[HN Gopher] Melting ice reveals two-million-year old peat
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Melting ice reveals two-million-year old peat
Author : abathur
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-09-03 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (williamcolgan.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (williamcolgan.net)
| a0zU wrote:
| That is going to make some very expensive scotch.
| helipad wrote:
| Immediate first thought.
| echelon wrote:
| Not to veer off topic, but this felt tangential with the mention
| of thawing peat.
|
| I've read some analysis that says global warming will make much
| more of Russia arable and open up lots of new economic
| opportunities. China will gain new shipping lanes through the
| Arctic. Canada will also get more useful land, etc.
|
| Obviously it's going to wreak havoc on ecosystems and species
| diversity and the climates of other nations, but you don't see
| the lopsided benefits mentioned frequently or how these factor
| into the calculus of certain nations.
| baybal2 wrote:
| agilob wrote:
| Many opportunities, yes, Czechia will have access to sea...
| trylfthsk wrote:
| Ahoj
| [deleted]
| MAGZine wrote:
| Not well, IMO. Or, at least, "it's complicated."
|
| Take for example, the boreal forest, which produces roughly
| equivalent amounts of oxygen as the Amazon. A large swatch of
| canada is covered by boreal forest. As the climate warms, the
| growing season could become elongated. However, there actually
| isn't any more arable land in Canada without deforesting.
| Grassland goes right up to the forest, and the forest doesn't
| stop until the arctic circle.
|
| Maybe you could EVENTUALLY grow in the arctic circle, but even
| then you face significant developmental/logistical challenges
|
| So, what do you do? Do you tear down the forest, as is
| happening in S. America, make room for homesteading and
| civilization? probably not wise. And yet, in the south, if I
| had to guess, the desert in the southwest will continue to
| creep up into the grasslands to the north and east.
|
| So say that you do decide to deforest to turn that land into
| something more than just forest--what then? Increasing
| turbulent/violent weather poses significant challenges.
| Arguably one of the worst parts of climate change is not just
| the extra warmth, but the extreme weather that it brings.
| Hailstorms are becoming more likely. Early frosts are becoming
| more likely. And both of these things will kill your crops in
| one fell swoop. So the existing arable land's yield is going
| down, not up.
|
| But yes, we'll get a new shipping lane.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| For everything you described the opposite is also true.
|
| Now that we've largely settled on "climate change" instead of
| all the other catastrophic descriptors which didn't last a
| decade...
|
| There will be places where what you claimed is true and
| places where the opposite is true, _if_ the climate changes
| in the way you propose.
|
| The benefits to many places will be immense, there is no
| rigorous science measuring at this point, because no one will
| pay for that investigation to take place publicly.
|
| The new paradigm with "denialism" being a career sinking
| position means honest appraisal is not happening publicly.
|
| The southwest US had a seven year drought through the
| nineties, now they experience exceptional monsoons. It is not
| hotter there by any measure that humans can appreciate. Data
| shows us it is hotter in the cities, but the climate is not
| warming outside of the cities once the city data is expunged.
|
| What do you do with that information?
|
| Historical data suggests that there is no safer time to be
| alive. And yet, people are dying from starvation, not because
| we don't have food, mind you. Because we won't get food to
| people that starve.
|
| Isn't it funny. We can focus on a future catastrophe and
| never have to help people or be kind now. We can be vicious
| and mean to people and they deserve to starve to death
| because they won't do as they're told and follow "the
| science"
| MAGZine wrote:
| There's a lot of science doing done. It's being paid for
| people are volunteering.
|
| The IPCC is the largest collaborative effort. They produce
| reports continuously that researches exactly what we're
| talking about.
|
| It does not agree with what you're saying. They just
| finished a report this year, you should read it.
|
| Fwiw, as the earth heats, I don't think you're going to
| find less desert, only more.
|
| I'm all for kindness, and that starts with caring deeply
| about climate change because the rich west will weather the
| storm the best. Countries in Africa have a lot to lose here
| as wet bulb temps begin killing people.
