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

A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 324 posts

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#181

Post by 7952 »

Biologist123 wrote: post #90
braaannigan wrote: post #50

I've got a background in this field and I am very surprised to see this published in Nature. The model presented is purely statistical with no representation of the underlying physics. When we are dealing with a phenomenon that is driven by well-understood physical laws (e.g. geophysical fluid dynamics, radiation physics etc) then these physical models are the most reliable basis for prediction. When I say physical m…

As a lay-bystander to the climate debate, I get a little spooked when I see comments like this. Like 99.9% of people, the science of complex climate systems is beyond me as are the de facto black box models that project climate change. Instead I use “appears in a credible journal” as a basis for trusting the apparent direction of travel and I’m disconcerted when I see that proxy challenged. I also, I am somewhat sorr…

Never convinced that models are a good basis for this kind of debate. It just presents a world in which we don't have agency over the climate.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#182

Post by pphysch »

layer8 wrote: post #78
pphysch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compound and significantly accelerate the timeline There's a misconception that the biosphere is a delicate machine that will have a catastrophic internal failure if we don't follow the maintenance bibl^H^H^H^Hmanual, which apparently some experts have access to. In reality, it is a highly dynamic, self-repairing living organism, which we are a part of. There are at least as many negative feedback loops as positive…

> it is a highly dynamic, self-repairing living organism Organisms are self-repairing (to a certain extent) because they evolved to be so due to natural selection. The Earth as a whole and its climate are not subject to evolutionary pressure (they don’t reproduce) and thus are nothing like that.

The biosphere is composed of countless suborganisms that have become highly stable over eons of evolutionary pressure.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#183

Post by waitSo »

braaannigan wrote: post #50

I've got a background in this field and I am very surprised to see this published in Nature. The model presented is purely statistical with no representation of the underlying physics. When we are dealing with a phenomenon that is driven by well-understood physical laws (e.g. geophysical fluid dynamics, radiation physics etc) then these physical models are the most reliable basis for prediction. When I say physical m…

Electromagnetism as a theory did not work until Maxwell removed a bunch of imaginary pulleys and weights intended to simulate real objects.

Did Einstein rocket off at the speed of light before coming up with relativity?

All those things were later refined as they were the correct cognitive framework with inaccurate physical models behind them.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#184

Post by mrguyorama »

timmg wrote: post #177
oceanthrowaway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this is the great utility of the IPCC reports. If you look at the full report you can find subsections on many aspects of climate change and a discussion of the state of the field complete with citations compiled by an expert.

Speaking of which, I recently saw this: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-ipcc-actually-... which is kinda a review of what IPCC report says about "extreme weather". For me, this summary is a lot different than the way I see this aspect talked about in the media (and on Twitter, etc) even by climate scientists.

This article isn't great. He says "the IPCC says we won't see extreme weather until 2100.... (except for extreme heat and cold which the IPCC says is already here)"

Okay? A lot of the discourse is explicitly about the heat and cold.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#185

Post by saltcured »

hathchip wrote: post #108
pvaldes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good way to see the problem in a second Think about New York, is at 40 degrees N latitude. This means that if NY would be in the Atlantic coast of Europe would fall in Portugal! a little North to Lisbon! (38ºN). Sometimes Is easy to forget that NY is "Southern Europe" league. Southern than the North Coast of Spain. Now lets see Quebec (53ºN). Well, London is 51ºN. Without the sea current bringing hot tropi…

But the West Coast of North America is has milder winters than the East Coast, which has milder winters than the center. Shouldn't we expect London to end up with a similar climate as somewhere on the West Coast of Canada at the same latitude?

I think the hard part of this is predicting how the global jet stream and polar vortex winds might change in response to disruption of the Atlantic currents. It already changes for North America in response to the Pacific subtle temperature oscillation we call El Nino / La Nina.

The proximity to the ocean and the general westerly winds of the mid latitudes mean that the west coast gets a moderating marine influence. The cold ocean surface provides us "air conditioning" in summer and yet is also a mild "heater" in winter, helping keep coastal air above freezing temperatures.

But, this general background pattern is regularly disrupted by large high and low pressure systems that wander through the region and give us our weather of storms, cold snaps, and heat waves. These cyclonic systems can both carry a somewhat distinct air mass inside them and also disrupt the normal westerly surface flow. And the jet stream is largely in control of steering these systems, making them track further north or south or even helping them stall out temporarily in their generally eastward course.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#186

Post by wredue »

olddustytrail wrote: post #148
mschild wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mentions a potential collapse as early as 2025. More precisely 2025-2095. That is this century and it's accurate to say 2025 is imminent.

Yes, but I - and probably you - will die sometime between 2025 and 2095. I wouldn't say that therefore our deaths are imminent.

That’s a ridiculous comparison. Single human lifetimes are only measured in decades.

If the entirety of humans were very likely to be wiped out from 2025 to 2095, you would definitely call that imminent, and is a much more apt comparison.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#187

Post by chiefalchemist »

oceanthrowaway wrote: post #32

I’m a physical oceanographer. While I have only skimmed this article I would like to make two quick comments. 1) The AMOC is one of the most studied parts of the world ocean and predictions about its collapse have been made since Stommel in 1961. I think in general any study on its imminent collapse should be taken with a grain of salt and it would be wise to wait for further replication and the consensus of the comm…

Since you're familiar with this stuff, and I didn't see it in the article, what's the impact if it were to collapse? To the ecology? To the weather? To other ocean currents?

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#188

Post by marketerinland »

DanHulton wrote: post #146
bjourne wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it this way. The link to the article appeared on HN 15:59:54. braaannigan's comment appeared on 17:07:56. Thus, it took this HN user not more than 60 minutes to conclude that this article is of low quality and should not have been published in Nature. Nature's editors, the article's authors, and its peer reviewers disagree. braaannigan is anonymous and do not put their reputation on the line. Nature's editors…

> If appeal to authority is a valid argument Well, thankfully it is not. There's no need for one side or the other to "win," especially at this point. Instead, likely, debate will continue until a more-nuanced view is better understood and accurately disseminated. (Not necessarily a view "in the middle." Sometimes one side is just Right, Full Stop. But a more-nuanced view when there's strong disagreement on both side…

Appeal to authority is only a fallacy where the authority is not actually an authority.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#189

Post by chiefalchemist »

Biologist123 wrote: post #90
braaannigan wrote: post #50

I've got a background in this field and I am very surprised to see this published in Nature. The model presented is purely statistical with no representation of the underlying physics. When we are dealing with a phenomenon that is driven by well-understood physical laws (e.g. geophysical fluid dynamics, radiation physics etc) then these physical models are the most reliable basis for prediction. When I say physical m…

As a lay-bystander to the climate debate, I get a little spooked when I see comments like this. Like 99.9% of people, the science of complex climate systems is beyond me as are the de facto black box models that project climate change. Instead I use “appears in a credible journal” as a basis for trusting the apparent direction of travel and I’m disconcerted when I see that proxy challenged. I also, I am somewhat sorr…

> Question for the community: how does one navigate such uncertainty?

This is one of the key reasons I come to HN. Yes, for the news, obviously ;) But mostly for the various insights on that news.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#190

Post by ajmurmann »

digdugdirk wrote: post #49
Brusco_RF wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satire?

No, actually the truth. The climate change "hype" comes from journalists and editors. The actual research papers are generally very conservative in their estimations, and we've been exceeding the predicted outcomes for decades without making any real changes to improve our situation.

Given the conservative estimates by scientists have been exceeded, how far of where the more exaggerated takes by journalists?
Post reply on HN