A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by surgical_fire » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #270

surgical_fire wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the concern is one that sounds horribly like eugenics, perhaps this hypothetical "people" should indeed go the way of the dodo.

An agreeable platitude, but such a people are not born, they’re made as their neighborhoods close off, their favorite restaurants and stores disappear, their children are excluded from playdates with school friends, and they’re rejected from employment in favor of one of the tribe. Also do consider that you’ve advocated for the elimination of people holding a belief that is far more common in the world in aggregate t…

None of this happen because "they are strangers in their own land" (which is just a cowardly way to complain about brown people).

This happen due to economic pressures and incentives. The neighborhoods are closed off because it became too expensive. Stores and restaurants disappear when rents gone up and most people prefer to buy shit on Amazon or use delivery apps for food.

I have no fucking idea what you are talking about children being excluded from playdates.

Rejected employment "in favor of the one of the tribe" is plain bullshit.

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

#272

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

GeoAtreides wrote: post #248

solid_fuel wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're pointing out that stupid short-sighted reactionary tendencies on the part of the farmers is directly contributing to the problem that will make their livelihood impossible in the future. It's ironic, if nothing else.

no, he's engaging into a classical "tu queque" that adds nothing but noise to the discussion, maybe except some division between classes and pointless finger-pointing

I wish it were the case that class warfare would be sufficient to solve the climate problem. But I don’t really see any alignment between economic class and ecological consciousness where I live. Are all the poor and middle class folks walking and biking in your part of the world? I mean for sure there are some such places but in most parts of the US you’re no less likely to find a pickup in the garage of someone at the median income than a rich person.

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

#273

Post by baq » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #199

baq wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you agree that fusion power generation is not at the state where it can be straightforwardly built today, and you also have no idea what it might actually take to even research it to possibly get it there, but yet you're still asserting that "accelerating the burning" will surely cause whatever needs to happen to happen? Have I got that right?

Yes, pretty much, except getting to working fusion is not guaranteed - but the climate disaster is, so we have to make a bet. Solar and batteries are the obvious fallback plan. Nuclear should also be, but it’s a hard sell.

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

#274

Post by vladms » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

Loquebantur wrote: post #213

vladms wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're not, it's systemic with industry being the main culprit and the rich being the ones who benefit from that socialization of pollution costs. You two might agree if we consider that when you say "rich" you might describe the average individual on this website (if we consider all people alive). I do believe that 90% of the people would not want to actually destroy the planet the way it seems to be happening, b…

No, you're entirely wrong. The impact an individual has on carbon emissions is directly correlated with their wealth. The distribution of which is extremely uneven: as of 2024, the top 1% worldwide possessed as much as the lower 95% combined, 57 trillion US$. That has gotten only worse in the last two years. It's not about "bad habits", impulse control or whatever, at all.

Wealth distribution is an issue, but lots of "wealth" is due to stuff that is owned by some and used by many.

Take a landlord as an example: he might have 100 houses and own 99% of the wealth in a village, but if the houses are inhabited, people still use them. If those people want to use a 300 sq meter houses rather than 50 sq meter studios, they do contribute as well to the climate issue.

This holds for other fields as well. Example: "... private air travel accounted for 6.3% of the ‘total commercial plus private aviation emissions’ in the USA in 2019, and 7.9% in 2021." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01775-z

I honestly can't say that 92.1% which is from "normal" population is ignorable.

There are no easy solution and everybody is responsible by different degrees. Pointing fingers and wanting "others" to fix it first is not in my view something that ever worked.

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

#275

Post by nikanj » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

xnyan wrote: post #257

nikanj wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WWII was much easier to sell to the people, because the nazis were invading _now_. It seems impossible to sell reduced standard of living today to respond to a problem tomorrow

Nazis were invading other places now. The US cut off Japan's oil supply, triggering an existential crisis for Japan that led to a military attack. If United States had joined the Axis powers, leadership very plausibly could have continued the practice of isolationism (which was the popular opinion before Pearl Harbor). It might have been a shortsighted move, but Nazis invading Europe did not sell the US population on…

Comment I replied to was talking about Europe during WWII

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

#276

Post by cycomanic » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

tocs3 wrote: post #34

albumen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet millions of people still play the lottery. I don’t think it’s as simple as uncertainty. Nobody wants to change their lifestyle to avert climate change. People prefer carrots to sticks.

