Evidence of human influence on Northern Hemisphere snow loss | Hacker News Reader

Evidence of human influence on Northern Hemisphere snow loss

nature.com

72 pointsrntn39 comments

Well, at least we'll have plenty of ammunition to locally target ice cover if we go down the icehouse branch of the Ghil-Sellers model.

(Which found in the 70s that the positive ice-albedo feedback was strong enough to plunge the model Earth into a global pole-to-pole ice age if solar output dropped by 6%. It was briefly a big scare.)

Figure 3 in the paper is particularly excellent.

75% of carbon emissions come from energy production.

If this is actually an emergency, the only feasible option at the moment is nuclear power. If anybody is talking about anything other than nuclear power, I question their motivations.

If you're still saying things like "there is no viable path except nuclear power" in 2024, then you're not paying any attention to what's happening in the world right now. There is literally no economic path to deploying enough nuclear to make a difference right on the timescales necessary to fight climate change, while renewable construction is on an exponential tear (particularly in China). Storage costs are also dropping on an exponential curve. Meanwhile nuclear costs and deployment aren't seeing anything similar. https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-s-solar-capacity-sur...

Ouch that link.

When people stop ignoring exponential growth, they just decide to project it forward without any consideration.

I really doubt China's electricity usage will more than double until 2026. Or that it will be 100% (or rather, 300%?) replaced by solar.

China is aiming to build 206 GW of additional renewables (excluding coal and nuclear) in 2024, and they reached their 2023 targets ahead of schedule.

And they probably will.

The article says they'll have 5 times that, from solar alone, by 2026. What they almost certainly won't, there's nobody to buy that much energy and it's not enough time to create some industry that could use it.

exponential? is there a link where i can read about the storage costs dropping exponentially and renewable construction growing exponentially?

(i thought china was in a construction freeze with a huge quantity of incomplete high rises, for example)

You keep using that word (exponential), but I do not think it means what you think it means.

It means that growth in renewable deployment over the past several years can be fit to an exponential curve, and shows no signs of immediate slowdown. If what you think I’m saying is that growth will continue on that trajectory forever, then that’s a very foolish thought.

I'm sorry my comment was a little snarky. What I meant to say is that is not an exponential curve. It may have tracked with a quadratic curve, or even a cubic curve, but not an exponential curve. In mathematics, a curve that grows exponentially is (loose definition) one where the exponent is increasing as you move along the x-axis. f(x)=2^x is an example of an exponential curve. f(x)=x^2 is an example of a quadratic curve that may better describe what you're referring to.

In this case we're talking about a situation where growth occurs by a (relatively) constant percentage over a period of time. Between 2000-2022 solar capacity has been increasing at about 37% per year, doubling every 2.2 years (per Wikipedia) and that trend appears to be on track to continue for at least a few more years, until (obviously) it levels out because the world is finite.

You need a plan to to execute at the policy level, and at the field/ground level - That is always the hard part. "Lets do X, its so much better than Y" - yeah, we know, but please also propose a practical plan of how to accomplish that. Otherwise, we're all just sitting around nodding heads.

>If anybody is talking about anything other than nuclear power, I question their motivations.

And what will this accomplish?

Question away, your questioning is noted.

Nuclear has a long lead time. Setting aside safety concerns, any realistic shift to accelerating nuclear would not help us much in the 10 year range. If we are most concerned about tipping points, which tbh appear real but impossible to predict, a nearer term but less effective shift to renewables would be warranted.

When I say “realistic” I mean in the current political and cultural climate. If we posit that we can do anything we want, dictator-style, that’s a thought experiment. At which point I’m totally with you: latest designs, aggressive funding and incentives for both r&d and actual projects, etc. That’d complement the progress we’ve made with renewables.

I've heard this argument that it's too long to build 10 years ago as well, the best time to plant a tree is now I guess as the proverb says? And it's not like climate change will stop in the next 10 years anyways.

> Setting aside safety concerns

Nuclear is the safest energy source per kilo of fuel mined and spent.

There are numerous ways to look at safety here. All else being equal, non-nuclear-weapon states wishing to arm with nuclear weapons would hate a total ban on nuclear energy, due to dual-use mining acting as a cover for their arms development.

Is that a sufficient justification for actually imposing such a ban? I personally don’t think so, but reasonable people can disagree on that.

