Climate Change: How Hot Cities Could Be in 2050 (bbc.com) 265
dryriver writes: A new study, published in the journal PLOS One, suggests summers and winters in Europe will get warmer, with average increases of 3.5C and 4.7C respectively. It's the equivalent to a city shifting 620 miles (1,000km) further south -- with those furthest away from the equator being most affected. London could feel as hot as Barcelona by 2050, with Edinburgh's climate more like Paris, Leeds feeling like Melbourne and Cardiff like Montevideo. That's from a study looking at how a 2C temperature increase could change the world's 520 major cities.
That temperature increase would result in the average UK temperature during summer's hottest month increasing by about six degrees to 27C. The University of Reading's Professor Mike Lockwood warned about the damage that could be done to infrastructure. 'Bringing Barcelona's climate to London sounds like it could be a good thing -- if you don't suffer from asthma or have a heart condition, that is -- except London clay shrinks and is brittle if it gets too dry and then swells and expands when very wet. As ever, there is destructive and unforeseen devil in the details of climate change.'
That temperature increase would result in the average UK temperature during summer's hottest month increasing by about six degrees to 27C. The University of Reading's Professor Mike Lockwood warned about the damage that could be done to infrastructure. 'Bringing Barcelona's climate to London sounds like it could be a good thing -- if you don't suffer from asthma or have a heart condition, that is -- except London clay shrinks and is brittle if it gets too dry and then swells and expands when very wet. As ever, there is destructive and unforeseen devil in the details of climate change.'
Bright side (Score:5, Funny)
On the bright side, Europeans may finally stop bitching about us wimpy Americans and our air conditioning.
- Necron69
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They've already started. We won whether AC is good. Can we stop heating up the planet now?
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On the bright side, Europeans may finally stop bitching about us wimpy Americans and our air conditioning.
- Necron69
No, we are transitioning to laughing at you silly Americans for burning coal to run your air conditioning when you could install solar cells on your roof and use the sun that's causing the heat to run your air conditioning :-D.
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paper (Score:5, Informative)
Direct link to paper: https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
This is really bad... (Score:3, Funny)
...what can we do to reverse this and prevent it from happening? Would new taxes help?
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Absolutely. We have to account for externalities somehow. It's free to dump whatever you'd like into the air, water, and earth right now in most places. That's sort of a big problem.
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That's good. So as long as we pay the government we can free to dump as much stuff as we like? Good deal!
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Sure, because ideally, you'll be paying enough in taxes to clean up your messes (plus some extra for administrative costs). That's how taxes and government work! Of course, those overhead costs will get expensive, so smart people will simply choose not to pollute any more, instead of paying the penalties in taxes.
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No, but it's better than being able to dump as much as you like and not have to pay anyone for it. This gives you an incentive to pollute less. And ideally we can take those taxes and invest them in energy conservation and solar panels and things like that..
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reverse this
Nothing. There's not a reverse that happens on anyone who is currently alive's timeline. If you're speaking of terms of people who have yet to be born that's a slightly different but similar question. For us though, there's nothing that can be done to reverse it. We can only begin steps towards reversal for some generation in the future.
prevent it from happening
Well that's vague, what are we trying to prevent here? Getting to 2C or just prevent Europe from warming up. The first is somewhat preventable, the latter is not.
Would new taxes help?
Depen
Yeah, they would actually (Score:2)
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I dunno. Here in Montana we didn't get any of this Global Warming until this week... so far this year we've been as much as 30 degrees below normal, and winter hung on two months past normal. Maybe if we reduce taxes, we'll get our share of warming??
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FYI, cow belches contain far more methane than their farts.
China is preventing this (Score:2, Funny)
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lolz no, the soot particles in air are heated by the sun.
Change in temp across latitudes (Score:2)
It looks like cities closer to the equator will have the least amount of change.
It makes moving to Columbia or Ecuador look like a good idea.
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Actually, coral is migrating away from the equator and towards both poles. So the old Caribbean is now more like the Pacific or Atlantic seaboard. Think DC or SF.
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Just because places further from the equator are projected to see bigger RELATIVE increases, in no way means they will be seeing hotter ABSOLUTE temperatures.
If the equator goes up by "only" 1.5C, and Canada goes up by 3C, the equator is still way hotter.
How hot is it? (Score:5, Funny)
It's so hot... I saw a chicken lay an omelette!
It's so hot... I saw a squirrel picking up nuts with pot holders!
It's so hot... I saw a funeral procession pull thru a Dairy Queen!
