[HN Gopher] Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record
___________________________________________________________________
Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record
Author : tambourine_man
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-03-14 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Pardon my crudity, but is there a reason to not build a bunch of
| nuclear power plants + carbon suckers powered by electricity?
| mikestew wrote:
| "carbon suckers": perhaps the fact that we don't even have a
| popular phrase for the technology, let alone having built
| anything practical, will answer your question sufficiently.
| That, and there are a lot of other inputs to that equation such
| that when I read what you typed, I kind of paraphrase it as,
| "why don't we just wave a magic technology wand and make it go
| away?" :-)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I meant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration
| mikestew wrote:
| Yeah, I knew what you meant, I'm being somewhat of a
| smartass. Somewhat, because I maintain that my point
| stands. :-) I mean, do we have any meaningful carbon
| sequestration that's even _threatening_ to come online?
| otikik wrote:
| The only thing carbon capture is good at is at capturing public
| millions in grants and storing them deep, deep into the
| accounts fossil fuel companies' bank accounts, where no tax
| officer can reach them.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| That sounds like it would hurt the oil industry and the
| reactionaries that prop it up have somewhat of a monopoly on
| force.
| ajuc wrote:
| The reason is that it's too expansive - it would mean we stop
| whatever we're doing and focus almost all resources on this for
| decades.
|
| If the price wasn't an issue then there are simpler ways to
| deal with global warming without building anything - just
| consume less. But we're not doing that cause it's politically
| unpopular. So any solution that relies on majority of people
| making huge sacrifices probably won't fly either.
| sfe22 wrote:
| Do we even have an efficient way to extract carbon using
| electricity?
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Define efficient. We have ways that take about as much
| electricity to remove the CO2 from the air as we get from
| burning the fossil fuels today. If we got to a point where we
| have an extreme energy surplus, we could do it. But as long
| as we're burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, we
| can't really pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere more
| efficiently than we can put it here. It does allow a type of
| location arbitrage, where places that are good at producing
| clean energy could pull gas out of the air for places that
| don't have any options besides fossil fuels. You'd have to
| convince the places burning fossil fuels that it's worth
| paying the clean energy rich places for that service though.
| Then after you have it out of the air, storage becomes
| another hard issue.
|
| At the moment there's the low hanging fruit of carbon capture
| at plants that burn the fuels, which can be done many times
| more efficiently.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Apart from the time it would take, and the total carbon
| released during the building process, and the fact that it
| would still not get close to net zero?
| chromaton wrote:
| Possible, but expensive.
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1044972/carbon-r...
| anonporridge wrote:
| Ok, you spend your time and resources doing that, and I'll
| spend mine increasing my military and economic might.
|
| Now replace 'you' and 'me' with competing nation states and
| super powers.
|
| It's a kind of geopolitical prisoner's dilemma. We're all
| screwed to different degrees if we do nothing, but everyone has
| an incentive to be a parasite, letting 90% of the world use
| their energy working on this problem that distributes the
| rewards of success (averting global climate disaster) equally
| to all people, while you use your energy on something that
| gives you direct and exclusive benefit, not globally diffused
| benefit.
|
| And even if you could somehow force everyone to participate,
| you run into the same problem that makes communism (in the
| "from each according to their ability, to each according to
| their need" definition) not work well. When conscious beings
| don't get rewarded personally for working harder or smarter,
| and the fruits of their labor are always diffused equally
| across the population, everyone falls into a vicious downward
| spiral of trying to do the minimum work possible, therefore
| making everyone worse off in the long run.
| jjcon wrote:
| I actually think if we had the technology to do that we
| probably would be, we spend billions on climate research and
| even on carbon sequestration tech but we just don't have a
| good scalable way to do it yet.
| anonporridge wrote:
| It's going to cost significantly more energy than the
| aggregate energy output of all fossil fuel burning over the
| past 200 years to remove the carbon from the atmosphere
| that was added. Probably several multiples more because
| it's harder to undo chemical combustion than to do it.
|
| We're probably talking trillions of dollars, not billions.
