Melting ice reveals two-million-year old peat | Hacker News Reader

Melting ice reveals two-million-year old peat

williamcolgan.net

62 pointsabathur65 comments

That is going to make some very expensive scotch.

Immediate first thought.

Are you counting the cost the of fossil fuel burnt to unearth it, or the externalities of having done so?

As an aside, it’s striking to me that Hacker News has a significant audience of flat earthers. Don’t look up, right? Let’s be clear, human caused climate change is very real. Rigorous science confirms this and CO2 + methane levels are now driving very visible and catastrophic weather all over the world. The only thing left to debate is how quickly the planet will become hostile to human life and whether some scientific discovery (magic at the moment) can head off the worst outcomes.

Edit: The responses and downvoting in this thread just prove my point. Debating human caused climate change is no different than debating that the earth is round or that Trump won in 2020. Incredible.

What leads you to believe there is a “significant” number of people who view the earth as flat on HN?

It's flat if you consider the hypothesis of extra small dimensions.

It won't become hostile to human life, it will become more challenging for human civilization to deal with the warming. And we don't need magic, we can decarbonize and pursue several strategies for mitigation.

It will absolutely become hostile to human life.

https://theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need-to-...

Please post peer reviewed papers and not sensationalist articles. You’ll quickly see how wrong you are

The crop failures and flooding will create famine, refugee crisis and wars that will kill more people than WW2, covid19 etc. But unlike the previous crises, it will mostly affect "other" people.

But we will have several strategies for mitigation on paper.

Given how many people reject any decarbonizing plan as political ploy, we might as well need magic to make it work. :/

“Magic at the moment”, that’s a new one to me.

What a way to box the entirety of human ingenuity into a pithy phrase.

Such a fiendish application of the dialectic knife.

I don't think it was meant as you interpret it. Rather a callback to the famous quote "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

That might be right.

I took it in the spirit of climate change advocates who tend to argue for immediate radical change. Underlying those arguments is a belief that we will not be able to address problems as they arise in the future.

I think we will. I believe in the power of human ingenuity to respond to constraints of the environment. That’s what I took it to mean; the ability to solve unsolved problems when the need arises.

Kind of like stopping a volcano or an earthquake. What happens when the problem gets too far gone and the vaunted human ingenuity is utterly impotent in solving the problem? (I mean the point after which there is literally nothing humans could do to react to the problem.)

To get an idea of the monumental complexities of global warming, I recommend reading The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History by David Beerling. He describes a multi-discipline investigation of global warming involving paleobotanists to atmospheric scientists, climate scientists, oceanographers, chemists, physicists, and the list goes on.

I also recommend googling "planetary boundaries" and "tipping points". Climate change is only one of the boundaries whose transgression threatens us. And the boundaries interact with each other and we don't really know how these interactions might affect rates of change.

So, radical changes now -- bad. Human ingenuity and radical changes in the future on the threshold of global catastrophe -- good.

Drawdown https://drawdown.org/ lists number of strategies what is and can be done to mitigate results of global warming. So it is not all white or black, but yes it is still quite serious .

Hostile to human life seems a bit hyperbolic. Our technology and society will collapse and stop the co2 addition well before then. Its possible we will have hit run-away by then, but I don't think that is currently predicted? A malthusian collapse followed by a second shot with sustainable tech built on the back of unsustainable ones might well have a chance.

Do large scale catastrophic floods, heat waves, snow storms, hurricanes, and wild fires not qualify as hostile to human life?

What is the true scotsman weather and climate that is hostile to human life?

If they do then the Earth already qualifies as hostile to human life

The problem is that the level of hostility is increasing. A caged tiger is hostile but with some sensible precautions, one can avoid harm. If the cage is opened, that hostility is an immediate concern.

Hostile to human life means "humans cannot exist without technological assistance".

It doesn't mean mass death, that's a measure of the Carrying Capacity. Hostility means carrying capacity is zero, or close to it.

Who will maintain the nuclear plants so they don't go out of control if the society collapse?