| vkou wrote:
| Forests aren't even something we should take into account
| when it comes to carbon balance, since over years and
| decades, they are ~net-zero carbon sinks.
| MAGZine wrote:
| That's only partially true. You can cut forests down before
| they burn and finish the product into something that won't
| just be burnt. Then people can store the carbon compacted,
| and in their homes. Or honestly, you could just bury it
| underground if you wanted.
|
| Trees are biological mechanisms for capturing carbon. We
| don't need to invent anything new.
| echelon wrote:
| Would it be practical to grow entire farms of trees (or
| something fast growing - bamboo, kudzu, certain crops),
| harvest them, and bury the results? Repeat over and over
| at scale to sequester carbon.
|
| You'd need mineral inputs, of course, but maybe you can
| recoup these.
| MAGZine wrote:
| That's a good question. I suspect it matters on the
| composition of the wood. Wood that locks in a lot of
| moisture instead of carbon might be counter-intuitive.
|
| I don't really know what I'm talking about here, I'm just
| thinking aloud. There's probably some woods better than
| others, though that's not a very interesting statement by
| itself.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Ocean used to be 400 feet lower. We are still coming out of an
| ice age.
|
| People will move further inland if needed.
| NegativeK wrote:
| That feels like it's oversimplifying the effects of mass
| displacement and the destruction (both economic and physical)
| of all of the residential, commercial, agricultural,
| industrial, etc. property.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Ah, but it's a growth economy!
| thefz wrote:
| Interesting read! It is amazing how some discoveries like this
| are made almost by chance.
| edgefield wrote:
| As an aside, it's striking to me that Hacker News has a
| significant audience of flat earthers. Don't look up, right?
| Let's be clear, human caused climate change is very real.
| Rigorous science confirms this and CO2 + methane levels are now
| driving very visible and catastrophic weather all over the world.
| The only thing left to debate is how quickly the planet will
| become hostile to human life and whether some scientific
| discovery (magic at the moment) can head off the worst outcomes.
|
| Edit: The responses and downvoting in this thread just prove my
| point. Debating human caused climate change is no different than
| debating that the earth is round or that Trump won in 2020.
| Incredible.
| momento wrote:
| What leads you to believe there is a "significant" number of
| people who view the earth as flat on HN?
| akomtu wrote:
| It's flat if you consider the hypothesis of extra small
| dimensions.
| goatlover wrote:
| It won't become hostile to human life, it will become more
| challenging for human civilization to deal with the warming.
| And we don't need magic, we can decarbonize and pursue several
| strategies for mitigation.
| Arainach wrote:
| It will absolutely become hostile to human life.
|
| https://theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need-
| to-...
| edgyquant wrote:
| Please post peer reviewed papers and not sensationalist
| articles. You'll quickly see how wrong you are
| uncle_ted_ wrote:
| random314 wrote:
| The crop failures and flooding will create famine, refugee
| crisis and wars that will kill more people than WW2, covid19
| etc. But unlike the previous crises, it will mostly affect
| "other" people.
|
| But we will have several strategies for mitigation on paper.
| yongjik wrote:
| Given how many people reject any decarbonizing plan as
| political ploy, we might as well need magic to make it work.
| :/
| [deleted]
| enchiridion wrote:
| "Magic at the moment", that's a new one to me.
|
| What a way to box the entirety of human ingenuity into a pithy
| phrase.
|
| Such a fiendish application of the dialectic knife.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I don't think it was meant as you interpret it. Rather a
| callback to the famous quote "any sufficiently advanced
| technology is indistinguishable from magic".
| enchiridion wrote:
| That might be right.
|
| I took it in the spirit of climate change advocates who
| tend to argue for immediate radical change. Underlying
| those arguments is a belief that we will not be able to
| address problems as they arise in the future.
|
| I think we will. I believe in the power of human ingenuity
| to respond to constraints of the environment. That's what I
| took it to mean; the ability to solve unsolved problems
| when the need arises.
