Lake found at 11,000 feet in the Alps proves climate change is real | Hacker News Reader

Lake found at 11,000 feet in the Alps proves climate change is real

wouldsayso.com

27 pointsjicata28 comments

This article contains wild claims without backing them up or referencing any science at all. It references another article, an instagram post, and an interview. Mestre is apparently a climber, not a scientist. Greg Porter, the author, is a freelance copyrighter and pop culture commentator.

This trend of "make it sound dead serious and catastrophic" is having the opposite effect that people like Greg are probably intending -- it's turning people off of what actually is a serious (albeit not this serious) issue.

11,000 feet ~= 3350 meters

Also, did we need more evidence that climate change is real? The article has a paragraph about deniers ("people […] cynical about the impact of climate change") but somehow I don't think they will change their mind because there is a now a lake where there shouldn't be in the Alps.

plus from what i’ve read so far, climate change « deniers » think humans have very little to do with climate and that recent warming is a natural phenomenon that started 14k years ago. Not that it doesn’t exists.

There are several types of deniers. Some actually don't believe the raw data about temperature change, some don't believe humans are responsible.

And some believe that they will be dead by the time it becomes a problem.

I don’t think you actually mean “raw data about temperature change” because most of the warming is only seen in the processed readings, not the raw data.

Consider the USCRN raw temperature dsta, which comes from the gold standard observation network, with carefully sited locations and the best instruments. It was designed from the start to have reliable observational data needing few, if any, corrections. It has seen very little warming since it went live about 15 years ago. True, it only covers the US, and 15 years isn’t yet long enough to have enough statistical significance for a confident claim of little to no warming, but it is getting close. One can’t simply ignore the data, though. It will soon require an explanation.

Sadly many who deny climate change use “shapeshifter” arguments (it doesn’t exist; it exists but it wasn’t us; it exists and it’s good for us; it exists and it’s bad for us but we’ll adapt) to support their case. As a climate scientist once complained, “they get to pick from an assortment of contradictory arguments and will shift from one to the other; we can only resort to one argument - the truth” (quote may be wrong, sorry, I can’t find the original reference nor remember who said it).

> Sadly many who deny climate change use “shapeshifter” arguments (it doesn’t exist; it exists but it wasn’t us; it exists and it’s good for us; it exists and it’s bad for us but we’ll adapt) to support their case.

It is amusing / sad how closely that follows the Narcissist's Prayer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/4nymz1...

A Narcissist's Prayer

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did...

You deserved it.

Repeat Chorus.

I've heard it called the ladder of denialism, but it's more of a mouse wheel, they end up back at the first step sooner or later.

Thanks. Measuring mountains in the Alps in feet makes no sense at all.

Well, what does this "prove"? That the climate isn't 100% static? That snow melts? You can cherry pick data to support whatever conclusion you want. Clickbait.

Of course I get downvoted for discrediting fake news pushing an agenda. Ridiculous.

You're right. We don't need more evidence, we need more action.

Get involved with the strikes on the 20th. You can even put your website on strike https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/ (got some big names signed up already).

Here are some good resources to combat science deniers but it's probably better to focus on people in the middle who know it's happening but have yet to take action.

https://skepticalscience.com/

https://xkcd.com/1732/

> It cannot be stressed enough that pools of water should not be forming at the top of mountains. That’s just not what Mother Nature had in mind.

Does the author really know what Mother Nature had in mind than? When statements are clearly made up, it is not good journalism and the whole article becomes questionable.

I'm not sure that the argument presented here justifies being called an "extinction-level event". Displacement of hundreds of millions of people, sure, but how are melting glaciers and rising sea levels alone going to drive us extinct?

Wouldn't desertification be more of a concern, especially in tropical regions of Asia, America, and Africa?

""" It seems that, unless we change our ways, moving to Africa is the only option. Egypt will be lost, but the rest of the nation will remain mostly unaffected. """

¿When did Africa became a nation? Last time I checked it was a continent.

You know there are 2 nations in the world. Muricans and others.

I get advertisements for cheap flights on the page.

There are several lakes higher.

https://www.thoughtco.com/highest-lakes-in-the-world-4169915

How does this prove anything?

People should probably check the pictures of the water on your cited webpage before they take this as some kind of evidence. The lakes listed seem like mostly geothermally heated, or no longer existing.

More cited here: http://www.highestlake.com/highest-lake-world.html

Yes, and that page says "There are many catchment areas high in the mountains that are capable of collecting liquid water, and some of these are now filled with snow and ice. As the climate gets warmer, it's probable that they will melt out and a new high lake will emerge."

Hence, new high lakes may be evidence of warming, which might be from climate change, or from volcanic heating, or changes in weather patterns causing more rain.

Some examples of new lakes:

"Imja Lake is forming by glacial melting and did not even exist in 1960."

"Ridonglabo Lake" is a classical moraine lake produced by climate warming. The glacier retreated from its terminal moraine, leaving a depression in which glacial meltwater could collect into a lake. We know this happened between 1925 and 1988 because we have two maps of the area from those years.

"Laguna Glaciar lake is a glacial lake near Sorata in Bolivia at 5,038 meters above sea level. The lake has gotten much larger during the last 50 years due to the warming climate in that area."

You wrote "How does this prove anything?"

Assuming you aren't asking the abstract question "What is proof?", it contributes support to the widely-held understanding that global warming is occurring.

Limited support, IMHO, when taken as a standalone data point, as local climate does not always reflect global climate.

Theres a picture under Aguas Calientes but is actually Machu Picchu... and it says its in Chile too. So nope pictures are def wrong

Because this shouldn’t be the case so high in the Alps. Snow melts on my roof every year, it does not follow that the polar icecaps should also melt.

The tsunamis part made me laugh. But then I thought I should check it out, because it seeming evidently absurd to me doesn't mean it's wrong.

I wish I hadn't: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/16/climate-change...

I don't know anyone that denies that climate change is real, but I know plenty of people that deny that it's caused by us. To these people it's just caused by God. A "sign of the times" if you will.

This is reductive.

Plenty of people argue that climate science is not a single-variable problem, i.e. the correlation between temperature and atmospheric carbon is not monotonic. This is supported by geological histories, which do have various cyclings of temperature and carbon abundances well before the anthropocene era and often out of sync with each other.

Throwing hands in the air and saying "they all think it's God or something" is... tiresome.

> The levels of ice found in the Arctic Sea are already depleting at an alarming rate. The consequence of this is pretty obvious – it leads to rising sea levels.

The ice found in the Arctic Sea floats on the surface of that sea. It’s pretty obvious when floating ice melts, water level doesn’t change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle

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