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The Center for American Progress reports
At the end of [the week of June 30] in Quriyat, a small fishing village on the northeast coast of Oman, people experienced 51 straight hours of temperatures above 108.7°F--making this the hottest low temperature recorded on earth.
[...] Keene, New Hampshire's daily record of 100°F, first set in 1913, was broken on July 1 when temperatures there reached 102°F. A new record was also set that day in Allentown, Pennsylvania with 98°F. And Burlington once again tied its daily record high (96°F) [and] the temperature streak continued for six days.
The trend of cities breaking their records continued on Monday, July 2, in Montreal (97.8°F record daily high), Burlington (80.6°F, its record warmest low temperature ever), and Mount Washington, New Hampshire (59.9°F, tied for its all-time warmest low temperature). Also on July 2, Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, reached a record high for the month when temperatures hit 107.6°F.
[...] Many are asking: is this climate change?
Just like with extreme storms, no single record can be specifically attributed to climate change. However, taken together, these more than 20 different heat records spanning the globe this past week are consistent with what scientists say can be expected from climate change.
[...] Yet, during the midst of the week's scorching weather, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportedly scrubbed mentions of climate change's impact [PDF] on occupational safety and health, including how extreme weather could have negative health impacts.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @10:18AM (28 children)
Those two posts are an awful lot of effort just to deny that we are all frogs in a slowly boiling pot.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 08 2018, @10:51AM (22 children)
Well, hell, you knew the sun is expected to go nova, didn't you? "an awful lot of effort" you say? I've read those before. Didn't have them bookmarked, so there was a little effort, but I wouldn't call it a lot of effort.
As for the slowly boiling pot - I'm all for getting the hell out of the pot. Let's get colonies started all over the solar system, and start shipping people out to them. Maybe we can get earth's population down to 1 or 2 billion. Let the aborigines have it - they treat it better than we do. All the high-tech people can build high-tech domiciles on Mars, our moon, and the other moons. Maybe even some habitats in orbit. We aren't exactly overpopulated, we're just crowded into such a small space, it seems that way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:23PM (10 children)
Way to go! Shitted this place full to the rafters, let's move on and shit somewhere else too, this place stinks.
Reconcile yourself with the idea, mate, you aren't going to leave Earth. Nor the other billions of this planet.
Look, the western countries discard zillions of tons of food - because they don't meet the "esthetic and size standards" of the supermarkets**. Enough to feed some other billions. Because, you see, it's too expensive to transport that food half a world away.
And you think there's gonna be a relocation of more than 2/3rd of Earth population on other planets?
The only way the Earth is going to drop its population due to space colonies is those colonies become self-sufficient, declare independence and drop some asteroids on Earth in the ensuing independence war.
---
** Households account for roughly half of the 15 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK every year... 40% of farmers’ crops are being rejected by supermarkets because they are not the right shape or colour. [edie.net]
20 tonnes of freshly dug parsnips consigned to the rubbish heap in a Norfolk farmyard - purely because they didn't look pretty enough [bbc.com]
Up to 87% of undamaged, edible tomatoes harvested from a commercial Queensland farm were rejected and wasted based on appearance [theguardian.com]
Americans waste 150,000 tons of food each day – equal to a pound per person [theguardian.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)
The space colonies will probably be libertarian, which means they get a tech boost. They will probably develop laser turrets very quickly and so not need to use asteroids.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:09PM
By what miracle you think libertarians get a tech boost over non-libertarians?
Those will likely be provided by Earth mining companies - pretty hard to replace those drilling bits at light-minutes distances.
But, to use the lasers, one will need to be close enough to the target, even lasers don't escape the inverse square intensity decrease with the distance.
Why would they come back into the Earth orbits when they have the Sun's gravity working for them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:16PM (3 children)
I went to a supermarket yesterday that had a small section near the other produce that sold onions, potatoes, etc. not meeting aesthetic and size standards at a significantly lower price. That is a good way to train consumers into accepting it: point out the problem, give an incentive. Other stores [civileats.com] are catching on to this idea [npr.org], and there are also stores [qz.com] popping up [smithsonianmag.com] that sell exclusively expired, damaged, or "ugly" foods. I'm confident that this trend will never be reversed, even if it is a slow movement.
The distance between consumer and "farm" could be reduced using hydroponic vertical farming in standard size shipping containers and other innovations. This could be of help in cities and particularly in places where fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce, such as Alaska. Alaska, Antarctica, etc. should be seen as training grounds for Mars.
