Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming • Hacker News Board

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#81

Post by jmcgough » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:17 PM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #73

Shekelphile wrote: post #71

My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point. It is worth mentioning that we are already in the last few hundred million years of earth's lifespan -- the sun was much dimmer last time the planet had this much GHG and warming going on. We may have already set the conditi…

if it bleeds it leads.

These are climate scientists, not tabloid reporters. But don't worry, they'll be fired and silenced by the feds soon enough. Everything is fine, please ignore the rapid increase in tornados and hear waves.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#82

Post by anthropodie » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

jansan wrote: post #63

kacesensitive wrote: post #11

Earth gets over 170,000 terawatts of solar energy every day—10,000 times more than humanity uses. Losing just a fraction of our cloud cover means a massive, invisible throttle is coming off the climate system. If this trend holds, we’re not just warming—we’re stepping on the gas.

What causes the shinkage of clouds? By writing "we’re stepping on the gas" you seem to imply that somehow humanity is causing this.

Do you mean my dog or other animals are responsible for this? Humans are the only species that are capable of modifying the environment.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#83

Post by roter » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

nurettin wrote: post #49

Wait, doesn't that mean less greenhouse effect?

Clouds have two main impacts: reflect incoming, shortwave radiation back to space and absorb (and re-radiation up and down) outgoing, longwave radiation from the surface. The interplay and relative proportion between these two impacts has long been a challenge and depends upon the cloud altitude (low/high), composition (water,ice), and optical depth.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#84

Post by dataviz1000 » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #72

dataviz1000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including inland mountains 700km from the coast like in Vietnam and North Carolina which both got destroyed last year as tropical depressions dumped historical levels of rain.

Why mountains in particular?

As the warm moist air is pushed upwards in mountains, on the windward side, the air will drop in temperature and will not be be able to hold the moisture dropping it as rain.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#85

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

spacedcowboy wrote: post #28

dbacar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

terawatt is not an energy unit.

R̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶x̶t̶…̶ - A̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶1̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶ A̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶1̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶e̶q̶u̶a̶l̶s̶ ̶1̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶ - A̶ ̶T̶e̶r̶a̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶.̶ [edit: The earth receives 14.9 ZettaWatts of solar…

[deleted]

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#86

Post by anthropodie » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

jansan wrote: post #67

anthropodie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree with GP's comment but they do have a valid point. > We could solve this problem in a few years with technology if we really wanted to. Everybody wants to solve the problem with technology. What if, the solution is just plain old hard work like planting trees, conservation, better recycling, better laws that help in saving ecosystem. But who would do that. So let's keep on creating problems w…

What technology specifically has caused the clouds to shrink?

Humanity has tendency to do things wrong and then decades later realize that what we were doing was awful to the planet.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#87

Post by srameshc » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

> Climate scientists now need to figure out what’s causing these cloud changes..

Only if we have enough funding for the scientists to study these important changes for the sake of future generations

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#88

Post by imchillyb » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

There is an ancient text that predicts every body of water becoming like blood.

There is an algae that flourishes in warm water that almost solidifies water into a reddish goop. That goop is much like blood.

We, society, are making this happen. And, it’s happening at a prodigious rate.

The earth’s cooling mechanisms rely upon these bodies of water. The warmer the water the greater the chances of these algal blooms.

Yay us.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#89

Post by shrubby » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #45

kacesensitive wrote: post #11

Earth gets over 170,000 terawatts of solar energy every day—10,000 times more than humanity uses. Losing just a fraction of our cloud cover means a massive, invisible throttle is coming off the climate system. If this trend holds, we’re not just warming—we’re stepping on the gas.

These types of comments are pointless. We are destroying the world. Ok. What’s the solution? All involve pain, but no one wants to talk about that . Tech isn’t going to solve it. For one, the kind of person on this site is contributing literally 10000x more to the issue than the worlds bottom, so we can start there. People love tech solutions, because then they don’t have to stop consuming and live modestly.

We'd be well net neutral and way positive on the just/unjust scale with just two fucking changes.

Get rid of the millionaires excessive destructive power (both structural/political and the personal excessive consumption) and by eliminating factory animal agriculture.

Neither would diminish well-being. At least the actual. Some ego/envy issues though as narcissistic "successful" people couldn't feel their power, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for my kids future.

The benefits are many fold as per Durkheim and more recently Wilkinson and Pickett have shown us.

Easy peasy guys.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#90

Post by DennisP » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

RecentlyThawed wrote: post #15

How large a scale and with how many countries participating would cloud seeding be able to reverse these effects? Last I remember it was only a few countries in Asia that were attempting anything of the sort.

There's a serious proposal to do that with a fleet of wind-powered ships, seeding low-lying clouds with seawater. Wikipedia cites a cost of $5 billion/year for a large deployment, and a maximum potential of offsetting two-thirds of our current anthropogenic warming. If we stopped doing it then things would be back to "normal" in a couple weeks. There would be local weather changes, but less than what's caused by unabated heating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening

A disadvantage of solar radiation management like this is that it does nothing for ocean acidification. But it could buy us time by heading off feedback effects that cause the planet to emit a lot more greenhouse gas of its own, due to melting permafrost, forest fires, etc.