2016 Will Be the Hottest Year On Record, UN Says (theguardian.com)

2016 will very likely be the hottest year on record and a new high for the third year in a row, according to the UN. It means 16 of the 17 hottest years on record will have been this century. From an article on The Guardian:The scorching temperatures around the world, and the extreme weather they drive, mean the impacts of climate change on people are coming sooner and with more ferocity than expected, according to scientists. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, published on Monday at the global climate summit in Morocco, found the global temperature in 2016 is running 1.2C above pre-industrial levels. This is perilously close to to the 1.5C target included as an aim of the Paris climate agreement last December. The El Nino weather phenomenon helped push temperatures even higher in early 2016 but the global warming caused by the greenhouse gas emissions from human activities remains the strongest factor.

Comments

How to prevent it? Raise taxes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Raising taxes makes it get colder out.

Re:How to prevent it? Raise taxes!

[JoeyRox]

Raising taxes doesn't make it colder out but the system of cap-and-trade (which most call taxes) does create financial incentives/disincentives to account for the environmental cost of using polluting sources of energy. Absent that system, power companies and manufacturers will use the cheapest source of energy they can find, which usually correlates to the most polluting source of energy. For those who think this interferes with the free market, Milton Friedman was a proponent of a cap-and-trade system and he was a staunch supporter of the free market with near-zero governmental interference.

Re:How to prevent it? Raise taxes!

[JoeyRox]

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/ghost-milton-friedman-endorses-price-carbon

And in case you don't believe what's written, here it is from Milton's own mouth - discussion at 2:08 into the video, and he comments on taxing pollution at 3:08:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH0O_JjH06k

Re:How to prevent it? Raise taxes!

[bmo]

A supposedly free market depends on fully informed consumers and producers both making rational choices for their own interests.

Just look at that statement. Look at the assumptions built into it. Tell me that's not a lot of horse shit. Information imbalance always existed. People are hardly rational. Free markets never existed, even when humanity consisted of 300 or so person pre-metal tribes.

And then Led Zeppelin came along.

But seriously, a free market is like a unicorn, with wings and the whole nine yards - a unicorn can be described, even painted, animated, carved into wood/stone/titanium, and stories and games written around it, but it doesn't exist and never will. Just like a free market.

It is a figment of imagination and always will be. The fact that so many believe that it's a real thing says that a lot of people are willing to believe bullshit. It's not a fact. It's a religion. It's like believing that My Little Pony Friendship is Magic is a documentary. Rational adults know better.

--
BMO

Re:How to prevent it? Raise taxes!

[bmo]

A 'science' built on false assumptions is what we call a pseudo-science. Much like homeopathy.

>what friedman says

Friedman can go piss up a rope. I read his book "the world is flat" and I have come to the conclusion that he entirely believes his own bullshit. Which is what it is. He argues that capital /should/ be fungible and it's a great thing that it is. The problem is that people aren't. There is no such thing as the free movement of people which is what you'd expect in a true free-market where capital is allocated.

And he sees none of his views as harmful. So he can go fuck himself with his own book.

>what we can do

Deal with the market as it is, instead of trying to do it through gedankenexperiments-as-religion based upon nonsense.

They (economists like Friedman) keep trying to make Economics a hard science, when it's not - it's a soft science at best like Sociology. It's not physics and will never be like physics.

But they will keep trying, and getting people to buy their tomes. Because witchcraft still sells.

--
BMO

2016, old calendar

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 1, in the Trump Revolutionary Calendar. It's the 15th of Trumptember.

Re:2016, old calendar

[phantomfive]

Oh, wake me up, when Trumptember ends!

Glad President Sanders taking action on this

[WillAffleckUW]

Luckily for all we Americans, President Bernie Sanders has committed to taking action on global warming, saving the coastal states from massive floods and storms, and ending the massive subsidies for inefficient fossil fuels like coal and oil, while transitioning our workforce to higher paying jobs in solar and wind installation and maintenance, jobs that are 1000 times more than any propping up of a dying fossil fuel pipeline would be.

We dodged one when that Trump guy lost. That was close.

Re:uhm...

