For people saying individual action is useless, where does top-level action from governments and big companies come from if it can't be traced to individuals?
How is this different from saying voting in elections, organising protests and boycotting companies/products has no influence? How does voting with your wallet not heavily influence supply/demand and company policies? Why would governments feel compelled to make changes if there's little support demonstrated by individuals?
Are you saying the beliefs and actions of your friends and family have little influence on you and you personally have rarely influenced anyone you know?
There is no way you could meaningfully control CO2 emissions of companies as an individual. If you will try to do it, then the companies will optimize for misleading you.
There are systemic solutions:
European Union Emissions Trading System is quite good system. It sets a limit on emissions and auctions rights to emissions that can be traded later. The limit will go down according to the IPCC recommendations. The current price is ~50 euro per metric tone of CO2 emissions.
> There is no way you could meaningfully control CO2 emissions of companies as an individual. If you will try to do it, then the companies will optimize for misleading you.
You don't think you can have an impact on your personal CO2 levels by avoiding flying and eating less beef for example (which both have a massive footprint)? How is a company realistically going to mislead you into going for a worse alternative there?
> There are systemic solutions: European Union Emissions Trading System is quite good system.
But why would systemic solutions get suggested or implemented if individuals didn't show they wanted a solution? Where would these initiatives come from if they're not influenced by the voices, voting power and buying power of individuals?
Aviation is responsible for some 3% and whole agriculture for some 10%. Not only you will have very little impact, but it will decrease your life standard. Additionally, you will not convince the whole society to stop flying and to stop eating meat directly. We barely can agree on climate change in the first place.
It is beauty of the free market and capitalism that as the price of CO2 will increase everyone will start looking for ways to reduce emissions without even thinking about emissions. Including innovators and investors.
There is also nice political side of Emissions Trading Schemes. It had no effect when it was introduced and it's impact increases little by little each year. Not everyone who would be opposed realized effects of that system when it was introduced. They are slowly gaining awareness, but the positions have reversed. Now, they have to fight against the status quo.
I see that quite clearly in Poland. Polish coal miners have a lot of political swing, but they did not realize the consequences of Emissions Trading Scheme. Now as the effects are increasing Polish government is not capable of changing it. But they have money from selling emission rights so they can use that money to appease coal miners and other politically important groups.
> But why would systemic solutions get suggested or implemented if individuals didn't show they wanted a solution? Where would these initiatives come from if they're not influenced by the voices, voting power and buying power of individuals?
It's easier to convince people that climate change needs to be addressed than to educate them on how --all-- industries work. E.g. how much do you know about concrete curing, steel and related emissions? Would you be able to make informed decisions with regard to building materials and CO2 emissions? Do you even know if viable alternatives exist? Do you expect companies to spend more to emit less?
"At a global scale, the FAO has recently estimated that livestock (including poultry) accounts for about 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions estimated as 100-year CO2 equivalents.[60] A previous widely cited FAO report using somewhat more comprehensive analysis had estimated 18 percent"
> There is also nice political side of Emissions Trading Schemes. It had no effect when it was introduced and it's impact increases little by little each year. Not everyone who would be opposed realized effects of that system when it was introduced.
I'm in strong agreement that taxing emissions is the long-term solution but do you not think the collective actions and influence of individuals have had a part in paving the way for solutions like this to appear? Don't companies, products and political parties appear and adapt (however slowly) to meet the needs of individuals?
The story with livestock is complicated. From that same Wikipedia article.
> The indirect effects contributing to the percentage include emissions associated with the production of feed consumed by livestock and carbon dioxide emission from deforestation in Central and South America, attributed to livestock production
So now deforestation is equivalent to livestock? Should I say shopping malls and residential areas are a problem because they require all the plants on the land to be cut down and paved over? I really wish these '% of everything' statistics would go away. It is almost always more complicated which fosters climate skeptics.
Energy production - aka fossil fuel burning such as coal for electricity and gas/diesel for - is the vast majority of emissions. We should be focusing on getting our democratic voting power focused on one that one easily digested story to get things done on a nation-state level instead of getting bogged down in these micro-issues. "Everything causes climate change" is impossible to fix. "Fossil fuels and especially cars and coal" cause climate change is very possible to address.
