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

2016, old calendar

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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

[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

[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.