
July Matched, and Maybe Broke, Record for the Hottest Month Since Analysis Began - infodocket
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/july-matched-and-maybe-broke-record-hottest-month-analysis-began
======
mAEStro-paNDa
With this topic it's important to remind people that while individual actions
to address climate change are good, and encouraged, it's going to take serious
systemic action and cooperation to address this to the degree it should be.

There was a climate scientist not long ago calling for a "world war-like
mobilization" in regards to addressing climate change and that's exactly what
needs to happen. Buying an electric vehicle and slapping a solar panel on your
roof simply isn't enough.

~~~
Brakenshire
Transport is a third of emissions, most of that road transport, so if everyone
bought an electric car it would certainly have an impact.

I think people have to bear in mind this is also about industrial scale. One
person buying an electric car brings down the price for another, each new
person brings down the price more and opens up the possibility to more people,
and at some point you’ll get a mass transfer. Electric cars are only something
like 0.3% of cars on the road but already have the scale to get quite close to
competitive. They're already cheaper for high mileage cases.

Although I do agree we will need concerted effort, it’s likely this will be in
conjunction with, not opposed to, these kind of individual decisions.

~~~
fulafel
It would have an impact alright, a catastrophic impact. Most people don't have
cars, and we need to reverse the trend of increased car ownership.

~~~
Brakenshire
Why? Electrification of grid electricity is comparatively easy, and may even
substantially happen (say, to 60-80%) without government action because of the
relentlessness of the learning curves for wind and solar. But that’s only a
third of emissions. The core challenge is to electrify transport and heating
to tackle the other two thirds. Replacing combustion cars with electric cars
might involve a lot of mining (as does all of industrial civilization), but it
will almost certainly be a benefit for climate change. Just plateauing the
number of cars would be an achievement, reducing them by 90%+ globally, as
would be needed without electrification, is cloud cuckoo land.

~~~
fulafel
EVs still have big co2 lifecycle footprints, more than is sustainable, so a
dead end. Bonus: each new EV will put another low cost used gas vehicle on the
market to guzzle gas for another 20 years.

~~~
Brakenshire
Their lifecycle is almost all dependent on the grid, most of the rest is the
battery, which are already being manufactured using renewable energy. Even
mining is being electrified. In the UK I can already buy a car which will
reduce emissions by 40%, and by the end of its lifetime probably 80% as the
grid decarbonises. Or even more if I have solar panels. How many decades of
campaigning would we need to halve car ownership? Your perfect outcome from
this is not going to happen, not quickly enough to tackle the problem, don’t
make the enemy the perfect of the good.

~~~
reitzensteinm
That's bad math. If you add EVs to a grid that's in the process of
decarbonizing, the marginal impact is all that extra power comes from whatever
would be shut down next.

EVs are still worth it if they're powered by coal or natural gas. But quoting
them as getting cleaner as the grid decarbonizes is wrong, until the existing
load is satisfied with renewables (even instantaneously).

The only exception is if EVs allow you to increase the renewable share beyond
what you'd otherwise be able to do eg with demand dispatch.

------
semi-extrinsic
In November 2020, the 26th COP summit will be held in the UK, where world
leaders will agree on the action plans for cutting emissions.

When that conference ends, we have _one decade to cut global emissions by
50%_.

Are we going to make it? If so, how?

~~~
onion2k
_Are we going to make it?_

No.

Global heating is pretty much inevitable. There's no taste for fixing it among
the people who can actually do something. Politicians don't see farther than
their next term in office, and the rich don't need to fix it. It's not really
a case of "if" any more. It's going to happen.

~~~
chmod775
Speak for your own country.

Where I live major political parties are now scrambling to adopt greener
policies after losing big to green parties in the recent EU wide elections.

Because people have shown that if they don't do it, they will vote for someone
who will.

