Live data from Hacker News

A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

nature.com

311–320 of 324 posts

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this is the great utility of the IPCC reports. If you look at the full report you can find subsections on many aspects of climate change and a discussion of the state of the field complete with citations compiled by an expert.

How would a layperson like myself judge what's in the IPCC report? The predictions are so dramatic that we have to act now and can't wait and see how it turns out. How is it different from this submission here?

Dramatic? The IPCC is perhaps the driest bit of prose there is.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#312
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crossing into personal attack. Please don't do that here.

I disagree it was a personal attack. I just said anonymous posters who claim they are don't have credibility, in contrast with people who put their names and credentials up there. I haven't called the poster names or insulted them. It's very easy to shape public opinion, dang; we shouldn't let anonymous posters set the tone of discussion or flung FUD around on the most important issue of our lives. When I go to the d…

You're misassessing the costs and benefits of attacking people for posting anonymously.

Re costs: Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=oceanthrowaway - the odds that this commenter is legit are quite high. Would it would have been better if they had posted under a regular username? Sure, but people sometimes have good reasons for making throwaway accounts to post about topics they're professionally expert in. Such comments add value to HN, sometimes a lot of value (e.g. sometimes they give important inside information about a topic), and punishing people for doing that is against the community interest.

Re benefits: it's not at all easy to "shape public opinion" by an anonymous comment on an internet forum. You'd have to do it repeatedly, and the more repetitive it gets, the more predictable the comments become, and the more likely the community will have an immune response to it. In my experience from moderating this place over the years, internet users are far too quick to assume that they're encountering manipulative stealth behavior.

What you should be responding to instead is the quality of the comments. If a throwaway account is repeatedly posting low-quality comments, then sure, that's a good reason to be critical - but the throwawayness of the account should not be the high-order bit.

If you had made your point less aggressively, I probably wouldn't have responded, but you came down on the GP like a hammer (e.g. "spreading FUD from behind anononymity") and that put your comment on the wrong side of the HN guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#313
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree it was a personal attack. I just said anonymous posters who claim they are don't have credibility, in contrast with people who put their names and credentials up there. I haven't called the poster names or insulted them. It's very easy to shape public opinion, dang; we shouldn't let anonymous posters set the tone of discussion or flung FUD around on the most important issue of our lives. When I go to the d…

You're misassessing the costs and benefits of attacking people for posting anonymously. Re costs: Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=oceanthrowaway - the odds that this commenter is legit are quite high. Would it would have been better if they had posted under a regular username? Sure, but people sometimes have good reasons for making throwaway accounts to post about topics they're professionally expert in…

> you should be responding to instead is the quality of the comments.

But that's the thing, isn't it? I'm not an expert in climate science, I can't judge what's quality and what's FUD reasonably phrased. Neither the vast majority on HN. There is no way for us to determine if this anonymous guy makes some good points or just wants to spread some doubt towards the study. Just because climate science seems more approachable than maths, doesn't mean people are equipped to determine what's true, what's manipulation or what's plausible.

Blows my mind some guy made an account, said he was a physical oceanographer, made some grammatically correct comments and everyone believed it. Just like that!

> internet users are far too quick to assume that they're encountering manipulative stealth behavior.

It's 2023 and it's about climate change, dang...

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a lay-bystander to the climate debate, I get a little spooked when I see comments like this. Like 99.9% of people, the science of complex climate systems is beyond me as are the de facto black box models that project climate change. Instead I use “appears in a credible journal” as a basis for trusting the apparent direction of travel and I’m disconcerted when I see that proxy challenged. I also, I am somewhat sorr…

Like you would any other thing that is outside your circle of influence: kick it out of your circle of concern because you aren't realistically speaking geared up to move yourself into a position where you do have influence. If you don't you end up with the global equivalent of a burn-out and it might start to affect your ability to make decisions about things that you do have influence over because it is paralyzing…

Truly, though, if you were to honestly treat it like the weather, it would determine your housing/infrastructure with year-round effects. The weather for my region doesn't demand A-frames to support massive amounts snow - if one of our contractors put up a house in North Dakota in June while only considering the near-term weather, the flat roof would collapse in the long term. Have fun with your purchase of a snowplow because tomorrow's weather calls for snow. I'd advise that one make decisions only for the time they are willing to address their effects. If you don't consider 20 years out, leave the decision-making about 20-year-goals to those who do, and both support and comply with their choice when they enforce things like EVs, agricultural reform, and other environmentally supportive/regenerative actions. Otherwise your default (non-compliance with and distrust of the "weathermen") is a decision to effectively subvert the efforts of those who do care and are informed. Your pronouncement here is effectively proselytizing nihilism. Such cultural disease is probably better kept to yourself.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#315
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misassessing the costs and benefits of attacking people for posting anonymously. Re costs: Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=oceanthrowaway - the odds that this commenter is legit are quite high. Would it would have been better if they had posted under a regular username? Sure, but people sometimes have good reasons for making throwaway accounts to post about topics they're professionally expert in…

> you should be responding to instead is the quality of the comments. But that's the thing, isn't it? I'm not an expert in climate science, I can't judge what's quality and what's FUD reasonably phrased. Neither the vast majority on HN. There is no way for us to determine if this anonymous guy makes some good points or just wants to spread some doubt towards the study. Just because climate science seems more approach…

In that case you could ask curious questions that would help you, and the rest of us, to learn about it; or you could just not post.