|
| Much more likely is that we'd invest a few billion in
| pumping global coolants into the atmosphere, which could be
| simpler.
| robocat wrote:
| If the benefits to an individual country are high enough
| compared against the costs, then that country could decide to
| do it even if everyone else is freeloading.
|
| Also the problem should be solved depending on wealth: the
| richest countries cause/caused the majority of the problem,
| and they have the most incentive to fix the problem (e.g. NY,
| California, London), and they have the best resources to try
| and solve the problem.
|
| The EU shows that countries can work together, rather than
| your simplistic dystopian view. Let's presume the EU and the
| US pull finger, then they alone could make a difference. Rope
| in other rich countries, and use trade restrictions to
| penalise or equivalently tax non-participants.
|
| Disclaimer: I live in a coastal city in a wealthy country: I
| very definitely have some skin in this game. However I expect
| to die ~2050, so perhaps I don't care as much as someone who
| expects to die closer to 2100.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| The answers here are mostly wrong. The real answer is that
| energy is expensive, carbon extraction is difficult, and you
| would remove less carbon than you could avoid adding to the
| atmosphere by just using the nuclear plant to offset a coal or
| gas plant.
| defiantdesign wrote:
| Currently the only method we have that is effective is chemical
| scrubbing using monoethanolamine.
| wefarrell wrote:
| Because our economy lacks the incentives to do so. This is a
| solvable problem and it doesn't require new technological
| breakthroughs but governments do need to put the proper
| incentives in place.
| generalizations wrote:
| If the temperature drop becomes inevitable, I wonder if it'd be
| worthwhile to just colonize Antarctica to make up for the lost
| landmass elsewhere. Maybe it's time to have more than scientists
| living there.
| anonporridge wrote:
| The vast mass of humans who will be displaced by sea level rise
| will come from hot, humid regions of the world, primarily
| southeast Asia, https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-
| flooded-future-gl...
|
| Suggesting that people who are both biologically and culturally
| adapted to hot, equatorial climates migrate to Antarctica as a
| primary solution to this displacement strikes me as absurd.
|
| Having said that, I think colonizing Antarctica will certainly
| be a thing, but mostly for resource extraction, not for
| habitation of tens of millions of displaced poor people.
| rajup wrote:
| I sort of understand the cultural aspect of it, curious what
| you mean by the biological adaptation needed. As far as I
| know a person from the tropics has no problem living in
| Canada (well sure they complain about how cold it is, but
| they do fine).
| davmar wrote:
| i think it's inevitable...
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| There's plenty of land on the already inhabited continents,
| even if the sea level rises 100 meters. The issues have more to
| do with how many of our big cities are coastal than the amount
| of land that will be lost.
| howlin wrote:
| The extreme seasonal summer/winter swings in light levels makes
| this undesirable, independent of the temperature.
| mym1990 wrote:
| It won't just be worthwhile, it will be necessary. If and when
| the time comes, that landgrab will be a massive struggle in
| itself.
| kaybe wrote:
| There are no soils to speak of. That will be difficult.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Difficult to build housing. For example, Greenland housing
| shortage is severe:
|
| >> These staff residences are important for attracting
| employees, as the waiting time for a municipal rental property
| in Nuuk is between 10-12 years for a private individual.
|
| https://www.norden.org/en/info-norden/housing-greenland
| llampx wrote:
| Why is it difficult to build housing there? There's a housing
| crisis in most Tier 1 European cities.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| at least Europe can produce its own lumber, it will be some
| time yet before sustainable forestry takes off in
| Antarctica (knock on wood ;)
|
| edit: my bad. didn't realize you were asking about
| greenland, I don't want to act like "no trees" is the cause
| of their housing crisis, I have no idea
| anonAndOn wrote:
| There is practically no lumber to harvest.[0]
|
| [0]https://ign.ku.dk/english/about/arboreta/arboretum-
| greenland...
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Qinngua Valley, the only forest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinngua_Valley
|
| Lumber is imported. Mostly from Denmark, if I'm reading
| this chart correctly:
|
| https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/GRL/
| Yea...
