Oh good. Because burning fossil fuels hasn't heated up the climate enough.

or perhaps this is further confirmation of the urban heat island effect, where temperature measurements that used to be in the middle of the countryside are now surrounded by towns or busier airports which make it appear to have heated up more than it actually has. This would mean that we should probably use satellite measurements instead of ground based, if we want something more accurate.

However that would mean climate change isn't anywhere near as scary as we're being led to believe.

Anon as I work for an energy company who are currently "all in" in Net Zero, so I'll keep it like that until the Overton Window shifts in a couple of years, and those targets will be quietly dropped.

It's common around power stations to find localised higher temperature and humidity, due to the plant's cooling towers adding a lot more water vapour, which apart from the direct heat from the station, also absorbs sunlight.

I think it's pretty clear that the earth IS getting warmer and weather is becoming more violent - e.g. just look at sea ice and glacier loss - but how much of that is due to CO2, and how much is from other human-caused pollution (such as methane, CFCs, SF6, carbon black, and water vapour) or even natural changes in solar activity I am less convinced.

I do nevertheless believe we need to reduce energy consumption - the oil will run out eventually, and the wars we will have over the last few zillion barrels of it will be our undoing. And as we have seen in the middle east: War is a major polluter in itself, and even a small one in a far away land can wipe out any progress we might make with our Net Zero malarkey.

So we need clean, reliable power - nukes are a good candidate but are burdened by crippling regulation - the good news is that regulation is the one thing that governments CAN fix.

I agree the Earth is warming up. Just not convinced it's enough to worry too much about... for now. And hopefully we'll have power tech that can replace fossil fuels in the coming decades. And if not it's probably cheaper to put in mitigations rather than completely impoverish ourselves, as we seem to be doing in Europe right now.

More nuclear would be the obvious stop gap.

I'm not sure that calling CO2 "pollution" is a good idea. There are far worse pollutants that are actually directly harmful.

I'm also not convinced about sea ice loss. It does seem to be stubbornly not being lost at the rate which is of any concern. Although this depends on who is telling the actual truth. Is it those nasty climate denier web sites with scientists who are probably funded by Big Oil or those lovely climate alarmists who are probably funded by Big Green. ;-)

Yup, those hundreds of dead trees I pass walking in forests are just a liberal fantasy. Stupid trees are just trying to shame the oil industry, which doesn't have any shame.

Just stay indoors and listen to podcasts.

Downvoted because while the assumption that the Earth overall is getting warmer is very likely correct, there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that weather is becoming more violent. Neither is there any particular reason to expect that to happen. In point of fact the scientific consensus is,and always has been, that the affects of planetary warming will mostly be felt in the high latitudes and mostly in the form of warmer Winter nights

And yes you're right that fossil fuels won't last forever, although the supply is probably underestimated. At least that's always been the case in the past. And yes the answer to that is presumably nuclear power although I don't think the issue of where the massive amounts of fissionables and/or fusionables are going to come from has been thought through.

But the idea that nuclear power plants don't need to be regulated as strictly as commercial aircraft are strikes me as being incredibly optimistic. Perhaps if guaranteed fail-safe designs like Pebble bed reactors become standard, humanity can safely allow bean-counters and sales geniuses to run nuclear plants without strict regulation. But I wouldn't underestimate the capability of those folks to generate catastrophy even where failure seems impossible.

I think "fusionables" means Hydrogen, which I understand we have plenty of. Most of it's attached to water, but the electro chemical reaction to separate the Hydrogen uses WAY less power than the power from the nuclear reaction that you get out. At least that's how I understand it. If we can ever get that one to work. A big if.

Yeah, they do need to be regulated of course. Just not over regulated. I don't think anyone suggested regulating them less than commercial aircraft?

Apart from those couple of points, thumbs up.

> or perhaps this is further confirmation of the urban heat island effect, where temperature measurements that used to be in the middle of the countryside are now surrounded by towns or busier airports which make it appear to have heated up more than it actually has.

I'm not sure I understand. What's the "it" in the last sentence? What does "heated up more than it actually has" mean?

You mean that the urban heat island effect is not a driver of climate change? Okay, I agree, but I've also almost never heard anyone claim that, certainly nobody who has any authority on the subject. When a correlation is claimed, the causal link is typically claimed to be the opposite (heat islands make heatwaves more dangerous, which seems a no-brainer to me).

Why would we want to exclude ground-based measurements? I live on the ground, it's where I sweat or shiver. Anything that changes ground temperature is very relevant to the general public.

Puzzling.

"it" is the Earth. The Earth appears to have heated up more than The Earth actually has.

We seem to be using those increases in temperature a proxy for the whole planet. It's only 1 to 3 degrees so it's hardly going to make a difference to how much you sweat or freeze, however it does lead to headlines about "Record temperature increase" to make us all scared that it's getting hotta than evah. The satellite is still measuring the ground temperature where you actually _live_. Why exclude the ground based measurements? Because they have been corrupted by the Urban Heat Island effect and can't be extrapolated into a GMST.

A nit -- satellites don't actually measure ground temperature. They measure lower troposphere temperature -- very roughly, the average temperature of the lowest few km of the local atmosphere. They can, and do, detect extremely warm spots -- wildfires, missile launches, but that's done with different satellites.

Thanks. I learned a thing today.

You can use the heat from the data centres to conceal your grow op.

and if you grow some of the really strong Cali strains, you too can hallucinate like AI.

I often wondered about ground sourced heat pumps dumping and extracting heat to the ground within the suburban setting and changing the local climate. Never really considered the "what if" of doing the same with a data centre, and especially an AI/HPC datacentre built to run high loads as much as 90% of the time. Are any of these DCs dumping heat into the ground? If not, then that's one hell of a heat plume to change a delta of 9C in the ground from the air.

Over the last 20 years we've noticed a massive change (to which I mean decrease) in animal populations - mainly birds, but also insects and small mammals such as hedgehogs. The increase in sound and light pollution due to the expansion of the town (increased traffic noise and change to white LED street lights as a notable jump) has been a major factor. Now with a large DC supposedly being built nearby soon, and within 3 miles of us I guess the drop in animal numbers will only increase with the higher ambient temperatures.

Unless the AI data centre replaces a bunch of suburban lawns sprayed with pesticides and intensive single crop farms sprayed with pesticides

I hate this day.

GJC

The source article was published 27th March.

THEY DO NOT CARE.

I joked a few days ago that maybe we should ban active cooling in datacentres - so I have some data to back up the idea!