Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

insideclimatenews.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 254 posts

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#221

Post by lithos »

Udik wrote: post #150
aaron-lebo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricanes? New Orleans will never recover. That same season saw a couple other storms that were just as strong but luckily missed worst case scenarios. I wouldn't be shocked if cat five hurricanes became pretty common in a couple of decades due to warmer waters, and one or two of those a year would devastate coastal economies. But I'm not a weatherman...

And these statements are based on what? There have been some major earthquakes around the world in the last 20 years, are they also caused by global warming? Do you project an increase in them in the next 20 years? Here's a page with good, updated information about global warming and hurricanes: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

Actually Wisconsin isn't by any fault lines and occasionally gets an earth quake (very small). From the glacier recession of the last ice age. Turns out glaciers are heavy and bedrock is still uncompressing.

So we do have proof of weather changes causing earthquakes.

Though I doubt anyone has data or models that would be useful for this tangent. At least for oceanic fault lines, which could be affected by ocean rise.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#222

Post by fictioncircle »

brokenmasonjars wrote: post #159
fictioncircle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would only allow them to win more elections and retain power for longer. Instead include them in discussions; try to socialize them. Don't talk down to them as they will move away from the discussion and purposefully remain ignorant and vote on such feelings of wrong and vengeance that emerges from ridiculing them. Have we learned nothing from Trump's victory? If so, get ready for two terms. The problem isn't…

I never said it would be easy. All I'm saying is to shout them down and ridicule them is going to make the problem worse. Socializing is a good first time. Keep talking to them. Try not to lose your cool. It's hard.. it's really hard. I know people who are Trump fans and are caught up in one aspect that they like about him. Be it ant-immigration or whatever. I do my best to make them think I'm actively accepting thei…

> I never said it would be easy. All I'm saying is to shout them down and ridicule them is going to make the problem worse. Socializing is a good first time. Keep talking to them. Try not to lose your cool. It's hard.. it's really hard. I know people who are Trump fans and are caught up in one aspect that they like about him. Be it ant-immigration or whatever. I do my best to make them think I'm actively accepting their views.. then I do my best to talk about some stuff here and there..if I get them to acknowledge one flaw in their thinking then I see that as a positive. Its going to take years..decades and luck.

Socializing and normalizing people who claim people never shot BLM protesters, Mosques don't get burned down, and Sandy Hook never happened is the opposite of what you should do.

I'm sorry, but normalizing that behavior is not a viable solution.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#223

Post by giardini »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #158
giardini wrote: post #155

Why the Chicken Little sky-is-falling panic? By the time the Earth freezes over or turns into a dustball (or whatever other disastrous scenario you envision): a) we'll have AI that can solve the climate problem cost-effectively, or b) we will pass our legacy on to our AI descendants, just like in the movie "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", where, at the end humans are extinct and Manhattan is buried under a glacier. Ni…

The problem is that the effects of rising sea-levels alone will be pretty bad in our lifetime. For the good portion of people that live in reality, and not a sci-fi world that doesn't exist or they'll never be able to afford, a rise in global temperatures is a bad thing.

The real problems are

a) Redirected despair - liberals' despair over the Republican election victory has been redirected to AGW. Some are now convinced them that the world will be underwater within the next two elections.

b) Lack of imagination - AGW has become a religion: to question any aspect of AGW or to propose new alternatives or new solutions is instantly interpreted as charlatanism. Minds are doctrinally set in concrete and are consequently both scientifically uncritical and uncreative.

Many AGW proponents are modern-day Thomas Malthus': no credit is given to human ingenuity, no possible solutions exist (other than the ones they parrot), and they think we're all gonna die (and SOON, now that Trump has won). Gloom-and-doom downers all. It is no wonder their normal friends won't speak to them (which only increases their despair).

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#224

Post by giardini »

lacampbell wrote: post #19

My one crumb of comfort will be seeing the expensive coastal houses of property investors be destroyed. I really should get some land high above sea level while it's still cheap and undesirable.

I don't endorse your glee at the woe of others but you really, really should "get some land high above sea level". It may be a rumour, but I heard that the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski's former Montana cabin site may be up for sale. It might be just what you're looking for!8-))

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#225

Post by giardini »

fsloth wrote: post #182
giardini wrote: post #155

Why the Chicken Little sky-is-falling panic? By the time the Earth freezes over or turns into a dustball (or whatever other disastrous scenario you envision): a) we'll have AI that can solve the climate problem cost-effectively, or b) we will pass our legacy on to our AI descendants, just like in the movie "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", where, at the end humans are extinct and Manhattan is buried under a glacier. Ni…

Both of those scenerios are so ill defined that at this point it's lunacy to think they are solutions to anything. This leads me to conclude you think our level of understanding is about two or three magnitudes higher than it actually is. We don't understand brains or intelligence. Therefore thinking we could replicate them is silly since we don't even know what to replicate. This is not to say the march of creating…

So, in your opinion, we won't have adequate AI in time to help us deal with AGW? That is, a disastrous AGW collapse will precede any Singularity (or even a non-Singularity AI that radically improves our engineering/scientific abilities)?