No one, but I expect they'd get shut down properly as necessary materials became unavailable. But even if they all went into melt down, that wouldn't make the planet completely unlivable. I was merely stating plenty of breeding populations would exist. Hostile to human life reads to me like extinction, and that seems horribly unlikely. Really bad for sure, and we really should start being smarter now to avoid that (we won't, but we should).

I noticed an influx of Republicans into HN about 2 years ago. Since then there have been a lot of emphasis on Republican talking points, including vaccine phobia, mask phobia, climate science denial and other anti science stances. The change felt quite sudden.

> The change felt quite sudden

They've always been here but vocal and unashamed airing of those views is what rapidly changed across culture (not limited to HN) as a whole. Ignorance and conspiracy is now a badge of honor.

If they are at all representative of the party itself, their views were also different in the past. The views of an average republican from 2006, on many, many subjects don't look much like those of an average republican from 2020.

It's the consequence of a big tentpole party embracing it's loony fringe. Many party members will change their views to whatever the party tells them, even if it tells them that black is white and down is up.

The message is - don't look up

You don’t have to be a republican (as if that’s a slur?) to disagree with the “science” of masking considering government officials said not to use masks, then to use masks, then we were all going to die if we didn’t wear masks, now no one is wearing masks… What is and is not “settled science” is up to extreme interpretation

Not only that. But broadening the scope just a bit. These polypropylene masks might have a marginal benefit (the famous Guardian yt video shows its a small one) for small virus sized particles of breath. Yet are a big issue for plastics in our food supply and over all trash in the oceans. Marginal affect for thousands of years of microplastics.

Can someone be concerned about the actual pollution (benzene, pthalates, and heavy metals) While also realizing that we share an atomosphere with China and India. (Game theory abounds)

CO2 bad... buy electric car good- Is all people seem to want to think.

Nuclear is a clear option for limiting CO2, but that's unspeakable. Now climate activists are on the same side as big oil. Neither of you want us to look at modern nuclear technology.

What about: first we knew nothing about the virus and didn't have vaccines, then they arrived, then the virus mutated, then we discovered that multiple shots helped to mitigate the effects, etc? Science is not perfection, but it aims at it without vested interests, without hiding failures, actually using them to gather a better knowledge of the problem. When science fails, you can bet all your horses that it will try again with some added experience.

Right, I mean who do Republicans think they are asking questions? You cannot question science ever because science has never ever been wrong. I mean the simple act of asking questions itself is of course, anti-science. At least they put that one jerk, Galileo, under house arrest for questioning science.

Galileo was jailed for questioning religious dogma and propagating science.

This is exactly the kind of absurdist comedy that didn't exist on HN 3 years ago, equating the scientist Galileo with vaccine denialists.

Yes, you are right! You, just like the Catholic Church of 1610, are intolerant of those with differing opinions or for those that question authority. Absolutely amazing how the mere act of you scoffing at my Galileo reference actually proves my point.

At this point it looks like anything and everything proves your point.

Being scientific like Galileo makes me the Catholic church, and being anti-science like the Church makes you Galileo. Why stop at Galileo, you are also Newton and Einstein too as you keep on opposing more and more science. Donald Trump is the greatest scientist that ever lived, if only dogmatic doctors had just injected bleach and destroyed covid19.

Do you not know the story of Galileo? He claimed the earth revolved around the sun. The mainstream narrative (Catholic Church) said the opposite. Galileo contradicted the mainstream narrative (again, the church) and was put under house arrest.

You want people that ask questions about the vaccine to shut up and take the shot (that is the mainstream narrative in this example).

How again are you not the church?

You said YOU were being "scientific"...I would love to hear that explanation. I kind of also want to hear where anything I've said so far is "opposing science" as you claim.

I mean I have already conceded that you are Galileo, einstein and newton rolled in to one. Just like Galileo and flat earthers you are going against the "current dogma" . I have already acknowledged the superiority of your views. What more do you want?