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Important point is that the amount of area covered by sea ice,
| which as can be seen in the graph has been relatively stable, is
| often used as a talking point when arguing that climate change
| has not been happening. However the total mass of ice has been in
| steady decline:
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/265/video-antarct...
|
| In other words while the extent/area has been relatively stable,
| it has been getting thinner.
| soperj wrote:
| What do you mean getting thinner? It mostly melts out every
| single year in Antarctica.
| 988747 wrote:
| At the same time Arctic is having close to record high ice
| coverage: https://weather.co/analysis/arctic-sea-ice-extent-
| second-hig...
|
| Can it simply be some natural cycle that makes the ice cap shift
| from one pole to the other?
| elevenoh wrote:
| >At the same time Arctic is having close to record high ice
| coverage
|
| Too bad there's no incentive for media balance surrounding
| climate-hysteria
| CalRobert wrote:
| https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/ might be a
| more reputable source. It does not support the claim that the
| arctic is near record high ice coverage.
| eCa wrote:
| While the last couple of years have paused the steady downward
| trend, the winter of 2021-2022 is much closer to the worst year
| than the best year[1] since records began in the late '70s.
|
| [1] http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2022/03/Figure3.png
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic
| activities are changing the climate over time and we're not
| prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me
| because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time.
| There are mountains, and _plant fossils_ [1] under the ice at
| Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was
| little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, which can
| happen again, but the relentless effort to drive anxiety of
| extinction through the human race just feels so non-helpful to
| me.
|
| [1] https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/blog/the-ancient-fossil-
| fo...
| treeman79 wrote:
| 20,000 years the sea was 130 meters lower.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level
| CalRobert wrote:
| That doesn't seem like the right comparison to make, though.
| The time when there was no ice was not a time conducive to
| humans (or civilisation, at the very least).
| klyrs wrote:
| Geology is a funny thing. Those fossils lived 100 million years
| ago, when Antarctica wasn't even located at the South pole. So,
| that's a pretty, um, cold comfort.
|
| Found a really neat site for that:
|
| https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#105
|
| Also, geological time scales are a bit of a curiosity. Humans
| are barely a blip. Folks sounding the alarm about climate
| change are speaking to humans. The Earth will keep turning, and
| even generalized life on Earth will probably be "fine" as long
| as we don't tip too far towards a Venus-level greenhouse.
| Humans might have a rougher go of it.
| zsz wrote:
| That's a cool site! Now to find a continuous / animated --
| maybe even 3D -- equivalent thereof...
| melling wrote:
| The first sentence is explicit: "Antarctic sea ice shrank to
| below 2 million square kilometres this year, the lowest minimum
| extent since satellite records began 43 years ago"
| Gravityloss wrote:
| The scientists know this. Paleoclimatology is one big part of
| climatology. But the outcome is the opposite - you should be
| more scared, since it shows that climate can change massively.
| That affects things like agriculture or sea level. What would
| you assume the sea level was, when those plants were alive?
|
| For example, with very quick search:
|
| "In general, world oceans were about 100 to 200 metres (330 to
| 660 feet) higher in the Early Cretaceous and roughly 200 to 250
| metres (660 to 820 feet) higher in the Late Cretaceous than at
| present."
|
| https://www.britannica.com/science/Cretaceous-Period
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Okay, I'd like to respond to this, " _... you should be more
| scared,_ "
|
| Can you reason to that position? Here is how I see it, and
| perhaps that will make my position more clear.
|
| I'm going to die (so are you). Every year, the probability
| that I'm going to die in the next year goes up bit by bit. I
| don't expect to read articles that continually harp on "look
| how close to death you are, are you sure you don't want to
| eat at Cracker Barrel even ONCE before you die?"
|
| And yet, I'm not anxious about dying. I accept that I cannot
| live forever and I do everything that _I can do_ to live a
| long and happy life but there are things that _other people
| do_ that can kill me. If Russia tosses a nuke into Silicon
| Valley, I 'm dead, if a drunk driver crosses into my lane and
| crushes my car, I'm dead, if a clot in my bloodstream decides
| to take out a critical part of my brain, I'm dead. Nothing I
| can do to prevent that.
