Warning Signals for Collapse of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
nature.com
nature.com
I'm curious as to why this primary source post was flagged/dropped as a dupe, yet several secondary news articles remained posted. I usually scan or search HN before posting, didn't see any of those.
In any event, it's clearly a story of real interest to this community.
EDIT: To the people saying to get a house where climate change will be as minimal as possible: As a young person, I probably will never be able to own a house. I rent. If I’m living in a place where climate change has less effect, landlords will raise the price of rent dramatically and I won’t be able to live there anymore.
This just further illustrates that a large segment of society is powerless against things like this. The headlines don't help, they just actively worsen my mental health.
Climate.careers might be worth a look (I'm not affiliated, just keeping an eye on it myself)
Fatalism and resignation are not good nor helpful for you as an individual, nor for society as a whole (they also forestall meaningful corrective action).
The fact is that large trends have mostly pointed in the right direction over the last century or so, on a worldwide scale. (Examples: [1]-[17])
Some literature I'd look at as counterpoints:
- Steve Pinker, Enlightenment Now [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now]
- Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rational_Optimist]
- Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factfulness:_Ten_Reasons_We%27...]
- Julian Simon, The State of Humanity
Note: Some of these writers and arguments are co-opted by rabid libertarians or ideologues that argue that all is well, there is nothing to worry about, and nothing needs to be done (and certainly no government regulation of business) [N1]. That is nonsense, and not a position I advocate.
There are many worrisome trends, and we have to do something about them. But, there have been predictions of doom since the dawn of mankind (see: Malthus [D1], Ehrlich [D2]), and they have not panned out, either.
Conclusion/TL;DR: Things have largely gotten better for humanity over long timeframes. There are still many problems now (inequality, climate, etc.), but if we apply ourselves, there is a good chance we can tackle them.
Footnotes
[1] Life Expectancy [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...]
[2] HDI [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index-e...]
[3] Child Mortality [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality?tab=chart]
[4] Suicide rates (not improving, but not worsening) [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-rates-by-country]
[5] Air pollution [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-air-poll...]
[6] Polio [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-estimated-paral...]
[7] Cholera [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cholera-deaths-in-great-b...]
[8] Tuberculosis, Malaria, HIV/Aids [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-from-infections-of...]
[9] Anemia in children [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-anemia-in-c...]
[10] Access to electricity [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w...]
[11] Death from indoor air pollution [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rate-by-source-from...]
[12] Death from unsafe sanitation [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-deaths-unsafe-sanit...]
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-sanitation?ta...]
[13] Share of people who say they're happy [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-people-who-say-t...]
[14] Use of agricultural land per capita [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agricultural-area-per-cap...]
[15] Forests [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/forest-area-as-share-of-l...]
[16] Famine [https://ourworldindata.org/famine-mortality-over-the-long-ru...]
[17] Child labour [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/various-measures-of-child...] [https://ourworldindata.org/child-labor#long-run-history-of-c...]
[N1] Julian Simon himself was one of those over-optimistic libertarians. But the data he collected is still eye-opening.
[D1] Malthus: "This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_P...]
[D2] Ehrlich, in 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb] But a UN report in 2010: 'the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since Ehrlich published The Population Bomb.'
You’re already seeing this in the younger millennials and Gen Z. We’re smart enough to see what’s coming and more of us are radicalizing every day.
Surveillance today is already more all-encompassing in democracies than it was in Eastern Germany. Just wait for an emergency that scares people enough, and that becomes weaponized.
Individual rights don't last in emergencies.
Pfaf.org ic.org
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
If we all did it today we would make a huge difference to a collpasing system.
https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Acc...
Why folks are down voting your post, especially here on HN - a group apparently made up of rational and logical thinking folks - beats me.
Feeding the world with animal meat is not sustainable, it requires more energy and resources.
I guess it's called meat addiction for a reason.
And this is really just blame-shifting and conscience-cleaning: we'll kind-of try to reduce our impact on Earth, feel better about ourselves, but the total impact will be minimal.
Also, if you look closely at meat production, by far the biggest problem is methane, and that's a problem that's been pretty much solved (seaweeds added to diet), except there is no incentive to implement the solution on an industrial scale. Instead of avoiding meat, we should make sure that the solution is actually used.
I believe the first step towards actually dealing with the problem is putting a significant price on carbon emissions (CO2 and CH4) and sticking to it worldwide. The current attempts, unfortunately, are half-assed. It should be really expensive to emit CO2, so expensive that everybody would immediately start looking for mitigations. Unfortunately, I also believe that humanity is too stupid and disorganized to do it, what with the local politicians pulling this and that way.
Personally, apart from trying not to do stupid things myself (e.g. avoid buying an SUV, ride an E-bike around the city, etc), there isn't much I can do. If I were young, I would look to join one of the companies trying to implement carbon capture, because that's the only thing that can save us.
Add then the energy to grow it and its food, shelter, kill, transport, and cool the meat to preserve it. Add then quantities of single use plastic for some of these steps.
I eat less meat than before more because of this than CH4 emissions.
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...
And methane is the one solvable problem with meat production. Far worse is the land use change. We’ve destroyed natural forests to grow soy beans that go primarily to feeding animals. Crops grown with a fertilizer heavy, petrochemical driven process. This food is shipped all over the planet. Even if we switched entirely to regenerative pastures, we would come up short — unless we magically solve carbon capture engineering, natural forests remain our only serious method for re-sequestering carbon and slowly undoing the damage we’ve done, for future generations.
But introducing a high price on carbon emissions and sticking to it will force meaningful change.
The entire agriculture sector of the US economy produced 8.6% of US carbon emissions in 2016. About half of that is from fertilizer (soil management). Even if you impute the entire carbon footprint of us ag to beef production, combustion for transport beats it by 3.5x. Combustion for electricity also exceeds it by 3.5x.
Meat is a tiny slice of your CO2 footprint.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-01/documents/20...