Government has to make noise to what the people that vote for them want.
As such several government has made noise about doing something about global warming. No government has done anything that actually do move the needle. It is all about promises that won't be fulfiled and things like banning non-ice cars 10-15 years out (so that it can keep getting pushed out).
You have the same issue with boycots etc. Companies will make noise and do cheap things like fire an employee or post something to company social media, or change a supplier. They won't do anything major.
And you don't have any influence on people on areas they care about. I can influence my mum on what phone she should buy, only because she does not greatly care and she thinks I know about things. We disagree politically, on lifestyle, etc.
I live in a part of the heat bubble that rarely if ever experiences extreme heat. The hottest day of the year is typically 30C or so. This week, we hit 40.
People in Arizona are prepared for that kind of heat. But up here, nobody has AC. Many people don’t even own a fan. My house reached 40C and I basically had to leave because that’s unlivable.
the pseudo-reasonable ones will try to claim that, yes there is global warming, but that it's not caused by humans and is a normal part of climate on earth. Hell I already see a few in this very thread...
Forget the fact that there's been a huge spike in only the past few decades (coincidentally since the start of the industrial age), and that we don't see any change anywhere this fast in the history of the planet.
I'm still convinced that these are generally older people who want to enjoy their lives as it is and don't give a single fuck about the future of humanity and future generations.
I never understand that logic. Even if it’s not caused by humans we stil would want to do something about it, if we can, like we did something against smallpox, measles, lightning impacts burning doen houses, etc.
> I'm still convinced that these are generally older people who want to enjoy their lives as it is and don't give a single fuck about the future of humanity and future generations.
I personally met somebody who, after whittling down his climate arguments, told me as much... :(
> It's changing but not at a rate that will be of any impact to humanity
Yet here we are, with "once in a century" floods, fires, hurricanes and heat waves happening nearly every year in the past decade. Are you claiming these don't have "any impact on humanity"?
> We've been warming since the last ice age.
It has gone up and done over the centuries, but absolutely not at the rate that it has been (completely coincidentally) since the start of the industrial age. If you look at any graph of average temperature, there's a huge spike in the past few decades. When in history has there been a sudden spike like this in such a short period of time?
Look at the USGCRP Climate Science Special Assessment: Volume 1: Chapter 6: Temperature Changes in the United States https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/
Scroll down to figure 6.3. You can see that the 1920's to 1940's had more extreme heat events than any time since. Figure 6.4 is also useful to look at.
But that's the thing. You have to realise many people can't reason about events that take a 100 years to unfold. It's like when you hear on the news "the sea levels will rise by the end of the century". For an average person it's as far in the future as the thermal death of the universe. People won't wear a mask in the middle of the pandemic, and somehow we expect everyone to forever change their habits for the better future past their lifetime.
If you have 500 events that could be one in a 100 years, then you expect to have 5 events a year on average.
Not saying global warming isn't a thing, just that you can't make that argument, and even if you could the argument could still be just as true if global warming was caused by a sun phase.
Anyway I don't really care to debate global warming, but I would love to see people debate how to solve this problem, given real world constraints of politics, economics and the rise of China.
That might be useful. I still haven't seen any that don't begin with a) if only we could or b) if only everybody would which are nonstarters.
No, if you have an ever increasing number of high and low records, increasing number of drought and flood, &c. People should stop playing on words when discussing climate, what does it matter if your specific region is warming or not, if the highs and lows make life less and less sustainable? Your day to day quality of life doesn't depend on the yearly average temperature
Some people act as if it was a semantic game they have to win. "Aha see it's not warming its - 60c in winter and 60c in summer we're perfectly fine"
I've spent many years creating statistical analysis and models about a large business's operations. There is always at least one statistic that someone produces that purports to show the opposite of what a balanced analysis shows. In this case the lowest recorded temperature is not a solid indication of cooling or even of "not warming" because it is a localised measurement; it's about one small area - and one small area in a remote and hard to access place.
