[HN Gopher] The concurrence of three climatic events
___________________________________________________________________
The concurrence of three climatic events
Author : xemoka
Score : 406 points
Date : 2023-06-12 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (climatecasino.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (climatecasino.net)
| latchkey wrote:
| Warm water fish death happening now.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/us/dead-fish-texas-climat...
| [deleted]
| giarc wrote:
| This article and discussions here in the comments motivated me to
| send off 3 emails to relevant ministers of my provincial
| government.
|
| When I had my first kid, the environment and what our Earth would
| look like when she was my age really got to me. I realized that
| small, individual actions aren't going to cut it (ex turning off
| a light). It's not to say I don't do those things, but I had to
| do more, things that may actually move the needle.
|
| I pay for Bullfrog power to my house (https://bullfrogpower.com/)
| and I now email my local representatives to make sure they know
| their constituents care about this. What will _you_ do today?
| xrd wrote:
| I read the whole article. I looked at all the graphs and charts.
| I still don't understand the near term significance, even with
| the detailed explanations.
|
| Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the population
| won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many will actually
| care? Nothing will happen until it is too late.
|
| His final words weren't encouraging and I can't say I feel any
| better either.
| oezi wrote:
| The near term significance is that 2023 gives everyone a taste
| of what was supposed the new mean in 2050.
| TOMDM wrote:
| I think this is precisely what is missing in so much of the
| climate communication from scientists in the space, the "so
| what" moment.
|
| Drawing a line in the sand is useful for policy (We should
| target staying under 1.5C above historical records), but the
| other piece needs to be the why of it all.
|
| So sure, from the figures given in this post we're seeing
| record antarctic sea ice anomolies, record sea surface
| temperature anomolies and record temperature mean anomolies.
|
| But what does this mean for the average person?
|
| What portion of our farmland is no longer serviceable? What
| places can people no longer live, what portion of our fresh
| water sources no longer work?
|
| How many people will have to move, find other sources of
| food/water? What other severe downstream effects are coming
| that I'm not even aware of? Severe weather? Flooding? Ecosystem
| collapse?
|
| I understand that this blog is likely more dedicated towards
| the science behind climate rather than communication of the
| consequences to the layman, but it seems that most science
| communication is more interested in communicating the science
| behind predictions (and often failing) than communicating what
| the outcomes are likely to be.
| noiv wrote:
| > near term significance
|
| The North Atlantic heat flux of the air-ocean interface changed
| and some one more knowledgeable might tell how many terajoule
| stay in the atmosphere a little bit longer probably altering
| the weather pattern as we like to know them.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Ireland is going to have a warm and lovely summer, which is
| not it's usual climate pattern, leading to water shortages
| and peat bog /wild fires.
| graeme wrote:
| > Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the
| population won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many
| will actually care? Nothing will happen until it is too late.
|
| That's the crux of the dilemma. It's too hard. Nothing in our
| daily experience gives us an intuition for it.
|
| For instance, the media often says "solving climate change
| requires lowering emissions". Which gives the impression that
| if we lower emissions we solve it.
|
| But lowering admissions merely slows the speed at which the
| problem worsens. To solve the problem we would need to go to
| zero and then actually suck extra co2 from the atmosphere.
|
| And total global emissions, the only number which matters, are
| at a record high.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Third paragraph from the bottom. Seems pretty clear in layman's
| terms to me.
|
| > As we enter Northern hemisphere summer, large regions of the
| planet will experience record heatwaves, fires, storms and
| flooding. These events will set records in intensity, duration
| and frequency. The planet's overall temperature will spike to
| new highs for the modern era, with 1.5degC in sight for 2024.
| Antarctic polar sea-ice will continue its retreat from
| "normal", exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation
| and heating. Crops will fail. Infrastructure will break beyond
| repair. Climate migration will spike. And all of this is
| already happening.
| juujian wrote:
| Interesting. Alberta had plenty of wildfires even before the
| 'regular' wildfire season even began. Before any other place
| in NA. Now they are starting to have crop failures and are en
| route to 'zero production':
| https://globalnews.ca/news/9761043/dry-spring-southern-
| alber... . Of course they also reelected their conservative
| pro-culture war government while in the middle of all of
| this, Texas of Canada indeed.
| soperj wrote:
| We've got 40 years of data on Antarctic sea ice, and over the
| last 4 decades it's been growing, not retreating. [1]
|
| [1]https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| distortionfield wrote:
| The trends section in that graph shows all sections of ice
| in decreasing trends, what the hell are you on about
| soperj wrote:
| Only if you're looking at the Arctic, not the Antarctic.
| distortionfield wrote:
| Everyone knows it's only real science if you shrink your
| scope until data fit your narrative.
| hedgehog wrote:
| That's an accurate but misleading characterization of the
| data. Anyone can go eyeball the chart you linked and then
| read this for context to form a more complete opinion:
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-
| climate/...
| soperj wrote:
| How is it misleading when they're talking about "exposing
| more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and heating"
| specifically? How is it misleading at all when I've
| literally just quoted data from a really good site?
| hedgehog wrote:
| Presenting a very slightly increasing average antarctic
| coverage trend over specifically 40 years as a refutation
| that antarctic polar ice is in retreat is misleading for
| a couple reasons. First, the last ten years appears to
| show strongly decreasing coverage trend which shows
| variability or a change in trend to integrate into any
| conclusions. Second, over that whole period the minimum
| coverage has a clear decreasing trend, again that should
| inform any expectations about where we are going.
|
| Are you staking out a claim that antarctic ice is going
| to increase over the next few decades?
| soperj wrote:
| We've had a year with the highest extent ever recorded in
| the last 10 years.
|
| It's a direct refutation of the authors point that it'll
| continue to decrease and expose more ocean because of
| compounding effects when it hasn't actually been
| decreasing. I make no claims that it's going to increase
| or decrease, I'm not even talking about the future, I'm
| refuting the author's bad data.
| orwin wrote:
| Because while the winter maximum used to increase (5y
| average) in the last 40 years, the summer maximum
| decreased (5y average) over the same period.
|
| > How is it misleading when they're talking about
| "exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and
| heating" specifically?
|
| So, if you don't know, during winter there is almost no
| sun in antartica (and even in the areas you can see it 3
| hours a day like in the Kerguelen, it isnt absorbed that
| much to to a low angle of incidence). So we clearly don't
| care about random averages of the sea ice over a year,
| but its state when the sun hit the water, in summer
| (because the angle of incidence is higher, and also, the
| sun almost never sets there).
|
| That's why your data is correct, but misleading. What's
| important isn't the ice sheet surface this winter, during
| june-july-august-september (sorry to over-explain, but i
| get that this is a complex issue and this bear repeating)
| but how much ice was present last summer (this winter if
| you're in the north hemisphere). And this was the lowest
| we ever had.
|
| Do you want more clarifications on specific points? I'm
| not an expert, and this is a complex subject
| soperj wrote:
| > Because while the winter maximum used to increase (5y
| average) in the last 40 years, the summer maximum
| decreased (5y average) over the same period.
|
| March extent has neither decreased, nor increased. It
| hasn't been decreasing at all. The largest extent in
| march has occurred in the years 2008, 2013, 2014 and
| 2015.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I know that this is HN but this isn't an IQ-guarded secret.
| People not "getting it" is based on denial and/or a misguided
| Culture War politics ( _those people_ say it is so, and
| therefore it is _not_ so), not lack of smarts.
| phkahler wrote:
| Not doubting any of it, but what do we know about the effects of:
|
| 1) The war in Ukraine - changes in air travel routes will affect
| cloud cover.
|
| 2) Wild fires in Canada - this is really huge at the moment.
|
| 3) That giant blob growing in the Atlantic Ocean.
| josho wrote:
| The wild fires represent a massive positive feedback loop. The
| fires are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, that I believe
| effectively doubled Canada's emissions for this year.
| orwin wrote:
| I will start this post saying i'm not a techno-solutionist guy,
| nor a denier. My last post on the subect was basically:
|
| * This is why Co2 do not have any effect until it reaches the
| high troposphere. That takes 20 years. The average climate we
| have right now is caused by emissions from 2003. *
|
| However: we never had this meteorology scenario before. We cannot
| predict what will happen this summer. Yes, if you're a public
| servant or work with them or whatever, prepare for the worst
| please. But ultimately, we cannot know. we started an experiment
| that will bring us fast changes, lead us to discover retroaction
| loops and a lot of different things. Some will help, some wont,
| we can't know. If it wasn't this dangerous and violent, the
| uncertainty would be fascinating (it still is, somehow).
| vichu wrote:
| I fear that this is the year "wet-bulb temperature" becomes a
| term regular households across the world become deeply familiar
| with. It may be as ubiquitous as the term "social distancing"
| became.
|
| I've always naively thought that climate disaster was still 10-20
| years out, but it seems like it's going to begin in earnest now
| and instead be completely catastrophic after these next 10 years.
|
| What can I as an individual do? Move to Saskatchewan or Alaska? I
| already know from a friend in Alaska that the melting permafrost
| is causing many native villages to sink and collapse, and it's
| only gotten worse in the past few years. Check out this article
| on Newtok, AK by National Geographic from 2019:
| http://archive.today/1enHh
| kfrzcode wrote:
| Keep calm, carry on, adapt.
|
| Slow-moving crises are not crises, they're problems, not
| emergencies.
|
| ----
|
| Here, have some literature, down-voters! ----
|
| [1] Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were
| chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea
| level for 1904-2003. These records were found to capture the
| variability found in a larger number of stations over the last
| half century studied previously. Extending the sea level record
| back over the entire century suggests that the high variability
| in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20
| years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level
| change was found to be larger in the early part of last century
| (2.03 +- 0.35 mm/yr 1904-1953), in comparison with the latter
| part (1.45 +- 0.34 mm/yr 1954-2003). The highest decadal rate
| of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr)
| with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on
| 1964 (-1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of
| change was 1.74 +- 0.16 mm/yr. [0]
|
| ----
|
| We compare estimates of coastal and global averaged sea level
| for 1950 to 2000. During the 1990s and around 1970, we find
| coastal sea level is rising faster than the global average but
| that it rises slower than the global average during the late
| 1970s and late 1980s. The differences are largely a result of
| sampling the time-varying geographical distribution of sea
| level rise along a coastline which is more convoluted in some
| regions than others. More rapid coastal rise corresponds to La
| Nina-like conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean and a slower
| rate corresponds to El Nino-like conditions. Over the 51 year
| period, there is no significant difference in the rates of
| coastal and global averaged sea level rise, as found in climate
| model simulations of the 20th century. The best estimate of
| both global average and coastal sea level rise remains 1.8 +-
| 0.3 mm yr-1, as found in earlier studies. [1]
|
| ----
|
| Kemp et al. (1) note that recent Intergovernmental Panel on
| Climate Change (IPCC) reports emphasize sub-2 degC scenarios.
| Simultaneously, IPCC reports also overemphasize catastrophic
| scenarios, as does broader discourse. For example, the
| cataclysmic Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5)
| and Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 5-8.5 (SSP5-8.5) scenarios--
| now widely considered implausible (2)--account for roughly half
| of the scenario mentions in recent IPCC Assessment Reports'
| impacts (Working Group II) sections (Fig. 1A), similar to
| underlying scientific literature (3). The SSP3-7.0 emissions
| pathway, which Kemp et al. (1) use in their analyses, assumes a
| world in 2100 heavily reliant on coal and with no climate
| policy--an implausible future (3, 4). It projects vastly higher
| emissions than the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated
| policies scenario, which has continually been revised downward
| in recent years (4) (Fig. 1B). [2]
|
| ----
|
| [0]:
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
| [1]:
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
| [2]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2214347119
|
| Cherry-picked because hey, why not?
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Slow moving relative to your sense of time, sure. Extremely
| fast moving on a planetary timeline.
| _djo_ wrote:
| This isn't moving that slowly any more.
| valval wrote:
| It's moving super slowly, and if nothing is done by the end
| of the century, we'll be slightly worse off than we are
| now.
| data_maan wrote:
| If living in poverty, without access to various types of
| medication because our fragile supply chains broke is
| "slightly worse off", then sure, yeah, it's just going to
| be slight change
| _djo_ wrote:
| I can't tell if you're trolling, in denial, or just very
| naive.
|
| Climate change is already causing economic damage and the
| loss of lives. This isn't some theoretical future
| problem.
| r00fus wrote:
| Uncontrolled fires in the arctic circle along with every
| continent aside from Antarctica? Yeah, that doesn't sound
| apocalyptic at all!
