'Devastating' melt of Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets found
phys.org
phys.org
I'm not saying this as a way to minimize these findings but rather to point out that we should expect things to get worse.
Humanity needs to act now.
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2023/04/18/florida-insurance-...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-22/fraud-lit... | https://archive.is/Njkww
[2] https://www.mic.com/impact/climate-change-is-ravaging-florid...
[3] https://www.floir.com/siteDocuments/OIR-B1-1802.pdf
[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/21/how-to-build-a-hurricane-res...
(one of my properties is insured by the state's high risk pool at an elevation 90 ft above sea level)
Climate Town has a great video essay on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MondapIjAAM
Do you truly think this gets fixed in any significant way?
The only underlying science was some debate about whether air pollution, the kind you can see and scrape off your skin, was going to be so bad that it would offset the greenhouse effect. But Nixon effectively ended that debate with the Clean Air Act.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1756074
I mentioned it in an earlier comment but it was also in my science textbook in my elementary school days.
The science it was based on, of course, was the fact that ice ages are cyclical and we are well towards what would typically be the end of an interglacial period:
"the last four interglacials lasted over ~20,000 years with the warmest portion being a relatively stable period of 10,000 to 15,000 years duration. This is consistent with what is seen in the Vostok ice core from Antarctica and several records of sea level high stands. These data suggest that an equally long duration should be inferred for the current interglacial period as well. Work in progress on Devils Hole data for the period 60,000 to 5,000 years ago indicates that current interglacial temperature conditions may have already persisted for 17,000 years."
-- https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-long-can-we-expect-present-int...
You also had the fact that some of the coldest (and snowiest) winters on record in the US were during the 1970's, most notably during 1977 when it snowed in Miami and the Bahamas for the only time in recorded history, and temperatures in much of the midwest stayed below freezing for over a month. So of course articles about a new ice age would attract readers, even though any return to ice age conditions would happen over centuries, if it wasn't disrupted by humans.
It really was a lot of snow though, we were out of school for like two weeks in the spring of 1978.
In the Fort Worth Star Telegram, 27 Sep 1981, is the article "World's mercury inching upward", discussing the science which wouldn't look out of place today. But it wasn't until the end of the 80s that the US government started to take it seriously.
And it mostly worked.
The first time I was ever mad about politics was in grade school, when some fake magazine for kids (probably one of the ads from Scholastic) had an interview with Ronald Reagan, and what the interviewer thought kids needed to know about Reagan was how crazy he was for jelly beans.
If I had known the phrase, "What in the actual fuck?" I would have said it out loud.
It would be 6 more years before someone summed up how terrifying the 1980's were and that man's name was Phil Collins (Genesis, Land of Confusion). But those bases were already loaded with... well, take your pick. You can go with Michael Keaton Movies about the crumbling economy or West German rock bands with a sprinkling of Sting ('Russians') while we all collectively crossed our fingers that we wouldn't wake up on The Day After.
https://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
I have a distinct memory of my “science” textbook in 2nd grade circa 1981 had a section on the upcoming ice age. Once I realized that the book was old enough to not include the moon landing I didn’t pay much attention to it.
In any case, the idea about an impending ice age was in the science zeitgeist, at least the layman understanding of it well before the 80s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Framework_Con...
Here's how various models made during the 80s fared though: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...
Not unreasonably badly really. On the other hand I haven't really seen evidence from what I've heard from various far-right figures of a sudden shift to global cooling, cessation of global warming, or any sort of dramatically lower rate of global warming than expected. Usually I see people cite what Al Gore said in an inconvenient truth being wrong, but the thing is there's actually quite a few models which weren't wrong so why wouldn't you believe those?
If anything I've heard arguments shift from "global warming isn't happening" towards "peoples models of how climate change will impact the economy are wrong" and "it's easier to adapt to climate change than move away from fossil fuels" and "Doing things about climate change is pointless when $COUNTRY and $CORPORATION won't do anything" and recently "carbon pricing kills poor people through poverty today for a speculative benefit in the future". Maybe with a sprinkling of "The climate has always changed" (yes) and "Climate change - manmade?" (yes).
I kid, but I guess that is what’s at the root of it. A fear of change and wanting to believe it isn’t so, because then there’s no need for change.
The whole attitude is foreign to me, because I believe in following the evidence wherever it takes me, no matter how frightening I find it. It would be easier if I could believe the comforting lie sometimes.
