[HN Gopher] The Laptev Sea hasn't frozen
___________________________________________________________________
The Laptev Sea hasn't frozen
Author : xenocratus
Score : 222 points
Date : 2020-10-29 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| brandmeyer wrote:
| The East Siberian see is in a similar situation. The central
| arctic basin is also having its slowest re-freeze on record.
|
| https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laptev_Sea
|
| Does anyone know when 'records began'? I was trying to find out
| how long the local climate there has been measured.
| Afforess wrote:
| NSIDC records began in 1979 for the arctic sea ice. Earlier
| records have to be intuited from proxy sources, such as
| anecdotal accounts or early photos.
| arethuza wrote:
| This article refers to a 1981-2010 Median:
|
| http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2020/07/laptev-sea-lapping...
|
| Edit: Another graph goes back to 1979.
| dathinab wrote:
| The first record in the graph used by the hn-linked article is
| from 1978.
|
| If I'm not wrong this should be the point from which frequent
| reliable measurements had been taken. (It also roughly matches
| with my memory about that topic).
| post_below wrote:
| I was curious too, came across this graphic showing records
| since they began in 1979 (original source NOAA)
| https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1318913839568662529/...
| blululu wrote:
| Satellite records go back to 1979
| [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/alarm-as-
| arcti...], but there appear to be ground based observations
| from earlier years that corroborate the abnormality of the
| current year.
| xenocratus wrote:
| Interesting, the wiki page notes:
|
| > The sea has a severe climate with temperatures below 0 degC
| (32 degF) over more than nine months per year, low water
| salinity
|
| Given the low salinity and below 0 degC for so long, you would
| expect it to be frozen most of the time.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I can imagine growing massive hydrogen balloons in the sea. Using
| their solar energy and the day-night cycle, they pump small
| amounts of salt water to approximately 100m high, where the salt
| seeds cloud formation.
|
| Forming low clouds over dark blue oceans is very efficient.
| zaroth wrote:
| It is not beyond human technology, and not even particularly
| expensive in relative terms, to dampen the amount of solar energy
| reaching the Earth in a non-permanent, freely reversible, and
| infinitesimally granular degree.
|
| This will be done, if ever it is needed, by depositing hundreds
| of millions of tons of reflective material (basically refined
| moon dust) into Lagrange Points which will block a proportionate
| amount of energy from reaching the Earth.
|
| The solar energy output from the sun (measured as 'total solar
| irradiance' or TSI) is not constant. It ebbs and wanes in a
| fascinating quasi-periodic fashion on daily, 11-year, 210-year,
| 350-year, etc. cadences. It also shows an overall increasing
| trend over millennia timeframes (3 - 4 billion years ago the sun
| output only ~70% of its current energy). Since about the 1940s up
| until quite recently we have been experiencing a period
| considered a "modern grand maximum" in solar activity. [1, 2]
|
| All this is simply to show that the sun is not an absolute
| constant, as Aristotle believed, but a dynamic and fluctuating
| system which directly impacts -- actually that understates it,
| variance of solar output has been the primary driver of our
| wildly varying global climate for the Earth's entire history.
| Which makes it all the more notable that anthropogenic climate
| change has now begun to bend the curve in similar fashion to our
| mighty star.
|
| Crucially, the technological moderation of TSI is not a risky
| endeavor even remotely like detonating nuclear bombs to dust up
| the atmosphere. This would not be a last-ditch gambit. The impact
| of adding reflective material between the Earth and sun is
| miniscule on the scale of how much material could be placed into
| position at a given time, e.g. using rail-guns on the surface of
| the moon. It is a multi-decade effort that requires constant
| upkeep to maintain, or otherwise naturally dissipates over time.
| It is easy to measure precisely the impact achieved and therefore
| precisely control how much of a hand we put on the celestial
| scale. And once established and in place, e.g. 50 years from now,
| will cost likely on the order of $500 billion per year in upkeep.
| That is to say, an absolute bargain in terms of the economic
| impact of doing nothing.
|
| It is neither physically impossible, nor constrained by the
| practical extraction of natural resources that would need to be
| brought to bear, nor dangerous, nor requires exotic undiscovered
| materials or magical technology that could not be fabricated
| given proper funding over the next couple decades.
|
| I have no doubt or concern that our technological capability for
| generating clean energy will continue to grow exponentially,
| hopefully culminating in abundant and asymptotically free, clean
| energy within the century. And I have no doubt that while
| reaching that _crowning achievement_ that humanity is entirely
| capable of either extracting excess CO2 directly from the
| atmosphere, or moderating TSI in order to achieve an optimal
| climate equilibrium.
|
| This is by no means easy, or even guaranteed. But I firmly
| believe that we are not doomed, and that we remain entirely in
| control of our fate. In my opinion, the solution will not be
| found in the direction of policies that tax, ration, or restrict
| abundant energy, for that is an unethical chokehold that will be
| felt most directly by the poorest peoples among us.
|
| We must strive for technological solutions that make energy
| cleaner, cheaper, reliable, safe, and _abundant_ for energy is
| truly the path out of poverty. We have fewer humans living in
| poverty than at any time in human history [3], and we must
| continue on that path.
|
| I think as our energy and space technology continue to rapidly
| advance, the hardest part will be deciding not how to set the
| thermostat, but exactly where to set the thermostat, because
| there will be winners and losers regardless.
|
| [1] - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41116-017-0006-9
| [2] -
| https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~infocom/The%20Website...
| [3] - https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
| beervirus wrote:
| I've never heard of this idea, but it's certainly interesting.
| Are there any reputable papers taking a look at feasibility?
| zaroth wrote:
| Here's a paper I should have linked in my OP considering the
| idea at a very high level;
|
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0701/0701513.pdf
|
| That particular paper is considering an Earth-Moon Lagrange
| Point, which is much more accessible than Earth-Sun points,
| but the dust cloud would be highly visible in the night sky
| which IMO is disqualifying as long as other alternatives
| exist.
| beervirus wrote:
| That paper is also talking about doing it at the _stable_
| lunar Lagrange points. So it would not realistically be
| possible to remove the dust once it's in place.
| RDeckard wrote:
| There is a film starring Gerrard Butler. "Geostorm", 2017.
| llukas wrote:
| Isn't it cheaper to change albedo of earth? No exotic materials
| needed. Putting stuff in Lagrange points makes good scifi but
| most of effective engineering is boooring.
|
| There are many methods that _just work_ and are useful for
| other reasons:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48395221
| the8472 wrote:
| And we can do better than white
|
| https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2020/Q4/this-
| white-...
| scarmig wrote:
| What's the half life of dust in the Lagrange Point?
|
| As to where to set the thermostat: probably as a default keep
| things constant as they are today. If Russia would prefer a
| warmer setpoint, it can offer money to countries that don't
| want one to compensate them for their troubles.
| zaroth wrote:
| As I understand it, material would effectively reflect energy
| for about 10 years, assuming there isn't a more economical
| way to station-keep the already deployed material versus just
| "send more".
|
| I don't think it actually decays like radiation half-life
| though.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suppose the sunlight will constantly keep blowing the
| dust off the Lagrange point, after which it will orbit
| Earth, and maybe eventually fall down onto Earth, or back
| to the Moon.
|
| I wonder what kind of orbits it's going to have, because we
| speak of many megatons here, even if finely dusted.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _We must strive for technological solutions that make energy
| cleaner, cheaper, reliable, safe, and abundant for energy is
| truly the path out of poverty_
|
| I think this is the key takeaway. Talk of walking back modern
| prosperity for the sake of the planet will never work -- the
| haves won't give up what they have, and the have-nots won't
| stop striving.
|
| Fear is a powerful motivator for division. Aspiration is a
| powerful motivator for unification. Focus on aspiration.
| noiv wrote:
| Well, if we could only use our capabilities to reduce CO2
| Emissionen... And in case a personal low tech solution is
| needed - planting a tree is a good start.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| Surely CO2 sequestration using olivine would be vastly more
| practical than some mad scientist space engineering project.
| hansvs wrote:
| FYI, at least one project is doing this:
| https://projectvesta.org/
| jagger27 wrote:
| Pretty disheartening to see so much climate change denial in this
| thread.
| rektide wrote:
| Two other arctic bits of news from yesterday,
|
| [1] Two new studies substantially advance understanding of
| currents that help regulate climate,
| https://phys.org/news/2020-10-substantially-advance-currents...
|
| More focused on the Atlantic conveyors & new discoveries there.
| But very Arctic related, about the thermohaline cycle that has
| allowed warm water to sink & cool & how that has worked.
|
| [2] 'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release,
| scientists find,
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/27/sleeping-gia...
|
| Laptev sea specific... for now! Laptev Sea hasn't frozen... oh
| and the methane & other hydrates are dissolving, & also present
| at much higher concentrations at the surface than usual.
| dshpala wrote:
| I think it's clear that humankind won't be able to stop/reverse
| this process.
|
| So, are there any realistic state-wide plans to prepare for the
| worst? Like, move cities away from shores, prepare for certain
| regions to become very hot (unsuitable for farming), etc.?
| skim_milk wrote:
| It might not be _totally_ necessary depending on how people
| take their own initiative to move (although I think everyone
| would love to see some coordination). It 's not too hard to
| find pockets of areas that will have "better" weather for
| humans. I live in the middle of nowhere where it is expected at
| least in the next 80 years even with the doomsday 8 Celsius
| temperature change scenario that the water aquifer will rise
| (more freshwater for humans and agriculture) and the weather
| will be more mild. Evidently some people are paying attention -
| lots of people moving here from the coastal US for a variety of
| reasons, I'd imagine climate being a small factor to move. No
| reason to be excited to move to the middle of nowhere but
| people are already watching and listening for where to move
| evidently without any large-scale planning at the moment.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Hahahahahaha,
|
| No. We'll get drought, famine and resource wars, take it or
| leave it
| jonbaer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_shipping_routes
| S33V wrote:
| Are you insinuating that these ships are a driving force in
| inhibiting the formation of ice, that the lack of ice will be
| beneficial to these routes, or some other thought that I'm not
| seeing?