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| Therefore... panic?
| _djo_ wrote:
| Given that such rapid and severe deviations as shown in
| the charts are unheard of at this scale, perhaps a little
| panic is justified. It's certainly worrying.
| zaroth wrote:
| To be fair, this particular deviation we are seeing in
| the ocean temps was knowingly and intentionally caused
| _by changing the environmental regulations_ around sulfur
| content.
|
| So it's a weird state to be in where the
| environmentalists are pushing dramatic warming policies.
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| I agree it's worrying. Panic to me, though, indicates a
| loss of your faculties. You still have to be able to
| assess the situation objectively and adapt accordingly. I
| guess my point is that hyperbole about climate change
| (alarmism) is just as unhelpful as climate change denial.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Except that in context nobody, not even the self-
| proclaimed doomer who wrote the post, is suggesting we
| all go running around in blind panic with our hair on
| fire over this. Rather, that it's severe enough and so
| far out beyond recorded temperatures that it should be an
| urgent priority that's taken extremely seriously.
|
| Claiming this is just panic is devaluing the data and an
| argument in favour of yet more inaction or slow and
| ineffective action.
| matsemann wrote:
| Finally doing something or calling for action isn't
| "panicking"..
| plagiarist wrote:
| This is not slow-moving.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Wake me up when the banks stop giving 30 year loans for
| coastline property.
|
| Who do you trust? Bankers or the "experts".
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'm guessing this is a satirical question, given the
| behavior of the banking industry within living memory..
| data_maan wrote:
| Google California insurance providers.
|
| Anyone else got examples?
| data_maan wrote:
| Post your examples here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36297304
| uw_rob wrote:
| Bankers are known to be responsible and have a fantastic
| history of being responsible with others money. There are
| no reasons why a collection of individuals would make a bad
| decision which would impact other people 10, 20, or 30
| years in the future for an immediate gain.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| When the mouths are moving, watch the hands.
| eevo wrote:
| Markets are irrational - yeah I'll trust where the data
| leads rather than a known overinflated housing market
| jfim wrote:
| Bankers aren't in the business of underwriting risk, other
| than credit risk. However, mortgages typically require
| having property insurance as a condition for issuing the
| mortgage, so de facto, if the property is uninsurable, the
| bank isn't issuing a loan. The expert insurance and
| reinsurance underwriters have started raising rates or
| exiting some markets altogether, as well.
| Koffiepoeder wrote:
| In Belgium, if you buy an appartment at the coastline using
| a business, the fiscal authorities dispute the tax
| deductability and depreciation (33y by default) if it is
| not at least on the second floor.
| simmerup wrote:
| https://www.ocregister.com/2023/05/26/state-farm-says-no-
| new...
| creato wrote:
| Expectations of a bailout might mess up this analysis.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Exactly. Rich coastal communities are powerful and stand
| a decent chance of being able to force the rest of us to
| hold their bags.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| This is without a doubt the most hilarious take I have ever
| seen.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| There's literally nothing a "bottom-up" approach will do to
| effectuate any serious change on the climate. The climate is a
| dynamic system, and "climate change" is a tautology. At which
| point, ever, is any "climate" in a static state?
|
| Never, because systems are dynamic, and it's chaotic. Now, if
| anyone (the State powers and corporate interests) actually WANT
| to "solve" this "problem," it's, uh, very very clear where to
| start. Nuclear.
|
| But like many other scissor issues, it will continue to be used
| as a lever to slice apart groups so's they can fight each
| other.
|
| When was the last time you asked yourself "What made and or
| makes me confident in my belief that this is actually a crisis?
| Why?"
|
| Which papers and statistical analyses have you written? Are you
| "trusting the science?" Are you versed enough to truly
| understand how we'd even be able to measure this? Or is it just
| esoteric enough that it can be used as an engine of disruption,
| corruption, etc...
| uw_rob wrote:
| Double pendulums are a great example of complex, chaotic, and
| dynamic system. Given an initial state, I wouldn't be able to
| predict the outcome. However, I could easily go over and
| smash the toy and then have a pretty good prediction of the
| outcome state.
|
| Anyone who is interested in having a deeper understanding of
| climate change I would recommend checking out IPCC AR6.
|
| https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6.
| ..
| concordDance wrote:
| Unless you live in the select few poor equatorial countries
| with high humidity and heat you have little to worry about
| personally.
|
| Climate change is a long term problem. We're going to see
| hundreds of millions of climate refugees before the end of the
| century, but the bulk will be after most of us are dead.
| [deleted]
| momdad420 wrote:
| [dead]
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I am very familiar with how a wet-bulb thermometer works and
| some of the ways it's useful (like at altitude for weather
| forecasts, and as one of the ways to build a hygrometer) but
| I'm struggling to make the connection that you've made as to
| why it'll be a household term. Mind explaining?
| roflyear wrote:
| At a certain wet bulb temp humans cannot cool themselves off
| - they die without access to some other means to get cool
| (like cold water, air conditioning, etc).
| paranoidxprod wrote:
| To add to this with an article I just found
|
| "The [wet-bulb] temperature reading you get will actually
| change depending on how humid it is," says Kristina Dahl, a
| climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
| "That's the real purpose, to measure how well we'll be able
| to cool ourselves by sweating."
|
| Source:
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-
| need...
| roflyear wrote:
| Yes, wet bulb temp is in the context of humidity.
|
| Apparently 95f or 35c is the "limit" for humans - where
| many people will have health issues if they can't cool
| off otherwise.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| "Health issues" may be under selling it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
|
| > The theoretical limit to human survival for more than a
| few hours in the shade, even with unlimited water, is a
| wet-bulb temperature of 35 degC
| kzrdude wrote:
| Do we have any real world examples of this happening? That
| would help understanding.
| roflyear wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
| hammock wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Pakistan_heat_wave
|
| As far as global warming goes, study results indicate
| that limiting global warming to 1.5 degC would prevent
| most of the tropics from reaching the wet-bulb
| temperature of the human physiological limit of 35 degC.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00695-3
| jchmrt wrote:
| Just to be clear, studies also indicate that we will not
| realistically limit global heating to anything close to
| 1.5C, unless very drastic actions are taken immediately
| (actions on a level that would be seen as extremely
| radical by most people)
| hammock wrote:
| The threshold at which humans can no longer cool themselves
| naturally varies based on factors like health, activity,
| clothing and humidity.
|
| Typically, a wet-bulb temperature above 95F (35C) poses a
| severe risk to health, especially with high humidity.
|
| It's important to note that such extreme wet-bulb
| temperatures are relatively rare in most parts of the world
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > extreme wet-bulb temperatures are relatively rare in
| most parts of the world
|
| The concern the top-level comment has is that sooner
| rather than later these cases will not be as rare and so
| more people will become familiar with this concept.
| flerchin wrote:
| Because a wet-bulb temperature of 35C is generally considered
| deadly, perhaps as low as 31C. Global warming that kills
| large swathes of Burma or India would be a household term I'd
| think.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| But "heat index" is already a household term, and
| essentially has the same purpose [0]. It's like saying the
| Kelvin scale will end up in household use: I would disagree
| because while Kelvin is useful, it's not sufficiently more
| useful than C/F for most household usage.
|
| > people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a
| wet-bulb temperature of 32 degC (90 degF), equivalent to a
| heat index of 55 degC (130 degF) [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
| relaxing wrote:
| Wet bulb is not just a different scale, it's a different
| model with different inputs.
|
| If it becomes useful for knowing whether or not you're
| going to die (and it could), I bet it catches on.
| detrites wrote:
| > I've always naively thought that climate disaster was still
| 10-20 years out
|
| You can hardly be blamed for that, they've been saying it was
| one way or another since at least the 1970's.
|
| Literally none of their doomsday scenarios have occurred as
| stated yet.
|
| My bet is, rather than bovine farts and air for plant-life, the
| major climate driver will turn out to be what it always has
| been... 1 million earths-worth chaotic searing nuclear
| eruption, boiling atop hidden internal processes 4b+ years.
|
| And if there is a human aspect to it, I'd first investigate the
| large-scale weather-modifying experiments creating and
| directing precipitation in arbitrary and unaccountable ways
| over large landmasses for decades. Eg, look at China's.
|
| (Cue the brigade claiming sensible observations are madness
| because there's a "consensus"... among only scientists that
| agree...)
| sgu999 wrote:
| > And if there is a human aspect to it
|
| lol
|
| > sensible observations
|
| Please share how you've conducted your observations in a
| rigorous way, no one will blame you for it, that's how
| science progresses...
|
| > "consensus"
|
| lol
| guerrilla wrote:
| I dount it'll help you much to move. We've got drought and fire
| here in Sweden already. Never rains anymore. Slaugherhouses
| fullbooked already becauae the probability of being able to
| keep the livestock fed and watered looks pretty bad already...
| roflyear wrote:
| These issues are going to impact livestock around the world -
| which is a big contributor to global warming. I suppose some
| issues are self-correcting.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah malnutrition and inflation will be great...
| BasedAnon wrote:
| If by self-correcting you mean 'killing enough humans until
| a new equilibrium is reached' sure
| ardrak wrote:
| People usually get angry with this view, but I think soon
| enough meat consumption will become too expensive to be
| viable to most of the population.
| genman wrote:
| I hope they make canned meat then.
| hammock wrote:
| >Never rains anymore
|
| Sweden average rainfall seems to be trending up on a 100-year
| scale. https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/precipitation
|
| > We've got drought and fire here in Sweden already
|
| Forest fires in Sweden are a complex dynamic and the risk
| factor from climate change is only one part. Here is an
| interesting discussion
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-020-01718-2
|
| Droughts in Sweden have been on a downtrend for the last 60
| years, with quite a bit of variability. https://www.sciencedi
| rect.com/science/article/pii/S221458182...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Keep in mind that "drought" can be highly relative and
| short-term.
|
| For regions which have historically experienced frequent
| (e.g., daily or weekly) rainfall, even a few days or weeks
| with no or limited precipitation can induce stress on
| ecological communities. Deluge / drought patterns (see
| California's long-term drought and this past rain season's
| endless atmospheric river storms) actually _compound_ the
| problem.
|
| Looking at long-term averages _alone_ may well mask this
| effect and its significance.
| limpanz wrote:
| Well it mostly rains during winter in Sweden and for half
| the country that means snow, so mo chance of forest fires
| then. The past 10 years there have been more dry years
| during summer than the past. Also it's usually dry in the
| most southern parts of sweden, which also accounts for a
| majority of the food production.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Sweden average rainfall seems to be trending up on a
| 100-year scale.
| https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/precipitation
|
| > Droughts in Sweden have been on a downtrend for the last
| 60 years, with quite a bit of variability. https://www.scie
| ncedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221458182...
|
| Your averages are meaningless if not intentionally
| misleading. The country is huge ranging from 55degN to
| 69degN and having four distinct and relatively extreme
| seasons. It's ridiculous to assert that the droughts down
| here in the south aren't new, drastic and caused by climate
| change. The sea water here is virtually room temperature.
| Don't try to tell me that's normal. Cherry picking through
| your confirmation bias is no substitute for being here and
| being able to read our news with access to experts studying
| and working with exactly this.
