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A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

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Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#131

Post by yoyohello13 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #127
tialaramex wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below replacement would be terrifying if there were one thousand humans, it would be worrying if there were a million, and at least worthy of consideration if there were a hundred million, but there are almost ten billion simultaneous humans, we're fine.

>Below replacement would be terrifying if there were one thousand humans, The funny part is that it should terrify you whether there are 10 humans or 10 billion. At the current rates, it's over in about 12-13 generations regardless of the number you start with. That's how it works... no matter how big the starting number, it's how many generations you have left. Think of it this way? You know the dumb story they taug…

This whole comment rests on a very big assumption that these rates will never recover. Just because you can fit a trend line doesn’t mean the projections will pan out. It could just as easily be the case that once population starts meaningfully decreasing, the opportunity cost of children will also decrease and fertility rates will recover. This happens all the time in nature.

Our population absolutely exploded over the last 100 years. This can easily just be a reversion to the mean. There really is no reason to be worrying about human extinction right now. In fact, the ‘extinction’ rhetoric is harmful and dangerous since so many ‘solutions’ to fertility rates are less education and less freedom. I have no trouble believing a handmaids tail like faction emerging because they believe they are saving the species.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#132

Post by journal »

hliyan wrote: post #32

I recently finished rewatching The Three Body Problem in which (spoilers follow) the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years. If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real. Granted I was a climate change skeptic myself until about 10 yea…

if people have a hard time convincing themselves to brush their teeth, what do you expect from a whole civilization of those type of people?

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#133

Post by amanaplanacanal »

no_wizard wrote: post #115
baq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable. ...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more, but to focus on getting to true clean energy sources which will allow us to economically unwind the mess before the whole house of cards collapses, i.e. fusion + global scale solar (maybe even space solar and microwave beam down) + boatloads of batteries.

Steady state nuclear power plus wind and solar would. In today’s world, make the grid more reliable and greener than ever. Nuclear should not be off the table. It’s safe, it’s well understood, it’s reliable and is a very cheap way to create base load capacity that renewables like solos and wind can build out on top of

I'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap, but it sure isn't in the US.

Of course, given the seeming inability of the US to do any kind of large projects any more, small and decentralized is probably the only thing that will work.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#134

Post by amanaplanacanal »

drc500free wrote: post #106
esafak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A carbon tax would change behavior in short order. The challenge is introducing then maintaining it; people can always vote it out. I think left-leaning jurisdictions should definitely give it a try.

Carbon taxes are massively regressive. There is no political coalition that simultaneously wants to act against climate change and doesn’t mind driving further income inequality.

So you balance it with tax credits or handouts to the poor. This isn't an insoluble problem.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#135

Post by actionfromafar »

jdw64 wrote: post #51

The sad thing about humans is that under capitalism, capital consumes public goods like nature. Then, when those public goods degrade and harm the human species, the capital class that actively consumed those public goods refuses to help restore them and instead cries that it's all a lie

Capitalism is just a way to manage numbers.

If the true costs were accounted for, Capitalism would work great. The problem is a lot of the costs are left for someone else to eat.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#136

Post by RajT88 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #42
hliyan wrote: post #32

I recently finished rewatching The Three Body Problem in which (spoilers follow) the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years. If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real. Granted I was a climate change skeptic myself until about 10 yea…

I’ve come to terms with the fact that there is no stopping human consumption. It is simply not possible to get enough people to reduce to make an impact. The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof. The only way is ‘up and out’ developing clean, cheap methods of energy generation and lobbying to get that infrastructure built out as quickly as possible. At this point, investing more in Fo…

> anyone claiming “coal” or whatever is the future is simply a conman or a clown.

I've seen people on social media seriously claiming that coal plants are cleaner than wind energy or solar energy. It's aggravating. Never mind that it's easy to show that for the same amount of energy output, you get a similar amount of tons of coal ash yearly to the amount of materials it went into building a wind or solar plant...

I go back and forth if they are bots, or somehow people who are just really susceptible to this kind of garbage shill clickbait.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#137

Post by Moldoteck »

no_wizard wrote: post #115
baq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable. ...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more, but to focus on getting to true clean energy sources which will allow us to economically unwind the mess before the whole house of cards collapses, i.e. fusion + global scale solar (maybe even space solar and microwave beam down) + boatloads of batteries.

Steady state nuclear power plus wind and solar would. In today’s world, make the grid more reliable and greener than ever. Nuclear should not be off the table. It’s safe, it’s well understood, it’s reliable and is a very cheap way to create base load capacity that renewables like solos and wind can build out on top of

France and Sweden proved Renewables+Nuclear can decarbonize your electric grid almost fully and pretty damn fast - under 20y with old tech without any automatic welding and such... With proper policies the whole planet could do something similar in much less time...

The challenge still remains decarbonizing the rest/electrification

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#138

Post by Lonestar1440 »

Kon5ole wrote: post #87

I don't know if it's too late to stop the worst case scenarios of global warming yet or if there's still time, but it doesn't seem to be happening anyway. The world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts. However, I do think we have time to prepare for the worst case scenarios, and individual countries and states can do that efficiently on their own. Improve evacuation routines in floodab…

We've already stopped the "Worst case scenarios" by rapidly replacing Carbon-intensive energy with other sources over the past decade:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/emissions-worst-c...

Still work to be done, and also plenty of reasons for optimism. Batteries, motors, and carbon free generation only get better.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#139

Post by _alternator_ »

metalman wrote: post #70

Any talk of the various climactic theorys is very³ very³ likely to be wrong³.These systems are huge, interconected, and NOT UNDERSTOOD. What we do have is some data that strongly suggests that the climate is changing, possibly at an unprecidented rate.Right now. Record territory in fact. https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.cf.g... https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice_daily/?nhsh=nh https://ns…

What do you mean by 'very likely to be wrong' and 'not understood' (no scarecaps pls)? There are uncertainties, and there are still unanswered scientific questions, but the measured change in temperatures largely corresponds to the midrange predictions from climate models 20 years ago.

Don't mistake "I don't understand the science" for "the science behind climate change is weak". Go out, learn some coupled atmospheric modeling PDEs, and build a climate model yourself (Claude can help). It'll only take a few days. You'll learn a lot about what's known and the sources of uncertainty.

Re: A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

#140

Post by ramon156 »

Has anyone seen the news in India (that the Indian media for some reason is not covering)

It was 48 C this week in some cities. The power grid was not ready for the amount of AC power needed, and it turned into blackouts. You're sitting in a dark cube that has been cooking for 12 hours, hoping something might happen. A healthy 25 year old would die in 6 hours.

Even if you do not want to accept climate change is a thing, you can accept the current state of the world is affecting people.

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