| jonbaer wrote:
| https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/rosatom-invest-7bn-
| arctic-s... ... "By 2023 the company forecasts revenues of
| $700 million, reaching $5.6 billion in 2026."
| masklinn wrote:
| The lack of ice opens up these routes year-round.
| Diederich wrote:
| https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-...
| is one of the pages I watch pretty carefully. Sea ice extent is
| direct and important, it's far from the whole story.
|
| This is by no means meant to minimize what's happening in the
| Laptev sea. There's a lot going on up there, and the level of
| badness, while overall large and larger than ever, is variable.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the cold would "wait" for the very end
| of the winter season and then unleash a frozen hell to last until
| the end of spring.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| Polar bears are fucked, this makes me sad.
| edjrage wrote:
| "Would you care more if I was a [polar bear]?"
|
| https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uVr0ODIKv_s/VMGAo_qUiQI/AAAAAAAAA...
| Afforess wrote:
| Another factor which has not been mentioned much is that an
| unfrozen Laptev sea will affect the placement of the jet streams.
| Open sea will result in a lower albedo and greater evaporation on
| the surface, year-round. This in turn will change the composition
| of the atmosphere over the region, causing the jet streams to be
| shifted and may affect flight routes and seasonal weather
| patterns for northern regions.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/117/6/2824
| vikiomega9 wrote:
| How much of an impact would a Biden administration have on
| helping with climate change? Beside policy changes would they
| support moonshot research?
| CalRobert wrote:
| It does call in to question the wisdom of saving for retirement.
| Given the arctic is releasing methane and cities have, what,
| three days of food on average? How long can civilisation persist?
| nullsense wrote:
| >How long can civilisation persist?
|
| Can we use the number of seasons of The Walking Dead as a proxy
| to estimate that?
| raziel2701 wrote:
| I see hints of this rationale all the time on wallstreetbets.
| It comes with a heavy dose of nihilism and maybe a bit of
| hedonism. Why invest and wait 30-40 yrs for retirement if
| there's not going to be a world to retire into? Hence, they go
| all in on risky option plays.
| tropdrop wrote:
| Let's not forget the very real phenomenon in 1999 of many
| assuming the world ends in 2000 (some shadow of that again in
| 2012 with the Mayan calendar). It did not happen. In fact,
| whatever happens, life finds a way...
| CalRobert wrote:
| In 1999 and 2012, the more research you did the more obvious
| it was there was nothing to worry about. Now, the more
| research I do the more worried I get.
|
| I'm not a climate scientist but I majored in physics and like
| to think I'm not completely ignorant. The IPCC reports have a
| lot of systemic nudges towards underplaying risks, as part of
| attaining consensus.
| porb121 wrote:
| I must have missed all the IPCC forecasts about the Mayan
| calendar.
| jandrese wrote:
| It seems a bit disingenuous to conflate global warming with
| complete nonsense like the Mayan calendar rolling over.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > cities have, what, three days of food on average?
|
| This is a widely held belief, but I would need to see some
| solid evidence to believe that its true. Anecdata: Shelf
| turnover from the brief period when I worked retail, and the
| typical contents of my pantries. Also, the panic buying at the
| beginning of the pandemic stressed the system, but certainly
| didn't crash it.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that most climate scientists were saying
| that we wouldn't see a Blue Ocean Event (BOE) until 2040-2050,
| but I suspect we'll see, like many climate estimates, that number
| ends up being a bit too conservative. When the BOE does happen
| we'll start to see some pretty dramatic changes to our world
| fairly rapidly (and as a reminder, we are already seeing dramatic
| changes to our world).
|
| We're all in some form of climate denial right now. Even if you
| are able to acknowledge that climate change is happening, you
| likely aren't being realistic about how unavoidable its impacts
| are, or the full magnitude of those impacts.
|
| I still see people talking about life in 150 years as if it will
| be a simple continuation of the "progress" we've seen in the last
| 150, completely oblivious to the way that progress was achieved
| and the inevitably and unavoidable consequences of it.
| xwdv wrote:
| Oh many people know it's coming, and have simply accepted there
| is nothing that can be done.
|
| Solutions that require the cooperation of the entire human race
| will never work, yet that is what keeps being pushed upon us.
|
| The only real thing that can save us is for a small group to
| come up with some kind of technology that can make sweeping
| changes on a massive geological scale and ultimately reverse
| global warming without humanity having to do anything.
|
| People aren't going to change their lifestyles to save the
| world. Many people don't even change their lifestyles to save
| _themselves_ when it becomes medically necessary.
|
| Personally, I've come to accept this is the end. If I must die
| to global warming, at least it will be an interesting death, I
| could have been shot and killed by a mugger or killed in a car
| crash instead.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > I could have been shot and killed by a mugger...
|
| Don't get excited yet. Roving bands of raiders is still a
| potential outcome of climate change.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| 150 years ago there were no cars, and no roads to speak of.
| Now I'm pretty sure every country on the planet has cars and
| roads.
|
| Try and find a pay phone in 2020. In 1980 they were
| everywhere.
|
| The human race cooperates via market mechanisms. Those need
| to adjust to reflect the costs of global warming.
| 0xdde wrote:
| > The only real thing that can save us is for a small group
| to come up with some kind of technology that can make
| sweeping changes on a massive geological scale and ultimately
| reverse global warming without humanity having to do
| anything.
|
| Or, you know, fixing the US political process so that a
| handful of ideologues aren't in a position to ignore popular
| sentiment and derail even the mildest form of action.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I would argue that the former is easier than the latter.
| [deleted]
| markdown wrote:
| > Solutions that require the cooperation of the entire human
| race will never work, yet that is what keeps being pushed
| upon us.
|
| USA and Australia are the only two developed nations that
| continue to deny climate change. The entire world signed the
| Paris Agreement.
|
| While the USA slowly is slowly led into international
| irrelevance by the Republican Party, China just joined South
| Korea, and Japan in pledging to be carbon neutral by 2050.
| eloff wrote:
| > Personally, I've come to accept this is the end. If I must
| die to global warming, at least it will be an interesting
| death.
|
| Not to prove the OP's point about climate change denial. But
| that's overly pessimistic.
|
| Climate change is a slow motion train wreck. Things will
| slowly, steadily, exponentially get worse. But you probably
| won't be alive to notice the worst of it. 200 years from now,
| things will look extremely different. And we'll be lucky if
| we've managed to ride through all the changes and migrations
| and potentially famines without starting a dreadful war and
| blowing ourselves up with these delightful world-ending
| stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
|
| I'm really starting to think the answer to the Fermi paradox
| is there's a great filter and it lies in front of us.
| Technological civilizations wipe themselves out because they
| unlock powerful technologies before developing the wisdom to
| control them.
|
| Happy Thursday everyone!
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| The UN and IPCC estimates there will be up to a billion
| climate refugees by 2050 so your dates and predictions are
| off by quite a bit.
| eloff wrote:
| If things are truly that bad in 30 years when temperature
| is only a fraction of a degree warmer and sea level has
| barely moved - imagine how fucked we are in 200 years
| when polar melting is advanced, sea levels are many
| meters higher and temperatures are 4 degrees or more
| warmer than today.
|
| I don't buy that claim though, it's hard to believe you
| could have a billion refugees with such tiny changes.
| We've already changed more than that since 1900 and there
| aren't a billion climate refugees. Why is the next half a
| degree of warming so much worse? I'd need to see what
| they base that estimate on.
| btilly wrote:
| One of the reasons why you can is that higher temperature
| move climate zones around. In particular they increase
| the size of deserts like the Sahara. Rich areas with
| expanded deserts, like California, can pipe in water from
| elsewhere. But areas like subsaharan Africa are a
| different story.
|
| In short, it is easy to become a climate refugee from a
| little warming when that results in drought for you.
| eloff wrote:
| And some areas will get wetter. Higher temperatures mean
| overall more water in the atmosphere and overall more
| precipitation. That definitely makes winners and losers
| and refugees, but not in such huge numbers by 2050, or at
| least that would be very surprising and counter-
| intuitive.
| delecti wrote:
| >Why is the next half a degree of warming so much worse?
|
| A 3 degree F fever is okay with some bedrest and
| ibuprofen, but a 6 degree F fever can kill you. There are
| breaking points in every system. Half the stress of a
| breaking point is usually fine.
| eloff wrote:
| This is true, but the percent change here is very small.
| I just find it highly improbable at best. I'm not going
| to buy into something so unbelievable without seeing a
| very strong line of evidence behind it.
| delecti wrote:
| Why do you think your intuition is more relevant in the
| face of expertise about climate than the experts in the
| countless other fields you trust daily? Do you demand to
| see structural analysis reports before going into
| unfamiliar buildings?
| FooHentai wrote:
| Low end is 5 mil, upper is 1 bil. Most commonly cited
| figure and the basis for most extrapolation is 200
| million. However that's still a lot. To put it in
| perspective:
|
| "The current global estimate is that there were around
| 272 million international migrants in the world in 2019,
| which equates to 3.5 per cent of the global population"
|
| UN World Migration Report 2020 -
| https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/wmr_2020.pdf
|
| Back to the 200 million figure:
|
| "This is a daunting figure; representing a ten-fold
| increase over today's entire documented refugee and
| internally displaced populations. To put the number in
| perspective it would mean that by 2050 one in every 45
| people in the world will have been displaced by climate
| change."
|
| IOM Migration & Climate Change - https://www.ipcc.ch/apps
| /njlite/srex/njlite_download.php?id=...
|
| To be clear, these figures represent how many people will
| have relocated by that point in time, not the number of
| people actively relocating at that point in time. Today,
| about 3.5% of the global population lives in a country
| other than the one they were born in. This prediction is
| that by 2050 that figure will have an extra 3% on top
| attributable to climate change.
| eloff wrote:
| Thank you for looking into and sharing that. That's a
| more believable scenario.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| It's Great Filters, with an "s". You have to dig through
| the EULA but Asteroid, Thermonuclear War and Famine are all
| covered under the Cataclysm (General) indemnity.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| In a way, global warming will probably increase your chances
| of being shot by a nugget or killed in a car crash. Global
| warming happens, mass immigration increases, poverty
| increases, crime increases and book, you've just been shot by
| a mugger.
| xwdv wrote:
| All that misery just to be shot by a mugger after all.
| Wow...