[quantaman]

UN is a political organization. Or is that in question? It's not a scientific organization. Why should anyone care what a political organization have to say about any particular scientific question? By the very nature of politics, the organization must prioritize its political agenda over unbiased fact-finding.

Of course when it comes from a scientific group you'll just discount it because it doesn't represent all scientists, or whatever group of dissident scientists you found that deny that AGW is happening.

No matter how many scientists or organizations agree that AGW is happening you'll find a principled stance on which to discount their warnings.

How Many Paid Oil/Gas Industry Trolls Post Here?

[dryriver]

Slashdot used to be a site once where actual nerds/geeks/science majors used to comment on science and technology news. You could learn a lot from their opinions and insights, whether they agreed with your viewpoint or not. Now every time someone posts a Global Warming related story on Slashdot, a 4 story building worth of paid-per-post anti-AGW Trolls, each likely operating 20 - 50 sock puppet accounts, seem to post crap that Global Warming "isn't happening" or "cannot caused by human activity". The mere fact that this happens on a once "free" discussion site like Slashdot leads me to believe that a) Global Warming must be getting VERY bad indeed and b) the Energy Industry is very concerned about financial liability issues arising from this. By this I mean that when AGW starts to cause early deaths, natural disasters, major economic and environmental damage, contagious disease outbreaks and similar trouble in different parts of the world, the industry wants to be able to pretend that "nobody is liable for this because AGW simply does not and cannot exist". For this you obviously need a few hundred million dollars worth of Internet Trolls who flood sites like Slashdot with "IT ISN'T US. IT ISN'T US. IT ISN'T US..." Sad. Very, very sad.

Blaming the Wrong folks, Probably in Trouble.

[foxalopex]

I've always found it fascinating that folks accuse China of generating the most greenhouse gasses and while yes by absolute number of people they probably do that's the worst interpretation of statistics ever. China has a LOT of people, if you believe in equality everyone should have the same chance at the standard of living as everyone else. The problem is that we're a very rich country, so per capita alone we generate per person more emissions than a typical Chinese citizen. We use more resources than a typical counterpart in China. (A lot of the stuff that China produces is sold to us.) and so on. It's like a billionaire asking why they can pay a tax of a 1/2 million dollars as pocket change while that would financially bankrupt the average citizen. As the leading country and the wealthiest we need to contribute a bigger share because it will technically hurt us per person less. If we don't how would we expect someone who might not be able to contribute without literally dying to give up a part of their share?

And it is a problem. Climate change is likely to hit poorer countries first, and when conditions are unsustainable, who's door do you think they'll come knocking on first? If you're the one with all the food and everyone else is starving to death, it doesn't matter if you're armed, you're in deep trouble if you don't share. And it's not like we can't share, we do actually have enough for everyone. It's just, it's hard to give up luxury.

Re:Is this from The Onion?

[rthille]

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

Re:Is this from The Onion?

[amicusNYCL]

I personally don't really understand

You could have just stopped typing there.

Deniers

[JustNiz]

I was born and raised in the UK before moving to the US about 15 years ago.
Back then it was considered self-evident by pretty much every person in the EU that global warming was not only real, but very definitely anthropomorphic (man-made), and also inevitably going to kill us all if we didn't do something very tangible about it very quickly, which probably meant significant but necessary lifestyle compromises. Anybody that denied global warming was frankly considered a retard.
After doing significant ongoing research on the Internet I still believe that global warming is very real and anthropomorphic, and even though we don;t have absolute proof, since 99.9% of the scientific community and all indicators point that way, (and for those that don't, all have connections/funding to big oil), it just makes basic common sense to take global warming seriously and do all we can before its too late to do anything.
Fast forward to today. I now live in the US.
I'm honestly amazed by the number of Americans (including some of my best friends and apparently also including our next president) that apparently sincerely believe that global warming is not even happening and is all just made up by the scientists, or worse, just some commie plot.
With Trumps recent announcement of cutting the EPA and appointing Myron Ebell (famous climate change denier) to head the EPA transition team, I've got to ask:
Am I the fool for unduly worrying about our only means of survival, or is the majority of the rest of America the fool for being so willfully ignorant of all the scientific research and the associated danger of ultimate extinction of much if not all life on earth, for a few short-term dollars?

