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Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

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Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#81

Post by hashmap »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #33
kocsonya wrote: post #2

Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.

The forest where the community hikes has no value unless the trees are turned into paper. All to say, Capital at large seeks out the profit. Until climate change effects the profit considerably, mitigation will be the path less traveled. The only real way to approach this problem is to reduce consumption across the board which as you might guess, isn't profitable.

reducing consumption across the board isnt just unprofitable, it would mean everyone agreeing to overcome our biological gradients. i do not think it is possible for us to do, and evolution has not equipped us to do that as far as i can tell.

my semi-superstitious take is that the race to achieve ai is grounded in needing something that knows whats going on and is able to make decisions aligned to generational time horizons. whether that works out or not time will tell, but i get the sense a "good enough" ai is probably our best shot at saving us from ourselves. it's clear we can't do that on our own.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#82

Post by 9rx »

embedding-shape wrote: post #72
9rx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose they could refrain from injecting their feelings into it. The science doesn't change if it is presented as simple information and not as a warning.

So they should be more like "Atlantic currents might shut down, we'll see what happens and if it'll be good or bad" when they already can tell the effects will be pretty bad? Wouldn't that be basically burying the lede?

You'd have to ask the one who raised concern with this in the first place. What is apparent, though, is that "good or bad" is contrary to science. Science seeks to understand what is, not how you might feel about it. It is interesting that things went there.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#83

Post by bhouston »

This is an ongoing warning which I first read about in university in 1997.

One of the issues with slow moving catastrophes is that we get used to it and then we stop worrying about it.

I believe this is because humans are not good generally at long term planning past a couple years when there is no clear feedback (or it is purposely muddied.)

So essentially we are likely screwed.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#84

Post by hgoel »

kocsonya wrote: post #2

Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.

I don't get the impression of much techno-optimism here lately, it's mostly just incessant whining about how they think everything's AI generated.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#85

Post by xantronix »

giwook wrote: post #64
zurfer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techno optimist here who expects the following to make a big contribution to reducing human made future climate change: better batteries+solar/wind, nuclear fusion, self driving cars (we'll need to manufacture less cars for the same amount of miles humanity drives), AI helping with better resource allocation in general (hopefully). The answer can't be, let's just consume 10x less. We have to engineer our way out of i…

These are all helpful contributions, but ultimately we need buy-in from decision makers (i.e. rulers/heads of nations). And at least in the US we do not have it and are actively going in the opposite direction, mostly in the name of money.

I know one way to get their "buy-in", if you catch my drift.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#86

Post by ijidak »

metalman wrote: post #59

watch it happening in real time here https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/contour/ I am seeing changes, unprecidented changes, in my decades of watching, and they do not match any predicted scenario.

What changes are you seeing? When I look at these images, it shows me what sea surface temperatures are today, but I don't have context as to how it's changed.

I would love someone to stitch years of these images together in a video to help me get better context.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#87

Post by giwook »

fmkamchatka wrote: post #16

I can’t believe there are people in our industry who turn a blind eye (or worse) to these problems. They say that climate scientists are fearmongering and argue there is not a single truth.

People do weird things when there's a lot of money involved.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#88

Post by unethical_ban »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #33
kocsonya wrote: post #2

Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.

The forest where the community hikes has no value unless the trees are turned into paper. All to say, Capital at large seeks out the profit. Until climate change effects the profit considerably, mitigation will be the path less traveled. The only real way to approach this problem is to reduce consumption across the board which as you might guess, isn't profitable.

Which is why, to be blunt, libertarians and conservatives are wrong to demonize government without being equally or more skeptical of the corrupting power of money.

Government is the only apparatus that can govern unregulated motivations of capital, and we need regulations on pollution and investments in clean energy and waste creation/collection to stop things like climate change.

Gen X and forward grew up in a world that by default was cleaner due to regulations like the Clean Water Act, better for seniors due to things like Social Security and Medicare, and safer due to things like food regulations and vaccine mandates. The people who rail against these things are railing against the very things that made their world safer and in some instances kept them alive.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#89

Post by nickserv »

john_alan wrote: post #55
adrian_b wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am old enough to have witnessed how the climate has completely changed in Europe, where I live. In the same place where I live now, when I was young there was permanent snow cover for 3 to 4 months. During the last 10 years, there have been years with no snow and in the others a little snow has been present for 3 or 4 days of a year, when it melted the second day after falling. I have not used again my winter boots…

What you've said is emotionally compelling, but scientifically very weak. Personal recollection is selective and location-specific. You’ve described a memory, not established a mechanism. What you perceive as change isn't macro, it's micro. It doesn't mean macro change isn't happening, but it's not happening on our timescale. I'm 50 FWIW.

> it's not happening on our timescale.

Talk to anyone over 30 and they'll tell you the climate has already changed.

Well anyone that doesn't have a political agenda or shares in ExxonMobil.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#90

Post by jandrewrogers »

kocsonya wrote: post #2

Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.

The singular input for every plausible avenue for mitigating and addressing climate change is energy. And an astronomical amount of energy at that if you want to make a measurable dent over the next 100 years. You can't cheat thermodynamics.

Energy absolutely is something that you can engineer. It is one of the most fundamental things engineering is about. Nothing we can do will make a difference without serious investment in carbon-free power systems. There is a lot of money being invested in energy technology, the real question is if we will build enough of it.

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