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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

#251

Post by Saline9515 »

zerobees wrote: post #247
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…

I'm not as negative about this, but with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy why the current initiatives didn't go anywhere. It's not that people are not willing to make sacrifices. We repeatedly did this in times of famine or war. Europe during WWII is a perfect example. Another good example of a major cultural shift in response to a new threat was the AIDS epidemic. The entire sexual revolution went out the window…

Ressources are not infinite, and most of the consumption doesn't bring much happiness to the consumer, if not the contrary.

A good empirical example is the success of GLP-1 inhibitors, for which people are ready to pay a lot to allow them to consume less food.

Inflation is already here anyway, and 8 billion humans simply can't consume like Americans. Either you anticipate what's coming, or you will have to endure it.

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

#252

Post by derektank »

zug_zug wrote: post #180
giantg2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want the products. Industry wouldn't exist, or not at this scale, without that. The easiest way to see this is air travel. The vast majority of it is unnecessary - business trips that could be a zoom call, vacations, shipping, etc. People got to every place on earth using trains and ships before air travel. Possible exceptions are medical transport and some types of products, which are tiny by comparison. So y…

No it's not on consumer choice. The US government is SUBSIDIZING gasoline when it should be taxing it at a higher rate because of the environmental side-effects. This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up.

Roughly 90% of global air travel passengers are non-Americans.

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

#253

Post by dehugger »

MarkMarine wrote: post #240
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…

The whole framing you’re using is wrong. If you can do climate modeling and math at the planet scale, you don’t need to be convinced you have read the research and you knew 30 years ago. If you’re skeptical of scientific authority and lack those skills… as well as the critical thinking required to read the research and distill your own conclusions, there is basically no way to convince you. You can’t find objective t…

Capital, as a whole, barely thinks farther forward than the next fiscal quarter. If you are lucky, the absolute farthest out is end-of-career/lifetime for the current leadership suite. Why would capitalists be the saviors from climate change?

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

#254

Post by killerstorm »

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…

Well, EU is convinced it's a real problem, but the only solution they are considering is to reduce emissions largely via degrowth.

OTOH to actually solve the problem we'd need geoengineering and cheap energy e.g. from fission.

Just spamming more solar does not help during winter, and EU solution seems to be "maybe you should just die".

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

#255

Post by to11mtm »

yongjik wrote: post #189
tialaramex wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming the consumer is a time-honoured way to ensure nothing is done. The consumer can't pick options which don't exist, so the producer says oh well, you can either burn coal or you can go without light - there's no mention that the producer doesn't have to burn coal to make electricity, just straight to blaming you for wanting light.

It's a two-sided sword. When you are the consumer, blame the producer. When you are the producer, blame the consumer. In this way everybody can blame someone else and ensure that nothing is done. For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that. Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks…

> Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.

I still don't get how people got to that. In my head a decent first step for a carbon tax would be producing made consumer goods; the end result would be that yes, capitalism 'should' eventually win out and the more ecologically sound solutions would prevail.

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

#256

Post by darth_avocado »

MarkMarine wrote: post #240
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…

The whole framing you’re using is wrong. If you can do climate modeling and math at the planet scale, you don’t need to be convinced you have read the research and you knew 30 years ago. If you’re skeptical of scientific authority and lack those skills… as well as the critical thinking required to read the research and distill your own conclusions, there is basically no way to convince you. You can’t find objective t…

> Capital needs to understand it’s in its interest to fix the problem and it will be fixed

You’re looking at Capital as a monolithic block. The problem is that the majority of the Capital at the moment sits with the block that can only function by burning more fossil fuels and mowing down the last of the forests to extract natural resources. The private equity firm that owns private beach resorts will never be able to convince the trillion dollar petro giants that they need to find alternatives.

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

#257

Post by xnyan »

nikanj wrote: post #249
zerobees wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not as negative about this, but with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy why the current initiatives didn't go anywhere. It's not that people are not willing to make sacrifices. We repeatedly did this in times of famine or war. Europe during WWII is a perfect example. Another good example of a major cultural shift in response to a new threat was the AIDS epidemic. The entire sexual revolution went out the window…

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 entering the war.

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

#258

Post by alephnerd »

criticalfault wrote: post #233
camgunz wrote: post #4

I really think people are sleeping on the AMOC. The first season there isn't European wine/cheese/olives because of climate change is the first season European farmers probably literally declare war on their governments, to say nothing of the fact that almost no European homes can handle this level of cold. And for some perspective, this is only one of many other huge changes that huge populations will react violentl…

what is 'this level of cold' exactly?

For example, Paris is more north of Montreal yet never has Montreal level winters, and is usually 10-20 degrees F warmer.

There is a good visualization of the effects by Utrecht University [0]

[0] - https://amocscenarios.org/

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

#259

Post by jschveibinz »

darth_avocado wrote: post #256
MarkMarine wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole framing you’re using is wrong. If you can do climate modeling and math at the planet scale, you don’t need to be convinced you have read the research and you knew 30 years ago. If you’re skeptical of scientific authority and lack those skills… as well as the critical thinking required to read the research and distill your own conclusions, there is basically no way to convince you. You can’t find objective t…

> Capital needs to understand it’s in its interest to fix the problem and it will be fixed You’re looking at Capital as a monolithic block. The problem is that the majority of the Capital at the moment sits with the block that can only function by burning more fossil fuels and mowing down the last of the forests to extract natural resources. The private equity firm that owns private beach resorts will never be able t…

Since 1990, global deforestation has improved by 50%. It is still net negative, but the rate of net loss is way down from 100 years ago.

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

#260

Post by DenisM »

jdw64 wrote: post #51

The sad thing about humans is that under capitalism, capital consumes public goods like nature. Then, when those public goods degrade and harm the human species, the capital class that actively consumed those public goods refuses to help restore them and instead cries that it's all a lie

Under socialism ecology did do much better. Maybe it’s not the ism that’s at play here.
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