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Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

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Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#371

Post by jnicholasp »

M_Grey wrote: post #337
jnicholasp wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing here that we are. I'm arguing that it is conceivable that intelligent creatures could exist that were.

Why would such a cooperative require intelligence, never mind high intelligence? We already see such vast cooperatives in fungi, but they have no selection pressures for intelligence. Far from it, competition is the driver that made us "smart".

I'm not saying that cooperative behavior requires intelligence. I'm saying that cooperative behavior is a reasonable and effective choice for creatures intellectually capable of choosing between behavioral strategies, no matter what the evolutionary forces were that developed them to the point of being intelligent.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#372

Post by good_vibes »

jacquesm wrote: post #71
good_vibes wrote: post #60

[wow]

If you're on HN for all of 20 days and this is the level of your contribution to this thread I suggest you take your fart jokes elsewhere. Thank you.

I've been on HN for much longer. I just decided to start over because I've changed a lot over the years.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#373

Post by jnicholasp »

alicorn wrote: post #335
jnicholasp wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not conflating IQ with values, I'm arguing that as average IQ goes up, the percentage of the population who will recognize that certain problems of non-immediate import will inevitably become immediate, personal problems, will also go up. I agree with you that the mechanisms through which greater awareness and active concern for seemingly abstract problems will trickle into the global zeitgeist are things like ed…

I see your point. I would argue, howevever, that very few of the issues we are facing at the moment stem from lack of understanding. We have most of the knowledge we require to instantiate a radically better-off civilisation, and, most importantly, we have the tools to continue gathering and applying said knowledge and iterate on said civilisation. But we choose not to. There are loads of VERY smart people in the top…

> I would argue, however, that very few of the issues we are facing at the moment stem from lack of understanding.

My 11 year old nephew sprained his ankle a few weeks ago playing basketball, badly enough that he started walking in an odd way to compensate for the discomfort. He kept playing sports, including soccer on a rough grass field, every day at school recess, despite us having talks several times about how he needs to stay off it and let it recover or else he risks causing lasting damage. He nods and says, "I know" when I tell him that, but he keeps doing it. I think we are collectively much the same: we 'know', but we don't really believe that the abstract, distant bad thing will ever really happen to us.That is not understanding. That is lip service.

My argument isn't that IQ makes every individual behave better - it is the statistical argument that if the population average went up 20 points (and that number is one I just threw out, but I do think it's close), then we might cross a tipping point where there would then be enough people who take abstract, distant bad things seriously enough to take meaningful action, to form a significantly politically effective bloc.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#374

Post by wilkommen »

bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

That's totally wild. I hadn't heard about this before.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#375

Post by AznHisoka »

astrodust wrote: post #362
AznHisoka wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop with this tangent. grandparent is asking a question almost every average person is asking: what is the impact on me? and you basically started an entirely new unrelated subthread.

I'm sorry, did another political party just designate the former head of an oil company as Secretary of State, or did they take someone actively suing the EPA the head of the EPA? Is there any other party on the planet receiving massive amounts of money from coal companies? This is not unrelated. This is directly related. If the US was some little country in the Pacific where they could do whatever they wanted with l…

the grandfather is drowning and is asking "will i survive?" and you are basically in high ground yelling "blame the politicians!".

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#376

Post by Retric »

BrailleHunting wrote: post #300
Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.

Untrue and misleading. The more important GWP half-life (neither concentration lifetime nor concentration half-life) is on the order of 50 years . http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zuRBO1uTI70/T8A40kdMWBI/AAAAAAAAC9...

That's a graph of total heat gain / time which does not have a half-life. If you take A/10 years the A/20years them A/30 years... the graph looks like that, but you not getting warming in years 10-20 just averaging over longer time periods. Basically, it's graphing a short spike in temperatures and a rapid return to normalcy as a much slower decay.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#377

Post by zyxzkz »

mirimir wrote: post #242
M_Grey wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to get around to reading those books... I have Blindsight sitting on a shelf.

I love his ideas, but sometimes they swamp the action. There's less of that in Echopraxia than in Blindsight , as a response to feedback. But Blindsight gives you back story for Echopraxia . After you've read them, do check out https://www.reddit.com/r/SF_Book_Club/comments/2hzpmt/echopr... .

Which one should you read first?

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#378

Post by zyxzkz »

braymundo wrote: post #73
dreamcompiler wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some hope. We could geoengineer a giant shade structure to reflect sunlight away from earth. It would cost $trillions (twelve zeros) but it could be done with current technology. And it would cool the Earth immediately. Unfortunately it would do nothing to fix ocean acidification, which threatens to starve and/or suffocate us all.

You mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_II:_The_Quickening

I always liked that movie...

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#379

Post by zyxzkz »

zouhair wrote: post #176
_m8fo wrote: post #41

So, assuming we're screwed, where's the best place to move preemptively? I know Boston isn't that place. - I assume the coasts are a nonstarter. - Moving inland could be nice, but the ground would need to be pretty arable to restart civilization there. I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet, given the lack of resource exploitation there, but then again, there's not much infrastructure at the moment.

You do know most of the World is living off over exploitation of Africa.

Can you elaborate?

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#380

Post by dwaltrip »

buckbova wrote: post #360
brogrammer2 wrote: post #258

Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!! After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page. The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on ri…

Someone just copy/pasted your comment to reddit. Congrats. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6163gu/7000_unde...

Hmm... the Reddit user has a 4 year old account, and the HN user has a 23 day old account. Are we sure about who copied who?
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