There's also the issue of thousands of students rallying for greener policies
every friday instead of attending school. It's been going on for some time and
politicians are further under pressure because of that.

~~~
alfromspace
That's great, but Europe could dial all emissions to zero right now there
would be virtually no impact. Even the US doing the same would hardly put a
dent in climate change's trajectory, and the issue people have is that we
can't simply assume that if we overhaul our entire economies at ruinous cost,
China (over 2x America's emissions now and increasing every day), India,
Russia, etc will be inspired to get on board. We need a binding global
solution. Domestic solutions seem worthless to me.

~~~
chmod775
> overhaul our entire economies at ruinous cost

Reading this gives me a headache. Guess what will _WAY_ be worse than that?

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg)

Also most of the developing countries, those people like you like to point
their finger at and use as an excuse to keep dooming yourself, your planet and
most of all your children's futures, will be hit first and the hardest by
climate change. And they know it. China is already coming around.

~~~
alfromspace
I'm seeing a lot of rhetoric and no substance. Yawn.

------
not_a_cop75
Could we start framing hot years in the same way we do floods? I mean,
everyone knows what a "10 year flood" or a "100 year flood" is supposed to
look like. No one has a proper statistical relation for what the likelihood of
a broken temperature means, and I find that rather odd.

Even if climate change has made it so that the 100 year year broken
temperature records are now 10 year temperature broken temperature records,
could we at least say that statistically? Is it too much to ask?

------
dpatru
As a counterpoint, consider this quote from an article [1] by economist Robert
Murphy: "In the climate change debate, people often forget that under all but
the most catastrophic scenarios, the future generations who will benefit from
our current mitigation efforts will be much richer than we are. For example,
Nigel Lawson points out that even under one of the worst case scenarios
studied by the IPCC, failure to act would simply mean that people in the
developing world would be “only” 8.5 times as wealthy a century from now,
compared to 9.5 times as wealthy if there were no climate change. [2]"

[1]
[https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Murphyclimate....](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Murphyclimate.html)
[2] Nigel Lawson, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming (New
York: Duckworth Overlook, 2008), p. 36.

~~~
esotericn
Wealth?

What is this "wealth" you speak of?

Can you eat money?

Do all the technological advances, smartphones, VR, blah blah, counteract
killing off the megafauna, turning the natural landscape into deserts and
concrete?

Pure insanity.

------
formercoder
Could anyone who is more informed comment on this WSJ article discussing
climate change media coverage? [https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-media-
corrupted-climate...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-media-corrupted-
climate-policy-11562360829)

~~~
melling
Sure. You live in an echo chamber on HN where everyone is worried about
climate change. The WSJ is another echo chamber that is almost the polar
opposite where people either don't believe in climate change, or that it's
greatly exaggerated.

I've engaged with commenters in the WSJ hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
Basically, you'll talk yourself into one big circle. People have all sorts of
standard answers like "the climate is always changing", references to debunked
movies, a handful of "scientific names", the Global Warming Hiatus, etc.

You can address all of them but they'll simply start over again with the same
comments in the next article.

Several years ago I was even going to create an FAQ of questions.

[https://2cco2.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/hello-
world/](https://2cco2.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/hello-world/)

The only positive is that recently the WSJ stopped letting people comment on
most articles.

~~~
drewg123
While we're talking about this, I just listened to an older Freakonomics about
climate change ([http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-the-
planet/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-the-planet/))

One of the guests was Nathan Myhrvold, who was advocating for geoengineering.
I'm wondering why geoengineering is not being seriously considered as a
solution at this point.

Perhaps your understanding of both camps might help explain this.

~~~
User23
> I'm wondering why geoengineering is not being seriously considered as a
> solution at this point.

Because an overshoot in the other direction would be even worse than a couple
degrees of warming. Feedback loops can work both ways. We are currently in an
ice age[1] and glaciation covering most of the northern hemisphere could
happen in about a decade[2]. Reducing emissions is just tuning a known
activity and second order effects aside is perfectly safe, but geoengineering
is a giant unknown that could cause catastrophic consequences.

[1][https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cause-ice-
age/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cause-ice-age/)

[2][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/)

~~~
marmaduke
>
> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/)

That was an interesting read. It suggests that really abrupt changes in
warming are possible. The downside seems that only one good data source
exists.