There are yearly conferences where hundreds of private jets emit more Co2 into the world than the average person will in their lifetime. And the people attending these conferences step off their jet, drive in a motorcade of SUVs to the venue, and sign documents committing to disburse billions of taxpayer dollars to LLCs and corporations their friends will form before next year's conference when they'll do it all over again. They'll lament about the epidemic of science denialism afflicting the common folk, and then they'll get back on their jets and fly back to one of their multiple homes to continue hoarding and growing their obscene wealth.
When you dismiss criticism of the status quo as "science denialism" or whatever perjorative is en vogue amongst your fellow saviors of "our democracy," you are serving the agenda of the biggest polluters on the planet, by looking the other way while they facilitate global corruption and forego any legitimate mitigation of the impending catastrophe you care so virtuously about preventing to stave off the existential threat so many of your fellow non-billionaires are too ignorant and science-denying to recognize.
I would also stress what climate change is going to mean and connect it to contemporary politics. Economic migration is for the most part a very controversial thing especially among the type of people also against reforms regarding limiting ghg emissions etc. Realistically some of this is ALREADY caused by climate change, but we're going to see a LOT more of it caused by climate change, so if people don't want it to happen in the first place and also want to plausibly convince the general electorate they have no ethical obligation to take in migrants, than doing something about climate change early is expedient. This is not just international migration it will also be national migration and yuppies fleeing coastal cities which will get much more expensive generally leading to scarcity and inflation. Climate change it likely is going to have a rather adverse effect on purchasing power, notably for food, and we're only seeing the beginnings of high food prices if not outright famine due to both production and distribution constraints. Due to these legions of practical issues, not only should people support such reforms, the political will for different countries to impose measures against powerful corporations will pick up steam.
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_ha02700w.pd...
Feel free to superimpose today's data[1] on Figure 3 from the above report. Link to the CSV file is here [2] to save you some time with the analysis. Some discussion here [3] (2007). Seems to me that if you compare against the most recent data, scenario B ("the most plausible" of 3 scenarios) is pretty close to dead-on.
[1] https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/graph_data/Glob...
[2] https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/
[3] https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hanse...
Most everyone will still be driving gas/petrol cars
No evidence will appear that will convince me [the denialist] that climate change is real
Peak oil won’t happen until 2020 at the earliest
As a meteorologist, I know that persistence is very often a correct forecast. Inability to predict change is when people die, though.
The great salt lake is not even close to full.
We have less arctic ice.
Sea levels are higher.
But as you said, this isn’t an argument either of us will win, so agree to disagree?
Gonna need a citation there.
You understand that it’s part of the Colorado river, which is (pre-global warming) one of the highest flow rivers in the world (it literally carved the Grand Canton).
The path of The Colorado pre-Hoover Dam still went through Black Canyon. Stop all human intervention, the River still goes there.
Where else is the Rocky snowpack going?
You can’t make any inroads on convincing people if you don’t understand their arguments, so I try to do so. Having studied climatology in university I have heard dumb arguments galore, and not from anyone in my field.
>Humanity needs to act now.
And do what exactly? The kill count from shutting down all emission-producing parts of society would be enormous, and it still wouldn't be enough to keep global warming at a level that is habitable for a good chunk of people on the planet.
Net zero carbon by 2030 is a joke, literally nobody is on track to meet those targets and BOE will happen before then at the rate we're going anyway.
We rather spend it on the military or pensions.
My understanding is that nothing short of a massive, forced reduction in resource consumption will do anything to seriously slow down carbon emissions and curb climate change, if indeed it can be curbed.
But how do shut down pensions?
France tried to increase the age of retirement and people got angry. An alternative solution is to cut the pensions a little, but I guess people will get angry too.
In USA the system is different and they save they money and later get their money back, so cutting it is more obvios stealing, but I guess it's possible because they can't make a strike. [We tried something like that. The banks got a nice direct cut, the government got another nice indirect cut, and after some years we decided to make all retirement public again and in the transition the banks got a nice indirect cut, the government got another nice direct cut.]
Remember that one day you will retire, and you may like to have a good enough retirement salary. You don't want to be blamed for whatever new problem appears and get a 20% cut of your retirement money. (Are solar panels more difficult to recicle than expected? Did the wind turbine kill too many birds? Probably not, but it's difficult to guess the problems will know in 50 years.)
