Warning Signals for Collapse of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01097-4.epdf

by Kaibeezy • 5 years ago

269 248 5 years ago

nature.com

macintux• 5 years ago

Discussed here:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28078575

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28082887

vaylian• 5 years ago

The current thread seems to point to the underlying paper.

ghc• 5 years ago

Ironically I submitted a link to the original paper but the mods (in their infinite wisdom) changed my submission to point at a guardian article.

koheripbal• 5 years ago

Only the first page is visible with the current nature.com link.

nynx5• 5 years ago

What do I even do with this information? Something I haven’t seen articles or research about is how to psychologically cope with the slow collapse of our ecology.

EDIT: To the people saying to get a house where climate change will be as minimal as possible: As a young person, I probably will never be able to own a house. I rent. If I’m living in a place where climate change has less effect, landlords will raise the price of rent dramatically and I won’t be able to live there anymore.

quenix3• 5 years ago

This is my question too. I feel a sense of despair, uncertainty, and powerlessness reading these. Yes, awareness is important, but... what the actual hell am I supposed to do with this information?

malloryerik• 5 years ago

Maybe join or build a company or some kind of activity to help us survive.

joelbluminator7• 5 years ago

What I do when I want to help some cause is donate money to some legit organization. For me it's the most effective way to help out.

sixQuarks• 5 years ago

Life is absurd, and we may all be in a simulation anyways. Also, we're all going to die and be forgotten, no matter how famous or rich, along with everything in our solar system. Just keep that perspective and try to be grateful that we have this moment of consciousness or whatever the hell reality is.

ratsforhorses• 5 years ago

Feels like "our" ancestors must have felt in the 30's? The storm is gathering... I'd suggest finding a community of like minded people, (most of the western world remains oblivious) looking into growing insects, mushrooms and stuff with led lights.. also according to "Before the flood" (great film btw) the Gulf stream risks moving too and Europe entering a new ice age..so moving south seems like a good idea, which is great as they are more affordable countries with people generally being more...helpful?

Pfaf.org ic.org

chunkyslink• 5 years ago

It's old news but

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

If we all did it today we would make a huge difference to a collpasing system.

https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Acc...

fallingfrog2• 5 years ago

I echo this- went vegan last year. It’s not as scary as you think. There are lots of sources of good vegetable protein (tofu, peas, beans) and you can have one of those impossible burgers if you’re craving meat on a particular day.

jwr2• 5 years ago

Yeah, but… We won't all do it today.

And this is really just blame-shifting and conscience-cleaning: we'll kind-of try to reduce our impact on Earth, feel better about ourselves, but the total impact will be minimal.

Also, if you look closely at meat production, by far the biggest problem is methane, and that's a problem that's been pretty much solved (seaweeds added to diet), except there is no incentive to implement the solution on an industrial scale. Instead of avoiding meat, we should make sure that the solution is actually used.

I believe the first step towards actually dealing with the problem is putting a significant price on carbon emissions (CO2 and CH4) and sticking to it worldwide. The current attempts, unfortunately, are half-assed. It should be really expensive to emit CO2, so expensive that everybody would immediately start looking for mitigations. Unfortunately, I also believe that humanity is too stupid and disorganized to do it, what with the local politicians pulling this and that way.

Personally, apart from trying not to do stupid things myself (e.g. avoid buying an SUV, ride an E-bike around the city, etc), there isn't much I can do. If I were young, I would look to join one of the companies trying to implement carbon capture, because that's the only thing that can save us.

brandmeyer5• 5 years ago

I hear this meme all the time, and its absolute garbage.

The entire agriculture sector of the US economy produced 8.6% of US carbon emissions in 2016. About half of that is from fertilizer (soil management). Even if you impute the entire carbon footprint of us ag to beef production, combustion for transport beats it by 3.5x. Combustion for electricity also exceeds it by 3.5x.

Meat is a tiny slice of your CO2 footprint.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-01/documents/20...

vstm• 5 years ago

Apparently buying shitloads of toilet paper is the best coping mechanism for anything.

CalRobert6• 5 years ago

Find a location that should still be able to sustain life in a few decades, learn self sufficiency and crop growing in harsh climates, emigrate (if necessary) as soon as possible before further refugee crises make this impossible, transition your career to one working to stop this or ameliorate its effects (climate.careers, etc.), decide whether or not to have a kid.