Re:Deniers

[MightyMartian]

There would be climatologists whether AGW was happening or not. And who has more to lose at this point, a few thousand researchers, or large international corporations? You have literally concocted the dumbest conspiracy theory in history, and for what, because you're too much a coward or too selfish?

Grow the fuck up, moron. The Universe doesn't care about your stock fucking portfolio or how much it costs to gas up your fucking car. CO2's properties have been known for over a century, and concocting conspiracy theories to make yourself feel better is irrelevant to the laws of fucking physics.

Jesus Christ, grow the fuck up.

Re:Deniers

[h33t l4x0r]

Well, you have to remember that 44% of Americans get their news from Facebook, and it's mostly fake. So you've got 1) Climate change isn't real and 2) It's real but it's too late to do anything about it.

Re:Deniers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were born and raised in the UK, you'll doubtless be familiar with the Four Stage Strategy:

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we *can* do.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

The anti-AGW brigade is mostly, currently, on stage 3. They've made a small refinement to the basic model, however, and the argument you'll see most often parroted around here is "the solution the Enemy have come up with is wrong/ineffective because Al Gore sucks donkey balls". I paraphrase only slightly.

Re:How Many Paid Oil/Gas Industry Trolls Post Here

[quax]

The ultimate irony is that even Saudi Arabia understands that the age of fossil fuels comes to and end, and prepares accordingly But not the US extremist right wing.

If even a backwards kleptocratic monarchy, rooted in a Middle Ages value system, beats you in terms of mental flexibility, you know that you are truly fucked.

Re:Exactly the reverse is true

[MightyMartian]

AGW is beneficial for some people for a little while, but in the long run it's very damned bad. And you think scientists are so fucking stupid they don't track other climate elements in their models?

I can't tell whether you are being arrogant, or moronic, but this looks like a classic example of "Hi, I'm a random nobody on the Internet, and all those scientists never thought of this one..."

Re:moderate warming is good for humans

[Layzej]

Do you really think going from 0.025% to 0.040% atmospheric CO2 is what's driving all temperature change?

A change from 0.025 to 0.04 would cause a direct impact of 2.5 Wm^-2 based on radiative transfer codes. Over the surface of the Earth that is equivalent to 1,600,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. Yes, this is certainly what is causing most (possibly more than all) of the warming over the last 60 years.

When you consider that warmer air holds more H2O (a far more potent heat trapping molecule) then you begin to see that the overall impact is even larger than the direct effect.

Re:Exactly the reverse is true

[Namarrgon]

Why do you claim the models ignore clouds? Of course they're included. The problem is their effect is difficult to predict precisely, as they trap heat as well as increase albedo, so the net contribution can vary significantly. There are a great many studies about their contribution though, and confidence is very high that the increasing humidity is a positive feedback even with the resulting extra clouds factored in.

I'm glad you agree that the climate is steadily warming. Obviously all record temperatures will be on El Niño years, just as La Niña contributes to the cooler periods between them (which some have mistakenly labelled a "pause"). The important part is that this El Niño year has been hotter than all the previous El Niño years - just like 2015, 2014, 2010, 2005 and 1998. Such a string of broken records can only be a sustained warming trend.

And may I suggest less complaining about others examples, and more looking for citations to back up your own claims.

Re:Is this from The Onion?

[Namarrgon]

You think the UN controls every major scientific organisation on the planet (all of which endorse the findings of AGW)? You think they also control every climate research organisation around the globe too? Is the UN paying for NASA's research? Do they have authority over NOAA or CRU or CSIRO, or the peer review structure of the many climate research journals as well?

What leads you to believe any political organisation has such an astonishingly far-reaching influence over the entire global science community?

Come to that, what the heck is a "climate change based tax regime"? The science has shown we're changing our climate, and that remains independently true regardless of any proposed political solutions. If you don't like a given tax regime, vote for a different solution - but don't confuse the solutions with the problem, because no amount of political criticism will make that go away.