World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/08/climate-world-surpasses-key-warming-threshold-across-an-entire-year.html

by croes • 2 years ago

95 156 2 years ago

cnbc.com

swader999• 2 years ago

So tell me how they actually measured global mean temp back in 1850?

chefkoch6• 2 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_rec...

barelyauser• 2 years ago

There are things called 'proxies'. The same way you can assess the crime rate of a certain area by the amount of littering by the side of the road.

vdaea• 2 years ago

The same way you can assess the crime rate of a certain area by the amount of littering by the side of the road.

You mean incorrectly?

Also, if I had to guess, proxies that show global warming to be bad are widely publicised, whilst proxies that show global warming not to occur are ignored.

tromp• 2 years ago

With help from sea sponges as recently discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39268387

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

More discussion on the sponges and ocean warming: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39275272

defrost3• 2 years ago

With instrumentation across the globe at naval timekeeping stations of the various European empires - much of which persisted for a hundred years and thus overlapped with later instruments and broader coverage which allowed for levelling and blending.

It's essentially a "construct your baseline" problem faced in many domains, the Fifth and other IPCC reports:

    This IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C uses the reference period 1850–1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature.

    This is the earliest period with near-global observations and is the reference period used as an approximation of preindustrial temperatures in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

 ~ IPCC FAQ: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/SR15_FAQ_Low_Res.pdf

and naturally there are many papers that consider alternate baselines, data quality, proxies, etc. eg:

Estimating Changes in Global Temperature since the Preindustrial Period (2017)

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/98/9/bams-d-...

^^ Discussed in brief: https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2017/defining-pre-industr...

atleastoptimal3• 2 years ago

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

cowpig• 2 years ago

Can you connect the dots a bit more than that? To me this just sounds like self-serving hand-waving.

atleastoptimal3• 2 years ago

Technological innovation allows the same amount of consumption with far less collateral impact. For example, before AC, electrification required 1000x more wire than it does now. Streets were covered in poles and electrical wire. Cars produced far more and worse pollution. Every technological innovation in the aim of efficiency reduces the negative collateral impact of human civilization. Likewise, more recently, the lowered cost of solar, EV's, etc are all made possible through forward-thinking innovation.

padjo• 2 years ago

How on earth is AI going to help?

atleastoptimal3• 2 years ago

AGI will make the economy far more efficient, increase the rate of scientific innovation, etc. For example, some ancestor of alphafold could spark a revolution in genetic engineering, creating crops which are far more efficient and resilient, etc.

odiroot• 2 years ago

It will deliver great shareholder value.

gniv• 2 years ago

[Deleted the comment. Seems like I unwittingly answered a rhetorical question.]

moffkalast3• 2 years ago

A race of machines doesn't need to eat food, drink water, breathe clean air, and doesn't die from wet bulb temperatures. I bet it's a lot easier to build nuclear reactors when radiation poisoning doesn't matter. The perfect candidate for carrying our cultural torch forward.

micromacrofoot• 2 years ago

this is how we got into this mess in the first place!

Scarblac• 2 years ago

The IPCC models require both, so use a lot less energy to get to get to net zero by 2050 and then a period of some decades where we emit net negative CO2 through tech, to keep the planet somewhat liveable.

Tech alone takes too long to develop, if it is feasible at all.

Phenomenit• 2 years ago

Yeah doing more of the thing that screwed everything up is usually the best solution. /s

junek• 2 years ago

This is magical thinking

timeon• 2 years ago

New technologies have not helped yet. Just covered part of increased demand. So it doesn't seem like technology is going to save us.

It is all just distraction. Only way is one that will never happen: de-growth.

gorjusborg3• 2 years ago

I agree, except I am pretty sure de-growth will happen, it just will not be under voluntary or controlled conditions.

wongarsu7• 2 years ago

Per-capita emissions of most developed nations like the US and Germany peaked in the 1970s and 80s. Some of the "improvement" has been the outsourcing of polluting industries, but we are also more efficient today than we were back then. Agriculture evolved a lot, buildings became a lot more energy efficient, waste management improved, etc.

