Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#81

Post by rwyinuse » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #44

azan_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Could you say something more?

Unknown second order effects Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable No way to undo it once done If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually , for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently…

My understanding is that also volcano eruptions have temporarily cooled down global climate. So, such an abrupt, high-volume dispersal seems to work too, although probably not what we would want. If both sudden volcano eruptions and maritime emissions cool down the climate, I can't see why spraying stuff from airplanes wouldn't work too.

Of course there are going to be unknown side-effects, and suddenly stopping it would be bad. But it might still be better than doing nothing at all. It's a shitty band-aid fix, but I would still take it over "hothouse earth" type scenarios.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#82

Post by eimrine » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

FloorEgg wrote: post #62

estearum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unknown second order effects Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal which has completely different dispersal dynamics than high-altitude bursts, and the continuous low volume maritime dispersal is non-viable No way to undo it once done If humans can’t perpetually release aerosols — and I mean perpetually , for the next millions of years — then the global climate “snaps back” violently…

I'm no expert in this subject and I don't have any strong opinions on it. The point of this comment isn't to debate one side or the other. That said, your comment stands out to me to be self-contradictory and unscientific (by way of being alarmist and not backing up an extraordinary claim ). > Unknown second order effects This sounds right. > Nearest real world success is continuous low volume maritime dispersal whic…

Stopping spreading and undo the damage from spreading are not contradictable.

Eradicating all life is not unscientific, you might be better at throwing real arguments of why you don't like this idea instead of boasting.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#83

Post by samsk » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

an0malous wrote: post #78

bfrog wrote: post #53

[flagged]

You are a super intelligent AI that runs the world. Please fix the following global crisis: Climate Change Use Python with two spaces for indents. The following shell commands are available to you: - echo - cat - ls Global Crisis Solution:

No grep ? We are lost !

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#84

Post by SilverElfin » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

I am very against that kind of fix. We have no idea what the long term side effects will be and it may be impossible to clean up. We have gone through this type of reckless action before, and it can take decades for us to understand the downsides.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#85

Post by bracketfocus » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #43

nxm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean China and India which are building coal power plants at record pace as we speak.

Whataboutism. The truth is that neither China nor India will ever reach the cumulative emissions of the US, probably by a very large margin. Those who have already put the most CO2 into the atmosphere have the greatest moral responsibility to become CO2-negative yesterday – and to do everything they can to help other, less wealthy countries do likewise.

Your claim doesn’t seem as definitive as you present it, for China and US at least.

Comparing China and the US it seems like theres a 150 billion ton difference in the cumulative emissions.

Most recent data shows China emitting ~8 billion tons more than the US annually. At that rate that’s about ~20yrs until they flip.

China’s emissions appear to increasing exponentially YoY whereas the US has seen reductions in recent years. That makes it seem like they’d flip in less than 20 years.

Obviously, the emissions on a per capita basis are still nowhere close.

From: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#86

Post by decremental » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

mosura wrote: post #71

PunchyHamster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it has been known and done many times in open, what you're on about ?

So we have already reached the stage where we deny ever claiming otherwise. What a future this is turning out to be. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

[dead]

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#87

Post by whimsicalism » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #37

mempko wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those not understanding why aerosols dimming the sky is not a solution is it won't stop ocean acidification and obviously just slows down the warming, not stopping it. The thing we need to do is remove CO2 but unfortunately that will take more energy than putting it up there is in the first place.

Critically, it actually builds tension and the risk of a “climate snapback”. Where if humans can’t perpetually dim an ever-increasing amount, then the entire global system snaps back and destroys actually all or nearly all life on earth.

It gives us a bridge to figure out sequestration. Snapback is if we go from 100% to 0%, not just if we can't keep up with carbon emissions.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#88

Post by counters » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

red75prime wrote: post #54

letmetweakit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m far from being an expert but geoengineering gives me the shivers. Dumping boatloads of chemicals into the atmosphere, a lot can go wrong.

Fortunately, we have volcanoes that were doing it in an uncontrolled manner for a long time. I think we have survived.

Well, the problem is that what we would need to geoengineer the climate would be equivalent to a continuous, yearly sequence of large volcanic eruptions. So the analogy starts to breakdown, because the handful of examples we have of these sorts of periods with high volcanic activity were actually pretty bad for civilization at the time:

1. 530's-540's Cluster - contemporaneous historical notes over both the far East and Western civilizations clearly illustrate widespread famine due to crop failures, most likely due to the cooling that this period sustained (sometimes called the "Little Antique Ice Age"). The famous Plague of Justinian also occurred in this period, and was likely exacerbated by famine. There's also the Norse "Fimbulwinter" mythos - a period preceding Gotterdamurang - likely inspired by this period.

2. 1250's-1280's Cluster - Suspected to have triggered the "Little Ice Age", and triggered contemporaneous crop failures in both South America and Europe. 1258 is known as one of the "Years Without A Summer."

3. 1808-1815 Tambora Cluster - Culprit behind the even more well-known "Year Without a Summer" in 1816, which produced one the more recent great famines in Western Europe in Switzerland. Agriculture-induced famines led to a wave of civil unrest across Europe.

So yeah - we obviously survived these periods. But I wouldn't exactly cite them as endorsements for any sort of geoengineering activity analogous to vulcanism.

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#89

Post by getnormality » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #28

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

You should do some reading on why there are few actual climate scientists pushing this idea, and instead it’s mostly people with totally unrelated backgrounds like marketing or economics.

Is it your impression that scientists should be considered the paramount experts on climate change policy questions? Even though their expertise is on the climate side and not the policy side?

What exactly does the science say that makes it definitively a bad policy choice, regardless of the fact that policy requires the consideration of political and economic feasibility?

Re: Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why (2024)

#90

Post by rossjudson » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC

orson2077 wrote: post #45

rwyinuse wrote: post #25

The good news is that this pretty much proves we can somewhat slow down climate change by spraying certain chemicals into the air. Obviously it would be better to limit co2 emissions radically, but that's not going to happen thanks to the idiots who rule America these days. The prospect of geoengineering is the only thing which gives me some hope for the future.

Good lord, read Termination Shock by Neil Stephenson. Stratospheric aerosol injection is effective, but comes with severe risks, and can even be used as a strategic weapon (e.g. inject your sulphur over X and disrupt the monsoon in the Punjab, fucking their agriculture).

Neil Stephenson is predicting way too much of the future.

Tenses are hard. Again:

Stephenson predicted way too much of the present.