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| A friend of mine that works in climate science says that the
| IPCC reports are typically very conservative due to the
| process. His expectation is to view the upper end of the
| current report as likely.
| catawbasam wrote:
| RCP 8.5? No. The assumptions about coal alone blow that
| scenario out of the water.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Some of us are, but moving north, learning permaculture,
| investing in your community, and not worrying about a
| retirement fund are still "fringe" apparently.
| Zenst wrote:
| Not sure what proof will work with some people, after all in
| places which have face-mask rules, the number breaking that etc
| highlights a not so small percentage of the populous, even with
| facts will air on the side that suits them.
| yters wrote:
| why is global warming so catastrophic? the globe has been much
| warmer in the past and we are all here today
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| A two-degree average increase in temperatures would
| significantly reduce crop yields in the world's breadbaskets.
|
| If we didn't need to eat, we wouldn't be worried very much
| about global warming. I do need to eat, though, and I'd
| rather avoid having to eat global warming deniers when things
| get rough.
|
| The earth was warmer in the past, but it also didn't support
| planet-scale agriculture of hyper-specialized, high-yield
| grains that are expected to feed 8+ billion people.
| yters wrote:
| is adapting our food production out of the question? it
| seems that might be a bit easier than fixing global warming
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| It hasn't been done, it's not clear that it can be, and
| the problem is not in the grains that we grow, the
| problem is in the land. If a formerly arable area becomes
| a dustbowl, there's no adaptation of our food production
| that you can do to fix this problem.
|
| Moving our agriculture north doesn't work either, because
| of the poor quality of soil in what is currently the
| tundra/taiga.
|
| If you have a handful of magic beans that will grow a
| magic beanstalk, that will be resistant to the
| temperature and weather and soil changes caused by global
| warming, sure, by all means, share it with us, and I'll
| stop worrying. We don't have that handful, though, and
| I'm not keen on hope-based planning.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > there's no adaptation of our food production that you
| can do to fix this problem
|
| Norway got good enough at growing things in greenhouses
| to be considered a breadbasket. Norway. I think you
| severely underestimate human adaptability.
| Arnt wrote:
| 1. Norway's a breadbasket with lots of greenhouses?
| Here's some prime land in Norway, see if you find a
| greenhouse. https://goo.gl/maps/Vzn3J3HS2Nm1P1mZ7 Norway
| has fed itself, more or less, for a few hundred years
| except the odd bad year, but never exported enough to
| feed even one big nearby city (say Copenhagen or
| Edinburgh).
|
| 2. You may be adaptive and want to move to some better
| place, but you're also just another penniless would-be
| immigrant with a big house loan in the country you want
| to leave, you don't speak the language, so what makes you
| think you'd be welcome in that better place?
| antepodius wrote:
| Seems like the move for hackernews people is to pre-
| emptively move to high land (Tibet?) and not take out
| loans.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| 1. Looks like it was the Netherlands, not Norway [1] --
| embarrassing, but not of fundamental importance to the
| point, which stands: greenhouse farming is far from
| impossible.
|
| 2. I'm a penniless would-be immigrant? No, we are both
| captial-rich citizens of a capital-rich country in a
| capital-rich world capable of deploying enormous
| creativity and resources at incomprehensible scale to
| solve practical problems. Including this one, which
| doesn't actually require very much creativity or
| resources in comparison to our capabilities and needs.
| People predicting the doomsday love to downplay this side
| of economics -- the good side, the one that works. Their
| enormous pile of failed predictions should remind us to
| keep some perspective. _Actual_ penniless immigrants?
| Yeah, they 're going to be a problem, a big one, both in
| a humanitarian sense and in a cynical political stability
| sense. But is this the end of our civilization, or of
| human civilization? Not by a long shot, and claiming that
| it will be is crying wolf to such a shrill degree that
| it's an embarrassment to the cause.
|
| [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/h
| olland-...
| btilly wrote:
| On top of everything else, rate matters.
|
| An example of a climate effect that nobody mentioned is ocean
| acidification. It turned out that if you add CO2 to water,
| you get carbonic acid. This melts calcium carbonate at the
| bottom of the sea. The buffering makes the pH of the oceans
| relatively constant no matter what CO2 levels happen to be.
|
| Unfortunately that buffering takes place on the order of
| thousands of years. Which is fine when CO2 slowly increases
| in level. But when it rises suddenly, as it is doing right
| now, the oceans turn into a mild acid. Mild, that is, except
| for corals and shellfish whose shells dissolve. And anything
| that depends on them. Which, given how ecosystems connect, is
| pretty much everything in the ocean.
|
| Already, 3/4 of coral reefs in the world have experienced
| bleaching event. Similarly mass die-offs of shellfish have
| been widely reported in fisheries. Future projections
| are..bleak.
|
| All of this from a level of change that would have been fine
| if it was spread over 10,000 years rather than 100.
| floatrock wrote:
| To expand on the coral example: before fish get large
| enough to catch and eat, they start off as little
| hatchlings. Coral reefs are fish nurseries that offer
| protected environments before setting off for the deep blue
| seas, where the fishing boats find them.
|
| Something like 40% of humans worldwide rely on fish as
| their primary source of protein. What happens when there's
| no habitat to support that food source? Mass disruptions
| and migrations.
|
| So yes, the earth was warmer before, but that warming
| happened over geologic timeframes that allowed ecosystems
| to adapt and change. 100 years is long on human timescales,
| but it's an instantaneous disruption on geologic
| timescales.
|
| And despite the convenience of your neighborhood
| supermarket, we are not that detached from our ecosystems.
| The empty shelves at the start of covid should have been a
| wakeup call that our supply systems are still
| interconnected.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| >we are all here today
|
| We weren't here then
| macrael wrote:
| Genuinely, this was helpful to my gut understanding of this
| issue: https://xkcd.com/1732/
| yters wrote:
| according to that graph the world was as warm if not warmer
| relatively recently
| Arnavion wrote:
| It shows literally the exact opposite of that. 2016 is
| the highest temperature and at no previous point does the
| graph reach that value.
| yters wrote:
| it looks like the line marked gold metalworking is the
| same, although hard to tell for sure. But long periods of
| history were at least pretty close to today's remperature
| according to that graph
| kolinko wrote:
| we weren't here the last time globe has been much warmer
| nullsense wrote:
| Mass extinction I'm guessing? Ecosystems are systems. They
| are resilient to a point, but losing enough diversity to the
| point it can't sustain itself leads to a collapse.
|
| It's happened numerous times before.
| scythe wrote:
| One reason (of many):
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I actually think this is a fair question, because I feel like
| there are 2 issues that get conflated:
|
| 1. First, you are correct, the Earth was much hotter in the
| past, and I haven't seen anything convincing that global
| warming will lead to a fundamental "runaway greenhouse"
| effect a la Venus that makes life as we know it on Earth
| unsustainable.
|
| 2. That said, a huge climate change in a relatively short
| amount of time could easily lead the the deaths of _billions_
| of people, with a B. One third of the human population lives
| within 60 miles of the coast. Rising temperatures will lead
| to huge portions of the planet that are currently densely
| populated that will no longer support humans. The resulting
| migrations, "resource wars", and overall increase in extreme
| weather events (more hurricanes, more droughts, more floods)
| will lead to death and misery to a huge portion of humanity.
| yters wrote:
| but if this change happens on the order of 100 years, that
| seems enough time to respond
| ldargin wrote:
| That depends. Migrations and wars are the responses we
| can expect if its not handled in an organized way.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| We've known about it for over 50 years and have done
| basically nothing. Why would you expect another 100 to
| matter?
| catawbasam wrote:
| US CO2 per capita is down 1/3 from peak. Europe is way
| down. China is peaking out. It's a start.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Yes, and we should start responding.
| core-questions wrote:
| Sea level has to actually start rising enough that the
| rich folks who live waterfront are affected and then we
| will see some geoengineering efforts or at the very least
| some solid seawalls.
|
| I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to use solar +
| hotter temperatures + seawater to give us desalinated
| water
| nullsense wrote:
| Hundreds of years starting in 1800s gives us until about
| 2100. 80 years will be within our childrens lifetimes for
| us millennials.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| But it doesn't and won't. E.g. the sea level may creep up
| slowly, and then all of a sudden you get a giant flood or
| hurricane that makes a huge portion of the coast
| unlivable.
|
| And regardless, if you think moving a third of humanity
| to vastly different lands will be hunky dory smooth
| sailing, you should study history.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Not just that, but the places we currently grow our food
| have been primed to fertility over thousands of years of
| relatively stable climates. If many of those areas become
| substantially less useful for growing crops (because of
| storms, temperature changes, drought, whatever have you),
| it's foolish to assume that we will see just as many
| places that haven't had millennia of vegetation growing
| on them become fertile.
| rtx wrote:
| You need to look at arable land distribution, most of them
| are far from seas.