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| [flagged]
| kfrzcode wrote:
| The end is (nigh++)!
| rednerrus wrote:
| Accelerating global warming through means meant to slow down
| environmental degradation would be peak human behavior.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > The first WTF is in the Antarctic, where sea-ice extent is
| setting record lows daily, now fully over 2 million kilometers
| below the 1991-2020 mean. This is not some one-off event. A
| decline like this has long been predicted. The impact is that
| there is a lot more open ocean than normal for this time of year.
| Open ocean means the ability to absorb incoming solar radiation,
| and that means further heating in a well-known feedback loop.
|
| We already knew that it would get this bad, but then some other
| curveball came and made it worse.
|
| In other words just another Monday in the 2020s.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Is there anywhere on earth I can move to where it'll take longer
| to get terrible?
| ejb999 wrote:
| non-coastal new england - especially VT, Maine and Western Mass
| are some of the safest areas based on articles I have read.
| jgoodhcg wrote:
| I chose to live in Michigan mostly for climate crisis and
| natural disaster reasons. One of the largest fresh bodies of
| water, no earthquakes, hardly any tornadoes, no hurricanes,
| ocean levels won't impact directly, forest fires aren't common
| in the scale of California. Projections show it will still be
| farmable in 50 years. The downside is it's a Midwest flyover
| sate, and the winters can be tough. The lack of sun and
| abundance of snow can be impactful on mood.
| jcpst wrote:
| Michigan is where my research led me on this. In several ways
| looks an improvement to my current life in Kansas.
| DrThunder wrote:
| He forgot the 4th event - Social Contagion Resulting in Climate
| Sensationalism.
|
| Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate change? I'm
| so sick of these "scientists" acting like we're in "Day After
| Tomorrow" and every normal weather event is suddenly a precursor
| to the Armageddon that'll take us all out in the next decade or
| less. You scientifically cannot look at individual weather events
| and determine they're climate change, that's pseudoscience.
|
| People like this author only manage to turn rational individuals
| into deniers due to their over the top claims that never come
| true.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate
| change?_
|
| No we can't, because of the people who actually care about it,
| half are "everyone is going to be dead before your toddler goes
| to college unless we dismantle capitalism across the globe" and
| half are "humans haven't caused any warming at all and dumping
| trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere has zero
| measurable effect I bet you voted for Biden." Both are idiots,
| but the problem is if you're not in one of those camps, _and_
| you want to have a rational discussion about climate change,
| you 're in such a small minority you look like the crazy one.
|
| Even here where I'd like to think the users are generally
| intelligent, the thread is either jokes, apocalyptic
| predictions about _billions_ of climate-migrants, or nonsense
| about communism.
|
| It would be interesting to compare this trend in US politics as
| a whole and how it can also be applied to this specific issue
| (and other divisive issues like gun rights or abortion rights)
| if it wasn't so goddamn depressing.
| Convolutional wrote:
| > every normal weather event
|
| San Francisco and the PNW being covered by smoke every summer
| is not a normal weather event, and now it is starting on the
| East coast. The east and southeast is also being hit harder by
| hurricanes, and they are not stopping at the Gulf of Mexico any
| more. These are just the events people have been able to see in
| the US in past years and they're not normal and with ever-
| increasing carbon output it is undoubtedly going to get worse.
|
| I'll take the entire northeast being covered in smoke as an
| "over the top" claim that just came true.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The Australian wildfire smoke also had climatic effects on
| ozone when combined with Cl radicals.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00700-2
| monknomo wrote:
| I feel like for US folks to take climate change seriously
| requires that climate change directly impact NYC and
| Washington DC so that the media and policy makers can have
| some lived experience.
|
| Smoke in SF or Seattle doesn't seem to move the needle for
| whatever reason
| ldhough wrote:
| I live in DC, the haze from the smoke was crazy a few days
| ago.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If someone tells you that cigarettes are going to give you
| cancer the fact that you aren't dead yet isn't a good
| indication that they are wrong. Furthermore the climate is
| incredibly complex. Waiting until we are absolutely certain of
| the exact trajectory of our fuckery will surely result in us
| being too fucked to take much corrective action. Basically you
| are asking to much and you're wrong.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| This guy's blog is subtitled "Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of
| Everything Blog".
|
| Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending all the
| time, or is what he's saying true?
| thedougd wrote:
| "Eliot Jacobson, Ph.D. Retired professor of mathematics and
| computer science, retired casino consultant, now a full time
| volunteer, husband and grandfather. Know-it-all doomer. Born in
| the year 316 ppm CO2."
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Seems he was born in 1959.
|
| Hmph. I want to scoff at how easy he has had it on this
| subject. And I guess I am.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| try discussing the ideas and data, not the guy
| anigbrowl wrote:
| We should do both. Gates has outsized personal influence and
| resources, he's not some quirky hermit that publishes
| startling pamphlets but is otherwise separate from the world.
| It's rational to consider whether and where his personal
| interests coincide with his policy proposals.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| who
| abeppu wrote:
| Why do you think these things are in tension? If the world has
| been on a decades-long trajectory careening towards disaster
| with little indication that we can coordinate to respond
| appropriately, someone _should_ be saying it all the time
| _because_ it's true.
| rpenm wrote:
| The sea surface temperature data is from NOAA and the sea ice
| extent data is from JAXA. His claims are not difficult to
| verify, if you follow the citations.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Climate change is terrifying, but I also have a hard time
| taking self titled Doomers totally seriously. It makes sense to
| consider all of the worst case scenarios for any event, and to
| prepare for them. But Doomers seem to have an obsession with
| it, and a need to convince others that the worst _will_ happen.
|
| I noticed this a lot in 2020. COVID was (and is) awful, but
| there was so much shit that Doomers claimed _would_ happen that
| year that just didn 't. They seem to have a bias towards always
| considering the worst case scenario the most likely.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Apocalyptic Ideation
|
| see also: the book of revelations
|
| There will always be people fixated on The End, some because
| they think we all deserve it, others because they can't
| seperate their own existential crisis from potential global
| crises
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| And still others because they've started looking at the
| pieces of how our global society functions as a system and
| realized that it's very possible we have pushed our
| environment beyond it's ability to support us. Leading
| ultimately to overshoot which leads to collapse.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Maybe, but they never seem to weigh any of the challenges
| against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and
| overcome. Doomerism has planet-sized infomercial hands.
|
| There is a long and embarassing trail of false
| apocalypses predicted from extrapolations + assumptions
| of helplessness, often made by otherwise intelligent and
| scientifically inclined people. We were all going to
| starve, but then Haber figured out how to chemically fix
| Nitrogen. Nuclear war was going to end the world, but
| then MAD actually worked. The ozone hole was going to
| cook the plant life, but then we cleaned up our
| refrigerants. We were going to run out of oil by 2010,
| but then we found more.
|
| Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move.
| You don't have a choice in the matter, and it's easy to
| fixate on this and imagine yourself trapped, but you are
| "trapped" with one hell of a fighting chance so the truth
| is you just don't know.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against
| humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome.
|
| I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but
| the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on
| these topics are quite well aware.
|
| The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and
| overcome" has been based on two major things:
|
| - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of
| climate stability
|
| - More recent: abundant fossil fuels
|
| Malthus was wrong because he failed to predict the Haber
| process. But currently the Haber process relies heavily
| on fossil fuels. We didn't produce astoundingly more food
| per acre then ever before in history because we are
| incredibly smart, but because we had ready access to
| hydrocarbons. The same logic follows for nearly all great
| inventions of recent eras
|
| > Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise
| move.
|
| I see this comment all the time but it's a very odd one.
| As far as species go humans are very, very young and
| survived very little, just about 300,000 years.
| Additionally, like I said, we've only existed as a
| species during one of the most stable climates in the
| history of the planet.
|
| One final point on the "people always think the world is
| ending!" rhetoric. We've only really started seeing
| strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred
| years. Let's say, for argument, that humans were wiped
| out in the next 100 years. Alien scientists visiting
| would see people thinking about the end times in the last
| 1/300,000 of the species' existence to be fairly
| prescient, even if they were off by several of their own
| species lifetimes.
|
| On top of that the writing on this topic is not without
| merit historically. Revelations was written during the
| Siege of Jerusalem, when things _were_ collapsing for the
| world of the author. Most medieval apocalyptic literature
| was written or based on the black death which wiped out
| between 30-50 percent of Europe. Hardly irrational
| beliefs that the world is ending based solely on
| existential anxiety.
|
| There's also an obvious logical fallacy in all this
| thinking. Most of the time when people look up webMD they
| think they have cancer, and they don't most of the time.
| But it doesn't logically follow that they _can 't have
| cancer_ no matter how strong the evidence.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| My thesis was:
|
| > the truth is you just don't know
|
| You disproved:
|
| > it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer
|
| Good job, you really pwned that straw man.
|
| Also, I want to preserve this one for posterity, because
| I'm pretty sure it's hilariously wrong but I have better
| things to do than dig through the literature right now:
|
| > We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic
| thinking in the last several hundred years.
| munificent wrote:
| _> - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of
| climate stability_
|
| Homo sapiens survived the transition from the last ice
| age to today's climate.
| ericmay wrote:
| I may be misremembering my ancient history here but
| didn't Homo Sapiens arguably almost go extinct during the
| last ice age?
|
| As a related digression I think what people just keep
| forgetting about here isn't like, we'll survive. It's we
| have all this nice stuff like avocados, grapes, heart
| surgery, and MacBook Pros, elephants, winter sports,
| houses, etc. and it sure would be nice to not lose that
| stuff for no good reason only to say "we'll see we didn't
| go extinct it wasn't that bad".
|
| The apparently abrupt changes the unnecessary lives lost,
| and what could be damaged or lost forever are what's of
| concern. Less so just survivability.
| munificent wrote:
| I agree 100% that we should do everything in our power to
| save as many people and as much technology as we can as
| we go through climate change.
|
| My point was just that claims that the entire species is
| going to go extinct are unlikely and, worse, counter-
| productive. The last thing we need is fatalism and people
| giving up hope.
| ericmay wrote:
| I agree with you - I'm sorry I didn't gleam your original
| intent from the previous post. Fatalism and nihilism are
| mind viruses.
| nforgerit wrote:
| Hm, I do get why people trying to be optimistic always
| bring up examples from the past to extrapolate that
| "humanity will always find solutions". What I don't get
| is that the same people simply overlook that we're not
| talking about single symptoms with a simple cause but
| about a root cause (emitting co2) which is deeply
| integrated into all our actions and economies and
| humanity is struggling dealing with that for at least a
| couple of decades.
|
| We're talking about bringing half a dozen to multiple
| dozens of networks out of balance that we only halfway
| understand.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Consuming food wasn't deeply integrated into all our
| actions and economies? Oil?
|
| > extrapolate that "humanity will always find solutions"
|
| Good thing I didn't do that! Doomers, however, _do_
| extrapolate failure. They walk far out on a branch and
| forget they are carrying the burden of proof. That 's my
| entire point.
| nforgerit wrote:
| Well climate scientists have collected more proof than
| ever in the last 2 decades to back the models and
| predictions. What we see is _measured_, not just opinion.
|
| And if you happen to read a bit about how biological
| systems, the weather systems, our economical systems,
| food supply et al. work together while keeping in mind
| that IPCC reports are _conservative_ about their
| predictions (meaning they rather underestimate than
| overestimate), you should really deeply be worried about
| the near-future outcome of the ongoings.
|
| Just because we successfully hacked our nutrition system
| a 100ys ago does not mean that we'll be able to cope with
| how consumerism and agricultural intensification
| afterwards affects us with dozens of new problems. At
| some point it just gets too expensive and/or too complex
| for humans to solve.
| no_wizard wrote:
| My take on it is that _" well presented doomers"_[0], if you
| will, serve to balance the _" well presented optimists"_[1]
| in that they are needed in society so we can have some take
| on how things could actually go wrong and sound warnings for
| potentially catastrophic failures. Its important though, that
| I think it needs moderating, like not everything "Doomers"
| say needs to be taken at face value, its important that
| others can come up and really either shore up their case or
| make a case for different more likely outcomes, for instance.
| I feel the same way about overly optimistic takes as well.
|
| They serve an important function in society to keep us aware
| of just how fragile things _can be_ and that we need to be
| vigilant about understanding the second order affects of our
| actions as a society.
|
| [0]: Ones that generally rely on nonpartisan facts / science
| / evidence for making their claims, without resorting to
| debunked information to further their claims and/or not
| relying on conspiracy theories, for instance.
|
| [1]: I'd put alot of technologists in this group, for an
| example. People who constantly hype real breakthroughs and
| advancements as proof that we will always be trending upward
| as a species
| abracadaniel wrote:
| One downside though is that people generally love an excuse
| to avoid change or avoid additional effort. "It's not real,
| so we don't have to do anything" is functionally equivalent
| to "it's already too late, so why bother doing anything"
| no_wizard wrote:
| This is true even with positive things. I wish I had a
| good answer for human nature and resistance to change, as
| that would be game changing generally speaking
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I disagree, learned helpless is an easy attack on
| realists who tell it as it is.
|
| We consistently fall in the worst case scenario of most
| climate models so much so that "faster than expected" is
| now a meme.
|
| It is indeed too late to avoid famine and water wars but
| it is not too late to keep large parts of the world still
| livable. I would very much like my children and my
| children's children to have a fighting chance.
| deanCommie wrote:
| "Everything will go wrong whether we do anything or not!!"
|
| No, it won't. Because we will act.
|
| "Everything will turn out fine, we don't need to worry
| about anything!!"
|
| No, it won't. We need to act.
|
| Honestly, both extreme reactions paralyze humans and
| nations into inactivity. We fixed the hole in the Ozone. We
| fixed Acid Rain. We stopped the whales from going extinct.
| We did this through concerted human and governmental
| actions together with pressure and regulations on
| corporations.
|
| We can do it again. Not without some consequences.
| Significant human populations will become climate refugees.
| Significant species will go extinct. But we can offset the
| worst effects, but not if doomerism or "climate change is
| inevitable, humans have survived worse" optimism cause us
| to stop trying.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Personally, I like to prepare for the worst but hope for the
| best.
|
| I wish more people would take a reasonable middle approach
| like that. Are we still, as a society, allowed to do things
| like that?
|
| The reality is rarely "as bad as we imagined" OR "nothing is
| wrong at all".