Now lets start to argue over what plants to replace the rainforest with and we've lost to point.
The rain forest is being destroyed for greed. Fix greed and you can fix the planet.
So less rainforest needs to be felled for the same amount of nutrition.
Arguing what the land should be used for is the point. Some uses are more destructive than others.
"If we didn't put gasoline in our vehicles, we'd just put something else in them, so arguing over what to put in our vehicles for fuel is besides the point."
If the richer nations cared about the Amazon rainforest, we'd pay rent on it.
For example, there are detailed models and measurements for both soil management (significant) and fertilizer (negligible).
What you’re seeing under Agriculture fertilization is the application of fertilizer, not the production of it. They’re talking about the c02 released by using it, or the c02 expended generating the fertilizer in the first place.
Land use change is an entirely different category in the report. So even though the reason we’re changing land use is to farm feed crops for animals primarily, it’s listed as it’s own thing.
It goes on and on.
For an actually accurate picture of how land and agriculture actually affect the climate, see the incredibly well-researched, encyclopedic book “The Carbon Farming Solution”.
But for you or anyone else who wants to see an alternative take, a quick search pulled up this McKinsey analysis which, while I’ve only skimmed it, seems much more in line with my understanding which is that agriculture — when fairly measured — represents more like a quarter of our emissions. And there’s no getting around the fact that the vast majority of that is currently tailored towards meat production, directly or indirectly.
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/agricul...
That research was done by Oxford University over a 5 year period.
It's not a meme - it's scientific research.
But I get it, it's easier to label it a meme, so we can continue our destructive lifestyle.
And it's not just about GHG, it's also about biodiversity and habitat loss caused by the large scale animal agriculture industry.
But hey, burgers first, right?
And screw future humans having to live on a more hostile planet.
I think humans needed to be this remarkably selfish to get to this point. But now selfishness risks a quick demise. Quick as in faster than evolution can be an aid.
If there isn't a technical solution that's economically and politically equitable, we will end.
And buying solar panels and upgrading to a hybrid or electric car which costs thousands is easier than replacing your meat burger with a plant-based meat burger. Makes total sense and lets ignore biodiversity and habitat loss while we're at it.
Why not do both?
Why not eliminate / reduce consumption of large scale dairy and meat products AND use renewable energy sources?
Surely you would agree doing both is actually even more impactful, no?
Edit: Also, consider running for office, if your government hasn't suffered complete regulatory capture, and if you have money to invest maybe look at things like Engine No. 1's ETF (VOTE)
It's happening right now.
I find it useful because we might, in fact, overcome this, but for now we seem to be on track for 3+C of warming within my kids' lifetimes, wet bulb temperatures making a decent chunk of the Earth uninhabitable (even naked healthy people will die sitting in the shade), the loss of the majority of insects we need for pollination, sea level rise giving us millions of homeless people, wars breaking out over access to resources, increasing ocean acidity and anoxia threatening sea life, accelerating self-reinforcing carbon emissions (hotter weather melting permafrost releasing methane making weather hotter, ice sheets melting reducing albedo making Earth warmer and melting more ice) etc. and all of those put together don't make me optimistic.
Unfortunately the problem with "we managed to overcome it" is that everyone who didn't manage to overcome is not around to comment. I certainly aim to be someone who "manages to overcome it" but that won't happen by being ignorant of the dangers we face and failing to adjust my life in ways that maximize the probability of this.
I don't think you'd be the lone survivor in the post-apocalypse, short of going full Venus the planet will sustain _some_ life, including humans, hopefully. Where there are groups of people, or most other mammals I'd venture. there is at least the possibility of joy.
IPCC working group 1 is putting out a draft report Monday, let's see what they say.
Truth is, everything turned out somewhat fine.
I can definitely see planning for a sketchy future, plan for the worst and all that, but I'd say that the average person's biggest risk is simply staying employed for an entire career. The sub-average is in constant trouble with LEOs, ex-wives, has poor health lifestyle choices, but you have relatively good control over that.
(I’m skeptical on the hydroponics as a long term thing as well - traditional farming remains in the dirt for a reason, it’s much more practical - but the basement stands out more.)
If you're using generators burning fossil fuels to power lamps to grow food, that's an incredibly expensive way to do it. And if you're using "100W light bulbs" I'm not even sure what you're doing — is this traditional white light bulb or what? I sure hope not, but most grow lights aren't bulb-shaped and tend to come in larger wattages as a 600W LED grow-light panel is usually rated for about a 2'x2' area, which is not really a lot of food; you'd be looking at 9KW for your whole basement.
If considering that option, remember that climate change will affect the destination as well -- don't emigrate to a place that will be underwater or a desert in 10 years.
I'm not a climate scientist, but I'm curious after these comments if there is some way to know what changes will happen where. I know there are some obvious assumptions like coastal areas are likely to be underwater, but how can we know if e.g., South Dakota will be a frozen tundra or desert?
Apologies if that is a dumb questions. I am not knowledgeable on this subject.
Before moving to another area, it should be considered that the support system of employment, friends and family that we take for granted and that we depend on are things we would be leaving. So weigh options carefully.
Shellenberger's new book Apocalypse Never has been a comforting read in this regard. Despite the provocative title, he's a serious environmentalist and does not argue for "no action" but rather that many of the actions being pursued by NGOs and groups like XR are very short term oriented and not thinking about the big picture of second order effects. In particular, he argues that the key to saving the environment lies in doing things like deploying natural gas and nuclear power into Africa and South America to develop those economies as quickly as possible— that this is the route to stemming coal usage and hitting the world population cap sooner rather than later, and those are the two most important factors when it comes to ultimately controlling emissions.
I wonder how much of the US defense budget could be deployed to providing nuclear power to newly industrializing countries and what the long-term ROI would be re; staving off future climate refugee issues.