> I can't judge what's quality and what's FUD

I hear you! but you attacked the other person specifically for "spreading FUD". That is not a helpful thing to do, even if you can judge the question.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always I disagree... This is the attitude that "people in charge will do something for you, and if they don't I guess we'll cope" that is undemocratic and breeds passivity. if you are concerned about something it does not mean you must be non stop stressed or forever abandon your life for single cause. You can be concerned and act in constructive ways (lead by example, talk about it, raise the issue, vote, etc), m…

It's good to talk about things but it's not good to parrot things you can't understand.

No one "understands" it fully but it doesn't mean no one should talk about it. People raise the noise about climate change not because they have magic superhuman ability to see exact future (no one has) but because with what they know from various sciences it looks like things are headed in the bad direction.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Global warming is the effect of decreased solar radiation (as compared to how much solar energy is absorbed), thus more energy added to the Earth. A new ice age in Norther Europe might slightly increase that area's albido, which would increase solar radiation and in theory mitigate global warming. But truth is, the effect of that change in albido will be very small compared to the effect of the atmospheric CO2 (w…

You would think that adding that much ice in the atmosphere would cool it down a little, like putting an ice cube in a glass of water.

Where do you think that the "cold" in the ice comes from? It's just moving heat from one part of the planet to another.

The total amount of heat entering the Earth is increasing, cold spots not withstanding.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#318
The worst part of climate change is our response. As world conditions worsen we burn more fossil fuels to simulate cooling/heating. It's a positive feedback loop. The more intense the summers get, and the cold snap of winter, the more fossil fuels we need, which then worsens further worsens the greenhouse gas effect. Then we need more fossil fuels on more days and so on. We aren't striving to consume less but to instead create green illusions and box ourselves in virtual reality or simulations. Maybe the simulation technologists say we are in is actually the one we focus on creating as Earth deteriorates more from our over-consumed lives.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's mentions a potential collapse as early as 2025 "DOOM ITS THE END OF THE WORLD!" is a tale as old as time... revelations has been screaming the end is near for thousands of years now. It's "accurate to say" that prophets and prophecies are notoriously wrong which is why signs that the ice caps will be gone by 2000 have been removed from state parks. hint: they aren't gone.

Which previous doom sayer had mountains of evidence by thousands of scientists?

... all of them? Ice caps are still there and the world still isn't that much hotter than it normally is.

and "thousands of scientists" lol sure... thousands of priests say that miracles happen.

Meanwhile... those same "scientists" are silent as the solutions to "climate catastrophe" are mountains of "green" tech that's unrecyclable after destroying the earth to create batteries, wind mills and solar panels that under perform and end up in land fills.

https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winner-who-doesnt-belie...

But... if that's not enough? What about scientists - including Nobel prize winning scientists - that say there are no crisis?

My opinion? "Climate Change" is a religion just like other religions - some truth mixed with a lot of "follow what I say or WE'RE ALL DEAD!". Literally 100 years of failed predictions making global warming... I mean cooling... I mean acid rain... I mean CLIMATE CATSTROPHE! wrong at every step.

Can't have real conversations about real solutions to real problems when you're dealing with religious faithful which is why green solutions are going to fuck our planet up more than oil could ever dream of.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former military officer, does it concern you at all that in this case if the time comes that we must mobilize, like yesterday , instead of issuing orders and having them followed, we may have a 4 to 12 year lag as the orders filter through our "democracy", which is composed largely of a bunch of children arguing over their respective fantasy land realities (as illustrated among our best and brightest here every…

At least in the US the military works at the speed of congressional appropriations. If Congress and the President agree to what you consider a “4-6 year lag” in whatever response we take then, the best Service and COCOM chiefs can do is give advice and then execute orders. Call and vote for your congressperson if you want lasting change in the use of the DoD.

What if our democracy is the weakest link in the chain and as it is guarantees failure?

Does the fact that for some reason most humans literally cannot even contemplate this idea not seem like a bit of a risky situation to ignore, while representing/perceiving that we are thinking rationally??

To me, this is a recipe for disaster, the blind leading the blind.

Post reply on HN