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I guess the problem I run into is that "the worst" as
| proposed by Doomers is usually so bad that there's no way
| for me to prepare for it except by becoming a full time
| prepper. And that just becomes exhausting to even consider,
| so it's easier to fall into the trap of either depression
| or complete inaction instead.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I've come to accept that I simply can't be prepared for
| everything.
|
| I don't think my landlords would approve of a bunker. And
| where would I put it? The whole property is 25x75 feet.
|
| "Prepare" is sometimes "realize that I'm completely
| screwed and I have to die of something someday".
|
| Everything is temporary, after all, including me and you.
| seydor wrote:
| High priests always invoked the wrath of god to convince people
| bjourne wrote:
| As I understand it there is a scientific consensus about both
| the causes and the potential effects of global climate change.
| Scientists say that we are headed for 2C degrees of warming in
| the next years. Scientists say that 2C degrees of warming would
| be disastrous for millions of people. Any random dude can put
| two and two together.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending
| all the time, or is what he's saying true?
|
| I didn't get any "alarmist" signals from this post of his until
| near the end. If all the data is as it suggests there really
| does seem to be something going on this year in particular in
| addition to a trend. But then he said "Infrastructure will
| break beyond repair." which jumped out as alarmist to me. Like
| we can't fix or build more infrastructure? I wish people
| wouldn't do that, as it makes me react with "dude calm down"
| when they otherwise seem to have a point.
| data_maan wrote:
| I think the point here is the metaphore. When you say
| "infrastructure" you think of bridges, roads etc. And for
| those you have a notion of possibility and difficulty of
| repairing them.
|
| When he says "infrastructure" he means the nature that we
| draw on (to build our infrastructure) i.e. the weather, the
| trophic chains etc.
|
| I would doubt that everything from one type of infra can be
| translated to the other. E.g. when it comes to nature some
| things are simply almost irreversible, whereas there is no
| such thing for man-made infra.
| bbor wrote:
| I guess it depends on what you mean by "beyond repair", I.e.
| how many pieces of a bridge can you replace before you're
| replacing the bridge rather than repairing it?
|
| I am definitely not an expert on infrastructure or civil
| engineering in general, but I've heard lots of stories about
| heat being bad for our infra, e.g. warped rail lines in the
| UK. "Beyond repair" seems within the bound of reason
|
| EDIT: also, obligatory dont-look-up-ication:
|
| "I didn't sense any 'alarmist' undertones from this post of
| his until almost the end. If all the data is as it suggests,
| there genuinely seems to be an extraordinary astronomical
| event headed our way this year on top of other celestial
| trends. But then he said, 'Civilization will crumble beyond
| repair,' which struck me as alarmist. Like we can't rebuild
| or adapt our society? I wish people wouldn't resort to such
| extreme statements, as it prompts me to respond with 'dude,
| calm down,' even when they otherwise seem to have a valid
| concern."
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what
| he's saying true?
|
| These two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
| pphysch wrote:
| Climate change is many things:
|
| - Real.
|
| - Influenced by human activity, both positively and negatively.
|
| - Difficult to study, because we only have decades of hard data
| for what is a phenomenon spanning eons.
|
| - A narrative pushed by Western economies to discourage
| economic development of the Global South and maintain hegemony.
| If the former were actually serious about mitigating it, it
| would harshly regulate planned obsolescence which causes
| astronomical amounts of waste and pollution. Instead, they
| browbeat poor countries for building durable infrastructure.
|
| - Classic fear-mongering as a means of maintaining control
| ("follow me or everyone will die").
|
| - An expression of aging "hippy" eschatology; we have one of
| the most individualistic generations in human history reaching
| old age and projecting its death onto the world as a coping
| mechanism.
|
| - A polarizing topic that lures engagement.
|
| I think blogs like this are a manifestation of the latter two
| or three.
| vkou wrote:
| As opposed to the narrative pushed by Western economies to
| encourage limited forms of economic development in the Global
| South, by facilitating the creation of captive markets and
| dependent client states? You know, the normal day-to-day
| economic orthodoxy the world's been running under for two
| hundred years?
|
| Which one do you think is winning?
|
| (Also, when you say the Global South, do you mean the Global
| South that tends to be exempt from, or subjected to less
| stringent carbon limitations than the developed world? Or do
| you mean the Global South that everyone starts complaining
| about as soon as I mention that maybe we should reduce _our_
| emissions...)
| pphysch wrote:
| > You know, the normal day-to-day economic orthodoxy the
| world's been running under for two hundred years?
|
| Exactly, it's modern lipstick for an old pig.
|
| > the Global South that everyone starts complaining about
| as soon as I mention that maybe we should reduce our
| emissions...
|
| Yeah, that one.
| giarc wrote:
| Perhaps. I never know what to believe. I've heard smart,
| knowledgeable people like Bill Gates state that he thinks we
| won't experience a scorched Earth ending, but that we will
| solve this crisis. I'd like to believe him, but then I see an
| article like this and I don't know who to believe, the graphs
| are pretty damning if only to say "that line is way above the
| other lines, and that is bad."
| followthefunny wrote:
| [dead]
| zzzeek wrote:
| a public figure like Bill Gates who is trying to provide
| solutions (or whatever he is doing, I see some other posts
| pointing to other less noble agendas he might have) can't
| exactly come out and say "well, this will probably all not
| work, most of the observations point to collapse of most
| farming and mass die-offs due to heat / starvation within ten
| years", that would work against his goal of getting people
| motivated and interested in working / voting towards a
| solution.
| djleni wrote:
| For what it's worth, the average interpretation I've seen
| from climate scientists is:
|
| - No, we won't hit scorched earth Venus-like runaway warming.
|
| - If we don't reduce emissions drastically, greenhouse gas
| warming plus various feedbacks will cause extreme weather,
| render some parts of the world unlivable due to wet bulb
| temperature, and overwhelm unprepared infrastructure, costing
| huge amounts of money and creating millions of migrants.
|
| So, not the end times, but definitely dark times.
|
| If you sprinkle a bit of pessimism about current politics
| it's not a stretch to assume we probably won't handle those
| impacts gracefully, or achieve the drastic emissions cuts
| required to avoid them.
| saltminer wrote:
| > greenhouse gas warming plus various feedbacks will cause
| extreme weather, render some parts of the world unlivable
| due to wet bulb temperature, and overwhelm unprepared
| infrastructure, costing huge amounts of money and creating
| millions of migrants
|
| This is what I've been trying to tell people for years.
| Climate change is everyone's concern, if only because
| entire nations becoming uninhabitable, wars over natural
| resources (not just oil - now we'll be seeing fighting over
| arable land and water sources), etc. will cause massive
| influxes of refugees. Even if many nations did not have a
| significant split in opinions on migrants, most are still
| ill-equipped to handle the many millions of climate
| refugees that will come.
|
| Remember the Syrian migrant crisis? Where people were
| shouting about "the great replacement" (read: "white
| genocide") over people fleeing _ISIS?_ That 's going to
| seem like chump change compared to what's coming (and I'd
| bet good money that new extremist groups will start popping
| up as conditions deteriorate, governments collapse, etc. -
| a good chunk of the blame for climate change can be laid at
| the feet of developed nations, after all, so I would be
| shocked if no extremist groups decided to take matters into
| their own hands).
|
| I could write at length about this, but I'll leave it at
| this: the US is not going to come out of this unscathed.
| Obviously, sea level rise will lead to coastal flooding,
| yada yada, but unless American agriculture is forced to be
| more conservative with its water usage, the aquifers we
| rely so desperately on for our farmlands will run dry due
| to over-pumping within this century (and with megadroughts
| getting worse, our aquifers are recharging far slower than
| before...this will only get worse as climate change
| worsens).
| iso1631 wrote:
| Millions of migrants seems a massivly optimistic view. I
| suspect it will be well over a billion in 10 years.
| pc86 wrote:
| What's your citation for suspecting that more than 1 in 8
| living people will be a migrant? That seems pretty
| alarmist, and _well_ over any number I 've seen suggested
| elsewhere.
| sofixa wrote:
| Well if current temperatures and predictions are anything
| to go by, big chunks of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
| Pakistan, India and Bangladesh will become uninhabitable,
| wet bulb temperatures wise. Just from that area you can
| easily get to 1 billion; there's also Africa and the
| Americas that could experience droughts, destruction of
| wildlife habitats relied upon for sustenance (mostly
| fishing), unviable temperatures, floodings, etc.
| bbor wrote:
| Definitely don't think it's as settled as you're implying
| here :)
|
| This think tank says 1.2B:
|
| https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/there-
| could-be...
|
| Reasoning:
|
| - 19 countries with the highest number of ecological
| threats are among the world's 40 least peaceful countries
| including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Chad, India and
| Pakistan.
|
| - Over one billion people live in 31 countries where the
| country's resilience is unlikely to sufficiently
| withstand the impact of ecological events by 2050,
| contributing to mass population displacement.
|
| - Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and
| North Africa are the regions facing the largest number of
| ecological threats.
|
| - 3.5 billion people could suffer from food insecurity by
| 2050; which is an increase of 1.5 billion people from
| today.
|
| - The lack of resilience in countries covered in the ETR
| will lead to worsening food insecurity and competition
| over resources, increasing civil unrest and mass
| displacement, exposing developed countries to increased
| influxes of refugees.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Just look at the population figures for the areas of the
| globe that are projected to become uninhabitable. That's
| your baseline number and it by itself is over a billion
| people. Any additional extrapolation for political and
| social upheavals related to resource conflicts
| (regardless of how conservative your analysis might be)
| only add to that baseline.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Well, this is when the military budget of many countries
| will be put to a test, for real this time. After all, the
| reason to keep investing into military force is to be
| able to defend sovereignty. It is a harsh thought, no
| question, but we have to admit that we always prepared
| for this case. Sure, the left is trying to make it a
| humanitarian thing, but in the end, available space and
| resources will determine how much the people of a country
| are willing to accept foreigners. Right now, this "game"
| is very much leaning in favour of the left, however, one
| day, it will pivot, and then there will be only tears.
| The real question is, will you be able to migrate before
| the borders are closed with military force?
| [deleted]
| otikik wrote:
| Oh, I believe him.
|
| "We (the ultra-rich) won't experience a scorched Earth
| ending"
| bamfly wrote:
| From what I can tell, they'll all be riding it out in New
| Zealand, to minimize the climate effects they personally
| experience and keep themselves nice and far away from any
| political instability (or consequences...) It's the
| goldilocks-zone country for avoiding climate chaos, if you
| also need to minimize chances that the government will
| seize all your stuff (as less-liberal states might).
| tovej wrote:
| Bill Gates has been buying up water reserves, has investments
| in polluting industries, and he's got an interest in keeping
| the public thinking it's "not so bad". It is. Bill Gates is
| also behind the "our world in data" series on youtube, that
| consistently misrepresents climate science to make it seem
| like we can solve it with enough "green industry", when the
| only real solution is degrowth, we can't afford to keep
| siphoning the carbon out of the earth. GDP growth is
| correlated with --- and the main driver of --- the warming.
|
| This message doesn't serve the interests of billionaires, and
| Gates is no exception.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Bill Gates purchased farms clandestinely on a massive
| scale, now the largest single farms owner in the USA?