Edit: Also, consider running for office, if your government hasn't suffered complete regulatory capture, and if you have money to invest maybe look at things like Engine No. 1's ETF (VOTE)

gabereiser4• 5 years ago

I'd echo this. Sadly. I've been doing research into hydroponic farms and how to build them. Grow my own food in basements. How to build a disaster shelter. All the things the doomsday preppers do. My internet ads are now on par with QAnon conspiracies and how to survive the apocalypse. It's depressing. It's demoralizing. It's real.

fogihujy8• 5 years ago

emigrate

If considering that option, remember that climate change will affect the destination as well -- don't emigrate to a place that will be underwater or a desert in 10 years.

diego898• 5 years ago

How can one find “our best” estimates” about how locations will respond to climate change ? How can I know where I should be thinking of moving too besides things like stay away from the coasts, etc? I’d like to try and think about where I should buy a house and look for a job for the next 50 years.

sodality2• 5 years ago

I've found the Strategic Intelligence Network (there's a copy at https://the-eye.eu/public/Strategic%20Intelligence%20Network...) very helpful as it contains lots of survival resources. It's also just really interesting to read- some of it would raise eyebrows (there's a subdirectory just for weapons and explosives) but I've found a lot of it is genuinely educational, like military literature on how to defuse or recognize explosives, etc. Plus the survival subdirectory is perfect for this situation. Anyone else have similar survival resources?

Edit: In the parent directory (the-eye.eu/public) the "murdercube" directory is amazing as well. Similar type of survival resources, but even wider scope- you truly have to just scroll through to see how much stuff it has. It's got so much military, survival, health, literature, fiction, education, etc. it's actually incredible what resources people put on the web for free.

HuShifang• 5 years ago

Thanks for bringing VOTE to my attention -- I'd followed Engine No. 1's work regarding Exxon, and didn't realize they had rolled out an ETF. While it was probably more their ability to persuade BlackRock et al that carried the day with Exxon, I'm glad to give them just a few dollars' more clout...

fogihujy8• 5 years ago

I assume you're in one of the northern parts of Europe that'll take the blunt of this.

Look to your ability to handle long winters, short but intensely hot summers, unstable weather systems, and financial difficulties. Making sure your house is properly insulated is a good start.

dagw• 5 years ago

Also think a lot about the effects of flooding and torrential rains. Try to move to higher ground, out of valleys and away from slopes, and to houses built on solid rock foundations.

FpUser• 5 years ago

"As a young person, I probably will never be able to own a house"

So much for the American Dream.

nynx5• 5 years ago

The american dream died a long time ago.

bryanlarsen3• 5 years ago

The collapse just means that European winters will be like Canadian winters. Europeans in Canada survive and thrive. So all you need to do is embrace winter sports and buy a winter jacket capable of keeping you warm at -40. They exist, it's no big deal.

Food prices will likely go up, but that won't really affect Europeans, just the global poor. They're always the ones that get screwed.

Edit: and of course the ecology is screwed too. Humans can use technology like coats and furnaces to adapt immediately, animals and plants need thousands of years to adapt.

Workaccount2• 5 years ago

If European winters turned into Canadian winters, the ecosystem would likely be devastated. Sorry if your post was just sarcasm.

hef19898• 5 years ago

Ah, so that means we gonna have snow again in the alps? Jokes aside, I have a hard time imagining such a world. And I have zero interest living in one, not that there is much choice so in that case.

alichapman• 5 years ago

It will be far worse than europeans having to buy a winter jacket. From [0]:

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-...

lmilcin2• 5 years ago

Europeans in Canada survive and thrive.

But will European ecology, crops and infrastructure?

Europe is dependent on high yield agriculture that would basically be impossible in Canadian climate.

Canada has 38M population mostly huddled at the south of Canada -- roughly where Italy and Spain is in Europe.

Europe has 12 times more population on much smaller territory, most of it being north of Italy or Spain.

shuger2• 5 years ago

Is that what research says? Winters in Poland have been getting warmer not colder.

When I was a kid every winter snow started falling in december and started letting up late february or in march. For the past few years there was almost no snow in the winter. Temperatures are higher too. I barely needed my winter coat past few years.

tejohnso• 5 years ago

You're not alone. Eco-anxiety is real and a growing problem. If you search that term, you might find something helpful.

I've seen suggestions that people will go through the typical five stages of grief, ending with acceptance.

nynx5• 5 years ago

Thank you. You’re the first person who actually tried to help.

mellavora• 5 years ago

I've been stuck in the first state for over a decade. With loss of a loved one, they are gone and you can move on (either to a new partner, or 'move on' to join your lost partner).

With loss of a planet, not so much. The grieving doesn't end, because the destruction doesn't end.

d_g_r• 5 years ago

I have found Gaianism (http://gaianism.org/) to help a lot, by providing structure and rituals to cope with the situation.

Throwaway1974014• 5 years ago

99.9999% of all living species have been wiped out by mother nature herself.

You should find solitude in the fact that we might be the only species who actually have a chance of not becoming part of that statistic which we do by making the planet much more hospitable for us than life used to be. We do this by creating new knowledge which we then use to turn useless materials into valuable resources which allow us to solve problems that have always been challenging us.

