Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years • Hacker News Board

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#431

Post by nullstyle » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

_yb2s wrote: post #350

nullstyle wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, could you recommend any Science Fiction written before the nuclear age that talks about nuclear proliferation? Or to take something from our present world, what Science Fiction stories would you recommend to talk about the effect of drone tech on trade and shipping?

The unintended consequences of new powerful weapons falling into the wrong hands and new trade technology are very old themes in fiction even if the specific technical details are not.

I noticed you edited your initial response for tone before I could respond. Regardless, I'll respond to your initial statement to say that no, I'm not trying to make a snarky rebuttal. I'm trying to understand your statements better because my own personal experience and opinions disagree with what you claim and I'd like to integrate your perspective. I don't give a shit about internet points. You specifically mention Vernor Vinge, whom I haven't yet read. My understanding is his work is dependent upon their being an intelligence explosion with the development of AGI, which seems incredibly unlikely given how AI technology has developed thus far. I think we've seen amazing growth in capability but nothing close to an intelligence explosion as I've seen portrayed in SF. As someone working in this space, what lessons would I learn by reading Vinge's work as opposed to spending that time reading more about the history and happenings in the real world of computer security?

Now, to respond to your post-edit: I feel like my disconnect with your positions in this thread are around the importance of fiction. I think fiction is a minor muscle in the body that drives technology, if you'll allow the metaphor, whereas you claim "science fiction has been pivotal in both shaping and preparing our society for changes caused by technology." Perhaps you could explain what you mean more concretely? Another confusion I have: The claim of prescience and that the themes are very old seem to be at odds. If I develop an understanding of the dangers of runaway technology through a story about Genies, why do I need more modern work? What if I instead gain these understanding through actual history? The real world has so many more wrinkles than a story and so many more lessons to give about technological development than a story that I balk at words like pivotal. There is not pivot point, only hundreds and hundreds of articulations.

Anyways, I've written enough for now, and I don't expect you to follow up.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#432

Post by krainboltgreene » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:07 PM UTC

flir wrote: post #405

krainboltgreene wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again I must stress you've confused theme with plot point. I haven't read QOA in a long time, but I'm pretty sure it was about identity and justice.

It's about an AI struggling to become conscious! Alarms go off when it uses the word "I"! The whole point of that subplot is why that AI can't achieve consciousness, but the one sent to Alpha Centauri[?] can. It writes essays meditating on its circumstances, the way humans have treated it and its sibling, it writes an essay exploring whether punishment of others is a gateway to self-awareness... You want to tell me t…

It contains an AI struggling to become human (to gain identity), if I remember correctly.

Either way, we're way off course from "it was a great fear of scifi that AGI would become a risk" to "a book with AGI as the vessel for metaphor about humanity exists".

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#433

Post by nullstyle » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:07 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #360

nullstyle wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, could you recommend any Science Fiction written before the nuclear age that talks about nuclear proliferation? Or to take something from our present world, what Science Fiction stories would you recommend to talk about the effect of drone tech on trade and shipping?

Alas, Babylon was written in 1959. Not exactly before nuclear proliferation but before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That wasn't what I was looking for, but I appreciate the honest response. UniverseHacker claims "science fiction has been pivotal in both shaping and preparing our society for changes caused by technology" and I want to understand that claim more. Let me explain:

By my reckoning, there are two driving factors in how the understanding and control of nuclear reactions affects our world: First, the huge step change in energetic density over chemical reaction, second the fact that you can cause explosive chain reactions. If there was a smooth gradient of progression towards the energetic density of Fat Man, the world would have been a very different place. If the science had panned out such that we couldn't cause a nuclear chain reaction, the bomb/energy source duality would never have emerged.

I'm curious if there is any fiction out there that contended with either of these factors prior to us realizing that the disparities between chemical and nuclear reactions are what they are. I've not read Alas, Babylon, and I'm not trying to deny that it had important influence, but I'm pretty sure we knew that it was possible to end the world via nuclear conflict prior to 1959. By your estimation, how did the book shape or prepare our society for the changes caused by nuclear technology? We're on the other side of the cold war and the conflict between capitalism and communism isn't a thing anymore, right? If we die in a nuclear fire, it will not be anything like, to quote wikipedia, "The explosion is mistaken for a large-scale US air assault on the military facility and, by the following day, the Soviet Union retaliates with its planned full-scale nuclear strike against the United States and its allies."

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm trying to understand what I'm missing.

