Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scorching-heat-produces-all-time-record-highs-in-belgium-netherlands-as-western-europe-swelters-under-heat-wave/70008886

by spking • 7 years ago

171 162 7 years ago

accuweather.com

henrik_w• 7 years ago

No mention of climate change in the article.

lgeorget• 7 years ago

Arguably, it's better that way. Confusing meteorology with climatology is the favourite fallacy of climatosceptics.

EDIT: Replaced "argument" by "fallacy"

TallGuyShort2• 7 years ago

Example: across much of the US in the last few years there have been record colds because of polar vortexes. A few weeks of record colds doesn't negate climate change. A few weeks of record heat isn't the proof of it either.

I keep saying that ocean acidification needs to be the forefront of the argument more. The data is so much clearer and dramatic that it's so much harder to deny the harm being done by greenhouse gases. "It's hot today" is a terrible way to start a discussion with someone who doesn't believe in global warming, just like "it snowed today" is a terrible counter-argument from them.

jakoblorz• 7 years ago

weather != climate

jurmous• 7 years ago

Weather is not climate but record after record after record for years in a row is climate change.

https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/the-10-hotte...

ilikehurdles5• 7 years ago

It's a nice equation. Here's another: car crashes != driving. Despite this being technically true, let's not pretend that the left side is independent from the right.

MuffinFlavored• 7 years ago

I don't get why climate change is disputed. It's obvious that as society grows, we have increase CO2 output through record levels of burning fossil fuels.

Energy arrives from the sun in the form of visible light and ultraviolet radiation. The Earth then emits some of this energy as infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere 'capture' some of this heat, then re-emit it in all directions - including back to the Earth's surface.

https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enha...

ilikehurdles5• 7 years ago

Because energy companies and "free market"/"prosperity" thinktank lobbying groups dump a ton of resources into getting politicians and media moguls to broadcast well-known lies. It was never an organic movement.

starbugs4• 7 years ago

It's a hard sell.

It's devastating to think about, very negative, and it almost always means that people need to quit doing things they've come to love.

It's like trying to get someone who's addicted off their drugs and telling them that even if they are successful with quitting, it won't protect them unless all others stop doing drugs simultaneously.

dx87• 7 years ago

Some people are just super stubborn about it because they don't want to be wrong. I used to work with a guy who said climate change wasn't real, then after about a year of being the only person at work with that viewpoint, he accepted that it was real, but with the caveat that it's a good thing. He said that man-made global warming was going to help hold off the next ice age, so warming the planet now will pre-emptively save lives in the future. That makes no sense though, because we're experiencing extreme weather and mass extinction right now, and the next ice age isn't supposed to happen for over a thousand years.

jcranmer• 7 years ago

Some of the most extreme assertions about climate change are strongly disputable or outright wrong (for example, even the current high-end estimates wouldn't set records for Earth's temperature--merely the hottest in the Quaternary). It's not hard for many people to go from "this theory is partially wrong" to "there is no validity anywhere in the theory."

y4mi• 7 years ago

I was talking about climate change with a co-worker on Monday.

He still doesn't "believe" in it. "Nobody can know if it's happening" and "earth went through countless high and low temperature passes over the years. It's nothing special"

It was a great example of today's reality we live in. It's truly an age of misinformation.

arm64future• 7 years ago

He still doesn't "believe" in it.

Here's a clue:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

mindslight3• 7 years ago

What is the personal benefit to believing in climate change? Now you get to feel bad about doing all the things you're going to do anyway? If you're going to go cognitive dissonance, you might as well go all-in.

Lifestyle choices won't affect climate change as long as we keep fueling the machine that's chewing through the resources. "It's the economy, stupid" - the modern economy doesn't just depend on consuming many resources as possible, its tenets are fundamentally based around it. Every call for more jobs is a call for more waste. Every push to lower interest rates is a judgment of valuing the present over the future. We've figured out how to make more stuff than we can actually ever use - now we need to figure out how to dial it back instead of throwing the excess away.

criddell3• 7 years ago

Does he believe smoking causes lung cancer?