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-bill-gates-
| blackrock-7...
|
| Bill Gates famously funded a "mini-nukes" company to make
| smaller footprint nuclear power plants, and portable
| nuclear generators.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-
| gates-w...
|
| its a new plantation setup.. there are few other ways to
| interpret it.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Bill Gates purchased farms clandestinely on a massive
| scale_
|
| Clandestine means secrete and illegal. If it was secret,
| how do you know about it and if it was illegal, what was
| illegal about it?
|
| _Bill Gates famously funded a "mini-nukes" company to
| make smaller footprint nuclear power plants, and portable
| nuclear generators._
|
| So what? Where is the connection to a smaller nuclear
| reactor coming from?
| boc wrote:
| Degrowth is not a solution. Geo-engineering is our only way
| out of this mess.
| kersplody wrote:
| It is the only practical solution. The only way to get
| humanity's energy equation to balance is to dramatically
| reduce the population or dramatically reduce energy use
| per capita or invent and deploy a mythical free energy
| source within the next 30 years. And this just covers
| replacing black energy with green energy -- even more
| energy will be needed to address the climate problem.
| connorgutman wrote:
| This is an emotional response and not a scientific one.
| The Haber-Bosch process was the biological equivalent of
| a deferred-interest loan. It gave us enough food to scale
| from 2 billion to 8, but now the planet is coming to
| collect its dues. We never had the natural resources to
| support humanity's current numbers, and by inflating our
| Nitrogen supply and stripping the Earth of everything
| else we need, we've utterly fucked it all up. Degrowth
| would be the worst tragedy in human history, but it would
| at least give future generations a chance. Geo-
| engineering is like paying off one credit card with
| another. It's a recipe for further disaster and doesn't
| solve the underlying issue. Humanity has to default.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Hasn't all of technological progress been paying one
| credit card off with another?
| connorgutman wrote:
| Yes, but more specifically, all technological progress
| since the industrialized revolution. Prior to that, we at
| least had a reasonable credit limit in the form of a
| fixed Nitrogen cycle. Advancements in pre-industrial
| technology primarily made life easier, not more abundant.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Degrowth not only is a solution, it's a guaranteed
| outcome if other initiatives don't materialize to
| successfully address the problem.
| imtringued wrote:
| You underestimate the threat of eco-fascism. By that I
| don't mean green party politicians, no, I mean literal
| facists who blame climate change on overpopulation and
| who believe that the population has to be cut
| drastically. In the most basic form this would mean
| closing our borders and making sure nobody can cross
| illegally by using lethal force, if necessary.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I'm not certain I do. I feel like we may be arguing the
| same side here? What I'm hinting at is that unless
| concrete results don't begin to materialize and that
| right soon the resulting climate driven geopolitical
| upheaval, and knock-on effects to global logistics, is
| quite likely to result in a significant downsizing of
| both global GDP and the world population. Perversely both
| of these obviously bad outcomes will very likely improve
| global carbon emissions. Here's a really shitty joke for
| you: How do you reduce your carbon footprint by 100%
| overnight? Shoot yourself in the head. How do you reduce
| your carbon footprint by 900% overnight? Go shoot your
| neighbors in the head. :/
| connorgutman wrote:
| Climate change _is_ a result of overpopulation and
| overconsumption, though. It 's right there in the name.
| The climate is changing as a result of anthropogenic
| activity. I fail to see how eco-fascism affects the
| outcome here, if we do not cut our population and
| consumption the planet will do it for us.
| data_maan wrote:
| Geo engineering is jumping from a cliff and hoping there
| is water down so you don't hit concrete.
|
| Degrowth is the only sustainable solution, geo-
| engineering will create more problems than it solves.
| prottog wrote:
| Degrowth is a great solution for those who didn't get
| degrowth'd.
| connorgutman wrote:
| Must our entire species (and countless others) all die
| together because degrowth is unfair? Those are the only
| two scientific options at hand.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Economists tell us that the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the
| sharpest downturn in the world economy since the Great
| Depression. Result? Well, looking at the Mauna Loa
| atmospheric CO2 for the last five years, it's difficult to
| detect any shift in its monotonic increase.
|
| https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
| ciconia wrote:
| There's this paradox where, on the one hand humanity is convinced
| it can overcome any problem nature throws at us, and can
| completely subjugate nature; and on the other hand, human beings
| are tragically grossly understimating the impact of their actions
| on their environment.
|
| This is really what stands out to me when people on HN suggest
| that global warming is totally solvable with just enough
| technological innovation. The sad truth, and what this article is
| really driving home, is that while we're waiting for a _deus ex
| machina_ , we continue to trash our planet, as if we can just
| move to Mars or something when earth is done.
|
| I'm quite skeptical about the whole "collapse of industrial
| civilisation" schtick, but I _am_ worried, most of all for my
| children and their generation.
| tonymet wrote:
| if someone can explain how global temps are measured and weighted
| i'll give you a cookie
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| it's satellite photography of infrared emmission, no? combined
| with ground station measurements to calibrate?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The source listed by TFA for SST, surface sea-water
| temperature, is <https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/>
|
| From the note on that page:
|
| _The page provides time series and map visualizations of daily
| mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from the NOAA Optimum
| Interpolation SST (OISST) dataset version 2.1. OISST is a
| 0.25degx0.25deg gridded dataset that estimates temperatures
| based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations. The
| OISST data product includes SST anomalies based on 1971-2000
| climatology from NOAA. The datset spans 1 January 1982 to
| present with a 1 to 2-day lag from the current day. OISST files
| are preliminary for about two weeks until a finalized product
| file is posted by NOAA. This status is identified on the maps
| with "[preliminary]" showing in the title, and applies to the
| time series as well._
|
| Which further references
| <https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/optimum-interpolation-sst>
|
| can haz cooky plz?
| tonymet wrote:
| thanks we're on the right track but it's still lacking the
| stats. ie what is the distribution of the instruments and how
| are they weighted ? are dense and sparse weighted equally?
| how about close and distant instruments to settlements ?
|
| to me collapsing thousands of observations to a single
| average loses most of the signal
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Is there some peculiar technical limitation on your end
| which prevents you from following or reading links?
|
| From the NOAA link above:
|
| _See Huang et al. 2021 for complete details_
|
| Huang et al, "Improvements of the Daily Optimum
| Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST) Version 2.1
| " (April 2021): <https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals
| /clim/34/8/JCLI-D-...>
|
| Notably:
|
| - "DOISST v2.0 and v2.1 have a resolution of daily and
| 0.25deg x 0.25deg"
|
| - "The large-scale biases of AVHRR SSTs are corrected
| against the available in situ observations from ships and
| buoys in DOISST v2.0 (Reynolds et al. 2007) and from ships,
| buoys, and Argo floats in this study (v2.1; Table 1). Daily
| biases of AVHRR SSTs (e.g., 15 January 2020) are calculated
| in the following procedures: 1) daily AVHRR and in situ
| SSTs are bin-averaged separately to 2deg x 2deg grids; 2)
| daily AVHRR and in situ SSTs are averaged separately within
| a 15-day running window (e.g., 8-22 January 2020); 3) the
| averaged AVHRR and in situ SSTs are projected onto a common
| set of empirical orthogonal teleconnection (EOT) functions;
| 4) the difference between EOT-filtered AVHRR and in situ
| SSTs is defined as AVHRR biases; and 5) the daily biases on
| 2deg x 2deg grids are interpolated linearly to 0.25deg x
| 0.25deg grids and applied to AVHRR SST [see more details in
| Reynolds et al. (2007); Huang et al. 2015b]."
|
| I'll trust in your competence to answer your remaining
| questions without my assistance.
| billiam wrote:
| He tries a little too hard to make gradual global changes more
| tangible (what does 930 Hiroshimas even mean?), but in general he
| does a good job of stating the obvious for us lunkheads. The
| developed world is nearly at civil war in large part about the
| tiny number of refugees we have today---we will be completely
| unable to deal with climate refugees in the tens or hundreds of
| millions, and it won't be wet bulb temps that finish our society
| off, it will be us doing it to each other.
| coding123 wrote:
| tipping point - some line crossed
| whalesalad wrote:
| NAC Collapse?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Current
|
| - https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/14/1041321/climate-...
|
| - https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/huge-atlantic...
| cpr wrote:
| [flagged]
| simmerup wrote:
| That article is from March...
| distortionfield wrote:
| But much more importantly the OPs statement is directly
| contrary to what their own link states.
| cpr wrote:
| Conclusion of article:
|
| >Overall, the long-term trend in Antarctic sea ice is
| nearly flat. (in contrast, the glaciers and ice sheets over
| land in Antarctica are losing mass.) The satellite record
| spans more than four decades, and although the ice has
| shown increasing and decreasing trends over portions of
| that record, few of those trends have been statistically
| significant. Year-to-year variability has dominated,
| especially over the last decade. Since the year 2013,
| Antarctic sea ice has exhibited its highest and lowest
| extents in the entire record--the highest-ever winter
| maximum occurred in September 2014, and the lowest-ever
| summer minimum was in February 2022. But the overall trend,
| as of early 2022, is close to zero.
| vsareto wrote:
| >Average Antarctic sea ice concentration in February 2023, the
| month when sea ice reaches its summer minimum extent. Compared
| to median conditions from 1981-2010 (yellow line), the most
| recent minimum was the lowest on record throughout the month.
|
| ???
| otikik wrote:
| It does not. It clearly says it has gone down.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| "The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed
| right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a
| hopeful word to end with. But I don't."
|
| That's a pretty terrifying ending. Many of these trends (reducing
| sea ice causing increased ocean warming, burning of forests and
| permafrost) may be irreversible once things pass a certain point.
| At very least we may need to engage in some sort of large-scale
| solar radiation management project to stop them, and worryingly
| we may need to start that project _very soon_ before it 's too
| late.
| coldtea wrote:
| Don't worry. Magically awesome, yet uninvented, or in perpetual
| "in the next ten years" state technology, with Star Trek scope,
| will save us with a technical solution. If not, we're all just
| going to Mars in 10-15 years, with colonies and terraformings.
| Even if we haven't managed to even get back to the moon for 50
| years.
|
| That's what everybody insisted for the past 20-30 years, so
| must be true. All we need to do is keep expanding
| consumption/production!
| c1sc0 wrote:
| IF the correlation between sulphuric oxide contents in shipping
| fuel and these measures changes are true then we have the
| solution in the article right there. The best day to start
| solar radiation management was yesterday, the second-best is
| now.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I don't actually disagree with this. My concern is that right
| now the public is _very far_ from accepting the idea that we
| should engage in these projects, and they only exist at the
| research stage. Worse: convincing the world to accept near-
| term SRM (or even "use dirtier fuel again" SRM) may be a
| tough sell, since some portion of the world isn't convinced
| that climate change is very serious, let alone an existential
| threat that needs immediate action. Even if SRM works and is
| safe, getting from our current situation to one where we
| deploy SRM could take years, and I'm getting worried that we
| might not have those years.
| data_maan wrote:
| Post your companies that are withdrawing because of climate
| change here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36297304
| lettergram wrote:
| Let's see the last 200-400 years of climate data. Curious the
| fluctuations 1991-2020 has decent variance, there's also 30 year
| solar cycles. We only see one cycle in this data, we need more
| data tip make conclusions
| josho wrote:
| > we need more data tip make conclusions
|
| Skeptics have been raising questions like yours for decades. If
| you are truly interested in answers then it is only one or two
| google searches away. In short scientists have already factored
| those concerns into their analysis.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| whoever is using the ocean as a giant heat sink needs to stop
| (joke)
| tonymillion wrote:
| Turns out AI will be the death of us all, but not in the way we
| think...
|
| All those GPUs need cooling somehow.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| The reason why we cant fight climate change is because the AI
| wont let us (joke)
| intalentive wrote:
| What's up with the straight line across the equatorial Pacific?
|
| https://climatecasino.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/GLOBAL_...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Lack of wind, since the trade winds of the north and south
| hemispheres converge or cancel each other at the equator
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zo...
| intalentive wrote:
| TIL. Thanks.
| civilitty wrote:
| _> There is another possible input to this heating worthy of
| note. Dust from the Sahara typically blows west this time of
| year, blocking incoming radiation while trapping existing heat.
| So far this year the dust has not come. The lack of dust is
| notable and could also be a direct cause of some of the North
| Atlantic heating._
|
| This caught my eye as a potentially much worse catastrophe in the
| short term than the extreme temperatures. That Saharan dust feeds
| several ecosystems like the Mediterranean and the Amazon with
| crucial micronutrients like iron and phosphorus. If that transfer
| stops for very long, they could start to collapse
| phkahler wrote:
| Fair point, but what if the desert starts greening again? I
| don't expect it to, but having what nutrients there are NOT
| blow away would be a start right?
