Social How do we sleep while our beds are burning? The climate changing thread

[Voodoo_Child906]

There's no trend that shows we're getting less rain. Highest rainfall in the chart is in 2023 (half of the paths in my hometown forest were blocked by standing water), now we have a below average year. Shit has always been fluctuating wildly. I see zero reason for concern just because we've had one dry year.

It may not be quite that simple. Increased heat means increased evaporation which can lead to drier conditions even if the total rainfall has increased or is stable. Also patterns are changing, and there could be more extremes. Winters may be wetter and summers could see periods of longer drought as well as shorter more intense downpours. I know that there are a lot of "Could be" or "May be" in my reply but studying weather/climate patterns is complex with multiple factors.

 

[ShadowRun]

That is adding a lot to the problem in one day from some people who lecture the rest of the population about climate change. The 1,500 metric tons from Super Bowl private jets equates to the yearly emissions of roughly 31 average American households.

Private jets are notoriously inefficient: They emit 5-14 times more CO₂ per passenger than commercial flights and up to 50 times more than trains

The post highlights hypocrisy, as many attendees (e.g., celebrities pushing climate awareness) contribute disproportionately, global private aviation totals ~15-16 million tons CO₂ annually, driven by just 0.003% of the population

The average U.S. household has an annual carbon footprint of 48 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e)

 

[Ruprecht]

Hespect for the Midnight Oil reference

I was about to give up on this thread after that title and a couple of pages with a complete lack of Peter Garrett spaz dancing.

Spoiler: Old oil activism

Although the spaz dancing was stronger in the '80s...

...yeah, setting more heat records every other year, but bugger all happens while people put their head in the sand and muddy the scientific waters with bullshit motivated by greed and political identity.
I made myself an ebike for commuting this year. Cheap, quicker than traffic and still decent exercise. I used to treadly the old fashioned way, but I've moved further from work (with more changes in elevation) and don't want to have to shower after arriving.
I can tell you the batteries don't like 45+ degree (celcius) weather so much though.
Hard to tell what's going to give out first with extended climbs in this weather. Me or the battery.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

Scientific studies calculate climate change as health danger, while Trump calls it a ‘scam’​

BY SETH BORENSTEIN

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that climate change is a danger to public health, an idea that President Donald Trump called “a scam.” But repeated scientific studies say it’s a documented and quantifiable harm.

Again and again, research has found increasing disease and deaths — thousands every year — in a warming world.

The Environmental Protection Agency finding in 2009, under the Obama administration, has been the legal underpinning of nearly all regulations fighting global warming.

Thousands of scientific studies have looked at climate change and its effects on human health in the past five years and they predominantly show climate change is increasingly dangerous to people.

Many conclude that in the United States, thousands of people have died and even more were sickened because of climate change in the past few decades.

For example, a study on “Trends in heat-related deaths in the U.S., 1999-2023 ” in the prestigious JAMA journal shows the yearly heat-related death count and rate have more than doubled in the past quarter century from 1,069 in 1999 to a record high 2,325 in 2023.

For example, a study on “Trends in heat-related deaths in the U.S., 1999-2023 ” in the prestigious JAMA journal shows the yearly heat-related death count and rate have more than doubled in the past quarter century from 1,069 in 1999 to a record high 2,325 in 2023.

“Study after study documents that climate change endangers health, for one simple reason: It’s true,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, professor emeritus of public health at the University of Washington and a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health appointed by President George W. Bush.

“It boggles the mind that the administration is rescinding the endangerment finding; it’s akin to insisting that the world is flat or denying that gravity is a thing.”

In a Thursday event at the White House, Trump disagreed, saying: “It has nothing to do with public health. This is all a scam, a giant scam.”

Experts strongly disagree.

“Health risks are increasing because human-cause climate change is already upon us. Take the 2021 heat dome for example, that killed (more than) 600 people in the Northwest,’' said Dr. Jonathan Patz, a physician who directs the Center for Health, Energy and Environmental Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The new climate attribution studies show that event was made 150-fold more likely due to climate change.”

Patz and Frumkin both said the “vast majority” of peer-reviewed studies show health harms from climate change. Peer-reviewed studies are considered the gold standard of science because other experts pore over the data, evidence and methods, requiring changes, questioning techniques and conclusions.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

More than just heat and deaths​

The various studies look at different parts of health. Some looked at deaths that wouldn’t have happened without climate change. Others looked at illnesses and injuries that didn’t kill people. Because researchers used different time periods, calculation methods and specific aspects of health, the final numbers of their conclusions don’t completely match.

Studies also examined disparities among different peoples and locations. A growing field in the research are attribution studies that calculate what proportion of deaths or illness can be blamed on human-caused climate change by comparing real-world mortality and illness to what computer simulations show would happen in a world without a spike in greenhouse gases.

Last year an international team of researchers looked at past studies to try to come up with a yearly health cost of climate change.

While many studies just look at heat deaths, this team tried to bring in a variety of types of climate change deaths — heat waves, extreme weather disasters such as 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, wildfires, air pollution, diseases spread by mosquitos such as malaria — and found hundreds of thousands of climate change deaths globally.

They then used the EPA’s own statistic that puts a dollar value on human life — $11.5 million in 2014 dollars — and calculated a global annual cost “on the order of at least $10 billion.”

Studies also connect climate change to waterborne infections that cause diarrhea, mental health issues and even nutrition problems, Frumkin said.

“Public health is not only about prevention of diseases, death and disability but also well-being. We are increasingly seeing people displaced by rising seas, intensifying storms and fires,” said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a physician and dean emeritus at the George Washington University School of Public Health.

“We have only begun to understand the full consequences of a changing climate in terms of health.”

Cold also kills and that’s decreasing​

The issue gets complicated when cold-related deaths are factored in. Those deaths are decreasing, yet in the United States there are still 13 times more deaths from cold exposure than heat exposure, studies show.

Another study concludes that until the world warms another 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) from now, the number of temperature-related deaths won’t change much “due to offsetting decreases in cold-related mortality and increases in heat-related deaths.”

But that study said that after temperatures rise beyond that threshold, and if society doesn’t adapt to the increased heat, “total mortality rises rapidly.”

https://apnews.com/article/climate-...ickness-scam-5b7492660d7dad1c324f2bbbe6163f1c

 

[freakroor]

They then used the EPA’s own statistic that puts a dollar value on human life — $11.5 million in 2014 dollars —

​

i would like to know how they arrived at that figure for the value of a human life. Is that what epstein's clients were paying or what?