| kanox wrote:
| > Rising temperatures will lead to huge portions of the
| planet that are currently densely populated that will no
| longer support humans.
|
| This does not seem likely, the bar for a region being
| "unable to support humans" is very high. People already
| live in cities that need to support themselves with food
| from elsewhere, and worldwide calorie production per capita
| is increasing.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Because for starters a huge portion of the world's population
| lives on the coast so rising sea levels will wipe out a lot
| of cities. Secondly the entire human civilization has lived
| in the warming period coming out of the last ice age, we've
| never lived in that hot weather. Climate change isn't an end
| all life on Earth but it will drastically change how humans
| live on Earth.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Well it was only in 2016 we saw the biggest freeze we've ever
| recorded..
| standardUser wrote:
| "We're all in some form of climate denial right now"
|
| It should also be acknowledged - perhaps first and foremost -
| that we are also all in a very real form of climate ignorance.
| Being "realistic" about the impact of climate change requires
| believing our best science as it stands today, but also
| understanding that the science is incomplete and certainly
| wrong in various large and small ways.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| This is generally trotted out as an argument that we should
| continue with the status quo and do nothing until we have
| certainty. In practice, we've already begun an experiment in
| mass-scale terraforming of our environment by emitting vast
| amounts of CO2. Since we don't know exactly what this will
| do, but every indication is that the outcome will be
| catastrophic, we should be working as hard as possible to
| halt our emissions now. Once we've done that, we can wait for
| certainty.
| standardUser wrote:
| "This is generally trotted out as an argument that we
| should continue with the status quo..."
|
| And that is generally trotted out as an argument that we
| should ignore the facts. If it "sounds" bad to work towards
| the most accurate understanding of an issue, we should be
| striving to change that bias, not surrender to it.
| Otherwise we veer towards dogmatic interpretations that
| inevitably become false or contradictory, which I would
| argue is ultimately a larger deterrent to swaying hearts
| and minds.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| By far the biggest problem is that we do not agree with a
| common reality. If the conversation stops at "I don't believe
| this thing is real" then naive ignorance is the lesser
| problem. Climate denial is a bigger threat, it relies on
| moving the goal posts of what constitutes proof it's real,
| and in the decades it takes to "convince" these people it's
| real it will be too late to do much about it.
|
| Simply put, if climate denial leads to inaction, then that's
| the bigger problem. Also, climate change is an existential
| threat, the degree and vigor we use to respond to it should
| definitely be strong. Debating over which models are more
| accurate or not is mostly a waste of time.
|
| "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for
| nothing?"
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13
| CivBase wrote:
| > but I suspect we'll see, like many climate estimates, that
| number ends up being a bit too conservative.
|
| Good.
|
| When scientists and politicians publicize scary, doomsday
| numbers that aren't ever realized, the public's natural
| response is to be more critical of the things those people say
| in the future. That sort of thing results in climate deniers,
| anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, and a whole slew of conspiracy
| theories.
|
| If you want people to take climate change seriously, you need
| to publish conservative numbers and ring the bell when things
| end up worse than you predicted. Include a word of caution that
| things could be worse when you publish the conservative
| numbers, but don't start out with the worst-case scenario if
| you want to be taken seriously in the future.
|
| Of course you can be _too_ conservative with your predictions,
| but I don 't see a lot of that except as a knee-jerk reaction
| to the overly-alarmist predictions.
| jansan wrote:
| _> If you want people to take climate change seriously, you
| need to publish conservative numbers and ring the bell when
| things end up worse than you predicted._
|
| And also we have to talk about the fricking elephant in the
| room, which is global population growth. All predictions for
| populations growth on the African continent have been too
| conservative in hindsight, and the current projections
| ("population is leveling off") will most likely be wrong,
| too. In combination with migration to richer countries, we
| will not only have more people, but those will als have a
| larger average economic footprint.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Where are the "alarmist doomsday predictions" that never came
| true? Climate Change deniers claim that these exist all the
| time, but I have never seen an actual example. Predictions
| over the last 20-30 years have been almost universally spot-
| on.
| simonsarris wrote:
| > Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013' (2007)
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
|
| > Warming expert: Only decade left to act in time (2006)
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14834318
|
| > (1989) A senior U.N. environmental official says entire
| nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising
| sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by
| the year 2000.
|
| > He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity
| to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human
| control.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
| Maarten88 wrote:
| Those articles may still prove to be correct. Several
| Pacific Island nations (Marshall Islands, Maldives,
| Tuvalu) are indeed drowning, as predicted.
|
| At least to me it seems the greenhouse effect now is out
| of human control. I do not see mankind preventing it from
| raising much higher, for years to come, before we'll do
| anything about it.
| kortilla wrote:
| > > Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013' (2007)
|
| > Those articles may still prove to be correct.
| pstuart wrote:
| Next week we should should get a better understanding of
| our path forward. Obliqueness intentional to ward off
| hate.
| scottlocklin wrote:
| Your prediction isn't correct if your time estimate is
| wrong. I bet some Pacific islands will be beneath the
| ocean some day with probability very close to 1 (I dunno
| we could get hit by an Asteroid first). Betting they will
| be last month is a failed prediction. As far as I can
| tell they're not having any particular problems now they
| didn't have 50 years ago. I'm happy to entertain evidence
| to the contrary.
|
| The greenhouse effect is totally human controllable. You
| don't even need to stop using fossil fuels or resort to
| absurdities like industrial carbon sequestration.
| Geoengineering used to be a thing; if climatologists
| believed in their models, they'd be able to come up with
| a solution that works. Painting Australia white, pumping
| sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere; whatever.
| Someone could at least make a suggestion which doesn't
| involve everyone living in a yurt and eating gruel. One
| becomes suspicious people whose only solution is the
| latter are millenarian cultists rather than science
| minded.
| jagger27 wrote:
| So you demand that scientists produce predictions that
| are bang on not only in 'what' will happen, but also
| 'why' and 'when'? A single early incorrect time estimate
| in an ever-changing world with accelerating access to
| more and better data is somehow entirely disqualifying?
|
| Maybe if we lived in mile-high ecumenopolis mega cities
| instead of 8-lane-gridlock-highway-connected-cookie-
| cutter-5-bedroom-McMansion-suburbs we wouldn't have to
| live in "yurts" and eat "gruel".
| rriepe wrote:
| Tuvalu is growing:
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/fact-check-is-the-
| isl...
| raarts wrote:
| In which case investors will lose a lot of money:
| https://www.theinvestor.jll/news/maldives/hotels/the-
| maldive...
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-
| fre...
|
| > Many scientists have attempted to estimate when the
| Arctic will be "ice-free". Professor Peter Wadhams of the
| University of Cambridge is among these scientists; Wadhams
| in 2014 predicted that by 2020 "summer sea ice to
| disappear," Wadhams and several others have noted that
| climate model predictions have been overly conservative
| regarding sea ice decline. A 2013 paper suggested that
| models commonly underestimate the solar radiation
| absorption characteristics of wildfire soot. In 2007,
| Professor Wieslaw Maslowski from the Naval Postgraduate
| School, California, predicted removal of summer ice by
| 2013; subsequently, in 2013, Maslowski predicted 2016 +-3
| years.
| jansan wrote:
| "Within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very
| rare and exciting event"".
|
| "Children just aren't going to know what snow is,"
|
| David Viner - March 2000
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes. Climate change is catastrophic, but "human extinction by
| 2030" is absurd. If we don't treat it as such, reasonable
| people stop listening.
| blueblisters wrote:
| Prolonged human suffering is almost always worse than a
| quick end, at least from an individual perspective.
| throwaway_pdp09 wrote:
| Could you post a link to a reasonably reliable source (that
| is, scientific or government backed) that says this?
| thanks.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| No reasonably reliable source says it. That's why I
| called it absurd. It's a "kids these days" thing (parent
| post was about scientists and politicians -- this isn't
| off topic, as politicians are involved, but kids account
| for the numbers). They call themselves "doomers," and
| though some of them base their predictions of doom firmly
| in reality, there's a large faction that doesn't. "Human
| extinction by 2030" (or its predecessor, "human
| extinction is inevitable by 2030") are memes in that
| circle. They cross-pollinate, as memes do, so you might
| have seen a few, but may not have internalized that a
| double-digit percentage of kids believe wholeheartedly in
| them.
|
| Back when I was in high school, the eco-panic 10 year
| prediction was that oil would run out and the world
| economy would collapse. It didn't. I see some of my
| classmates on facebook from time to time. They remembered
| this instance of crying wolf and updated their priors
| accordingly. Now they ignore legitimate climate worries.
| It's unfortunate.
| raarts wrote:
| When I was 11 (that was 1971) I did a school project on
| climate change. At the time the coming Ice age was all
| the rage. All pop science magazines I read wrote about it
| and it was also mentioned regularly in newspapers and in
| documentaries.
|
| Apparently scientists had been seeing temperatures
| dropping for quite some time. (I also remember winters
| having more snow than they do now).
|
| Later all that changed to global warming.
| thedmstdmstdmst wrote:
| I think the "Human extinction by 2030" is a confusion of
| what is being claimed by serious people.
|
| If the current trend continues and nothing done by 2030
| the repercussions will be so severe to the environment
| they threaten future organized human existence.
|
| So basically we still have time to avoid the worst
| outcome, the loss of the ability for organized human
| existence. Not that we will all be dead by then.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Congresswoman Cortez said that the world would end by
| 2030 if we did nothing. Later, she said only a sea sponge
| would believe her.
|
| Presumably, she is arguing that hyperbolic proclamations
| are a valid way to get people to listen and engage in
| political discourse.
|
| Of course, I presume that by "serious people" you are
| referring to scientists, but it definitely creates a
| mixed message from politicians- you know, the ones
| setting government policy.
