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

#301

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #228

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…

I think that there is a swarming aspect to humanity, in the sense of locusts or passenger pigeons. Here's what I mean by that: For some species the survivability rate is inverse to the population density- the habitat fills up and a natural equilibrium results. But for other species there is a range of population densities where the survivability rate is positively correlated with population- so the more you have, the…

If that is true, and there may be a point, you might want to consider what the specific evolutionary benefit mechanism of that swarming behaviour is, and what its costs are.

In the case of passenger pigeons (now extinct) and locusts (not a species but a behavioural mode of specific species of grasshoppers), the swarming behaviour was a mobile one, essentially a fast-cycle nomadic activity. Swarming for each both provided defence against predation (any predator species were overwhelmed by the number of prey) and against competition: by moving rapidly across landscapes, passenger pigeons and locusts could out-compete other species for food sources (including humans).

If there's a benefit to human-based swarming, it doesn't appear to follow either of these modes. Humans don't swarm in mobs (outside of riots, and there, for similar advantage), but in stationary urbanisations. And the benefits seem to largely be of information flows and interactivity or interdependence.

At the same time, cities have multiple vulnerabilities. They aren't mobile, they require prodigious resources (Los Angeles, as an example, sources water from up to 1,500 miles away, and every city on the planet is dependent on oil which is found in only a few specific high-concentration regions and much of which crosses oceans to arrive), and of waste removal.

So, yes, humans become more effective competitors as they aggregate. Until, perhaps, they don't.

Fly in the ointment and all that.

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

#302

Post by sulam » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #300

sulam wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m banking on carbon capture being the obvious solution. Environmentalists (I do not count myself in their number) are resisting this because they’re worried it will lead to an attitude of complaisancy about human emissions. My point of view is that we already are grossly under shooting targets that bake in massive effects we haven’t begun to properly appreciate. Add in factors we can’t control like the feedback loo…

It is insanely expensive. There are carbon-capture devices already extant. Solar-powered. Self-replicating. They're called "plants". Problem is that 1) you've got to sequester the carbon formed, 2) there's only so much ag productivity (measured in terms of carbon fixation) on the planet, and 3) it is largely spoken for -- humans claim 40% of net primary productivity, the rest of the planet fights over the remaining 6…

There is already non-ag ambient carbon capture happening at commercial scale. Also, if you limit yourself to what exists today, you can easily draw a straight line to “doomed”. I don’t mind if you choose to limit yourself, but I am going to try and create the future I want my children (and others) to have vs settling for status quo.

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

#303

Post by throwawayjava » Sat, Jan 27, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

txsh wrote: post #297

throwawayjava wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also true that there's no DEFINITIVE ABSOLUTE PROOF that pressing the nuclear launch button will clause a MAD-style nuclear escalation. But still, there's good reason to believe it would , so it'd be irresponsible to push the button given other reasonable alternatives. "You can't ever know FOR SURE that this destroy life as we know it!" has to be the least logical form and most confusing of climate change skepti…

That has nothing to do with what I quoted from the article. It would benefit you to suppress your religious fervor for a few minutes and examine the facts for yourself.

> That has nothing to do with what I quoted from the article.

This has everything to do with your characterization of those quotes. "We don't know for certain, but shit could get bad" is a perfectly reasonable basis for precaution. The precautionary principle is not "anti-scientific".

> It would benefit you to suppress your religious fervor for a few minutes and examine the facts for yourself.

What are you trying to accomplish with this sentence?

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

#304

Post by throwawayjava » Sat, Jan 27, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

txsh wrote: post #217

llamataboot wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh? This has to do with how bad and how quick the feedback loops created by anthropogenic global warming will be and has nothing do with whether it exists or not.

Think about what you wrote. If I am giving you one apple per hour and you are giving me 100 apples per hour, is it accurate to say you are feeding apples back to me? No, I am feeding apples back to you. I am the feedback loop. You are the source.

> If I am giving you one apple per hour and you are giving me 100 apples per hour, is it accurate to say you are feeding apples back to me?

Yes. I am feeding apples to you. You are feeding apples to me. that's why a feedback loop is called a loop.

> No, I am feeding apples back to you. I am the feedback loop. You are the source.

You are not a loop. You are a person.

I realize that sounds silly, but I think this actually is the miscomprehension at play. We are both sources. And sinks. That's literally the whole point of a feedback loop.

Because I'm writing this on a site with a combinator in the upper left-hand corner, consider the following programming/logic analogy:

     let A = λx.xx

Does the program diverge? NO. However, the program

     let A = λx.xx;
     AA

does diverge. This is analogous to llamataboot's point: if anthropogenic warming triggers a feedback loop, then the effects of that feedback loop are attributable to anthropogenic warming.

A is a function definition, not a diverging program. You are a person, not a loop.

The observation by llamataboot that "maybe we shouldn't execute AA given what we know about the definition of A" demonstrates a competent and accurate understanding of feedback loops.

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

#305

Post by pizza » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #245

pizza wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're uncertain about the rarity of global collapse due to climate change. The more uncertain we are about our uncertainty of the rarity of a global catastrophe, the more rational it is for us to assume we are likely presently under-estimating its rarity, rather than over-estimating it, because examples of global catastrophe are pretty hard to come by. If nobody knows if it's gonna happen, but the consequence of cata…

> The more uncertain we are about our uncertainty of the rarity of a global catastrophe, the more rational it is for us to assume we are likely presently under-estimating its rarity So the opposite of Occam's razor?

It took me a long while to come up with a response to this I liked, but think about it this way: there is, maybe, a 10^-a prior climate change destroys life as we know it, right? But my prior for God, heaven, etc existing is, alas, 10^-b, where b >>>>>>>>>>>>> a. (never a 0 or 1 prior kinda guy, even if I know that is dumb in some scenarios, like tautologies and impossibilities, yadada). Too many more factors would have to be revealed to me in terms of the existence of God that I would then believe that a is of similar value to b, if that makes sense? ie that they have similar probabilities (or rather, utilities, which matters since heaven is probably +inf and catastrophe of all life is MAX(badness) which we might as well call -inf, right?

So, not only is -Cost * P(calamity | investment) >> -Cost * P(calamity | not investment), Cost(investment) sorry if this is at all unclear, i can clarify anything