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

‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 113 posts

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#101

Post by bluescrn »

Gigachad wrote: post #96
bluescrn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Climate change is caused by pollution and overconsumption. We're perfectly capable to change that ... we just don't want to. Yes, we can turn rich countries into poor countries by taking away transport, energy, and protein from the working class, and there's growing support for that approach. But that approach also destroys most of the hope for technological solutions. And even if the richest countries did sacrific…

Would standards of living really decline that much if we didn’t all have mega SUVs and the latest years iPhone? There is so much consumption that is absolute crap and could easily be cut out while honestly improving life.

> Would standards of living really decline that much if we didn’t all have mega SUVs and the latest years iPhone?

Would emissions really decline by a measurable amount if the changes were limited to that?

If we're going to have any impact on the climate, changes need to be drastic and on a global scale. But at the same time, governments will not accept an end to economic growth, let alone a managed 'degrowth'. They can't even allow an end to population growth as it's such an important factor in economic growth.

If we can't even end the era of hugely destructive wars between nations, what hope is there for the human race coming together on the scale necessary to slow/reverse climate change?

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#102

Post by ericmay »

ChatGTP wrote: post #90
ericmay wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but as such there isn’t anything for President Biden to do here in terms of an address or speech which was the point. I also don’t think invasion of member states is the only thing NATO is concerned with. For instance, NATO allies are coordinating and providing direct military support to Ukraine which isn’t a member state.

Use you’re imagination I guess, we can’t do the same things and expect different results.

I don’t follow. What good would addressing NATO members who are trying to take action on climate change do when the problem for President Biden is a Congress (House in particular) that doesn’t even think that rapid climate change is a real thing, let alone a threat?

For the US climate change policy completely falls at the feet of one group of people, and that’s Republicans. Period. End of story. No possible narrative otherwise exists.

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#103

Post by brmgb »

7e wrote: post #63
brmgb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are 30 years late. The world at large didn’t wait for you. Fertility has been declining worldwide for decades and been subreplacement in the USA and Europe for quite sometimes. South East Asia and Africa are slowly getting there too. Population is only an issue because of demographic lag. It’s already sorted out. We just have to pass the bump.

The U.S. population is still growing, which of course may be lag, but can also be caused by immigration. Countries need to keep the population growing to support Ponzi-schemes like retirement benefits. I expect poorer countries to continue to be baby factories indefinitely.

> The U.S. population is still growing, which of course may be lag, but can also be caused by immigration.

Indeed which is why I specifically talked of fertility as immigration is a thing. Irrelevant on a global level obviously.

> I expect poorer countries to continue to be baby factories indefinitely.

Highly unlikely. Fertility is getting lower everywhere. In all likelihood Africa will go the same way as South Asia as women education and access to contraception rise and children mortality rates drop. It’s already started.

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#104

Post by BasedAnon »

tzs wrote: post #97
BasedAnon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's propaganda, and now you're getting somewhere. We already get 63% of our protein from plants. If we were to extend that to 100%, we could store our entire 1.5C carbon budget through afforesting and rewilding pastures, which would also help restore biodiversity. Protein is not created equally. It is not possible to maintain a healthy diet using sustainable low-energy sources of plant protein in place of meat. M…

Even if we accept that meat is not optional we don't have to eat so much of it. Most of Europe consumes 1/2 to 2/3 of the meat per capita as the US. China too. Japan consumes about 40% per capita as the US and they consumer a mix of meats that has much less climate impact. India consumes around 1/30th of the US in meat per capita.

in western countries sure, there is a glut of food but there are non-western countries that are chronically malnutritioned and that absolutely do need that meat. it's a distribution problem not a farming problem

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#105

Post by FrustratedMonky »

fragmede wrote: post #35
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #3

Yes. We have lots of models, some of the biggest super computers crunching them. But models are still estimates. There can still be un-knowns. Scientist have been writing about un-known, or difficult to model feedback loops for awhile. That is the movie-style doomsday, where we hit some un-foreseen tipping point and climate change takes off. Instead view climate as a large dynamic system, you hit it hard enough, mayb…

All models are wrong, some are useful. At the scale we're talking about, with the number of cases we have (one, Earth), all our models are going to become more and more wrong the further off from our current equilibrium we get. But yes, Day After Tomorrow.