Edit: This is what I was trying to remember:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-risks-as-...

deanstag• 7 years ago

Whats the rational response to that? I keep getting into these discussions but I myself am not versed enough to counter it :(

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

Unfortunately you repeat anything enough times and people will pick up on it, even if it goes against what is self-evident. Even something you can explain in 5 minutes like the connection between the concentration of greenhouses gases and warming.

It’s probably quite a good lesson for everyone, a lot of our beliefs aren’t reached through some process from first principles, they are accepted from what appears to be normal. Our understanding of the world is really not much better than the sources for news and analysis we and those around us expose ourselves to.

gibbonsrcool• 7 years ago

I've gotten similar responses arguing with climate crisis deniers. I think a reasonable retort is: how do you know there were countless high and low temperature phases? If you listened to overwhelming science for climate history why don't you agree with equally overwhelming science that we are the cause of the climate crisis?

lordnacho• 7 years ago

It's a funny kind of fooled by randomness, the argument that there is variation, so it wasn't caused by a specific effect.

Suppose Iceland were to win the World Cup. Would people be saying that Iceland had spent a bunch of effort training players, or would they be saying that it's natural for different teams to win, and that it had to happen eventually?

One major issue is that probability and statistics are very far down the pecking order of what is considered part of a good education. A huge number of people think "it varies randomly" means the same as "there's no way to know any more".

wolco4• 7 years ago

There is a growing number of people who were on board in 2007 but now are expressing doubts. I think support ebbs and flows depending on the weather/what movies are popular.

binarnosp• 7 years ago

"Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explains how the misinformation about climate change (and other topics) unfolded.

mturmon• 7 years ago

The former accuweather CEO was appointed to head the National Weather Service by Donald Trump.

This man had in the past lobbied to forbid the NWS from releasing weather data directly to the public, and gotten Rick Santorum (his home state senator) to propose a bill to that effect.

parsnips5• 7 years ago

I thought conflating climate and weather is what "deniers" do?

geddy3• 7 years ago

We're seeing record shattering temperatures in different parts of the world a lot this yet - yet the article doesn't even mention climate change. As long as we keep shoveling meat into our faces 5x per day and the population keeps expanding at break-neck rate, we have massive heatwaves and endless storms to look forward to. And then that road will come to an end, and it won't be pretty.

_Microft• 7 years ago

You're right about the meat but peak population growth rate was 50 years ago.

See: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Updated-World-Pop...

qntty2• 7 years ago

Rate could also mean people/year instead of %/year.

darepublic• 7 years ago

I guess editorializing on the causes of weather trends is not within the scope of AccuWeather?

aaronbrethorst• 7 years ago

Or that the family that runs Accuweather has been deeply enmeshed with the party of climate denialism for the past few decades. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-p...

geddy3• 7 years ago

Fair, but the mere mention of the phrase "climate change" is better than pretending it's some anomaly and we have no idea why.

I know, I know - I don't want to soapbox here. But we're spiraling towards disaster in our lifetimes and I can't help but think that hundreds of millions are blissfully unaware.

wolco4• 7 years ago

Calm down, there will be a war or virus or climate change itself will help us with the overpopulation problem.

If you killed every second person and planted a tree things will balance themselves out.

cowmoo7282• 7 years ago

You joke (I think) but that's the path we're headed down. I'm fully expecting over a billion people to die within my lifetime from disease, malnutrition, and war spurred by climate change. It's foolish to think humans are so different from other life that we won't have a population crash after such rapid growth.

EpicEng• 7 years ago

Are you volunteering?

parsnips5• 7 years ago

Conflate weather and climate, I thought that's what "deniers" do?

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

According to normal variations around the long term average, these kind of temperatures would be happening once every 50 or 100 years, but they are happening now every few years. There’s only so many times you can roll a six before you conclude the die is loaded, and you should really start worrying when the die starts rolling sevens!

bad_user2• 7 years ago

As long as we keep shoveling meat into our faces 5x per day

Right, because that's your biggest problem.