|
| Should I be _more_ scared of dying? How about just scared
| enough to do everything I can do minimize my risks? I am
| always open to good science that informs me and helps me make
| good choices about risk with respect to my mortality. I
| exercise, I don 't smoke, I wear my seatbelt, I look both
| ways when I cross the street, the list goes on.
|
| Unless you haven't been paying attention, the most recent
| IPCC report basically says, "We're fucked, its gonna happen
| now no matter what." And that sucks because in an imaginary
| universe where there was some sort of world government that
| could tell everybody on the planet what to do and enforce it
| if they didn't then maybe it wouldn't happen. But we don't
| live on that planet any more than I live on a planet that can
| infinitely extend my life, no matter how much I wish it.
|
| So I point out, _the planet doesn 't care._ Big extinction
| event? No big deal, been there done that, look forward to
| seeing what the new apex predator looks like kinda not
| caring.
|
| What is even sadder, is that no credible climate scientist
| will say "If you do this, you'll avert disaster and it will
| all be well." _Because we AFFECT the climate but we don 't
| know how to CONTROL the climate._ That part would require us
| to take actions, look at the result, and then adjust to
| figure out what each of the levers does and what sort of pull
| we might have on it.
|
| I got into a long email discussion with one of IPCC
| contributors who worked on the clouds aspect of the model.
| Because the atmosphere is warming, it holds more moisture,
| and that moisture becomes clouds when you hit the dew point.
| Clouds can form at all levels of the atmosphere but _where_
| they form changes their impact on local weather. The cloud
| model shows that if we get more clouds in the stratosphere it
| will _increase_ surface temperatures, if they form in the
| troposphere the _decrease_ surface temperatures. It was the
| latter that guided the "nuclear winter" hypothesis. But we
| haven't gotten there yet so we don't know _where_ they are
| going to start showing up (and it can be different in
| different parts of the world). All the science tells is that
| there is more energy available for things like hurricane and
| cyclones which are powered by the difference between surface
| and atmospheric temperatures, and there is more water
| available for things like clouds and precipitation.
|
| You can play with the current IPCC model, change where the
| clouds form, and get an ice age. Pretty amazing right? But it
| represents the limit of our understanding in how things
| proceed.
|
| But that hasn't stopped any number of groups to weaponize
| anxiety to encourage action on their particular idea of
| what's "best." Some are well meaning but others, like the
| nuclear industry, are really trying to convince folks that
| you _have_ to start massive reactor projects right now, no
| matter the cost, to avert calamity. Is that accurate? No. The
| science says the calamity is locked and loaded. Is it
| effective at getting more money for nuclear? Absolutely.
|
| "Being scared" and "being anxious" isn't productive (and it
| reduces your life expectancy to boot!) Being proactive about
| the things individuals can do is good as long as all good
| ideas get equal treatment, rather than pushing a single
| agenda (whether it is nuclear, bicycles, electric cars, or
| high speed rail).
|
| That is the context of my annoyance at what I see as fear
| mongering headlines and articles trying to steer resources to
| one and only one cause.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Maybe you don't care about fellow people or coming
| generations, but I think most people do.
| ej_mage wrote:
| Yes most people do :)
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| That is an utter trite, passive aggressive, judgemental
| and potentially emotionally hurtful response to an
| eloquently stated position by the parent.
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| Agreed. That was beautifully, logically stated.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the most recent IPCC report basically says, "We're
| fucked, its gonna happen now no matter what."_
|
| More precisely, that climate change is going to happen no
| matter what. Yes, that's true.
|
| But the report does _not_ say we cannot _adapt_ to climate
| change. It only says we can 't stop it from happening. We
| should be thinking about how to adapt--which is just the
| large scale equivalent of you wearing a seat belt, looking
| both ways before crossing the street, etc., to adapt to the
| fact that there are whackos out there who don't drive
| carefully.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| While you're not wrong regarding adaption, to quote a
| fictional chaostician:
|
| "If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught
| us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks
| free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through
| barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh,
| well, there it is."