Edit: In the parent directory (the-eye.eu/public) the "murdercube" directory is amazing as well. Similar type of survival resources, but even wider scope- you truly have to just scroll through to see how much stuff it has. It's got so much military, survival, health, literature, fiction, education, etc. it's actually incredible what resources people put on the web for free.
Look to your ability to handle long winters, short but intensely hot summers, unstable weather systems, and financial difficulties. Making sure your house is properly insulated is a good start.
So much for the American Dream.
Food prices will likely go up, but that won't really affect Europeans, just the global poor. They're always the ones that get screwed.
Edit: and of course the ecology is screwed too. Humans can use technology like coats and furnaces to adapt immediately, animals and plants need thousands of years to adapt.
> Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-...
Compared to the devastation experienced by the poor or non-humans, that's trivial.
The other posters are talking about prepping. That's almost completely unnecessary. As long as you're human and not poor, the worst you will be is uncomfortable.
It would have been far cheaper to spend trillions to mitigate and prevent, but that would have required foresight from politicians and voters.
The Texas cold snap and German floods are examples of what the rich world will be facing.
The Indian Ocean tsunami killing hundreds of thousands is an example of what the poor will be facing.
Extinction is what many non human species are facing.
But billions of deaths or civilization collapse is what some are predicting, which is nonsense.
If poor people and poor countries are screwed then that will lead to major disruption in rich countries as we are reliant on them and potentially a large and dangerous climate refugee situation. Economic collapse in rich countries isn't off the table either.
Then there are questions like how much of the current status quo has to change for "our civilization" to have collapsed?
The name sounds nordic. Oslo, Stockholm & Helsinki would end up with a climate similar to Northern Manitoba. I tried to drop a Google StreetView to get a sense of the landscape. It was not possible, there are simply no roads and no cities at those latitudes.
Even the richest of the rich need a supply and support network. Money won't suffice.
But will European ecology, crops and infrastructure?
Europe is dependent on high yield agriculture that would basically be impossible in Canadian climate.
Canada has 38M population mostly huddled at the south of Canada -- roughly where Italy and Spain is in Europe.
Europe has 12 times more population on much smaller territory, most of it being north of Italy or Spain.
When I was a kid every winter snow started falling in december and started letting up late february or in march. For the past few years there was almost no snow in the winter. Temperatures are higher too. I barely needed my winter coat past few years.
[0] and the warnings are without a specific timeline: "Observations and recently suggested fingerprints of AMOC variability indicate a gradual weakening during the last decades, but estimates of the critical transition point remain uncertain."
I've seen suggestions that people will go through the typical five stages of grief, ending with acceptance.
With loss of a planet, not so much. The grieving doesn't end, because the destruction doesn't end.
You should find solitude in the fact that we might be the only species who actually have a chance of not becoming part of that statistic which we do by making the planet much more hospitable for us than life used to be. We do this by creating new knowledge which we then use to turn useless materials into valuable resources which allow us to solve problems that have always been challenging us.
So go on live your life, eat, travel, create, consume. Don't worry about the catastrophist rhetoric, don't worry about going vegan (unless you want to), don't worry about your CO2 footprint or any other things other people want you to care about for their own political ideologies.
Be optimistic and worry about living a good life, with good people, doing good and meaningful things and if you have the skills maybe get into something valuable like coming up with how to create more powerful energy forms such as fusion.
No amount of veganism, recycling or spartan living is going to change that.
On the other hand, having a positive look at the future and participate in the economy is going to help pay for much of the research we need to help come up with more powerful forms of energy.
We need wealth to create knowledge which helps create solutions to some of the issues that the climate has always been challenging us with just like we've done before.
Having a positive look at the future is exactly what we need and have nothing to do with utopia, it's just a better framework to think about the world and lead to better results than thinking the world is going to go under.
It might help with coping as an individual but does not solve our problems as a society.
While individually we can't do much, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for those who can to do as much as they can. In the United States, this means pushing back on things like drilling in the wilderness, voting in politicians who want to keep antiquated, polluting forms of energy generation in place, etc.
If there is enough political will in the populace, the transformative effects can be powerful. We've seen it with the bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands, and we've seen it with social issues in the United States.
So yes, we're polluting the earth and making it gross and we should stop that. Let's worry about living a good life, but let's define the good life at least partly about being a good steward of our only planet.
Why do you think we've done the things we've done? Why do you think we build houses, have conventional farming, create sewer systems, create water purification systems, drive cars, have electricity, heat our houses, fly, have heavy industry, run global supply chains, combustion engines, aqua farming, nuclear power plants, create hospitals, going into space, send up satellites, develop new medicin, use fossil fuels not just for energy but also for 99% of all out materials and material creation? Your phone, the internet, your computer, glasses, windows, airconditioning.
If nature provided us with alle these facets naturally we wouldn't have to create them ourselves but as we both know it doesn't. We have to create these solutions our selves. We have to create our own resources by creating knowledge.
And yes this process have negative externalities. Each problem we solve, create new problems we also need to solve. But the difference is that the problems we are facing today are better problems to have than those we used to have.
Trying to come up with a way to make energy cleaner is a better problem than not having energy to begin with.
Trying to deal with plastics in our oceans is a better problem to have than not having access to plastic materials.
We have better problems to solve today than we used to and when we solve them they will create new problems that are again better problems to have. That should make you hopeful not pessimistic.
There are plenty of doomsday or sad stories.. you don't need to hear another.
As a young person who will get older you will have the chance to buy a home everyone did before. Whoever told you different is trying to upsell your emotions.
Delete your post, mate.
The only thing most people talking about climate are selling is the idea that we should keep the planet nicer than we’ve been keeping it. With the climate situation being what it is, only Big Money is telling anyone to “ignore it” and saying that just tells us what side you’re on.
> As a young person who will get older you will have the chance to buy a home
I bet Social Security will be there for us too, huh?
This is a dangerous lie. i can’t tell if it’s just utterly useless, or if it’s actually a psyop designed to sow complacency in the populace.
