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Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

pnas.org

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Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#21

Post by hkyeti »

adrianN wrote: post #2

Doomsday messages are coming in in rapid succession. First the permafrost is melting 70 years earlier than expected, then Greenland losing massive amounts of ice, then glaciers that provide fresh water for hundreds of millions in India and China disappearing at an alarming rate, now this. And still politicians do nothing. What we need is an effort to build renewables, insulate homes, and build charging infrastructure…

Not just politicians. And still citizens do nothing. Meat consumption is rising (one of the best things we can do personally is stop eating meat and dairy). Travel is increasing. Consumption...

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#22

Post by TelmoMenezes »

llukas wrote: post #18
chewz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon tax is terrible idea. We have a science proving that it won't work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas_Jr . Pseudo-market solutions do not work. They are quickly gamed by market players. It would be just a waste of precious time.

> We have a science proving that it won't work. I think physicists can say they proven something but it is in principle debatable. Economy is just witchcraft in comparison - please do not give economy more credibility than it deserves.

> I think physicists can say they proven something

Not even them. It only makes sense to talk about proof in formal domains such as math and logic.

Science proves nothing. It is impossible to prove that any given scientific theory will not be falsified in the future. In fact, physics was one of the main inspirations for the idea of "paradigm shift" by Thomas Kuhn in his famous work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

Talking about proof in science is damaging, and it conveys the wrong idea about what science actually is.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#23

Post by chewz »

VorticesRcool wrote: post #15
chewz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon tax is terrible idea. We have a science proving that it won't work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas_Jr . Pseudo-market solutions do not work. They are quickly gamed by market players. It would be just a waste of precious time.

That link does not say anything about science or a carbon tax. What did that economist have to say about it?

Lucas got Noble prize for proving that market participants game new rules faster then regulators introduce them.

Pseudo-market solutions in healtcare (pricing procedures with ICD and allowing market participants compete) are currently proved as inefficient. Net gain for market participants but net loss for people and goverment budgets.

So my reservation is for carbon tax as gigantic wealth transfer without real benefits to climate. I am not against urgent action on climate.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#24

Post by chewz »

belorn wrote: post #19
chewz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon tax is terrible idea. We have a science proving that it won't work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lucas_Jr . Pseudo-market solutions do not work. They are quickly gamed by market players. It would be just a waste of precious time.

Looking at ( https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2207/economics/carbon-tax... ) the primary argument against Carbon tax is that companies will somehow tax evade even more than in the past, and companies will move to more tax friendly companies than they already do. Is there an argument against carbon tax that can't be said by any other tax?

The objective of carbon tax is to give incentives to market participants and let the market to the job. In my opinion it will result in creating huge wealth transfers with much real benefit to the climate.

I would rather side with Naomi Klein that capitalism proved ineffective in solving problems of this scale.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#25

Post by EGreg »

Getting whiplash reading this. What’s the upshot?

Following over 3 decades of gradual but uneven increases in sea ice coverage, the yearly average Antarctic sea ice extents reached a record high of 12.8 × 106 km2 in 2014, followed by a decline so precipitous that they reached their lowest value in the 40-y 1979–2018 satellite multichannel passive-microwave record, 10.7 × 106 km2, in 2017. In contrast, it took the Arctic sea ice cover a full 3 decades to register a loss that great in yearly average ice extents. Still, when considering the 40-y record as a whole, the Antarctic sea ice continues to have a positive overall trend in yearly average ice extents, although at 11,300 ± 5,300 km2⋅y−1, this trend is only 50% of the trend for 1979–2014, before the precipitous decline.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#26

Post by dao- »

martincollignon wrote: post #10
ForHackernews wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should also take political action. With due respect to people who are trying to take positive individual action, it will not be enough. We've been waiting 30 years and people are still driving SUVs. Only large scale government policy can move the needle for an entire society. Maybe you have political views that you find that distasteful, but unfortunately we're running out of time, and you'll have to choose betwe…

Everything will be needed - incl. political action. Not everyone wants to be political, and people should be offered other choices.

GP said "You should also take political action", so this doesn't rule out individual action.

GP's key point is that individual action would not be enough and you're not actually addressing that argument by just saying that not everyone wants to be political and that other choices would be nice.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#27

Post by rypskar »

King-Aaron wrote: post #3

I don't quite follow the results being discussed here, but from my reading am I right in understanding that up until now there's been a gradual increasing trend in sea ice coverage in the antarctic, which is now (as of the latest results) drastically decreasing?

https://earthsky.org/earth/while-arctic-sea-ice-declines-in-...

TLDR: He went on to say that many climate models actually predict a short-term increase in Antarctic sea ice, under conditions of global warming. He spoke of factors such as increasing fresh water and higher wind speeds that promote ice growth and expansion, and, as is clear from this year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum, these factors appear to be dominating right now.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#28

Post by fallingfrog »

defterGoose wrote: post #4
adrianN wrote: post #2

Doomsday messages are coming in in rapid succession. First the permafrost is melting 70 years earlier than expected, then Greenland losing massive amounts of ice, then glaciers that provide fresh water for hundreds of millions in India and China disappearing at an alarming rate, now this. And still politicians do nothing. What we need is an effort to build renewables, insulate homes, and build charging infrastructure…

Don't forget that all the insects (the single largest link in the animalian food chain) are dying. Politicians long ago forgot that their job is to instigate improvement in society, and now relegate themselves to either decrying or defending the status quo. I'm beginning to fear that the Apollo program might actually be the greatest societal effort the US will ever undertake.

I’m not sure politicians have ever seen their jobs as instigating improvements to society. I think they see their job as to protect the interests of the biggest contributors to their campaigns. There was a time when that was organized labor, which is as close as you’re going to get to the “will of the people”, but now it’s mostly big business.

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#29

Post by jsingleton »

rypskar wrote: post #13
martincollignon wrote: post #7

Want to make a difference on climate change as a technologist? Feel free to join these communities actively looking for support and with ongoing projects (that are alive): - https://climateaction.tech/ - https://techimpactmakers.com/ - https://www.tmrow.com/

Thank you for the links. Need to check them out more later today to see where I can help, but from first view they all looks like "We want to do something about climate change, join us if you also want to", but not much about what they actually do.

There are some projects listed on those pages but not all. Here's an incomplete list to give you an idea.

https://climatechoice.co/ (plenty of small issues up for grabs https://github.com/impactmakers/climatechoice/issues)

https://offset.earth/

https://fixathon.io/ (more sponsorship opportunities available, get in touch. https://bit.ly/fixathon-sponsor)

https://medium.com/clean-coffee

Re: Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

#30

Post by graeme »

chewz wrote: post #23
VorticesRcool wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link does not say anything about science or a carbon tax. What did that economist have to say about it?

Lucas got Noble prize for proving that market participants game new rules faster then regulators introduce them. Pseudo-market solutions in healtcare (pricing procedures with ICD and allowing market participants compete) are currently proved as inefficient. Net gain for market participants but net loss for people and goverment budgets. So my reservation is for carbon tax as gigantic wealth transfer without real benef…

Is a tax a regulation in that sense? I’m wary of non-tax responses to climate change for the reasons you suggest, I think they’re easy to game.

But with a tax you can only evade. The income tax still raises revenue and discourages income, even though it can be evaded and often is. I think a carbon tax would similarly raise revenue and discourage carbon, while letting us cut worse taxes like the carbon tax.

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