Nuclear probably has a place in phasing out fossil fuels, but the idea that its the only solution for every situation and nothing else is worth talking about is as idiotic as writing off nuclear altogether. We need a price on carbon and individual actors in the market should decide what alternative is best for their given situation. Picking a specific technology and then trying to force on everyone is inefficient and needlessly expensive regardless of which technology you choose. The world is complicated and there are almost never silver bullets. Especially in this case.

nobody made that argument

"If this is actually an emergency, the only feasible option at the moment is nuclear power. If anybody is talking about anything other than nuclear power, I question their motivations."

Seems close enough

Why not spending less energy?

we can do both, but energy efficiency is only a small part of it; still need to transition the bulk of energy away from fossil fuels

There are places in the world where a robust continent-spanning grid of renewables could compete with nuclear, but that's also a difficult problem to solve.

The ski season has so far been miserable in terms of snow pack. Last year was a positive fluke, with high snowfall early in the season. Some resorts are seeing half as much snow as last year.

Stating this season is half of what last season was immediately after stating that last season was a fluke doesn't help in comparing what the normal situation is like. The season immediately after a very unusual high amount would naturally be much lower. Comparing to outliers feels like someone trying to make a dishonest point

> The season immediately after a very unusual high amount would naturally be much lower.

Much lower than the unusually high amount, not much lower than average, to clarify.

Interesting how clarifying can make a difference. In California, the anomaly was having a much higher snow than the preceding years. That's what/where my brain jumped to for reference. What region are you referring?

I'm not sure what the parent was referring to, I'm just clarifying how regression to the mean works, ie just because something was higher than average one year, doesn't mean you can expect it to be lower than average the next year (you can always expect it to be average).

El Nino has a lot to do with snow pack. I don't know where you are at but from the Vail Basin to Keystone that usually means less snow. Anecdotally of course, that is just my own experience over the last 30 years of skiing here in CO.

But it still gets warmer than it did 30 years ago, and the little snow you get in those years doesn't go as far as it used too.

Miserable where? North hemisphere is fairly vast and there has been plenty of snow "here"

I'm based in "snow country" which is Northern East Honshu to Hokkaido, Japan.

We've had the strangest season. Later November seemed like we were in for a great season, we had snow on the ground, and it was great, early december mild temps and a bit more snow, then it decided to turn into spring and rain (practically unheard of), lower altitudes felt other worldly for this time of year. Nearly all the snow melted, the lower part of the resort couldn't open and resort almost had to close. It did temporarily...in freaking December? It was a terrifying blow to the local economy. I don't rely on tourism for my money but my friends do and they were freaked right out.

It was miserable.

Note that the place I'm describing would usually see +10 meters of snow fall a winter and rain was unheard of. Consistent snow fall was only to be expected. Not this year.

Lately we've been smashed by a few blizzards (thank god), we've accumulated a few meters in a week, the snow has been good but again this isn't really normal for around here. It's half way through January. What was normal until about 10 years ago was 20-40cms a night from late November, light winds and great snow conditions, averaging about -3+3c at about 500m AMSL. Today it's -5 and tomorrow it's forecast +7c during the day with some light rain for about 4 days. Do you see how that's going to impact the snow pack? Granted it' set to cool off again next week and snow again but none of this is preferable for around here.

This place relies on snow for tourism, culture, and farming.

The longer we let the climate emergency go without drastic action, the heavier the economic, social and ecological impacts will be. We'll all be affected.

Climate Change Could Cut World Economy by $23 Trillion in 2050, Insurance Giant Warns: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/climate/climate-change-ec...

You didn't even open the paper did you?

Global warming is small, you mostly notice a difference in how many days the snow stays. So in northern hemisphere the snow might be gone a couple of weeks earlier now than a century ago, but it will of course still snow just as much as before during the winter.

But that also means that for places where the snow barely stayed before now you will often not see snow at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht#Winners

Water vapour in the sky traps heat, so how much is the cloud seeding that's blatantly-obviously happening widespread impacting-causing this?

Where is the cloud seeding happening and why would the water vapor not still remain in the air, cloud seeding or not? What does that have to do with anything?

In such a large world it’s hard to find ways to help out. What can an individual do to accelerate this trend?

Could you clarify what trend you want to accelerate?

It's a good thing we have so many excellent technologies for producing abundant energy from nuclear fuels - sources of abundant energy will be essential for geo-engineering.

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