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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

#211

Post by intended »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118
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…

> 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 The areas to be rendered “uninhabitable” in our lifetimes are all poor. Hence the disconnect.

I suspect they will always “be poor”.

The rich will move away, and the people left behind will be the ones who don’t have the capacity to make any other choice.

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

#212

Post by AshamedBadger56 »

blindriver wrote: post #201
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…

My source of climate skepticisms is based on the following: 1) We know that the Earth was much warmer in the past, including the Medieval Warming Period. We know that the Alps were warm enough so that the Iceman could pass through them without protection from the cold, and yet he was found encased in ice. 2) We know that the Earth is cooler now than in the past. And it's also hotter than it was in the past. 3) We kno…

> Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before, I'm going to believe that temperature will moderate and cool, just like it did in the past.

Have you considered that one of the reasons it's not the same as before is because it's rising at a faster rate than before? It's not just that the temperature is changing but how fast it changes. If it happens slowly enough everything has time to adapt. If the rate of temperature increase happens faster than everything has time to adapt, there's problems.

> 1) We know that the Earth was much warmer in the past, including the Medieval Warming Period. We know that the Alps were warm enough so that the Iceman could pass through them without protection from the cold, and yet he was found encased in ice.

While true that the Alps were much warmer during the Medieval Warming Period, that was a regional weather change, not a global event, the change we're seeing now is global, and sustained, not just in one regional area.

Also, I'd recommend doing some additional research on Ötzi, the Iceman you're likely talking about. First, he died much earlier than the Medieval Warming Period, so they aren't even related. Also, I don't think very many people would describe him as found without protection from the cold, considering he was found with many different animal skin coats to protect him from the cold. And the fact that he died, frozen and encased in ice, further shows how it was indeed actually cold enough to be very dangerous.

> I live in California, where we were experienced a ~10 year drought. These same scientists claimed this was the "new normal" and everyone was in a panic. Then we had 2 years of rain and everything was back to normal for the last 4 years. In fact, it's better than normal. We are almost in summer, and there isn't a single area of California that is in drought conditions.

It totally is annoying how the drought conditions have been communicated to the public, for sure! However, California having a drought for 10 years and then being fine for 4 years is exactly the kind of weather whiplash and volatility that is intensifying due to climate change.

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

#213

Post by Loquebantur »

vladms wrote: post #183
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…

> 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.

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

#214

Post by intended »

drc500free wrote: post #106
esafak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A carbon tax would change behavior in short order. The challenge is introducing then maintaining it; people can always vote it out. I think left-leaning jurisdictions should definitely give it a try.

Carbon taxes are massively regressive. There is no political coalition that simultaneously wants to act against climate change and doesn’t mind driving further income inequality.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have one comment talk about consumption being the root of all ill, then another comment stating that reducing consumption is regressive.

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

#215

Post by georgeburdell »

jandrese wrote: post #90
hypfer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have 2 kids or fewer This is at odds with lots of other relevant topics that go beyond just "consumption". 2 or fewer is below the replacement rate of 2.1 This _has_ already happened, but there are a lot of voices voicing a lot of reasons why they believe that that might actually be not the best situation.

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.

It’s disingenuous to imply “industrialists” are the only ones unhappy. Anyone who doesn’t want to die a stranger in their own land is also concerned.

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

#217

Post by intended »

bayesianbot wrote: post #202
sph wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Twitter campaign will find even more suckers to convince, and they will vote yet another Trump if not worse. The Internet was a mistake because it expected every person to become a paradigm of rationality, yet we are at the end of the day stupid hairless monkeys that can be easily swayed for the promise of a banana.

The mistake was not spending the first years of school teaching people to care about what is true, and also the tools for critical thinking to figure out what is real and how sure we are about it. I thought that already when I was a kid and saw that people do not care at all if their beliefs are correct, and because of that don't care about learning any critical thinking skills, but I wasn't convinced and thought may…

The voting populations of the world, are opposed by experts of every stripe, whose job it is to figure out how to persuade or confuse them on critical issues.

Journalism has been decimated with advertising dollars moving to Google and Meta. This creates 2 camps of journalists, one who attempt to report as if the old standards hold, and others who are the media wings of political parties.

Educating people is always Good. However, no education will empower individuals enough to be competitive with people whose job it is to keep them ignorant.

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

#218

Post by solid_fuel »

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…

> Even if you do not want to accept climate change is a thing, you can accept the current state of the world is affecting people.

Ignoring the current state of the world is basically a sport for American Republicans, unfortunately. There's an entire political party, a news network, social media sites, and the worlds first trillionaire all aligned around the idea that the current state of the world isn't their problem and the ideal of "fuck those other people".

Pouring resources into pretending climate change doesn't exist has been a central goal of their movement.

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

#219

Post by _dark_matter_ »

CalRobert wrote: post #170
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.

That first chapter lives rent-free in my head. Highly recommend reading it. https://www.scribd.com/document/979965270/Robinson-Kim-Stanl...

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

#220

Post by calgoo »

supertroop wrote: post #69
mistrial9 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof superficial and incorrect

Explain your reasoning or stop wasting bits.

No, you stop wasting all our time. We are all aware that the world is going to shit because of people not accepting their part in the destruction.
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