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To me these claims of SF's prescience fall short, especially when it comes to the dangers of AGI. As an example, I have no mouth and I must scream, as wonderful as it is, doesn't have much to say about preparing our society for AGI. AM will not emerge from GPT-4o, and I'm pretty sure if AGI does happen it won't be through a super computer built to coordinate militaries. I enjoy reading SF, but I think its wider influence is as much miss as it is hit, and I think we can plot better courses when we treat SF as mostly entertainment. People who develop technology would be better served studying the history of technological development.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#434

Post by mike_hearn » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

jtolds wrote: post #404

mike_hearn wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said 20 years of doom predictions that haven't come true. Compounding effects don't apply to the accuracy of academic predictions. It's not like academic accuracy automatically gets exponentially better over time. Linear projection when attempting to guesstimate the accuracy of future predictions by a group of people who have also made predictions in the past is a fairly reasonable thing to do, unless you have som…

When someone says "20 years of doom predictions haven't come true", I charitably assumed that claim was about scientific consensus predictions, but perhaps I can't assume that everyone shares knowledge of what that is. So far, all data says that the climate scientists are dead on and have been very accurate: https://eps.harvard.edu/files/eps/files/hausfather_2020_eval... What doom predictions from the last 20 years h…

Although it's not well known, you unfortunately can't use temperature data to judge whether climatological predictions are correct. That's because the databases of temperature data that are presented as "global temperature" (a fundamentally statistical product) are themselves maintained by climatologists. It's a bit like asking a CEO whether his products are good, and he cites his own private data on customer happiness to prove that it is. Lots of people wouldn't accept this as evidence because it's not independent. The data might be correct, but his salary is at stake and so there's the risk of shenanigans. You'd want a truly independent assessment.

Climatologists like to claim that they are of course far better than that and would never abuse their monopoly position on such data, but they also regularly change those databases in ways that retroactively make failing predictions correct. Like here [1] where they declared a new record-breaking temperature that was lower than their previously announced record. They didn't mention that anywhere but the previous press release was still on their website and somebody noticed.

Anyway, you're right, let's Google things. Here are a few failed predictions from 20 years ago that can be judged without using temperature databases:

• Dr David Viner, climatologist, March 2000. "Children just aren't going to know what snow is". David Parker, climatologist, same article. "British children could have only virtual experience of snow." [2]

• "Australia faces permanent drought due to climate change", 2003 [3]. Dr James Risbey, Center for Dynamical Meteorology and Oceanography at Melbourne's Monash University, says "the situation is probably not being confronted as full-on as it should". Current data shows no drought [4]

• Pentagon report, 2004 [5]. By 2020 the weather in Britain "will begin to resemble Siberia", by 2007 violent storms have rendered parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. "A ‘significant drop’ in the planet’s ability to sustain its present population will become apparent over the next 20 years". "Immigrants from Scandinavia seek warmer climes to the south." None of that is even close. "Senior climatologists, however, believe that [the author's] verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon."

There are hundreds more like this. It's inevitable that people take this history into account, and kinda unfair to demand that people don't. If there had been rigorous investigations of what went wrong in these cases, and clear evidence of learning or regulation of the field in the same way as happens in other areas of life after big failures, then people's confidence might be higher.

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[1] https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/16/will-the-real-hottest...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150114205355/https://www.indep...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20200825073015/https://www.wired...

[4] http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/rainfall/?variable=rainfa...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t...

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#435

Post by card_zero » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:15 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #63

rjmunro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It it's not per capita that counts, but per country, then each American should be allowed to pollute 4 times as much as each Chinese person because there are less of them? I guess as a Brit, I should be allowed to pollute 5 times more than an American?

The climate doesn't care about countries either, and people in developed countries aren't going to lower their standard of livings to meet some acceptable per capita carbon footprint standard. That's why these kinds of arguments are pointless. Blame China, blame the US, blame the British Empire, what difference does any of that make? Unless you can convince the richer countries to pay fines to the developing ones to…

Possibly you (well, some international body) can do that. Leaving that idea aside, countries matter because countries are controlled by policies, per-country.

This doesn't, of course, mean that you get to burn a big bonfire of coal if your country has a small population. The reality is that you get to burn a big bonfire of coal in any country unless it has a law against it. And another part of the reality is that emissions are caused mainly by transport, power generation, industry and construction, all of which can be decarbonised by policy, so the personal carbon footprint thing just isn't relevant because it's not up to individuals, and people having orgiastic fossil fuel bonfires is not the true nature of the problem anyway.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#436

Post by bequanna » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:34 PM UTC

GenerWork wrote: post #245

Symmetry wrote: post #239

With each new IPCC report the chances of us keeping global warming below 1.5 C become more and more remote as emissions are locked in. But at the same time the really bad scenarios where we go well over 4 C also become more remote. Every half degree is worse than the last and each is worth righting for but it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact, even if not all people individually.