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| The issue is water and sand. While it's currently
| supplementing other ecosystems with nutritions, these by
| themselves won't magically become greenery.
|
| It would definitely have an incredible effect on the climate
| if you could magically make Africa into a Forest again
| though. Might even make some parts of Europe uninhabitable
| with that cooling alone. Not gonna happen though.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > The issue is water and sand. While it's currently
| supplementing other ecosystems with nutritions, these by
| themselves won't magically become greenery.
|
| photosynthesis efficiency goes up as CO2 increases, and
| plants need way less water.
|
| This leads to greening of the entire planet and reversing
| desertification.
| jdlshore wrote:
| But at the same time, heat reduces photosynthesis
| efficiency, and even if it didn't, photosynthesis alone
| doesn't lead to healthy plants. You can't take one
| element in isolation.
| ericmay wrote:
| Also "greening of the planet" doesn't necessarily mean
| it's a great place for mammals or humans specifically.
| ratg13 wrote:
| This was the only part of the post that I wasn't relating to.
|
| I'm just coming back from a trip to the Caribbean where during
| my trip the sky was hazy for some days and all of the locals
| were claiming the weather effect to be the Sahara dust.
|
| I'm not a local so I don't know if it is more or less than
| usual, but my personal experience makes me take issue with the
| "never come" part.
| fps wrote:
| The eastern islands of the Caribbean are currently getting
| hit with smoke from Canadian wildfires:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/smoke-maps-
| canad.... Smoke is covering everything from Puerto Rico to
| Barbados.
| deanCommie wrote:
| It's super important to not rely on individual data points
| when talking about year-long trends.
|
| Whatever the effect of the Saharan dust, it's not going to be
| all manifested in "some days".
|
| Just as in years of overall climate warning there can still
| be record cold streaks too.
| foxandmouse wrote:
| How is this on the front page? It's as poorly rooted in science
| as anti-global warming articles.
|
| This level of alarmism is dangerous because thoughts of others
| imprison us if we're not thinking for ourselves... why would a
| young person care about the climate if it's already too late.
| distortionfield wrote:
| How is it poorly rooted? They cite all of the data they used
| for their sources, and link to research supporting their broad
| claims. You can't just call something poorly sourced and
| alarmist because it's actually alarming. That's the problem,
| right now. Alarming is very much the word I should hope this
| article is.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What we have already done is enough to keep the momentum of
| global warming going the next centuries. That's a very
| difficult political reality, it is a great challenge. How can
| we deal with politics and everything else when the facts look
| like this?
|
| When the best we can do is to "not make it worse", then it's
| very hard for people to see the benefits of the changes we have
| to make.
| jchmrt wrote:
| The fun thing about climate change is that it is never really
| too late to make a difference, since every reduction in emitted
| CO2 results in less warming (even if not in a perfectly linear
| fashion due to various feedback loops). This means that even
| when we've already locked in 2C, it is still worth preventing
| it from going to 2.5C.
|
| So alarmism is good and necessary, we just need to make sure
| that we also need to take action based on it.
| brightball wrote:
| Can somebody explain this part?
|
| > By cleaning up shipping fuels, massive regions of the world's
| oceans that were protected from heating by shipping sulfate
| aerosols are now experiencing rapid warming. This includes the
| main shipping routes between Asia and the Western US as well as
| the major routes from the Easter US to Europe and the Middle
| East. And that's where the warming is happening. This rapid
| heating is known as "termination shock," and it appears to be
| what's happening right now.
| adregan wrote:
| Certain chemicals in the atmosphere can increase the planet's
| albedo, meaning that less of the sun's energy is absorbed. When
| people speak of geoengineering, they are referring to
| intentionally spraying these elements (sulfur) into the
| atmosphere to reflect more of the sun's energy and temporarily
| cooling the earth.
|
| However, the problem with this system is that the second you
| stop, you get a huge bump in temperature. Like a whip, you get
| a quick increase.
|
| Turns out, the shipping industry may have been inadvertently
| geoengineering and now that there are regulations on the amount
| of sulfur expelled, we may be experiencing that snap to warmer
| temperatures.
|
| You may think "Let's just spray some sulfur of our own," but
| there are unintended consequences associated with it. In my
| mind though, the biggest issue is that without a reduction in
| emissions, you'll need more and more sulfur sprayed into the
| atmosphere and eventually it will not be effective. Supposing
| you've continued to emit all that time and are still emitting,
| then the snap would be even greater.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I guess this geoengineering has left the ozone stable.
| lsh123 wrote:
| Yet another alarmist article. These predictions are so easy to
| make and nobody cares if you are wrong. From the past (you can
| google more yourself):
|
| https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
| https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/18/world/scientists-say-eart...
| https://nypost.com/2021/11/12/50-years-of-predictions-that-t...
| josho wrote:
| Let's see, you don't want people to be alarmist on events that
| could remap the world as we know it? Okay, if we aren't
| alarmist then governments won't take action. It sounds like
| there is no way to win with people like you, and evidently
| there are enough people like you that we've done nothing.
|
| Regarding your specific complaint, let's look at the AP
| article. The article is based off an interview with a director,
| not a scientist. I'm not sure if it's poorly written or the
| director poorly communicated the issue. The article implies
| that by 2000 we'd see all of these extreme outcomes, that
| wasn't what was intended to be communicated. Instead it was
| that we had until 2000 to stop these events from happening _in
| the future_. Which is a very different message. Regardless here
| we are in 2023 and we are getting ever closer to those events
| occurring, with some leading indicators already taking place.
| its-summertime wrote:
| Predictions end up being wrong if things change
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol and others for
| example
|
| (besides, "Will happen" is very different from "Could happen")
| lsh123 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
|
| "The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether
| observations agree with or conflict with the expectations
| deduced from a hypothesis"
| abm53 wrote:
| The article is mostly about current conditions, not
| predictions.
| lsh123 wrote:
| Last 2 sentences from the article:
|
| "... The end of global industrial civilization is where we
| are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I
| wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don't."
| otikik wrote:
| "mostly".
| idlewords wrote:
| As this post hints at in the discussion of sulfur emissions at
| sea, all it takes to significantly slow global warming is one
| country or sufficiently motivated non-state actor deciding to go
| all-in on geoengineering (like seeding the stratosphere with
| sulfur dioxides).
|
| Compare this to the collective action problem of everyone,
| including rapidly industrializing poorer countries, spending
| trillions to decarbonize their economy and it's pretty clear
| which outcome is more likely. The only question is which country
| (or countries) will be first to attempt it, and what will trigger
| them to act.
| detritus wrote:
| According to the 'novel' The Ministry of The Future, that could
| be a state Actor... .
|
| I put 'novel' in quotes because it's a really weird novel.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A lot of novels are weird. It's straightforwardly a novel you
| don't need to put it in quotes.
| detritus wrote:
| More that it's a weird form of treatise with the mereset
| semblance of a coherent novel intertwined within it to
| encourage people to read it.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| A novel novel, got it. I actually thought it was a pretty
| straightforward read, but to each their own. According to the
| novel Termination Shock it could just take an eccentric
| billionaire to launch a geoengineering effort like that
| (though with some blowback from state actors) - of course
| there aren't any of those around, so that's clearly
| fiction...
| ericmay wrote:
| Just as a digression I thought Ministry for the Future was
| a _far_ better book than Termination Shock was.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Every time humans try and fix nature, we tend to make it worse
| due to not understanding the problem or consequences.
| theropost wrote:
| Do we though? Up until very recent history, we thought of
| nature as deadly, and unforgiving. The wilderness would mean
| almost certain death. We did not master the environment, we
| were afraid of it.
|
| I wouldn't say we make things worse, I think we make things
| our own. Is that worse? I'd tend to disagree. I prefer human
| environments over the deep wilderness. Most of us love
| nature, but we love the human version of that.. groomed
| trails, modest temperatures, light breezes, and having all
| the human comforts within reach. Humanity does certainly do
| things wrong, but we also do things right.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I'm with you mostly....
|
| But this is fluids, we don't have science to know how it
| will actually perform.
|
| Gosh, I'm so afraid of problems with fluids.
|
| My worst case dooms:
|
| >The change in energy causes extreme weather
|
| >The energy change causes some electrons to leave their
| orbitals temporarily, causing compounds in the atmosphere
| that typically never occur(creating cancer air).
|
| >Long term effects are not known, causing cancer air.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's not the point of the comment you're responding to.
|
| Climate-driven austerity isn't going to happen, because it's
| an intractable global-scale collective action problem.
|
| If you believe that anthropogenic climate change is going to
| be a global disaster, you should probably reasonably assume
| that some country in the world is going to allocate serious
| resources to mitigating it.
|
| There are 50 countries in the world with resources exceeding
| that of Portugal or New Zealand. Any of those countries could
| fund and implement a large-scale geoengineering project. No
| mechanism exists to ensure that any of those countries get
| permission to do so.
|
| So it doesn't much matter whether we think it's a good idea.
| Either:
|
| (1) Anthropogenic climate change isn't going to impose
| unacceptable costs on the industrialized world, and we'll
| just blow it off, or
|
| (2) Some country is going to intervene directly in the
| climate.
| connorgutman wrote:
| "If you believe that anthropogenic climate change is going
| to be a global disaster, you should probably reasonably
| assume that some country in the world is going to allocate
| serious resources to mitigating it."
|
| Not when mitigating it requires ending and reversing
| economic growth. You're assuming there's a single nation on
| Earth run by good-faith actors. Furthermore, if climate-
| drive austerity doesn't occur, the Earth will kill billions
| of people until it reaches a new equilibrium.
| tptacek wrote:
| My understanding of the point being made is, if
| anthropogenic climate change is a global catastrophe
| threatening countries around the world, each of those
| threatened countries will, at some point, have no choice
| but to invest in the implementation of geoengineering
| projects. There won't be a choice.
|
| So the only real question is, when the moment comes that
| the first sufficiently industrialized country is pushed
| to the edge by climate catastrophe, what options will
| they have available to them? If the only options are bad
| things that are likely to cause more harm than good, that
| won't matter --- it'll still happen, because what else
| could happen?
| wizofaus wrote:
| What sort of geoengineering project could a country the
| size of NZ undertake on its own though? Certainly nothing
| that will make any difference to global climate - at best
| they might find ways to control cloud-cover and/or rainfall
| over its own territory. And "legal permission" mightn't be
| an issue, but if one country decides to undertake a
| geoengineering project that's fully expected to have a
| significant negative impact on other ones, they can
| certainly expect military retaliation.
| idlewords wrote:
| I don't know, the rural poor in America used to all get
| malaria and intestinal parasites, and now they don't anymore.
| And it's rare now to lose a child to disease, where it used
| to be normal. Our current rosy view of nature is skewed by
| the fact that so many generations of people worked to rid
| ourselves of its worst shortcomings, and largely succeeded.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Isn't that exactly what's happening with limiting the sulfur
| output of ships?
| scythe wrote:
| >The only question is which country (or countries) will be
| first to attempt it, and what will trigger them to act.
|
| The capability + motivation factors certainly point to India as
| the most likely candidate, since they're among the closest to
| disastrous wet-bulb temperatures and have a domestic nuclear
| umbrella that allows them to say "and what are you going to do
| about that?". If a heat wave makes it impossible or deadly to
| harvest crops at a critical moment, panic is a possible
| outcome.
