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Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

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Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#71

Post by triceratops »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #49
tonfa wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/which-countries-hav... I would be surprised if China ends up dumping more CO2 than the US (and then if we look at per capita, even more so).

CO2 since 1750! This isn't serious. Who is currently today doing the thing? china Does the climate care about per capita? no

> CO2 since 1750! This isn't serious. Who is currently today doing the thing?

> Does the climate care about per capita?

It does care about CO2 since 1750 though because that CO2 never went away. It's at least as important as, if not more than "Who is currently today doing the thing?"

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#72

Post by SpicyUme »

caturopath wrote: post #44
username223 wrote: post #24

I have believed for years that Americans would have a completely different attitude to global warming if the Lower 48 had more glaciers. In the Alps, you can easily walk to places where there are 100m of ladders to reach a hut that used to be at the level of the ice. In Canada, you can drive to places that used to be the toe of a glacier, then drive another half-mile to the parking lot, built at the edge of the glaci…

Whenever I try to read up on it, it seems like glaciers are receding at ~2x their without-climate-change rate. That's a huge increase, but it doesn't seem like there's something that a person can experience at a visceral level here that is based on fact and not just preconception. It's definitely striking, I can't deny that. I crossed the last remnants of an almost-extinct glacier last year that my guide guessed woul…

I live in one of the places in the lower 48 with relatively easy access to glaciers. The change in some of them is fairly noticeable for me over the last say 20 years. It tends to feel grim and helpless if think about it too much. But I hike so I have spent time closer to them than an average person.

This researcher's account is interesting to see comparisons of EU glaciers over the last 100 years or so. https://bsky.app/profile/subfossilguy.bsky.social

And this blog: https://glacierchange.blog/

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#73

Post by maxglute »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #49
tonfa wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/which-countries-hav... I would be surprised if China ends up dumping more CO2 than the US (and then if we look at per capita, even more so).

CO2 since 1750! This isn't serious. Who is currently today doing the thing? china Does the climate care about per capita? no

Total historic emissions is the ONLY serious metric. Since it accounts for all capital buildouts, it takes centuries of emission heavy construction to get developed countries where they are. Countries are going to emit more when they're in steel and concrete phase of nation building.

Does climate care about emissions? Does climate care about changing? No. Climate doesn't care it cycles back to ice age.

Humans (hypothetically) care about climate change. It's a fundmentally a geo-political problem, which means the solution is geopolitically agreed on metric. Currently it rhetorically per capita, but arguably it should be historic per capita, because per capita itself is geopolitic concession metric that shifts responsibility away from historic carbon debt of developed nations towards developing nations.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#74

Post by graeme »

triceratops wrote: post #65
graeme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so, but to do that it isn't enough to make renewables economical. You also have to make carbon uneconomical. China's CO2 emissions have continued to increase rapidly along with renewables. Energy is really useful and we don't have enough to fulfil demand. Unless renewables + nuclear are cheaper than carbon and not supply constrained I'd expect both sources to increase in tandem.

> China's CO2 emissions have continued to increase rapidly along with renewables China's emissions fell 2.7% this year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292 Not per-capita emissions, total emissions.

I'd love for CO2 to be peaking, but the comments on that link suggest this is a single month's measurement and that month is not representative as there was a policy cutoff for end of the month that frontloaded solar investments.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#75

Post by graeme »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #48
graeme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so, but to do that it isn't enough to make renewables economical. You also have to make carbon uneconomical. China's CO2 emissions have continued to increase rapidly along with renewables. Energy is really useful and we don't have enough to fulfil demand. Unless renewables + nuclear are cheaper than carbon and not supply constrained I'd expect both sources to increase in tandem.

> Energy is really useful and we don't have enough to fulfil demand. Enough sunlight falls on Earth in ~30 min to power humanity for a year. There is currently a capture constraint, not a supply constraint, which is currently being solved for. > Unless renewables + nuclear are cheaper than carbon and not supply constrained I'd expect both sources to increase in tandem. Renewables are cheaper than carbon, even when ac…

Proof is in the pudding. Has China halted all coal construction because coal is unambigously more expensive than solar?

We may at some point cross the cost curve and I hope we do but not obvious we are there yet.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#76

Post by triceratops »

graeme wrote: post #74
triceratops wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China's CO2 emissions have continued to increase rapidly along with renewables China's emissions fell 2.7% this year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292 Not per-capita emissions, total emissions.

