Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#201

Post by xyzzyz » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:42 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #81

matte_black wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such events are necessary to keep human population under a manageable number. Throughout human history there have been outbreaks that claimed many lives and stunted population growth for some time. We will likely see such an event in our time.

Humans prior to modern times haven't ever exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment and haven't had a die out that substantially reduced our population in modern times. Your thesis other than being fictional also is an emotional appeal to the concept that what is natural is desirable which is wholly unsound both on its face and because any die out sufficient to be effective is entirely likely to not only take…

Humans prior to modern times haven't ever exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment

Can you provide a citation for this? My understanding is that humanity have spent most of its history near the carrying capacity of the environment -- world population was very stable, and the major increases in population happened due to humans figuring out new ways to increase the carrying capacity (e.g through farming), or lucking out into them (e.g. through lactose tolerance genes). At least, could you specify what excatly you mean by "modern times"?

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#202

Post by Apocryphon » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:48 AM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #182

chc wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lovecraftian" is still used as a general term for an entire genre of fiction. He was a xenophobe, but that is not what he's best known for. Similarly, Aristotle was a misogynist, but it would not be accurate to say that Aristotle is best known as a navel-gazing misogynist.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Lovecraft is fundamentally about confronting modernism and the inevitable decay of humanity in the faces of forces beyond our control. Central to that is the decay of the Anglo-Saxon genetic stock. Xenophobic isn't quite the right word. Racist is closer, but even that misses the mark. Every story he writes is terrified of black voodoo savages, or toothless white hill peo…

Ur-tribalist, perhaps.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#203

Post by golemiprague » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:57 AM UTC

corpMaverick wrote: post #2

It is not just a bomb that can blow the arctic. It can destroy all human civilization. And at this point, we may have lost any ability to do anything. Edit: Doom scale... 1 Inconvenient storms. 2 More frequent natural disasters. 3 Destroying coastal cities. 4 Causing hunger, wars and mass migrations. 5 Decimating human population. 6 Destroying human civilization. 7 Destroying all humans on earth. 8 Destroying all lif…

All those things can and did happen from various other reasons. I don't see why I should be worried about those things just because some human actions might lead to it. They might not, it might happen by nature with no relation to people, I refuse to worry about it, it is stupid.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#204

Post by mirimir » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

sulam wrote: post #145

dredmorbius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resilience of humanity may actually be inversely proportional to its population. Yonatan Zunger, of Google, writing nearly five years ago, tossed out a fact that's stuck with me since: the response of "large animal" populations to global temperature changes: "When the biota of a planet get rewritten, the creatures that require the most delicate maintenance die first. This tends to mean really big creatures, that…

Before you get too happy about PETM, realize we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere at six times the peak PETM rate. We are in for a rough ride over the next several hundred years.

Well, I'll be dead before it gets too bad. But yes, the next few centuries will be challenging. China, Russia and Canada will do well, I suspect. Maybe even the Sahara. But not most of the US and Europe.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#205

Post by vasilipupkin » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #192

vasilipupkin wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unlikely that is the case. You are assuming that clean technologies will produce only economic cost not a net economic benefit. But that's not how technology works generally

Great, what is the national road-map for our transition to these net-beneficial clean technologies? If they are net-beneficial, why haven't we transitioned to them yet? What factors blocking this transition will be removed in the years to come, and how exactly are we going to remove them? What decade we going to hit net zero carbon? It's like a startup saying: "Well, sure, we are losing money hand over fist, and our…

The national roadmap is absolutely massive amount of R&D going into self driving cars for example or solar batteries

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#206

Post by mirimir » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

sulam wrote: post #164

pdeuchler wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why people don't listen to the scientists, because absurd FUD like this gets spread and it discredits the entire movement. Even the most doomsday predictions are on the order of inches, maybe over a foot in the next 50 years. Such a rise would still be incredibly devastating, don't get me wrong, but it would take about a hundred years of a completely runaway warming cycle to raise the seas a single meter, muc…

I'm quite serious about the historical record. This is not FUD, this is data. The historical record shows that the last time atmospheric CO2 concentration was at the level we are at currently, several things were true. 1) temperatures were 4-5C higher. 2) there was no permanent surface ice anywhere on the planet as far as they can tell. 3) mean eustatic sea level was anywhere from 50 to 200m above current levels. htt…

It's not just melting and thermal expansion. There's also loss of mass at the poles, which increases sea level elsewhere.

Edit: sense

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#207

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

noiv wrote: post #123

maxxxxx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It can destroy all human civilization." I think saying stuff like this should be avoided. There is almost no chance that civilization will be destroyed. There will be major problems but the world won't go under. By making up total doom scenarios credibility of climate change proponents goes down a lot in my view.

We tend to believe our current level of civilization is stable because it got never challenged by climate changing this fast. Probably it is not about ending all human culture but about rolling back decades or centuries in a lot of regions. I remember how Sandy interrupted gas supply in New York. People took extreme measurements to get what was 'needed' - civilized was something different. Just because English lacks…

If you want climate change to be taken seriously don't use extreme language. Otherwise it's too easy to be called alarmist and nothing will happen.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#208

Post by InclinedPlane » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #102

> But once carbon begins to percolate up through the thawing soil, it could form a feedback loop What? This has been happening for years.

Yes, but there's a point where the rate hits a critical level that dumps it in a runaway feedback loop. Have we hit that rate already? We don't know enough to say, but it's fairly likely that we'll hit it within the 21st century.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#209

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

sulam wrote: post #143

maxxxxx wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say temps rise by 10 degrees and sea levels rise a lot. I would think there will still be a lot of areas that will be inhabitable. I don't think that the atmosphere will become unbreathable. I think you can have a pretty sophisticated civilization with 100 million or even 10 million people. Again, I am not saying these things are OK. We should worry about displacing millions of people and probably wars but civi…

Of course the planet will be inhabitable. Will there be any of us to inhabit it? Or will war break out because of population migration due to the effects of climate change? I don't know the answer to the first question, but the second one is easy -- it's already happening.

These are important issues but I still doubt civilization will get destroyed. Let's warn of likely scenarios. These are bad enough. No need for exaggeration that then can easily be refuted.

Re: Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost

#210

Post by vkou » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #205

vkou wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, what is the national road-map for our transition to these net-beneficial clean technologies? If they are net-beneficial, why haven't we transitioned to them yet? What factors blocking this transition will be removed in the years to come, and how exactly are we going to remove them? What decade we going to hit net zero carbon? It's like a startup saying: "Well, sure, we are losing money hand over fist, and our…

The national roadmap is absolutely massive amount of R&D going into self driving cars for example or solar batteries

What exactly do self-driving cars have to do with reducing our carbon footprint?

Hell, self-driving cars are the absolutely wrong solution to this problem. Personal automobiles - a 4,000lb steel and rubber box that drives a single 160lb human around, are incredibly wasteful, energy-inefficient luxuries. Trains, buses, bicycles, and better urban planning are the real solution to low-carbon personal transportation.

There's no roadmap in America for any of those things.