>it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact Has anybody ever seriously believed that we wouldn't make it through? This just seems like an alarmist take to me.

An entire generation of young people in the West is being force fed climate doomerism from primary school through university.

They are telling these kids that the world will literally end if we don’t stop emitting carbon in a few years.

Maybe the motives behind this are genuine but it’s pure indoctrination and dishonest.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#437

Post by dylan604 » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:35 PM UTC

trashtester wrote: post #377

dylan604 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> radius from likely thermonuclear targets which direction did you take it though? did you move to a place away from likely targets (which really, with as many nukes that are out there, what's not a target?), or did you move closer so that you'd be taken out in the first wave and spared the life of misery after? my dad used to say that one of the deciding factors where he chose to build the house I grew up in was bas…

I moved away from the most likely target, enough that I would be likely to survive a 400 kt nuke.

If it's an actual full tilt global thermonuclear war with everyone using all of their arsenal, I'm not really sure I would want to live in that post-apocalyptic world. Now if it's just a couple of bombs in major metro areas, that's a different situation.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#438

Post by Night_Thastus » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:44 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #363

Night_Thastus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 isn't happening anytime soon, nothing we have is on a path in that direction. #2 people always worry about, but it's almost certainly not going to happen - insane dictators or no. Even in much worse scenarios we avoided it. #3 Real, but slow. I think we'll see some coastal communities devastated over the course of the next ~50 years, but the rest of the world will adapt and/or sweep it under the rug as best they c…

#2 People aren't evaluating this risk correctly. If the war in Ukraine has taught me anything, it's that the assertions, "Putin would never do..." is wrong. #3 The real risk is the refugee crisis. The world is going to be split into two groups: refugees, and those trying to keep the refugees away. Large countries are going to experience crises from both internal and external migration. Think, people from mexico flood…

There's a big difference between an invasion and launching nukes. There is no amount of reparation, apologies, victim blaming, empty promises, propaganda, etc. to un-do a nuke. Putin wants to remain in power - which doesn't happen if there's no country left to govern.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#439

Post by blueflow » Wed, May 15, 2024, 8:57 PM UTC

duozerk wrote: post #276

blueflow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People live in Australia right now. And Morocco!

Giving you the benefit of the doubt you're not trolling, it seems you're laboring under the belief that, say, "2C of warming" means it'll always be 2C hotter where people live. It does not. It means the mean will be at +2C. At this level of warming, we'd see crazy +15C / -15C swings regularly in many areas, often in a matter of days. It means plants that have started growing in earnest suddenly are in the midst of se…

I'm serious. People live and survive in places with conditions that i would consider uninhabitable. If dissent is trolling to you, reconsider your ideas.

I challenge you to back up the +15C / -15C numbers.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#440

Post by feoren » Wed, May 15, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

GenerWork wrote: post #245

Symmetry wrote: post #239

With each new IPCC report the chances of us keeping global warming below 1.5 C become more and more remote as emissions are locked in. But at the same time the really bad scenarios where we go well over 4 C also become more remote. Every half degree is worse than the last and each is worth righting for but it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact, even if not all people individually.

>it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact Has anybody ever seriously believed that we wouldn't make it through? This just seems like an alarmist take to me.

I don't believe climate change will be the downfall of human civilization, but it's not just an alarmist take. There's actual reason to believe it could be. The problem is that it's a potentially self-accelerating problem, like a nuclear meltdown.

As the planet warms, more CO2 that is locked up in melting glaciers will be released, accelerating the problem. Rising sea levels could displace a significant portion of humanity, causing a level of unrest and chaos that could make it hard to muster the governmental and intergovernmental efforts that might be require to slow or stop the problem. Food scarcity could further these issues. People won't be worrying about investing in green energy if they're worrying about whether they or their neighbor will be the one who gets the last bag of rice.

And my biggest concern: CO2 makes us stupider. As ambient CO2 levels rise, people can't think as clearly -- we're talking about the entire collective intelligence of the human race potentially being reduced significantly if CO2 levels rise to not that much higher than they are now. The effect is noticeable at 1000 ppm, and indoor concentrations can be 2x to 3x outdoor concentrations. Right now we're at 424 atmospheric ppm. It's not hard to imagine that worst-case increases could literally smother the brains of every human on the planet. And then civilization is literally at risk.

Again: I don't ascribe much weight into the probability of that worst case. I put a lot of stock into the incredible ingenuity of humans to solve problems, once they actually acknowledge that they are problems. So I'm pretty sure we'll get through this as a species (although some coastal cities may not, at least in their current form). But the end of civilization is not merely alarmist -- it's an actual worst-case possibility that we should be aware of.