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

The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

cell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 422 posts

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#21

Post by rkrisztian »

blueflow wrote: post #2

Its not a "risk". Water vapor (clouds) is a stonger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. We already got measurably higher temperatures, so we also have higher water evaporation, and from the last 5 years it looks like it happens every year. So the runaway is already happening, until something stops it near hothouse conditions or hopefully earlier than that.

Thank you for saying this. If you want to know the answer to what causes climate problems, you need to go back to the era of dinosaurs, where CO2 levels were multiple times higher than today. Trees could thrive because they could breathe in a lot of CO2. Dinosaurs got so big because there were plenty of food. How could dinosaurs happily live with such high CO2 levels? The key is that there were plenty of forests. Peter Wohlleben's book "The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them" explains how forests naturally circulate water.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#22

Post by bayindirh »

anon84873628 wrote: post #11
bayindirh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people bet that they'd be dead until that transition happens, so the problem won't be theirs to address.

It's a classic multi-agent coordination problem. Should I stop taking jet liners and eating meat, when everyone else is anyway? (Edit: purely illustrative rhetorical question, but I appreciate the responses)

For me, it's a hard problem.

For business trips, the choice is between two hours and two days, and unfortunately my body goes haywire if I don't eat some meat at least a couple of days per week (talking about 200g/300g total though. Not kilos of it).

On the other hand, I'd happily take trains as more high speed lines open in my country, and reduce meat consumption to bare minimum my body can tolerate.

For personal transportation, going fully electric won't be possible due to my circumstances, but I'd happily switch to a hybrid which would convert 75% of my in-city travel to electric (which I'm actively planning to do).

I also work on projects which tries to reduce footprint of data centers and computation, so there's that.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#23

Post by xgulfie »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6
vaylian wrote: post #4

This is one of the key sentences: > Policymakers and the public, however, remain largely unaware of the risks posed by such a practically irreversible transition Most people still underestimate what it means for the earth system to change from the current stable state into another state, which might need many years to become stable again. And that new stable state might be a lot less favourable for us humans.

It's not that policymakers are unaware. It's that some of them are allergic to true things that they find inconvenient, and have made false premises a pillar of their platform. Calling that "unaware" is giving them too much credit and understanding.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary (power, class) depends upon his not understanding it

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#24

Post by fc417fc802 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6
vaylian wrote: post #4

This is one of the key sentences: > Policymakers and the public, however, remain largely unaware of the risks posed by such a practically irreversible transition Most people still underestimate what it means for the earth system to change from the current stable state into another state, which might need many years to become stable again. And that new stable state might be a lot less favourable for us humans.

It's not that policymakers are unaware. It's that some of them are allergic to true things that they find inconvenient, and have made false premises a pillar of their platform. Calling that "unaware" is giving them too much credit and understanding.

I think it's both. That large shifts on a global scale of everyday things that we take for granted as well as historical differences on a geological time scale are genuinely difficult for non-experts to wrap their heads around.

And also as you say that many politicians are disincentivized to try in the first place.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#25

Post by baq »

Nothing new under the sun.

We can't cut emissions fast enough politically, but we can race towards economically viable fusion power which would solve the problem from the supply side and would make industrial scale carbon sequestration not insane, for a century or so, until waste heat itself can't be radiated fast enough even in 250 ppm CO2 atmosphere - but that's a problem for the XXII century.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#26

Post by jeffybefffy519 »

I really think the key to addressing climate change should have started 20 years ago in a lot of primary schools, whereby the curriculum includes subjects that are more tailored to solving problems with capturing or converting C02 (eg sciences) so that these students are thinking about these problems when graduating and starting businesses to solve the challenges (hopefully with gov incentives at same time).

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#28

Post by Carrok »

smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

I've started composting. I'm sure that'll outweigh the average Vegas visitor's emissions. /s

I'm being a bit facetious obviously, but it does feel a bit like tilting against windmills. We need policy and systemic changes, if we're relying on individuals to all collectively start doing the "right thing", we're sunk.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#29

Post by chasil »

What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare.

'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.

'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58 million years ago.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthh...

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#30

Post by vdupras »

And yet, the only reasonable action to take is to flag this topic and move along with the "humanity has always found a way out, technology will save us. Remember, we were supposed to drown in horse manure!"

Why? Because candidly looking at those risks as a society means deep collective existential dread, which automatically means an immediate civilizational collapse.

So I'm guessing some of our elite is actually ignorant and the other part is willfully shutting the hell up on this subject to let our civilization run on fumes a few more years.

It's unfortunate because a rapid civilizational collapse could give humanity as a species a better chance of survival.

Post reply on HN