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#226

Post by AnsemWise »

Udik wrote: post #150
aaron-lebo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricanes? New Orleans will never recover. That same season saw a couple other storms that were just as strong but luckily missed worst case scenarios. I wouldn't be shocked if cat five hurricanes became pretty common in a couple of decades due to warmer waters, and one or two of those a year would devastate coastal economies. But I'm not a weatherman...

And these statements are based on what? There have been some major earthquakes around the world in the last 20 years, are they also caused by global warming? Do you project an increase in them in the next 20 years? Here's a page with good, updated information about global warming and hurricanes: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

Earthquakes have no known cause so doesn't support your point well

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#227

Post by fsloth »

giardini wrote: post #225
fsloth wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those scenerios are so ill defined that at this point it's lunacy to think they are solutions to anything. This leads me to conclude you think our level of understanding is about two or three magnitudes higher than it actually is. We don't understand brains or intelligence. Therefore thinking we could replicate them is silly since we don't even know what to replicate. This is not to say the march of creating…

So, in your opinion, we won't have adequate AI in time to help us deal with AGW? That is, a disastrous AGW collapse will precede any Singularity (or even a non-Singularity AI that radically improves our engineering/scientific abilities)?

AI and singularity are these high level goals a part of the technological community is striving at.

Global warming on the other hand is a practical problem we are facing with plausibly catastrophic results.

Non existing poorly defined high level goals cannot solve an existing problem.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#228

Post by crpatino »

Avalaxy wrote: post #14
crpatino wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you are trolling, but I will bite. You know the Netherlands will be literally underwater within this century, don't you?

Not it won't. Why do you think differently?

As already noted in other sibling comments, the Netherlands is famous for having lots of territory under current sea level. According to Wikipedia, roughly half of its territory is 1 meter above sea level or lower. Two more facts from the same source: it is one of the more densely populated countries in the world, and the second exporter of agricultural products (only behing USA).

On the positive side, they have 500 years of experience building dykes and defending their coast line. Their experience will be invaluable to fight off raise of sea level during the current century, inland and around the world.

On the negative, they have huge liabilities that can be triggered even by temporary floods. Refugee crisises during storms, lost of high value agricultural land due to increased salinity of soil, etc. All this will cut down on their budget to support their current dyke infrastructure, precisely at a time when they should be extending and enhancing it agressively.

Rinse and repeat for 50 years, and you are bonded to see an ever growing number of marginal areas that are deemed not worth salvaging and left to be turned in unproductive swamps. I do not see the impoverished and overpopulated remanant of Netherlands surviving for long afterwards.

Best case scenario I imagine is they will be absorbed by Germany, who may at that time have the economic power to keep the dykes in running order. Or they may try to stick to their own guns, in which case it is hard to tell how much land they will be able to hold dry.

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#229

Post by josho »

giardini wrote: post #213
basurihn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James Hansen is the Doctor Oz of climate change. Dude will release study after study before they hit peer review. He's a god damn charlatan. https://theconversation.com/study-predicts-multi-meter-sea-l...

More like the Wizard of Oz of climate change - Hansen is an outright alarmist. I'm afraid my mad-hatter friend (whom I posted of earlier) has been reading Hansen's book with all critical faculties disabled.

I hoped that on hacker news folks would provide a reason for why his research/conclusions are wrong, rather than simply offer up character attacks.

Do you have an example of where his research is wrong or his conclusions were overly pessimistic?

Re: Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

#230

Post by LeifCarrotson »

tzs wrote: post #170
RandyRanderson wrote: post #133

Sea level rise is neither the largest nor most immediate threat of climate change. Water happens to have one of the highest, and I would argue, the most important thermal capacity of all the compounds we're likely to come into contact with daily. Water has about 5-10x the heat capacity of most common things and so heating up the all the oceans by say 2 degs average is an ENORMOUS amount of energy. Why is this importa…

> Far before ppl are forced from the shores by rising waters they will be forced from the shores by massive, frequent, destructive storms that, instead of say destroying 1/1000 homes, will destroy 1/100. Eventually it will be economically non-viable to live in storm-prone zones. It's possible to build homes that are much more resistant to storms than current homes [1], although they cost more than the currently most…

Not likely. Using the parent example that climate change causes the risk of destruction from a hurricane to increase from 0.1% to 1%, consider that 1000 homes of the old type for 100k each would cost $100 million.

Replacing 10 of these costs 1 million - but let's be generous and assume that you need to do this every 6 years, and use a 30-year period for our analysis. That brings our total cost to $105 million. If all the new homes survive undamaged, you have to build 1000 hurricane-resistant homes for less than $105 million to make the project viable, an increase of 5%. Looking briefly at that page, none of those features look particularly cheap. You'd probably burn your $5000 on just finishing the underside of the floor joists to elevate the home on those pilings, to say nothing of their fancy shapes or high-spec materials.

Post reply on HN