[HN Gopher] Evidence of human influence on Northern Hemisphere s...
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Evidence of human influence on Northern Hemisphere snow loss
Author : rntn
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-01-15 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| It's a good thing we have so many excellent technologies for
| producing abundant energy from nuclear fuels - sources of
| abundant energy will be essential for geo-engineering.
| ipnon wrote:
| The ski season has so far been miserable in terms of snow pack.
| Last year was a positive fluke, with high snowfall early in the
| season. Some resorts are seeing half as much snow as last year.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Stating this season is half of what last season was immediately
| after stating that last season was a fluke doesn't help in
| comparing what the normal situation is like. The season
| immediately after a very unusual high amount would naturally be
| much lower. Comparing to outliers feels like someone trying to
| make a dishonest point
| stavros wrote:
| > The season immediately after a very unusual high amount
| would naturally be much lower.
|
| Much lower _than the unusually high amount_ , not much lower
| than average, to clarify.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Interesting how clarifying can make a difference. In
| California, the anomaly was having a much higher snow than
| the preceding years. That's what/where my brain jumped to
| for reference. What region are you referring?
| stavros wrote:
| I'm not sure what the parent was referring to, I'm just
| clarifying how regression to the mean works, ie just
| because something was higher than average one year,
| doesn't mean you can expect it to be lower than average
| the next year (you can always expect it to be average).
| nixass wrote:
| Miserable where? North hemisphere is fairly vast and there has
| been plenty of snow "here"
| Jensson wrote:
| Global warming is small, you mostly notice a difference in
| how many days the snow stays. So in northern hemisphere the
| snow might be gone a couple of weeks earlier now than a
| century ago, but it will of course still snow just as much as
| before during the winter.
|
| But that also means that for places where the snow barely
| stayed before now you will often not see snow at all.
| stillbourne wrote:
| El Nino has a lot to do with snow pack. I don't know where you
| are at but from the Vail Basin to Keystone that usually means
| less snow. Anecdotally of course, that is just my own
| experience over the last 30 years of skiing here in CO.
| lainga wrote:
| Well, at least we'll have plenty of ammunition to locally target
| ice cover if we go down the icehouse branch of the Ghil-Sellers
| model.
|
| (Which found in the 70s that the positive ice-albedo feedback was
| strong enough to plunge the model Earth into a global pole-to-
| pole ice age if solar output dropped by 6%. It was briefly a big
| scare.)
|
| Figure 3 in the paper is particularly excellent.
| ralusek wrote:
| 75% of carbon emissions come from energy production.
|
| If this is actually an emergency, the _only_ feasible option at
| the moment is nuclear power. If anybody is talking about anything
| other than nuclear power, I question their motivations.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| If you're still saying things like "there is no viable path
| except nuclear power" in 2024, then you're not paying any
| attention to what's happening in the world right now. There is
| literally no economic path to deploying enough nuclear to make
| a difference right on the timescales necessary to fight climate
| change, while renewable construction is on an exponential tear
| (particularly in China). Storage costs are also dropping on an
| exponential curve. Meanwhile nuclear costs and deployment
| aren't seeing anything similar.
| https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-s-solar-capacity-sur...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| exponential? is there a link where i can read about the
| storage costs dropping exponentially and renewable
| construction growing exponentially?
|
| (i thought china was in a construction freeze with a huge
| quantity of incomplete high rises, for example)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Ouch that link.
|
| When people stop ignoring exponential growth, they just
| decide to project it forward without any consideration.
|
| I really doubt China's electricity usage will more than
| double until 2026. Or that it will be 100% (or rather, 300%?)
| replaced by solar.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| China is aiming to build 206 GW of additional renewables
| (excluding coal and nuclear) in 2024, and they reached
| their 2023 targets ahead of schedule.
| xedrac wrote:
| You keep using that word (exponential), but I do not think it
| means what you think it means.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It means that growth in renewable deployment over the past
| several years can be fit to an exponential curve, and shows
| no signs of immediate slowdown. If what you think I'm
| saying is that growth will continue on that trajectory
| forever, then that's a very foolish thought.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Question away, your questioning is noted.
|
| Nuclear has a long lead time. Setting aside safety concerns,
| any realistic shift to accelerating nuclear would not help us
| much in the 10 year range. If we are most concerned about
| tipping points, which tbh appear real but impossible to
| predict, a nearer term but less effective shift to renewables
| would be warranted.
|
| When I say "realistic" I mean in the current political and
| cultural climate. If we posit that we can do anything we want,
| dictator-style, that's a thought experiment. At which point I'm
| totally with you: latest designs, aggressive funding and
| incentives for both r&d and actual projects, etc. That'd
| complement the progress we've made with renewables.
| stillbourne wrote:
| > Setting aside safety concerns
|
| Nuclear is the safest energy source per kilo of fuel mined
| and spent.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| There are numerous ways to look at safety here. All else
| being equal, non-nuclear-weapon states wishing to arm with
| nuclear weapons would hate a total ban on nuclear energy,
| due to dual-use mining acting as a cover for their arms
| development.
|
| Is that a sufficient justification for actually imposing
| such a ban? I personally don't think so, but reasonable
| people can disagree on that.
| realusername wrote:
| I've heard this argument that it's too long to build 10 years
| ago as well, the best time to plant a tree is now I guess as
| the proverb says? And it's not like climate change will stop
| in the next 10 years anyways.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Nuclear probably has a place in phasing out fossil fuels, but
| the idea that its the only solution for every situation and
| nothing else is worth talking about is as idiotic as writing
| off nuclear altogether. We need a price on carbon and
| individual actors in the market should decide what alternative
| is best for their given situation. Picking a specific
| technology and then trying to force on everyone is inefficient
| and needlessly expensive regardless of which technology you
| choose. The world is complicated and there are almost never
| silver bullets. Especially in this case.
| r3d0c wrote:
| nobody made that argument
| Tarsul wrote:
| Why not spending less energy?
| r3d0c wrote:
| we can do both, but energy efficiency is only a small part of
| it; still need to transition the bulk of energy away from
| fossil fuels
| pompino wrote:
| You need a plan to to execute at the policy level, and at the
| field/ground level - That is always the hard part. "Lets do X,
| its so much better than Y" - yeah, we know, but please also
| propose a practical plan of how to accomplish that. Otherwise,
| we're all just sitting around nodding heads.
|
| >If anybody is talking about anything other than nuclear power,
| I question their motivations.
|
| And what will this accomplish?
| p1mrx wrote:
| There are places in the world where a robust continent-spanning
| grid of renewables could compete with nuclear, but that's also
| a difficult problem to solve.
| shipscode wrote:
| In such a large world it's hard to find ways to help out. What
| can an individual do to accelerate this trend?
| jl6 wrote:
| Could you clarify what trend you want to accelerate?
| huppeldepup wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht#Winners
| loceng wrote:
| Water vapour in the sky traps heat, so how much is the cloud
| seeding that's blatantly-obviously happening widespread
| impacting-causing this?
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