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The concurrence of three climatic events

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Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#281

Post by followthefunny »

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."

[flagged]

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#282

Post by deanCommie »

ratg13 wrote: post #156
civilitty wrote: post #95

> There is another possible input to this heating worthy of note. Dust from the Sahara typically blows west this time of year, blocking incoming radiation while trapping existing heat. So far this year the dust has not come. The lack of dust is notable and could also be a direct cause of some of the North Atlantic heating. This caught my eye as a potentially much worse catastrophe in the short term than the extreme t…

This was the only part of the post that I wasn’t relating to. I’m just coming back from a trip to the Caribbean where during my trip the sky was hazy for some days and all of the locals were claiming the weather effect to be the Sahara dust. I’m not a local so I don’t know if it is more or less than usual, but my personal experience makes me take issue with the “never come” part.

It's super important to not rely on individual data points when talking about year-long trends.

Whatever the effect of the Saharan dust, it's not going to be all manifested in "some days".

Just as in years of overall climate warning there can still be record cold streaks too.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#283

Post by munificent »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #242
jjoonathan wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. Doomerism has planet-sized infomercial hands. There is a long and embarassing trail of false apocalypses predicted from extrapolations + assumptions of helplessness, often made by otherwise intelligent and scientifically inclined people. We were all going to starve, but then Haber figured out how to…

> they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on these topics are quite well aware. The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and overcome" has been based on two major things: - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stabili…

> - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability

Homo sapiens survived the transition from the last ice age to today's climate.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#284

Post by gmuslera »

dj_gitmo wrote: post #166
isp wrote: post #54

In this article is the first time I've seen a graph with units "Hiroshimas per Seconds". https://climatecasino.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ocean_H...

very poor taste IMO.

I don't think it is a bad measurement of energy for transmitting a scale. It was an actually used nuclear bomb and with enough understanding of its power and consequences in our current culture. Your message have a target public, and that target must understand it properly.

A Tsar bomb or a long number with an unit attached won't be as graphically understood as this one. Scientists may grasp those numbers, but they already know how bad this is, you must reach everyone else.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#285

Post by deanCommie »

no_wizard wrote: post #231
Trasmatta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change is terrifying, but I also have a hard time taking self titled Doomers totally seriously. It makes sense to consider all of the worst case scenarios for any event, and to prepare for them. But Doomers seem to have an obsession with it, and a need to convince others that the worst will happen. I noticed this a lot in 2020. COVID was (and is) awful, but there was so much shit that Doomers claimed would ha…

My take on it is that "well presented doomers" [0], if you will, serve to balance the "well presented optimists" [1] in that they are needed in society so we can have some take on how things could actually go wrong and sound warnings for potentially catastrophic failures. Its important though, that I think it needs moderating, like not everything "Doomers" say needs to be taken at face value, its important that other…

"Everything will go wrong whether we do anything or not!!"

No, it won't. Because we will act.

"Everything will turn out fine, we don't need to worry about anything!!"

No, it won't. We need to act.

Honestly, both extreme reactions paralyze humans and nations into inactivity. We fixed the hole in the Ozone. We fixed Acid Rain. We stopped the whales from going extinct. We did this through concerted human and governmental actions together with pressure and regulations on corporations.

We can do it again. Not without some consequences. Significant human populations will become climate refugees. Significant species will go extinct. But we can offset the worst effects, but not if doomerism or "climate change is inevitable, humans have survived worse" optimism cause us to stop trying.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#286

Post by nomel »

Ancalagon wrote: post #272

A lot of comments deriding this article as alarmist. Excuse me if I'm incorrect in saying so, but even the data seems to tell me that alarmism is where we are at: This articles data. Incredible floods in Pakistan. Heat domes over the PNW. Fires in Australia, Canada, California. And now a warming event in the North Atlantic unlike any other. All of that and this is likely to be one of the coolest summers for the remai…

> Fires in Australia, Canada, California.

Please don't use California as an example here. It's supposed to be on fire. Several species of trees and plants here cannot germinate without fire. The loooong known problem [1] is mismanagement, building houses where places burn, and blaming the wrong people, which leads to overgrowth from lack of fire. Fires aren't, by any measure, optional. If you impede them, they will come back harsher the next time around, which has very recently been addressed with laws to help increase the frequency of fires [2][3].

I don't see how it's possible to even measure global warming impact with the mismanagement that has accumulated.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-s...

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#287

Post by anigbrowl »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #228
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?

try discussing the ideas and data, not the guy

We should do both. Gates has outsized personal influence and resources, he's not some quirky hermit that publishes startling pamphlets but is otherwise separate from the world. It's rational to consider whether and where his personal interests coincide with his policy proposals.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#288

Post by ericmay »

munificent wrote: post #283
PheonixPharts wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on these topics are quite well aware. The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and overcome" has been based on two major things: - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stabili…

> - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability Homo sapiens survived the transition from the last ice age to today's climate.

I may be misremembering my ancient history here but didn’t Homo Sapiens arguably almost go extinct during the last ice age?

As a related digression I think what people just keep forgetting about here isn’t like, we’ll survive. It’s we have all this nice stuff like avocados, grapes, heart surgery, and MacBook Pros, elephants, winter sports, houses, etc. and it sure would be nice to not lose that stuff for no good reason only to say “we’ll see we didn’t go extinct it wasn’t that bad”.

The apparently abrupt changes the unnecessary lives lost, and what could be damaged or lost forever are what’s of concern. Less so just survivability.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#289

Post by ciconia »

There's this paradox where, on the one hand humanity is convinced it can overcome any problem nature throws at us, and can completely subjugate nature; and on the other hand, human beings are tragically grossly understimating the impact of their actions on their environment.

This is really what stands out to me when people on HN suggest that global warming is totally solvable with just enough technological innovation. The sad truth, and what this article is really driving home, is that while we're waiting for a deus ex machina, we continue to trash our planet, as if we can just move to Mars or something when earth is done.

I'm quite skeptical about the whole "collapse of industrial civilisation" schtick, but I am worried, most of all for my children and their generation.

Re: The concurrence of three climatic events

#290

Post by forgetfreeman »

imtringued wrote: post #234
forgetfreeman wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Degrowth not only is a solution, it's a guaranteed outcome if other initiatives don't materialize to successfully address the problem.

You underestimate the threat of eco-fascism. By that I don't mean green party politicians, no, I mean literal facists who blame climate change on overpopulation and who believe that the population has to be cut drastically. In the most basic form this would mean closing our borders and making sure nobody can cross illegally by using lethal force, if necessary.

I'm not certain I do. I feel like we may be arguing the same side here? What I'm hinting at is that unless concrete results don't begin to materialize and that right soon the resulting climate driven geopolitical upheaval, and knock-on effects to global logistics, is quite likely to result in a significant downsizing of both global GDP and the world population. Perversely both of these obviously bad outcomes will very likely improve global carbon emissions. Here's a really shitty joke for you: How do you reduce your carbon footprint by 100% overnight? Shoot yourself in the head. How do you reduce your carbon footprint by 900% overnight? Go shoot your neighbors in the head. :/
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