Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways • Hacker News Board

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#51

Post by lisper » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

rybosome wrote: post #42

Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? I have to admit that this topic depresses me deeply, as the United States' tepid response does not match the magnitude of the problem. It is shockingly easy to imagine scenarios resulting in the collapse of civilization (agricultural collapse places significant pressure on a few areas which leads to a domino effect of instability trig…

> Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change?

Yes: because failing to be optimistic about it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also, you never know what will make people come around. In any process of winning hearts and minds there is always a time before which things seem hopeless. Look at the Sanders and Trump campaigns: when they started, no one believed they could succeed. Bernie came very close, and Trump actually won. (Not that I want to hold up Trump as a model of how to proceed, but just as a data point to show that the unexpected can happen.) Maybe if we get enough "thousand year floods" like just happened in Maryland -- say a dozen of those events in a year or in a month -- people will suddenly wake up and realize the gravity of the situation and find their sense of duty and planetary patriotism.

You also never know what's coming down the technology pipe. This, for example, looks promising: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-breakthrough-solar-cell-capture...

We can still fix this. Don't lose hope.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#52

Post by Diederich » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:35 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #39

JustUhThought wrote: post #3

We are in for a shtt-storm. But go over to Bloomberg news, and they're wondering why the Japanese won't make the tough cultural sacrifices needed to increase immigration, to stave off stagnant GDP caused by declining population and the accompanying demographics. (I get the workers to non-workers issues in play. Even with that, I believe it is telling, which solutions are put forth. Increase immigration. Not, decrease…

Here is one little positive thought: At least there won't be an ice age, which, according to the timeline, should happen soonish (on geological timescales). An ice age would be very problematic too, and we've averted that easily.

That's true enough. The key point, though, is that the cold would have come at a typical rate. Typical being extremely slow, by human standards. We would have had many generations to prepare for it.

There is growing agreement that what we are facing is going to happen very quickly, even by human standards.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#53

Post by blaze33 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

So, I've been curious: here's a chart of the mean annual temperature departure for Alaska (1949-2015)[1](source: [2]), the past two years have been particularly hotter there with anomalies > 4.5°F.

The NOAA has more detailed datasets but it's a bit more work to extract meaningful information.

Also I'm sick of hearing that people believe (or don't) in climate change when it's just factual data.

[1] http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/sites/default/files/ClimateTren...

[2] http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.ht...

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#54

Post by agentultra » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

It's already hell in many Northern Canadian communities that rely on ice-roads [0].

From what I understand we're on track for an unavoidable > 2C increase in global average temperatures this century. It's also quite likely that we'll be passing the extinction threshold if we don't take extreme measures to avoid it.

It's quite likely another Syria-like crisis could happen anywhere affected by climate change. I'm disconcerted that these issues are not the most pressing issues of our time. There are many valid socio-political issues to consider but extinction seems to be the most important one to me.

Maybe it's because the predictions are far enough into the future that we cannot fathom a solution right now... sort of like how smokers don't make the decision to quit today because it's not going to kill them right now.

[0] https://news.vice.com/article/canadas-ice-roads-are-melting-...

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#55

Post by mc32 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #41

mc32 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan, by some measures, is over populated. But regardless. World population is stabilizing, at least in mature economies. The US would be in a pop decline, if not for immigrants. If we only count US born newborns, the US pop is in decline. Japan facing this issue we will all face is good for them and for us as their solutions will pave the way for other countries which will follow (much of western Europe and east As…

>The US would be in a pop decline, if not for immigrants. But that's exactly my question. Why is importing workers "defraying the issue" when that same tactic works for the US?

Because the trend world wide is for pop to level off and decline. The economies are based on growth. It'd be good for an advanced nation to work a solution to that problem (good economy in a pop decline).

