
May is Earth's hottest on record - jonbaer
http://www.sciencealert.com/may-was-the-hottest-month-on-earth-since-records-began-says-nasa
======
mmastrac
We live in a time where it is far easier to invent wild new technology to
extract and sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere than it is to convince industry
and individual to reduce the amount of CO₂ they contribute, let alone
convincing people that a problem actually exists.

~~~
bsder
It is significantly easier to engineer a solution for a single, large
(generally industrial) pollution source than a billion small pollution sources
for both technical and political reasons.

So, for example, electric cars are incredibly useful _even if they have the
same carbon footprint as combustion cars_ simply because they move the
pollution source to a single point (the power plant).

In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will
dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become
walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home
because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo).

Most carbon reducing solutions require buy-in from a group of people, and that
takes forever, if you can get them to agree at all.

~~~
pmyjavec
"In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will
dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become
walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home
because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo). "

I don't buy that, that attitude I largely why we're in this situation.

It's the individuals which make up the whole, if each individual did
something, then the whole would be better off.

~~~
umanwizard
What do you mean you don't buy it? Parent post is saying that's what the
problem is. You seem to agree that it's the cause of our problems, then saying
"I don't buy that".

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adwhit
A 99% chance that this year will be the hottest on record. [0]

I would say that now is time to panic, but the time to panic was twenty years
ago. Perhaps the West will pass from 'apathy' directly to 'resignation' and
skip 'panic' altogether. Bring on the apocalypse!

[0]
[https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/742668462699499520](https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/742668462699499520)

~~~
mesh
Why call out the west? A quick google search shows China as the top
contributor to global warming, with Russia and India in the top 5.

[http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...](http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-
countrys-share-of-co2.html#.V2V21OYrJE4)

Seems to me this is a world wide issue, that calls for a world wide solution.

~~~
bmmayer1
That's completely unfair. China is a huge importer of CO2 emissions. Where do
you think the dollars behind all those plastic toys and electric components
come from?

Statistics like these don't account for a countries carbon footprint relative
to population; there's no way that Poland, with a GDP of $13k per capita,
produces _fewer_ CO2 emissions than South Africa with a GDP of $6k per capita.
But it is likely that South Africa has more manufacturing and mining
operations to support exports.

------
sideband
Serious question, not trolling: Why do many HackerNewsen seem to feel that
global warming is a bad thing? For all we know, the changes brought on by a
warmer climate may be great for humanity as a whole.

~~~
TeMPOraL
One reason is the already mentioned feedback loop. We might like it a few
degrees warmer, but we wouldn't like to accidentally turn Earth into Venus.

Another is that rising water levels means flooding coastal areas, which means
mass-scale migrations of people who lived there, which will probably end up in
wars, famines and generally whole lot of crap for _everyone_.

~~~
themartorana
And while people love to trash on the East Coast Elites and other nonsense,
these coastal cities in many countries are the economic centers of the world.
You can't just displace NYC and Tokyo and Hong Kong and Sydney and so on and
think "no big deal, it's just some displacement" because it will rock the
world economy like nothing we've seen if these cities become swimming pools.

~~~
niftich
You could displace them, slowly, but you don't have to. You could just keep
building [1] tide [2] barriers [3] instead [4].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Pass_S-1_of_Saint_P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Pass_S-1_of_Saint_Petersburg_Dam)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project)

------
frakkingcylons
How about instead of linking to some blogspam, you link to the actual source:
[http://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/may-2016-sets-new-
record...](http://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/may-2016-sets-new-records)