It's so hot... Jehovah's Witnesses started telemarketing!
It's so hot... I saw the Devil in Wal-Mart buying an air conditioner!
It's so hot... You can wash and dry your clothes at the same time!
It's so hot... I saw two trees fighting over a dog!
It's so hot... I saw a cop chasing a thief, and they were both walking!
It's so hot... Cows give powdered milk!
It's so hot... My thermometer goes up to "Are you kidding me?"
It's so hot... I bought a loaf of bread and before I got home it was toast!
It's so hot... I got condensation on my butt from the water in the toilet bowl!
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It's so hot... My thermometer goes up to "Are you kidding me?"
One of our better products, if I do say so myself.
How about some discussion of solutions? (Score:2)
Yet another entry on Slashdot about how we are all going to burst into flames before we drown. Can we discuss solutions instead? Can we have some more nuclear power now?
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We have more than enough solutions already. They have to be implemented, and for that you need politicians who actually care about the people they govern abd look further than their terms. So vote green and hope for the best.
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I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis act like it's a crisis.
Not going to happen. Welcome to game theory.
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So, you won't believe anybody until a politician is running around screaming?
That's not going to happen.
No, they're not running around screaming. They're flying around in private jets screaming.
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I'm supposed to ride my bike on my commute at -30c, but they won't even fly commercial instead of private.
Make some gesture, any gesture, that shows you actually take seriously what you're preaching.
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If you want to be taken seriously, act like you believe what you say, don't just say it, do it.
I'm not saying never go anywhere, but the carbon footprint of these people is orders of magnitude above the average citizen. How should I take them seriously if they aren't even willing to do the work to get somewhere in the ballpark of average, let alone to where they think everyone else should be?
A nutr
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No, we can't discuss solutions because half of the largest carbon producing country in the world (per capita) still won't acknowledge global warming exists or is caused by humans.
You mean Qatar [wikipedia.org]?
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Can we have some more nuclear power now?
Not really, as you already know: building a new plant takes a decade or two. So now you can sit in the corner and sulk as much as you want, you won't get one. Not even a little one.
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You ignorant condescending ass, go sit in a 100F corner and think about how you have given out lethal advice like this...
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
I've had enough of you following me around spreading lies. Cite your sources or go to hell.
On second thought, just go to hell.
I'm open to solutions (Score:2)
At the risk of being modded down to oblivion I'll say this: We can't even punish a serial child rapist in this country, you think we're gonna do anything to a CEO of a nuke plant aft
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Wind? Do you know how birds that kills??
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Compared to cats and traffic ? Not much.
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True, but wind turbines tend to kill the kinds of birds that don't get killed in traffic. It kills the kinds of birds that are more likely to be endangered, too, like various types of raptors. Probably still a lot better than fossil fuels, on the whole, but not exactly benign either.
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37 C is not bad, it's only 100 F (Score:2)
That said, if you live in the South, get ready for 50 C, which is 120 F
Leeds is already like Melbourne (Score:2)
Re:What bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Underwater in 2050, not 2020. The models tend to have been pretty darn accurate from 1970's to now. Since the 1950's it's been correct on trends. Also, models keep getting better as we discover stuff we missed. For instance, ocean acidification is a huge problem and removes CO2 from teh atmosphere (keeping it from warming), but we didn't always know about it.
Models proven false predict false futures. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a textbook from my masters studies published in 2010 that claimed Micronesia and several other Oceania countries would cease to exist due to being underwater and we would have 40 million climate change refugees by 2015.
That was not fringe science. That was settled science at the time. I was employed to teach that to undergrads in a tier one school as science fact.
Deny the false predictions. Insist specific models and theories are still good before proven right and after ones 99.9% the same have been
Re:Models proven false predict false futures. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a textbook from my masters studies published in 2010 that claimed Micronesia and several other Oceania countries would cease to exist due to being underwater and we would have 40 million climate change refugees by 2015.
Can you tell us the title, author, and publication date of that textbook? I'm not trying to be intentionally pedantic here but you said you have the textbook that says this, it would be interesting to know a little more about it. Lots of people have been telling us how they heard about such claims a decade or so ago but it's been really hard to find these claims published anywhere.
Re:Models proven false predict false futures. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2010 they were saying that several Oceania countries will in a few decades cease to exist, and we'll have climate refuges. I don't believe anyone predicted 2015 as the date that would happen. Citation or it didn't happen
As for refuges, there are already islands being abandoned because they are 98% underwater, etc. There are 65.8 million refugees today, up from almost 24 million in 2008. Hey, there's 42 million more from somewhere. Where have I just heard that number? (Note, Syria produced just 3 million of those refuges, so absent that it's still a 39 million refugee increase).