Yeah. didn't mean to say models are wrong. Just that because they are estimates, that it is likely that some unknown variable, or unknown feedback, could dramatically shift climate more than the model would show. So this worse than expected melting in Antarctica could be some 'disaster-movie-level-unforeseen-event'.

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#106

Post by myshpa »

BasedAnon wrote: post #104
tzs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we accept that meat is not optional we don't have to eat so much of it. Most of Europe consumes 1/2 to 2/3 of the meat per capita as the US. China too. Japan consumes about 40% per capita as the US and they consumer a mix of meats that has much less climate impact. India consumes around 1/30th of the US in meat per capita.

in western countries sure, there is a glut of food but there are non-western countries that are chronically malnutritioned and that absolutely do need that meat. it's a distribution problem not a farming problem

False Cause fallacy

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#108

Post by danny_codes »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #6

I don't believe there is anything we can do about the impending climate changes. In my opinion all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt.

I agree there is nothing we can do to prevent the next 30 years or so of climate change.

However, there is plenty we can do longer-term.

Step 1: USA via coalition (or alone, it doesn't matter) goes Nuclear (Fission). Global energy consumption is 17.4 Terawatts. About 4 Terawatts of that is us. We therefore need about 4000 nuclear power plants to cover our usage (which, given the economy of scale, would probably cost about 4 Trillion or so). It would take 15 years to build them out, so that's about $280 billion a year. Not particularly expensive, given the overall federal budget is $6 trillion. In addition to domestic construction, we offer generous construction deals to all other countries at-cost with shared IP. Any country can sign up, and the US will use it's hegemony to backup all deals in a "too big to fail" kind of way. Note that we only need about $24 trillion to build out power for the rest of the world, which again isn't a substantial component of anyone's budget (except for developing countries, for which we would just provide the reactors for free/via loan schemes). China will probably do it themselves, so that's like another 5TW capacity we don't need to build.

Step 2: We change out the infrastructure. Massive funding, drowning-in-money level funding for Hydrogen aircraft. Massive funding for electric cars & electric grid improvements. Build out HSR between all cities & build out public transit to sap down air travel / car travel. Cut energy use & de-carbonize.

Step 3: Turn the CO2 in the air back into fossil fuel, or capture it into some other form. We build 17 TWatts of nuclear capacity, so we have plenty of energy. We need only scale up the chemical processes for doing the conversion.

Once completed, we can now "tune" CO2 levels, giving us a lever for global weather control. This will likely be a useful tool for humanity & will let us dynamically control mean surface temperature.

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#109

Post by danny_codes »

BasedAnon wrote: post #70
myshpa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should use fossil fuels to transition away from fossil fuels asap. And stop using them for things we don't need.

So that people in poorer countries can use more of them in our place to industrialize and then join everyone else in the gangrape of our environment!

But this won't happen.

Fossil fuels are the cheapest energy source because of they are already established (economy of scale) and are subsidized heavily. In a world were all major economies have shifted to nuclear power, solar power, and wind power, that will no longer be the case. It will be cheaper for developing countries to use green tech.

Also, once the powerful countries have moved off fossil-fuels, we'll hypocritically force poor countries not to use them anyway. Come now, be reasonable.

Re: ‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

#110

Post by danny_codes »

jhgfjhgfjhfgjhg wrote: post #27
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows an enormous amount of ignorance over how the US works. Because of gerrymandering, republicans own the House of Representatives, no legislation can pass from the legislative branch if the Congress and the House don’t agree. The executive branch can not “just” make new legislation. It’s not part of its power or job. You can’t blame Joe because Marjorie Taylor Greene and every so and so lunatic has decided to…

This shows an enormous amount of ignorance of how federalism works. Nothing is stopping Californians from banning fossil fuels.

Man I would love to see us go 100% nuclear. Just slap 50 power plants down and we'd be done, 10 years, in-and-out. It'd only cost like 100 billion or so, basically free.
Post reply on HN