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Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

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Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#71

Post by pharmakom »

xupybd wrote: post #36
neerd wrote: post #10

Does anyone have suggestions for how an individual can feel like they’re actually doing something. I already make donations to organizations that advocate for climate activism, vote at local and national level for candidates what support climate action, and in my own live I try to be conscious about the environment impacts or my lifestyle and purchases. Despite all that I still feel like I'm changing nothing. I still…

I strongly believe engineers will solve this not politicians.

Either that or game over. Totally agree that humans cannot coordinate on this scale.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#72

Post by upsidesinclude »

gridspy wrote: post #29
zamfi wrote: post #7

Let me preface this by saying that I believe climate change and decarbonization to be one of the critical challenges of our time. That said… This article’s title and its content are completely at odds. Here’s a critical passage: > As the ice sheet melts, its surface will be at ever-lower elevations, exposed to warmer air temperatures. Warmer air temperatures accelerate melt, making it drop and warm further. Global ai…

No, the story is that we begin the melting by raising the earth's temperature a little. You'd think that if we reduced our carbon emissions, the ice would stop melting. > But once the ice crosses the threshold, it would inevitably continue to melt Bear in mind that the atmosphere retains carbon dioxide for ~50 years, that other melt events are dumping methane into the atmosphere from permafrost. It's not just one fac…

>have to remain elevated for hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective.

To further reiterate:

hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#73

Post by pharmakom »

offmycloud wrote: post #56
neerd wrote: post #10

Does anyone have suggestions for how an individual can feel like they’re actually doing something. I already make donations to organizations that advocate for climate activism, vote at local and national level for candidates what support climate action, and in my own live I try to be conscious about the environment impacts or my lifestyle and purchases. Despite all that I still feel like I'm changing nothing. I still…

Figure out how to stop China from building a new coal-fired power plant every week.

Emissions per capita in China are not even that high though.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#75

Post by nostrademons »

ryandrake wrote: post #11

Every time there's an article about climate change, it's always about how we're "close to the point of no return." It's felt like the Truck Almost Hitting The Pole GIF[1] for like 10 years now. Has anything actually gone past the point of no return? I'll almost be relieved when we're officially inevitably fucked... at least these "nearly there!" articles won't keep popping up. 1: https://tenor.com/view/truck-crash-te…

We already are officially inevitably fucked. If you corner a climate scientist in private and point out the real implications of their work, they might even admit it.

The problem is you can't admit that we're officially inevitably fucked in public. If you did that, funding for climate science and climate mitigation would dry up, because there's nothing we can realistically do about it. Trust in governments would evaporate - the purpose of a government is to keep us all safe, but if we're all fucked anyway, it'll quickly become every man for themselves. Currency would lose its value, because it assumes that there will be a future better than the present where you might want to buy things. So everybody has an incentive to parrot the "Things are looking bad, we have a serious problem, but if we all band together and lower our emissions we can solve it!" line.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#76

Post by danjoredd »

vlunkr wrote: post #66
ryandrake wrote: post #11

Every time there's an article about climate change, it's always about how we're "close to the point of no return." It's felt like the Truck Almost Hitting The Pole GIF[1] for like 10 years now. Has anything actually gone past the point of no return? I'll almost be relieved when we're officially inevitably fucked... at least these "nearly there!" articles won't keep popping up. 1: https://tenor.com/view/truck-crash-te…

Applies to the Doomsday Clock as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock Someone ought to make a parody clock at this point.

The me getting a GF clock will reach midnight sooner than that thing

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#78

Post by bell-cot »

neerd wrote: post #10

Does anyone have suggestions for how an individual can feel like they’re actually doing something. I already make donations to organizations that advocate for climate activism, vote at local and national level for candidates what support climate action, and in my own live I try to be conscious about the environment impacts or my lifestyle and purchases. Despite all that I still feel like I'm changing nothing. I still…

Daydream: Chain all the politicians to rocks within a foot of sea level, so they'll actually care.

More practically, try to downsize your life and carbon footprint. Avoid the performative virtue of buying lots of "green" things. (Many goods like EV's have a huge carbon footprint to manufacture. And eco-tourism via airplane is right out.)

And maybe donate to a non-profit or two that are trying to mitigate the harm that climate change is causing to people much less fortunate than you.

Re: Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return

#80

Post by kiliantics »

alex_young wrote: post #32
zamfi wrote: post #7

Let me preface this by saying that I believe climate change and decarbonization to be one of the critical challenges of our time. That said… This article’s title and its content are completely at odds. Here’s a critical passage: > As the ice sheet melts, its surface will be at ever-lower elevations, exposed to warmer air temperatures. Warmer air temperatures accelerate melt, making it drop and warm further. Global ai…

From the same page: Previous research identified global warming of between 1 degree to 3 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) as the threshold beyond which the Greenland Ice Sheet will melt irreversibly. We're already at 1.2c above pre-industrial levels. Although it will take a long period of exposure to warm air for the ice to melt, we've already been doing that for a long time. It doesn't seem reasonable…

> It doesn't seem reasonable to say we have hundreds of years to figure out a solution.

We've also known about the global warming problem in great detail for well over 50 years at this point. Since then we haven't figured it out but made it worse -- most of our cumulative emissions have happened in just the last 50 years. Why do people still think we can figure this out in a matter of decades without having to drastically change our fossil fuel habits?

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