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As for refuges, there are already islands being abandoned because they are 98% underwater,
Which islands?
Here ya go (Score:5, Informative)
Closer to home there's extreme weather in the US. In Florida you can no longer buy hurricane insurance. No one will sell it to you because they're too frequent. New Orleans was destroyed less than a decade ago and may be again soon.
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Well, in 2016, in the US, the Isle de Jean Charles (in Louisiana) was submerged by 98% and the people moved 100 miles inland at a cost to taxpayers of $52 million. I mean, that's one very well documented example. And most of the people had already moved themselves out, so that $52 million was only for a small percentage of the original population.
If you look up Last Week Tonight's flood insurance special, they'll show you people living on islands where the streets flood every high tide. And another isl
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There are many good arguments that the syrian revolution was partly caused by crop failures.
Re:Models proven false predict false futures. (Score:4, Interesting)
This [theguardian.com] island is probably the one the GP was referring to which has lost 98% of its land mass to the sea level rising and the coastal erosion it has caused. There are other examples of islands being lost and government planning for near future relocations, but this is the only citation of a 98% land loss I found with a few minute search.
The UNHCR [unhcr.org] puts the total number of refugees at 70.8 million, so his 65.8 million figure is probably just a bit old.
The other statements are not critical to his central point so I'm not going to waste more time looking them up. Especially for someone is probably doesn't care about the truth of this issue anyway.
Re: What bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
The only place your linked article mentions year 2000 is in the sentence "measures better be taken by year 2000".
And it was a very good assessment.
You're a lying troll.
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Re:What bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
First, no, we weren't.
Second, why are you using a worldwide average to discuss rising sea levels? What was the increase where it's supposed to be colder and icy? [slashdot.org] Mebbe... double that [slashdot.org]? Pretty sure double that [wikipedia.org].
Third, how many gigatons of measured ice loss [antarcticglaciers.org] are required to prove that the predictions are not failing?
I expect your answer is "a bajillion," if you even answer at all, because your comment has no grounding in reality, much less science.
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It's worse than that. OP agrees with AC, and AC is too dumb to understand that. Reading comprehension is extremely difficult, apparently.
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My broken links [livescience.com] didn't help my clarity [wikipedia.org] much either.
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Oh, I saw that movie [imdb.com]! It sucked.
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It is too bad that scientific studies have become political cannon fodder.
The type of Car I drive is some sort of political statement.
I can't wear sneakers without it being a political statement
I can't have a medical condition and want to be cured by it without being a political statement
If I feel strongly on a topic it is as much of a political statement as if I have no feelings on it.
The problem is we are avoiding the problems that are happening and blaming those who are not in your group for the problem.
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If I fart, that too is a political statement.
Meh, they got your click (Score:2)
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degree per degree, its (212-32)/100 = 180/100 or 1.8X
that is a degree in C is worth 1.8 (almost 2X) in F. so a 3.7C increase is almost a 7F increase
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If you're still using F in this day in age, regardless of country of origin, you have much bigger (and largely unsolvable) problems of your own.
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K and C are the same, smartass the only difference is where you set the zero point.
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Thus proving his point.
Which still went over your head.
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Proving what point? There was no point, just a stupid false equivalence.
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most metric units are less suited to everyday use than English, but that's another story^H^H^H^H^Hmyth.
Fixed that for you.
That's why C thermostats have to allow half degrees ... and those have one digit after the decimal point, so ten fractions :P
Only digital ones
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Tell me how tall you are in meters, and how intuitive that is.
Tell me how far it is to the nearest town in meters, and how intuitive that is.
The base units are nearly useless for every day measurement. If you don't see that, I'm not sure what to tell you. The English system doesn't have inches and feet just for the amusement of it. It's because those units correspond more closely to real world things one deals with every
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They are as intuitive as your measures.
Because I grew up with them ... idiot.
And a human is around 170cm tall, close to 2meters ... no idea what that has to do with "intuitive".
The next town is not meters away but kilo meters, thousands of meters. Wow that was easy.
And for your stupidity: a meter is more or less exactly as long as a yard.
The English system doesn't have inches and feet just for the amusement of it.
No, it has it for historical reasons when a new king changed the measurements when he started h
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Look, for science purposes, Kelvin is probably as good as anything... but for the specific purpose of answering the question, "how hot is it outside", Fahrenheit's scale IS more optimimal.