|
| That change is going to probably hurt a lot more than
| looking left or right.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> That change is going to probably hurt a lot more than
| looking left or right._
|
| It would hurt less if we'd spent the last couple of
| decades thinking and talking about adaptation, and taking
| steps in that direction, instead of wringing our hands.
| Or, for that matter, if more coastal cities and nations
| had acted like the Netherlands, who have been managing
| sea level rise for more than four centuries now (an
| excellent example of what adaptation can accomplish),
| instead of like, for example, the city of Miami, which
| has had drainage issues for decades and has done nothing
| about them.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| pdonis wrote:
| _> All the science tells is that there is more energy
| available for things like hurricane and cyclones which are
| powered by the difference between surface and atmospheric
| temperatures_
|
| Actually, they're powered ultimately by the difference
| between polar and tropical temperatures, correct? A cyclone
| is basically just a big thing that transports energy from
| the tropics to the poles to equalize an imbalance. And
| warming affects the poles more than the tropics, so the
| difference between polar and tropical temperatures, and
| hence the energy available for cyclones, should be
| decreasing, not increasing.
| gnatman wrote:
| I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines
| would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly,
| significant!!
|
| https://www.floodmap.net/
| jjcon wrote:
| Certainly significant but that also happens on a massive
| time scale - the best estimates have us up 0.7 meters in
| 2100.
|
| https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/us-coastline-to-see-up-
| to-...
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Unfortunately, that's just linear extrapolation from
| current rates.
|
| Ice sheet collapse can be extremely nonlinear,
| accelerating rapidly. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41
| 467-018-05003-z.pdf?origi... Or watch any of Eric
| Rignot's presentations in youtube. The term is Marine Ice
| Sheet Instability.
|
| This video in my opinion gives a fun demonstration of it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLdaAKIkpKA
|
| Miscommunicating sea level rise risk is a big problem.
| jjcon wrote:
| False, the long term NOAA models are far more complex
| than simple extrapolation (though that is of course a
| part of any forecast) and they certainly aren't linear.
| Feel free to read up on them yourself:
|
| https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealev
| elr...
| 988747 wrote:
| This map is weird. I put 20m sea rise and it shows Caspian
| Sea expanding, roughly doubling its size. But the thing is:
| Caspian Sea isn't a sea at all, it's a lake (named "sea"
| only because of its size), not connected to oceans in any
| way - why would its level rise at all?
|
| Also, it is nice to see that my family home is safe until
| about 350 meters rise (although it would be located on a
| small island in that case)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's possible it's the algorithm has a bug for stuff like
| this, but I did notice that with, for example, 40m sea
| rise it shows a connection from the Black Sea to the
| Caspian Sea.
| arno_v wrote:
| Surprisingly if you put it to 20 meters the effect globally
| seem insignificant. Although 80% of my own country would be
| flooded, so that's not great.
| scruple wrote:
| At 20 meters, the Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los
| Angeles, and parts of Orange county are significantly
| impacted.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Well if California goes, we might as well all pack up,
| civilisation is over.
| scruple wrote:
| Okay. So what do you think will happen when a significant
| chunk of the United States economic power is under water?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I suspect it will look like Amsterdam, or Venice, or any
| number of cities that figured out how to cope with
| existing at or below sea level.
| gus_massa wrote:
| From https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anti
| cipating...
|
| > _In its 2019 report, the IPCC projected (chart above)
| 0.6 to 1.1 meters (1 to 3 feet) of global sea level rise
| by 2100 (or about 15 millimeters per year) if greenhouse
| gas emissions remain at high rates (RCP8.5). By 2300,
| seas could stand as much as 5 meters higher under the
| worst-case scenario._
|
| I guess thy will migrate the datacenters before 2300.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| On a global scale, sure, but as you pointed out for some
| spots it wouldn't be good. Both Miami and New York (to a
| lesser extent) would be having a bad time.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't
| change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population
| lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| They'll have a _long_ time to migrate though, no?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The rise in sea level is something of a misnomer, because
| the real damage comes in storm surges. Even a 1cm rise
| increases the amount of water that can pushed inland by
| *checks notes* a whole helluva lot. So while manhattan
| isn't going to be put underwater even after a whole foot
| of sea level rise (predicted by 2100), the storms it has
| to survive will be much worse.