Olds and the rich have been using this language to manipulate the rest of us for years. It’s finally coming to light that no, it’s not true, and it was never going to be true for us.
We have the data. Home ownership is only getting further out of reach for most of us.
> everyone did before
And this is where we see that your idea of “everyone” is limited to land owners (now where have I heard land ownership and personhood equivocated before…?).
That kind of thinking will only make more of the mess that we have to clean up.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
Homes are only expensive if you want to live in a popular urban area. In less fashionable areas they're still affordable for most families.
Compared to the past, homeownership is expensive nationally, and the general trend has long been up although there wasa a sharp, temporary reduction from the late 2000s financial crisis [0]. Sure, there is regional variation, but that doesn't mean that national prices are relatively static.
I signed up with 350.org, and I got put on a mailing list. I signed up with Sunrise, and the events available to me in my area are to pass out blankets to the homeless and campaign for DC statehood.
This is frustrating to me, I try to find a coalition to work with and I either get ignored or I get a baited and switched to work on leftist causes.
I’m calling my senators and representatives today, and I expect to be ignored.
Unless there is someone organizing to cause large social change around GHGs and we can be involved with that, I think we should just accept that our lives will be filled with uncertainty, starvation, and an early death.
The single best advice is to put limitations on your consumption of climate news. But it's highly personal, some people turn to activism to cope, facing the problem head-on. I did that, but it's very depressing honestly.
A powerful image my wife likes to use is sitting at a loved one's deathbed. You don't have hope, you know he or she is going to die, but that makes the remaining time extra special. We are all sitting at the deathbed of the world as we know it. That makes the time we have left extra precious. And we're running out of time.
I'm not sure if this is a good advice. It's like hiding in the woods, but once you're out, you'll be in for a massive shock.
May be that's better than gradual adaptation? I don't know.
Since we don't have the collective willpower to stop pushing the climate, it's definitely going to change, so we're just going to have to adapt. The bad news is that it will involve a staggering amount of destruction and violence as everybody tries to avoid bagholding. The good news is that humans are really, really good at adapting. Staggeringly good.
If you look at the history of doomsday predictions -- I'd suggest the Malthusians, since they were rooted in science and rationality but still managed to be very wrong on a large number of issues -- you'll note that their biggest mistake is underestimating adaptability. It's reeeealllllly easy to extrapolate some lines and say "this can't go on, it's going to break, the world will end" and be correct on the first 2 points but wrong on the 3rd. Don't underestimate human adaptability. It's not an optimistic long shot to think that we will adapt. Adaptation is who we are, it's what we do, and we are good at it.
And we WILL get to more sustainable technologies because we must, by the laws of physics - that which cannot be sustained, will not be sustained.
My much more open questions now are whether we will get there in time. Humans really suck at understanding systems, and responding in appropriate timescales - especially when the effects involve exponential growth/decay or tipping-point phenomena. Add to that entrenched commercial and political interests who actively poison the well, and we could be doomed.
As a small example, just look at what the Republicans did over COVID - literally spoke out against scientifically based vaccines and countermeasures as a political ploy to make the other side fail - even though the risk, and now the fact, is that it will literally kill thousands of their own constituents, and even with record hospitalizations and deaths, the R FL gov is threatening school funding for any school that requires masks. Scale this up to decades of climate disinformation and anti-progress lobbying... Even Toyota is lobbying to slow progress because they bet on the wrong technology.
So many links in the ecological chain are being broken that it is looking ever more likely that several tipping points will be reached before we reach sustainable economies. Once a tipping point is reached, no amount of sustainability will reverse it -- we'd have to actively repair all the damage more rapidly than it can spread. Think permafrost melting and releasing gigatons of methane into the atmosphere ~22X more powerful a greenhouse gas vs CO2. It's already happening.
I'm not sure, but I'm no longer as optimistic as I was.
We're capable of understanding. What we continue to fail at is priorities, as well as focus. That is, it's difficult to imagine the future and how you as an individual can make an impact when the systems are designed to keep you on The Distraction Diet. Whether that's Keeping up with The Kardashians or some other form of random low-relevance events presented as news.
Id say that once it gets down to a level of intelligence where the person can tolerate the existence of the distraction diet (well-said!), they are below the level of systems thinking.
As Einstein said: "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is why so few people do it.".
Our economics and political systems have no answer to long term negative growth. They assume growth, the occasional recession is a big problem but can be mitigated.
Honestly I personally don't really care about whether humans go extinct or not. I don't find the existence of us as a species intrinsically valuable, even though I do find individual life, when it's there, very valuable. It's the suffering I'm concerned about. That's why the adaptation story doesn't do very much for me.
Get out into nature, and enjoy her company.
Now I’m wondering what the inherent CO2 is in those two, and how much variation there is between guitars.
Isn't fracking a great source of natural gas? Isn't that much better than oil?
It is, but fracking allows a large volume of methane to escape into the atmosphere as waste[1], which is itself a potent greenhouse gas[2].
[1] https://www.epa.gov/uog#air
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/methane.htm...
Use your vote offensively.
I guess just trying to see the things for what they are, versus what you/I/we were told they were or were supposed to be. It at least helps with the acceptance of present circumstances, and allows for establishing enough ownership over your/mine/our own part in it all, however small or great.
Unfortunately the myth of our adversarial relationship with our world is still a firmly held belief by many. That's not something anyone has a great deal of control over—especially in adults.
Likewise, the idea that we're somehow above everything around us tricks us into thinking we might not just be like a spider who wandered too far into the house and is about to get squished by an ambivalent power [read: Earth's nature] greater than ourselves.