We're going to be destroyed by the narcissism and sociopathy of our supposed leaders.
And I don't mean our elected politicians, who are largely ornamental. I mean the individuals who buy and sell them.
There is no scenario where the situation is fixed, there are only situations where it MAY be 'less disastrous', but it's entirely speculative.
You not only have to change planning, you also need to change all the existing cities to accomodate that planning
What
On the other hand, I, too, want to live in a house with a green space of my own, and would complain loudly if I was forced to change
There are a few exceptions like London (7 million in the 19th century, 9 million now), but most cities are not London.
>>>>The first step is to make it possible to live without a car.
>>>The first step is to set up separated bike lanes and improved electrified bus/rail routes.
>>The first step is to convince the legislature to shift infrastructure funding away from building new roads.
>The first step is to elect the right candidates, build a base of support, and draft an amendment which can get through the next budget showdown.
And so on...although it's more of a sprawling tree than a descending list.
That part's made even more difficult by there typically not being any right candidates at all.
Most people are waiting for big corporate entities or the government to do something. Yell that they need to do something, but in the meantime go about the lives as if nothing needs changing. People only care as long as it doesn't affect them and someone else acts or makes the decisions. It's despicable
Every person on this planet has the power and responsibility to change and act now, we do not need to wait for government and corporations to change. Waiting is just an excuse, and really is just slowing the desired outcome.
I would take issue with that statement. It is very difficult to make the sort of personal changes which would eliminate your own footprint. It might be impossible without leaving civilization entirely, largely because of how our societies and markets are structured.
Here is the story of a journalist who tried to go a full day without using plastics (disable JS if you get a paywall):
The better is not the enemy of the best.
But that was an example, plastics are only one small part of the problem. Production of energy, metals, wood, food, etc. Disposal of the toxic byproducts. Nothing we do at a large scale is clean or sustainable, and there's almost no accountability for any of it. Individuals don't have the ability to meaningfully influence all of that, outside of large-scale political action.
If you look at the meat industry, and we all agree it's environmentally impactful to absurd degrees, one might apply that same all or nothing mentality here - which is incorrect. You don't need to become a vegan to have dramatic impact, but what if it became a norm to go a day without meat? We already have some religious expectations about that, we even have cultural norms that have altered what we eat and when (breakfast = sugary carbs in the West), why can we not do the same here? But this cannot happen magically, it involves individuals making the choice to encourage themselves and then their families. Everyone can do this.
I bring up a day without meat (per week) because it's a great example of how little change is actually required to have tremendous results. But we cannot get to those results if we expect some gigantic overnight change.
So going back to your article, you don't have to leave civilization entirely, and going plastic free overnight is silly. But, you can buy shampoo that comes in recyclable cardboard instead of those tacky bottles. You can eat delicious veggie meals for an entire day once a week. You can buy reusable utensils that you carry with you instead of demanding they be offered. You can use refillable containers to buy your groceries with and store them. List is truly endless.
You, yes you, can have a great impact. We as humans just struggle understanding long term impact. In the exact same way that we see someone like Michael Jordan and think he's naturally gifted, and ignore him spending 8+ hours a day practicing for years and how those choices have compounded for him.
However, behaviour is learned by sharing. In that mind set, the best course of action is, in addition to one's own virtue, to encourage others to also recognize the situation and to change their own ways. In this way, one multiplies their own impact. People need to be the first movers of any social change, regardless of their own insignificant impact, because behaviour spreads and eventually industry will have no choice but to change.
Simply sitting at the sidelines complaining of industrial pollution is about as helpful as watching your own house burn.
Acting responsibly makes us feel better, but little else. The fact of the matter is the problem is not individuals, it's government and industry. What can any individual do to stop the burning of fossil fuels? To stop deforestation? To curb industrial agriculture? To stop the concrete and glass industries? To clean up shipping?
I'm not being cynical, you're just focusing on the wrong people. Every individual on earth could begin to reduce their carbon contribution to nothing, and it wouldn't make a dent on Climate Change, It isn't us, it really isn't. We can only elect so many liberals and environmentalist conscious politicians, because the stupid is very strong in our country. To fix the problem, we need to focus on the problem, of which more than 99.9% are the list of major carbon and greenhouse gas contributors. I think we need to start with energy production, and silence the entitled energy hogs insisting on more and more energy no matter the consequences. Then work down from there, agriculture, construction, glass, shipping, etc. And that will make a difference if we could just target the top 10 greenhouse gas producers.
