Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted • Hacker News Board

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#131

Post by jbay808 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #94

Fede_V wrote: post #27

Global warming is the single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced, and we aren't doing nearly enough to tackle it. Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm. As citizens, I encourage ev…

Global warming is not an existential threat if you consider the studies that look at existential threats in general. It's not even in the top 10. Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.

I wish you didn't get downvoted for saying this. You are wrong, but it's a fair perspective because most people wouldn't know why an extra 4-10 C is such a problem.

There are a lot of reasons such as whether food or water scarcity might trigger nuclear war. But the biggest reason is that it puts us into the territory of previous mass extinction events on Earth. This article does a good job of illustrating the worst possible outcome. It does belong up with the others on the existential threat scale.

http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/impactfromthedeep.pd...

Give it a read and let me know if you think industrial civilization could adapt to these conditions.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#132

Post by ngngngng » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #34

ngngngng wrote: post #22

[Deleting because I don't want to perpetuate apparently debunked climate change myths, sorry, I honestly hadn't seen it debunked.] Dang, my most downvoted comment was asking an honest question about climate change.

If you aren’t a denier then why are you repeating a classic, thoroughly debunked denier talking point? https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm

Great write-up, I really appreciate it.

Don't worry, I won't ask any more honest questions about climate change ever again.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#133

Post by perfunctory » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #115

Fede_V wrote: post #27

Global warming is the single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced, and we aren't doing nearly enough to tackle it. Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm. As citizens, I encourage ev…

Except a single factory in China emits more CO2 than all the readers of this HN thread combined. So all you are going to do by minimizing your own carbon footprint is make your own life miserable and free up the resources for someone who doesn't give a damn. And I am sorry to say that, but I don't think that a global framework enforcing the same environmental restrictions on every country in the world, regardless of…

> Except a single factory in China emits more CO2 than all the readers of this HN thread combined

This is just not true. World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions [0] I would guess a fair share of HN readers are in the top 10%

[0] https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-ex...

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#134

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

chr1 wrote: post #47

dvorak365 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate engineering to stop global warming seems to me like trying to remove a bullet by shooting it out from the other side

It depends on what do you mean by climate engineering. If you mean randomly dumping large amounts of sulfur in stratosphere then it is exactly like shooting another bullet, but if it is done by more controlled devices it is like using a scalpel. In any case waiting the for body to heal naturally is not going to work. And i think it is very unfortunate that any mention of using technology to fix the problem gets ridic…

[deleted]

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#135

Post by akvadrako » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

lexpar wrote: post #106

akvadrako wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global warming is not an existential threat if you consider the studies that look at existential threats in general. It's not even in the top 10. Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.

I really hope you'll change your mind, specifically about that last sentence. Probably billions of the world's poorest people are likely to see their environment become unlivable. That's not a problem a little AC and migration will easily solve. Just look how poorly rich countries are reacting to the current levels of migration from less rich countries.

I'm not going to change my mind just because of mindless downvotes. If you want to show that global warming could cause the end of the human race, you have to give some plausible argument.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#136

Post by graeme » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #115

Fede_V wrote: post #27

Global warming is the single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced, and we aren't doing nearly enough to tackle it. Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm. As citizens, I encourage ev…

Except a single factory in China emits more CO2 than all the readers of this HN thread combined. So all you are going to do by minimizing your own carbon footprint is make your own life miserable and free up the resources for someone who doesn't give a damn. And I am sorry to say that, but I don't think that a global framework enforcing the same environmental restrictions on every country in the world, regardless of…

>And I am sorry to say that, but I don't think that a global framework enforcing the same environmental restrictions on every country in the world, regardless of its economic state, is realistic. Sorry.

We don't need a perfect global framework. We just need to shift incentives to some extent. The market is already coming up with some non-carbon alternatives. Adding a carbon tax will shift incentives further and increase tech development.

To mitigate the effects, business need an energy source. Either it's:

* a replacement to carbon, or

* still carbon

If it's still carbon, you can't reverse the causes, and mitigation gets harder and harder as you worsen the problem.

You're effectively arguing that:

1. There's no use trying now, it's basically impossible, but

2. Despite not trying now, we will solve the impossible problem at some future point.

You're perhaps arguing that the problems of global warming will help us. This seems rather like Bastiat's parable of the broken window.

Negative changes will only hurt us, and individual solutions can't fix a global atmosphere.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#137

Post by akvadrako » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #131

akvadrako wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global warming is not an existential threat if you consider the studies that look at existential threats in general. It's not even in the top 10. Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.

I wish you didn't get downvoted for saying this. You are wrong, but it's a fair perspective because most people wouldn't know why an extra 4-10 C is such a problem. There are a lot of reasons such as whether food or water scarcity might trigger nuclear war. But the biggest reason is that it puts us into the territory of previous mass extinction events on Earth. This article does a good job of illustrating the worst p…

1) You'll notice I didn't put nuclear war in my list of existential threats. That's because it also will likely not cause human extinction.

2) We are probably already in a mass extinction event. That also has little change of causing human extinction - we're the most adaptable species this planet has ever seen.

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#138

Post by neilv » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

Fede_V wrote: post #27

Global warming is the single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced, and we aren't doing nearly enough to tackle it. Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm. As citizens, I encourage ev…

> voting exclusively on how credible a politician is on tackling global warming

"Credible" is one difficult part of that, and the situation is also exploitable even if they are credible in that one regard.

For example, a person or group could produce a candidate who is credibly stronger on global warming than the competition, while at the same time the secret goal being to sell out constituents' fiscal interests or rights in some other regards.

(It's not far-fetched -- without getting into contemporary partisan examples, it's fair to say that this seems to already a strategy and tactic, on other single-issues, in some contests.)

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#139

Post by entropea » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

polyfractal wrote: post #82

entropea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is literally no way to stop it All people have to do is put their arms behind their backs, stop working, and demand it happen from the most powerful people in the world. I assure you that this isn't as bad as having humanity go extinct from climate change. Admittedly, getting enough people to do that is the real challenge, especially in the face of capital trying to tell them the exact opposite. If an asteroid…

There is a real difference between a singular event like an asteroid, and a slowly boiling frog like climate change. You can point at an asteroid and say "That thing. It's going to melt half the planet." I'd like to think we could collectively get our shit together and find a way to fix that. But climate change is more insidious because it's so slow. It's in every nations best (short term) interest to ignore climate…

>You can point at an asteroid and say "That thing. It's going to melt half the planet."

How do you get people to believe it up until the day it gets close enough to make out with the human eye that it's approaching the planet? It's too late at that point. How many people have a telescope with that type of resolution, cameras that can pull out something likely low magnitude? We present scientific evidence to the public on Climate Change and many just don't care enough to actually do anything, why wouldn't the same happen with an Asteroid?

Re: Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years earlier than predicted

#140

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

omegaworks wrote: post #66

crispinb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you mean by "we". Homo sapiens has enormous cultural flexibility (though clearly, as the worldwide ecosystem collapse shows, this doesn't scale). So groups of humans will continue to live. But our global civilisation will inevitably collapse. No-one can predict in detail what that will entail, but we can be sure it won't be pretty.

People are already being displaced from their countries by climate. Economies that relied on the stability of their rainfall for their agriculture are declining. They're building camps for them at the border here in the US.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for stating an obvious fact. Climate change isn't the only factor in central American migration but it's definitely part of the equation.