Conflict [unu.edu] and poverty are big factors that hurt the distribution of food in the developing world. No amount of food waste reduction in the West is going to make a big dent in those issues.
At the end of the day, there will always be some amount of food waste per person, no matter how many ugly apples or avocados with special coatings [soylentnews.org] are sold. People buy stuff and just let it go moldy in the fridge. But food waste can be reduced, conflicts can be mediated, and new technologies and bioengineering can improve farming and yields. And don't forget the omniphobic coatings [soylentnews.org] for the inside of ketchup, mayo, peanut butter, etc. jars.
You're likely right about that. Even if a beyond-BFR-class reusable rocket gets developed, it's still going to be expensive to ship people off, and they will need to live off the land with ultra high efficiency and low waste when they get there... techniques that would be much easier to use right here on Earth.
One issue to think about: where is the global population heading?
World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision [un.org]
Some countries, like China, are projected to decline dramatically in population. And global population is expected to peak around 11-12 billion. But the assumptions may be totally wrong if anti-aging causes life expectancy to start shooting up. Luckily, those same anti-aging treatments could allow older people to be much more productive. And the treatments are only going to be available to the rich in the initial decades.
Finally: Jeff Bezos dreams of a world with a trillion people living in space [cnbc.com]. Is the new world's richest man onto something?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:24PM (2 children)
Of course he is. He's into taking your money. Now.
Even better if all he needs to offer in exchange are some futuristic dreams.
(hint: his billions don't modify the laws of physics, chem, biology)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:41PM (1 child)
Most of Blue Origin's funding [wikipedia.org] currently comes from Bezos himself:
If he sells tickets for New Shepard suborbital tourism (and a couple of space agency launches), that's providing a service, not just dreams.
The "laws of physics, chem, biology" don't prevent an eventual solar system population of 1 trillion. This planet itself can support far above 10 billion, it just requires us to take better care of the planet, build denser cities, and maybe put metropolises/megalopolises in Siberia, the Sahara, etc. Bezos would object to that, seeing as it will more likely than not result in a lot of environmental destruction before we can clean up our act.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @01:21AM
We haven't actually tried**, we don't know the complexity and costs. If those costs are prohibitive, expect a 'space colony extinction' rather than growth.
Until we try, your/Bezos'es assertion is as good as mine: a guess.
My guess draws from the current capability shown by humanity to obtain and control++ enough energy in space while independent from Earth - that's the main bottleneck.
---
** no, ISS on LEO is not a good indicator of the problem complexity and we already know from there that even with trained individuals living in space has some nasty side effects
++ an uncontrolled nuke explosion is useless for the purpose of long term living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:37PM (1 child)
If food were the only concern, then, yeah, we can feed the world. Except, it isn't really happening.
The OTHER concerns are more serious though. Pollution increases every year. We strip mine the world for a few "precious" commodities. We use good, clean water for bullshit stuff. We continue to defecate all over the world, literally, creating dead zones in our offshore waters. You'll note that I haven't even touched on the climate change enthusiast's number one concern: greenhouse gases.
If it were just food, we could allow the have-nots to starve, and the world would just go on without them. But, if we continue to poison the world around us, there may be no survivors.
Don't like that argument? Fine - how about the impending impact argument? We've discussed and argued the possibilities of deflecting a huge in-bound meteorite several times on this board. Medium to medium large, we might deflect. Large or very large, I don't give us very good odds.
I care little which reasons mankind finds to GTFO this world. I just want it to happen. The last big influenza endemic (1918) only killed several million people. (seems like it almost killed as many people as Joseph Stalin, if I remember right) The next one might kill billions, instead of millions.
An apocolyptic disease that takes out half of the world's population may or may not break our civilization, but I'm damned sure civilization won't just spring back in a year or two.
Take any argument you like, ignore the ones you don't like. We need to move on to bigger and better things than poisoning the earth. There is no future here.
Maybe you should consider re-reading the book, Soylent Green. Or, watch the movie. Maybe that particular dystopia won't happen, but another surely will. Shall we go Orwellian? How many governments monitor their citizen's communications? How many attempt to surveil it's citizens 24/7? The UK claims to be a bastion of liberty, and supposedly allies itself with the US, but how many cameras does the Crown own, for the purpose of keeping it's population under control?