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#56

Post by Diederich » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #2

I have trouble interpreting stories like these as anything other than scare tactics. I'm not a "denier". I'm acknowledging that there's been an increase, generally in the range of 1-2 degrees F. But given an increase of that magnitude, I find it very hard to blame for the kinds of problems being described here. 1F to 2F is well within the normal range of variation, and so if the roadways are suffering from it, it mus…

The temperature increase isn't evenly spread across the globe, it's concentrated toward the poles.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#57

Post by mikestew » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #2

I have trouble interpreting stories like these as anything other than scare tactics. I'm not a "denier". I'm acknowledging that there's been an increase, generally in the range of 1-2 degrees F. But given an increase of that magnitude, I find it very hard to blame for the kinds of problems being described here. 1F to 2F is well within the normal range of variation, and so if the roadways are suffering from it, it mus…

the roads weren't properly designed for the expected variations to begin with.

Considering that the road has been there for seventy-years, I'd argue that it was designed just fine. I mean, yeesh, who am I going to pick for my SME on road construction, the anonymous dude/dudess on a forum devoted to work that will never involve a shovel or leave a callous on your finger, or the U. S. Army Corps of friggin' Engineers who have built roads in places you or I wouldn't survive more than a day or two?

But all appeals to authority aside, let's assume for the moment that the road was built to account for a variation in temps. Problem is, that variation window moved by a few degrees. You get that, right? That the average temp was (just making up #s) 28F +/- 2F and now it's 30F +/- 2F? With my made up numbers, the road never reached the freezing (EDIT: melting, actually) point even with variation. Now it does.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#58

Post by agentultra » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #51

rybosome wrote: post #42

Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? I have to admit that this topic depresses me deeply, as the United States' tepid response does not match the magnitude of the problem. It is shockingly easy to imagine scenarios resulting in the collapse of civilization (agricultural collapse places significant pressure on a few areas which leads to a domino effect of instability trig…

> Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? Yes: because failing to be optimistic about it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, you never know what will make people come around. In any process of winning hearts and minds there is always a time before which things seem hopeless. Look at the Sanders and Trump campaigns: when they started, no one believed they could suc…

> We can still fix this. Don't lose hope.

I think it's beyond our capabilities to "fix" in any meaningful amount of time. However we can still survive. If we remain optimistic and plan to adapt to the coming changes.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#59

Post by placeybordeaux » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

rybosome wrote: post #42

Is there any reason to be optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change? I have to admit that this topic depresses me deeply, as the United States' tepid response does not match the magnitude of the problem. It is shockingly easy to imagine scenarios resulting in the collapse of civilization (agricultural collapse places significant pressure on a few areas which leads to a domino effect of instability trig…

Currently the DoD does not think that stable states will be disrupted to the point of conflict, but unstable states for sure.

It's unclear who exactly they consider fragile states in their report, but I'd certainly put North Korea, India and Pakistan in there as states that have a potential for climate change based conflict. If China feels any real stress they will stop providing rice to North Korea and we could see nukes flying from there.

I personally don't see large scale nuclear war (above 5 nukes flying) happening unless it's Russia or the US that are feeling the pressure. Russia seems to be in the camp of countries that will gain aritable land and the US has a huge amount of resources and plenty of ways to cut back on consumption before it feels the pressure.

If you are suggesting a donimno effect of refugees then the answer is very different: I don't think a large influx of refugees would cause a state to go to war, more likely they would turn them away at the border and we'd see a horrible increase in a humanitarian problems, racism and xenophobia, but then again we seem to have already seen that with the end results of the Arab Spring.

Re: Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways

#60

Post by vkou » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #24

vkou wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real disaster isn't rising sealevels (except in Bangladesh). Homes can be rebuilt. Its just a question of money. The real disaster is agricultural collapse in the tropics and subtropics. Either way, it would be far cheaper to switch our energy production to renewables, then to geo-engineer on a planet scale. We aren't doing that in any meaningful way. Instead we pat ourselves on the back for reducing US coal ener…

> The real disaster isn't rising sealevels (except in Bangladesh). Homes can be rebuilt. Its just a question of money. The real disaster is agricultural collapse in the tropics and subtropics. Homes aren't the only thing destroyed by rising sealevels. Arable land that is under saltwater is a lot less arable.

Most arable land isn't coastal though - and most coastlines are urban. If you flood, say, all of China's, America's, and Europe's coastlines, nobody will have to go hungry. As another poster mentioned, the land doesn't have to be underwater to become unusable, but rising sea levels have a limited reach.