Of course for decades this has been offset by population growth even in those nations. And that's not accounting for the parts of the world where populations exploded due to better agriculture, medicine and trade. If we had time to let it play out for another 200 years without climate issues we might be fine. Sadly we don't.

changoplatanero2• 2 years ago

Is degrowth even enough to save the planet from warming? Imagine 95% of people on earth magically disappeared. Have we already emitted enough co2 that the atmosphere will continue to warm for a long time even without those people’s new emissions?

maccard• 2 years ago

New technologies have not helped yet. Just covered part of increased demand. So it doesn't seem like technology is going to save us.

Those two statements are in direct conflict. Look at these two graphs, one for UK CO2 emissions [0] and the other for England's population [1] (Sorry I couldn't get a UK population graph, but to the best of my understanding they're proportional). Population is up 20%, CO2 emissions are down 50%. If that's not technology helping, I don't know what it is.

It is all just distraction. Only way is one that will never happen: de-growth.

Disagree. We have plenty of resources, we're just incredibly, incredibly wasteful with them.

Here in the UK, there is a group trying to advocate for insulating houses who are being met with "it's too hard, it's too expensive, insulation doesn't work, causes damp, heat pumps don't work in -24c, it's a ploy from the government to limit our resource usage", but the reality of the situation is that slapping up insulated plasterboard on the inside of half of the UK's homes and putting a trickle vent on the window would save an enormous amout of CO2 and make people more comfortable. There are loans and grants available for those who can't quite afford it, and for those who absolutely can't afford it it's often done for free (yes there's a gap in the middle, but honestly we can deal with them when we've dealt with the other two categories), and yet still people won't do it.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/449503/co2-emissions-uni... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/975956/population-of-eng...

smokel• 2 years ago

You might want to read up on Jevons Paradox [1].

Also, be warned that the term "accelerationism" is being used by different parties, with quite opposing intentions.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

gitfan86• 2 years ago

Why can't humanity survive an increase in 10 degrees? I understand polar bears or other animals that need specific levels of Ice or vegetation in specific areas, but humans are an extremely adaptive species.

Edit: I'm getting a lot of responses. It seems like there is a general misunderstanding of what happened during the previous ice age. Humans existed during the previous ice age and humanity survived a major increase in temperature. Obviously any tribe or culture that needed to be able to walk across the bearing straight didn't survive, but humanity did. And without any modern technology.

I get that an unknown future is scary, but just giving into the gloom and doom isn't productive. We need to increase out technologies for many reasons, not just climate change and we can survive and thrive, even if the world will be different that doesn't mean it will be terrible.

blueflow3• 2 years ago

If humans can survive in Australia, Humanity surely will survive the climate change.

OwseiWT• 2 years ago

floods, droughts and that kind of stuff. I'll will not die on a 40c heat, but some may, and the consequences on other systems will also affect me.

The panama canal, the lake more specifically, is drying up because of this stuff. And ~40% of US cargo ships use it.

changoplatanero2• 2 years ago

Human beings as a species surviving seems possible. The modern world economy surviving seems much less likely. And without a modern economy then much of the population will die.

SketchySeaBeast3• 2 years ago

Because it wouldn't be just a 10 degree (not sure where this number is coming from) average increase. It's a 10 degree average as calculated across an entire world full of extremes.

A 10 degree average is a huge increase in energy in the system, and that energy will be expressed in all sorts of ways. It'll be colder in winter due to an erratic jetstream pulling cold air down further than ever before, hurricanes will be bigger because of all that extra energy, summer storms will have that much more potential and the clouds will be able to hold way more water before bursting. But also because the atmosphere can hold more water it'll rain less, leading to drought.

The whole system will be energized, and the energy won't be evenly distributed. Our natural disasters will be massive.

boxed9• 2 years ago

The previous ice age was 4 degrees below preindustrial. Just for scale.

wenebego• 2 years ago

Humans require other animals or vegetation to consume for energy

astrospective• 2 years ago

There’s going to be more moisture in the air, wet bulb temperature is gets deadly at much lower temperatures than dry, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need...

tgv• 2 years ago

Have you seen what 10 degrees difference did to the world some 20k years ago? Now double the change from the last ice age to today. 60% of the Earth will be desert. The polar caps will be gone. It will be impossible to sustain 8 billion people. Billions will die. Humanity survives, but at what cost?

adamwong2463• 2 years ago

Such an event would render swaths of the planet truly uninhabitable and much more land un-farmable. Humanity must abandon the tropics entirely. Every costal city is now 300 feet underwater. Billions die in mass migrations and wars on a scale hitherto unseen. The ecosystem of the planet is ravaged by this rapid change, being unable to evolve quickly enough to adapt. The life that remains is agriculture that directly sustains the few human survivors. Scientific progress halts entirely. The ultra-rich retreat into their enclaves while what remains of humanity regresses into Morlocks.