So go on live your life, eat, travel, create, consume. Don't worry about the catastrophist rhetoric, don't worry about going vegan (unless you want to), don't worry about your CO2 footprint or any other things other people want you to care about for their own political ideologies.

Be optimistic and worry about living a good life, with good people, doing good and meaningful things and if you have the skills maybe get into something valuable like coming up with how to create more powerful energy forms such as fusion.

te_chris• 5 years ago

This is horrific advice: Just be an uber-individual and hope someone else sorts it. Awful and delusion utopianism.

vesinisa• 5 years ago

"Think about positive things and suppress negative feelings and thoughts."

It might help with coping as an individual but does not solve our problems as a society.

necrotic_comp• 5 years ago

I don't find this helpful. There's the idea of "well, we can't continue doing what we're doing if we want the Earth to continue to be hospitable" even if these predictions are false.

While individually we can't do much, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for those who can to do as much as they can. In the United States, this means pushing back on things like drilling in the wilderness, voting in politicians who want to keep antiquated, polluting forms of energy generation in place, etc.

If there is enough political will in the populace, the transformative effects can be powerful. We've seen it with the bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands, and we've seen it with social issues in the United States.

So yes, we're polluting the earth and making it gross and we should stop that. Let's worry about living a good life, but let's define the good life at least partly about being a good steward of our only planet.

ipaddr2• 5 years ago

Ignore it. Ignore all news trying to get an emotion out of you so they can sell you something.

There are plenty of doomsday or sad stories.. you don't need to hear another.

As a young person who will get older you will have the chance to buy a home everyone did before. Whoever told you different is trying to upsell your emotions.

notduncansmith• 5 years ago

“Bury your head in the sand like we did! Don’t worry, your privilege will save you!”

Delete your post, mate.

The only thing most people talking about climate are selling is the idea that we should keep the planet nicer than we’ve been keeping it. With the climate situation being what it is, only Big Money is telling anyone to “ignore it” and saying that just tells us what side you’re on.

As a young person who will get older you will have the chance to buy a home

I bet Social Security will be there for us too, huh?

This is a dangerous lie. i can’t tell if it’s just utterly useless, or if it’s actually a psyop designed to sow complacency in the populace.

Olds and the rich have been using this language to manipulate the rest of us for years. It’s finally coming to light that no, it’s not true, and it was never going to be true for us.

We have the data. Home ownership is only getting further out of reach for most of us.

everyone did before

And this is where we see that your idea of “everyone” is limited to land owners (now where have I heard land ownership and personhood equivocated before…?).

That kind of thinking will only make more of the mess that we have to clean up.

ngcazz• 5 years ago

It would also sound those people have packed it in and stopped caring about the very true possibility of misery for millions.

vegetablepotpie3• 5 years ago

What I’m doing is getting involved. But it doesn’t seem like climate groups are doing much about GHGs.

I signed up with 350.org, and I got put on a mailing list. I signed up with Sunrise, and the events available to me in my area are to pass out blankets to the homeless and campaign for DC statehood.

This is frustrating to me, I try to find a coalition to work with and I either get ignored or I get a baited and switched to work on leftist causes.

I’m calling my senators and representatives today, and I expect to be ignored.

Unless there is someone organizing to cause large social change around GHGs and we can be involved with that, I think we should just accept that our lives will be filled with uncertainty, starvation, and an early death.

konschubert2• 5 years ago

Maybe impact-makers-group.slack.com and climate-tech.slack.com may be what you are looking for?

debo_• 5 years ago

I joined the Citizen's Climate Lobby, and I've found them to be very well-organized and super effective. Please give it a shot!

Lutger3• 5 years ago

I'm not sure, honestly. I don't have any references but there definitely is research about anxiety and depression caused by climate collapse. I know at least one psychotherapy professor (Netherlands) who specializes in this. There's a lot of literature. One of the terms often used is eco-anxiety.

The single best advice is to put limitations on your consumption of climate news. But it's highly personal, some people turn to activism to cope, facing the problem head-on. I did that, but it's very depressing honestly.

A powerful image my wife likes to use is sitting at a loved one's deathbed. You don't have hope, you know he or she is going to die, but that makes the remaining time extra special. We are all sitting at the deathbed of the world as we know it. That makes the time we have left extra precious. And we're running out of time.

theplague42• 5 years ago

tl;dr just ignore it?

rytis• 5 years ago

The single best advice is to put limitations on your consumption of climate news.

I'm not sure if this is a good advice. It's like hiding in the woods, but once you're out, you'll be in for a massive shock.