It couldn't be the fossil fuels used for transportation (29%) or the industry that produces the goods and the raw materials like cement (22%), the production of electricity (28%), or even the commercial and residential emissions (12%).

Oh no, our biggest problem has to be agriculture (9%). And let's not talk about the use of fertilizers, or of the transportation of food for thousands of miles before it reaches the table. Let's also not talk about the practice of burning crop residues, or of the seas of plastic.

The problem has to be meat and the solution is to shame meat eaters.

microtonal2• 7 years ago

The problem is everything. I sometimes have discussions with people about unnecessary flights. People always point out, that there is no need to change their flying habits as long as industry is producing even more CO2. The thing is that if we want to turn this around we have to change our behavior in everything. We need to radically adjust our travel patterns, our consumption patterns (why a new phone every 2 years?), our eating patterns, our energy sources, etc.

Unfortunately, I fear that it is too late to turn things around. Climate change has been a known serious problem for at least three to four decades. But politicians do not want to bring the bad news that we need to change our lives drastically in order to get their votes the next election.

But we should still try for future generations. No more holidays by plane. Switch to renewable energy. Live close to work and travel by bike or work remotely. And yes, perhaps eat a little less meat.

geddy3• 7 years ago

Yes, meat and meat eaters are a very big problem here. Not the only one as you pointed out, but look at is this way:

- Industrial regulations will take years if not forever to be reformed to offset the damage in that sector. You also have big money in keeping things "business as usual", so good luck with that. Things need to be made.

- Transportation: it will take years to get all the gasoline-fueled vehicles off the road, although there are some good strides being made here. However, the biggest issue is that electric cars are prohibitively expensive, and people still need to get to work.

- Production of electricity: again, good strides being made in this department but it's still years away. We need electricity.

- Meat eating: you, the people next to you, _everyone_ can immediately decide this very second to do their part. Here's the thing about food though - human beings don't need to eat meat. There is plenty of plant-based food out there and at this day and age and depending on your location, highly restricting your meat and dairy use is the easiest it's ever been.

Out of the list of issues you described contributing to climate change, the one you are annoyed at me for bringing up is the only one that you personally can fix, entirely by yourself. Yet, you choose not to, and I don't really understand why.

tl;dr: All those other issues require change at a massive level that the "average Joe" can't do a whole lot about. But eating no or less meat requires minimal effort, everyone can do it starting right this second, and it has a huge payoff. Not just on a climate impact scale, but on a global health level.

If people won't even make that first step that can be done for no effort, how do you think any of those huge issues will get figured out?

gilbetron• 7 years ago

Not only broke it, destroyed it: +2.2C (+4.0F). That's incredible, in a terrifying, "well, I guess this is going to happen" kind of way.

jandrese• 7 years ago

Terrifying in the "this is the new normal" sort of way.

parsnips5• 7 years ago

Really, when was the record set?

criddell3• 7 years ago

If every disaster contains opportunities, what are they here?

The obvious thing would be investing in green technology, but what else? Are HVAC equipment producers about to see a big uptick in sales?

sangnoir2• 7 years ago

Vast swathes of land in Russia that have been frigid are becoming arable. Lots of formerly inland properties will become seafront all around the world - invest wisely!

the_duke• 7 years ago

Probably. Much of Europe hasn't really needed AC until now.

It would often only have been really impactful for one or two weeks a year. Not really worth the investment.

With temperatures climbing this high, and being maintained for longer periods, I recently bought my first mobile AC unit and am thinking about installing a permanent one after the summer.

Sharlin• 7 years ago

Even in Finland where we’ve been mostly spared from >30° weather, portable AC units have been sold out for a couple of months now.

laobagua• 7 years ago

It's kind of ironic that when the Earth gets hot we turn on more devices that heat up the Earth (via CO2 emissions).

