Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 114 posts

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#91

Post by Aloha »

ForHackernews wrote: post #56
Aloha wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could just build fission power plants, they're reasonably safe, not too expensive and we know how to store the waste safely, heck - we've built a place to store it, but until there is political will to overcome the NIMBYism of not wanting to live in the next potential Pripyat (no matter how remote that risk is) nothing will change, except the climate of course.

I was mostly being facetious. We probably don't have enough time left to build fission power plants (and certainly not fusion) before the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead inevitably to catastrophic consequences. According to the IPCC, we have to cut global CO2 emissions by 50% before 2030. So your vast fleet of nuclear power plants might just barely be coming online by then. Maybe. If you started getting regu…

The answer is some sort of sequestration tbh, I've long felt that the idea (even in say, 2005) that we could reduce our carbon output by 50% was unworkable - the only thing that is easy to move to zero carbon is electricity generation, everything else is an order of magnitude harder.

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#92

Post by api »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #47
pjkundert wrote: post #34

There is something that you can do. Advocate that governments cut down on soot emissions. This accounts for a significant portion of the current temperature rise in the Arctic -- but, most importantly -- an unknown amount of the loss of snow and ice cover. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-track-... Unfortunately, this form of carbon (soot) is not as useful for funds transfer... Between cutting do…

Advocate that governments cut down on soot emissions. i.e. vote. There are extremely important elections coming up in several states in November that will indirectly decide who controls Congress for the next ten years. Voting in this off-year election, especially if you live in Virginia can make a material difference in how the United States responds to this crisis.

Voting won't help in China, and most democratic countries have scrubbers on coal plants and tend to be phasing out coal.

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#93

Post by jseliger »

pjkundert wrote: post #34

There is something that you can do. Advocate that governments cut down on soot emissions. This accounts for a significant portion of the current temperature rise in the Arctic -- but, most importantly -- an unknown amount of the loss of snow and ice cover. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-track-... Unfortunately, this form of carbon (soot) is not as useful for funds transfer... Between cutting do…

Also, subscribe to bury CO2: https://www.climeworks.com/

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#94

Post by MegaButts »

Aloha wrote: post #90
pwinnski wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in America's past suggests that we would build and maintain plants better than Fukushima? Is it our mismanagement of waterways? Our disaster preparedness and response as evidenced after Hurricane Katrina? Our laser-sharp focus on energy policy in government? Yes, Chernobyl was especially bad, and yes there were issues at Fukushima. I think we would avoid Chernobyl-level disasters, but I'm not convinced we would…

All are systems engineering failures, we have a pretty good history of building resilient systems. I won't say that a fukushima couldn't happen in the US, but I'd say that the particulars of that disaster are unlikely to happen here (or anywhere else again). We have very few nuclear plants in areas that are even seismically active anymore, much less have any meaningful tsunami risk.

As another commenter pointed out, a lot of the knowledge for developing nuclear power plants has faded since they were mostly built decades ago. And while they're smaller projects, looking around where I live (San Francisco) I see a leaning skyscraper, a bridge that was way, way overbudget and many years late and an ongoing debate about its longterm safety, and a transit center (also late and overbudget) that still hasn't opened due to safety concerns.

It seems obvious that it's possible to build safe nuclear power plants - we've done it. But I think it's like building airplanes. Despite flying being the safest way to travel, all the planes were built decades ago and our attempts to change that in the US, ie the 737-MAX, have shown obvious examples of corruption and incompetence that have led to unnecessary deaths.

I think where we disagree is whether or not the US government is competent enough to build a nuclear power plant today, not whether or not the project itself is viable. I realize my original comment doesn't reflect that, so I apologize for the poor communication on my part.

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#95

Post by brandmeyer »

Here's a more quantitative view, to get an idea of how serious this season is. Summary: its still early in the melt season, but this year is somewhat ahead of every previous year.

(via the excellent arctic sea ice blog's regional data aggregation page: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional)

This first graph is arctic sea ice area, including the sum of all of the sub-regions that are what you normally think about as the Arctic Ocean. Several other bodies of water also get seasonal ice coverage adjacent to the arctic basin.

https://14adebb0-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/ar...

There are three clusters of lines shown here. Each one corresponds to the reports provided by a different sea-ice monitoring office. Differences in technique have been used by commentators to kibbutz about the finer points of what constitutes a record minimuim in the past, so its common for independent observers to show multiple institutes all together now. While the details differ, the broad picture is the same for all three offices.

The three clusters have been offset in the vertical axis to visually separate the three institutes. Roughly 2/3 of the arctic basin melts out each year.

Each institute reports both sea ice area, and sea ice extent. Ice area is the total area actually covered by ice. Ice extent is somewhat trickier to understand. Much of the summer ice pack isn't a big chunk of ice, its composed of many different chunks, and they will break up and merge over time. So many of the map grid cells are only partially covered by ice. When the fraction of coverage is greater than a certain threshold, then the entire grid cell is counted towards "ice extent" - the amount of ocean that has some ice floes in it. With that definition in mind, here's the current graph of sea ice extent, along with some recent historical context:

https://14adebb0-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/ar...

One thing of note: The current record year for melting is 2012. You'll note that the shape of that year's curve is quite a bit different from every other year's curve. 2012's weather patterns drove a melt that was so substantial that every year since has followed a different trajectory than the years prior to 2012, because so much multi-year ice melted out. At this point in the Summer, several years have had less area and/or extent than the previous record.