Are you aware of any computational modeling of the large scale mechanisms? I'm
coming from computational neuroscience and bayesian modeling and found this
data pretty interesting

~~~
User23
I don't, but the data quality really is impressive, so it would be interesting
to see if anyone has tried to develop a model using it, especially since you
could test it by taking other cores.

~~~
marmaduke
I started reading a bit and found CESM but it seems like a lot of these models
require supercomputers. It's not clear that simulation of many years (ie
predicting what a core might look like) is feasible.

------
makerofspoons
This is to be expected- we will continue to break these records until such a
time we deploy carbon sequestration at scale.

~~~
mikepurvis
What is the plan to pay for carbon sequestration? My assumption was always
that it would be via carbon taxation or some kind of offset/credits scheme— if
you run a business with a conventional emissions footprint, you need to pay
for that footprint, and the cost of paying (for someone elsewhere to capture
and sequester your emissions) will simultaneously provide the incentive to
improve efficiency and reduce your emissions at the source (which is always
preferable to having to scrub them afterwards, of course).

But... carbon taxes seem to be a huge non starter. The current (centrist)
Liberal government in Canada introduced an extremely modest and utterly
inadequate one that is revenue neutral (the money for the year came back on
our tax returns this spring), and the opposition Conservative party is having
a field day attacking it as a "cash grab" that's just ideologues taking money
out of the pockets of "everyday Canadians". Check out the parade of last
carbon-tax-free fill ups posted on social media the night before it kicked in:

[https://www.macleans.ca/news/conservative-mpps-fill-up-
their...](https://www.macleans.ca/news/conservative-mpps-fill-up-their-
massive-gas-guzzling-tanks-in-protest-of-the-carbon-tax/)

And the keyboard warriors on social media are even worse— they read the word
"tax" and their brains just click over into rage mode, despite that carbon
taxation is a long time conservative policy, and that similar market-based
solutions were openly favoured by previous generations of right wing
politicians in Canada:

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-if-youre-
a-c...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-if-youre-a-
conservative-who-opposes-carbon-pricing-are-you-really-a/)

How do we make progress on this? If a relatively progressive country like
Canada can't even collect a tiny payment for incentive purposes (because all
the revenue is being returned), how in the heck are we supposed to get to a
place where polluters are charged the actual cost of scrubbing their
emissions?

If we can't get polluters to pay directly, where are the trillions going to
come from to pay for this? We can't even seem to find the money to build high
speed rail, or get proper running water to our indigenous communities.

~~~
makerofspoons
A carbon tax and dividend scheme might be more politically palatable, as it
wouldn't be as regressive.

~~~
mikepurvis
This is exactly what the Canadian system is:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend)

It's almost certain to be repealed when the current government loses power in
this fall's election. :(

But the larger point is that when you pay back all the revenues as dividends,
then you only get the reduction incentives. Where does the extra cash come
from to actually pay for sequestration?

~~~
makerofspoons
That is unfortunate.

Perhaps government contracts to sequestration companies in order to hit
emissions targets could be carved out of existing budgets. I'm from the U.S.
and there is certainly money to be diverted. Maybe we just need sequestration
contractors in the right districts for certain politicians?

~~~
mikepurvis
Possibly. But the reality is that if we (either Canada or the US) were looking
to "spend money on jobs", there are a million things we could have been hiring
people for over the past couple decades, even stuff as simple as
infrastructure maintenance and tree planting.

Looks like there are projections for a bunch of jobs in the carbon capture
industry (eg
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/17/carbon-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/17/carbon-
capture-and-storage-strategy)), but I'm still hazy on how we're going to find
trillions in the general revenue pot to make it happen.

------
aivisol
In the meantime in Finland, NE Russia and Baltics: "The average temperature
over Europe in July 2019 was just above the 1981-2010 average for the month.
It was warmer than normal over western Europe, except for south-western
Iberia, but cooler than normal over the east of the continent, particularly
the north-east. " [1]

[1] [https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-
july-2...](https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-july-2019)