As our civilization has become more powerful we are able to put sensors in many more places, some of those places were inaccessible to previous generations of sensor programs. Sensors now operate autonomously and the data is collected remotely. This would create a strong bias towards detecting lower temperatures. It would be possible to estimate and control for this bias in the number - but I haven't done that as it's a bit of work!
As a not expert (not ever involved in any climate analysis) if I were asked to create a meaningful statistic I would try to do an analysis that tries to see things as they are (rather than supporting an opinion) and would look at the mean and median temperatures recorded at sensor locations over time, and would also look at the evolution of temperature aggregates across representative populations of sensors deployed - which would include sensors in cities and deserts as well as those in Antarctica. For example I would take random samples of 10% of the sensor population that was available at a given time point. I have no idea how the climate scientists do this - but I am confident that they will have methods that are far more reliable than my silly homebrew idea - if you are interested in the topic it would be good to look into how they do it.
Well yeah today is just weather. Your 30 year graph is useful and shows temps rising since industrialization which is expected. But we saw the same kind of rise in the 1920's to 50's (AND THEN FALL 50's to 90's). Climate varies and there's long multi decade cycles in play. Sunspots, earth orbit to name a couple.
I think it is fairly clear that we are seeing a .04 C rise per year since the 90's. We are also seeing a 1-3mm sea level rise per year which is a slow rate compared to 20,10 and five thousand years ago. This 1-3mm/year rate will have little to no impact on humanity.
If you want to explain this heat wave its probably more useful to look at the La Nina, El Nino cycles and what they are doing right now.
People love to cherry pick parts which have "no impact on humanity" but the truth is that all the effects combined already do have impacts.
Of course 1mm rise in sea level doesn't matter but what about warmer ocean creating different currents, which in turns affects storms and hurricanes, marine life, ocean acidification, mass insects/animal migrations &c.
If climate change was just about 1mm of water and 1c more it wouldn't be an issue, the problem is that Earth is an infinitely complex system full of inter dependant parts we barely understand and we might very be breaking important sub systems without even realizing it.
> its probably more useful to look at the La Nina, El Nino cycles and what they are doing right now.
I'll agree that its an infinitely complex system. And I'll add that its impossible to model. Yet we base policy on these models that don't agree with one another and fail to predict historical climate when rewound and replayed.
This policy isn't trivial by any means either and likely will restrict economic growth and prosperity for billions of people if it is seen through.
The thing with these "all time high records" is they have an intrinsic trend to the upside. Consider the following thought experiment: Draw a continuous random number between 0 and 100 and compare it with the previous result. If the new number is higher than before, keep it as the new record value. Draw a time evolution of all the record numbers and you will see a straight line going up. But this is not a statistical trend. So, while I am not saying there is no climate change, the evidence they provide is questionable.
If that was the case, the number of record lows and record highs would be roughly equal, assuming no shift in distribution. However, according to this paper (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...), it's not the case, with record highs outnumbering record lows.
> Since January 1, 2009 (also compiled to the end of September, 2009), there had been 11,711 record highs and 7,449 record lows, with a ratio of just less than two to one.
We can also check whether that ratio is consistent with a random process that has an even probability of giving record lows and record highs:
> binom.test(c(7449,11711), p=0.5)
Exact binomial test
data: c(7449, 11711)
number of successes = 7449, number of trials = 19160, p-value < 2.2e-16
alternative hypothesis: true probability of success is not equal to 0.5
As such, the data indicates that there is a shift in distribution.
Thanks, this is a well written and accessible article!
To other commenters: Of course, there wouldn’t be a straight line but rather the curve would flatten out the longer the random sampling would take place. This is due to the fact that it gets increasingly unlikely that a random „temperature“ would be higher than any drawn before.
As the paper explains the ratio between the number of maxima and the number of minima decays in a 1/n law if there is no underlying temperature trend and approach 1:1. What is observed is that the ratio between maximum and minimum temperatures indeed approached this limit until the 1970s but since then increased to almost 2:1 — at least for the US. Simulations suggest the number to increase up to 100:1 by the end of the 21st century. However, this would not so much be due to ever increasing extreme high temperatures but due to a decreasing number of extreme temperature lows.
> 11,711 record highs and 7,449 record lows, with a ratio of just less than two to one.