| e44858 wrote:
| Sulfur dioxide + water + oxygen = sulfuric acid, which is not
| something you want in the atmosphere where rain clouds form.
| idlewords wrote:
| Rain clouds don't form in the stratosphere, and there's very
| little water there.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| No world leader is going to stick their neck out and spend
| billions to rain acid (even if thats exactly what the country
| needs), especially if their country is in a climate crisis.
| They mind as well hand in their resignation.
| OrwellianChild wrote:
| In which idlewords basically cites the plot of "Termination
| Shock" by Neal Stephenson... :-)
| idlewords wrote:
| Please don't make me read another one of his books. I'm still
| recovering from the Seveneves fiasco.
| OrwellianChild wrote:
| I didn't hate it, even though it played out more like a
| REAMDE type thriller than some of his earlier stuff
| (Anathem, Baroque, etc). I liked Seveneves, though.
| callmeal wrote:
| I don't think people watching their cars rust before their eyes
| will go over well. Did we forget acid rain already? 1991 was
| not that long ago.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/09/news/new-paint-new-cars-a...
| idlewords wrote:
| This is about stratospheric SO2, the stratosphere by
| definition doesn't mix (on short timescales) with the air we
| park our cars in.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| You do realize that even if it might work, and even if there
| weren't any other side effects like acid rain, this would
| essentially make every piece of sky on every day hazy. We'd
| essentially trade the very concept of "blue sky" for a livable
| temperature. Kinda hard to put a price on that for me. Maybe
| I'd prefer living with genuinely less comfort but blue skies.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Kinda hard to put a price on that for me. Maybe I'd prefer
| living with genuinely less comfort but blue skies.
|
| If all you have to trade off is comfort, maybe you can't.
|
| If you were one of the literal HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people
| who are living in parts of the world that could become
| unsurvivable in the next few decades, or get flooded by
| rising sea levels, you'd have a different perspective.
|
| For what it's worth, I agree with you that reckless
| geoengineering could easily cause more harm than good. But
| aesthetically desiring a blue sky is a bit silly when up to a
| billion human lives are on the line (and that's a low
| estimate)
| idlewords wrote:
| You can get a lot of darkening without perceptible effect on
| the sky, and as a bonus you get amazing sunsets. This happens
| naturally every time there's a major volcanic eruption; this
| would just be hurrying the process along a bit.
| isp wrote:
| In this article is the first time I've seen a graph with units
| "Hiroshimas per Seconds". https://climatecasino.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/06/Ocean_H...
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| very poor taste IMO.
| diydsp wrote:
| It's been suggested to state things in terms of 9/11/2001 for
| Americans who don't understand the distaste in such
| discussions. E.g. each "Hiroshima" would be worth 65
| "9/11/2001"s. The scale of the graph's Y-axis would run from
| 195 to 585 "9/11/2001"s.
|
| Derivation: Hiroshima: 129,000-226,000 deaths.
| E(death_Hiroshima) ~= 180k. 9/11/2011, NYC: 2,753 people
| died. 180k/2753 ~= 65.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| I found it very striking - it's a number that someone like me
| (not a physicist) can grasp.
| gmuslera wrote:
| I don't think it is a bad measurement of energy for
| transmitting a scale. It was an actually used nuclear bomb
| and with enough understanding of its power and consequences
| in our current culture. Your message have a target public,
| and that target must understand it properly.
|
| A Tsar bomb or a long number with an unit attached won't be
| as graphically understood as this one. Scientists may grasp
| those numbers, but they already know how bad this is, you
| must reach everyone else.
| connorgutman wrote:
| What would you rather have us measure a mass-extinction event
| in, "sad puppies per second?" This shit is life-and-death.
| I'm sorry that reality offends you.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| "The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed
| right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a
| hopeful word to end with. But I don't."
|
| Sunshade:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade
|
| I'm not too concerned with climate change destroying us all
| within a 100 years.
|
| I'm excited to see the innovations and discoveries to be made
| while we develop technology to mitigate disaster.
|
| Edit:
|
| Furthermore I am excited to see the ROI I will receive from
| investing in mitigation technology.
| redtriumph wrote:
| > while the world attempts to recover from a pandemic that is
| still ongoing but ignored by global media.
|
| I wonder what parts of world are still going through the
| pandemic. Without citations, some of the facts in article come up
| as alarmists.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Literally everywhere on the planet where it is still trivially
| possible to catch covid, so....everywhere.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| By that logic we've been in a common cold pandemic for the
| last 200+ years
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Ok, and?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I shared it with my dad. He's basically a socialist boomer.
|
| His response? "I don't read articles starting with 'WTF'".
|
| I wish people were in general more intentional in writing for a
| broad audience.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| The record fire season in 2020 is why I decided to hedge my bets
| on living a long life and smoke 1 cigarette per day.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I was skeptical, but when the author introduced "Hiroshimas per
| second" as a scale to measure temperature I understood that this
| was a truly scientific article.
| distortionfield wrote:
| Why does converting units for convenience nullify a scientific
| hypothesis? Please explain.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Who said it was nullifying the scientific hypothesis? On the
| contrary, it strengthens it significantly. I suggest he
| further strengthens his science by converting carbon
| emissions to Auschwitz' per minute, so that the everyday Joe
| gets a better grip on the numbers.
| distortionfield wrote:
| avoiding the question and argumentum ad absurdum isn't an
| answer.
| golemotron wrote:
| > These next two years are a pre-amble to what it will mean for
| the world to pass the Paris 1.5degC barrier. The end of global
| industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at
| some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end
| with. But I don't.
|
| This isn't going to age well.
| abeppu wrote:
| > The IPCC suggests that current sulfur aerosol levels are
| contributing in the neighborhood of 0.5deg C to total global
| cooling, offsetting warming that would otherwise rapidly occur.
|
| > By cleaning up shipping fuels, massive regions of the world's
| oceans that were protected from heating by shipping sulfate
| aerosols are now experiencing rapid warming. This includes the
| main shipping routes between Asia and the Western US as well as
| the major routes from the Easter US to Europe and the Middle
| East. And that's where the warming is happening. This rapid
| heating is known as "termination shock," and it appears to be
| what's happening right now.
|
| It's frustrating that we've argued a lot about the hazards of
| intentional geoengineering responses without reaching a consensus
| that we should do it, and meanwhile the shipping industry was
| cavalierly doing it along-side their other emissions. Yes, we
| need to rapidly cut emissions. Yes, we need to in parallel invest
| in carbon capture. But if every fraction of a degree matters,
| shouldn't we also be at least continuing if not scaling up these
| these albedo-increasing changes?
|
| (edited for grammar)
| pyrale wrote:
| Climate change is just one of the things that will get us if we
| don't find a way to live in our environment. We can't just fuck
| every other issue to solve that one problem, and hope
| everything will be fine.
| creato wrote:
| You could include the cost of energy in your statement, and
| then it says nothing.
| pyrale wrote:
| Yeah, well, it's up to you to decide what's important to
| you.
|
| Personally, I don't mind curbing my use, especially if that
| helps avoiding physical limit.
| Retric wrote:
| Solving climate change doesn't require dramatic long term
| changes to the cost of energy. Economically it's mostly a
| question of sunk costs as our infrastructure is built
| around fossil fuels. However, infrastructure has a finite
| lifespan meaning gradually changing things is vastly less
| expensive, though you do need to actually start changing
| things.
|
| Thus ideas like increasing carbon taxation so economies
| optimize for efficient transitions.
| imtringued wrote:
| Carbon taxes are unpopular because you are literally
| pulling future damage done to the economy, which cannot
| be observed, only predicted, and making people pay for it
| today, when the harm hasn't arrived yet. People think
| that this is pointless or even harmful because they don't
| like paying for things and expect others to bear the
| costs.
|
| I have no idea how to fix it. Even when you tell people
| about it, they will disagree with the concept of a carbon
| tax plus dividend.
| Retric wrote:
| That's why you want escalation in carbon taxation. The
| ideal situation is nobody is paying the tax because they
| have swapped to something else.
|
| The point is to convince people building infrastructure
| to build something else because their giant fossil fuel
| investments wouldn't be economically viable where green
| solutions would be.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This baffles me too but it is the way of things. Smart people
| refuse to support action unless they're 100% sure no one will
| dislike it. Meanwhile morons wreck things without pause or
| consequence. I don't know what it is but I think it will doom
| our species. You see the same thing from climate change to
| deficits to wars.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This isn't really the case. The people who study climate are
| having to censor themselves from the loud idiots who took the
| bait and turned a scientific concern into a creed.
|
| In the 21st century if you have to frame your solution as a
| fight against something, you're part of the problem not part
| of the solution. "Fighting" is now a bigger problem than the
| contested topic. Idiots fight and the bigger the idiot, the
| bigger the fight. So the contest is over two extremes that
| have nothing to do with reality and whomever is doing the
| real discussion gets labelled as the enemy by both camps
| because they don't belong to the extreme.
| volkl48 wrote:
| > But if every fraction of a degree matters, shouldn't we also
| be at least continuing if not scaling up these these albedo-
| increasing changes?
|
| Acid Rain is also a bad thing with bad consequences.
|
| While I'm not necessarily that opposed to cautious attempts at
| some geoengineering, I don't think "scale up the sulfate
| emissions" is a viable solution.
| TSiege wrote:
| The argument the OP was really making was, could we at least
| not scale _down_ sulfur emissions
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. Sulpher, causing acid rain,
| was a big deal and caused a lot of damage. Whole forrests
| died, public structures and art was damaged, etc... Also,
| sulpher contributes to ocean acidification.
|
| The point is that the earth is a really complex systems,
| and it's not always clear what technical fixes to use, Let
| alone getting the political will to implement them.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It also causes ozone damage.
| abeppu wrote:
| Acid rain _was_ bad, and I'm not trying to ignore it.
| However, my understanding is that we've already brought down
| sulfur emissions by an enormous amount over the past 30
| years, and the 2020 value was a very small fraction of our
| peak sulfur emissions [1]. The IMO change took place in 2020,
| and it's my understanding that the IPCC statement about 0.5C
| of cooling coming from sulfur emissions is relatively recent.
| I think our current level of sulfur emissions is closer to
| being acceptable than our current warming trend.
|
| I'm not pretending that cooling via sulfur emissions is
| without costs -- but e.g. if living at 2018 levels of sulfur
| emissions (which were already 90% down from peak) can give us
| 0.5C of cooling, that's a deal I'm willing to take,
| especially in light of how hard it is proving to reduce
| carbon emissions. It especially seems like we're hitting a
| number of tipping points with warming, and if sulfur
| emissions (or any other albedo-increasing intervention) can
| keep us from crossing those lines, we should, in my view.
| Would we be better off with 2014-level sulfur emissions?
| 2008? At _some_ point, trading sulfur emissions for cooling
| becomes a bad deal, and we shouldn't scale up without limit.
| But is it a good direction to move from where we are now? I
| think so.
|
| [1] https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/07/09/whatever-happened-
| acid-...
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| The calculus changes. One day it might look very attractive
| to ecologists
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's pretty easy to predict how and how quickly "reduce
| emissions and begin effective-but-insufficient-on-its-own
| geoengineering" becomes "only do geoengineering."
|
| It's relatively much easier, especially politically. And the
| entities most poised to begin it are exactly the behemoths who
| benefit from fossil fuel use in the first place. It'll rapidly
| become another money-and-PR funnel for the same couple hundred
| individuals who got us here in the first place.
| TSiege wrote:
| I completely agree with this sentiment. We should either remove
| the sulfur scrubbers from ships, start solar dimming around the
| poles, or both. It's an emergency and we're feeling the shocks
| right now.
|
| Another example, the war in Ukraine is accelerating the clean
| energy revolution in Europe, cutting down on air pollution.
| How's that going to help their drought? Will the EU act on
| national interests?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Another example, the war in Ukraine is accelerating the
| clean energy revolution in Europe, cutting down on air
| pollution."
|
| Maybe in the long run it helps, but right now, not really:
|
| "European coal-fuelled power generation climbed last year as
| countries scrambled to replace Russian gas, but the increase
| was smaller than feared as renewable energy helped to plug
| the gap, ...Outright coal generation in the EU increased by
| 7%, or 28 terawatt hours (TWh), in 2022, pushing up power
| sector CO2 emissions by nearly 4%."
