our society is
incredibly complex and fragile, with a very high degree of specialization.
That makes us vulnerable to these kinds of issues.

While the "dark ages" were hardly dark and ignorant, the collapse of the Roman
empire meant advanced road building and concrete were lost for 1500 years. So
there is some historical precedent here.

~~~
noir_lord
500 years would put us back to 1500ish, I can’t see that, steam technology and
electric motors/turbines are simply doable (and where done) with not much
technology to boot strap from, hand tools made machines which made specialised
machines which repeated for generations but the first step comes back to steam
and electrification.

It’s not like every book in every library would or could disappear.

------
jasonless
Has anyone seen predictions that would provide a good estimate of when
everyone would die? My sense is if we can surface this data to poor people
quickly they might have time to save money and move to Northen Canada where
most are saying the weather would be perfect as the climate heat average index
increases. The more we share this on FB the faster we can save everyone. I
think we can all agree rich people can stay in their original location bc they
will have money to pay for AC. Just my 2 cents here.

~~~
NeoBasilisk
The trouble is that life can get so much worse without everyone dying.

------
jachee
Hey dang: why editorialize the actual article title?

It was up verbatim and got edited to appear less catastrophic.

------
newintellectual
Two things. First, anybody ever think about why an ice covered body of land
was called _Greenland_? Here's a clue, it used to be a lot warmer and green.
This is nothing new. Ice was a disaster for the settlers of Greenland.

And this:

"Scientists already know that the Greenland ice sheet is melting. But the
hidden heat source originating from deep inside the Earth partially
responsible for that melting has been a mystery. Now, researchers have pinned
down evidence of that heat, revealing yet another force pushing glaciers into
the ocean."

[https://www.newsweek.com/puzzling-heat-deep-inside-earth-
mel...](https://www.newsweek.com/puzzling-heat-deep-inside-earth-melting-
greenlands-glaciers-786943)

~~~
jfkienennd
Because people from Iceland wanted to entice people to join them on a voyage
there, and thought calling it Greenland would help them with that.

------
andrewstuart
The biggest problem IMO is that people don't seem to be able grasp that
governments simply cannot solve this.

Only when there is that general understanding can people stop focusing on
government as the path to solving this.

Unfortunately however almost _everyone_ focuses on government and elections
which is simply wasting more time.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Individual action cannot convert to zero carbon generation, make treaties,
implement carbon taxes, require impact labelling or ban unsustainable methods.

Governments are the _only_ ones with the necessary leverage. Even if we have
to wait for some country to elect a Green party government, or there be enough
XR style demonstrations disrupting the economy that they _have_ to act.

~~~
andrewstuart
All those certainties need to be loosened up.

New ideas are needed.

Clearly government has failed to solve this. And when there's a problem that
needs solving, and the current 'solution' ain't working, well you'd be crazy
to stick with that being 'the solution' wouldn't you?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
You don't think an alternative to government action will take longer to find?
Or are you advocating revolution?

What are your new ideas?

