As Glaciers Melt in Alaska, Landslides Follow | Hacker News Reader

As Glaciers Melt in Alaska, Landslides Follow

nytimes.com

50 pointscookscar41 comments

The original article in Alaska Dispatch News has more pictures of the landslide in Glacier Bay, it's pretty impressive.

http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2016/07/02/massive-landslide-...

Similar problems in Switzerland. After the Lower Grindelwald Glacier partially melt to generate a lake, there were worries that a sudden outbreak would flood Interlaken. Also there were landslides. A short tunnel to drain the lake has been bored.

It is amazing how both adaptable and yet resistant to change we are. We are so afraid of change—yet what comes just might be better than what we have now.

That's been the human situation for all of history. Psychologically we are terribly conservative and fragile but physically, we're the ultimate product of billions of years of evolution, having survived much bigger environmental changes in the meantime than we see today. We may not like it when we have to, but we are by far the best in the known universe at adapting to and changing our environment. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen how many of us will survive this process of adaptation.

Just charting the world population by latitude shows that we're still living in a relatively narrow area of the planet where conditions are just right.

We're flexible, but still very tied to a fragile ecology.

1. https://goo.gl/images/bGCPHr

And yet, not only did we survive the last glacial period [1] which lasted ten times longer than agricultural civilization has thus far, but we used the lower temperatures to spread through entire continents and migrate across oceans that had isolated us before. We have seven billion more people on Earth now, so naturally only those that are born in or migrate to the regions capable of supporting such density survive.

All I said is that humaninty's ability to adapt is unprecedented, not that all of humanity will survive shocks to the environment as massive as large sea level rises or a major ecological collapse. However, given our performance over just the last century, I wouldn't bet against the constant growth of our population outside of a mass extinction event like a super volcano or large asteroid.

Or a war caused by fighting over shifting resources. I'm more worried about the second order effects.

That chart needs to be adjusted for landmass, e.g. population density rather than population. For example, why is there so little population in the southern hemisphere? A major contributor is the fact that only 32% of land is in the southern half.

I don't think it's likely to cause human extinction if the Rice Belt moves up into, say, Arkansas, and the Corn Belt moves up into, say, Saskatchewan.

Your chart has very little to do with external conditions being "just right" and much more to do with presence of a technological infrastructure.

Are you seriously arguing that the natural climatic conditions are responsible for there being a higher population density in southern Canada than, say, Argentina?

"Southern Canada" i.e. southern Ontario or even Quebec is a mild midwest climate with extremely fertile rich farming soils and abundant fresh water. It has high growing degree days, high fertility, and can grow everything from peaches and apples and grapes to corn, tobacco, soy, wheat, garden vegetables, tomatoes. It sits at the same lattitude as southern Oregon.

Argentina, while it has some fertile regions, is pretty arid.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the comparison.

"I'm not sure what you're getting at with the comparison."

Southern Canada covers a whole lot more territory than Toronto and Montreal, dude. There's a whole actual country out there.

The observed temperature range in Buenos Aires is 22 °F to 109.9°F.

The observed temperature range in Winnipeg is −54 °F to 108 °F.

"Not killing an unprotected human within hours" is a pretty good basis for comparison, I'd say.

Edit: corrected maximum temperature observed in B.A.

Winnipeg isn't considered "southern Canada" by anybody who isn't from the far north, for whom anything south of the Yukon/NWT border is "the south."

I grew up in Edmonton and never considered it "southern Canada"

Winnipeg is only 62 miles from the U.S. border.

You know what else isn't likely to cause human extinction? Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.

Yet, for some reason, when this is brought up the same people are suddenly very, very hostile to any kind of change.

"You know what else isn't likely to cause human extinction? Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels."

You might want to look into where the fertilizer that grows the world's food crops comes from, and exactly how that food gets distributed around the globe.

Extinction? Probably not. Mass deaths? Yeah, that would be very likely.

Caveat: assuming that the fossil fuels aren't replaced with nuclear power, but in general those who hate fossil fuels are even more vehemently opposed to nukes.

Your example, not mine, was "Corn Belt moves up into, say, Saskatchewan." You're cool with entire Illinois becoming unarable, but you're worried about fertilizer?

At least you seem to agree that "humanity not going extinct" is a patently silly standard to compare anything against. Well, that's a progress.

No one said anything about "Illinois becoming unarable".

If the Corn Belt moves up into Saskatchewan, Illinois would probably switch to producing rice, cotton, sugar cane, citrus fruit, or some other warm-weather crop.

What's patently silly is your idea that farmers are too stupid to switch to crops suited for the local climate.

Fertilizer production is an ideal match for solar power because it's not time sensitive; it can happen when the sun is shining. Or put another way, producing energy-intensive stuff like fertilizer is one way to solve the problem of storing solar energy.

Fossil fuel is not just an energy source. The Haber process requires a chemical feedstock -- nitrogen gas and methane, as I understand it. I don't know if anybody has found a pathway for making ammonia from e.g., the hydrogen in water, that's even remotely efficient.

I found this tidbit interesting from the Haber process wiki page: "Nearly 80% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber-Bosch process" and yet only "3–5% of the world's natural gas production is consumed in the Haber process"

Great. Set up a solar-powered fertilizer plant and put the nasty petrochemical-based ones out of business.

Talk is cheap. Results matter. Especially when you're talking about the food supply for billions of people.