Companies will only do the bare minimum they need to and there main goal is to make lots of cash for shareholders. If everyone starts to do there bit, things will start to change much faster
At the moment, most people are sitting back and waiting for someone else to make the decisions and to.
What more power beyond, say, recycling and using public transportation can an individual person have? Note how this narrative is literally shifting the blame from corporations, industries, and governments to individual people. "It's your fault you're not doing enough".
Meanwhile, Germany alone, thanks to the actions of its government, is responsible for more carbon emissions on a single night than I can even theoretically reduce over a milion lifetimes.
They shut down their nuclear reactors, and right now even on a windy night they burn coal and gas to make up for the difference: https://imgur.com/a/3bYudyd
What can I, and individual, do to fix the issue that it takes three trains with a high chance of failures and delays, to get to a destination within my country on what is a direct route from city to city?
etc.
Stop shifting blame to individuals
Renewable energy is growing faster than expected, and population growth is slowing faster than expected. We do not appear to be on track to meet worst cases scenarios from the IPCC. Note that I'm not saying there won't be/aren't harms, just that the rate of change does not seem to be accelerating.
Edit: here’s a graph. I see no reason to feel optimistic. https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions
If it’s flat 5 years from now then I’d be inclined to agree with you.
Edit: and here is more damning evidence. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over time is not flattening.
Second, what matters most is the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Here is a graph of that, and it's continuing to increase. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
One reason that the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere matters more than emissions is that we could also be reducing the planet's ability to remove greenhouse gasses through things like deforestation. I wish there were evidence to believe we are on the right track, but there isn't any at this stage. There are positive things, but in aggregate, it's getting worse as of this moment, not better.
My evidence is clear, and here. You haven't shown any to support your claims. At this point I can't tell if you are arguing in bad faith, are arguing just to argue, or don't understand the topic. If you don't provide any evidence or sound good faith reasoning after this, I won't reply.
edit: typos
I never claimed GHG wasn't continuing to increase, though maybe that's what you thought I meant. I meant to discuss the original commenter's opinion that global warming was accelerating. It's not accelerating. It's slowing. Emissions are still increasing, yes, because we don't have a deficit. But increasing isn't the same thing as accelerating.
You can also see this in how the actual temperature of the earth (the only metric that matters) has not increased in the past few years. https://climate.nasa.gov/ (click on "global temperature")
Another important metric is that per-capita GHG emissions are declining across the developed world. This indicates we are increasing the efficiency of our society significantly. This is trade-adjusted, so it accounts for emissions embedded in imported goods. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
"I meant to discuss the original commenter's opinion that global warming was accelerating. It's not accelerating. It's slowing."
I don't think you can conclude this at this time, but even if you want to believe it, it's still increasing (GHGs in the atmosphere and temperatures), and that's very bad news.
"You can also see this in how the actual temperature of the earth (the only metric that matters) has not increased in the past few years"
Again, you can't draw conclusions from 3 data points. Not sure if you are arguing in bad faith here, or simply don't understand. Look back at either the temperature graph or the emissions graph and you can find several 3 year periods where it didn't increase, then it shot right back up again. In the case of the last few years of temperatures, that's due to the La Nina (link below) which lowers temperatures, when we switch back to the El Nino it's going to shoot up again, and likely start breaking records again. We are not on the right track, and all of the evidence shows this.
Emissions not accelerating is of course important because 1) it was what the conversation was literally about and 2) it’s a necessary prerequisite for them going down. Plus, as I showed, emissions are going down, not just not accelerating, in developed nations.
Emissions going down is the right track, emissions going up or accelerating is the wrong track.
What is it you want to see? Zero emissions? Obviously that’s going to take a while, it won’t happen overnight. And before it does, they have to start going down. And zero emissions isn’t even enough, we have to go negative by capturing carbon. Unless we think 1.1C over pre industrial is acceptable. Which obviously we don’t because people are talking about current effects of warming.
So no, not all of the evidence shows that we are not “on the right track”. It’s true only if you ignore the evidence that contradicts your worldview.
