Visualizing temperature change isn't the problem I've ever had with people. It's always been about: "okay, so what does 1.5C mean?"
I think what we need to be using when we talk about climate change are things like projected coastline and population displacement maps.
One of the most powerful facts I've seen recently in Canada was an insurer talking about how some houses simply aren't insurable anymore because they will be flooded again every few years. I want to show people a map of "communities that will be uninsurable by 2050"
People must understand that increasing 1.5ºC of yearly average of global temperature is not the same as the increase of 1.5ºC in any particular day in their local city.
It is not only not evenly distributed around the world (this chart, and the monthly ones on https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/index_v4.html gives a different picture), that is the average could well mean 10+ ºC in their particular area in several given days (this week there was like 40ºC in Poland, and there was over 50ºC in India and Vietnam the previous one) while decrease in others, that is not just how they feel temperature, but also what is affected by it in larger areas (more energy to fuel extreme weather events, including the ones that brings extreme cold), and that the regions with the bigger increase in temperature have also several of the possitive feedback loop factors for increasing the global temperature even more.
You don't need 100ºC to get a lethal temperature, with half of that (it is becoming increasingly common), depending on hidration and humidity, a lot of people will die. And you die in a particular place/day, not in a global yearly average, after you are dead doesn't matter if the next week the temperature is bearable. And the food sources that feed billions of people must survive too. And the complex ecosystem that enables that you, and your food sources survive as it is now, even if you are not aware of how something that just got extinct was essential, should survive too.
Is there a good similar chart for daily or monthly maximum temperatures that one could share instead? As you say, people don't understand the problem about 1.5 degrees increase in average indeed.
If temperature regularly exceeds 40°C it will look more threatening to people.
The book “uninhabitable earth” is good for this. As is his talk on the Chris Hayes podcast. Some key points:
2C means genocide. Entire island nations under water and lost.
Every minor increase means exponentially higher costs - many more dead, large swaths of the earth uninhabitable.
4C is something like Hong Kong/Shanghai, and many other parts of th world uninhabitable. Going outside would be fatal within minutes.
> I want to show people a map of "communities that will be uninsurable by 2050"
Relatedly, there was a recent story in CBC [1] pointing out that flood maps are due to get updated next year, and the impact it will have on housing prices.
And it's not speculative - it's historical. It shows that decline of 4.5 means basically complete icing of the north North America and puts 1.5 in perspective.
its time to move past slam-dunking on the creationists/anti-vaxers/flat-earthers/climate-deniers and focus on the much harder part: engineering for zero by 2040.
that is within the realm of your next mortgage. your utilities and larger institutions are already financing infrastructure that will be around then.
Reading these headlines is pretty depressing. If you want to do something about it, a paper called Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning[0] just came out, and under Tools for Individuals a startup called Tomorrow[1] is mentioned. They're actively looking for help to get more integrations to their app to calculate people's personal CO2 emissions.
I think trying to frame this as an issue of personal responsibility, as "turn the lights off when you leave the room to save the world", is not only wrong but actively harmful to doing what is needed: massive, concerted, governmental, action.
I found a surprising way to reduce my carbon footprint: I downloaded the music and am playing it locally now instead of streaming it over and over again.
I was listening to music on Youtube pretty much all the time and that amounted to about 35GB of traffic per month in average.
That's 420GB per year and with 7kWh/GB and emissions of approximately 500g/kWh that's a surprising total of roughly 1.5t of CO_2 emissions per year. And a downside is almost non-existant.
Edit: my playlist consists of a small number of songs, so I actually get savings. That would not work when listening to a list that does not actually repeat of course.
There is no way 7kWh/GB is an accurate figure. For example, AWS Oregon region charges you $0.05/GB after the first 150 TB.[1] This page[2] says the current electricity rate of Oregon is 9.8¢/kWh. Assuming AWS is getting electricity at half the price (and making no profit), it can burn 1.02 kWh/GB.
The actual number is most likely lower: AWS has to make some profit, and it's not known for being cheap.
I'm surprised to hear it takes 7 kWh to transmit 1 GB. My phone consumes only 0.3 kWh a month and I use 1 GB. So the power requirements are very asymmetric.
1 dot per country, regardless of its size or shape, may not be very fair.
Maybe data availability will rig the chart, but perhaps something similar, not grouping countries and continents but similar sized areas by latitude could show a more definite trend.
Even without read-the-thermometer records, tree corings and lake bed sediment samples and a number of other go-out-and-look methods can get pretty useful atmospheric data from the past. I don't know what the resolution would be, but it might fill in some gaps.
I find it interesting how the warm years in the rest of the world seem to correspond to cold years in europe. The strange deep cold of early WW2 in Europe is also interesting.
Very interesting indeed. WW2 cold: It would be interesting to know if this was a result of the increased dust in the air because of the war or just pure randomness.
There is no chance your individual actions will have any impact. Our only hope is drastic, large scale policy changes at the national and international level.