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-coal-rebound-
| smal...
| TSiege wrote:
| This is likely season/already out of date
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/11/crossover-solar-wind-
| po...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Also tanks get bad gas mileage.
|
| But the Ukrainians seem to have a lot of fight in them, and
| we are willing and able to support them solo from the US.
| So, I suspect the fastest path, of the options that the EU
| can actually pick from, is: maximum support, get it over
| with.
| bee_rider wrote:
| What's the implied EU national interests here? Start some
| geo-engineering projects unilaterally?
| TSiege wrote:
| Yes
| kersplody wrote:
| The macro challenge is that we have already overshot and the
| IPCC appears to be massively understating the current state.
| According to Hansen et. al.'s Global warming in the pipeline
| [under peer review], "Equilibrium global warming including slow
| feedbacks for today's human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) climate
| forcing (4.1 W/m2) is 10degC, reduced to 8degC by today's
| aerosols. Decline of aerosol emissions since 2010 should
| increase the 1970-2010 global warming rate of 0.18degC per
| decade to a post-2010 rate of at least 0.27degC per decade."
| For context, this 10degC is over the next 1500 years, but it
| does imply at least 4.3degC of warming by 2100.
|
| > But if every fraction of a degree matters, shouldn't we also
| be at least continuing if not scaling up these albedo-
| increasing changes?
|
| Humanity is running the experiment in real time with a sample
| size of one. Aerosol dimming is good but acid rain is bad: we
| have a bad vs a worse choice so someone will be harmed, thus
| any project has liability and the default of doing nothing
| happens.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474 if you want some light
| reading.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > It's frustrating that we've argued a lot about the hazards of
| intentional geoengineering responses without reaching a
| consensus that we should do it, and meanwhile the shipping
| industry was cavalierly doing it along-side their other
| emissions.
|
| Was there a debate about this that the IMO ignored? As a
| layman, I have heard before that cutting emissions of certain
| particulates could increase global warming in the short term
| but I don't recall seeing any real discussion of its dangers or
| strong calls against it. I mean at a societal level - I'm sure
| there has been discussion of it within the scientific
| community, but what were the conclusions of that discussion and
| how were they communicated to the IMO and the rest of society?
|
| I worry that this could further undermine public support for
| climate change initiatives. The skeptics will spin this as
| "they said we should cut emissions, then we did and now they
| are saying that cutting emissions led to climate change". You
| and I both know that's a flawed message but that's the story
| they will tell and a lot of people will probably buy it.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Sulfur emissions also cause acid rain, so it's not as simple as
| "keep the emissions as is"
| tooltip-penguin wrote:
| Also approximates the theme of Neal Stephenson's most recent
| book of the same name, Termination Shock.
| bioemerl wrote:
| It was hilariously and recklessly irresponsible for these guys
| to basically use a regulation to put a geoengineering
| experiment into play that is the exact opposite of what we want
| to be doing right now.
| htk wrote:
| Reading the article I see some very short timeframes being used
| (e.g. 1991-2020, 1979-2000) as statistically relevant. Might be
| enough when preaching to the choir, but irrelevant to the
| skeptics.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Skeptics will stay skeptics whatever we say. Last time the
| timeframe was too long, this time the timeframe is too short.
|
| "we had ice age in the past", "we had warming in the past",
| 1990 is too close, -2m years is too far, the sun is closer
| (it's not), "numbers can say anything", "oooooh spooky graphs
| ;)" &c.
| klyrs wrote:
| If we move the goalpost to before we started collecting data,
| then all studies are invalid and the problem goes away!
| coldtea wrote:
| Not so much sceptics as "prejudiced".
| jgilias wrote:
| Those are standard climatological periods. You need that for
| data to be comparable and make sense. I would expect the
| skeptics to put in at least minor surface level effort in
| trying to understand the thing that they're skeptical about,
| but yeah, maybe that's too much to ask.
| brindidrip wrote:
| So given this context and assuming it is accurate, where do you
| think would be the most viable areas to live? If I were to
| consider for the US, I'd say inland northern states like
| Wisconsin and Michigan thanks to the Great Lakes...
| sverona wrote:
| I moved to Grand Rapids for precisely this reason.
| jtolds wrote:
| I made a bunch of maps to answer this question!
| https://www.jtolio.com/2022/07/anthropocene-calamity-part-8-...
| jtolds wrote:
| Here's my wizard if you want to tweak the maps yourself: http
| s://climatedash.fly.dev/?selection=tmean_avg_2050+&filte...
| ashes-of-sol wrote:
| [dead]
| mbil wrote:
| Interesting that removing sulphur emissions may have resulted in
| more solar radiation being absorbed by the oceans. Wonder if
| cargo ships could purposely emit some benign material that would
| reflect away sunlight. Although I suspect there could be
| unintended consequences.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This could work in combination with emission of Iron Salt
| Aerosols (ISAs). These would have two beneficial effects:
| increase of phytoplankton growth in iron-poor regions of the
| oceans, and increased photogeneration of OH and Cl radicals in
| the troposphere to increase the rate of removal of methane.
| roflyear wrote:
| I'd be careful buying into the "whys" here, as I'm not sure
| they are qualified to come to these conclusions. It seems
| speculation.
|
| However, the data seems to be real...
| rjmunro wrote:
| Just spraying seawater upwards to make clouds might do the
| trick:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-conceptual-Flettner-sp...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Even if scientists agreed that spraying seawater upwards from
| every ship would mitigate say 10 years of climate change, can
| you imagine world governments coming to an agreement to do
| it, and how to fund it?
| notfish wrote:
| Also, H2O is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, so this is
| prolly not really a great idea
| tonymillion wrote:
| To counter that, H2O has a really easy path to exit the
| atmosphere (straight down), and it's not like we're
| producing that much more...
|
| Unlike CO2 which has been nicely stored away from the
| atmosphere for millions of years...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| water effects weather differently based on whether its
| vapor (traps infrared) or suspended droplets/crystals as
| a cloud (reflects infrared)
|
| sulfur is both a greenhouse gas and a condensate for
| cloud formation
|
| nature is full of examples where you can add more and
| more of a single factor and suddenly the effect will flip
| and contribute to the other direction, before reaching a
| further threshold and flipping the other way
|
| it is not possible to make blanket statements like
| "Adding water to the atmosphere increases average
| temperature"
|
| As I understand it, CO2 is one of the few factors that we
| can all agree is just straighforward, more CO2 more
| problems. But chaos is tricky, we can only simulate so
| much.
| phtrivier wrote:
| > As of January 1, 2020, the International Maritime
| Organization put a limit on the sulfur content in shipping
| fuels, reducing the global upper limit on sulfur content from
| 3.50% to 0.50%. Here is a link to an article describing this
| change. This reduced limit was mandatory and led to over a 75%
| drop in sulfur oxides. While great for the environment in many
| respects (e.g. less acid rain and ocean acidification), there
| was also a not-so-unexpected consequence.
|
| What is actually beyond my understanding here, is that an
| international organization implemented a very strict
| environmental standard, one that probably applies to
| notoriously uncooperative countries (hint: China), one that
| applies to a notoriously uncaring industry (cue the oil-spills
| and dirt ships transporting crap around the world), and,
| _somehow_ , the standard was respected, and the restriction had
| the "desired" effect (less SO2 in the air.) ?
|
| That's my WTF: since when do environment standard work ?
|
| What did the IMO do ?
|
| Why didn't the cargo coorporation simply bribe and cheat and
| lie, as usual ? Didn't using "cleaner" fuels cost _more_ money
| ? How did they let this kind of communist nonsense of a
| regulation happen ? Where are the freedom fighters ? Why don't
| we have an "airpollutionskeptics.org" site that denies the link
| between cargo ships and SO2 level in the air, on the ground
| that SO2 levels have always changed in the past, and that the
| IMO is an evil governement body of elitists who want to take
| again our gunships ?
|
| Or is it only that we're slaves to irony, that no good deed
| should go unpunished, and that the only way we can solve any
| environmental problem is by inadvertently making another one
| even worse ?
| lavela wrote:
| AFAIK in the maritime space the lever is usually
| seaworthiness and it's connection to insurability[1]
|
| Your _really_ don't want your vessels to go uninsured so you
| better comply and the big insurers are in europe/usa (not
| that I don't think that there are some black sheep). That's
| also the mechanism by which sanctions work in regards to
| maritime traffic (like against russia last year [2])
|
| [1]
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43546-022-00334-y
|
| [2] https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2022/06/eu-
| sanctio...
| Daishiman wrote:
| Regulation of CFCs was successful at helping to recover the
| ozone layer. Likewise the Clean Air Act.
|
| Regulation works remarkably well in many spaces. Skepticism
| is warranted as usual but the cynics that claim it almost
| never works usually have a hidden agenda.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Just curious really, but sources on China being particularly
| uncooperative with this kind of stuff? Totally take your word
| for it, of course. I'm mainly just surprised I hadn't heard
| this particular point before in the various and constant Bad-
| China discourse.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| A lot of comments deriding this article as alarmist. Excuse me if
| I'm incorrect in saying so, but even the data seems to tell me
| that alarmism is where we are at:
|
| This articles data.
|
| Incredible floods in Pakistan.
|
| Heat domes over the PNW.
|
| Fires in Australia, Canada, California.
|
| And now a warming event in the North Atlantic unlike any other.
|
| All of that and this is likely to be one of the coolest summers
| for the remainder of our lives. Its only getting warmer from here
| (barring geoengineering).
|
| What about this is not alarming? As disheartening as it is, this
| is what is needed for action at this point.
| nomel wrote:
| > Fires in Australia, Canada, California.
|
| Please don't use California as an example here. It's _supposed_
| to be on fire. Several species of trees and plants here _cannot
| germinate_ without fire. The loooong known problem [1] is
| mismanagement, building houses where places burn, and blaming
| the wrong people, which leads to overgrowth from _lack_ of
| fire. Fires aren 't, by any measure, optional. If you impede
| them, they will come back harsher the next time around, which
| has very recently been addressed with laws to help _increase
| the frequency of fires_ [2][3].
|
| I don't see how it's possible to even measure global warming
| impact with the mismanagement that has accumulated.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-
| mismanagement-l...
|
| [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-
| law-...
|
| [3]
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-s...
| nomel wrote:
| Please read the links. I'm not some anti climate nut. This
| isn't some controversial take, if you're at all familiar with
| local politics/policies.
| civilitty wrote:
| Same with Australia. There's so many pyrophytes that the
| Eucalyptus tree adapted to produce an oil that burns
| especially hot in order to wipe out competitors and prevent
| them from sprouting after the fire.
|
| Canada, on the other hand, is a powder keg waiting to blow.
| The ecosystem is too wet to have any fire adaptations and as
| the peatlands dry, they expose meters thick layers of
| undecomposed plant matter that are dense enough to be used as
| a cheap and dirty fuel in some parts of world. It's one of
| the largest carbon stores on the planet and we'll soon have
| months long fires a the peat burns.
| SergeAx wrote:
| What kind of action do you have in mind?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Maybe actually meeting the Paris climate commitments to
| start...
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It's about 50C cooler here today than yesterday. Crisis averted
| .
|
| What I am trying to say is you cannot use specific weather
| events to talk about climate. And of course once you go into
| statistics, you will lose 55.3% of your persuasiveness.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Weather events, by themselves, are just individual data
| points. But once you start looking at the big picture, it's
| difficult to not notice patterns. And said patterns are
| extremely alarming.
| PogoPuppy wrote:
| Climate is the conditions you expect and weather is the
| conditions you actually got. Always helps me to remember
| this.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Climate Change is a real threat, but listing individual weather
| perturbations as data points is like giving personal anecdotes
| as evidence of societal changes.
|
| The strongest and most accurate evidence for global climate
| change are GLOBAL indicators, such as sea level rise, global
| average temperatures, etc...
|
| Every weather event you list, can probably be countered with a
| mild weather event somewhere else. It's mock science, and it's
| the most obvious sign of hyperbole.
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