Emissions are NOT going down, full stop. At this point it's clear you are arguing in bad faith, so I'm done. 20 years ago people made the exact same dishonest arguments you are now, that over a few data points temperatures stopped going up, climate change was over! Every time there's a La Nina the same bad faith argument returns. In 5 years when it's clear that what you've said is wrong, you'll move on to some other bad faith argument like they did. I've seen the pattern over and over again over the last 25 years.
The evidence I've provided is clear, and I'm confident that anyone with more than two brain cells that reads it will see the obvious reality that it illustrates.
It seems like its easier for you to pretend I'm some kind of global warming denier than to actually engage with what I'm saying.
It's fascinating psychologically, but obviously we're not having a productive conversation. I hope you're able in the future to look at this stuff with clearer eyes. It doesn't seem like you'll be very helpful in solving this problem if this is how you approach it.
10 years ago, we thought we'd be in a worse situation than we are now. Things are still getting worse, but getting worse at a slower rate. If the change in rate continues, things will start to get better at some point.
It will be decades before we can see the results of those actions.
> We do not appear to be on track to meet worst cases scenarios from the IPCC
The worst as in reaching +5ºC on average around 2100? Maybe not, but we're 100% going to shoot beyond +2ºC global avg in the coming decades.
But it gets worse.
Europe is warming at 2x the global avg.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/02/europes-...
The Arctic is warming 4x the global avg.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3
The Arctic has a huge influence on the climate of Europe and NA. Also the warming will trigger climatic feedbacks (arctic ice, methane, etc) if that hasn't happened already. There's no human way to stop feedbacks. It's like trying to stop an earthquake.
Etc.
So yeah, things are looking pretty dire.
Are we going to see any realistic solutions to climate change, the ones which do not expose you as a religious person who want to flagellate themself and still be a sinner?
This might change in a decade or two due to electorate and therefore representation turnover. Until then, you’re on your own.
Edit: @thriftwy reply here because of comment throttling
Will they though? Sounds like those folks are uniquely positioned to take the brunt of climate change. Hard to say who is going to a) still be living and b) have power that far out into the future.
Long story short, do what you can with what you have where you are while staying emotionally healthy and grounded. That’s all that really can be done imho. Take care.
In a decade or two, most of world's electorate, in terms of energy production and manufacturing production capacity, will be people from China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil and the like. Iran, Uzbekistan and Tunisia. Maybe Nigeria or Congo. You will have to start climate change debate afresh because post-christian flagellation is starting on a seriously wrong foot when talking to these people (to whom I am not a complete stranger). The audience who is now receptive to climate change talks will be largely irrelevant.
1. The climate problem is way too ideal of a problem that absolutely requires government intervention (at this point anyways). This sets off big red flags for me, because it makes us more dependent and beholden to "savior" government. We can't fix it - only government can!
2. I am more worried about the messed-up, exotic, forever chemicals we're slowly seeping into everything, because at least with climate change we can probably engineer around it on a big scale. These chemicals? That's the stuff of global-scale annihilation by infertility and hormonal changes in our entire species. Think Alex Jones' crazy "the fluoride in the water is turning the frogs gay".
But because the world's oceans are so huge, the melt just from the ice sheets since 1992 still only adds up to a little less than inch (21 millimeters) of sea level rise, on average. Globally sea level rise is accelerating and melt from ice sheets has gone from contributing 5% of the sea level rise to now accounting for more than one-quarter of it, the study said. The rest of the sea rise comes from warmer water expanding and melt from glaciers.
Though they're happy to call this "devastating", and it sure does sound bad -- that label by itself isn't helpful, because it doesn't tell what danger we're facing and how much time we have to brace for it.
That is -- it's sounding the alarm, without providing specifics as to what even the approximate level of danger to anyone's survival is, in real terms. Which probably has a lot to do with why this stuff barely gets reported, and why people mostly shrug when they hear about it (on top of the psychological and other sources of denial).
The repercussions are basically an increase in warming and a decrease in sea-life. The effects of these will be more temperamental weather, and less fish to eat.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-change-ocean-circulat...
Mechanism: > The conveyor is driven by the descent of cold, salty water to the ocean floor in just two places: in the far North Atlantic near Greenland and in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. In both regions, the mechanism is the same. In cold polar conditions, large volumes of water freeze. The salt in the water is not incorporated into the ice. It remains in the residual liquid water, which grows ever saltier. The saltier water becomes, the denser it becomes. So the residue is heavier than surrounding water and eventually sinks to the ocean floor.