I don't have AC at home in the Bay Area -- when it gets hot I just go to a public air-conditioned space for the day.

maximente2• 7 years ago

i imagine real estate in Greenland is p. cheap - barley was grown there at one point, so there's that

blablabla123• 7 years ago

Green HVAC equipment ;)

starbugs4• 7 years ago

Aside from the direct opportunities making the problem even worse (sell millions of ACs) presented here already:

This is a serious opportunity for mankind to learn from its mistakes and become a sustainable society. Let's hope it doesn't take more than 100 years and half the population to do so.

kiliantics• 7 years ago

My hope is that this is taken as an opportunity to change the logic of our society's organisation away from endless growth and to end the calous, brutal exploitation of people and resources for the singular goal of profit.

stirfrykitty6• 7 years ago

Meanwhile here in Texas, that level of heat is business as usual. I get that most places in the EU don't have aircon, as they rarely need it, barring southern EU, which I have spent considerable amounts of time in. I far prefer the misty moors of England over anything with tons of sun.

Having grown up in Europe, I do prefer their weather when it's normal for them. If only I could convince my wife to move somewhere with a proper 4 seasons rather than this hideous backwater of heat and humidity.

tsneed290• 7 years ago

A major difference is most Texans make use of air conditioning. Paris largely does not.

stirfrykitty6• 7 years ago

And I mentioned same in my statement above. The entire lower half of the US would be largely unlivable without aircon. Even Alaska get 90+ in the summer, albeit for short bursts.

hestipod2• 7 years ago

Growing up in the US then living for quite some time in Europe it was initially weird for me to not see AC everywhere, but I quickly realized it was much more comfortable for me. Something about being in a cold building and then going out into a swamp heater just makes it more miserable. Maybe its slow acclimation or some subjective thing.

hestipod2• 7 years ago

Guess some Texans have seen your post ;) Not in TX myself but after a recent Texas-like heat/humidity wave I found myself thinking how much more energized and comfortable I felt after it left, but it was still subjectively quite a high temperature. Such oppressive heat really does affect your quality of life in a big way. I lived in Europe for many years without air conditioning and was never more than mildly uncomfortable on the worst days. There was something very different about the heat...it may be as simple as humidity levels, but it was not particularly dry where I lived and visited either. Here I don't see many days that would be tolerable without AC.

stirfrykitty6• 7 years ago

Good comment. I loathe Texas, but I'm here because of the wife and her family. I would prefer to live someplace where it's overcast 90% of the time, and where it rains at least twice a week. I also prefer snow on the ground for a couple of months. Here in the Houston area, the heat, humidity, insects, and sheer amounts of concrete all contribute to the lack of comfort. Moreover, there are too many people here all shoved into a space that really cannot accommodate them.

ilikehurdles5• 7 years ago

Good luck! My wife and I were fond of Texas (well... really only Austin and select parts of Houston) -- but I was more fond of having four seasons than anything Austin had to offer. A move to Boston convinced her pretty easily and since then we're both on the same page about sticking to places with similar climates. We would love to see our friends in Texas more but ever moving back is a very hard no, both due to weather and politics.

I also grew up in Europe for a few years at least.

b_tterc_p• 7 years ago

Do heatwaves pose a threat to local fauna and flora?

boudewijnrempt• 7 years ago

Yes, irrepairable damage in fact. And it's already done near where I live, in the eastern part of the Netherlands

xyzzy_plugh• 7 years ago

Yes, they can be devistating to agriculture as well. Animals are just as susceptible to heat stroke and dehydration.

Plants are of course similarly susceptible to extreme temperatures. There are tactics farmers can apply such as coating their crops but there are limits.

atourgates• 7 years ago

This is highly dependent on the crop, and when in the plant's growth cycle the heat comes.

For example, crops like wheat benefit from a hot dry period when they get close to harvest time. Same for some vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

The challenge isn't so much that high heat (to an extent) and agriculture is incompatible, it's that unexpected high-heat, or high heat at unexpected times can be damaging.