In short, 10 degrees should be regarded as apocalyptic. It would turn back human progress by millennia, and the state of planet would not return to "normal" for several millennia more, if ever. Perhaps for a century or two some outposts in greenland cling to survival but over the longest term, it's not clear if humanity can survive such conditions. Perhaps we can adapt to this terrible "new normal" but our ancestors will tell myths about "The Earth that Was". Their children will marvel at the idea that Earth once had "wildlife". They will tell cautionary tales about their foolish and near-sighted predecessors who had inherited a garden of eden and but destroyed it to fuel their insatiable appetites.

lm284696• 2 years ago

Its not like we won't survive, it's more like moving from your New York 100k/month penthouse to a tent under an LA highway ramp. You can still live/eat/sleep/&c. it's just a bit less nice

thelastgallon5• 2 years ago

The temperature is a metric of energy in the system. 10 degrees means a significantly more energy in the system. This energy manifests as weather events. No infrastructure in any climate will be left standing with that change. We already see extreme events increasing.

And, lookup wet bulb temperature.

Humans usually regulate their internal body temperature by sweating, but above the wet-bulb temperature, we can no longer cool down this way, leading our body temperature to rise steadily. This essentially marks a limit to human adaptability to extreme heat – if we cannot escape the conditions, our body’s core can rise beyond the survivable range and organs can start failing: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need...

gmuslera2• 2 years ago

Dealing with very complex and large systems is hard, probably harder than our knowledge will be capable of this century, even if we keep accelerating.

That is the world system, climate, life, cycles, feedback loops, and many other things that we probably are not aware yet (just check the number of recent discoveries to have a hint) as a very complex and interrelated system. Trying to have an "engineering" there and not just messing with it to see what happens is beyond our capabilities. And our side of messing with it so far has not been preservation or austerity or whatever, just is making profits, and avoid putting a finger on that.

Then you have the human system, that is also complex, interrelated and fragile in ways that the many big powers that mess with it doesn't understand. That is not something that you can control in a directed way neither.

So you have an accelerating car, a cliff, and a lot of inertia you are not trying to register, and a lot of fragile things inside packed in unsafe ways. No matter the damage that does to start to stop right now, it won't be anything similar to what it will cause to crash, or to try to manoeuvre desperately when you are close enough. With all the consequences on a very complex system that something as dramatic will cause (that, as complex is it, can't be put a safe upper bound)

But somewhat you suggest that we keep accelerating that surely that cliff can be jumped over because we will be so fast that we will be flying, or it is not so deep and we will keep going safely on the other side. Is a nice bet for a basically suicidal individual, but not for a civilization with a lot of people that want to have a meaning for their life.

boxed9• 2 years ago

Trying to have an "engineering" there and not just messing with it to see what happens is beyond our capabilities.

That's what we're doing with the CO2 emissions though. So it's not beyond us, we just do it badly.

jodrellblank• 2 years ago

But do you have a better idea? If you want meaning for people’s lives that rules out mass death and dictator demanded planet-wide austerity and reduction in lifestyle down to subsistence - even if anyone could enforce that, which is something people would go to war to defend themselves against. If you individually choose to consume less and own less that’s not enough to make a difference. Has there ever been a time in history where the world has deliberately returned to an earlier state in a positive and successful way (not war or disease setbacks) to model such a thing on, and in a way more planned than your “messing with it to see what happens”?

If we don’t pursue the same as we have now but less damaging and trying to reverse the damage, what else could we do that’s possible and not awful?

_Algernon_6• 2 years ago

This won't work simply due to induced demand.

We spend something like 2000x less energy per unit of light now than we did burning whale fat in the 1800s and all the energy saved energy simply goes into producing more light.