I've used a similar compartment plot as a way of evaluating fMRI quality, and how different preprocessing routines affect it. Compartments determined by structural masks, eg white matter, gray matter, cerebrospinal fluid, etc.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|6 years ago|reply
I think what we need to be using when we talk about climate change are things like projected coastline and population displacement maps.
One of the most powerful facts I've seen recently in Canada was an insurer talking about how some houses simply aren't insurable anymore because they will be flooded again every few years. I want to show people a map of "communities that will be uninsurable by 2050"
[+] [-] gmuslera|6 years ago|reply
It is not only not evenly distributed around the world (this chart, and the monthly ones on https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/index_v4.html gives a different picture), that is the average could well mean 10+ ºC in their particular area in several given days (this week there was like 40ºC in Poland, and there was over 50ºC in India and Vietnam the previous one) while decrease in others, that is not just how they feel temperature, but also what is affected by it in larger areas (more energy to fuel extreme weather events, including the ones that brings extreme cold), and that the regions with the bigger increase in temperature have also several of the possitive feedback loop factors for increasing the global temperature even more.
You don't need 100ºC to get a lethal temperature, with half of that (it is becoming increasingly common), depending on hidration and humidity, a lot of people will die. And you die in a particular place/day, not in a global yearly average, after you are dead doesn't matter if the next week the temperature is bearable. And the food sources that feed billions of people must survive too. And the complex ecosystem that enables that you, and your food sources survive as it is now, even if you are not aware of how something that just got extinct was essential, should survive too.
[+] [-] DanielleMolloy|6 years ago|reply
If temperature regularly exceeds 40°C it will look more threatening to people.
[+] [-] wdr1|6 years ago|reply
That plus a few other things, including how much variance is to be expected?
[+] [-] donjoe|6 years ago|reply
https://ss2.climatecentral.org
[+] [-] ianai|6 years ago|reply
2C means genocide. Entire island nations under water and lost. Every minor increase means exponentially higher costs - many more dead, large swaths of the earth uninhabitable. 4C is something like Hong Kong/Shanghai, and many other parts of th world uninhabitable. Going outside would be fatal within minutes.
Here’s a map someone put together for 4C: https://mymodernmet.com/parag-khanna-global-warming-map/
At 8C of warming, clouds may be unable to form.
[+] [-] SECProto|6 years ago|reply
Relatedly, there was a recent story in CBC [1] pointing out that flood maps are due to get updated next year, and the impact it will have on housing prices.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/flood-plains-1.5135336
[+] [-] DenisM|6 years ago|reply
And it's not speculative - it's historical. It shows that decline of 4.5 means basically complete icing of the north North America and puts 1.5 in perspective.
[+] [-] hi5eyes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cagenut|6 years ago|reply
its time to move past slam-dunking on the creationists/anti-vaxers/flat-earthers/climate-deniers and focus on the much harder part: engineering for zero by 2040.
that is within the realm of your next mortgage. your utilities and larger institutions are already financing infrastructure that will be around then.
[+] [-] martincollignon|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05433
[1] https://www.tmrow.com/
[+] [-] jellicle|6 years ago|reply
I think trying to frame this as an issue of personal responsibility, as "turn the lights off when you leave the room to save the world", is not only wrong but actively harmful to doing what is needed: massive, concerted, governmental, action.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Microft|6 years ago|reply
I was listening to music on Youtube pretty much all the time and that amounted to about 35GB of traffic per month in average.
That's 420GB per year and with 7kWh/GB and emissions of approximately 500g/kWh that's a surprising total of roughly 1.5t of CO_2 emissions per year. And a downside is almost non-existant.
Edit: my playlist consists of a small number of songs, so I actually get savings. That would not work when listening to a list that does not actually repeat of course.
[+] [-] yongjik|6 years ago|reply
The actual number is most likely lower: AWS has to make some profit, and it's not known for being cheap.
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ [2] https://www.electricitylocal.com/states/oregon/
[+] [-] tjoff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nroets|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] classicsnoot|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gmuslera|6 years ago|reply
Maybe data availability will rig the chart, but perhaps something similar, not grouping countries and continents but similar sized areas by latitude could show a more definite trend.
It ss not the same kind of chart, but https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ai94ek/glo... seems to show that.
[+] [-] pepijndevos|6 years ago|reply
I'm not saying it's fake, but I'd like to know where the data comes from, and how reliable it is.
[+] [-] wolfram74|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y-bar|6 years ago|reply
> most stripes are built on global data collated by Berkeley Earth
[+] [-] southern_cross|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheschire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imeron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|6 years ago|reply
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/
https://rebellion.earth/
There is no chance your individual actions will have any impact. Our only hope is drastic, large scale policy changes at the national and international level.
[+] [-] your-nanny|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seaghost|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] admiralspoo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boybd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harsh3195|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epistasis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frumiousirc|6 years ago|reply