---
I see you're from not too far away. Similarly in SW Ontario I've wondered what it will look like when climate change really starts taking its toll around the world. On a recent visit to Vancouver Island, the heat and the dryness already is staggering. The image of BC I had not twenty years ago is kind of gone. It's not the same. Its long-time residents have watched it change year-over-year. SW Ontario remains more or less unscathed. It's as lush as it's ever been and fresh water is plentiful. Somehow, it's almost always insulated from the worst weather effects of every major surrounding ecosystem save for the odd ice storm or low-grade tornado. If it wasn't somewhat land-locked it would probably already have a wall around it filled with compounds of the ultra-wealthy.
The wet and dry cycles we have mean our river levels are very high then very low, with water temperatures rising higher in summer as a result. The more this happens, and it does every year, the less life they will support. Salmonids which make up the vast majority of river fish can’t handle warm, shallow water. They get sick, tired, develop fungal infections, or get trapped in low areas and run out of food or oxygen.
Our lakes are doing better, but declining just the same. When fishing it’s very rare to catch wild native species, instead you’ll find plenty of stocked or invasive fish. Water temperatures are increasing very quickly, meaning very small lakes will fail to support species like trout which need cool, oxygen rich water.
Logging has done incalculable damage to our watersheds, and it won’t recover quickly. Warming conditions are compounding the damage from that and perhaps reducing the ability of forests to recover and protect our watersheds.
I’m taking my son fishing this weekend for a couple days, and I’ve spent so much time researching to find out which lakes and rivers are doing well or aren’t experiencing too much fishing pressure. There is virtually nothing on the South Island. It’s very sad. We will probably spend a significant amount of time snorkeling and pulling out garbage, especially monofilament from near the shores.
I think we’ll see ecological collapse in major rivers like the Cowichan in the next decade. Some years the levels are so low, comparing it to records is shocking. Crayfish (which serve as a sort of canary species and food web foundation) have begun to have die outs and decreasing populations with some regularity.
Every time I visit I am more and more convinced I'd like to move out there. I think I'd be happier with more outdoors activities available, but man— it's unnerving.
One of the more peculiar things I witnessed when there last week was—as you mentioned—the very high water levels in Cumberland Lake which apparently forced BC hydro to let open the Comox dam and increase flow down the Puntledge. And for some reason they don't syphon any of that "excess" fresh water off, they just flow it into the ocean. I can understand not wanting to do anything overly disruptive, but it's already dammed. There were water shortage notices posted the entire time we were there.
And it is always amazing in the worst ways to drive past clearcut segments of rainforest. Conversely, I saw some of the most amazing (in the best ways) sights I've ever seen on my most recent trip... I hope we can temper our damage before it changes things too much. There's so much to lose.
You’re right though, there are still plenty of stunning sights to see here. All of strathcona park is loaded with breathtaking opportunities and it’s just one small part of the island. I personally can’t get enough of the west coast around Tofino. Snorkelling and diving is such a treat, I’m so excited to get back there.
The only time I've been was down near Port Renfrew.
Next time I'm out there Tofino is a must. I want to catch the surfers but I've been told storm season is pretty amazing as well.
You feeling bad while reading these articles is smallest of our problems.
2. Assuming you answered yes above, take small steps... eat less meat, drink less milk. Vote for politicians who care about the environment. Push for changes locally - bike lanes, mass transit, less car-based society. None of these take massive amounts of effort. Yes, none have a dramatic or immediate impact. But, you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time.
I personally think it’d be fairly easy to just require all new vehicles to have plugs. Already, EPA fuel consumption rules have helped cause over 70% of GM’s vehicles to be “micro hybrid” (integrated start/stop). Requiring all new vehicles to be plug in hybrid within, say, 5 years or so is well within the realm of possibility and would have little pushback since plug in hybrids work for literally everyone’s situation (if you can’t plug in, just don’t). And besides the near term benefits, that sets the stage for eliminating gasoline or at least making it very expensive, which today is political suicide. Everyone will desire access to charging, whether just ability to use a 120V outlet, or use destination chargers. Electricity is effectively as cheap as $1/gallon gasoline right now in my area, which means consumers (who might drive across town for a 10 cent per gallon gas price difference) will happily try to plug in whenever they can, making charging no longer a niche thing for 1% of drivers but something everyone wants and therefore easy to standardize for apartments, on-street parking, etc. 5-10 years after that, we can either start mandating new vehicles be completely emissionsfree.
How do people moving around on the planet make a difference? Especially since immigration moves people from more impoverished places, where they are more likely to have more kids, to less impoverished places, where they are less likely?
poor = small energy footprint
rich = large energy footprint
Assuming the problem is that the global energy consumption is too large, the last thing we want is to increase the energy footprint of the people we already have. Moving people from poor countries to rich countries means greatly increasing those people energy footprint. It is in direct contradiction to the stated goal of reducing the energy footprint of humanity, and serves as a strongly visible signal that the ruling class is not serious about reducing global emissions.
There is only one possible solution: replace CO2-intensive power sources like fossil fuels with low or zero CO2 power sources like nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar energy. If that can't be done fast enough, well enough, or affordably, then we should plan and prepare for climate change as a certainty.
We have the technology (solar, wind, nuclear, grid scale batteries, HVDC long range transmission lines, EVs), but do not have the political will. This is largely because the fossil fuel industry is powerful enough to block serious efforts, and because national economic and military competition incentivizes nations to defect from any CO2-reducing strategy and exploit cheap fossil fuels to get ahead quickly.
Sobering: As of 2021, there is no 'western lifestyle' country on the face of the Earth that has emissions in line with the requirements of the Paris accord emissions, which is about 2.5 CO2 t/year/capita for a global population of 10 billion (2050 estimate). Even countries like Sweden, Switzerland of France, which are >90% nuclear & renewable in their electricity production, still have 4.5, 4.7 and 5.1 t CO2 t/year/capita. I have yet to hear concrete proposals of where the 50% cuts should come from, other than large scale technologies that have not been developed yet.
It’s also hypocritical. “Could you do us a favor and stay poor to help solve this problem we mostly created?” That will get a big “fuck you.”