Hoping for technology to solve this mess is the same as hoping that adding an additional lane to a congested highway will solve traffic. It won't.

boxed9• 2 years ago

That's just wrong on so many levels. First of all, creating light is irrelevant to the problem at hand. Secondly, LEDs have made your statement outright false as there's no one who lives in a house that packs their home with light enough to spend that energy budget AND KEEPS THEM ON AT NIGHT. Because they would GO BLIND.

So that's just the light thing. 100% wrong.

Saying technology can't solve the problem is speculative, as technology is a moving target. You just can't know what problems it can solve until it's too late and the problems are already solved.

thelastgallon5• 2 years ago

AI is power hungry, AI will accelerate carbon emissions. Expected ICT projects by 2030, energy demand will be 20%. This paper was before AI. If this is revised with the AI demand growth projections, its quite possibly a lot more. If Sam Altman starts on his $7T chip plan, that alone will add 10 - 20%.

[1] Chasing Carbon: The Elusive Environmental Footprint of Computing: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02839.pdf

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563

yodsanklai• 2 years ago

There's no hope simply through technology either. No technology in sight can address this issue, and certainly not in this time frame. And climate change is only one symptom, and maybe not the most worrying on. The root cause is constant growth in a finite world. It can't work.

mcdonje• 2 years ago

We already have the solutions. We need to act. We can't pin our hopes on future options when the crisis is now and we're not using current options.

We need to stop using fossil fuels. Full stop. Nuclear and renewables. Trains and EVs.

We need to sequester carbon. Reforest the US east of the Mississippi. Make Ohio look like Vermont. Do the same in all other previously deforested areas. Dense cities and towns, great natural expanses, farms, and nothing else. Sprawl is killing us.

wongarsu7• 2 years ago

The findings do not represent a break of the landmark Paris Agreement, which aims to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels” over the long term.

It seems safe to say we are now locked in to a path that will break the Paris Agreement, unless "long term" includes space sunshades, scattering reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, or other similarly drastic geoengineering solutions.

chefkoch6• 2 years ago

I guess at some point we will start geoengineering which will either work or kill a lot of people.

boxed9• 2 years ago

We already do massive geoengineering. That's what all that CO2 is doing! We're just doing it incompetently.

polotics• 2 years ago

Looks like this is already documented: Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson.

jowea12• 2 years ago

Is there a point to starting geoengineering after the situation is already disastrous? Because that's the only case I see it happening.

The big advantage is that it could be done unilaterally.

boxed9• 2 years ago

I don't like the word "drastic" here. It's very much less drastic than what we are already doing. In fact, it's much less drastic.

I like to say: There is no longer a choice of playing God or not, only a choice of playing a competent or incompetent God.

shafyy2• 2 years ago

You know what would be less drastic? Fucking stop emitting as much carbon. Solutions are there: Less livestock farming, less cars, less flights, less production of unnecessary products. Now, can we convince enough people to change their behavior just by telling them to do it? No, of course not. But what works really well is controlling people's behavior via consumer prices. This means, make animal products more expensive, make gas more expensive, make cities pedestrian and bike-friendly so people can get around without cars, make fast fashion more expensive.

But of course nobody wants this, because the politicans and people voting for them are also fucking babies that start whining if they can't fucking fly across the world just for fun twice a year. God forbid they need to eat one meal without a fucking dead animal in it.

Excuse my language, but FUCK trying to find "maybe" futuristical technological solution to problems we know we can solve right now, right today.

But of course, VCs and other motherfuckers can't make money this way.They can make money if they invest in a direct air capture startups that will never work, but then get the fuck out of there and cash out. They are out there building underground bunkers while they have you believe that technology will solve our problems. IT WILL NOT.

magicalhippo• 2 years ago

It seems safe to say we are now locked in to a path that will break the Paris Agreement

I've been of the opinion that this was obvious from the day the Paris agreement was signed, and should be absolutely no surprise to anyone.

Not saying we shouldn't try, more energy makes for more extreme weather which is not great.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

Related/Dupe yesterday:

First year-long breach of key 1.5C warming limit

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39297490

Fornax962• 2 years ago

We're doomed. News like this drains my motivation to do anything at all, because it might all be for nothing anyway.