|
| People won't move just from a little water in the roads
| (just look at Miami), I think even in the year 2099
| you'll have a hard time getting new yorkers to move to
| ohio, but once a storm comes through and destroys their
| housing they will have to find somewhere else to live.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, I was looking at this and thinking "At 20m,
| basically the entire Eastern and Southern Seaboard of the
| US is gone."
| Maursault wrote:
| Not at all. Those living along the shore have flood
| insurance which will continue to pay for restoration of
| the coastline.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| The big problem, as a sister comment pointed out, is
| that, for various reasons, a lot of people live close to
| the coast line. And a lot of people having to move was
| historically never really a good for peace, plus we loose
| a lot of agriculturally valuable land in the process.
| r00fus wrote:
| And as Lex Luthor pointed out in Superman1, there may be
| profit to be had. So honestly, two sides to that coin,
| amirite?
| jl6 wrote:
| Interesting that even at a ridiculous, unprecedented 500m
| sea level rise, there are still substantial areas of dry
| land. It would be a radically different world, and a
| smaller one for us land based animals, but it doesn't seem
| outlandish that civilization could persist.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's difficult to imagine the extent and depth of
| suffering that humans will endure during the transition.
| rexpop wrote:
| Dry land is just one aspect of climatic stability.
| Tolerable and predictable weather patterns is another.
| Fertile regions, a critical consequence of that. The
| question isn't whether some will survive, the question
| is: Who, why them, and at what cost? Furthermore, it's
| best to avoid population bottleneck scenarios in general,
| isn't it?
|
| So, sure; we can relax at least our fears for a Kevin
| Costner "waterworld."
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Not to mention 500 meters will likely take a thousand
| years or more. Where will society be a thousand years
| from now? Changing the climate might be as easy as using
| the terrain editor in Sim City.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| something like only 10 meters is necessary to depopulate
| large part of Florida (due to loss land and freshwater
| aquifers) and turn part of _central_ California into a salt
| marsh and start reducing the USA 's most productive
| farmland.
| jjcon wrote:
| Good to keep in mind that best estimates right now have
| sea level rising by less than 0.7 meters through 2100. 10
| meters may happen some day but it will be a very slow
| process.
|
| https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/us-coastline-to-see-up-
| to-...
| r00fus wrote:
| Ecological estimates have been shown to wildly
| conservative.
|
| Who ten years ago had in their ecologic prediction bingo
| card that we'd have rampant wildfires globally and 118
| degree ground temps in the Arctic Circle by 2020?
| jjcon wrote:
| If you have better sources than the NOAA estimates then
| by all means provide them, all I see is an unsourced
| claim and an anecdote
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| was always curious about how below sea level works there,
| how much sea rise does it take before death valley
| becomes the new dead sea?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That is a flaw with this site, it seems to "fill in"
| Death Valley even with no change in sea level. The best
| way to read the map is to look at what new blue areas are
| connected to oceans, rivers, and seas. If they aren't,
| then it's unlikely they will be flooded as illustrated in
| the map at that new sea level. Death Valley, to go with
| that, is still detached from any oceans or rivers until
| almost a 600 m sea level rise.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Right on, thanks for the answer.
| burkaman wrote:
| The article mentions that "on record" only covers the last ~40
| years 5 separate times, including in the first sentence and
| visually in a graph. Is there any way it could be more clear?
| It also says in the subtitle and body that this change is
| probably not due to global warming. How are you reading it as
| an "effort to drive anxiety of extinction"?
|
| It's honestly hard to imagine a more mildly-framed climate-
| related story that is still accurate. Do you have an example of
| some climate-related coverage that you find acceptable?