|
| At what point is it not hyperbole, but actual serious
| discussion? Should we treat _everything_ as hyperbolic?
| All this does is confuse the problem (making it more or
| less drastic than it actually is).
|
| In my lifetime, "serious people" have often made
| predictions about drastic things and were completely
| wrong- and they had models to support them! This is true
| about many things beyond climate change as well. Why
| should this be any different? Why should I believe that I
| should act, or believe that there is still time to do so?
| Is this a new hockey stick graph?
|
| If you don't invest a lot of time sorting through all the
| BS, most people I think end up flipping a coin, picking a
| side and just going with it.
| thedmstdmstdmst wrote:
| You were talking about Kids in your comment, Doomers I
| guess you said. So by serious people I mean not that.
|
| "The world would end by 2030", like obviously there is no
| way this can be true. No matter what happens the world
| will not end in a biblical sense.
|
| "People made predictions and were wrong in the past" is a
| great point.
|
| Why should you believe you should act or that you can and
| do something about it? I don't know great question! I'm
| sure someone has explored the morality of avoiding the
| worst case scenario caused by human induced climate
| change.
| lordnacho wrote:
| You have to think the quite heavy burden of proof lies on
| the side that claims the world is ending in 2030.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If you're going to pretend yelling that people thinking
| the world will end by 2030 is reasonable, the burden of
| proof is on you to prove that credible organizations are
| actually saying that. Otherwise, you're just putting up a
| strawman of "lots of crazy people saying the world will
| end by 2030".
| majormajor wrote:
| > If you want people to take climate change seriously, you
| need to publish conservative numbers and ring the bell when
| things end up worse than you predicted. Include a word of
| caution that things could be worse when you publish the
| conservative numbers, but don't start out with the worst-case
| scenario if you want to be taken seriously in the future.
|
| Isn't that basically saying "just pray that it's not that
| bad, and that you can react fast enough if it is bad"?
|
| This seems to give up on any rational attempt at handling
| risk solely because you're giving in to the least rational
| instincts of the herd...
|
| Yes, people are bad at dealing with probability. No, that
| doesn't mean that we (and especially leaders) don't have a
| responsibility to do better.
| CivBase wrote:
| > Isn't that basically saying "just pray that it's not that
| bad, and that you can react fast enough if it is bad"?
|
| No. It's basically saying "do not erode the public's trust
| in you by making frightening predictions that probably wont
| come true".
|
| > Yes, people are bad at dealing with probability.
|
| I rarely see climate change projections tempered by
| probability. I'd be much less concerned about overly-
| alarming predictions if they were published with an
| associated probability and margin of error.
| moultano wrote:
| I don't understand the expectation that every prediction
| from a climate scientist should be able to hit inherently
| stochastic dates precisely. On the scale of geologic time
| and the level of inherent randomness and epistemic
| uncertainty, predicting things within a few decades is
| amazing.
|
| > I rarely see climate change projections tempered by
| probability.
|
| Honestly, if this is true, then it seems like the only
| thing you have ever read about climate are popular press
| articles. The error bars on every single prediction are
| on every graph or study that climate scientists produce.
| Mean sensitivity itself still has large error bars, but
| beyond that the amount of emissions we produce is
| inherently unpredictable. It is not possible for a
| climate scientist to say with any certainty how much coal
| we are going to be burning in 40 years.
| yongjik wrote:
| I agree with you that climate scientists are being too
| conservative, but I fail to see why that's good.
|
| Imagine an aviation engineer being "too conservative" with
| potential dangers (i.e., accept too much risk) because if you
| raise an alarm and it turns out to be not as bad as
| predicted, you will have cost the company $$$ and hurt your
| career. Would you call that a good thing?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| My high school science teacher told us all the world
| economy would collapse in 10 years because the oil would
| run out. It didn't. My classmates remembered -- and updated
| their priors accordingly. At this point, it's pretty clear
| that despite his good intentions he hurt the cause.
|
| Fundamental attribution error tempts you into believing
| that it's OK to lie for a good reason. Others see it
| differently.
| stripline wrote:
| Tell your high school science teacher to read _The
| Doomsday Myth_. https://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Myth-
| Economic-Institution-Pu...
| CivBase wrote:
| Funny enough, I actually am a software engineer for
| avionics.
|
| Those are not reasonable comparisons. Climate change
| predictions amount to milestones on our slow journey to
| oblivion. Ideally we want to be spot-on with all our
| predictions, but being on the "too conservative" side
| doesn't immediately put human lives at risk.
| bambataa wrote:
| ...So what climate scientists have been doing for decades?
| Yet they were still ignored. So people state more alarming
| predictions and get told "if only you'd been more moderate
| and reasonable".
|
| The truth is that most (Western) people simply don't care
| that much.
| CivBase wrote:
| > So what climate scientists have been doing for decades?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-
| fre...
|
| > Many scientists have attempted to estimate when the
| Arctic will be "ice-free". Professor Peter Wadhams of the
| University of Cambridge is among these scientists; Wadhams
| in 2014 predicted that by 2020 "summer sea ice to
| disappear," Wadhams and several others have noted that
| climate model predictions have been overly conservative
| regarding sea ice decline. A 2013 paper suggested that
| models commonly underestimate the solar radiation
| absorption characteristics of wildfire soot. In 2007,
| Professor Wieslaw Maslowski from the Naval Postgraduate
| School, California, predicted removal of summer ice by
| 2013; subsequently, in 2013, Maslowski predicted 2016 +-3
| years.
|
| Looks to me like there have been plenty of overly-alarming
| predictions about a Blue Ocean Event over the last two
| decades.
| ku-man wrote:
| "Looks to me like there have been plenty of overly-
| alarming predictions about a Blue Ocean Event over the
| last two decades."
|
| Absolutely.
|
| I clearly remember, back in 2008, that many scientists
| predicted a Blue Ocean Event by 2015. We are entering
| 2021 and still there is sea-ice in the Arctic (granted,
| it's thinner and the covering area has diminished, but
| still there is sea-ice in the Arctic!).
|
| I am not a climate change denialist but because of these
| over-alarming claims the climatic scientists have lost
| credibility with lots of people. And no, having Jane
| Fonda arrested is not helping in the credibility
| department.
| Daishiman wrote:
| That's not overly-alarmy; it's a demonstration of the
| astounding capabilities of climate models to describe
| incomprehensibly complex phenomena to a remarkable
| degree.
| CivBase wrote:
| I think that's a very forgiving take. I recognize that
| climate change is extremely complex and it's a huge
| accomplishment for our models to be as accurate as they
| are. However, they are clearly not accurate enough to be
| making statements like "2016 +-3 years". Statements like
| that are easy ammunition for climate change denial.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Given the references in the comment you are replying to,
| I think more people might interpret as a demonstration of
| the astounding degree that climate models can totally
| miss the mark. And calls into question the degree to
| which we should base policy decisions - with major
| negative consequences - on those models.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The wikipedia 'graph talks about one scientist who made
| an over-aggressive estimate... And then lays out the more
| 'conservative' estimates, placing the BOE sometime
| between 2022 and the 2030's or 2040's. That sounds like
| the process working, to me; there's a range of estimates,
| and it's foolish to disregard honestly-obtained outliers
| just because they are on the outside.
|
| As it is, I don't think even the over-aggressive calls
| have "totally missed the mark"; what we're seeing now
| says maybe they were off by a few years. In terms of
| global risk analysis around climate change, that error
| doesn't really matter all that much. Calling to address a
| major tipping point a few years early is arguably a
| feature, even.
| jansan wrote:
| I don't like how absolutely reasonable comments are being
| killed in this thread.
| claydavisss wrote:
| > in 2014 predicted that by 2020 "summer sea ice to
| disappear
|
| And what could the human race have done in 2014 to
| prevent that?
| burade wrote:
| Are you serious right now? Do you realize how hard it is
| to predict this stuff?
|
| You actually expect them to nail it down to the year? lol
| [deleted]
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| I think the reason they're being ignored is because the
| required solution is now political, and our governing
| institutions are inadequate and unable to address the
| problem.
| tomp wrote:
| The _proposed_ solutions are political. When someone
| tells me I need to stop eating meat, pave forests with
| solar panels and stop flying, I _know_ they 're talking
| politics, not climate change. I _hate_ ideologies trying
| to control my life. What happened to nuclear,
| geoengineering, fair revenue-neutral carbon taxes - those
| are _reasonable_ solutions. Instead, I have to chew on a
| slimy paper straw...
| triceratops wrote:
| > need to stop eating meat, stop flying
|
| That'll happen anyway with carbon taxes. Or at least
| it'll cost a lot more and many people will do less of it.
| Until we have carbon taxes, you could choose to do it
| voluntarily to help out.
|
| > pave forests with solar panels
|
| I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that.
|
| > What happened to nuclear
|
| Expensive and difficult to build. But if you like it,
| France, the UK and India are still doing it. And you're
| always free to advocate for it. "They oppose nuclear"
| isn't a great reason to stop working with people on
| solving the problem. Why be so prescriptive in solutions
| by saying "nukes or bust"?
|
| > geoengineering
|
| You mean the thing that's already gotten us into this
| mess?
|
| > fair revenue-neutral carbon taxes
|
| Cheers to that. A lot of the people you dislike
| politically support those. Work with them.
| tomp wrote:
| Exactly, the point of carbon taxes is that everybody gets
| a choice. You'll eat less meat, I'll drive around less.
| It's the least-ideological solution.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| I think a carbon tax is one of the most efficient
| solutions available, but it's proven to be very
| ideological since the burden of consumption taxes tends
| to fall on people with lower income. They're very
| unpopular, and few countries have been able to implement
| them successfully.