------
hellofunk
It seems that about every 2 or 3 months, we have the hottest month on record.

~~~
Brakenshire
Every one of the last 13 months has broken the record for the hottest month on
record.

In other words, May 2015 was the warmest May on record, June 2015 was the
warmest June on record, same for July 2015, August 2015, September 2015,
October 2015, November 2015, December 2015, January 2016, February 2016, March
2016, April 2016, and now May 2016.

[https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201604](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201604)

------
PeterStuer
Am I the only one more than a bit annoyed by that link at the end to 'what you
can do'? 'Personal responsibility' has been the neo-liberal hands off policy
excuse every time, while the problem is completely structural and systemic.

------
gdubs
At risk of being redundant (I've mentioned this book a few times), I highly
recommend Stewart Brand's "The Whole Earth Discipline". [1]

Brand, for those unfamiliar, was a key player in the personal computer
revolution of the 1970's. He created the "Whole Earth Catalog", which inspired
many of the internet's pioneers, and was a hero of Steve Jobs. He later helped
create "The Well" \-- the first big online community, and was present at
countless other cultural moments like the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, and
the forming of the Green movement.

The Whole Earth Discipline chronicles his early participation in the
environmental movement, and how he's diverged from that movement over the
years.

It's presented as a pragmatic guide for addressing climate change and explores
things like urbanization, genetic modification of food, and nuclear power --
and how these things need to be reconsidered by environmentalists.

1: [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6411373-whole-earth-
disci...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6411373-whole-earth-discipline)

~~~
MaysonL
_was a key player in the personal computer revolution … was present at
countless other cultural moments_

One of the first major cultural moments he participated in was the "Mother of
All Demos" - he was the camera operator at Engelbart's
Augmentation Research Center in Menlo Park. This was the experience that
turned him on to personal computing.

------
r0muald
> human emissions are now 25 percent greater than in the last big El Niño in
> 1997/98

Sigh. It's not as if we were clueless about the effects of emissions 20 years
ago, already

------
fegundastr
"I'm making too much money to care" \- Oil and coal executives

~~~
gedy
You mean China

~~~
Pxtl
Per capita, China produces less carbon than the first world. What gives us
more right to burn carbon for quality of life then them? Besides that, we buy
their crap - basically we export the carbon costs of our goods.

~~~
gedy
Yes, but the environment doesn't care about at per capita stats - only the
total CO2 output. China output is growing, West is not.

~~~
Pxtl
Do Chinese people have different biological needs? Do they require less food,
less transportation, less shelter? Then why the hell should they have less
carbon than you or I?

Pick a per-capita number and stick to it. Anything else is hypocrisy.

~~~
gedy
Yes, but - those "per capita" numbers for China are not for all the Chinese
populace's needs - it's for huge factories, etc that benefit relatively fewer
and are a growing menace to the climate.

------
tma-1
And it won't improve until the world population starts limiting its meat
intake.

~~~
hunterjrj
I can't see why the parent has been down voted:

"Meat production is a major contributor to climate change. It is estimated
that livestock production accounts for 70 per cent of all agricultural land
use and occupies 30 per cent of the land surface of the planet. Because of
their sheer numbers, livestock produce a considerable volume of greenhouse
gases (such as methane and nitrous oxide) that contribute to climate change.
In fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has
estimated that livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse
gases."

[http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/food-and-our-
plan...](http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/food-and-our-planet/food-
and-climate-change/)

(David Suzuki is a biologist and climate change activist here in Canada)

~~~
zzalpha
Because, as meat consumption produced less than a fifth of all greenhouse gas
emissions, the claim that "it won't improve until the world population starts
limiting its meat intake" is simply false.

Reducing meat production would help, certainly. But it ain't a blocking
requirement to getting global warming under control.

As an aside, while I'm choosing to accept that 18% number, counting methane in
that list is a bit misleading as, while it is a far more powerful greenhouse
gas, it has a far shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2.

------
aivosha
the issue is not with oil industries. it is with media/news industries making
every fucking thing a sensation, a breaking news solely to get their ratings
up! what it does in turn - it makes people numb. we only react on things that
are super violent, super graphic and immediate, now. its the media industry
thats greedy and inhuman.

------
almostApatriot1
Serious Question: Why does the US always get away with average or below
average temperatures? Every time I see one of these maps, USA (outside of the
West Coast) is always blue.

~~~
adrusi
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex#Climate_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex#Climate_change)

[http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/polar-vortex-
to-v...](http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/polar-vortex-to-vist-
central-u/36890008)

Changes in weather patterns brought about by melting arctic ice has brough
cold arctic winds south over much of the US.