I am curious about the statistics you’re quoting. If 90% of power is electricity they are probably counting petrol cars and possibly the embodied energy in products manufactured abroad. It shows why the entire energy system must be converted and it must be global. If it’s not global rich countries will just outsource polluting industry and poorer countries will be happy to burn cheap fossil fuels to make money selling products back.
… but I am also pessimistic. We may eventually get there but not before serious weather changes that cause a lot of disruption.
For starters, experts do admit when they are wrong. That comes in the form of later studies and more refined models. Experts in the field of science and research let the data speak.
A lot of distrust in "experts" has come from the fact that as new data comes in experts have changed the models they used (for example, abandoning global cooling back in the 70s).
What we are seeing in climate change is the evidential weight equivalent to what we have for evolution. It's massive, it's conclusive, and it's undeniable. It's not something that's just one study or a few scientists pet theories, it's accepted by all serious climate scientists.
To overturn that amount of evidence, you'd need an equal amount of evidence and, frankly, nothing has been found that comes close to disproving it.
If there's been any evidence of the experts being "wrong" it is in fact pointing towards them having underestimated the impacts.
> The media has a vested interest in working you up (this includes social media). They make money off your attention, don't give it to them.
Or you could do like I've done and look up the research for yourself. It's bleak.
Rather than burying your head in the sand and rejecting news that makes you feel upset, it's important to make sure you aren't letting your own biases drive your opinions.
I say all this as someone that was formerly a climate change denier. Funnily, it was an "askscience" reddit question that ultimately moved me and changed my opinion here. The responders gave me a plethora of scientific evidence and data which all points to exactly the same conclusion. Man made greenhouse gases are heating up the earth which, in turn, is causing a higher rate of natural disasters.
Experts can be wrong, they usually aren't, and when they are they update and change their models to explain both why they are wrong and how the new data fits in. That's how science works. It's a constant process of "being wrong" or learning more and refining the models and predictions.
The problem is you are picking different instances where experts are wrong in different fields and saying "See, all experts everywhere are wrong about everything! So let's do nothing!".
The message and understanding on climate change and global warming is roughly 30 years old. Do you think there hasn't been ample opportunity for a different theory or evidence to produced to explain it? Do you think nobody is testing it? Do you think there's some grand conspiracy to prop it up?
Climate change isn't a nutritional or sociological situation where a lot of different impossible to control variables are coming into play. It's dead simple. We measure the amount of greenhouse gases, we measure global temperatures, we compare.
It's even trivially provable, even by an elementary student. Take 2 glass jars, fill one with CO2 and another with O2. Place in the sun. Observe as the jar filled with CO2 becomes hotter while to O2 jar matches outside temperatures.
> You cannot base your life on expert opinions.
My life, your life, our lives are based on expert opinions. How on earth do you think electronics and computers work? By amateurs banging clay together? Computers and electronics were built on exactly the same scientific principles of "experts" that climate change was founded on. Experts are why we have GPS, cell phones, automobiles, doctors, cancer treatments, antibiotics, vaccinations, pain killers, fertilizers, etc... The list goes on. Our entire modern society is built on experts.
Expert research, (and this is what climate change is, research, not just opinion) is what brought about the modern world.
You might as well point to Doctor Oz and say "See, he's full of garbage so all modern medicine is bunk!".
If you live in Europe, start planning on a furnace for your home. Wear gloves when installing fiberglass insulation, it itches. The vapour barrier goes on the outside.
London is at the same latitude as Calgary, AB, Canada. Have you been to Calgary? Winter temp. hits -40°C (but it's a dry cold). Every outdoor parking stall has an electric plug for your block heater. Spray ether in the carburetor to get the car started.
Welcome to the 51st parallel.
Almost no one should be spraying ether in their cars; carburetors are quite rare nowadays. I have found that a fuel injected car will reliably start in extreme cold (North Dakota) as long as you can get the engine to crank well. And I never use a block heater.
My late father-in-law, who worked in construction, says they found out the hard way in the 1940's when fiberglass insulation was first installed, without vapour barrier. Within a few years, entire walls would just collapse, the studs and framing having rotted like cheese.
And I never use a block heater
North Dakota is South of Calgary.
Every society has developed systems of meaning and value to help us individually deal with the fact that we will die and nothing we will have lived for matters. For many societies the future and present where not all that interesting. These societies typically focused on worship of ancestors, and focused on how their daily actions connected them with their past. This develops into more complex systems of religion and spirituality that help give us meaning.
Industrial society has increasingly abandoned these with a new system of meaning: progress. Much of our personal meaning is derived from things like career, contributions to society, our own projects, personal fame etc. We belief we are playing our small part in the future of humanity and that gives us meaning. But now, as that future starts to come into question, so do these essential sources of personal meaning.
The trouble is that we can't trivially go back to older systems. This is the crisis of nihilism we see across America, and people will beat on the empty symbols of blind nationalism, religious extremism etc trying to resurrect lost meaning. This is what Nietzsche was trying to warn us of in his frequently misunderstood "God is dead" aphorism. We have destroyed our old systems of meaning but the new ones we have he correctly saw were fragile, and when they break he knew there would be a crisis.
The comments to view this as grieving are in many ways correct. You can see the stages of grief everywhere:
- denial: "climate change isn't real" or "climate change won't be so bad"
- bargaining: "If we just recycle more, development more green energy, etc we'll be fine!"
- anger: "It's those damn republicans! they did this!"
- depression: "what's the point of doing anything if we're going to lose everything"
The trouble is that getting out this grief isn't as simple because there's no return to normal. The loss is part of our world. One approach is study what the existentialists have talked about, their immediate post-WWII felt similarly lost. My HNers like the stoics which is another path to explore. But either way the long term project is to work on establishing systems of meaning that work for you... else you risk falling into a feverish insanity which I think we'll see more and more common place.
Full Text PDF https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Hulme/publication/...