|
| It's still worth trying to pursue a more popular version
| of a carbon tax because of how efficient they are, but we
| need to acknowledge their political shortcomings. Perhaps
| we could pair a carbon tax with an annual distribution of
| revenue raised to everyone - a carbon bonus - so people
| see a direct benefit too instead of just the tax.
|
| Regardless we need to explore other solutions too, since
| it's not going to be enough to stop the climate from
| destabilizing further.
| tomp wrote:
| Yeah that's why I wrote "revenue-neutral".
| porb121 wrote:
| Incredible that some how a tax appears less political to
| you than suggested behavioral change
| tomp wrote:
| If we want different results then we need to change
| behaviour, that's a given.
|
| But a ideological behavioral change ("eat less meat")
| enforced on everybody _is_ much more political
| (ideological) than just implementing the required nudges
| /incentives (less carbon) and allowing everybody to
| adjust their behavior as they see fit.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| Carbon taxes and more nuclear power are also political
| solutions. So are controlling emissions from meat
| producers, stricter emission standards on airplanes, and
| investments in infrastructure for renewable energy.
|
| Preventing climate change from getting worse requires
| coordinated action at the national and international
| levels. There are many proposed solutions, but so far
| none of them have been implemented and it's unclear our
| government systems are sophisticated enough to do so, to
| the detriment of us all.
|
| Incidentally, I think the primary driver of state-level
| bans on single use plastic straws was to reduce plastic
| waste, especially in the oceans.
| bamboozled wrote:
| They're just changing I feel.
|
| Maybe it's too slow but the end is near for fossil fuels,
| it's either because humans will end up extinct if we keep
| burning it at the current rate or because it's not
| economically competitive anymore.
|
| As corrupt and as rotten as politics is, there is a limit
| to how far you can push for coal and fracking before it
| just becomes silly.
| chowned wrote:
| Denial is the only way to cope with how impossible it feels to
| make any meaningful progress. I mean, the alternative is to sit
| white-knuckled until I die in a food riot. I am well aware of
| the changes that are coming, and it's one of many reasons why
| I'm not having kids: I _don 't_ believe progress will continue
| like it has (which was always unsustainable, even without
| deleterious effects on the climate), and I think the future
| earth will be much harder for humans in the short term. Sure,
| humanity will probably adapt, but millions of people might die
| in the process.
| erikerikson wrote:
| > Denial is the only way to cope
|
| I disagree. We can accept that we have a feeling of
| impossibility and still continue engaging in behaviors we
| predict to have a more positive outcome than any others.
| After all, have you ever been wrong? I have.
|
| Occasionally the bulk of our actions create emergent shifts.
| It seems we will have to make adjustments and there may well
| be horrid consequences but the severity of those remains
| under our adjustment.
|
| I'm surprised to read this on Hacker News, one of the homes
| of "impossible" successes.
| core-questions wrote:
| > Denial is the only way to cope
|
| > I'm not having kids
|
| You are a defeatist, aren't you? This entire thing has
| literally scared you into not fulfilling the genetic
| imperative, ending your own genetic line because you think
| that perhaps you may have an easier, simpler life and death
| this way. No need to expose yourself to the suffering of
| others you love, no need to invest yourself in tomorrow -
| just watch it all go, knowing that when you inevitably
| shuffle off the coil nobody is going to mind a bit.
|
| Sad. Sorry to hear it. It's always a shame when an
| intelligent person chooses to ignore the sacrifice every one
| of their ancestors made to bring them to this point, just so
| that they don't have to risk the potential of having any
| hardship themselves. I do sincerely hope that you accomplish
| something great in your life that makes it otherwise
| worthwhile for them; to know that generations of people eked
| by just for you to play video games all day would be a truly
| disappointing conclusion.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| Well he/she is not alone. Birth rates are falling because
| people don't feel secure in their future. I can't think of
| a single thing that makes me hopeful about the future.
| Stagnant salaries, stagnant economy, weak global
| leadership, rising nationalism and sectarianism, climate
| change, increasing wealth inequality, people don't agree on
| basic reality (masks, climate change) and no where in our
| political spectrum do we see glimmers of hope of someone
| having a vision for what is the right thing to do.
|
| I think we are about to see a huge insolvency event in the
| next few years that will further destabilize the economy on
| top of everything. A huge demographic shift is coming with
| the boomers retiring, and damn, they're getting out at just
| the right moment as we inherit the problems they started
| and/or ignored for decades. If you are in your 30s or
| younger, we are the world's biggest suckers.
| catawbasam wrote:
| I think you are too pessimistic. This year is bad, but
| most recent years have been much better. And in most
| places on Earth, the new generation will have a better
| life than the last one.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| > scared you into not fulfilling the genetic imperative,
| ending your own genetic line
|
| > It's always a shame when an intelligent person chooses to
| ignore the sacrifice every one of their ancestors made to
| bring them to this point
|
| Ok please don't project your creepy literal-Darwinist
| ideology on other people. The parent comment literally said
| "one of many reasons." I am not having kids because my
| "genetic imperative" is about the species itself, not my
| specific genes, and I sincerely don't care about whether or
| not the Ojnabieoot Dynasty makes it to 2100. The idea that
| I'm "ignoring the sacrifices of my ancestors" is idiotic
| and unnecessarily insulting.
|
| > to know that generations of people eked by just for you
| to play video games all day would be a truly disappointing
| conclusion.
|
| Seriously what in the world is your problem? You don't know
| anything about this person. This comment is pure toxicity,
| completely undermines the point I think you are trying to
| make, and adds nothing to the conversation.
| core-questions wrote:
| > Ok please don't project your creepy literal-Darwinist
| ideology on other people.
|
| "Darwinism" is an "ideology" now? I thought believing in
| evolution was actually in-vogue! Do you actually not
| think intelligence is heritable, despite every study into
| the subject confirming that, as one of the most-
| reproducible pieces of social science research? Do you
| think we'll be better off if the smart people live lives
| of hedonism while only people who aren't as Climate
| Enlightened produce all the children?
| hluska wrote:
| With all due respect, you long abandoned reason and now
| you're just being an asshole. Someone decided not to
| reproduce - your opinions are of no value to their body.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| No, the ideology is using an idiotic personification of
| Darwinism as a guideline for major life decisions like
| "do I want kids."
|
| I am not engaging with your blatant eugenics and ignorant
| Redditor's understanding of intelligence and
| heritability. Needless to say, two commenters who don't
| want kids does not mean that the unwashed hordes of dumb
| dumbs are going to take us over.
| CalRobert wrote:
| If you knew their life would be misery and toil, would you
| have kids? I'm terrified for mine.
| core-questions wrote:
| Everyone's life is some variety of misery and toil. I'm
| not especially worried for my children because spending
| time on worry is illogical and counterproductive - sure,
| things could go badly, but as long as I am always doing
| everything in my power to ensure my children do well, I
| can rest with an easy conscience no matter what happens.
| [deleted]
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| >sure, things could go badly, but as long as I am always
| doing everything in my power to ensure my children do
| well, I can rest with an easy conscience no matter what
| happens.
|
| Sad. Sorry to hear it. It's always a shame when an
| intelligent person chooses to ignore the sacrifice every
| one of their descendents will make, just so that they
| don't have to risk the potential of having any hardship
| themselves.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Interpreting "I am always doing everything in my power to
| ensure my children do well" as "you won't risk having the
| potential of any hardship yourself" is startlingly
| ungenerous.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| Did you read the previous comments?
|
| I wrote two (I think) of the words in my comment, the
| rest were written by the person I was replying to about
| someone deciding not to have children.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| when was the last time you experienced true joy?
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| Ironically enough, when I was writing that comment. If
| you read the comment chain you'll realise why.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Imagine medieval peasant, which was most of the
| population ever. What they would give to live our lives!
| Toil? Are you kidding me? We have it better than some 120
| billion human being before us. Concepts like basic
| freedom, education, healthcare were not a right that most
| ever had.
|
| Watching half of your kids die before age of 5 from
| something a set of pills cures now? Your wife risking her
| life with every delivery? Dying of very minor wounds,
| when flu is killer that covid can only dream about?
|
| I could go on like that for very long time... No, our
| life isn't a misery and toil in any western society,
| unless we make mistakes and chose such a path. My isn't
| for example, nor is most people I know.
|
| Its kind of sad to see how weak we have become. 100 years
| ago a mutated flu killed 100 million people which was
| significant chunk of global population, right after the
| most horrible war mankind has ever experienced, and
| people got through. We can get through almost anything.
| Its properly sad what's happening. As a nature, travel
| and adventure lover my heart weeps, but I have no doubt
| mankind will get through this. There is still _so_ much
| beauty out there. I am not naive anymore we will get much
| wiser while getting through this, but somehow we will
| manage. Till then, taking it day by day, enjoying the
| little things life so often gives us, enjoying friends
| and family... that 's still a great life to live. Only
| few in the history had such a luck. I am definitely not
| terrified for my kids.
| bambataa wrote:
| This is something I think about a lot. The most important
| is to keep things going. Our descendants might have
| terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be
| worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on
| the other side. The only reason we've had all this wealth
| and ease to squander is because of those who went before
| us.
| petercooper wrote:
| I am hugely optimistic about humanity and technology and
| believe we will get through this just fine. I say this to
| qualify my question here:
|
| _Our descendants might have terrible lives for a
| thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means
| humanity can get to better times on the other side._
|
| _Would_ it be worth it? There is likely no net loss for
| the universe if we or even the entire Earth disappeared
| overnight and that might be better than thousands of
| generations suffering painfully over thousands of years.
| chr1 wrote:
| Why do you think suffering is worse than not existing? If
| they find their suffering to be unbearable they can end
| their lives, But unlike us they will have more
| information to make such a decision. With suffering they
| have a chance to at least achieve something, so we should
| not be ones deciding to discard their lives.
