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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

#161

Post by llukas »

giantg2 wrote: post #119
no_wizard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores too much to be a good faith argument like lack of options to choose. Ability to choose in absence of regulation, the fact that industry spends millions to curb any regulation and I know ok missing other factors. Individual choice is actually a small part of this wheel, almost negligible. The vast majority of polluting is done by industry, and they also do the most not to make things better and actively o…

People want the products. Industry wouldn't exist, or not at this scale, without that. The easiest way to see this is air travel. The vast majority of it is unnecessary - business trips that could be a zoom call, vacations, shipping, etc. People got to every place on earth using trains and ships before air travel. Possible exceptions are medical transport and some types of products, which are tiny by comparison. So y…

Policy of subsidizing various modes of transportation modes shapes consumer choices. Best example is high speed rail vs air on shorter routes.

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

#163

Post by CalRobert »

graeme wrote: post #148
CalRobert wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing is that we have basically everything we need right now. You can live in a well-insulated fully electric home powered by renewable energy and have most things you need within a walk, bike, or public transport ride away, _OR_ use an electric car for the things that aren't. If you combine that with a mostly-plant based diet (or at _least_ swapping chicken for most of your beef and lamb) and have 2 kids o…

>The crazy thing is that we have basically everything we need right now. Have you travelled? This doesn't describe most of the world. Most of the world would need to increase carbon emissions to live the way you're describing. You aren't describing a zero carbon lifestyle, you're describing a lower carbon lifestyle. And we still use carbon in building the things in your scenario: the building, the car, etc. Lower car…

Indeed I have traveled, and I am in favour of nuclear and renewables and batteries for pretty much the reasons you state. There are other issues (concrete production comes to mind, and it always bugs me that houses in Europe are so dependent on concrete when its a huge emissions source) but when you're running your building equipment and factories and transit networks on zero emissions electricity (so we can include nuclear, which I suppose isn't renewable but is still very low carbon) then the building, the car, etc. have lower embodied carbon as well.

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

#164

Post by CalRobert »

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…

The way emissions are going we* won't make it another 12-13 generations either.

* Some humans will likely survive, but modern civilisation won't.

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

#165

Post by RickJWagner »

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…

Something that would help a great deal would be some very public, clearly worded predictions about future events that should happen.

Climate scientists could help convince skeptics by correctly predicting future events. Skeptics could vet the predictions immediately to avoid late refutations. They’d look foolish if they tried to downplay the events if they didn’t raise concerns at the time they were predicted.

Looking fairly at things, predictions along the lines of ‘An inconvenient truth’ did not help. ( A UK high court ruling found at least 9 errors or exaggerations in the film. )

Demonstrating predictability should increase acceptance.

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

#166

Post by baq »

mindslight wrote: post #149
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.

Please explain how "accelerating the burning" is supposed to cause fusion and global scale solar to pop into existence.

No idea, ask fusion scientists, they might have answers on what they need built a lot of and quickly and whatever it is it’ll take energy to do it.

I wouldn’t mind shortening e.g. the Iran war by a couple of days and redirecting the funding from that to fusion research and battery buildout.

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

#167

Post by lostlogin »

dmitrygr wrote: post #79
CalRobert wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing is that we have basically everything we need right now. You can live in a well-insulated fully electric home powered by renewable energy and have most things you need within a walk, bike, or public transport ride away, _OR_ use an electric car for the things that aren't. If you combine that with a mostly-plant based diet (or at _least_ swapping chicken for most of your beef and lamb) and have 2 kids o…

Western nations reducing will DO nothing - it is too small a fraction of greenhouse emissions. The large fraction is coming form india and china. And they do not have electric everything. they don't even have running water in most places.

> Western nations reducing will DO nothing

That doesn’t fit my understanding at all.

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

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

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

#168

Post by tsimionescu »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #154
yoyohello13 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>This whole comment rests on a very big assumption that these rates will never recover. J The opposite, actually. Your assumption is that the rates bounce up and down, mostly because you don't want to believe there's a problem. The rates are transmissible, older generations to the younger. No one growing up in a world where people have few or just one child will say to themselves "hey, you know what, I want 10 kids w…

> The rates are transmissible, older generations to the younger. No one growing up in a world where people have few or just one child will say to themselves "hey, you know what, I want 10 kids when I'm an adult!"... but that's what would have to happen.

And yet this exact thing happened, in reverse, everywhere in the world as certain social conditions were met. So it's not just not impossible, it's by far the likeliest scenario.

> Our population isn't exploding, it's just big. And it will shrink rapidly.

The whole population of the world slowly rose from some 10-50 million before 1 CE to some 100 million by 1000 CE, to maybe some 2-300 million by 1700 CE. And then it suddenly reached 1B in 1800, 2B in 1920, 4B in 1974, 8B in 2022. This is a massive population explosion, with the doubling rate increasing rapidly, especially before the 2000s.

> People are only generally capable of reproduction from the ages of 16 to 36... just 20 years.

This is wildly wrong. Children of 16 years should NEVER reproduce, it's an awful thing that this happened for so long of human history, a shameful reality that will hopefully never happen again. And as health has increased, women have become able to reproduce (with some medical aid) well into their 40s (note that the record is currently 74), while men can and often do reproduce well into their 60s+.

Now, is it better if people who want to have children have them when they're younger, probably in their late 20s? Absolutely - mostly to keep generational gaps manageable, to benefit from grandparents' help, etc. But it's not in any way a strict biological necessity, and as fertility science advances, we have every reason to believe this will continue to improve.

> Well at least when our species dies out, the last few people will have masters degrees. That's the important part, right?

This is absurd hyperbole for the exact reasons above.

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

#169

Post by CuriouslyC »

gorjusborg wrote: post #153
jandrese wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a whole lot of panic from industrialists over the birth rate drop in the industrialized world. They claim it is an extinction level event for humanity. This is not quite correct. It is an extinction level event for economic models that assume unbounded growth of the consumer base.

This is an important distinction: what is good for ecology is not necessarily good for economy. If we need unbounded growth to jeep our economic system to function, its the economic system that is wrong, not nature.

Hence why the die hard capitalist shills are so set on going to space.

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

#170

Post by CalRobert »

ramon156 wrote: post #140

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 thi…

Sooner or later we'll have a wet bulb event and many, many, many people will die. The first chapter of Ministry for the Future is plausible.

https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/north-india-heatwave... for anyone curious, and that was almost a month ago. Pakistan is also very vulnerable.

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