If 1.57 is "just less than 2", I am just less than 8 ft tall.
I am a staunch believer in the dangers of climate change, but it's easy to see why people are skeptical of arguments like this. The evidence is compelling enough that it doesn't need to be massaged into more.
It makes more sense in the context of the paper. The previous sentence ends with
> [...] since January 1, 2000, there had been 291,237 record high maximum daily temperatures set, and 142,420 record low minimum daily temperatures, or a ratio of roughly two to one.
It seems like "just" shouldn't be in that sentence though.
Wouldn't this logic only apply if the distribution is symmetric? We know it can't be symmetric, because there is a lower bound to how cold it can get, but no upper bound to how hot it can get; the question then whether the asymmetry is significant or whether a symmetric model is close enough.
(To clarify: I'm specifically asking about your use of a binomial distribution, not about the linked paper).
I'd have to think more about it, but assuming a mild skewness in the distribution, it shouldn't matter too much. This is not unlike the Mann–Whitney U test where the sign of the difference matters, not the magnitude of the difference.
As for the bounds on the distribution, while it's true that there is an absolute minimum temperature, in practice I don't think a temperature anywhere near it has been reached by natural means on the surface of the Earth.
Record values occurring more often certainly is a statistical trend, even if the average stays the same. It's a change in distribution, just like a rising average is a change in distribution. Or is that not what you were referring too?
"Straight" is not correct - it implies that that the maximum increases linearly with time. The maximum will clearly asymptote at 100, and since it's an increasing function of time, the rate of increase must slow with time.
>Draw a time evolution of all the record numbers and you will see a straight line going up.
Ok, to understand this as evidence what you actually need to do is to repeat this process after you have got to ~0.99 many times, this will give you a way to understand the expectation of the evolution of this process, then you will see a curve with an initial rise that flattens as you approach 0.99 - you will have many trials at that level before you can have a expectation of getting to 0.991
So getting to a record level - if the bias of instrumentation is understood - is a surprising and significant thing; it's not something that we should expect. It's an event that can be interpreted as either a rare and surprising coincidence or an significant piece of evidence of a change. As a bayesian it makes me update my priors towards a stronger belief in climate change - but I had strong priors for that already.
Here is the counter evidence: count the number of record high days and the number of record low days. For the past few decades, and increasingly so, the number of high days far outpaces the number of record low days, something your example doesn't exhibit.
The temperature change in the last 100 years was larger than in the 5000 years before that. You can cherry-pick time periods however you like, you won't find another with such a drastic change in such a short timeframe.
The OP is about the flaw of using record highs or lows to show a rising/falling trend. Not temperature changes in general.
You can indeed cherry pick decades long periods of both cooling and warming which would show a biased in the last 100 years. In the 80s, scientists thought there was Global Cooling. There was also an Ice age that shows temperatures were indeed cooler.
At least understand what is being discussed before you make a response and downvote.
Weather is not a random number pick.
And your proof is wrong it's not if the number is higher than the previous one, but higher than all the previous ones. This means that you should have a curve getting flat, or potentially no curve at all if your first draw is 100.
If you have one hundred cities, then a "once in 100 yrs" event will happen in ~1 city per year. So first lesson is be careful assuming extreme events are necessarily linked directly to a trend.
Cliff Mass' Weather Blog has been covering the heat since it was first predicted by the models a over a week ago [1]. His view [2] is that this would be a 100-year (or more!) event regardless of global warming.
So the expert analysis is that this is not an indicator of climate change, but that warming is sure not helping.
If this were a city-wide record, I would agree.
This is a country-wide record, and the second widest country in the world (Canada represents ~6.7% of the world's land surface).
> If you have one hundred cities, then a "once in 100 yrs" event will happen in ~1 city per year. So first lesson is be careful assuming extreme events are necessarily linked directly to a trend.
Temperatures aren't a random number you get from throwing 10 dices and adding the numbers. This isn't a statistical issue
Record highs do not work that way. Record highs are by definition outliers. For example, in the Bay Area when we get some record highs during a heat wave, only around ~5-10% of station get new highs. Part of the issue is that except for San Francisco (which has 150 years of records) the records have only been kept for less than 100 years.