| bambataa wrote:
| Are you happy to be alive, knowing that untold ancestors
| lived comparatively short and brutish lives
| creata wrote:
| It's nice that we have you to interpret the actions of our
| ancestors.
| hluska wrote:
| You know friend, I understand how you feel. When I look out
| at the world, I see so much garbage that I can't even believe
| it.
|
| Then I hang out with my four year old. She doesn't understand
| racism, politics or climate. But she knows that she really
| likes everyone, respects others pronouns and likes sharing
| what she has.
|
| There's hope. As cynical as I am, there is hope. And the fact
| that you feel so strongly fills me with as much hope as
| watching my little one learn about the fucked up planet she's
| inheriting.
| bamboozled wrote:
| What happens to grow up to suck so hard?
|
| Why can't we just look at each other and imagine the child
| that person once was, then maybe we'd care more about
| others like your 4 year old does.
| fsloth wrote:
| Thank you, this is beautiful and deep. I think I will try
| to imagine people as children and imagine them growing up
| more. Much easier to project loving-kindness that way.
| redvenom wrote:
| We are taught in Western and most other societies of
| today to numb pain. The problem is that we have knowledge
| of the problems of this world. I think if we allow
| ourselves to feel the pain of our knowledge and
| understand our existence through it, we can return to a
| childlike state and realize the pain is not something
| wrong with us, but our natural inclination and love for
| the world telling us that we are doing something wrong.
|
| We may not be able to solve the problems created by our
| species, but if we learn to live with respect for the
| planet then we can at least know we are doing as much as
| we can with our own existence.
| hluska wrote:
| This is beautiful writing and it deserves a reply, but
| for now I'm just going to read your words and wonder
| along with you.
|
| I'll edit this comment at some point but for now, thank
| you friend. This is beautiful and poignant. :)
|
| Edit - I notice you edited your reply but I'm happy I got
| to read the original. You're a beautiful writer.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| Well, "everyone is in denial" is too strongly worded.
|
| A lot of us are aware that there are all sorts of self-
| reinforcing feedback loops that we have not found yet, and
| those will definitely influence the events. But models cannot
| account for hypotheticals.
| scythe wrote:
| >I mean, the alternative is to sit white-knuckled until I die
| in a food riot.
|
| You could try participating in politics! It's not exactly
| fun, but it's a lot better than dying.
| kanox wrote:
| > sit white-knuckled until I die in a food riot.
|
| This is nonsense, food production on a per-capita basis is
| increasing and population is leveling off.
| ahelwer wrote:
| And this year's Thanksgiving turkey is reporting it
| continues to be fed more and more each day! The future is
| bright!
| NortySpock wrote:
| How does food production deal with crop destruction by
| droughts, freak storms, or flooding rains driven by climate
| change? How do the world's poorest deal with rising food
| prices caused by crop failure?
|
| That's what we're worried about, not "the current steady
| state trend is currently going up, it's all fine!"
| kanox wrote:
| > crop destruction by droughts, freak storms, or flooding
| rains
|
| Aggregate data is much more relevant than anecdotes.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| It's at least worth keeping in mind that this discussion
| thread is happening on a link to an article describing an
| occurrence -- the Laptev Sea not freezing by late October
| -- that aggregate data up through a couple of decades ago
| would not have predicted. Global warming itself is
| arguably a radical break from what aggregate data tells
| us about climate trends, and the (originally good faith)
| argument against it for decades was, essentially, that
| the "alarmists" were mistaking statistically
| insignificant temperature drifts for new statistically
| significant trends.
|
| The theory that global warming is going to lead to food
| shortages in the relatively near future is not an out-of-
| the-blue flight of fancy on the part of random HN
| commenters; a UN panel in 2019 warned of this
| possibility, as did a 2020 IPCC report (pre-pandemic, no
| less), as did a 2016 study in the Lancet; this is just
| from a cursory examination of the Google results for
| "food shortage predictions global warming".
| titzer wrote:
| You forgot soil depletion, loss of pollinators, and
| system ecological collapse, but yeah.
|
| Food production per acre has increased by ~4x over a
| century, but that's the only 4x we ever got and the only
| 4x we'll ever be getting. We've been at diminishing
| returns for decades but will soon peak and experience
| lots of bad effects from unsustainable practices.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You underestimate humanities ability to adapt. I'd bet in
| 100 years a lot of food is grown in vertical farms and
| those can be made (mostly) immune to droughts and storms.
| It isn't going to be easy but nor is society just going
| to throw in the towel when it gets hard.
| strogonoff wrote:
| I suspect calling what's happening "global warming" is part of
| what's causing the denial.
|
| People living in mild latitudes hear about the warming but
| experience unusually cold summers _and_ winters due to
| phenomena like polar vortex disruption[0]; the claim may be
| hard to take at face value.
|
| Warming in longer term if left unchecked, sure, but "climate
| destabilization" could be a more fitting term for the time
| being.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Polar_v...
| umvi wrote:
| > I believe calling what's happening "global warming" is part
| of what's causing the denial.
|
| Also just attributing climate change as the root of every
| problem.
|
| Extra hot summer? Climate Change.
|
| Extra cold winter? Climate Change.
|
| Unusually moderate summer? Climate Change.
|
| Unusually moderate winter? Climate Change.
|
| More than usual wildfires/tornadoes/hurricanes/blizzards?
| Climate Change.
|
| Insect apocalypse? Climate Change.
|
| Sharks washing up on the beach stabbed by sword fish? Climate
| Change.
|
| It puts you in denial when literally every issue is
| attributed to climate change.
| count wrote:
| It's almost like the climate impacts everything, and a
| changing climate upsets a ton of things!
| umvi wrote:
| But it's also a lazy cop-out. Why investigate alternative
| theories when climate change is an obvious, easy one?
|
| It's like this board I worked on that only had 128 MB
| RAM. We were very tight on memory. Anytime an unexplained
| issue came up, low RAM was blamed by default even if it
| turned out later not to be the root cause.
| jagger27 wrote:
| What alternative theories would you like to see
| investigated?
| beowulfey wrote:
| Every single one of your complaints, except perhaps the
| last one, are referring to a changing climate.
|
| Do you not see the logical connection? How if global
| homeostasis system that regulates temperatures and
| weather across the entire globe suddenly destabilizes,
| you start to see changes in things like local
| temperature, weather etc?
|
| How is that unreasonable? What kind of cause are you
| looking for exactly? That it's done by aliens?
| btilly wrote:
| Unusually cold is all relative.
|
| See https://xkcd.com/1321/ for how what we call unusually
| cold today used to be normal.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Russia is finally getting those warm water ports they've always
| wanted? I guess we should start getting ready for climate change
| events, and pre-planning our reactions to those _specific_
| events.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| It is really irresponsible that we don't fund geoengineering
| research.
|
| 1. Marine cloud brightening can be accomplished with,
| essentially, salt water jets on the back of container ships.
|
| 2. Selective iron fertilization has, additionally, positive
| ecological effects that need to be understood.
|
| 3. The lofting of sulfer dioxide into the upper atmosphere is not
| that expensive. On the order of 10 billion per year. We need to
| start experimenting to learn the dangers and adapt.
|
| We don't want to be in a place where we have to do this in an
| emergency. We need to more fully understand the science of it in
| less dramatic ways.
| skosch wrote:
| It is being funded - at a small scale, but growing nonetheless.
| Just yesterday the NYT wrote about $3M from Silver Lining and
| $4M from NOAA.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/climate/climate-change-
| ge...
|
| [1] https://www.silverlining.ngo/safe-climate-research-
| initiativ...
|
| [2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/12/20/131449/the-us-
| go...
| titzer wrote:
| I mean, we _do_ fund geoengineering research. We subsidize
| fossil fuel production which is a live Earth experiment to see
| what happens with runaway CO2 production. Oops, we forgot a
| control and there 's no reset button on this one.
| rektide wrote:
| Lofting things seems like a super great place to deploy some
| electric powered flight systems. It's a bit nebulous where
| power comes from- nuclear? solar? thermal convector engines?
| how? a boat? solar pilons?
|
| But the vision seems cool. The battery doesn't have to be big.
| As long as it can charge fast, and is long lived, it can keep
| delivering power & energy, coming back down, charging, & doing
| it again. Persistence.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Neat idea! They can be charged on a giant hydrogen balloon
| platform, which can pump the SO2 to about 20km. I started
| making pictures of a related concept.
|
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r6CPFJ1AX1ZULacguTf6.
| ..
| KarimDaghari wrote:
| Also, Kurzgesagt released a cool video about it:
| https://youtu.be/dSu5sXmsur4
| smeeth wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you any more than I do.
|
| For the past 20 years western liberals have entered into the
| collective delusion that it is possible to reduce global GHG
| outputs to a level where warming will stop or reverse.
|
| This should be obvious to anyone who has ever made a personal
| sacrifice for a cause and tried to convince others to as well.
| I'm vegetarian, and convincing even the most cute animal loving
| people to reduce consumption (forget stopping entirely) is
| shockingly hard to do. Convincing the entire world to replace
| fossil fuels was never going to happen.
|
| The tragedy here is that the only trans-national political
| movement seriously concerned about this problem insists on
| directing all investment and attention away from the only
| viable solutions to the problem they care so deeply about.
| porb121 wrote:
| It's impossible to nicely ask people to limit their
| consumption of resources to which they have unfettered
| access; it's very feasible to seriously limit their access to
| them. If meat (and other polluting products) were priced
| according to their emissions externalities, a lot more people
| would be vegetarians.
| worik wrote:
| I know. Let's fly to Mars!
| umvi wrote:
| Mars' climate is 1000x worse than the most apocalyptic post-
| climate-change earth climate you can imagine.