>What more do you want?

My bad, I made the assumption that you could actually back up your statements. I will take this as your way of saying, "Uncle."

I’m consistently surprised by how effective the “scientism” push has been at muddying the waters, and places like HN show it most readily. I have more than several friends who are smart, highly educated individuals, working in tech or tech adjacent jobs, who are absolutely convinced that the scientific community is all blowing this “climate change” out of control and that it’s really a symptom of some deeper problem with academia. It’s incredibly effective too, because academia is certainly not perfect.

> the planet will become hostile to human life

Example of someone blowing it out of proportion, right in your parent post. The trust issues don't come from nowhere.

Have you seen the news about Pakistan? A third of the country has turned into an ocean. 1,000+ have died. Millions have lost their homes. This sounds pretty hostile to human life. Don’t you think?

What do you expect? That earth is some garden of Eden where nothing bad ever happens? Climate Change is going to make things worse, but it always has been a struggle, and always will be. Remember 2004, when a Earthquake and Tsunami killed a quarter of a million people? Spanish Flu? The Plague?

I don't consider that hostile. Mars is hostile. Or Venus.

So is everything fine until Earth becomes Venus?

A decent chunk of the Earth's landmass (where a TON of people currently live) is going to get pretty bad if temperatures rise 3C.

At 35C in India - it's believed even healthy young people can die in just 6 hours of exposure.

This will happen regularly if temperatures rise 3C.

India will be home to maybe 2B in 2050 - when many climate projections say this will happen.

I'm optimistic we won't reach 3C of warming by 2050. But it seems within reason that it could happen.

> So is everything fine until Earth becomes Venus?

From Wikipedia[1]:

> The IPCC states that "a 'runaway greenhouse effect'—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities."

> At 35C in India - it's believed even healthy young people can die in just 6 hours of exposure.

Yet people somehow still survive in the Sahara at higher temperatures.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth

Way less humidity. Look up wet bulb effect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

Personally I believe in climate change but how are data points like this supposed to prove/disprove? Only ~12000 years ago there was a shift from the ice age and rapid flooding. Probably not man made and very recent. All evidence points to climate change being semi-cyclical and around as far back as we can gather data points. The cycles are very long relative to individual human lifespans but very short and frequent in the grand scheme. To me this is reason enough to make an educated guess that humans can affect the climate with our outputs. But it also makes it nearly impossible to disentangle natural changes from man made ones using science.

That happens to the California Central Valley on a semi-regular basis. They intentionally let the floodwaters go to protect the cities.

Next year they get a large snowfall with an early spring warming and it will happen again.

California is just hostile to human life I suppose.

I would be more accurate to say parts of the planet will become hostile to human life that currently are not. India, for example, will have human shattering heat waves. And it is hard to live in a city when it is underwater.

Saying "human caused climate change" with that level of certainty, catastrophizing, and distain for questioning is as anti-science as believing in flat earth.

Interesting read! It is amazing how some discoveries like this are made almost by chance.

Not to veer off topic, but this felt tangential with the mention of thawing peat.

I've read some analysis that says global warming will make much more of Russia arable and open up lots of new economic opportunities. China will gain new shipping lanes through the Arctic. Canada will also get more useful land, etc.

Obviously it's going to wreak havoc on ecosystems and species diversity and the climates of other nations, but you don't see the lopsided benefits mentioned frequently or how these factor into the calculus of certain nations.

Many opportunities, yes, Czechia will have access to sea...

Ahoj

Not well, IMO. Or, at least, "it's complicated."

Take for example, the boreal forest, which produces roughly equivalent amounts of oxygen as the Amazon. A large swatch of canada is covered by boreal forest. As the climate warms, the growing season could become elongated. However, there actually isn't any more arable land in Canada without deforesting. Grassland goes right up to the forest, and the forest doesn't stop until the arctic circle.

