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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

#171

Post by 13415 »

9rx wrote: post #155
13415 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

I really don't get you stance. Of course, you can make more fine-grained distinctions and that's fine. You can claim that medical doctors act as medical scientists when they conduct studies and as doctors (consultants) in their practice with patients. But that doesn't mean the value judgments aren't part of the science.

If a seismologist has evidence that an earthquake is likely to occur in a certain area, should they not warn the public about it? I would say they clearly should, and any other view about this seems bizarre to me. I find it equally implausible to not call a seismologist who warns about an impending earthquake a scientist. They're a geophysicist or geologist. Or take an astronomer warning about a possible collision of a meteor with Earth -- astronomy is a science, so why would that person not be called a scientist?

There is a an array of scientific disciplines for whom consulting (in your sense of the word) is a frequent, though not primary part of their activity, and we certainly still call them scientists. Material science, vulcanology, epidemiology, seismology, meteorology, biology, climate science, economics,... basically any science that involves the study of processes that might have important consequences for mankind.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#172

Post by cagey »

SoftTalker wrote: post #134
ericjmorey wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defeatist mindsets expressed in these comments seem more like a way to shed any sort of personal accountability for participating in a solution that doesn't kill billions of people than a reflection of reality. There are many solutions.

> There are many solutions. There are, but none that will be accepted. Will you give up your car, your air condititioning, your AI agents, your uber eats, your year-round fresh produce at the supermarket, meat as a regular part of your diet, all the imported stuff you are accustomed to having?

You're right, I won't, and I'm probably not alone. So what's the endgame? A world government that enforces all of those "give-ups" at gunpoint?

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#173

Post by pllbnk »

spwa4 wrote: post #116
jmward01 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many of those 'could maybe happen' are, in fact, happening right now. The researcher is also quoted as saying 'more likely than not' which is pretty big when it comes to something like the AMOC shutting down. This really is catastrophic and really should be causing governments to take immediate, massive, steps to avert it including steps to sanction countries that are causing it.

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.

It won't be the case that a global scale ocean current collapses and its impact is local. It's like a butterfly effect where the butterfly is the size of an ocean - its wing flap will resonate throughout entire world with unpredictable natural and social consequences. There will be no winners, only losers.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#174

Post by 0xy »

senordevnyc wrote: post #169
SoftTalker wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is complete nonsense. The US energy use per capita is down significantly from 1975 and still actively declining.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#175

Post by IAmGraydon »

nickserv wrote: post #74
lisper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preparing for the outcome How exactly do you propose to prepare for Europe becoming uninhabitable?

You can buy sets of matching luggage. "Funny" story, in a few months we'll be moving a few hundred km north, partly due to the summers being unbearably hot and dry the past few years. Now we're hearing more and more about the area we're going to potentially getting really cold due to the weakening of the Atlantic current. Good times.

Moving in response to something as slow and variable as climate change is definitely a choice. Like timing the market but 1000x worse.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#176

Post by Swenrekcah »

senordevnyc wrote: post #160
idiotsecant wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What kind of response is this?

Why haven’t you fixed healthcare or all the potholes in your town?

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#177

Post by jules-jules »

Tyrubias wrote: post #79

The probabilistic nature of predicting how likely any given climate change event like the AMOC shutting down is creating a false sense of security and skepticism. Many climate change skeptics like to claim that Earth’s climate has been radically different at various points in its history, therefore current anthropogenic climate change is fine. Other climate change skeptics like to claim that we’re currently in an ice…

Considering that we're already approaching a Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum analog at up to ten times faster than the onset of the PETM (one of the largest mass extinction events) [1], I’d say it’s pretty much game over.

[1] "Atmospheric Methane: Comparison Between Methane's Record in 2006–2022 and During Glacial Terminations" (Nisbet, Manning et al. 2023)

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#178

Post by cagey »

postflopclarity wrote: post #166
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.

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.

Well that's not how I heard the fable, and not how the authoritative reference recalls it either[0]. If "every time the boy cried wolf, there actually was a wolf and it ate some people", then it would hardly be a fable about giving a false alarm, would it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#179

Post by Timon3 »

thrance wrote: post #27
jedimastert wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> capital has no interest Selfish humans. "Capital" is a mental model, it's not some force of nature or hand of god.

Selfishness has nothing to do with it. Capitalism rewards anti-social investment strategies and capital accumulation, so that's what we get. "Capital" is not a force of nature, it's an emergent force from our economic system. It behaves sort of predictably and can be described: that's economics. EDIT: got to love how anytime you write something even remotely critical of capitalism you get auto-downvoted. Fine, "clima…

While I agree with you that the system itself inevitably causes these issues, I don't see how this absolves those who use anti-social investment strategies etc. of selfishness. On an individual scale they're still making morally bad decisions, and worse: they're actively influencing the system to exacerbate these mechanisms.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#180

Post by cindyllm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #73
ck2 wrote: post #63

two 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.

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