Consequence: > If there was no new deep water plunging to the ocean depths, however, there would be nothing to bring the nutrients back to the surface. Instead, the waters of the deep ocean would accumulate nutrients and become stagnant, while the supply of nutrients to sustain marine life at the surface would be drastically reduced, says one of the paper’s co-authors, Adele Morrison of the Australian National University. Marine ecosystems could collapse. This would not happen instantly. It might take centuries, but once in train could not be prevented.
Consequence: > A shutdown would also accelerate global warming, says Rahmstorf. “The deep-water formation sites are conduits where carbon dioxide is brought down to the ocean abyss, where it is locked away safely from the atmosphere for centuries [and] currently helps slow down global warming. However, this mechanism is set to be weakened.” The IPCC estimates that the oceans altogether capture a quarter of our CO2 emissions, much of it through deep-water formation.
And I am now suitably terrified.
the GP makes a bunch of assumptions about systems that science barely has any understanding of
maybe in order to survive life will have to return to a pre-industrial state, but if that's the case and you think "humanity needs to act now" the only thing you could be possibly advocating for is genocide.
From the link I posted:
> Meanwhile the long-standing concern about a shutdown of the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic sometime in the 21st century appears to be subsiding. A Swiss study[1] published this month found that, contrary to past belief, the circulation did not fail at the end of the last ice age, suggesting, the researchers say, that it was more stable than previously supposed, and less likely to collapse. [1] - https://www.unibe.ch/news/media_news/media_relations_e/media...
We're figuring this out all the time. We know change is happening because of human action. We know this will alter the status quo. For greenhouse gases we know this will involve general global temperature increases. Figuring out the precise results takes some work.
Those ideas seem to be at odds and support the suggestion that the conclusions of climate science are always the same: doom.
I can’t understand why these sort of studies don’t take a probabilistic or temporal approach to their conclusions. In this way they could be better used to inform policy, in their current state they just instill fear. Something like “we calculate P=0.9 for circulation collapse to begin by 2050. To reduce this P to <0.02 would require emission reduction to accelerate by an additional 10% per year” would actually be actionable, and allow further debate to solidify findings.
If you told me P=.99 for collapse of ocean ecosystems I would be much more likely to listen than if you tell me “ocean current destabilisation is ‘worse’/‘better’ than we thought.
If I read these articles right, I believe the North Atlantic circulation may slow, but it's not going to stop. And what is predicted to happen in the Antarctic is predicted to be worse than whatever happens in the North Atlantic.
How does one find a P-value for the accuracy of a model, when all of the parameters are not known?
If model parameters are unknown, you should be doing a sensitivity analysis on these parameters anyway (you must have already estimated values for these to run your model in the first place).
Once you have a measure of the uncertainty of your model and sensitivity to unknown parameters, you can combine this with probabilities of different warming scenarios (maybe from IPCC data), and determine the likelihood of the circulation stopping given current emissions/warming trends.
Put another way, you shouldn't walk around eating random substances you find because no one has proven to you that it won't cause harm.
Broken AC unit in alley this morning. Ambient temperature burst coolant loop. This city's afraid of tomorrow. I've seen its true face. The streets are extended beaches and the beaches are full of plastic and when the seas finally rise all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their emissions and pollution will foam up about their waists and all the deniers and oil execs will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'...and I'll look down and whisper 'No.'
https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-change-ocean-circulat...
> Meanwhile the long-standing concern about a shutdown of the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic sometime in the 21st century appears to be subsiding. A Swiss study[1] published this month found that, contrary to past belief, the circulation did not fail at the end of the last ice age, suggesting, the researchers say, that it was more stable than previously supposed, and less likely to collapse. [1] - https://www.unibe.ch/news/media_news/media_relations_e/media...
> A new analysis by Australian and American researchers, using new and more detailed modeling of the oceans, predicts that the long-feared turn-off of the circulation will likely occur in the Southern Ocean, as billions of tons of ice melt on the land mass of Antarctica. And rather than being more than a century away, as models predict for the North Atlantic, it could happen within the next three decades.
> It predicts a 42 percent decline in deep-water formation in the Southern Ocean by 2050. This is more than twice the 19 percent they predict for an equivalent event in the North Atlantic.
