Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record • Hacker News Board

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#31

Post by jazzyjackson » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

arno_v wrote: post #25

gnatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/

Surprisingly if you put it to 20 meters the effect globally seem insignificant. Although 80% of my own country would be flooded, so that's not great.

I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#32

Post by ejb999 » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #20

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time. There are mountains, and plant fossils [1] under the ice at Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, wh…

The article mentions that "on record" only covers the last ~40 years 5 separate times, including in the first sentence and visually in a graph. Is there any way it could be more clear? It also says in the subtitle and body that this change is probably not due to global warming. How are you reading it as an "effort to drive anxiety of extinction"? It's honestly hard to imagine a more mildly-framed climate-related stor…

I think the point is - its a non-story - there is no importance whatsoever to the article.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#33

Post by jtsiskin » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time. There are mountains, and plant fossils [1] under the ice at Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, wh…

Ah yes, the “Tens of millions of years ago, the climate was also different!” silly excuse.

Modern humans have been around a minuscule fraction of that time. If we are affecting the climate in ways that normally take millions of years, “there’s some plants under the ice” is the non-helpful remark

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#34

Post by jazzyjackson » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

llampx wrote: post #23

adamredwoods wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult to build housing. For example, Greenland housing shortage is severe: >> These staff residences are important for attracting employees, as the waiting time for a municipal rental property in Nuuk is between 10-12 years for a private individual. https://www.norden.org/en/info-norden/housing-greenland

Why is it difficult to build housing there? There's a housing crisis in most Tier 1 European cities.

at least Europe can produce its own lumber, it will be some time yet before sustainable forestry takes off in Antarctica (knock on wood ;)

edit: my bad. didn't realize you were asking about greenland, I don't want to act like "no trees" is the cause of their housing crisis, I have no idea

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#35

Post by stevenwoo » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

gnatman wrote: post #14

Gravityloss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scientists know this. Paleoclimatology is one big part of climatology. But the outcome is the opposite - you should be more scared, since it shows that climate can change massively. That affects things like agriculture or sea level. What would you assume the sea level was, when those plants were alive? For example, with very quick search: "In general, world oceans were about 100 to 200 metres (330 to 660 feet) hi…

I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/

something like only 10 meters is necessary to depopulate large part of Florida (due to loss land and freshwater aquifers) and turn part of central California into a salt marsh and start reducing the USA's most productive farmland.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#36

Post by Sebb767 » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

arno_v wrote: post #25

gnatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/

Surprisingly if you put it to 20 meters the effect globally seem insignificant. Although 80% of my own country would be flooded, so that's not great.

The big problem, as a sister comment pointed out, is that, for various reasons, a lot of people live close to the coast line. And a lot of people having to move was historically never really a good for peace, plus we loose a lot of agriculturally valuable land in the process.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#37

Post by mikestew » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #28

mikestew wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“carbon suckers”: perhaps the fact that we don’t even have a popular phrase for the technology, let alone having built anything practical, will answer your question sufficiently. That, and there are a lot of other inputs to that equation such that when I read what you typed, I kind of paraphrase it as, “why don’t we just wave a magic technology wand and make it go away?” :-)

I meant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration

Yeah, I knew what you meant, I’m being somewhat of a smartass. Somewhat, because I maintain that my point stands. :-) I mean, do we have any meaningful carbon sequestration that’s even threatening to come online?

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#38

Post by sacrosancty » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time. There are mountains, and plant fossils [1] under the ice at Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, wh…

The climate was far more extreme in the past than what AGW is expected to do. It doesn't matter. Climate change is expected to be a problem because of changes that are faster than humans and other species can adapt.

Having said that, nobody has any idea how much of a problem it'll be for humans or even if life will be better or worse than it already is. All we have is predictions of sea level, temperature, etc. that don't directly impact us.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#39

Post by jazzyjackson » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #35

gnatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/

something like only 10 meters is necessary to depopulate large part of Florida (due to loss land and freshwater aquifers) and turn part of central California into a salt marsh and start reducing the USA's most productive farmland.

was always curious about how below sea level works there, how much sea rise does it take before death valley becomes the new dead sea?

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#40

Post by NineStarPoint » Mon, Mar 14, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time. There are mountains, and plant fossils [1] under the ice at Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, wh…

The general reason to worry has more to do with the rate of change than the change itself, illustrated the best by this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ Historically, life had a lot more time to adapt to changes in the atmosphere. Times we know of sudden changes, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, are mass extinctions.

On one hand, we're already a mass extinction event even without considering the temperature change, so maybe it's not that much of an additional reason to worry. On the other hand, stacking even more stress onto the habitats of creatures we rely on might be the straw the breaks the camel's back as well. And that's ignoring things like sea level rise for our coastal cities, and the effect temperature changes might have on agriculture. Much like the above, the rate we're affecting the climate will not give us much time to respond to issues.