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#96

Post by graeme »

jseliger wrote: post #93
pjkundert wrote: post #34

There is something that you can do. Advocate that governments cut down on soot emissions. This accounts for a significant portion of the current temperature rise in the Arctic -- but, most importantly -- an unknown amount of the loss of snow and ice cover. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-track-... Unfortunately, this form of carbon (soot) is not as useful for funds transfer... Between cutting do…

Also, subscribe to bury CO2: https://www.climeworks.com/

That looks more advanced than I would have expected. Do you have any details on the project beyond what’s on their site?

I’d be interested to know if this can be scaled up if societies started investing in it.

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#97

Post by baron_harkonnen »

oconnor663 wrote: post #86
seem_2211 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in New Zealand, and now live in America. In New Zealand, people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if Americans don't change" Now I live in America, where people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if the Chinese don't change" And I'm sure in China they say the same thing back to the US. It's fun shifting the blame.

I believe in China and India they would point out that the West allowed itself to emit pollutants unchecked during its period of rapid economic growth, and it would be ridiculous to ask the East not to do the same. It's more complicated than just passing the buck.

Can we stop with this "growing phase" mythology of high carbon emissions? The US didn't "grow out of it" we out-sourced it to China and India. China and India can't "grow out of it" unless they find someone else that can take it over for them (and I don't think there's enough production capacity in the remaining parts of the world to do this). This article[1] does a pretty good job showing the complexity of this.

The idea that eventually every industrial nation can mature and "grow out of" carbon production makes the ludicrous claim that somehow industrial production magically requires less CO2 over all in the long run. Sure this would be possible if processes could all become more efficient and overall output experience 0 growth, but continued growth is essential for current economic models.

We all know we are living in a global economy, but then talk about resources and waste as if they are local problems. The truth is modern global Capitalism requires perpetual growth and increase production and consumption. We all like getting paid and living in a prosperous society but that money cannot come in a sustainable world. Where do you derive profit from a truly sustainable system?

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#98

Post by bryanlarsen »

Will_Parker wrote: post #48
amluto wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds entirely tractable. Institute a carbon tax. In addition, create a tariff on all imports from countries that don’t have an equivalent bona fide carbon tax at the same or higher rate, and set the tariff such that it recovers 150% of the deficiency in taxes vs emissions. The tax needs to be transitive: if countries A and B don’t cooperate and country A reexports something from country B, the tariff needs to…

How do you decide the baseline emissions for the tax and tariffs, internationally? China emits about half the carbon as the USA, per capita. So is the USA willing to pay tax to China unidirectionally, until we get to their level? Does China need to keep their current per capita levels to avoid extra tariffs? How, roughly, could this work politically at a global level, in a way that also works within the politics of e…

There are no payments between countries. It's a tax and an import tariff on countries that don't have the tax (or an equivalent like tax and trade).

William Nordhaus has done the math, you can read his papers for more details and appropriate levels. Of course the fact that we didn't implement in 2015 when he did his calculations means that the appropriate levels are higher than they were then.

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#99

Post by bryanlarsen »

Will_Parker wrote: post #55
seem_2211 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in New Zealand, and now live in America. In New Zealand, people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if Americans don't change" Now I live in America, where people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if the Chinese don't change" And I'm sure in China they say the same thing back to the US. It's fun shifting the blame.

> It's fun shifting the blame. I don't think blame is a useful concept at all. The question is, within the complex world of economics and politics, starting from the point we are at today, what would a pragmatic solution look like, that is actually possible? It is far from obvious that the best solution is to make local sacrifices, then hoping the world will follow. It might be that we all (in the world) need to agre…

"what would a pragmatic solution look like, that is actually possible?"

William Nordhaus' climate club:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001

https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

Re: Arctic Summer Melt Shows Ice Is Disappearing Faster Than Normal

#100

Post by mlguy456 »

seem_2211 wrote: post #49
Will_Parker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that if the "we" who are doing something does not include China and the rest of the world in coordination, then it is just sacrificing local economics in vain. The idea that the rest of the world is going to follow suit automatically based only on morals is far from obvious. It doesn't seem that anyone in the mainstream has really found a way to come to grips with this, that at its core any solution is…

I grew up in New Zealand, and now live in America. In New Zealand, people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if Americans don't change" Now I live in America, where people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if the Chinese don't change" And I'm sure in China they say the same thing back to the US. It's fun shifting the blame.

IMHO, local sacrifices is a dead end approach because it expects coordinated good will from billions of people. This won't happen: people are as bad as they are allowed to be. The solution should be going after the popular business model that makes consumers buy new items because the old ones break: this applies to everything, from cars to toothbrushes; it even seems to apply to newly built houses now. The manufacturer can't care less if an average buyer has to leave 3 cars behind because those cars were designed to break, as long as it brings profit. Axe this business model, bankrupt these manufacturers by holding them accountable to how much of their products end up thrown away and we'll see how reliable products will take their spot. No more useless waste, no more icebergs of plastic in the ocean, no more need to burn gigatons of coal to make all these intentionally flawed items. I'm sure everybody sees this solution, but nobody has balls to implement it because blaming individual people is easy and safe.
Post reply on HN