------
bhickey
Does anyone have a good argument for why carbon emissions should be zero
rated?

~~~
tim333
Economically for the planet a carbon tax would make sense but individual
countries may be better off pollution and letting others worry about the
damage.

>Many large users of carbon resources in electricity generation, such as the
United States, Russia, and China, are resisting carbon taxation. (Wikipedia)

------
marchenko
"Hottest on record" here means "hottest since 1950"(when proper record keeping
began).

~~~
ajnin
I don't know where your quote comes from but actually the record (as stated in
the source NOAA publication) starts in 1880.

------
randyrand
Can someone give me a summary of what will happen to the human race if we burn
all of earth fossil fuels?

How will it affect daily life? I've never seen it put in these terms and
frankly it seems daily life would stay the same. Wouldn't mind being proved
wrong.

~~~
nikdaheratik
1\. Food prices will go up, probably by quite a lot.

2\. Your chance of contracting an infectious disease that used to only live in
the tropics will be higher.

3\. Depending on where you live it will either be much dryer or much wetter
rather than more temperate.

4\. Obviously, at that point, energy prices will have to be much higher as
there won't be as many fossil fuels. Or else we would have transitioned to
renewable sources/nuclear by then.

5\. If we're talking about even more worse case scenarios, there's the death
of large chunks of life in the ocean as corals will have been bleached and the
fish that live there died. Also runaway algae blooms, deaths of birds and
other animals that used to live on those now dead fish.

6\. Areas near the equator, like the middle east, that supply important
resources will be basically uninhabitable for large parts of the year if not
the _entire year_.

7\. Areas in the far north that are covered in permafrost will turn into
swamps/bogs instead. Also, in some projections, places in Europe that are
warmed by the N. Atlantic stream may end up being much cooler and similar to
other places at similar latitudes (e.g. Canada/Russia).

But again, many of these are unlikely to happen until late in the 21st
century, so you're likely going to not be alive then anyways.

~~~
randyrand
So it seems that with a one time move you could avoid 4/5 of these?

Not including the fish one since it doesn't really affect daily life IMO, or
the oil price one since that is just what happens when you run out of
something and not a consequence of GW, IMO.

Seems like only daily life effect of GW (assuming you migrated to somewhere
else over the course of 50 years) will be higher food prices. Though I'm also
curious if over time innovation will make that change rather insignificant.

------
mtgx
Another relevant story this week:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-
co2-hit-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-
co2-hit-400-ppm-for-first-time-in-4-million-years/)

~~~
gdubs
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918741)

------
Aelinsaar
It's almost as though there is some kind of ongoing trend of which this is
just a part.

~~~
Cyph0n
Obviously not global warming though. /s

~~~
Aelinsaar
Obviously not! That would be madness. /s

------
jakozaur
What if Earth will be warming faster than we have predicted. Time to prepare
time B with some geoengineering?

At least fund research to have some plan and prototypes. Maybe that should
have priority over article citing business :-P.

~~~
nikdaheratik
What you're talking about is basically the _Blade Runner_ scenario where
everything is overcast, many animals that used to be alive are replaced by
electric sheep, and Mars starts to look better than many places on Earth.

------
ag_47
I am also of the opinion that we are currently treating the internet just like
we treated plastic/fossil fuels 20-30 years ago. The amount of digital data
being generated on a daily basis with no regard to the massive DCs that host
all the servers with A/C on full blast 24/7 is staggering. And nobody seems to
care..

~~~
themartorana
That's because while also a troll haven, the internet and parallel technical
revolutions have done more to improve access to education, free speech, news,
productivity (not to mention small businesses, new money, new economies, and
just so much more) and so on than any other 20 year period in history.

FaceTime and like software alone have so vastly increased our family's access
to each other across global distances that it's hard to put a number on, let
alone having pocket access to the wealth of the world's information nearly
instantaneously.

Yes, there are concerns as you mention, but you'd be hard pressed to find
anyone that would roll back the way things work now. I'm willing to bet many
people would give up cars and meat before the Internet and related
technologies.

~~~
ag_47
I didn't say we should give it up. My point is people's attitude is complete
carelessness.

