Climate models take this into account [0], contrary to what some people here seem to imply. It is also very likely that this is part of, but not the major factor of recent warming. [1] I would like to point out that this is not something we're just figuring out "this week" as Hank Green seems to want to frame it. There's no need to sensationalize. There is no conspiracy here. This is well known. It's good to educate…
It’s reasonable to be skeptical since past climate models (eg from 20 years ago) didn’t do great over the subsequent period. It could be that current ones are much better (but we won’t know for a while).
Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
481–490 of 581 posts
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
>That is why discussions around such technological silver bullets are always toxic: people want to believe. On the flip side, some people reject technological solutions on principle because for them, it's not about solving problems, it's about atoning for the sins of humanity. What does the alternative future look like where we solve the climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize society? Personally, I w…
This is either dishonest or ignorant. We can make a huge difference by moving faster to solar, eating a lot less meat, living in denser settings rather than suburbs, living in smaller houses, switching to heat pumps, not driving huge trucks and SUVs, avoid so much waste particularly in food, driving less, etc.
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your point?
“Point” seems generous. Looking at their post history their either a shill or a troll. That said I’ve heard real people in real life with alleged “real ideas” that say that because system warming has happened in the planet’s distant past we should just accept it as Gosh’s Will or whatever and accept whatever divine punishment we deserve or something. It always gets very fuzzy on how we actually continue to have a wor…
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Spending lots of money, to produce lots of energy, to solve a problem we created by using too much energy... How does this argument make sense? Why is producing energy inherently bad if it doesn't put carbon into the atmosphere? >What people don't get is that environmentalists just want to solve the problem in the most cost effective way, and that is to stop destroying the environment we live in. The most realistic…
> Why is producing energy inherently bad if it doesn't put carbon into the atmosphere? Because it costs money. Just not polluting in the first place is cheaper . Nuclear is probably an important part of the future energy mix but now we discussed using nuclear energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere and I believe that would be a huge waste of resources compared to just not putting the carbon in the atmosphere in t…
We should be pouring a huge amount of money into nuclear fission right now, it's the most straightforward way toward a zero target, and repetition/scale with large series of identical reactors and streamlined regulatory oversight will hopefully make it cost competitive with fossil fuels.
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of climate change like a car driving off a cliff. The car is “safely” on solid ground until it isn’t. The problem is that at some point to avoid the emergency you need to hit the brakes or turn, and this particular car might not be able to turn or brake very hard without catastrophic effects on the occupants. Moving away from this metaphor, there is a possibility we cross a tipping point in the climate system (…
those who believe we will hit a discontinuous tipping point are precisely those who should be advocating for geoengineering now , despite its unknowns and downsides… yet the voices to do so are curiously absent
> yet the voices to do so are curiously absent
It's easy to think this if you're not paying attention: the issue is very controversial and many people oppose it But a number of scientists signed onto a letter calling for additional research into this [1], and Congress and the White House OSTP are also pushing to speed up and increase research funding [2]. Of course, this kind of research could go away in a single election.
[1] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022023/solar-radiation-...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2023/06/30/cong...
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#486Climate models take this into account [0], contrary to what some people here seem to imply. It is also very likely that this is part of, but not the major factor of recent warming. [1] I would like to point out that this is not something we're just figuring out "this week" as Hank Green seems to want to frame it. There's no need to sensationalize. There is no conspiracy here. This is well known. It's good to educate…
It’s reasonable to be skeptical since past climate models (eg from 20 years ago) didn’t do great over the subsequent period. It could be that current ones are much better (but we won’t know for a while).
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
But none of the examples you give move the needle enough with regards to climate change. You're just following what feels like it would be good for the environment (and maybe it is good for your local environment) but isn't actually impactful at a large scale. You write eloquently, but futilely.
