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

Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

thatjoescott.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#41

Post by overfeed »

aqme28 wrote: post #35

Yes, the title is exaggerated. But I think a lot of you are underestimating the societal impact of roughly half a billion climate refugees. That kind of destabilization could easily lead to societal collapse, world war, etc... The Syrian refugee crisis meant something like a million people fleeing into Europe and it caused massive political upheavals.

> But I think a lot of you are underestimating the societal impact of roughly half a billion climate refugees.

If North America and Europe enters an ice age, the preferred term would be "climate-expatriates"

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#42

Post by bawolff »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #39
bawolff wrote: post #34

> Back in 2021, a study in Nature Geosciences showed that the AMOC was the weakest it’s been in more than 1,000 years. Out of curiosity, what happened 1000 years ago to make it so weak? 1000 years ago is still human time scales - there were people living in europe and north america at the time. We have written records from the europeans at least. Its not like this was 100,000 years ago.

the further back you go, the less evidence we have. we don't know it was this week 1000 years ago, it's just that the error bars got big enough that we can't yet rule it out.

I guess this is the study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00699-z unfortunately i can only see the abstract so its hard to say.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#43

Post by PinkMilkshake »

roenxi wrote: post #15
shrubby wrote: post #4

This scary, yet almost nothing on the news. We're living in a fake world and pretending everything is fine. Adam Curtis made a movie HyperNormalisation and we're living it also today. Adam Curtis: “HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating,…

It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust. Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.

> humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures.

That's not the problem, though. The problem is almost nothing else can. Livestock, staple crops, pollinating insects, etc.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#44

Post by globalnode »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #13

[flagged]

im sure the responsibility for fixing everything will fall on all of us. maybe if we get another bin with a new coloured lid we can get busy sorting all our plastics into soft, hard, transparent, semi-opaque, labelled, bought before tuesday, stored in the fridge, etc... some busywork for the masses ought to fix things up. heavy fines and moral outrage if you dont comply! carbon credits will ofc play a big role in industries' response, and gatekeepers of public policy will make a lot of money.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#45

Post by zkmon »

As long as things gradual enough, similar to Roman empire collapse, you wouldn't even recognize the collapse.

Any change is seen as good or bad, only by the people who saw both ends of it and categorize the change as such. If a change happens through multiple generations, each generations sees only a part of the change. Specially the younger population can only see the change through the past decade or two. That explains why the youth are always merrier than the older folks who have a bigger burden of mempries.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#46

Post by nerdsniper »

bawolff wrote: post #42
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the further back you go, the less evidence we have. we don't know it was this week 1000 years ago, it's just that the error bars got big enough that we can't yet rule it out.

I guess this is the study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00699-z unfortunately i can only see the abstract so its hard to say.

Here you go: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/s41561-021-00699-z

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#47

Post by greygoo222 »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #43
roenxi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust. Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.

> humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. That's not the problem, though. The problem is almost nothing else can. Livestock, staple crops, pollinating insects, etc.

Livestock, staple crops, and pollinating insects cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. Some specific crops don't, but that's not a problem as long as changes are predicted.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#48

Post by SupremumLimit »

roenxi wrote: post #15
shrubby wrote: post #4

This scary, yet almost nothing on the news. We're living in a fake world and pretending everything is fine. Adam Curtis made a movie HyperNormalisation and we're living it also today. Adam Curtis: “HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating,…

It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust. Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.

The ignorance of this comment is breathtaking. How are the crops going to grow if the temperature drops by 15 degrees Celsius? What marine and terrestrial ecosystems can survive a sudden catastrophic change like that? What’s going to happen to the weather patterns after this planet-scale shift? How do you “adjust” to the collapse of your food supply and entire ecosystems?

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#49

Post by sph »

shrubby wrote: post #4

This scary, yet almost nothing on the news. We're living in a fake world and pretending everything is fine. Adam Curtis made a movie HyperNormalisation and we're living it also today. Adam Curtis: “HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating,…

Another take away from that documentary is not that politicians do not care, but that the world has become so increasingly complex, fast-moving and interconnected there is no simple or real solution to any of the problems people have. They just do not have the answers.

Whenever a politician gets elected on the wish to fix housing, jobs, the pension system, the larger and larger divide between the ultra rich and the masses, either they are lying to you or are hopelessly naive they can achieve anything in their 4 years. At that point all they can do is just fill their pockets like everybody else is doing.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#50

Post by roenxi »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #43
roenxi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust. Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.

> humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. That's not the problem, though. The problem is almost nothing else can. Livestock, staple crops, pollinating insects, etc.

How big a problem is that over a multi-decade time horizon?

There is a pretty big variation in average temperatures by country [0]. Somehow People everywhere from Thailand to Greenland manage to find food. All else failing it is a possibility to trade for calories. Let alone technology improvements that might save the day by accident.

I mean, it might make places uninhabitable over the course of a few generations, but things that change so slowly are't actually much of a threat on an individual level. Worst of the worst cases people can move or not have children - the statistics suggest that is an acceptable option to a lot of people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_y...

Post reply on HN