Disease, starvation, technical dystopia, impending impact - pick a reason, and start pushing for mankind's survival on other rocks - or even without rocks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 09 2018, @03:17AM
> We need to move on to bigger and better things than poisoning the earth. There is no future here.
Spoken like someone who has soaked up too much fantastical SF. If Faster Than Light travel is possible at all, we sure don't know how to do it. Without FTL, you can just forget about colonizing other solar systems any time soon. There are many, many advances we would need. We and our civilizations may be too unstable and competitive to have much chance of surviving centuries of travel in a generational colony ship. Can't have some new assholes popping up every few years blackmailing everyone else, threatening to wreck the ship unless they get more than their fair share of the available resources, or some insane suicide cult arising and just killing off everyone without bothering to make even an unfair demand. Just one unstable person could scuttle the attempt. So, maybe have passengers travel in some sort of cold sleep? Wouldn't help if they pull the same sorts of stunts on the newly established colony world and get everyone killed off shortly after landing.
As for Mars, no, just no. We can't hack it in Antarctica. Mars is much worse. No breathable air, no radiation shielding, toxic, and colder.
Fixing the issues here at home is way, way easier than walking away. Worse, leaving may not solve anything. If we don't clean up our act here, learn to behave ourselves better, cultivate a sense of greater responsibility, because, face it, we made the mess, we inflicted these problems upon ourselves, and we do somehow manage to colonize another few worlds, why shouldn't the same forces that made a mess here not mess those places up too? Earth has been a going concern for billions of years, and now, in less than 10k years, we personally have made such a mess we're well on our way to making it necessary to leave? WTF?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @07:05PM (1 child)
it's too expensive to transport that food half a world away
A store was running a special the other week.
They had 14.1 oz cans of "Americana" brand chick peas (garbanzos) for $0.39.
The brand got me curious--especially since, when you turned the can/label 180 degrees, that side was in Arabic.
The country of origin was UAE (United Arab Emirates).
So, they had to
-plant the seeds
-water the plants repeatedly
-probably apply herbicide and pesticide
-harvest the crop
-wash the produce
-truck the crop to a processing plant
-shell the legumes
-cook the product, seal it in cans, apply labels, and box the goods
(so, the plant had to buy tin-plated steel cans, labels, glue, and boxes from vendors)
-truck the boxes full of canned goods to a port
-ship the goods halfway around the world
-truck the goods to a warehouse
-truck the goods to the grocery store
-have the stockboy cut the cases and put the goods on the sales floor
-have the cashier ring up the sale
That anyone is making a profit on this is a shock to me.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @09:16PM
I've noticed similar, amazingly low prices, even for things that are not on sale (short term discounted). How do they do that?
I get that the labor in the originating country is very, very cheap, but, even with zero cost of labor, the processing, packing, shipping and distribution ought to cost more than what I can buy the item for in USA.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:26PM (10 children)
...the Sun is not expected to go nova, super or otherwise, you science-illiterate idiot. It's a G-type yellow dwarf. What will happen is it'll swell to red giant size, maybe out to the orbit of Venus or so, then puff off its outer layers and leave behind a helium or carbon white dwarf, which will spend the next eleventy-billion years cooling down to background temperature.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:40PM (9 children)
Orly? And - when that happens, what happens to the earth? Presuming, of course, that life survives on earth until your big cheese puff scenario.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:27PM (6 children)
As you would know if you knew anything about stellar evolution, as main sequence stars age their luminosity goes up. This means the habitable zone expands outward, and within a billion years or so--still 4+ billion years before Sol leaves the main sequence and begins expanding--it'll be too hot for life on Terra. The seas will boil, though slowly, as more and more vapor is wafted into the upper troposphere and stratosphere and photodissociated, the hydrogen escaping into space.
We'll be long gone by then, and nothing says some *other* disaster won't boot Terra back to the unicellular-life age, or even sterilize it entirely, before then.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 08 2018, @03:42PM (5 children)
Oh, so, you mean the earth will burn up, like the Bible says? Imagine that . . .
I do love your condescension, please, go on!!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 08 2018, @06:46PM (4 children)
No, Runaway, Terra will not "burn up." Even Venus hasn't "burned up" and it's three times hotter than a pie oven in there. There is a possibility we'll end up like Venus, or possibly just a larger Mercury; depends on what happens with the atmosphere between now and then.