Maybe you could EVENTUALLY grow in the arctic circle, but even then you face significant developmental/logistical challenges

So, what do you do? Do you tear down the forest, as is happening in S. America, make room for homesteading and civilization? probably not wise. And yet, in the south, if I had to guess, the desert in the southwest will continue to creep up into the grasslands to the north and east.

So say that you do decide to deforest to turn that land into something more than just forest—what then? Increasing turbulent/violent weather poses significant challenges. Arguably one of the worst parts of climate change is not just the extra warmth, but the extreme weather that it brings. Hailstorms are becoming more likely. Early frosts are becoming more likely. And both of these things will kill your crops in one fell swoop. So the existing arable land's yield is going down, not up.

But yes, we'll get a new shipping lane.

For everything you described the opposite is also true.

Now that we've largely settled on "climate change" instead of all the other catastrophic descriptors which didn't last a decade...

There will be places where what you claimed is true and places where the opposite is true, if the climate changes in the way you propose.

The benefits to many places will be immense, there is no rigorous science measuring at this point, because no one will pay for that investigation to take place publicly.

The new paradigm with "denialism" being a career sinking position means honest appraisal is not happening publicly.

The southwest US had a seven year drought through the nineties, now they experience exceptional monsoons. It is not hotter there by any measure that humans can appreciate. Data shows us it is hotter in the cities, but the climate is not warming outside of the cities once the city data is expunged.

What do you do with that information?

Historical data suggests that there is no safer time to be alive. And yet, people are dying from starvation, not because we don't have food, mind you. Because we won't get food to people that starve.

Isn't it funny. We can focus on a future catastrophe and never have to help people or be kind now. We can be vicious and mean to people and they deserve to starve to death because they won't do as they're told and follow "the science"

There's a lot of science doing done. It's being paid for people are volunteering.

The IPCC is the largest collaborative effort. They produce reports continuously that researches exactly what we're talking about.

It does not agree with what you're saying. They just finished a report this year, you should read it.

Fwiw, as the earth heats, I don't think you're going to find less desert, only more.

I'm all for kindness, and that starts with caring deeply about climate change because the rich west will weather the storm the best. Countries in Africa have a lot to lose here as wet bulb temps begin killing people.

Forests aren't even something we should take into account when it comes to carbon balance, since over years and decades, they are ~net-zero carbon sinks.

That's only partially true. You can cut forests down before they burn and finish the product into something that won't just be burnt. Then people can store the carbon compacted, and in their homes. Or honestly, you could just bury it underground if you wanted.

Trees are biological mechanisms for capturing carbon. We don't need to invent anything new.

Would it be practical to grow entire farms of trees (or something fast growing - bamboo, kudzu, certain crops), harvest them, and bury the results? Repeat over and over at scale to sequester carbon.

You'd need mineral inputs, of course, but maybe you can recoup these.

That's a good question. I suspect it matters on the composition of the wood. Wood that locks in a lot of moisture instead of carbon might be counter-intuitive.

I don't really know what I'm talking about here, I'm just thinking aloud. There's probably some woods better than others, though that's not a very interesting statement by itself.

Not really.

A big part of the issue is fossil fuels. These are essentially vast amounts of carbon from millions of years ago that we are digging up and pumping into the atmosphere. Burying trees is not the answer, not digging up the old ones and not burning them would help a lot.

Also, bury trees and you bury the nutrients they use to grow, locking them away from the next generation of trees and plants. To plant, grow, cut down and bury trees on any scale you also require machines ... that run on fossil fuels.

Ocean used to be 400 feet lower. We are still coming out of an ice age.

People will move further inland if needed.

That feels like it's oversimplifying the effects of mass displacement and the destruction (both economic and physical) of all of the residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, etc. property.

Ah, but it's a growth economy!

It’s not like it’s going to happen over a weekend, people will have plenty of time to adapt to the new normal. Factories get moved (overseas), houses and people get relocated, humanity survives.

The thing I like most about these debates is if you state a simple and obvious fact people will attack you as a denier because the sky isn’t falling. But I can’t resist even though I know better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com