AnonCoward42• 2 years ago

What is it exactly for?

bibelo• 2 years ago

I truly agree. What's the point of learning JS when the Internet might collapse in the next 3 years?

Not sci-fi. Center of Spain is in severe drought at this early point of the year. People can't take showers. What will next year be?

smeej3• 2 years ago

I don't want this to sound dismissive, but aren't we all "doomed" in the end anyway? How long does anything we do have an impact anyway? A generation? Two? Five? How many individual people have had an impact on the world five or more generations after they've died, as a percentage of the total population?

Were all those other people's lives meaningless?

I think you're grappling with a fundamental aspect of being mortal, not just one related to the climate.

Fornax962• 2 years ago

The hardest part for me to accept is that there are so many people who just don't care. Not about the disasters, the climate refugees, the death toll, the extinction of thousands of species, respiratory diseases, etc.

How can people just accept all that as a fact of life when it's all man-made horrors?

jowea12• 2 years ago

Not the previous poster but it could feel meaningless if you really sincerely think civilization is doomed. At least with optimism for the future you can feel like you mattered to the people close to you, or you were a good cog in a great machine, or you lived a happy life and so will your successors.

Even with daily life, if you think your own life is going to worsen in the future no matter what you do, won't that demotivate you today?

FreelanceX• 2 years ago

There is no such thing as "doomed". Humanity is not going to disappear. We can either do better or worse, and there really is no limit to the "worse" side.

bloopernova2• 2 years ago

If predictions of 8 to 10 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century are true, then humanity is absolutely doomed.

paulsutter2• 2 years ago

Like most media coverage, the article omits the primary cause of the recent acceleration in warming - desulphurization of ship fuel

“ the IMO2020 fuel change cut cloud tracks in key shipping lanes by half...this has a substantial effect on warming, concentrated in areas with heavy shipping activity like the North Atlantic. The reduction in reflective cloud cover over this region, plus an unrelated reduction in reflective airborne dust levels, can account for most of the warming observed in the North Atlantic”

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/low-sulfur-fuel-r...

raverbashing• 2 years ago

While that does have an effect, the record temperatures are not only located on the northern Atlantic, but on the whole planet

vixen992• 2 years ago

It's questionable how much the Tonga eruption which sent an 'Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere' has had on the climate. Some temporary warming was certainly predicted and this would be global.

_Algernon_6• 2 years ago

Does this change anything? It is the warming that is harmful, not the cause of it.

paulsutter2• 2 years ago

Yes, this change is reversible

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/06/06/we-should-not-...

“How do we keep the world cool for the next few decades while we upgrade our industry to a post-carbon world and scale up CO2 removal? It does us no good to be stable at 350 ppm by 2060 if we’ve already lost Greenland, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and 7 m + 4 m of coastline respectively”

moffkalast3• 2 years ago

Yes, and we need to start putting that sulfur or something equivalent up there again as soon as possible.

This is textbook geoengineering and people are wary of it because once you start with it, the environment becomes dependent on it to maintain balance. And like with someone addicted to a drug, there will be withdrawal symptoms if you stop abruptly. It's really funny that we've been doing it all along but never realized it.

defrost3• 2 years ago

Partial cause but not primary.

The largest kick to recent activity has been the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) swing.

Expect high temps for a few years and then some slight relief before things rachet up again.

jmyeet• 2 years ago

Sure but for a brief period we created an awful lot of shareholder value.

In all seriousness, I expect the next century to be devastating. We will start to see massive climate-related migration and the resulting genocide and death as a result. Famine, war, natural disasters, that sort of thing.

Here's how I think the ultra-wealthy will shape the world: massive depopulation with people essentially reduced to indentured serfdom with employment largely being maintenance of massive estates. Any kind of class mobility will essentially be gone. That is the future so many are (unwittingly or not) working towards.

xyst• 2 years ago

We are the worst stewards of this planet.

Suzuran• 2 years ago

We aren't the stewards by any means. We are an invasive species existing in a bubble. Climate change is the planet healing itself of us.

argiopetech• 2 years ago

We're the only stewards of this planet, learning in real time, with imperfect or completely absent communication among individuals.

I'd say things are going pretty well, considering the pace of change.

World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

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