| mek6800d2 wrote:
| Kind of like stopping a volcano or an earthquake. What
| happens when the problem gets too far gone and the
| vaunted human ingenuity is utterly impotent in solving
| the problem? (I mean the point after which there is
| literally nothing humans could do to react to the
| problem.)
|
| To get an idea of the monumental complexities of global
| warming, I recommend reading _The Emerald Planet: How
| Plants Changed Earth 's History_ by David Beerling. He
| describes a multi-discipline investigation of global
| warming involving paleobotanists to atmospheric
| scientists, climate scientists, oceanographers, chemists,
| physicists, and the list goes on.
|
| I also recommend googling "planetary boundaries" and
| "tipping points". Climate change is only one of the
| boundaries whose transgression threatens us. And the
| boundaries interact with each other and we don't really
| know how these interactions might affect rates of change.
|
| So, radical changes now -- bad. Human ingenuity and
| radical changes in the future on the threshold of global
| catastrophe -- good.
| daliusd wrote:
| Drawdown https://drawdown.org/ lists number of strategies what
| is and can be done to mitigate results of global warming. So it
| is not all white or black, but yes it is still quite serious .
| shakezula wrote:
| I'm consistently surprised by how effective the "scientism"
| push has been at muddying the waters, and places like HN show
| it most readily. I have more than several friends who are
| smart, highly educated individuals, working in tech or tech
| adjacent jobs, who are absolutely convinced that the scientific
| community is all blowing this "climate change" out of control
| and that it's really a symptom of some deeper problem with
| academia. It's incredibly effective too, because academia is
| certainly not perfect.
| [deleted]
| blueflow wrote:
| > the planet will become hostile to human life
|
| Example of someone blowing it out of proportion, right in
| your parent post. The trust issues don't come from nowhere.
| edgefield wrote:
| Have you seen the news about Pakistan? A third of the
| country has turned into an ocean. 1,000+ have died.
| Millions have lost their homes. This sounds pretty hostile
| to human life. Don't you think?
| evv555 wrote:
| Personally I believe in climate change but how are data
| points like this supposed to prove/disprove? Only ~12000
| years ago there was a shift from the ice age and rapid
| flooding. Probably not man made and very recent. All
| evidence points to climate change being semi-cyclical and
| around as far back as we can gather data points. The
| cycles are very long relative to individual human
| lifespans but very short and frequent in the grand
| scheme. To me this is reason enough to make an educated
| guess that humans can affect the climate with our
| outputs. But it also makes it nearly impossible to
| disentangle natural changes from man made ones using
| science.
| blueflow wrote:
| What do you expect? That earth is some garden of Eden
| where nothing bad ever happens? Climate Change is going
| to make things worse, but it always has been a struggle,
| and always will be. Remember 2004, when a Earthquake and
| Tsunami killed a quarter of a million people? Spanish
| Flu? The Plague?
|
| I don't consider that hostile. Mars is hostile. Or Venus.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So is everything fine until Earth becomes Venus?
|
| A decent chunk of the Earth's landmass (where a TON of
| people currently live) is going to get pretty bad if
| temperatures rise 3C.
|
| At 35C in India - it's believed even healthy young people
| can die in just 6 hours of exposure.
|
| This will happen regularly if temperatures rise 3C.
|
| India will be home to maybe 2B in 2050 - when many
| climate projections say this will happen.
|
| I'm optimistic we won't reach 3C of warming by 2050. But
| it seems within reason that it could happen.
| blueflow wrote:
| > So is everything fine until Earth becomes Venus?
|
| From Wikipedia[1]:
|
| > The IPCC states that "a 'runaway greenhouse effect'--
| analogous to [that of] Venus--appears to have virtually
| no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities."
|
| > At 35C in India - it's believed even healthy young
| people can die in just 6 hours of exposure.
