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

The concurrence of three climatic events

climatecasino.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 408 posts

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#11

Post by giarc »

booleandilemma wrote: post #4

This guy's blog is subtitled "Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of Everything Blog". Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what he's saying true?

Perhaps. I never know what to believe. I've heard smart, knowledgeable people like Bill Gates state that he thinks we won't experience a scorched Earth ending, but that we will solve this crisis. I'd like to believe him, but then I see an article like this and I don't know who to believe, the graphs are pretty damning if only to say "that line is way above the other lines, and that is bad."

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#12

Post by vichu »

I fear that this is the year "wet-bulb temperature" becomes a term regular households across the world become deeply familiar with. It may be as ubiquitous as the term "social distancing" became.

I've always naively thought that climate disaster was still 10-20 years out, but it seems like it's going to begin in earnest now and instead be completely catastrophic after these next 10 years.

What can I as an individual do? Move to Saskatchewan or Alaska? I already know from a friend in Alaska that the melting permafrost is causing many native villages to sink and collapse, and it's only gotten worse in the past few years. Check out this article on Newtok, AK by National Geographic from 2019: http://archive.today/1enHh

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#13

Post by TOMDM »

xrd wrote: post #2

I read the whole article. I looked at all the graphs and charts. I still don't understand the near term significance, even with the detailed explanations. Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the population won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many will actually care? Nothing will happen until it is too late. His final words weren't encouraging and I can't say I feel any better either.

I think this is precisely what is missing in so much of the climate communication from scientists in the space, the "so what" moment.

Drawing a line in the sand is useful for policy (We should target staying under 1.5C above historical records), but the other piece needs to be the why of it all.

So sure, from the figures given in this post we're seeing record antarctic sea ice anomolies, record sea surface temperature anomolies and record temperature mean anomolies.

But what does this mean for the average person?

What portion of our farmland is no longer serviceable? What places can people no longer live, what portion of our fresh water sources no longer work?

How many people will have to move, find other sources of food/water? What other severe downstream effects are coming that I'm not even aware of? Severe weather? Flooding? Ecosystem collapse?

I understand that this blog is likely more dedicated towards the science behind climate rather than communication of the consequences to the layman, but it seems that most science communication is more interested in communicating the science behind predictions (and often failing) than communicating what the outcomes are likely to be.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#14

Post by rjmunro »

mbil wrote: post #10

Interesting that removing sulphur emissions may have resulted in more solar radiation being absorbed by the oceans. Wonder if cargo ships could purposely emit some benign material that would reflect away sunlight. Although I suspect there could be unintended consequences.

Just spraying seawater upwards to make clouds might do the trick:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-conceptual-Flettner-sp...

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#16

Post by matthewdgreen »

"The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don’t."

That's a pretty terrifying ending. Many of these trends (reducing sea ice causing increased ocean warming, burning of forests and permafrost) may be irreversible once things pass a certain point. At very least we may need to engage in some sort of large-scale solar radiation management project to stop them, and worryingly we may need to start that project very soon before it's too late.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#17

Post by djleni »

giarc wrote: post #11
booleandilemma wrote: post #4

This guy's blog is subtitled "Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of Everything Blog". Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what he's saying true?

Perhaps. I never know what to believe. I've heard smart, knowledgeable people like Bill Gates state that he thinks we won't experience a scorched Earth ending, but that we will solve this crisis. I'd like to believe him, but then I see an article like this and I don't know who to believe, the graphs are pretty damning if only to say "that line is way above the other lines, and that is bad."

For what it’s worth, the average interpretation I’ve seen from climate scientists is:

- No, we won’t hit scorched earth Venus-like runaway warming.

- If we don’t reduce emissions drastically, greenhouse gas warming plus various feedbacks will cause extreme weather, render some parts of the world unlivable due to wet bulb temperature, and overwhelm unprepared infrastructure, costing huge amounts of money and creating millions of migrants.

So, not the end times, but definitely dark times.

If you sprinkle a bit of pessimism about current politics it’s not a stretch to assume we probably won’t handle those impacts gracefully, or achieve the drastic emissions cuts required to avoid them.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#18

Post by 0zemp3c »

TOMDM wrote: post #13
xrd wrote: post #2

I read the whole article. I looked at all the graphs and charts. I still don't understand the near term significance, even with the detailed explanations. Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the population won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many will actually care? Nothing will happen until it is too late. His final words weren't encouraging and I can't say I feel any better either.

I think this is precisely what is missing in so much of the climate communication from scientists in the space, the "so what" moment. Drawing a line in the sand is useful for policy (We should target staying under 1.5C above historical records), but the other piece needs to be the why of it all. So sure, from the figures given in this post we're seeing record antarctic sea ice anomolies, record sea surface temperatur…

[flagged]

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#19

Post by londons_explore »

rjmunro wrote: post #14
mbil wrote: post #10

Interesting that removing sulphur emissions may have resulted in more solar radiation being absorbed by the oceans. Wonder if cargo ships could purposely emit some benign material that would reflect away sunlight. Although I suspect there could be unintended consequences.

Just spraying seawater upwards to make clouds might do the trick: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-conceptual-Flettner-sp...

Even if scientists agreed that spraying seawater upwards from every ship would mitigate say 10 years of climate change, can you imagine world governments coming to an agreement to do it, and how to fund it?

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#20

Post by phtrivier »

mbil wrote: post #10

Interesting that removing sulphur emissions may have resulted in more solar radiation being absorbed by the oceans. Wonder if cargo ships could purposely emit some benign material that would reflect away sunlight. Although I suspect there could be unintended consequences.

> As of January 1, 2020, the International Maritime Organization put a limit on the sulfur content in shipping fuels, reducing the global upper limit on sulfur content from 3.50% to 0.50%. Here is a link to an article describing this change. This reduced limit was mandatory and led to over a 75% drop in sulfur oxides. While great for the environment in many respects (e.g. less acid rain and ocean acidification), there was also a not-so-unexpected consequence.

What is actually beyond my understanding here, is that an international organization implemented a very strict environmental standard, one that probably applies to notoriously uncooperative countries (hint: China), one that applies to a notoriously uncaring industry (cue the oil-spills and dirt ships transporting crap around the world), and, _somehow_ , the standard was respected, and the restriction had the "desired" effect (less SO2 in the air.) ?

That's my WTF: since when do environment standard work ?

What did the IMO do ?

Why didn't the cargo coorporation simply bribe and cheat and lie, as usual ? Didn't using "cleaner" fuels cost _more_ money ? How did they let this kind of communist nonsense of a regulation happen ? Where are the freedom fighters ? Why don't we have an "airpollutionskeptics.org" site that denies the link between cargo ships and SO2 level in the air, on the ground that SO2 levels have always changed in the past, and that the IMO is an evil governement body of elitists who want to take again our gunships ?

Or is it only that we're slaves to irony, that no good deed should go unpunished, and that the only way we can solve any environmental problem is by inadvertently making another one even worse ?

Post reply on HN