I'm in full agreement with you here, but the time to act was at least 20 years ago. The changes necessary at this point to make a dent in climate change are things that I have gotten downvoted for so much that I realize if the HN community can't be convinced then the rest of the world surely will not.
We made tremendous progress in reducing carbon emission in April 2020. If we were serious about a serious last ditch effort to correct the issue we would have decided to remain at the April 2020 level of economic activity, and cool down from there. Instead we collectively could not wait to get the economy humming again.
The only "solutions" people take seriously are things that require more industrialization and more energy. Certainly green energy can be part of the solution, but only after we massively reduce carbon emissions... which have only gone up.
People can't even collectively agree to wear masks or get vaccinated. Pandemic is wildly easier to solve than climate change, and wildly easier to reason about see and understand, but we absolutely failed. We also collectively learned nothing from pandemic.
A few decades ago people where just as enthusiastic about "Green" movements, and we have seen things only escalate. I understand that bargaining is part of grieving so continue doing what you're doing, but for other out there I think it's important to be honest about the situation.
Personally, I do what I can and then just accept that I can't control the rest. I try to reduce, I try to re-use, I switched to vegetarian. I own a new house and I'm going to try to get solar, I have an electric lawn mower and I'm planning on my next car to be electric. I try to vote for people that I think will do the best job.
I'm sure there is a lot more that I _could_ be doing, or attempting to be doing. But I am only a drop in the bucket. I just do the best I can.
Of course, as one person, this does little. But I’ve convinced about 5 other people to go from gasoline to electric for their cars. And taking solid personal steps to address climate change (without the highly ascetic lifestyle, which isn’t as attractive to many) helps give your calls for policy action more intellectual and moral authority. Taking action, beyond “flee for your lives!”, is effective in mustering the political and mental energy we’ll need to address climate change, both in the preventative sense and in the adaption sense.
Burning fossil fuels right now for our society is a choice. The biggest struggle is convincing everyone, from the public to activists to politicians and other leaders, that it really is a choice and that real, attractive alternatives exist.
It is actively important NOT to cast the solution as something that requires massive societal sacrifice but instead firm, decisive action and hard work. Ultimately, our action sets the stage for luxurious abundance for all, to a level not possible with fossil fuels, while also rewilding the Earth and making most of the Earth’s surface into beautiful National Parks and reserves.
We’ve delayed action at this point that climate change will cause damage, but it is absolutely in our hands to what extent we’ll prevent more and then heal that damage and set the stage for both human abundance and a thriving Gaia.
I wish I could avoid having to insure, register, and worry about this stupid investment, not to mention the guilt from having this barely-used thing expanding my carbon footprint.
However, the math on renting a car every weekend that has all-wheel drive still just doesn't work out, not to mention the hassle of retrieving and returning it.
I don't like the "you will own nothing and be happy" way things are going, but I could definitely do that with a car if the economics wouldn't be so rapacious.
My point is that one Euro can have a huge or a small impact on the climate. Nevertheless there are some studies that wealthy people produce more CO2e because of their higher consumption. Everyone should reduce their consumption to what's really necessary. For a real change though, we would need better laws, and people that lobby for them. You could help, too! [2]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/807688/average-price-of-... [2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
In 1880s london, a laborer may spend 23 pence a week on coal, with coal prices at 10 pence per hundredweight, that’s about 230 pounds of coal per week (the English used fantastically inefficient open fires: https://digpodcast.org/2017/12/03/heating-homes-victorian-br...). That’s higher per capita emissions than in the UK today in spite of incomes a factor of 10 less. So if you live in a small, drafty house with a coal fired gravity furnace, you may burn enough coal to have higher emissions than my entire household in spite of low income.
So efficiency also matters, and matters a lot. While it might be an okay rule of thumb, there is no 1 to 1 correlation of spending and emissions. In fact, there’s no particular reason why there need be any emissions at all.
I’m reminded of ozone depletion. At one point, refrigeration relied on ozone depleting refrigerants. Because people tend to have refrigerators or air conditioning proportional to spending, you could’ve made the case that there’s a 1 to 1 relationship between spending and ozone depletion. HOWEVER! We passed bans on ozone depleting chemicals, and since then, emissions of such chemicals have dropped so much that the ozone layer has started to heal in spite of National and global wealth increasing dramatically. We simply developed alternatives.
In fact, as of 2013, UK emissions per capita are less than what they were in 1860. https://voxeu.org/article/driving-uks-capita-carbon-dioxide-...
And now, since there have been further drops, it’s lower than 1860-1880 even including imports (which are about 20% of emissions, give or take).
The solution to climate change is not castration, whether literal or metaphorical (Degrowth). In fact, we’ll be poorly prepared for fixing the damage of climate change if we lack the wealth and industrial capacity to do anything meaningful. And there’s no way to convince the developing world they should stay poor in order to solve climate change. The only solution is to use alternatives to fossil fuels.
And while I admire those who are willing to engage in a vow of poverty to fight climate change (assuming they’re not putting their few resources into inefficient coal heating, etc), it is actively harmful to addressing climate change to insist, falsely, that every dollar spent has an identical effect and therefore the only way to mitigate climate change is poverty. (In fact, a laborer in 19th century london would be poorer than you by today’s standards but higher emissions, so even poverty is not sufficient!)
Mencken quote: “For every complex problem there is an answer [$1 = 1 unit of CO2 emissions] that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Luckily for humanity, there is no ultimate necessity to burn fossil fuels to have abundance. Decoupling of GDP growth & CO2 emissions is not just possible but demonstrated: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1423354006127091715?s=...
Only difference is, that was solvable
Computer functionality has been stagnant for a long long time yet system requirements are growing exponentially.
Most developers could slave their whole career making optimizations only to have them overshadowed by the carbon they emit driving to the office.
To put it another way: Bitcoin uses more energy than Argentina. Shave 1% off of that and watch it gobbled up by growth in the BTC network within a month.