0F isn't just "cold"... it's the point where even someone in good health, with proper protective clothing, is likely to be at serious risk of injury or death if literally anything goes even slightly wrong. Likewise, 100F (wet bulb) isn't just "hot", it's the point where you're in active danger of heatstroke, EVEN IF you're
Re: Climatedot (Score:4, Informative)
I agree that Fahrenheit looks nicer for human-related temperatures, but if you've grown up with Celsius, it's all perfectly fine too. And the fact that 0 C is freezing point of water is helpful when driving.
Re:A good Matlab replacement, not the next big thi (Score:2)
To me C works better for human the human scale.
less than -50 I will die if I go outside
less than 0 it's cold. Definitely need a jacket (if from Newcastle, substitute -10).
0-25 generally ok for human life. might be chilly or warm, but not that bad and I won't die if I go outside whether or not I wear a jacket.
greater than 25 it's hot. Do not wear jacket
=37 blood
greater than 50 I will die if I go outside
100 tea!
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Likewise, 100F (wet bulb) isn't just "hot", it's the point where you're in active danger of heatstroke, ... facepalm, how stupid are you americans actually?
No you are in no danger. That is your body temperature
Holy fucking shit dude! Have you never been in the military? Played sports? Had hunter safety training? Worked a job stacking boxes? Even fucking gone on a walk outside in the summer? 100F in the shade, at rest, is downright LETHAL! You could have at least bothered to look it up on Wikipedia at least before giving such bad advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 ÂC (95 ÂF) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature, environmental heat gain instead of loss occurs.
I pray to God that you are not ever put in care of children. You'll have them dead or injured for life with such an ignorance of how the w
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I was born in India, I live in Australia. I go for a jog when the air temperature is 40 degrees Celsius. I've been outside when it's 50 degrees Celsius, and that made me feel lethargic as hell, but it didn't kill me.
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1. The issue is wet bulb temperature, not air temperature alone. So 35 degrees C and 100 % humidity.
2. Of course you can "go outside" when it's even much hotter than that. You can also go into a sauna. However. you can't survive long-term (say, 24 hours).
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You should call people less names when you're as wrong as you are.
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Thermodynamics is thought in Physic classes.
And the topic has nothing to do with thermodynamics ... if at all it is a medical topic. However blindseer is an idiot, so we actually have no topic.
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Thermal transfer.
No you are in no danger. That is your body temperature ... facepalm, how stupid are you americans actually?
With a wet bulb temperature of... your body temperature, then you are *incapable* of cooling. There will be no thermal flux. Unless your metabolism drops to 0 (See: documentation [wikipedia.org]) you will quickly become hyperthermic, and die.
Basic thermodynamics.
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I would love for you to tell that to one of my 20y/o troops that is permanently disabled and partially paralyzed from a heat stroke at 82F.
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The heat stroke was not because of "82F" but sun on his helmet or what ever. ... idiot.
No one gets a heat stroke in 82F
Re: Climatedot (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in the US, I'm born and raised in Arkansas. I drive a 4x4 truck and qualify as a redneck and a hillbilly. I have my GED and 2 years of community college. I can understand the metric system and use it with no issues. I don't convert the exact temperature from C to F in my head but I have a pretty good idea of how hot or cold something is when given temperatures in C. I know 20C is a nice comfortable temp just below 70F and that 40F is a few degrees over 100F and hot as balls. 0C is Freezing and 100C is boiling.
It would be nice if people like you quit acting like the US was some kind or rational haven because we use imperial measurements and ignore the metric system. I was never taught the metric system in school but I wish I was. I'm 42 and it's much easier to learn and use and it makes sense. The US and 1 or 2 other shithole countries in the entire world still use imperial measurements. Don't act like you are too good to learn something new, especially on a site like Slashdot "news for nerds stuff that matters" because if you cant take an hour or two out of your life to learn the metric system get the fuck off of news sites about technology and futurism and go spend your time commenting on funny memes on 9gag. This website is for people who want to learn new things and talk about them. It's not for people who want to bitch because they don't understand something as simple as temperature being measured in celcius.
It's the scientific standard for the world, including scientists in the United States. Go take a giant flying fuck if you can't see an article using C without crying in the comments that you are too fucking thick headed to know what 3.7C means in farenheit and too lazy to type 3.7C to F in your address bar where it will fucking convert it without you even having to press enter or search or anything else.
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You've already been modded up to a 5, can't go any higher, but here's another vote for your comment. Thanks.
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and another vote up, if I had them. Metric works for me.
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I'd mod you up as well if I had mod points right now.
