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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

#341

Post by joha4270 »

fulafel wrote: post #314
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've already stopped the "Worst case scenarios" by rapidly replacing Carbon-intensive energy with other sources over the past decade: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/emissions-worst-c... Still work to be done, and also plenty of reasons for optimism. Batteries, motors, and carbon free generation only get better.

Fossil fuels use continues to increase and shows no signs of slowing down: https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels Instead of trying to push with a string (coming up with new non fossil energy sources) we need to ramp down fossils production using regulation, international agreements, emissions trading etc. Otherwise we'll just keep using both fossil and new energy sources.

That's a negative framing and while I'm not going to call it /wrong/, but world population is increasing so of course our energy usage is going to increase too.

If you scroll a little further down on your linked page, you will encounter another[1] graph, with renewable fraction of primary energy production and its steadily falling everywhere but the gulf states.

We're probably doing too little, too late, but my read is actually that we're moving in the right direction even if there is significant inertia to overcome before emissions actually start decreasing.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy

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

#342

Post by Paradigma11 »

Loquebantur wrote: post #213
vladms wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most of that wealth is just a tag on physical things that would happen anyway, just with another tag.

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

#343

Post by Timon3 »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #342
Loquebantur wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of that wealth is just a tag on physical things that would happen anyway, just with another tag.

This ignores that physical things can happen in many different ways, most of which are decided by those who have the money. The choices of the rich aren't preordained, so there's no reason to absolve them of the responsibility for their decisions.

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

#344

Post by graemep »

cameldrv wrote: post #243
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…

The environmental movements of the past 60 years have been extremely successful, certainly in the U.S. The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire has been essentially solved, massive smog has been essentially solved.

> The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire

All far less expensive to fix. Never actually heard of rivers catching fire?

Has acid rain been solved globally?

The ozone hole problem we got lucky on. It required global action but a lot of things lined up. Things like the British prime minster at the time being a former research chemist and therefore understanding the issue, and being successful at influencing both the US President at the time and European countries.

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

#345

Post by metalman »

_alternator_ wrote: post #139
metalman wrote: post #70

Any talk of the various climactic theorys is very³ very³ likely to be wrong³.These systems are huge, interconected, and NOT UNDERSTOOD. What we do have is some data that strongly suggests that the climate is changing, possibly at an unprecidented rate.Right now. Record territory in fact. https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.cf.g... https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice_daily/?nhsh=nh https://ns…

What do you mean by 'very likely to be wrong' and 'not understood' (no scarecaps pls)? There are uncertainties, and there are still unanswered scientific questions, but the measured change in temperatures largely corresponds to the midrange predictions from climate models 20 years ago. Don't mistake "I don't understand the science" for "the science behind climate change is weak". Go out, learn some coupled atmospheri…

Ha! climate models are updated to account for what they get wrong, but off course there are so many thousands of "runs" published that there is "proof" that they got it right the first time. The uncertainty factor surounds the rate of ocean water expansion due to warming ,and resultant sea level rise,coupled with destabising ice sheets, glacial outflows, and other effects on perma frost, natural releae of CO², methane, and calthrates, and quite literaly 50~100 other drivers of atmospheric changes, albedo , rock weathering,cloud density, water vapour, bla baa, fucking blaaa!, on and on it goes been watching and reading since my mom taught me to read @ 3yr's old and nobodys model has reliable data for everything, just factoring in the effects of small waves in the southern ocean will SWAMP, ha!, is totaly beyond claude or even the very best teams, so guesses at best, HUGE unknowns that represent energy exchanges that introduce uncertainties rendering the outputs essentialy useless.

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

#346

Post by graemep »

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

Even with the obvious danger the Nazis presented it took a long time for most countries to respond. Britain and France could have stopped them (from a much stronger position) earlier but did nothing until after they had conquered Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland) and very little until the Nazis actually invaded France. The US did not enter the war until it was attacked either. Nor did the Soviet Union.

There was reluctance to act on an obvious and imminent threat. People just hoped it would go away.

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

#347

Post by graemep »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #322
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…

On top of that, I see more and more people actively resisting what they call "the degrowth mind virus". For example levelsio on Twitter. He regularly complains about EU environmental regulations and the lack of AC, or inability to set it to lower than 22 C. He sets it to 18 C (which is too cold for me to sleep, but his cup of tea I guess). And regularly posts about how hot temperatures make people dumber and drive do…

I often have discussions of substance about religion! I love them.

I think one of the problems is that,as with many political things, people assume bad faith on the other side in this argument so there is no point having a discussion about the substance.

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

#348

Post by InsideOutSanta »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #268
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this should absolutely not terrify anyone, at all. The only reason it is a concern is that our economic system is built on infinite growth, which is going to fail one way or the other eventually. It's better it fail by people voluntarily having fewer kids than any of the other possible fail states. The solution is to fix the economic system, not to worry that teenagers aren't getting accidentally pregnant so much…

>The only reason it is a concern is that our economic system is built on infinite growth, This is plainly, factually wrong. A sub-replacement fertility level isn't "the growth has stopped". It's "rapid shrinking has started, shrinking of the sort that causes even more shrinking". That's the concern. > It's better it fail by people voluntarily having fewer kids If they have fewer than 2.1 on average, that's not better…

> It's literally "you should die out and become extinct". That's what you're telling them.

This is both dumb and dishonest. It's dumb because you're not making an actual argument, just pointing at a potential long-term outcome, which isn't even an obviously bad outcome; if there are no more humans, there are also no humans to fret about their own lack of existence, so who exactly is being harmed here?

It's dishonest to claim that a temporarily shrinking population (which is a good thing given our current population level) will automatically lead to extinction. It will absolutely not.

You sound like somebody with some kind of religious conviction, which is fine for you, but leave the rest of us out of it.

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

#349

Post by rsynnott »

graemep wrote: post #344
cameldrv wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environmental movements of the past 60 years have been extremely successful, certainly in the U.S. The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire has been essentially solved, massive smog has been essentially solved.

> The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire All far less expensive to fix. Never actually heard of rivers catching fire? Has acid rain been solved globally? The ozone hole problem we got lucky on. It required global action but a lot of things lined up. Things like the British prime minster at the time being a form…

> Never actually heard of rivers catching fire?

This is the most famous example, though there have been a few of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

> Has acid rain been solved globally?

Not entirely, but largely.

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

#350

Post by rsynnott »

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…

> For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that.

If you're talking rich democratic countries, largely only in the US (this would generally be a _very_ fringe position in Europe, say, even on the hard right). Where the fossil fuel industry spends a lot of money convincing people to be ideologically opposed to that. That is, it's still a producer-driven problem.

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