For computers with discrete GPU's this could save a lot of power!
When you aren't using lights, turn them off.
The rich folks in power want us to feel like we are responsible for their mess. This has been going on for years. Turn off lights, recycle (lol), or do whatever... but feeling guilty or seeing it as actually making a difference doesn't effect a damn thing... unfortunately.
I have the same question about incandescent lightbulbs that seem to have been banned in many places.
I hear you there. I was you, some years ago. I graduated in 2008 _just_ as the economy completely fell off a cliff and it SUCKED. I only managed to buy a house 10 years later by looking at very nontraditional properties. I wound up with a cottage on a few acres of land for €68,000. There's bargains to be had if you're OK with something outside the norm.
I had a look at your page at https://charted.space/ - if I may say so, you seem to have a lot of skills that could fetch a good salary - you might wind up able to buy a home (if that's your goal) after all.
It's a good thing I like buckwheat and beetroots.
When I lived in Denmark the Copenhagen subway was shut down because of a bit of snowfall. 10 cm of snow brought Aalborg to a halt for days. Things we laugh at in Finland, but which they are simply not prepared for.
I'm afraid good old-fashioned -30C Siberian cold front would cause serious disruptions in Denmark and the southern half of Sweden (and possibly southern Norway -- not sure how used they are to cold weather, being blessed with ice-free coasts and all that). And without the North-Atlantic current to keep things nice and warm, it's just a matter of time before proper winters become a regular thing.
Besides short winter days, it's easy to forget how far north we are. Inland Russia, Canada, even europe at much lower latitudes have far more extreme weather.
At least here in the UK the plumbing isn't really designed for extended cold periods - meaning pipes often freeze when they come. If that happened every winter it wouldn't take very long for people to retrofit insulation and interior pipes.
Otherwise it's just a question of insulating buildings and having more infrastructure for snow. Snow often causes chaos because it comes so infrequently - there's very few snow ploughs, the trains don't have ploughs, pipes were routed without planning for freezing weather, people don't know how to drive in it, people don't have snow tires. All these things can be fixed in a few years of cold weather.
It got published in highly-impacted peer-reviewed journal, ok, but so does a lot of stuff that turns out not true later so that's not much a signal
Biodiversity is collapsing right now at unprecedented rates; we're in the 6th Extinction. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur...
Arthropods are collapsing wordlwide: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur...
Ocean life is in grave danger: https://hyperaxion.com/biology/ocean-biodiversity-collapse-n...
A study concluded that Syria's civil war was in large part driven by climate change and ecological problems (i.e. society collapse is already among us). https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/150302-sy...
Our way of life WILL change dramatically in the coming years. The alternative is as follows: either we choose to reduce drastically our individual and collective impact, or nature and the law of physics will achieve it anyway in much harsher ways. The option to go "business as usual" simply isn't available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#/media/File:...
Also these things are HUGE and require A LOT to mess with them. It can take decades, just the same as it probably took centuries for it to start.
So, here is another doomsday prediction. As someone who whole-heartedly believes climate change is happening and is a very real threat, I am forced to take this article with a big grain of salt, unfortunately, unless there is an immense amount of evidence to the contrary. Also, I don't want people to assume that I am arguing 'these scientists have been wrong in the past, so they will be wrong in the future'. That is definitely not what I am saying. But at this point it is a frustrating boy-cried-wolf situation with these predictions.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park-202...
20 years have passed and water level is the same.
The problem is there is two issues: 1. Is climate change real - this can be easily verified with observation, and there is solid science proving this. 2. What will happen in the future - here we have tons of research that would not fly in other domains as it is not verifiable experimentally until it actually happens. This are just hypothesis about extremely complex system we do not fully understand. And it should be viewed us such.
I do see a lot of wildly misleading claims in newspapers, including where the research institutes the newspapers claim to be citing release statements specifically denying what the newspapers claim they’ve said, and I’ve been confounded by comments sections under those stories where other readers read only the false interpretations and not the actual words of the researchers.
Are you sure?
Here’s a graph of historic CO2 levels over recent geological history, note that 2008 and (forecasts for) 2100 are the same column of pixels: https://blueskiesmeteorology.com/carbon-dioxide-at-400-ppm-w...
Nothing without more context.
What value does that bring to the table?
Unfortunately, predicting its behaviour is difficult, for a variety of reasons. However, that doesn't mean such predictions should not be made, nor that alarm bells shouldn't be rung when it appears that things might be going awry, especially given the AMOC's global significance. Surely we can agree that insisting on only considering dangers of which we are entirely certain is a foolish approach to risk management?
(For example, there'd be a big difference between a five year old article saying "we're worried this thing is going to collapse over the next two decades" and one saying "this will collapse by 2017". Also it matters if it's a peer reviewed publication, a pop sci article, some rando youtube video talking about another youtube video, or etc. But there's no way to tell from your comment unless you give a source.)
Unspecified timeline.
I mean, someone could say “asteroid could hit earth and end civilization” but that’s not actionable and this useless information.
As far as I can tell, based on the mentioned author name and year and topic, that article is talking about the paper "Overlooked possibility of a collapsed Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in warming climate" by Liu et al [1]. I'm not a climate scientist but I read the intro and discussion section of the paper. They're talking about existing models assuming AMOC will stay stable when maybe it won't, and they present a model where it collapses after 300 years if you set CO2 at double 1990 levels.
So the paper does specify a timeline, but it's a centuries long timeline in a model mainly intended to clearly demonstrate an effect they want future research to model correctly. (In particular, they don't seem to be making a prediction about the actual timeline in the real world.)
Seeing real world warning signs that AMOC might collapse would be very much in line with this paper's thesis of "we should be modeling the possibility that AMOC might collapse". And I disagree that the paper is failing to make actionable suggestions: they're suggesting to improve models to account for a specific effect.
1: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/1/e160166...