Wait I've seen this... Day before the day after tomorrow right?
Generally in science when your see the same results being reproduced by different researchers your certainty should increase.
Don’t look up, 2026 is the midterm campaign slogan for MAGA
Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
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Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#32not to diss the science and the work involved around it but this kind of alarmist stuff makes me wonder how many similar things have happened in the past but nobody noticed because nobody was looking or even knew how to track such a thing, the environment is so complex, seems unlikely that we can make heads or tails of this, and in 50 years some new understanding will flip all of our current models (no pun intended!)…
I agree with your sentiment, but I have a hard time imagining any alternative action scientists could take besides publishing and warning.
Science is best when it’s purely that, I’ve seen plenty of living examples and read about past ones where science mixed with politics or overt profit motives don’t end well. Surely there must be examples where the contrary has been the case, but I am biased, and I would wager that it ended poorly more often than well.
I would much rather have politicians that heed scientific results than scientists springboarding into politics.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#33Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.
The forest where the community hikes has no value unless the trees are turned into paper.
All to say, Capital at large seeks out the profit. Until climate change effects the profit considerably, mitigation will be the path less traveled.
The only real way to approach this problem is to reduce consumption across the board which as you might guess, isn't profitable.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#34Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.
> capital has no interest Selfish humans. "Capital" is a mental model, it's not some force of nature or hand of god.
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Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#35Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#36Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#37Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.
Climate also doesn't change in macro over a lifetime. It's very real, but the notion that it's changing over a 5 year period is nonsense. things aren't "shutting off".
I am old enough to have witnessed how the climate has completely changed in Europe, where I live.
In the same place where I live now, when I was young there was permanent snow cover for 3 to 4 months.
During the last 10 years, there have been years with no snow and in the others a little snow has been present for 3 or 4 days of a year, when it melted the second day after falling.
I have not used again my winter boots and my winter jackets for the last 15 years or more.
This is really a huge change during less than a human lifetime.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#38I think climate change is a compelling crisis but I find these types of “could maybe happen according to some models” type of catastrophic scenarios a little frustrating because they soak up a lot of attention with scary headlines, reinforcing hopelessness in those who care while providing ammunition to skeptics when the catastrophe doesn’t materialize. It’s also easy to question methodology for anyone who has done a…
What, exactly, do you expect scientists researching these things to do? Bury their findings?
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#39“Scientists” have been warning the world about this since Stommel issued his paper in 1961: https://tellusjournal.org/articles/10.3402/tellusa.v13i2.949... It’s going to shut down The ice caps and antartic ice are going to melt entirely The Gulf Stream is going to collapse Global emissions have skyrocketed with no brakes since then 1.5C target was a joke. 2.0 target is a joke. There is no world where humans can coord…
> There is no world where humans can coordinate in a way that reduces global emissions They seem to have cooperated rather effectively on increasing them, so I wouldn't say "no world"?
People don’t need to coordinate to ignore externalities
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Climate has changed over a lifetime though.
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