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Comment by Terretta | Hacker News Reader

The terms "imminent" and "predict the time" seem like missing the point of the article you acknowledged you have only skimmed.

I felt the article was clear collapse is not imminent, not even in this century.

I felt it noted focus was not on imminence, but on changes worth mentioning in aspects of interest.

Perhaps the difference is this article is talking of timing for transitions of significance, rather than the forthcoming collapse more likely to arrive sooner after such transitions?

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You are completely correct I regret that word choice now. I was rushing to comment because I felt it was important to provide context on AMOC collapse scholarship.

Memento mori: top comment made the same mistake[1], your contributions reinforced the top comment, and your separate individual reply is the second comment.

Rushing to comment has deep effects on HN, the threading incentivizes appending to the top comments rather than replying. This will now be a philosophical debate about scientific trust for hours just because people assume the article says "collapse is happening shortly by X date", but its just a statistical model :(

Don't mean to make you feel bad or call you out, most people don't read the article if it's popular. It's my attempt to give a little back to the community to note it, been here a very long time, and when people try calling it out coarsely it isn't constructive.

[1] sort of: they understood it was a statistical model but spent so much time hand-wringing about Nature publishing a statistical model that it came off like there was something wrong with the article, causing a rush of replies of "how can I trust anything??"

Thank you for your kind tone (genuinely). I understand your concern. I certainly hope it does not become a debate about scientific trust for hours although you are right its headed that way. I have a great amount of trust in the scientific consensus, am a publishing climate scientist myself, and did genuinely enjoy this paper. It is my opinion that is instructive for people to know that studies on AMOC collapse are often misinterpreted when they are spread widely, similar maybe to headlines about experimental new battery designs. I do not think that the authors of the study have any ill intent or that their work is unimportant, but rather that AMOC collapse is an incredibly complex topic and that when studies on it are often posted to sites like hacker news (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28085342 I have been here a decade just not on this throwaway ;) ) they are often taken as a significant change in the understanding of the field which they are not (yet at least).

I see your point that harping on this fact is perhaps boring and repetitive so I apologize for that.

This is the single biggest flaw in how HN discussions are formed. I almost always downvote the top comment. Often they completely derail any sort of meaningful discussion. I have fantasized around a "forum garden" where we could experiment with other ways of facilitating discussions.

There should at least be several ways to sort the comments (like reddit) and then each page load should randomly select one way to sort it unless a user has explicitly set a sort method preference in their account settings.

For myself, I’m looking for a forum that has no up votes or down votes.

It has nothing to do with downvotes. The first person to show up decides the entire future direction of the conversation.

One presentation format which utterly flips this is to post newest message first.

Random ordering can also work.

(Newest first has its own issues, notably of late-hit low-value comments. But the overall effect on the thread discussion of early low-value comments is reduced.)

Which is a great idea and HN does.

I'd love to see a chatmodel as a forum board moderator. They understand nuances, so it would be able to spot people just fighting or adding too much snark. A real net nanny.

I don't know. I'd rather have the top comment be from a physical oceanographer than from, say, some random web programmer. Both the perspective and the background context information are valuable.

I've more than once made a late comment to a thread that I've felt has gone ... seriously pear-shaped ... and found that comment rising to or near the top of the thread.

HN does reward earliness somewhat, but less so than many other fora.

Focus more on getting it right than getting it fast.

It's mentions a potential collapse as early as 2025. More precisely 2025-2095. That is this century and it's accurate to say 2025 is imminent.

Yes, but I - and probably you - will die sometime between 2025 and 2095. I wouldn't say that therefore our deaths are imminent.

Right but that's just you making a bad comparison on the timescale of this thing having collapsed previously it's pretty imminent.

Likely, but if the collapse happens in say 2030, the rest of my life and that of almost everyone else, however short or long that may be, is not going to be pleasent.

Regardless, I would like to see humanity safely thrive. I don't want earth to become an example of the great filter theory.

That’s a ridiculous comparison. Single human lifetimes are only measured in decades.

If the entirety of humans were very likely to be wiped out from 2025 to 2095, you would definitely call that imminent, and is a much more apt comparison.

That’s a ridiculous comparison. The vast majority of humans don't live anywhere near the Atlantic so there's no way the entirety of humans would be wiped out. My comparison was much more apt.

The number of people the collapse would affect is a whole lot closer to “the total human population” than “1 person”.

Obviously, the OP does not have children or does not care about the future children are the future animals or the future anything

2095 isn’t, but 2025 sure is if I’m thinking about my death! Also, for an event like this, even 70 years out seems “imminent” To me.

My kids should still be alive in 2100, if only just

If my son lives as long as his (still alive) great grandpa has so far, he’ll still be alive in 2110.

> It's mentions a potential collapse as early as 2025

"DOOM ITS THE END OF THE WORLD!" is a tale as old as time... revelations has been screaming the end is near for thousands of years now.

It's "accurate to say" that prophets and prophecies are notoriously wrong which is why signs that the ice caps will be gone by 2000 have been removed from state parks.

hint: they aren't gone.

Which previous doom sayer had mountains of evidence by thousands of scientists?

... all of them? Ice caps are still there and the world still isn't that much hotter than it normally is.

and "thousands of scientists" lol sure... thousands of priests say that miracles happen.

Meanwhile... those same "scientists" are silent as the solutions to "climate catastrophe" are mountains of "green" tech that's unrecyclable after destroying the earth to create batteries, wind mills and solar panels that under perform and end up in land fills.

https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winner-who-doesnt-belie...

But... if that's not enough? What about scientists - including Nobel prize winning scientists - that say there are no crisis?

My opinion? "Climate Change" is a religion just like other religions - some truth mixed with a lot of "follow what I say or WE'RE ALL DEAD!". Literally 100 years of failed predictions making global warming... I mean cooling... I mean acid rain... I mean CLIMATE CATSTROPHE! wrong at every step.

Can't have real conversations about real solutions to real problems when you're dealing with religious faithful which is why green solutions are going to fuck our planet up more than oil could ever dream of.

... all of them?

Name one and show their evidence

Meanwhile... those same "scientists" are silent

What are you talking about

as the solutions to "climate catastrophe"

Now you are mixing 'solutions' with just admitting there is a problem.

My opinion? "Climate Change" is a religion just like other religions

Climate change has huge amounts of evidence behind it. A religion by definition doesn't. If a religion had evidence it would be science.

Can't have real conversations

Is this your version of a real conversation?

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