| ejb999 wrote:
| I think the point is - its a non-story - there is no
| importance whatsoever to the article.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Do you want every article about climate change to include at 10
| page essay about the geological history as we know it, how we
| know the current warming is caused by human activities, and
| what happened during past rapid warming events and what their
| causes were?
| lmilcin wrote:
| I think the main problem here is not necessarily the actual
| extent of the ice but rather rapid change and how we, people,
| are dependant on particular climate in particular parts of our
| planet.
|
| We are all dependant on very fragile balance of various
| mechanisms that we do not fully understand.
|
| For example, European climate depends very much on the mass of
| warm water transported by Gulfstream. Europe would be basically
| north Canada if not for all that warm water and precipitation
| that comes with it. But we also know that this stream itself
| depends on the water cooling up north and sinking to complete
| the cycle. If the water can't cool the cycle will be broken and
| Europe may suddenly change the climate dramatically at an
| astonishing rate.
|
| I am not worried about plant and animal life -- these will
| migrate or adapt. Nature has always found a way in the past.
|
| What I am worried is human toll, masses of people affected by
| rapid climate change that are unable to fend for themselves.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| do you have any other ideas about how we can slow the human
| influence on climate change? people have been trying
| alternatives to fear for quite some time... and well, here we
| are
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Ah yes, the "Tens of millions of years ago, the climate was
| also different!" silly excuse.
|
| Modern humans have been around a minuscule fraction of that
| time. If we are affecting the climate in ways that normally
| take millions of years, "there's some plants under the ice" is
| the non-helpful remark
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| My family member worked as a petroleum geologist for Exxon-
| Mobil for many years, and he is fond of talking about how the
| climate has changed dramatically throughout the earth's
| history as a sort of defense against any discussion of
| climate change. That those changes historically went very
| poorly for the organisms living in affected areas doesn't
| seem to faze him, as though we should be desirous of a new
| Permian extinction. I've come to the conclusion it's a
| defense mechanism for him psychologically, to avoid having to
| acknowledge that his life's work served to destroy the
| natural world and threaten the peaceful existence of his
| descendants.
| Maursault wrote:
| > it's a defense mechanism for him psychologically
|
| Maybe, but it's also a straw man.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I'm not defending Exxon but I feel like no one asks the
| question "What if we never discovered fossil fuels".
|
| Well, perhaps Earth would be in the middle of an ice age
| (And there is evidence to support it) which clearly isn't
| good for all the species that would go extinct during such
| a period. If you look past the alarmism I don't think we
| understand this complex system as well as we like to think
| we do. And that is completely ignoring the massive amount
| of good things that hydrocarbons do for our planet, help to
| feed the world, enable humanity to support huge cities and
| billions of humans, all the modern conveniences of life,
| and so on.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Speed of change matters. Walking downstairs is not the same as
| falling thru a window. You can't adapt to very fast change.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| sacrosancty wrote:
| The climate was far more extreme in the past than what AGW is
| expected to do. It doesn't matter. Climate change is expected
| to be a problem because of changes that are faster than humans
| and other species can adapt.
|
| Having said that, nobody has any idea how much of a problem
| it'll be for humans or even if life will be better or worse
| than it already is. All we have is predictions of sea level,
| temperature, etc. that don't directly impact us.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| well it impacts is pretty directly if your house ends up
| under water which will happen to a ton of people.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The general reason to worry has more to do with the rate of
| change than the change itself, illustrated the best by this
| xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ Historically, life had a lot more
| time to adapt to changes in the atmosphere. Times we know of
| sudden changes, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, are
| mass extinctions.
|
| On one hand, we're already a mass extinction event even without
| considering the temperature change, so maybe it's not that much
| of an additional reason to worry. On the other hand, stacking
| even more stress onto the habitats of creatures we rely on
| might be the straw the breaks the camel's back as well. And
| that's ignoring things like sea level rise for our coastal
| cities, and the effect temperature changes might have on
| agriculture. Much like the above, the rate we're affecting the
| climate will not give us much time to respond to issues.
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| I guess we should keep a close watch on the Maldives.
|
| https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/maldives.html
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