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Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

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Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#151

Post by ordu »

9rx wrote: post #82
embedding-shape wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they should be more like "Atlantic currents might shut down, we'll see what happens and if it'll be good or bad" when they already can tell the effects will be pretty bad? Wouldn't that be basically burying the lede?

You'd have to ask the one who raised concern with this in the first place. What is apparent, though, is that "good or bad" is contrary to science. Science seeks to understand what is, not how you might feel about it. It is interesting that things went there.

Theoretically speaking, yes. But practically science is very interested with good and bad, because the goal of science is to bring as much good and to avert as many bad as possible. There is abstract science, there is fundamental science, which are studying things far from our everyday concerns, but even they are not free from "good and bad": ITER has all its funding, because we believe that fusion can bring a lot of good to us. Scientists cannot just forget where the money came from, and what the goal was attached to them.

But when we speak about climate science, or something else "close to Earth", then it is impossible to imagine how they may not be concerned with good and bad.

Theoretically speaking, science is looking for a truth, and any truth, but practically it seeks useful knowledge, and if you look into any scientific article, it starts with an argument that the results presented in the article are useful, and not just the authors of the article think so, but there are (were) other people too. Undergraduates are explicitly taught to write articles like that.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#152

Post by idiotsecant »

graemep wrote: post #111
postflopclarity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the 50th headline they’ve read on how we’re screwed today that hasn’t happened the things are happening though. e.g. if you read a headline in the 70s that said something like "ski seasons will shorten by an average of 1 day per year, leading to only 5 inches of snow water equivalent in Colorado resorts by 2026, and eliminating the economic viability of skiing in the northeast by 2060" that would have been complete…

The problem is that those were not the headlines. There were headlines in the 80s saying AMOC would collapse by now.

"I read a headline that turned out to be wrong, all headlines adjacent to that original one are now wrong"

You are constantly seeing all manner of predictions. When someone makes a wrong prediction that is not a indicator that the thing will never happen. Otherwise I would bet that I will suffer no problematic effects if I stop paying a mortgage.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#154

Post by idiotsecant »

bastawhiz wrote: post #104
grey-area wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk was 5% and is now above 50% according to experts in the field. Given the significant consequences this is worth paying attention to.

The GP didn't say not to pay attention to it. Clearly people are. The point is that it's unactionable. The people who care could all pour their life savings into climate action and commit suicide to cancel all future carbon footprint and it still wouldn't move the needle. Even if the Democrats in the US took over both branches of Congress, the white house, and the supreme court, they wouldn't move the needle. There i…

Its perfectly actionable. Its just inconvenient. Imagine if tomorrow we discovered that internal combustion engines produced a gas which immediately killed everyone with 200 feet. What would change?

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#155

Post by 9rx »

13415 wrote: post #142
9rx wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So medicine is not a science because it's concerned with what's "good" and what's "bad" for someone's health? It is concerned with understanding health. It is unable to decide what is "good" or "bad" as that is in the eye of the beholder. That is why medicine presents the options gleaned from the gained understanding, leaving the individual to decide for themselves what is "good" amid all the different tradeoffs. T…

You're nitpicking. Medicine is concerned with what's good and bad for someone's health. Medical doctors literally advise their patients on that and evaluate the effects of actions with respect to what's good and what's bad for their health. What's good and bad for someone's health is simply one form of instrumental goodness. Other sciences evaluate in similar ways, though they are perhaps concerned with other aspects…

> Medical doctors literally advise their patients on that and evaluate the effects of actions with respect to what's good and what's bad for their health.

You're talking about a consultant now. Yes, consultants take scientific understanding and help translate it into what the customer wants to hear: doing their best to interpret what the other person is likely to think is "good" or "bad". Which, I will add, is not absolute. Often patients reject the doctor's opinion of what is "good". It is technically possible for someone to be both a scientist and a consultant, of course. Humans can do many things. But generally medical doctors are focused on operating consultancies alone. There usually isn't enough time in the day to be both deeply engrossed in science and other professions at the same time. Generally speaking, medical doctors are not scientists in any meaningful sense. That's literally why we call them medical doctors or physicians instead of calling them scientists... Yes, there are some exceptions, as there always is. But, to be sure, even in those exceptional cases, we don't call them scientists when they are operating in a consulting capacity.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#156

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

john_alan wrote: post #55
adrian_b wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you've said is emotionally compelling, but scientifically very weak. Personal recollection is selective and location-specific. You’ve described a memory, not established a mechanism. What you perceive as change isn't macro, it's micro. It doesn't mean macro change isn't happening, but it's not happening on our timescale. I'm 50 FWIW.

Just look at any glaciar in the Alps (or almost anywhere in the world really). Over the last 50 years, your liftime, there have been enourmous changes.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#157

Post by pjmlp »

bastawhiz wrote: post #113
postflopclarity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the 50th headline they’ve read on how we’re screwed today that hasn’t happened the things are happening though. e.g. if you read a headline in the 70s that said something like "ski seasons will shorten by an average of 1 day per year, leading to only 5 inches of snow water equivalent in Colorado resorts by 2026, and eliminating the economic viability of skiing in the northeast by 2060" that would have been complete…

> the things are happening though. That's what the headlines said the last 49 times. Why should the average person care now ? What are they supposed to do? Al Gore got on a scissor lift and showed the hockey stick graph. Millions of people saw it. Then the data was bad. Then the average person didn't see anything happen that they could point to and be like "That's what Al Gore warned us about". What you're asking for…

Use paper straws, because that is how we save the world. /s

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#158

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

nickserv wrote: post #89
john_alan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've said is emotionally compelling, but scientifically very weak. Personal recollection is selective and location-specific. You’ve described a memory, not established a mechanism. What you perceive as change isn't macro, it's micro. It doesn't mean macro change isn't happening, but it's not happening on our timescale. I'm 50 FWIW.

> it's not happening on our timescale. Talk to anyone over 30 and they'll tell you the climate has already changed. Well anyone that doesn't have a political agenda or shares in ExxonMobil.

Even ExxonMobil scientists came to the conclusion. They made an internal study in the 70s and it was actually incredibly solid: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#159

Post by senordevnyc »

idiotsecant wrote: post #150
Izkata wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the climate people never heard the fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It's exactly that.

Who are 'The climate people' you seem to think are doing this? Do you think there is a club where the climate people president takes a vote from the climate people council on how many news stories hacknews user Izkata should read? If you lived under a big precarious rock and people always talked about the big rock falling on you would you ignore the big rock because the big rock people keep crying wolf? This is hones…

If you lived under a big precarious rock and people always talked about the big rock falling on you would you ignore the big rock because the big rock people keep crying wolf?

Yeah, that’s exactly what we do, all the time. From nuclear weapons to pandemics to climate change, people become accustomed to the background risks they live under, and go about their lives. Especially when there’s almost nothing they can do about it anyway.

And well-meaning people constantly predicting calamities that don’t materialize only hasten that process.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#160

Post by senordevnyc »

idiotsecant wrote: post #154
bastawhiz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP didn't say not to pay attention to it. Clearly people are. The point is that it's unactionable. The people who care could all pour their life savings into climate action and commit suicide to cancel all future carbon footprint and it still wouldn't move the needle. Even if the Democrats in the US took over both branches of Congress, the white house, and the supreme court, they wouldn't move the needle. There i…

Its perfectly actionable. Its just inconvenient. Imagine if tomorrow we discovered that internal combustion engines produced a gas which immediately killed everyone with 200 feet. What would change?

If it’s perfectly actionable, why haven’t you fixed it yet?
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