I'd love for CO2 to be peaking, but the comments on that link suggest this is a single month's measurement and that month is not representative as there was a policy cutoff for end of the month that frontloaded solar investments.

It's for 2025 up to May, and not just for a single month. Fair point about front loaded investments that may have moved the numbers. Nevertheless it's a positive sign.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#77

Post by maxglute »

lm28469 wrote: post #51
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is building, domestically deploying, and exporting solar, wind, batteries, and EVs so fast that the world will have no choice but to rapidly move towards net zero simply due to economics. Existing excess atmospheric carbon emissions remain to be sequestered. China deployed 277GW of solar in 2024 and is accelerating, having deployed 212GW in the first half of 2025. 1GW of solar is being deployed globally every 1…

> China is building, domestically deploying, and exporting solar, wind, batteries, and EVs so fast that the world will have no choice but to rapidly move towards net zero simply due to economics. I can't help but read "we're going to produce and consume more than ever" and I really don't see how it ends in a good way... Take transportation alone, 1.3 billion ICE vehicles to replace by EVs, there is nothing green abou…

50%+ of the world population is low to low middle income, and they're all going to want to increase emission by 4x for parity high income life styles. Realistically 8x since developing = catching up on infra build out, i.e. extremely emissions intensive fuckton of steel and concrete. IIRC 50% more than current consumption by 2050, i.e. consuming much more is basically locked in and that's based on presumption that developing countries are fucking inept and slow rolling development because they don't have a system to do a PRC modernization push otherwise we'd be looking at 200/300/400% increases in steel and concrete. Net zero is pipe dream, it's not going to happen. We can try to make the transition greener, but it's not going to be green. Ultimately, enviroment pilled brains need to remember, development/poverty reduction is going to be a net good that benefits far more people than climate change will fuck over / displace.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#78

Post by robmsmt »

carefulfungi wrote: post #59
username223 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Wildfires are some percent more likely and larger, but forests have always burned, and there are other factors like a century of fire suppression. Hurricanes are more violent and frequent, but there have always been hurricanes. Eggheads will tell you those things, but your day-to-day experiences of them are easy to dismiss. Watching a glacier die is visceral: https://maevethornberry.ie/wp-content/uploads/201…

Most polls find that a substantial majority of Americans acknowledge climate change is real. However, whether it should be acted on with urgency polls differently by party affliation and by geographical region. Many climate change deniers I know have moved from "it isn't real" to "so what?" Or, perhaps more charitably, to "addressing climate change is not in the national interest." I don't think people who want to dr…

Tragically common. A tragedy of the commons if you will.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#79

Post by maxglute »

graeme wrote: post #43
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is building, domestically deploying, and exporting solar, wind, batteries, and EVs so fast that the world will have no choice but to rapidly move towards net zero simply due to economics. Existing excess atmospheric carbon emissions remain to be sequestered. China deployed 277GW of solar in 2024 and is accelerating, having deployed 212GW in the first half of 2025. 1GW of solar is being deployed globally every 1…

I hope so, but to do that it isn't enough to make renewables economical. You also have to make carbon uneconomical. China's CO2 emissions have continued to increase rapidly along with renewables. Energy is really useful and we don't have enough to fulfil demand. Unless renewables + nuclear are cheaper than carbon and not supply constrained I'd expect both sources to increase in tandem.

Ultimately cost is just one factor to prime driver like energy, energy security most overwhelming priority in energy trilemma (security, cost, sustainability)... Having dispatchahble power not tied to weather with abundance fuel source is always going to trump all other considerations for any serious grid. PRC got burn going ham on renewable a few years ago, few heat events that fucked over hydro production, increased AC demand and all of sudden you're dealing with opportunity cost of rationing factories that currently far exceeds $ differences in generation. Theoretically countries can size renewable rollout that minimum intermittent power + storage can reliabily power grid even with current tech, but that's like... multidecade megaproject.

Re: Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

#80

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

triceratops wrote: post #67
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 emissions by country: China vs US. Number only.

> China vs US. Number only. China: down 2.7% this year US: up 4.2%. That's total, not per-capita. Try some other excuses to do nothing about climate change. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

-2.7% to what total amount? +4.2% to what total amount?

This obscures the numbers. The climate doesn't care about improvement, only about total tons of CO2.

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