Don't think that I'm downplaying the risk of climate change to agriculture, there are plenty of very serious negative effects that climate change will have on agriculture, but warmer temperatures on their own, at least at this range, aren't directly a huge issue if they're expected.

saalweachter2• 7 years ago

One thing that should worry you in particular is that there is a temperature range photosynthesis happens in, and that temperature range ends at about 40C.

This isn't necessarily an immediate problem for plants, because plants store extra calories generated from photosynthesis for future use, and when the temperature is too hot they can switch from photosynthesis to respiration, consuming their stored sugars for energy. During this time, plants become net producers of CO2 instead of net consumers, taking in oxygen, burning their sugars (in the same slow chemical burn we use) and releasing the CO2 at the end.

This is an immediate concern for us, because those stored calories are what we wanted to eat. Plants may survive higher temperatures, but they produce fewer stored calories in the form of delicious fruits, vegetables and grains for us to eat. Climate change is complicated for agriculture, but extra days above (or close to) 40C is just bad, bad, bad.

maxlamb• 7 years ago

For sure: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-france-fore...

morsch• 7 years ago

Sure. For example, local river fish start dying at 28C. The Rhine is now at 26C.

ilikehurdles5• 7 years ago

Warm seas kill coral reefs, and ecosystems depend on these coral reefs for sustenance and protection (hard for a colorful fish to camouflage itself in a bleached reef). It's also allowing Jelly Fish colonies to multiply out of control, which are pretty much devoid of nutritional value.

vbuwivbiu3• 7 years ago

Climate Crisis

Any news source that reports "record-breaking temperatures" is, deliberately or not, making these dangerously increasing temperatures sound like a good thing.

This extreme heat is costing us $$$

chapium• 7 years ago

I missed the part where "deadly heat wave" was a framed as a good thing.

vbuwivbiu3• 7 years ago

that's my point: many news sources are framing it as a good thing by not calling it what it is: a deadly heat wave

kbenson• 7 years ago

No, record-breaking means it broke a record. If it was used almost exclusively for positive things, you might have a point, but it is routinely used for negative things as well. For example, "storm" is the third most related topic based on Google trends.[1]

1: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=record-breaking&g...

vbuwivbiu3• 7 years ago

There's no universal law that declares it has to be reported as such

kareeeem• 7 years ago

Climate change isn’t disputed by logic. It’s being disputed by the commercial entities that are protecting their $billion/$trillion industries who, otherwise, would have to face big losses. We all know the industries that are negatively impacting the environment. Their selfish stakeholders have managed to successfully create a reality distortion field of denial. This article, with lack of mentioning global warming, is proof.

saalweachter2• 7 years ago

It's disputed by the argument to consequences.

"If climate change were happening, we would feel morally compelled to control our CO2 emissions; we don't want to control our CO2 emissions, therefore, climate change must not be happening."

DuskStar6• 7 years ago

"If climate change was happening and a massive problem, we would be morally obligated to advocate for the most effective methods of prevention - no matter their side effects. Nuclear, geoengineering, a carbon tax, making sure that Africa never industrializes - everything would be on the table. Since we don't like those solutions, climate change must not be that large of a problem."

They aren't as bad as the Republicans, but let's not try and pretend that the Democrats are particularly great either. If the Green New Deal is what they'd actually attempt to do, we're fucked.

jbob2000• 7 years ago

The real problem is pension funds. And when you look at who's benefiting from the pension funds, you'll see another problem; People aren't dying and the pension funds are being asked to fund way more than they expected to. We have hoards of people who haven't worked in 40 years still getting paid out of a pension that expected to pay them for 20.

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

At this point fossil fuel investments carry a significant long term financial risk. Pensions funds shouldn’t be involved in that kind of investment.

jhayward• 7 years ago

We have hoards [sic] of people who haven't worked in 40 years still getting paid out of a pension that expected to pay them for 20

Citation needed. I don't know of many 90- to 100- year old people collecting pensions.

