But the Dow is over 50,000! Who cares about the AMOC?
Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
161–170 of 248 posts
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#162I 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…
You don’t like honesty?
Effectively everything in life is a balance of uncertainty. Surgeries can do more harm than good. Drugs have varying efficacy. Investments are uncertain. Careers can disappear.
Nobody can tell you the future, but nearly all the scientists freaking out about a potential major issue should me worrying.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easier to blame climate change on a conspiracy theory around billionaires then it is to stop driving so much and reduce consumption.
At least in the US, many people have to drive because US metropolitan areas are car-centric and lack public transit. This, in turn, is a direct result of lobbying by powerful companies like oil producers and automobile manufacturers. As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of m…
The car-centrism of the USA is IMO because people like the convenience of being able to go where they want, when they want, and not waiting for a bus that will take an indirect route and twice the time. People also like living in their own house with a fenced back yard and not having neighbors on the other side of the wall/ceiling/floor. This means we're more spread out (we have lots of land) and mass transit is less practical.
In dense urban areas we do have good mass transit and it's relatively more common for people to not own a car.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big consequence here is for the EU. And the only way to deal with this is for the EU to force US, India and China to seriously reduce energy use, and with that, their economy. This is not going to happen. The EU can't even convince itself to stop buying from China.
China has made huge efforts toward sustainable power. Google it. The us on the other hand is well you know blowing up oil all over the world with military conflicts that are wars but aren't wars but are wars that are over but evolving and over and evolving. They are also rolling back green energy projects , fueling data centers with gas, etc.
China’s greatest geopolitical weakness is lack of access to petroleum. That’s why they are going so hard on renewables. We just get the benefits for free.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#165Hot 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.
We engineered ourselves into this, and we’re actually making good progress in engineering ourselves out. Not without some serious upcoming pain, but it’s not all doom and gloom. We as a species have accomplished many things that weren’t profit-motivated.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
It's like the climate people never heard the fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It's exactly that.
except that every time the boy cried wolf, there actually was a wolf and it ate some people, but then the people it didn't eat were like "idk what you're talking about, I'm doing just fine" and then plugged their ears.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a problem with memories. You can have a snowy week and remember it as the entire winter, if it affected you in particularly memorable ways. Kids usually get out of school and play building snowmen and having snowball fights. When I was a kid in the midwest USA, 100 degrees in the summer happened every once in a while. Still does. July and August were always hot. Still are. As a kid the heat didn't bother me s…
Likewise in the winter, as a kid in the 90s I remember my dad wondering if we'd have a white Christmas (wondering if snow would fall before Christmas or not). There's even songs from decades earlier about it. Whether we'd get snow before January has always been a toss-up, and I'd hazard we've gotten it more often recently than when I was a kid. Like about 10 years ago I even remember a huge blizzard in November.
Same as my childhood in the 1970s.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#168Earlier 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.
This has serious “your dad and I are for the jobs the comet will provide” energy.
Sometimes, the outcome of a scenario will be unambiguously tragic for humanity. The collapse of the AMOC would be one such event.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#169two absolute facts: 1. even if there was something humans could do about it, we won't, ever 2. insurance rates are the only "control". they will skyrocket and thereby the only change to select behavior human society allows "privatize the profits, socialize the costs" so that scales from the smallest to the largest models
Pretty much agree. Nature will fix the climate, after it eliminates (a large number of) the humans that are causing the problem. That's really the only way.
We will never, ever see a reduction in the amount of energy that humanity uses. The population might dip slightly from climate change (highly unlikely actually), but that won’t be what solves climate change. Clean energy is the solution, and it’s already happening.
Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Techno optimist here who expects the following to make a big contribution to reducing human made future climate change: better batteries+solar/wind, nuclear fusion, self driving cars (we'll need to manufacture less cars for the same amount of miles humanity drives), AI helping with better resource allocation in general (hopefully). The answer can't be, let's just consume 10x less. We have to engineer our way out of i…
These awesome things will enable a higher human population. We are like a virus taking over the host organism and overdoing it.
In almost every wealthy country the birth rate has fallen below sustainable, meaning we're shrinking if life expectancy doesn't magically explode.
Viruses btw never reflect on killing the host :P