In this case, posting as AC does have the virtue of more mod-room (from 0 to 5.) But you sound like the kind of person who could improve this site. Please sign in and let us get to know you.
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We are talking about temperature differences not about absolutes.
Can't be so hard to memorize 1C is ~ 2F (a tiny bit more). So just multiply by 2 and forget that you are a few percent off.
I wouldn't know how to relate to a 3.7C change in temperature if my life depended on it.... ...
Now you know: it is roughly 7.5F
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American exceptionalism at work again....
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the Church of Carbontology.
Thats the fossil fuel industry.
Re:A carbon-doom oopsie (Score:4, Insightful)
Stuff like shrinking clay sounds funny and trivial, until you realize that it breaks homes and infrastructure, and the cost of fixing is huge. It's cheaper to buy an A/C unit to deal with a hot summer than to have your house repaired.
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Guess what London's built on? The clay.
Guess what happens to buildings, sidewalks, pipes, tunnels, and so on built on ground that constantly shrinks and expands? Especially when the original construction did not consider it since it wasn't a problem back then.
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Guess what London's built on? The clay.
Guess what happens to buildings, sidewalks, pipes, tunnels, and so on built on ground that constantly shrinks and expands? Especially when the original construction did not consider it since it wasn't a problem back then.
They think they're in North Carolina?
Seriously, it's a known problem with known solutions that are relatively cheap, and if London were going to have this problem, they'd have it already. A few degrees of delta in temps isn't going to change the situation.
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A few degrees of delta in temps isn't going to change the situation.
Actually, it's going to significantly increase drying, and the additional rainfall in winter is going to significantly increase how wet it gets then.
If this had been part of London's normal weather, they'd have built to deal with it. But it's not. So they didn't. Which means retrofitting/repairing a shitload of buildings.
Re:Link to study (Score:4, Informative)
1) Sad that it wasn't included in the header
2) Sad that one has to scroll 2/3rds of the comments to find it (I was about to post it myself).
Note that there's far more cities covered than listed in the news article in the Slashdot summary. Scroll down to supporting information, database_S2, and click download. I can see that Reykjavík, for example, would correspond to Edinburgh. Nice. :)
* Average mean temperature would rise from 4,6C to 6,8C
* Coldest month average temperature would rise from -2,5C to -0,4C
* Warmest month average temperature would rise from 13,1C to 15,4C
* Annual precipitation would rise from 901mm to 931mm
* Wettest month precipitation would rise from 92mm to 103mm.
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Just like gravity, climate change doesn't care whether you believe in it or not.
If you want people to pay their own money in taxes, higher priced products, different lightbulbs or toilets, or whatever else it is you are trying to sell then you need people to believe in it. If you can't put in their heads the threat global warming poses then don't expect them to give up cash to avert this threat.
Here's an idea, do something about this that doesn't require taking more money. Let's get more wind, hydro, nuclear, and a little bit of natural gas to replace coal. In many parts of the worl
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When it comes to transportation it should be relatively easy to sell people on natural gas and LPG
Natural gas would help a little, but it would require modifications to cars, and it's only a short term solution.
LPG would not help. We already use all our naturally concurring LPG, so it would have be be converted from gasoline or diesel, which would only increase CO2 per unit of energy.
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Natural gas would help a little, but it would require modifications to cars,
Don't modify existing cars, offer new CNG cars as replacements for people that wore out or outgrew what they have now. This is supposed to be a low cost and low resistance shift in our energy usage. Something that shouldn't require government subsidies to get people to buy in.
and it's only a short term solution.
No, it's not. Or, at least it doesn't have to be. There's plenty of natural gas reserves in the Americas and much of Asia. Enough to last decades, if not centuries. It may be a short term solution but it's a solution that lowers
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Natural gas still produces 75% of the CO2 that gasoline does for the same energy output. That's a small improvement for a big price. We would have to replace the cars, upgrade fuel infrastructure, and greatly ramp up natural gas production and tranport, only to find out that 75% is still too much.
Here's an idea, how about instead of telling me how my ideas won't work you offer something that will
I don't think there are any. Half the people are still in denial, and they are not going to accept tough measures that would be required to have a chance.
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I live in Canada near the US border and winters are getting harsher, thus disproving climate change once and for all.
Suck it libtards
Allowing what you say is true, it does not disprove climate change because:
(a) you are supplying one data-point to argue against large numbers of scientific studies based on worldwide observations; and
(b) climate is an oscillating system, and greater extremes (high or low) are a sign that energy is being pumped into the system.