People prefer carrots to sticks. I sometimes think those in the environmental movement have made a mistake with their messaging. It is too often "we need to suffer to save the planet". It could also be things like: "Why do you want to pay more to drive a giant expensive gas guzzling vehicle to work so that you can pay for a giant expensive gas guzzling vehicle to go to work in". "Why do you want to pay for extra elec…

That ignores the fact that there is a incredibly well founded coalition of organisations with idiological (climate change by its nature requires collective action, but collective action is bad...) and economic (big oil, big tobacco...) motivations that has been running a massive desinformation campaign for decades. We know desinformation is much easier than factual information, climate change is almost a poster boy for this. It would have not mattered an iorta if "environmentalists" would have used different messages, in fact they primarily used exactly the messages you proposed, the fact that you remember it as being ”you all have to suffer to save the planet" just shows how powerful the desinformation campaign was. Because that was their prime message, not the one of climate activists.

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

#277

Post by Loquebantur » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #269

Loquebantur wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of average individuals being the relevant actors in global carbon emissions is pure misdirection. They're not, it's systemic with industry being the main culprit and the rich being the ones who benefit from that socialization of pollution costs. The AMOC shutdown isn't merely "possible" and due "this century" either. The math of the dynamics of complex systems shows the current behavior to be signs of a phas…

This isn't true at all. If all of the global rich immediately became carbonless monks....we would cut only a portion of emissions. And continuing to emit increases global warming. Even if you estimate that the top 1% use 70% of our carbon (implausible) that still just pushes threshold back a few decades. And if industry stopped producing with carbon billions would starve. Industry makes stuff for people. Energy is us…

Them becoming carbonless would already cut 16.5% of emissions. Together with their investments they are responsible for 25% of emissions.

But more importantly, the reason nothing is happening to cut the systemic reasons for the pollution is due to them.

You present a straw man when you point at simplistic nonsense like "energy is useful". There is no dichotomy "either carbon pollution or we sit in caves". You argue from ignorance.

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

#278

Post by dqv » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

vladms wrote: post #274

Loquebantur wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're entirely wrong. The impact an individual has on carbon emissions is directly correlated with their wealth. The distribution of which is extremely uneven: as of 2024, the top 1% worldwide possessed as much as the lower 95% combined, 57 trillion US$. That has gotten only worse in the last two years. It's not about "bad habits", impulse control or whatever, at all.

Wealth distribution is an issue, but lots of "wealth" is due to stuff that is owned by some and used by many. Take a landlord as an example: he might have 100 houses and own 99% of the wealth in a village, but if the houses are inhabited, people still use them. If those people want to use a 300 sq meter houses rather than 50 sq meter studios, they do contribute as well to the climate issue. This holds for other field…

> I honestly can't say that 92.1% which is from "normal" population is ignorable.

It would be even harder to ignore if the 0.003% of the population causing 7.9% of the emissions were banned from private flight and had to start doing "normal" flight like everyone else :)

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

#279

Post by Loquebantur » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 10:14 PM UTC

vladms wrote: post #274

Loquebantur wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're entirely wrong. The impact an individual has on carbon emissions is directly correlated with their wealth. The distribution of which is extremely uneven: as of 2024, the top 1% worldwide possessed as much as the lower 95% combined, 57 trillion US$. That has gotten only worse in the last two years. It's not about "bad habits", impulse control or whatever, at all.

Wealth distribution is an issue, but lots of "wealth" is due to stuff that is owned by some and used by many. Take a landlord as an example: he might have 100 houses and own 99% of the wealth in a village, but if the houses are inhabited, people still use them. If those people want to use a 300 sq meter houses rather than 50 sq meter studios, they do contribute as well to the climate issue. This holds for other field…

Your simplistic take is fundamentally wrong. It would take someone in the bottom 99% of the world's population more than 1,500 years to match the personal lifetime carbon footprint of a billionaire.

People in the top 1% can be attributed with 25% of emissions when you take their investments into account also.

But most importantly, they are the ones who actually "steer the boat". They are responsible for the utter lack of proper action against the pollution.

Your "arguments" are precisely the deflection they employ to steer public attention away from them. Notice the utter absurdity of asking the bottom 99% of humanity to take responsibility for what they have absolutely no control over.

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

#280

Post by dualvariable » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #243

yoyohello13 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The environmental movements of the past 60 years have been extremely successful, certainly in the U.S. The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire has been essentially solved, massive smog has been essentially solved.

And the people involved in climate policy have solutions to climate change which don't involve enormously large restrictions on consumption, but just require more energy efficiency (which is savings) and investment into carbon-neutral energy. And they've had those solutions for at least the past 20 years.

This isn't an insolvable problem, but the carbon-based energy sector will be big losers, and they're fighting tooth and nail against it.

An awful lot of our politics and geopolitics right now is symptomatic of the carbon energy sector fighting against the reality that it needs to die for the good of the human race, but it is also extraordinarily powerful.