Congrats go to Phoenix btw on breaking a bunch of heat-wave records. Including 19 days in a row of 110 degree weather. Keep it up! See if you can hit 25.
Keep your eyes on the prize and one day you’ll nail an entire Summer.
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Will be interesting to see how the hot summer temperatures might impact the timing of future travels to and within Europe? Some folks have to travel in summertime because of school holidays but if you can be flexible why would you visit Southern Europe in summertime? May/June and September/October may become as expensive as July/August for Europe trips? And November to April become the shoulder season rather than off-season?
The large number of baby boomers in their retirement years will be a catalyst for this (although some of us have already been avoiding Europe in the summer for some time).
So long term we’re looking at another few years till peak CO2 output, then it starts to decline over time at some point in the future. What does peak warming look like and how many years before declines in temperature start? Is this a small 200 year blip in the history of the Earth’s climate that we just so happen to be living through?
Yes, hopefully.
Net zero emissions in 40 years, hopefully??
Kind of like Texas?
Peak temperature in 50-60 years??? Though the decline will be slow, unless we suck up the CO2 or block the sun.
Yes. Though that’s kind of humans in general.
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The question to ask is: when we reach peak CO2, what will the prognosis for polar icecaps, and what does that imply for the climate?
I am by no means an expert, but I had thought that one of the reasons such attention has been given to the health of the icecaps is that without them, additional processes kick into play that would be expected to warm the planet further.
We are looking at over 2.5C now. 1.5C is a pipe dream.
That means it is likely that North Atlantic jet stream will shift.
That means climate patterns will shift quickly causing previously fertile areas for food production and water to become far less viable (or completely unviable).
Its not the heat and drought that is potentially dangerous (this will create problems but we can adjust eventually), it is the famines and droughts that will create large-scale instability (economic, political, social), leading to mass immigration, excess deaths, and likely wars and conflicts (as we would then end up fighting for resources).
If humans are the cause of global warming, fewer humans is the obvious solution.
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Going to need a lot more of this type thinking about water usage:
So basically just like the rest of human history.
There is a decent argument that, if raw materials are limited, hybrids reduce CO2 by more per unit of raw materials than pure electrics.
“Toyota’s claim is accurate. We’ve crunched the numbers on this,” Ashley Nunes told me. He is a senior research associate at Harvard Law School and the director for federal policy, climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank.
Basically, lots of the battery in a pure electric is almost never used. It is just along for the ride, in case the owner wants to take a long trip. The same batteries in, say, three hybrids would do more to cut down on gasoline consumption.
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Yeah, that was my ‘maybe not enough raw materials’ caveat. I don’t know how this will play out, some newer battery chemistries use less lithium and cobalt, and the sodium batteries are… in motion, but I don’t honestly know the timelines.
I guess still a lot in play. Do we have enough lithium now to build as many cars as there are EV customers? Is more lithium being mined to add to the supply side? Longer term, will battery chemistry change to offset demand for lithium? I honestly don’t know how this will all shake out.
Not really.
The world is a lot more populated now, and we have much more advanced weaponry.
That changes the calculus of “how bad it could get”.
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“But I want to be able to go 0-60mph, five times in a row, in under 3 seconds!! I need all the battery I can shove in my car!!”
I agree with this. Wife and I are both leaning toward plug-in hybrid for the next car.
Looking at this, amazed that it was only 1500 pounds!!
Looked elsewhere and that number was the kilograms.
I think the larger issues pushing battery size are range, and people buying large cars in the US. Still boggles my mind that the Hummer EV exists. I guess it’s better than buying an ICE Hummer, but driving a 9,000lb vehicle… says something.
I’m told that part of the reason EV motors are as powerful as they are has to do with the other side of the equation: larger motors provide more regen so you can recapture more energy when stopping. I’m not saying that my Y Performance was built with just that in mind.
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Yup, tho these days we get all upset and stuff when people do holocausts and 50 million refugees show up in florida.
Just bus them to Chicago. Problem solved.
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That is what we have decided as well.
I’m having a hard enough time working on this dumb insurance thing, don’t tempt me to read the whole ipcc.
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To be clear, nobody knows. It’s kind of like we’ve been running a humongous uncontrolled experiment to see what happens when we fill the air with sun absorbing gas. We’ve known, since the 80’s, how warm it would get, but we don’t really know what heat does to the weather, or what the weather does to the economy, or even when we will stop it.
Every year I think is good news. In part because we’ve lucked into good technologies. Mostly because the window of uncertainty shrinks. We can cross off the best and worst case scenarios, which is good because the two tails aren’t equal. There’s still a lot of uncertainty left, but it’s probably less world-ending uncertainty, and more a question of $trillions.
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Point taken, but what is the incremental increase to this risk from global warming. It’s not like climate change is the only reason we have to fight with each other (my point of looking at the rest of human history).
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