Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures • Hacker News Board

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#231

Post by wnkrshm » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:56 AM UTC

sfvisser wrote: post #168

nologic01 wrote: post #156

The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained patch implodes. It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our mo…

I highly doubt many proponents of geoengineering think in terms of rebooting or isolating individual factors. The appeal of geoengineering is you can nudge specific systems slowly into another direction. You can start small and observe expected effects and unwanted side-effects. Reduction of sulfer emissions by ships is an interesting starting point to learn something.

Starting small doesn't work if you have a nonlinear system. In nonlinear systems, the magnitude of a perturbance isn't linearly related to the absorbed effect.

So in the worst case: small input, giant irreversible effect.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#232

Post by mdekkers » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:59 AM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #155

mdekkers wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global overpopulation is absolutely a part of the equation, and everyone is deeply uncomfortable talking about it because there are no palatable solutions to that specific problem. Humans, as a species, exhibit all the damaging properties of a cancerous growth, and our habitat can no longer support us. As George Carlin said: the planet will be fine, it’s the humans that are fucked!

The solution is well understood: universal education and readily available birth control. It's already working in the more developed economies.

Absolutely. Now all we need is politicians and their constituents around the globe to get on board with this.

Again with the George Carlin quotes though (watch the clip “it’s a big club”) most governments are not _that_ interested in a deeply educated general population, _or_ birth control. Where are we going to get all of our obedient little workers from?

So not holding my breath :)

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#233

Post by brabel » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:00 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #225

Meanwhile, in Tonga: "Tonga experiences unusual cold during El Nino alert" [1] > Tonga's Meteorology Department said on Friday that the Pacific island country is experiencing unusually cold weather, with cool days and cooler nights, and climate is leaning towards El Nino conditions. > According to the Matangi Tonga news website, a low of 9.3 degrees Celsius, recorded at the end of July in Tongatapu island where the c…

Do you intentionally ignore advice that's constantly posted here and elsewhere to NEVER take local events that go against the trends as evidence against the trends, or you're just new here and on any discussion of this topic and just didn't know that?

Even parts of Antartica are currently cooling down, that's very well known and even expected according to climate models. But no, that's not evidence against global warming.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#234

Post by sangnoir » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:04 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #187

sz3 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no alternative. We have "aggravated the situation" (as you put it) beyond recovery. Doing nothing will now surely lead to an unacceptable outcome. We are going to have to fix it, or resign ourselves to a huge shrinking of the habitable region of the planet, with the hunger/famine/war that will accompany that. Obviously we can always make things worse. But when doing nothing is unacceptable, we have to start…

[flagged]

A modest proposal: load up all the geoengineering-of-bust onto Falcon Heavies and ship them to Mars as a pilot project

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#235

Post by matsemann » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:06 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #226

nologic01 wrote: post #156

The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained patch implodes. It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our mo…

It is very uncomplicated in fact: Most people here on HN are rationally capable of understanding the challenges humanity faces right now. What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused. Deep down they might suspect this is necessary,…

Especially since HNers mostly are the top top top earners in the world, having unsustainable lifestyles. No one likes to accept it can't be like this forever.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#236

Post by jojoo » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:07 AM UTC

epivosism wrote: post #136

uxamanda wrote: post #60

For anyone interested in a near-future sci-fi look at how sulfur as a form of geoengineering might play out, check out out Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson[0]. The title[1] refers to what happens when you suddenly stop an effort like that... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Maintenan...

Read counts: Snow Crash (3) The Diamond Age (1) Anathem (2) Cryptonomicon (3/4) Baroque cycle (2/3) Seveneves (2) Reamde (2) The rise and fall of D.O.D.O (9/10) Fall or Dodge in hell (1/2) Termination shock (1/3)

Are the fractions ongoing efforts or did you drop it?

re-reads for me:

Diamond Age (4) (I'm an educator), Cryptonomicon (2), Baroc cycle (2)

However i plan to re-read Anathem in paralell with my second re-read of Russels A History of Western Philosophy. Really looking forward to this one.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#237

Post by _factor » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:11 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #187

sz3 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no alternative. We have "aggravated the situation" (as you put it) beyond recovery. Doing nothing will now surely lead to an unacceptable outcome. We are going to have to fix it, or resign ourselves to a huge shrinking of the habitable region of the planet, with the hunger/famine/war that will accompany that. Obviously we can always make things worse. But when doing nothing is unacceptable, we have to start…

[flagged]

More akin to duck taping the HVAC to avoid an emergency amputation.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#238

Post by defrost » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:11 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #190

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. My province in Canada is experiencing anomalous weather events year after year, and while things still look “okay” we seem to be encroaching on visible threshold events quite rapidly. Sure, these events could mysteriously stop. Or stay very much the same, acting like a new normal that isn’t so destructive as to be an emergency. But the trend line is there. Fires increasing, biodiversity decreasing, floo…

Fires are actually decreasing. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-hasnt-set-th... https://archive.li/WfDJh

It's technically true that total area burned globally has been on a downward trend.

That's a real piece of misdirect by Murdoch press though and typical of their editorial stance.

To quote Multi-decadal trends and variability in burned area from the 5th version of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED5) [1] (one of many similar studies)

* Burned area declined by 1.21±0.66% yr-1 20 , a cumulative decrease of 24.2±13.2% over 20 years.

* The global reduction is primarily driven by decreases in fire within savannas, grasslands, and croplands.

* Forest, peat, and deforestation fires did not exhibit long-term trends.

So, managed areas are increasingly having fewer fires for a variety of reasons and they're a big part of the non ice areas across the globe.

Forest fires aren't decreasing, more worrying areas that typically don't see frequent fires are now seeing fires more often.

The Fox message is that beacuse total global fire area is reducing there's no need to worry about massive forest fires in places that typically don't see such things.

If ten thousand acres of seasonal grass fires doesn't happen does that really offset a thousand acres of old growth forest being torched to the ground?

[1] https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-182/essd-202...

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#239

Post by jb1991 » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:13 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #187

sz3 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no alternative. We have "aggravated the situation" (as you put it) beyond recovery. Doing nothing will now surely lead to an unacceptable outcome. We are going to have to fix it, or resign ourselves to a huge shrinking of the habitable region of the planet, with the hunger/famine/war that will accompany that. Obviously we can always make things worse. But when doing nothing is unacceptable, we have to start…

[flagged]

As someone who uses a butter knife literally every day, I am offended by this comment.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#240

Post by fullspectrumdev » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 8:14 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #65

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is defeatist and also not true. We adopt nuclear, invest in carbon capture technologies, and employ geoengineering strategies as needed until fusion comes online. This is a solvable technical problem with significant political hurdles.

Dude. Nuclear takes decades to build, and that’s IF you can even build it. There’s zero appetite for it in the US or even formerly nuclear happy Europe. We’re literally decommissioning more reactors than we build. Carbon capture doesn’t work. Even if you did manage to capture it from a coal plant, that’s not enough. You have to suck it from the air, and a scalable technology doesn’t exist, and even if it did, we’d ne…

Better to do something (build nuclear) than do nothing (cry on twitter).