> And after 2050, their model predicts that things will get even worse. Deep-water formation “looks headed towards collapse this century,” the coordinator of the study, Matthew England of the University of New South Wales, told Yale Environment 360. “And once collapsed, it would most likely stay collapsed until Antarctic melting stopped. At current projections that could be centuries away.”
And “not burning to ashes” is something Canada has been failing.
Nobody is going to stop driving their car, nobody is going to stop taking plane trips.
And those are utterly nothing as compared to the largest generators of CO2 --- children. Every single thing that a person can do is miniscule compared to having a baby. Are we going to convince every female from 15-years-old to 40-years-old to not have any children?
If you are past childbearing age and have children, are you going to try to talk them into not having children, and therefore you will have no grandchildren?
Let's all just sit back and watch the world burn, because that is exactly what is going to happen. As far as we know, we may have already passed the point of no return and just don't know it yet, as some things might take a decade or more to unwind, but it is too late to do anything. This is what I think is the case. There is no action that can be taken. It's too late. It doesn't even matter about trying to slow it down. It's like people saying to stop an avalanche with a cardboard box to catch all the snow. Too late, too late.
The future is going to be bleak, people are going to be eating each other.
The circle in the middle is for each child you have, or grandchild. Can you imagine how big that circle is with 2 or 3 or 6 children??? https://imgur.com/FmNUUeB
It is also very unpopular to tell people that they need to change.
Part of the problem is that the things a person can do are almost entirely negligible, compared to industry, or require systematic changes of how housing, cities, and jobs are structured, which isn't something an individual can really influence.
That is, if it means riding your bike to work, or it is a shift in ostentatious spending, from e.g. square footage to bespoke furniture, keeping up with the joneses can actually be an excellent forcing function.
e.g. new england puritans were (are (?)) famously keeping up with the joneses by not buying flashy, wasteful things.
Similar mindsets - that are environmentally responsible - need to take hold (and can take hold. be that example.)
shrug
People vote for all this with their life choices, by what they consume and literally at the ballot box. Saying otherwise is just a popular way to deny responsibility and the individual need to change.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
And animal agriculture is the biggest culprit of them all ... but suggest that people should switch to plant based diets, and even climate activists will want to stone you.
People are the primary cause of climate change. We all want it to change, but too few wants to change.
Look at the changes in one year from the link below. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
Droughts and heat waves have a very real impact in global affairs in the Middle East, South America, India, and Asia.
The disaster is too slow-moving for human time scales to prepare for until it's too late. And our current systems of business and government aren't covering this natural blind spot when they're similarly incentivized to focus on short-term results/re-election.
On a lighter note, watch Invader Zim's Walk For Your Lives [0] episode which cleverly speaks to this problem in the subtext.
You'll probably buy rubber boots first week in January.
When do you migrate?
Migrate where? This analogy doesn't make any sense, unless the apartment is our planet and the answer is "there's nowhere to go".
It's not just about rising water levels, or temperature changes, or weather changes. It's about all of it and the fact that we're performing an experiment with no rollback that may or may not lead to the extinction of our species.
Carl Sagan said in the late 80's[1], and I'm heavily paraphrasing, that by 1989 the US would have spent $1 trillion dollars on the cold war (enough money to buy "everything in the united states except the land") -- which is to say, defending against the potential threat of Soviet invasion. This was obviously a non-zero risk, but the real question is: how large was the risk compared to the money being spent, and what is the risk of climate change compared to the money being spent.
[1]: https://infinite.mit.edu/video/carl-sagan-guest-speaker-sloa...
On top of that, toxicity may be an issue in some areas as the water overcomes man made structures (eg roadways and basements) and systems (eg sewage and fuel delivery) that were never intended to come into contact with water.
But still…someone will market it.
Nobody cares. We're too busy trying to get through our lives. No, I'm not a climate change denier, I'm a climate-change not-care-er. I keep my heat/AC where I'm comfortable. I drive a large comfortable ICE vehicle. Would I buy an EV, solar panel roof, home backup batteries - if they were cheap and as convenient as what I have today? you bet. Persuade me with things that make my life easier, or cost me less than what I have today.
> Nobody cares. We're too busy trying to get through our lives. No, I'm not a climate change denier, I'm a climate-change not-care-er. I keep my heat/AC where I'm comfortable. I drive a large comfortable ICE vehicle. Would I buy an EV, solar panel roof, home backup batteries - if they were cheap and as convenient as what I have today? you bet. Persuade me with things that make my life easier, or cost me less than what I have today.