| worik wrote:
| Ok... Let's fly to the moon!!
|
| Look at this puppy - it can walk on its front legs!
| newintellectual wrote:
| Ice Worshippers by any other name, a new religion.
| csours wrote:
| At this point it feels like Global Warming will be really bad,
| but also really uneven. Some people will have a really bad time,
| losing their homes, way of life etc, but a lot of other people
| won't notice much most of the time.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Look at Europe and the Syrian refugee crisis.
|
| Global warming will make that look like a small band of
| visiting tourists.
|
| Global warming will impact the poor far more than the rich, and
| there will be BILLIONS of refugees running towards borders.
|
| One would hope it would be gradual and not as catastrophic as a
| bloody civil war, but a series of warming-fueled storms or a
| pronounced month-long heat wave could have similar effects.
|
| At some point, nations will close borders.
|
| Resource/Environmental wars are never apparent as such. Since
| they involve movements of entire ethnicities, they become
| ethnic wars that are actually resource wars where the haves vs
| have-nots to deal with the environmental or resource disaster
| are delineated along ethnic divides.
|
| The Sudan crisis was explained to me as being fundamentally a
| water war in this way.
| core-questions wrote:
| > At some point, nations will close borders.
|
| Why would it not be logical to start gearing up for this
| inevitability now, then? Why wait?
| raziel2701 wrote:
| It was always going to be uneven and as usual it will be the
| rich who feel its effects the least.
| xenocratus wrote:
| And some areas will actually become more habitable - closer to
| the poles.
| scarmig wrote:
| It turns out that beachfront property in Siberia was a great
| deal!
| londons_explore wrote:
| Lots of siberia is permafrost... When that melts it usually
| becomes boggy marshland. Not great for your holiday resort.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Those siberian methane craters make me second guess whether
| any of that land would be habitable either.
| graeme wrote:
| We in Canada already inhabited pretty much all the habitable
| land up here. The bits that aren't widely settled aren't
| suited for agriculture even in summer.
|
| People say this northern land thing with no actual experience
| of what unsettled lands look like.
|
| Google Muskeg if you want to see your promised land.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=muskeg&hl=en&prmd=imvn&sourc.
| ..
|
| There's also the boreal forest, but the consensus is that's
| at a tipping point and will eventually perish in wildfires.
| Might be useful savannah eventually but will not be pleasant
| during the transition. There have already been massive
| wildfires in northern canada and siberia.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3198892#click=https://t.co/3NEaJz0R.
| ..
| PeterisP wrote:
| Our ancestors practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. A
| boreal forest that burns down in a wildfire should result
| in reasonably fertile land.
| scythe wrote:
| Unfortunately, the geometry of a sphere is such that half of
| the total area of Earth is between +/- 30 degrees latitude.
| The areas that will be improved are much smaller than the
| areas that will get worse.
| masklinn wrote:
| > And some areas will actually become more habitable - closer
| to the poles.
|
| These areas have no soil worth speaking of so agriculture is
| not an option, the ecosystem will not be stable so no
| foraging or hunting, and the grounds will be extremely
| unstable as they'll be thawing continuously, and the surface
| will just be soggy bog.
|
| As all extreme locales the long winter night also tends to
| trigger depression in many.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Everyone will notice but it may take time to recognise the root
| cause. We can expect desperate people do desperate things
| meaning that those with the lucky tickets may not get a break
| to enjoy it.
|
| Ask Europeans how much fun it is to have civil wars in the
| neighbourhood.
| demosito666 wrote:
| > Ask Europeans how much fun it is to have civil wars in the
| neighbourhood.
|
| It's absolutely no trouble until it spills over the border
| into your country.
| mrtksn wrote:
| And how do you achieve that? Build a wall? Shoot the
| intruders? deploy WMDs?
|
| The moment you choose to close your eyes what's going on in
| your neighbourhood the fabric of your society tears apart
| because the morality in the society crumbles.
|
| You will have people who know people and love people beyond
| the border, you will have people who believe in a
| philosophy that teaches to help those in need,you have
| people who are not happy about how your society works but
| were keeping it to themselves because killing other human
| beings was not an option but now it is an option obviously.
| Not only that, there will be people competing for power in
| your lucky society and the people in need and all the
| issues in your society will be tools to gain power. Things
| wont also happen in one day, those in need will have things
| to offer to people in your society - anything prohibited,
| anything that those in power deny to those who want power.
|
| It will spill over, there's no way around it. Unless maybe
| you have some kind of monarchy where everyone knows it's
| place and follows the orders, doesn't question authority
| and doesn't aspire to move between classes. How do you turn
| democracies into this thing? To decide who is the king who
| is the servant you will need civil wars, so it will
| definitely spill over.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, barbed wire on borders and militarised border
| guards who are authorised to shoot tresspassers outside
| of the official crossing points are a thing on quite a
| few borders, and used to be even more common just a few
| decades ago, e.g. the Warsaw pact and USSR borders.
|
| It's not a pleasant option, but it is an option that
| countries can choose to take if the circumstances suggest
| that it's in their best interest. The last 25 years have
| seen a trend of more open borders in and around Europe,
| but if the circumstances change, that trend can reverse
| itself.
|
| And while such closed borders are more common in various
| dictatorships, given the political trends we're seeing in
| many elections worldwide, it's not particularly
| implausible that such policies could get majority support
| also in democratic countries if the economic conditions
| deteriorate, for example, because of climate change.
| tzs wrote:
| Some of those people who are likely to have a really bad time
| have nukes. India and Pakistan, for example. They both depend
| on water from Himalayan glaciers.
|
| If they get in a war over dwindling water and it goes nuclear,
| the effects could be felt globally. Ironically, a big effect
| could be global cooling, which would set crop yields around the
| world plummeting. That would only last for a few years, maybe
| 10 tops, and then we'd be back to warming, but a hell of a lot
| of people would have died due to widespread famine during that
| time.
|
| China also makes heavy use of Himalayan glacier water, but I
| don't think they'd nuke anyone over it. A few other countries
| also depend on the glaciers, but India, Pakistan, and China are
| the only ones with nukes.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I don't think that an India-Pakistan nuclear conflict has the
| potential to lead to a global cooling effect.
|
| All the nuclear doomsday scenario estimates are based on the
| cold war NATO-Warsaw Pact nuke arsenals, where something like
| 30000 warheads might have been fired. That's a _huge_ number
| of nukes, the world does not have nearly as much nukes now,
| and even less so for the smaller powers (90% of all nukes are
| held by USA and Russia).
|
| India and Pakistan together have ~300 warheads; if India and
| Pakistan blow all their nukes, that's comparable to something
| like two years worth of nuclear weapons testing back in the
| 1960s, and the 1960s tests were nowhere close to triggering a
| worldwide famine.
| robohoe wrote:
| Do note that the testing wasn't done on the cities. If
| anything I could see cities in those regions getting
| bombed.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Yes, that's a good point - the global cooling effect IIRC
| was largely based on the emissions from burning cities,
| not the direct effects of nuclear explosions. Still, in
| an India-Pakistan war there would be much less burning
| cities than in the hypothetical cold war turning hot,
| which would burn the urban areas of the whole northern
| hemisphere.
|
| It's a bit weird to guesstimate about so horrible
| hypothetical events, but perhaps the consequences of such
| a war might be comparable to all the many cities burned
| in firebombing and otherwise during WW2 - which, again,
| did not trigger a global cooling that might threaten
| global agriculture.
| tzs wrote:
| It's the firestorms afterwards that cause climate problems.
| Most above ground tests were not in places that led to big
| firestorms.
|
| See the paper "A regional nuclear conflict would compromise
| global food security", PNAS March 31, 2020 117 (13)
| 7071-7081 [1]. Here's an article about it [2].
|
| They are looking at a war with 100 Hiroshima-sized
| detonations in the most populated urban areas of India and
| Pakistan.
|
| [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/13/7071
|
| [2] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-
| india-...
| mckirk wrote:
| Damn, citing game on point.
| rektide wrote:
| For sure, this will bifurcate, cause those on one side to
| suffer greatly, & those on the other side will as usual pay for
| the convenience of it not affecting them.
|
| But at the same time, I think the level of crisis is perhaps
| bigger than we realize. Climate scientists talk about the
| conveyor systems of the ocean, that literally keep the ocean
| flowing around the world. It's not spoken of very much, but the
| threat really does go up to "the ocean stops circulating" (is
| drastically drastically reduced in circulation). The ocean
| acidifies, runs out of dissolved oxygen,... dies.
|
| Meanwhile we're already in an era of mass extinction for the
| animals. How many more shocks can the animals take?
|
| Maybe the rich can get by on a deadening husk of a world
| without really noticing, maybe human life goes on. Who am I
| kidding, of course it does, but my general gist is that the
| current pattern of extreme weather & disasters being localized
| is knitting together as the crisis marchs into ever more dire
| territory into something truly globespanning & globe-wrecking,
| where earth itself will visibly no longer support the same
| everyday vitality of life, and where we have to find new means
| to artificially sustain the ecosphere & pollenate our
| farmlands.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I believe that vegans have made a strong point that humans
| can live reasonably well without any animal-derived foods and
| other materials, so a mass extinction of animals would not
| destroy our way of life.
|
| The same goes for pollinators - while there are many
| commercially important plants that rely on pollinators (e.g.
| almonds as one of main exports of California), the staple
| crops that feed humanity - wheat, rice, corn, potatoes - do
| not require pollinators and would be viable even if all
| insects died.
|
| So even the horrible ecological disaster scenarios threaten
| human wellbeing and comfort, but they don't really threaten
| the existence of humanity; fucking up our ecosystem would be
| a great cultural loss but industrialized farming could still
| march on.
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