    > Are you seriously arguing that the natural climatic conditions are
    > responsible for there being a higher population density in southern
    > Canada than, say, Argentina?

As others have pointed out already Argentina is less hospitable than Canada, but no, that wasn't what I was getting at.

The chart shows that give or take some variations due to political borders, regional climates etc. the human population is pretty much distributed like a bell curve as a function of latitude.

I.e. despite all our technology and adoption skills very few people live in Northern Greenland or in the middle of the Sahara. Climate change might change existing population centers more towards either of those extremes with bad results.

"As others have pointed out already Argentina is less hospitable than Canada"

They have pointed out nothing of the sort.

The base climate in almost all of Canada will kill an unprotected human within hours for a significant portion of the year. That is simply a fact, even if you cherry-pick "Canada" to mean Toronto (which has a climate moderated by Lake Ontario), as the other guy tried to do.

What change do you see coming that might be better?

California disappearing into the ocean.

In a vacuum, you might have an excuse for saying that. But we are not in a vacuum. We know what bad things are coming via climate change, and we are seeing bad effects already. Furthermore, we have every reason to believe that the interaction between current geopolitical systems and the technological systems that support food production will be severely strained by what's coming, and is strained by what's already here.

It is simply too late in the game for deliberately uninformed speculation about what utopias await us after the global demise of saltwater shellfish, for example, or after the collapse of thermohaline circulation, or the thawing of methane hydrates. This isn't some game of chicken that will be won by not being "afraid of change." This is the recognition of an unfolding global catastrophe, and it's irresponsible to bury our heads in the sand with wild essentialist speculation about how "resistant to change" we are. Whether we survive or not will not depend on essences like "adaptability" or "resistance"; it will depend on contingencies like whether the boreal forests burn in spring or fall of 2023, or whether political instability in a crumbling Russia results in the launching of nuclear weapons and how the West responds.

There's no need to go as far as nuclear war. Climate change will manifest itself in political instability and mass migration (see Syria and Africa), and perhaps even more fundamentally, rampant desertification which is liable to lead to food shortages in poorer countries.

But yes, it _is_ a global catastrophe and sadly few people seem to care enough to do something about it.

I agree humans are great with change. I also see 2 massive flaws in your statement;

1) Change often comes with massive price. E.g. WW2 was great for women's rights in the west but ~60m deaths is kinds tough way to earn that. I dont see this being any different.

2) Saying what comes next 'might be better' is really weak. Nothing we've seen about global warming looks particularly great except for a few less populated places like greenland and Siberia. And we can see massive problems coming like in Low lying cities/countries. So to be afraid of this change seems quite rational. This is not a flip a coin ands see type problem.

Keep in mind that glaciers always melt. And cause landslides. And new ones form. Been happening for millions of years.

> Keep in mind that glaciers always melt. And cause landslides. And new ones form. Been happening for millions of years.

Keep this in mind, from the article:

> Scientists say the slides will most likely continue as warming temperatures cause more glacial melt.

Also, keep in mind that mussel shells were 27% thicker in 1970 than they are now, due to ocean acidification. Keep in mind we just came out of a streak of the 12 hottest months on record, and, lest we feel complacent, that's only because the 13th month was the second hottest on record. Keep in mind that we're about 4 years away from having no glaciers in Glacier National Park.

In the completely neutral spirit of keeping things in mind, keep all those things in mind, too. As a matter of fact, I recommend to you, and to everyone here, go online and find climate-related things to keep in mind.

Thank you for your concern.

Nothing we can't fix with an app...

"Keep in mind we just came out of a streak of the 12 hottest months on record"

Keep in mind that "on record" covers less than an eyeblink, geologically speaking, and that we have evidence that the earth has been both much warmer and much colder than it is now.

Not just millions of years ago, either. On the warm side, the Vikings had dairy farms in Greenland, some of which are only now emerging from the ice. That's only 1,000 years ago, and the temperatures were clearly warmer than they are now (not only are there no dairy farms in Greenland today, but quite obviously the farms were not frozen in the ice when they were in operation).

http://naturalhistory.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland...

On the cold side, most of the American Midwest and central Canada was covered in several miles of ice as recently as 11,000 years ago.

Where are these new ones forming exactly?

Mainly in the base of the freezers at work which don't seem to thrive on humidity.

The glaciers have been receding for about the last 11,000 years. They'll be back. It's happened many times.

Perhaps, perhaps not. With enough CO2 in the atmosphere, we could trigger an irreversible cascade. We'll essentially turn the planet into a second Venus. Your glib confidence is misplaced, as there isn't anyone who can say for certain how this will turn out.

"Your glib confidence is misplaced"

Not any more than your Chicken Little "sky is falling" schtick.

"Glib", indeed.

Your "Venus" idea is absurd. The CO2 level in the Earth's atmosphere is currently around 400 ppm. It's been as high as 8,000 ppm in the geologic past without the Earth turning into Venus.

Venus's atmosphere, by comparison, is 96.5% CO2. That's 965,000 ppm.

It should be obvious that a) all of the CO2 in fossil fuels was in the atmosphere at one time (that's what "fossil fuel" means) and b) the Earth did not have Venus-like conditions when it was.

That's like comforting the family of a shooting victim with "don't forget! animals die, it happens all the time!"

That's a terrible analogy.

That's a terrible critique. Care to elaborate in a way that can be discussed productively?

Well, that's basically how religion comforts the family of someone who has died.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com