Futility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy way too easily to let it persuade one not to do what one thinks is right
Further, even if what you advocate isn't exactly harmful, just neutral (ie eating local vegetables instead of imported, nevermind that the carbon footprint difference is negligible) wasting valuable political capital on useless gestures is objectively wrong.
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are people saying we should not just not stop, but even increase sulfur injection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio... The thing is, this is not a one time solution. We would have to do it continuously, or else the temperature would quickly rise again. And we would have to increase sulphur injection if the CO2 level keeps rising. It could be a temporary solution though, e.g. until al…
We do this until CO2 levels come down. Hopefully 20-30 years. Regardless this is really a series of crazy experiments we are proposing doing on a very complicated system.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-....
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think CO2 would go down naturally after some time. How? Where does the carbon go?
Eaten by plants, turned into coal. Atmospheric CO2 will indeed go down, after… some time.
Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without modern, western, industrial technology 50% of all people die before reaching adulthood: https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past This is reproducible across time, geography and culture. It is the basic condition of humanity. > I invite you to visit basically any place on Earth that is not Europe or North America. It's frankly a white/western superiority complex and technology is just a fig leaf…
> As an aside, I'm very disturbed to realize this screed is coming from someone of your stature in the tech community. Oh geesh. As if the lines of code I have written are what I put forth to vouch for this. We should divorce the tech fantasies from the meatspace realities. My opinions are based on the many, many, non-tech days that I've spent roaming the Earth[1] and have seen what humans as a whole are really up to…
1. The human growth explosion already happened. We're dealing with the end stage of it over the next 50-100 years. There will never be a world of "a hundred billion people on Earth" since it turns out people don't want to reproduce that much. We'll hit peak human this century which means that we actually do have a shot at giving all people a decent lifestyle if we develop our technology and have abundant energy. Exponential growth is just not required. The Ehrlichian doomsday was never going to happen.
2. The past was actually really bad, even for the wealthiest. Disease, starvation, and violence were actually rampant. Rewinding the development clock in rich areas, or pausing it in developing areas, would be equivalent to the largest crimes against humanity ever perpetrated.
I find your rejection of this basic fact of history by writing things like: "if native peoples lives (over hundreds of thousands of years, indeed) are such utter trash that they need to be rescued from it by technology" or "Incredibly tone deaf, frankly, when most past humans had none of those things and yet dealt with it, living actual full lives. We've basically forgotten what we are, what we came from, and believe we deserve Saturday morning cartoons." to be wildly ignorant. These people suffered, for millions of years, and still they suffer today. Alleviating this suffering is not optional. Frankly only someone who grew up in the utterly privilege western culture could ever think or write something like this.
3. Humans are not separate from nature. This one is counter-intuitive and hard to swallow but the truth is all human activity is natural, Lowes and Burger Kings are just a natural as forests. Nature is utterly impersonal. It has no morality or opinion. Sometimes one species gets a lot of adaptions that let it dominate and reshape the rest of nature into the way it sees fit. Then other species evolve to fill the new niches that are created. We make a lot of plastic now, but bacteria are starting to evolve to eat it, is plastic bad for nature? It's a nonsensical question. Plastic is nature.
It's fine to not like this and prefer some parts of nature over others, I certainly do, but no part of it is "better" or "worse" it just IS. Any morality you assign to it is purely your own opinion. You're right that keeping 8 billion humans fed and happy has a big impact on the rest of nature. But the only moral dimension that impact has is: will it cause more or less human suffering?
Sometimes the answer is yes, and we should stop. Sometimes is no and we have a moral duty to reconfigure nature to our liking. Most of the time the answer is: "it's not clear" and then people argue about it and sometimes pass laws.
But crucially it's all about humanity.
> And if you take my opinion for advocating any fascist-sounding, eugenics-sounding, kill-the-baddies-sounding recommendation, then you're reading something in I didn't write
But surely you must realize that the malthusian collapse that you anticipate will be characterized by authoritarian violence. Times of resource scarcity always are. So by embracing a defeatist philosophy you implicitly endorse it.