Let's compare two scenarios: (1) no warming and (2) warming.
With no warming, when a heat wave hits we get a few new highs. This is because (a) heat waves a rare events, so we may not have one in the record for that exact day and (b) due to microclimates in the area, the exact conditions will affect which sites are able to beat the record. And (c) there aren't that many records to compete with.
With warming, problems (a) (b) and (c) still apply. But you get a nice little bias up which should increase the number of sites obtaining new records. Yay except... the amount of warming so far means that it won't be a complete wipe out of new records, but rather just "more."
The question is how to distinguish the two cases. How do you tell if it's just the expected number of records being broken vs an increased number? The answer is stop doing that! Instead we should look at all daily temperatures -- rather than focusing on the count of record breaking highs -- because then we have a lot more data to work with.
In any case, the PNW heat wave does not match any reasonable expectation for the types of records we expect to be set by global warming because records would have been smashed regardless of warming.
None of this argument is an "anti-global warming" argument. Too many people conflate "science says this particular event was not a sign of warming" with "this person is a climate denier." If we're going to follow the science, that means less panic over individual events and more concern over the ongoing changes.
I live in India and we're either seeing a draught or a flood.
And things are getting worse consistently
Rainy season was June to Sept.. now it rains 12months, literally.last year it rained in ALL months. It has never happened before.
There never were cyclones in Arabian sea, since 2yrs we had 1 cyclone per year.
And they had predicted these cyclones, yes. That's happening due to a warming ocean. And that's because of global warming.
There was polar vortex in US for 3 or 4yrs now, Texas was freezing just a few months ago
The fact that these events are predicted means climate is changing. Else how would we predict a freak accident? A freak accident that keeps happening over and over again
Edit: getting heavily downvoted so much that HN isn't allowing me to post comments!
Do not underestimate the weight of astro-turfing going on here. Many know that lots of influential persons have hcknews as one of their sources of information, how often did you see something here first before it gets digested by more widely read media?
Stopped using the car for everything within a 4km radius from home with an exception for bulk transport of heavy/large stuff.
By taking the resolute habit not to use the car for short trips, the side benefits are that my kids now bike everywhere in the city independently and instead of 700km per tank on average, we are at 1000km. We drive less and for what we drive we reduced our per km consumption. It is really a win-win habit.
Recently I have moved to the city and stopped using a car all together. Ignoring the environmental impact, it has been an incredible improvement for my mental health. Life is also massively more convenient without a car. I also do not use public transport and just walk everywhere.
This kind of logic, while compelling, really pisses me off. It seems like industry has the following strategy time and again: make a giant public mess, then blame it on the distributed actions of individuals, then continue making the mess. This is the case with public health, climate change, recycling, etc.
To solve these problems we need to solve them upstream at the regulatory level. There is no way we are going to solve climate change by trying to get everyone to use their bikes for short trips. But if we had pushed fleet wide efficiency standards harder we would be in a much better position. The solution will only begin to be obtained by nudging everyone in the right direction by only giving the “right” option.
Exactly. Every person on the planet making a 100% change will only make a minuscule difference down the line. It has to be regulated in that the big companies that make most of the damage can no longer just do whatever they want.
This guilting of people for actions of industry is exactly what industry pushes. It's been a tried and true tactic for many decades now. Responsibility is always on the individual and never on the industry/government.
It's just sad that many people cannot imagine anything else besides individual responsibility these days. The brainwashing by industry to this condition has been extremely successful.
Those things suggested are the solution but government has to enforce them to have any effect. Recently the local government in my area banned plastic knives and forks and pretty much overnight every restaurant and takeaway place switched to reusable steel, wood/bamboo, or just not giving out cutlery by default and only when it is actually needed.
A single action by the government wiped out tens of millions of plastic pieces per year effortlessly.
So yes, the solution was for us to stop doing certain things. It's just enforcement that matters.
In the UK, plastic bags are no longer free in shops. In fact they keep increasing the price. It's definitely made me use far less plastic bags, it's just a case of developing a habit to take my own.