|
| Yet people somehow still survive in the Sahara at higher
| temperatures.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse
| _Earth
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Way less humidity. Look up wet bulb effect.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Hostile to human life seems a bit hyperbolic. Our technology
| and society will collapse and stop the co2 addition well before
| then. Its possible we will have hit run-away by then, but I
| don't think that is currently predicted? A malthusian collapse
| followed by a second shot with sustainable tech built on the
| back of unsustainable ones might well have a chance.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Who will maintain the nuclear plants so they don't go out of
| control if the society collapse?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| No one, but I expect they'd get shut down properly as
| necessary materials became unavailable. But even if they
| all went into melt down, that wouldn't make the planet
| completely unlivable. I was merely stating plenty of
| breeding populations would exist. Hostile to human life
| reads to me like extinction, and that seems horribly
| unlikely. Really bad for sure, and we really should start
| being smarter now to avoid that (we won't, but we should).
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Do large scale catastrophic floods, heat waves, snow storms,
| hurricanes, and wild fires not qualify as hostile to human
| life?
|
| What is the true scotsman weather and climate that is hostile
| to human life?
| jpollock wrote:
| Hostile to human life means "humans cannot exist without
| technological assistance".
|
| It doesn't mean mass death, that's a measure of the
| Carrying Capacity. Hostility means carrying capacity is
| zero, or close to it.
| edgyquant wrote:
| If they do then the Earth already qualifies as hostile to
| human life
| klyrs wrote:
| The problem is that the level of hostility is increasing.
| A caged tiger is hostile but with some sensible
| precautions, one can avoid harm. If the cage is opened,
| that hostility is an immediate concern.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Saying "human caused climate change" with that level of
| certainty, catastrophizing, and distain for questioning is as
| anti-science as believing in flat earth.
| edgefield wrote:
| random314 wrote:
| I noticed an influx of Republicans into HN about 2 years ago.
| Since then there have been a lot of emphasis on Republican
| talking points, including vaccine phobia, mask phobia, climate
| science denial and other anti science stances. The change felt
| quite sudden.
| datalopers wrote:
| > The change felt quite sudden
|
| They've always been here but vocal and unashamed airing of
| those views is what rapidly changed across culture (not
| limited to HN) as a whole. Ignorance and conspiracy is now a
| badge of honor.
| vkou wrote:
| If they are at all representative of the party itself,
| their views were also different in the past. The views of
| an average republican from 2006, on many, many subjects
| don't look much like those of an average republican from
| 2020.
|
| It's the consequence of a big tentpole party embracing it's
| loony fringe. Many party members will change their views to
| whatever the party tells them, even if it tells them that
| black is white and down is up.
| seibelj wrote:
| You don't have to be a republican (as if that's a slur?) to
| disagree with the "science" of masking considering government
| officials said not to use masks, then to use masks, then we
| were all going to die if we didn't wear masks, now no one is
| wearing masks... What is and is not "settled science" is up
| to extreme interpretation
| ocbyc wrote:
| Not only that. But broadening the scope just a bit. These
| polypropylene masks might have a marginal benefit (the
| famous Guardian yt video shows its a small one) for small
| virus sized particles of breath. Yet are a big issue for
| plastics in our food supply and over all trash in the
| oceans. Marginal affect for thousands of years of
| microplastics.
|
| Can someone be concerned about the actual pollution
| (benzene, pthalates, and heavy metals) While also realizing
| that we share an atomosphere with China and India. (Game
| theory abounds)
|
| CO2 bad... buy electric car good- Is all people seem to
| want to think.
|
| Nuclear is a clear option for limiting CO2, but that's
| unspeakable. Now climate activists are on the same side as
| big oil. Neither of you want us to look at modern nuclear
| technology.
| squarefoot wrote:
| What about: first we knew nothing about the virus and
| didn't have vaccines, then they arrived, then the virus
| mutated, then we discovered that multiple shots helped to
| mitigate the effects, etc? Science is not perfection, but
| it aims at it without vested interests, without hiding
| failures, actually using them to gather a better knowledge
| of the problem. When science fails, you can bet all your
| horses that it will try again with some added experience.
| [deleted]
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