The Bible, which is ALSO something you seem to know very little about, was predicting the end times around or before, at the VERY most generous estimate, about 120AD, given parallel passages in all three Synoptic Gospels that state "...this generation shall not pass away...until all these things take place." The word used here is the Koine "genea," which *always* means a single, literal generation.
Runaway, there is nothing wrong with a little condescension if you can back it up :) You, my aging, ignorant friend, are so far out of your depth you'd need to look up to spot an anglerfish's asshole, and you'd better salute when you do.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 08 2018, @06:59PM (1 child)
Your verbosity is atrocious. Can't you get to the point? You think that I'm lower than whale shit. If you had joined the Navy, you could have learned to be concise with your insults.
Meanwhile - despite all your condescension - the earth's future involves fire, and exceedingly hot temperatures, at which no life is known to be capable of surviving. Kinda like hell. Hellfire and brimstone. Will there be blues?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 08 2018, @08:21PM
Don't worry, you'll find out all about Hell soon enough. I give you perhaps 10-15 more years at most, assuming no accidents or nationwide catastrophe happen between now and then.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday July 08 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)
You can't say that for sure. The radius of the Sun may or may not exceed 1 AU when the Sun becomes a red giant. If it does, Earth could "burn up":
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/39-our-solar-system/the-earth/other-catastrophes/65-what-will-happen-to-life-on-earth-when-the-sun-becomes-a-red-giant-beginner [cornell.edu]
The Sun has a radius of about 1/215 AU. Its radius could eventually expand [wikipedia.org] to 256 Solar radii or 1.2 AU:
Obviously, life on Earth will be toast long before any of this could occur.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday July 09 2018, @05:23AM
There is a small chance of a passing star perturbing the Earths orbit just right that we don't burn up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @07:22PM
Yes, really.
you science-illiterate idiot
Azuma has it on the nose.
A nova is an accretion phenomenon and requires a binary pair of stars exchanging mass in a dramatic way.
Sol doesn't have a twin, so that's not going to happen.
A supernova is also not possible with Sol since that requires a star to have at least 3 solar masses.
This is, once again, an example of someone attempting to use words that he doesn't understand.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @01:44AM
Good grief. Just admit you fucked up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday July 08 2018, @11:34AM (4 children)
Look, 107 degrees is not boiling. 108 degrees is not boiling. And 109 degrees, it wasn't 109 in Quriyat, it was almost 109, that's still not boiling!!!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 08 2018, @05:18PM (3 children)
Shit, that's not even that hot (yeah, I know its a low, but still.). In my ancestral home, the Imperial Valley, temperatures regularly go up to 120-ish degrees F, so your breath feels cold on your face when you exhale and not having air-conditioning can be a death sentence for older less mobile folks.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 08 2018, @07:05PM
I had my middle son with me on a trip to Cal. We stopped at the truck stop at 29 Palms. The boy had made a thing out of collecting samples from the salt flats, alkali flats, and whatever else struck his fancy. The boy jumped out of the truck at 29 Palms, and ten seconds later, climbed back in. I looked at him, and asked what he was up to. He says, "IT'S HOT OUT THERE!" Well, yeah, it's hot. Grab the thermometer, and jump out and see how hot. He laid the thermometer on the sand, and climbed back in. Few minutes later, he got it, and read 122 degrees. I told him to stick the thermometer down into the sand, and a few minutes later he read it at 118 degrees.
The boy had to find his shoes, and tossed his silly sandals into the back of the truck, before he could walk across the parking lot.
Yep, it gets hot in Cal. I've seen it a bit warmer further up in Mojave, 126. I've never been to Death Valley - just kinda close to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @07:48PM (1 child)
temperatures regularly go up to 120-ish degrees F
The thing about the desert southwest is that the temperatures go down at night.
Depending on cloud cover, the day/night differential is rarely less than 15 degrees F.
20 degrees is common and 25 degrees is not all that uncommon.
Newcomers hereabouts soon realize that, even in the summer, if they're going to venture out during the day and stay out after dark, they need to take a wrap with them.
The story here is that for over 2 days running any nighttime drop they experienced still had them with extremely hot ambient conditions.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 08 2018, @08:08PM
I'd much rather take hotter levels of our dry heat than less hot but soaking Southern humidity (and all of their large prehistoric-sized bugs that come with it).