This is the perfect demonstration of the type of attitude that is pervasive among the high energy use, heavy emission segments of humanity. Most people simply do not like to face the consequences of their actions; they believe their lives must be constantly made easier and more comfortable as part of modernity, progress, human development -- whatever you want to call it.
As became evident in the last few years, its far too late to avoid the effects of climate change. Now its a question of how bad it will get. Well as long as this is the prevailing attitude (and while I have no source to say it is, I feel this to be so), we are ensured to have no short term solutions; so we can count on a future with intermittent catastrophe.
What I find most interesting about this wicked problem is that its loudest proponents also make themselves doubly vulnerable by emphasizing the importance of individualism and downplaying the need for communal response. So its interesting to me to see at what threshold the "make my life easier", "I want a big pickup truck", "I deserve comfort" sentiment starts to be the driver of demanding assistance for natural disasters, drought, famine, etc. We are already seeing it happen in parts of the US southwest, in south florida, and to some extent in the California central valley.
Anyways, I would argue its wrong when people describe climate change as a technical or scientific problem. As we can see, its very much a social and cultural issue -- maybe secondarily an economic one. I think the above sentiment provably captures that.
Actually, a lot of people care. It's just easier to pretend that it's "nobody" so that you can maintain the philosophy that your personal comfort is what matters most in this world.
The only way things get better is via technology that allows people to use the same amount of energy in ways that are less destructive. Anything else is fighting against human nature and wasting your breath.
Human nature is irrelevant. If not, it will be one day.
> Human nature is irrelevant.
Nope. If your plan is to make people do what they don’t want, instead of making what they want tolerable, you’ve already lost.
>If not, it will be one day.
Definitely nope. Climate change will change a lot of things, but even in the most extreme projections, it doesn’t come anywhere close to wiping us out.
I can see where a lot more people than we care to believe follow a philosophy in the same vain as that which was stated. Go ahead, do a survey and I bet you get a lot of "I care about climate change," but who's telling the truth and who's just trying not to look like a selfish a-hole? More people will lie, saying they care than will admit the truth and say they don't care.
This also assumes prices will get cheaper, they will not. Climate change will cause prices to increase.
It's shocking how little foresight people have about this. You don't have to start screaming in the streets - but to publicly proclaim you have zero empathy... and so proudly too.
Potentially one could convince you to favour forcing everybody (yourself included) to reduce emissions, but this seems unlikely when you start off a post with a mocking "the sky is falling!" with a middle of "I drive a large car and keep the heat comfortable" and end it with "convince me". Why would it be in anybodies strategic interest to convincing somebody openly hostile who affirms a minority position? It's more time-efficient to convince other people to use force against parties that you rely on for goods and services, as well as you directly.
Everyone doesn't have to be an activist or even perform outrage (for whatever marginal benefit that has to the cause), but if you're not willing to accept some level of inconvenience then that is a little abhorrent.
Which on a planetary scale, it very much is.
Don't bet against reality. Reality doesn't care what you want. You will always lose.
Given that, I prioritize my comfort and convenience over any of the low efficacy virtue signaling that certain faction in this discussion seems to demand. In practice, this means that I sometimes throw dirty plastic in the garbage rather than washing it for recycling. It’s not clear that washing would be making effective use of potable water given the vanishingly low chance that my plastic will actually be meaningfully recycled. And I don’t have a grey water system available for that kind of task. I didn’t own a car from about 2011 until 2019 because I was lucky to live in areas that supported that lifestyle choice. I have two now because I have relocated somewhere that requires one and I like having a high capacity utility vehicle available. Does that make me the problem? In comparison to another individual in Ghana, sure, absolutely yes. In comparison to a whole multitude of industries like cruise ships which have been allowed to leave their emissions externalities unregulated and unaccounted for? No, I don’t even show up on that chart. So yes, I will be using my air conditioning to stay comfortable. And yes I am also very, very fucking angry that I am trapped in a system that gives me little opportunity to address the systematic problems I observe around me every day. So, op, I see you out there but don’t be afraid to engage in the discussion and push back on the virtue signaling requests.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
[2] https://www.geekyexplorer.com/cruise-ship-pollution/
[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/18351/emissions-from-crui...
Maybe you don't care but your emissions kill people.