Because framing collective action problems caused by a very small powerful minority of people as mass moral issues is how we all fucking die.
In fact, you have a moral imperative to stop doing this, since you are covering for the actual actors with bad morality by misrepresenting where the moral failing lies.
> you are covering for the actual actors with bad morality by misrepresenting where the moral failing lies
Corporations have no moral values, only a profit motive. The only way to improve them is through legislation. Legislation is written by politicians, who are elected by individuals*. Therefore, individual awareness is in fact _the only way we have*_ to lower CO2 emissions.
Who cares about this theoretical BS though? It's useless. The model isn't predictive. Those are spherical cows. At this point we know the areas where public support is most detached from policy and it always corresponds to wealth.
So just start using the adult model of the world already.
10% of MEPs (Members of European Parliament) are already Greens. 9% of the Dutch parliament is [GreenLeft + Party for the Animals], and that's not even counting the Labour party (who have similar policies). 9% of the German Bundestag is Greens. Are all those representatives spherical cows? Were they all voted in by the wealthy?
Sure, 10% of legislators isn't huge in the grand scheme of things. But again, _the only way_ to increase that percentage is for the people to go out and vote, and that road starts with awareness.
OK, wait. You said that individual action making a difference was a fairy tale. Now you're saying that democratic action is useless because it runs counter to the interests of the rich.
So... what do you think is a useful, workable approach?
In no other area do we kindly request people not to do bad and damaging things.
You don't tell the public "Drink driving is really bad, so please be considerate and don't do it". Instead you ban drink driving and vigorously enforce the ban.
Yes, and I eagerly await the day governments around the world impose hefty CO2 taxes. Until that day comes, again - why would we be absolved of our moral duties?
Is it really necessary for everyone to eat meat every day? (30% of Western Europeans already say no [1].) Is it really necessary for everyone to buy a new smartphone every year?
To be clear, I agree with you and make my best efforts but I know that there is no way that requiring individuals to apply restrictions to themselves is going to work. Seeing how little effect it has had vs tiny changes from government having massive effects.
Yes, I agree with you too :) Government action is definitely needed and I'll be among the first to advocate as such. That notwithstanding, I think we also each have a duty to examine our own lifestyles critically. Like I wrote in a reply to another user - in 2019, 60 flights took off every day from Amsterdam to London (just a 4-hour journey by rail) - someone's taking all those flights.
No, I didn't imply that at all. Legislation must come from governments and corporations must pay their part - but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look critically at our own actions.
Did you know that in 2019, 60 flights departed from Amsterdam to London every day [1] - just a 4-hour journey by rail [2]? Clearly someone's taking all those flights.
Re: public health - I don't exactly understand the argument you're trying to make.
So many countries just need to stop being delusional about AC. Many people will need one within the next decade. But you can’t just install it in many European countries. So people end up buying portable AC units which have terrible energy efficiency. This makes the climate problem even worse.
True. There are ways to use a 2nd exhaust for the portable AC to increase efficiency but not sure if it's worth it. For ~3 weeks per year I wouldn't really care. Also, if ACs are sold with 2 hoses they fall under a different category of ACs and must be somewhat more efficient. That's why those are not sold usually.
> Well what a surprise climate change is real and it is to late to do anything about it.
Climate change isn't a boolean that just switched to "true", if we took global actions now we could slow it down, if we give up and consider it's too late we'll only make things worse
As a Canadian I would strongly prefer that we didn't live in a world where there are climate 'winners' and 'losers' even if that means that I am likely to win.
Never the less, I think we need to be pragmatic about the tyranny and blessing of geography, as well as desire for underdeveloped countries to develop. Climate is changing, we need to calibrate with interest in mind.
Overall, change in climate will be beneficial i.e. unlock more resource from permafrost, increase agricultural output, open up new artic transit opportunities, reduce net need for winter heating.
How is this different from saying voting in elections, organising protests and boycotting companies/products has no influence? How does voting with your wallet not heavily influence supply/demand and company policies? Why would governments feel compelled to make changes if there's little support demonstrated by individuals?
Are you saying the beliefs and actions of your friends and family have little influence on you and you personally have rarely influenced anyone you know?