There are some professions, mainly police/military, that permit retirement after 20 years of service. Those pensions are managed to expect longer payout periods albeit using the actuarial stats of their members which are not the same as the general population.

gridlockd2• 7 years ago

It's pretty short-sighted to blame individual companies for providing what the people want: Affordable energy and transportation.

You see what happens if you drive up prices for gasoline in France: People start rioting in the streets.

If you had gasoline prices like that in the US, whole states would stop functioning.

Also, most CO2 emissions are from countries where people are far poorer than in developed nations. Are you expecting them to become even poorer?

If you don't have a solution to these economic concerns, don't be surprised when world leaders adopt a "devil may care" attitude.

aaron_m04• 7 years ago

Yes! Any solution that screws over the bottom strata of society is no solution at all. We need their cooperation, and they won't be willing to help if we're shitting on them.

kgabis• 7 years ago

Please see https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/10/CO2-emissions-by-....

86% of CO2 emissions are created by people in upper-middle income and high income groups.

mettamage2• 7 years ago

Pro tip for people who do not have airconditioning in their houses:

1. Go to universities

2. Go to co-working spaces

Go to any place to flee the heat.

I'm at my university right now, and I'm not even noticing it's as hot as it is since the airconditioning is doing an amazing job here.

floatrock• 7 years ago

I know you're in triage mode helping the immediately-affected get safe, but given the climate change undercurrents of all this, a statement like

I'm not even noticing it's as hot as it is since the airconditioning is doing an amazing job here.

...just leaves a frustrating and poor taste.

What's powering all that air conditioning? It's not free.

Get safe now, but don't lose sight that it's all inter-related.

post_break• 7 years ago

If your alternative is to just stay hot, it doesn't really help. Those places will be in AC whether this person goes there or not.

markkanof• 7 years ago

Solar power?

mettamage2• 7 years ago

Fair point, but like a sibling comment already stated: I cannot convince my uni to stop using AC in the short-term. So then better use it.

The climate change issue in the long-term is gripping me. What are we — as mostly programmers — doing about it. Why isn’t FAANG doing something? For pure problem solvers this seems like a juicy problem to sink your teeth into.

amfsn• 7 years ago

Shopping centres. You can even have a beer! :D

AdamJacobMuller• 7 years ago

French energy company EDF stated that it would shut down two nuclear reactors in an attempt to limit the amount of heating water used to keep the reactors cool at Golftech nuclear power plant.

I don't see why that would be a necessary or even good thing? Surely they must have higher demand for power from AC loads with the heat, even if AC isn't quite as prevalent in the EU as the US.

purerandomness• 7 years ago

France is EU's top energy exporter [0]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/france-electricity/french-20...

supertrope• 7 years ago

They just don’t have the cooling capacity on the hottest days.

Brakenshire6• 7 years ago

Because reactors need a lot of water as coolant, and they were designed with assumptions about how high the temperature of the water would be, which are now being broken. They started building that reactor in 1982, before they understood that temperatures were in the process of rising 1.5C (up to now).

nraynaud• 7 years ago

The more accurate answer is that to not cook everything downstream they are forbidden from releasing to hot a water. If the upstream is already hot, they have no margin to not cook the fish downstream so they close shop. (It’s a bit more complicated since it depends also on the River size, but the main factor is downstream temp.)

mrec• 7 years ago

I don't know about France, but domestic AC is almost unknown in the UK.

I wonder if "heating water" implies that coolant is being plumbed through buildings to heat them, which could be dangerous to the occupants of those buildings if they were already too hot. Or maybe France is suffering a drought at the moment.

AlphaGeekZulu• 7 years ago

The nuclear reactor of Grohnde in Lower Saxony, Germany is also currently being shut down. Like many reactors this one depends on a river (River Weser) for cooling. The water temperature of the Weser will reach 26° Celsius by tomorrow, which is a threshold value for serious damage to the ecosystem along the riverside – so the decision was made to not let the reactor contribute to further heatup of the river. The shut down is expected to last until sunday or monday.

pcdavid• 7 years ago

It's necessary because the water used to cool reactors is rejected in rivers. In normal circumstances the temperature increase this causes is under control, but right now it risks endangering the wildlife in said rivers.