~~~
Brakenshire
You could just as well pick out unusually hot regions as well, the article is
about a global average, it takes both these fluctuations around the mean into
account. What matters is that the mean is increasing.

~~~
aivisol
I was not trying to deny the average increase. Rather I wanted to point out
that there are extremes which are becoming more pronounced on both ends. The
July was extremely cold in NE Europe and even the map shows only few degrees
below average, in real life it translated to nightly temperatures falling to
almost freezing point several days in a row. And the August here is no better
so far...

~~~
chewz
I had been using electric blanket July/August - quite unusual :-)

~~~
aivisol
The look outside the window right now is depressing :(

~~~
chewz
These Western Europeans will never understand what we must suffer here :-)

------
crispinb
A species which by dint of evolutionary happenstance has skirted limits on
reproduction and consumption goes ahead to strip its habitat. Big surprise
(said no ecologist ever).

A pity in this case its habitat is a whole planet, but that's life (and
death). I wonder if something like this eventually happens on every living
world, and if the overrunning species generally comes to harbour a comforting
superstition that basic biology doesn't apply to it in its magnificent
superior aloneness?

------
jakewins
For finding where you can have the most impact here, I highly recommend
_Project Drawdown_ ; it's a data-driven roundup of proposed solutions, ranked
by how effective they are actually estimated to be. It takes into account
things like cost, timelines and political feasibility as well. There's a
summary of the book here:
[https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/)

If you are in the US, consider looking into Citizens Climate Lobby. They are
pushing for a carbon tax-and-dividend bill, shown by independent analysis to
be enough for the US to surpass the Paris Accord if implemented, it currently
has bipartisan support in the House:
[https://citizensclimatelobby.org/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/)

And if you're into graphic design, there's a really small group of devs within
CCL working on an OSS project we're using to coordinate calls to
representatives - like reminding members to call, helping with talking points
and tracking which districts we are making calls in:
[https://projectgrandcanyon.com/](https://projectgrandcanyon.com/) You can
message me (email in profile) if you're keen and I can put you in touch with
the maintainers.

------
jjtheblunt
genuine question: does that imply that no recent month set a hottest record,
or we'd have seen that in the news?

~~~
makerofspoons
June broke the record, too: [https://www.noaa.gov/news/june-2019-was-hottest-
on-record-fo...](https://www.noaa.gov/news/june-2019-was-hottest-on-record-
for-globe)

July was hotter than June.

May was the 4th hottest ever: [https://www.noaa.gov/news/may-2019-was-4th-
hottest-on-record...](https://www.noaa.gov/news/may-2019-was-4th-hottest-on-
record-for-globe)

~~~
jjtheblunt
Thanks : I hadn't thought of looking it up there, though should have.

------
doubleg
The server appears to be down. Mirror:
[https://outline.com/fqYT2e](https://outline.com/fqYT2e)

------
abstractbarista
We'll be alright.

------
867567838694
Unfortunately, any gains my western countries will just be wiped out by other
growing nations. America could cut its emissions by 90% and it wouldn't put a
dent in what Chind puts out.

~~~
mikepurvis
Western nations have had a 200 year head start. Even if our current status is
middle of the pack, we have a lot of climate guilt to atone for.

Even moreso because we are outsized in our cultural influence. As we model the
lifestyle changes ourselves, and those changes are reflected in the movies,
etc that we export. That impacts what lifestyle the rising middle class
aspires to in places like China and Africa.

~~~
panzagl
Well, if they're watching our movies then they won't be surprised when our
solution turns out badly for them.

~~~
mikepurvis
Not sure what point you're trying to make here, but right now the rising
middle class worldwide wants to join westerners in doing things like living a
suburban, car-oriented lifestyle, eating lots of beef and chicken, and flying
to overseas vacation destinations.

