
UK weather: February temperature jump was incredible, says climate expert - vanilla-almond
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/02/uk-temperature-jump-february-incredible-climate-weather-carbon
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codeulike
I had lunch in the garden on 21st feb. Sitting there in the sun without a
coat. It was like June. It was really nice, and also really unsettling.

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thinkingemote
I took the day off to go on a long hike it was great but all the invisible
dust on the air gave me an odd pain in my chest when I went to bed then it
gave me a sore throat and asthmatic conditions which has only just cleared!
Turns out the dust raised the pollution level to high with people being
advised not to exercise! I suppose my ten mile hike up the hills was a bad
idea.

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AlexTWithBeard
I think in order to be fair we shouldn't use local weather as an indicator of
general climate: for every "we had trees blossom in January" story they're
will be a "we had ice on the lake in June, you, hoaxers" answer"

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metacritic12
To quote Scott Adams, why are people seeing a single data point as evidence
for climate change, when those same people deride the alt-right for seeing
cold weather in April in their town as evidence against climate change?

It's behavior like this, reeking of bias in which singular data points count
and which don't that gets the other side to think climate change is just a
base/faith political belief instead of something derived from evidence.

Even the article itself is editorially-suggestive. The question is posted
throughout the article "what fraction is due to climate change? we don't
know!". A single record-breaking 20C day above a trend of say 5C is 15C
warmer, whereas the best guesses for the magnitude of human-caused sub portion
of global warming is about 1C. The quote in the article say says the warm
record is largely due to global warming is totally misleading in the R^2
technical sense, and even needs to be couched in the technical language of
"well the trend of warmer temperatures..."

For full disclosure, I believe climate change, but also that these singular
data points have very little information value.

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7952
I think that climate change absolutely is faith based and political. And we
shouldn't be afraid of that. Lots of changes in human behaviour have a faith
and moral component. Just think about hand washing. People don't need to
understand microbiology to wash their hands. They need social pressure and a
sense of morals.

Climate change deniers see environmentalism as a faith based political
movement. Well it is. Even if you believe in climate change, there is nothing
that says we have to do anything about it! It is perfectly reasonable to just
shrug your shoulders and not do anything. The drive to protect the planet is a
matter of conscience. And that is how people need to be pursuaded. Science is
just not very convincing in everyday life, even among educated rational
people.

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Steel_Phoenix
I think it's dangerous to turn a complex and global issue into a binary social
signaling device. We do terrible things to the planet. We should stop.
Combining "should", goals, and politics only turns the majority of the planet
against you. The global economy, global politics, national politics, and
climate are all extremely complex systems. Ban plastic straws and cows and you
may think you're helping, but end up being an example of failure to others.
Make an electric car that is cheaper, more efficient, and outperforms
gasoline, and you've taken a solid step towards saving the planet. When it's a
binary issue, you lose the nuance of having choices. You burn witches before
even figuring out if they were helping or hurting with their heresy. Is
nuclear worth the risk and waste to offset carbon? Is the wind farm worth it
if it destroys a bird's only habitat? Those are cost benefit questions.
Believer or denier is a witch trial.

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7952
There is no scientific formula that tells you if a coal miner should loose
their job, or if a wind farm should be allowed to kill birds. As you say it is
complicated. We are balancing a huge range of issues that feel like a false
dichotomy. Just telling people "because science" is not the answer. That is
actually what makes it a binary choice because you are leaving no room for
argument. By talking about morality you broaden the argument. The democratic
political system is our algorithm to decide these questions and is driven by
more than just fact and science. You may not like this but it is the reality.
You can't answer a load of massive false dichotomy's with science. You need
other avenues.

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laythea
Climate change people. Key word is change. We will need to get used to
adapting.

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EGreg
The politics of our day is as dysfunctional as it’s ever been. Tons of people
in the USA ALONE believe climate change isn’t even happening, let alone man-
made. They have bought into the weird myth that moving to sustainable energy
will harm the economy, and therefore are motivated to deny climate change (set
aside the ridiculous mental gymnastics that entails, even if true).

Our only hope for short term sustainability is a Carbon Tax and Dividend,
which has been introduced as a bipartisan bill a few months ago[1]. I wish
there would be more media coverage of it. It is much more realistic than the
Green New Deal but the only person running for President I know that even
mentions it on his campaign website is Andrew Yang.

A carbon tax redistibuted to the people would avoid the yellow vest-like
protests about disproportionately falling on the poor and middle class.
Instead, it would be “Climate Justice” that even _anarcho capitalists_ could
support — corporations having to compensate people for polluting the common
atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Such a dividend would incentivize voters to
say “more carbon tax, please!” and cause electric vehicles to be produced,
which represents CHOICE of energy generation instead of the fuel lock-in we
have been subjected to by te fossil fuel industry since Edison designed
electric cars 100 years ago (they are in the Edison museum).

Unless you think the fossil fuel industry should enjoy free externalities and
lack of competition in fuel generation for cars, you have no leg to stand on
to oppose this even from an economic standpoint.

[https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-
bill/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-bill/)

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danaris
> They have bought into the weird myth that moving to sustainable energy will
> harm the economy

It's actually a bit more complex, and thus less weird, than that.

On the one hand, you have blue-collar workers in the US. A significant segment
of those has always been coal miners (and those in their orbit). It's not just
that the shift away from fossil fuels has caused them to lose their jobs—it's
that, for many such communities, coal mining was the central part of their
identity. They were proud of it, and had been for several generations.

Then, on the other side, you have the oil & natural gas industry, which makes
massive amounts of money, and spends huge chunks of it on propaganda, aimed
both at regular people and at legislators.

The end result is a large proportion of the population that believes that
renewable energy is The Enemy, an existential threat to their entire way of
life—whether it's because they're coal miners themselves, because they, as
working-class people, coidentify themselves with the coal miners, or because
they're simply on the political right, and have been indoctrinated by the
aforementioned propaganda to believe anything that tries to help the
environment is Evil by first principle.