_ph_• 7 years ago

It is not a good thing. Just another piece of infrastructure affected by the heat. And a problem to solve - the higher the average temperature, the more limitations on cooling power plants with river water.

teabee89• 7 years ago

This was done to prevent badly affecting the ecosystem of the rivers. The water from the river is used to cool down the plant, but the resulting warm water is poured back into the river. The temperature of the water going back to the river is carefully monitored and during heat waves it may be decided to shut down the plant. By the way this is not specific to nuclear at all, coal plants work the same, but France is the major exception in the world with 74% electricity coming from nuclear, and most of the rest coming from dams (extremely low carbon footprint for electricity). Some plant designs only use closed-circuit cooling which doesn't have this problem. The towers people usually associate with nuclear plants, is in fact a cooling tower that uses the air to cool the water. Again despite popular belief, these cooling towers are not just for nuclear, they are also used for coal plants (any thermal power plant)

hleszek• 7 years ago

In 2014, there was a fake weather report to imagine what would the temperature be in 2050.

https://www.rtbf.be/info/medias/detail_canicule-un-bulletin-...

Seems like we are 30 years too early

olivermarks2• 7 years ago

http://www.weatheraction.com/resource/data/wact1/docs/PiersC... Piers Corbyn's latest (June 22nd) deck

etrautmann• 7 years ago

well that's disturbing but interesting to be aware of. I'm surprised that this doesn't innately trigger any reader's quack detector

olivermarks2• 7 years ago

We are bombarded daily with hysteria about the world ending due to climate change caused by humans. There are lots of opposing views but they are almost invariably laughed off because 'it's been decided'. I'm on the fence about Corbyn but he's serious enough to warrant attention

pjc50• 7 years ago

Piers CORBYN is a timecube level nutcase and climate change denier.

rb808• 7 years ago

I like the viewpoint that while yes its the hottest summer for the last few decades, its also the coolest summer for the next few decades.

chewz2• 7 years ago

It is actually pretty cold July here in Poland, after hot June. Few nights before I have used electric blanket. We have northern circulation for 4th week.

tehjoker• 7 years ago

Cut the military and substantially cut emissions. Consumer decisions aren't up to this task: consumers accept what is sold to them, and what is sold is driven by profitability - the ability to make something that can be made exclusive and sold repeatedly. That is a requirement which walls off most good ideas and forces unlimited consumption of natural resources.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s...

codegrappler• 7 years ago

For me it’s easy to accept that climate change is happening but predicting what will unfold in the next 30-50 years seems nearly impossible. Humans have historically been bad at predicting what will happen even 20-30 years in the future. The media is even worse (https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-in...). Articles can be found from at least the sixties predicting the end of the earth in X years due to climate change. Can you really blame people for being skeptical given what they’ve been told over the years? On top of that, climate change isn’t the only existential threat that humanity faces. How do you rank its importance, and thus the level of focus and resourcing it gets, relative to other threats? I understand that we shouldn’t do nothing. I also understand that some of the extreme climate change proposals likely over estimate the magnitude of the problem.

elcomet• 7 years ago

I think a lot of proposals actually underestimate by far the magnitude of the problem.

pojzon• 7 years ago

Look at it this way. In 1970 some scientists predicted how bad climate change will influence the Earth in 50 years.

50 years passed and their predictions in some areas match current state and in some preconditions failed because they did not think it will be THAT BAD.

Based on that I know it will be either what they say now or it will be way worse..

Ps. Im talking about the scientists which were hired by oil companies to create prediction maps.

sp332• 7 years ago

Some of that was misinformation spread by Exxon, whose scientists predicted global warming fairly well (as a global average anyway) 40 years ago. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... So the real science is not as fickle as was reported.

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