May be that's better than gradual adaptation? I don't know.

jjoonathan• 5 years ago

Powerful image but bad analogy. The climate does not have a well defined "death" state, unless you water down the definition of "death" so much that it becomes meaningless, i.e. by defining death as change. If you insist on doing this and then get mired in fatalism... realize that the fatalism was rooted in this choice, and maybe reconsider it.

Since we don't have the collective willpower to stop pushing the climate, it's definitely going to change, so we're just going to have to adapt. The bad news is that it will involve a staggering amount of destruction and violence as everybody tries to avoid bagholding. The good news is that humans are really, really good at adapting. Staggeringly good.

If you look at the history of doomsday predictions -- I'd suggest the Malthusians, since they were rooted in science and rationality but still managed to be very wrong on a large number of issues -- you'll note that their biggest mistake is underestimating adaptability. It's reeeealllllly easy to extrapolate some lines and say "this can't go on, it's going to break, the world will end" and be correct on the first 2 points but wrong on the 3rd. Don't underestimate human adaptability. It's not an optimistic long shot to think that we will adapt. Adaptation is who we are, it's what we do, and we are good at it.

animal_spirits• 5 years ago

Its time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work! What a challenge we've been given to solve! I'm not backing down

lmilcin2• 5 years ago

The basic thing to do is to inform your choices on who you vote for for public functions.

javajosh2• 5 years ago

Process your emotions first. Get to a place where you feel positive about facing the problem. At the end of the day, global climate change is a good problem to face, like WW2 was a good challenge, and it decomposes into smaller problems, recursively, and there are real things you can do. Government's are the only actors that really matter; so it's time to get political. Understand the legislative and executive options; if there's something in-play, help out. Politics is, in general, labor intensive so volunteer. The more local the law, the more leverage you have - so don't ignore state and local law. If you work for a carbon intensive industry, quit. Triage your environmental concerns: landfills << carbon emission. Heck, nuclear waste << carbon emission. So don't get distracted by plastic straw bans or Fukushima/Chernobyl, etc. Politically, care about stopping: fracking, offshore drilling, pipeline investment, and (this one is important): carbon money in politics. Culturally, embrace a voluntary contraction: make more things locally, at home, using local material. Replace your PS5 (dream) with a treehouse; replace Spotify with your dad's guitar.

Get out into nature, and enjoy her company.

sva_• 5 years ago

For a moment I suspected you'd end this with "turn on, tune in, drop out".

ben_w4• 5 years ago

replace Spotify with your dad's guitar.

Now I’m wondering what the inherent CO2 is in those two, and how much variation there is between guitars.

dantheman• 5 years ago

The only actors that matter are technologists developing better sources of energy generation, energy storage, and carbon capture are really the only thing that matters.

Isn't fracking a great source of natural gas? Isn't that much better than oil?

brnt• 5 years ago

What do I even do with this information?

Use your vote offensively.

52-6F-623• 5 years ago

Personally? A deep wading into physics and philosophy. What are we even doing here and what, how, and why does it all work and be at all?

I guess just trying to see the things for what they are, versus what you/I/we were told they were or were supposed to be. It at least helps with the acceptance of present circumstances, and allows for establishing enough ownership over your/mine/our own part in it all, however small or great.

Unfortunately the myth of our adversarial relationship with our world is still a firmly held belief by many. That's not something anyone has a great deal of control over—especially in adults.

Likewise, the idea that we're somehow above everything around us tricks us into thinking we might not just be like a spider who wandered too far into the house and is about to get squished by an ambivalent power [read: Earth's nature] greater than ourselves.

---

I see you're from not too far away. Similarly in SW Ontario I've wondered what it will look like when climate change really starts taking its toll around the world. On a recent visit to Vancouver Island, the heat and the dryness already is staggering. The image of BC I had not twenty years ago is kind of gone. It's not the same. Its long-time residents have watched it change year-over-year. SW Ontario remains more or less unscathed. It's as lush as it's ever been and fresh water is plentiful. Somehow, it's almost always insulated from the worst weather effects of every major surrounding ecosystem save for the odd ice storm or low-grade tornado. If it wasn't somewhat land-locked it would probably already have a wall around it filled with compounds of the ultra-wealthy.

steve_adams_862• 5 years ago

The worst things I notice here on Vancouver Island are that our lakes and rivers are losing their ability to support life very rapidly.

The wet and dry cycles we have mean our river levels are very high then very low, with water temperatures rising higher in summer as a result. The more this happens, and it does every year, the less life they will support. Salmonids which make up the vast majority of river fish can’t handle warm, shallow water. They get sick, tired, develop fungal infections, or get trapped in low areas and run out of food or oxygen.

Our lakes are doing better, but declining just the same. When fishing it’s very rare to catch wild native species, instead you’ll find plenty of stocked or invasive fish. Water temperatures are increasing very quickly, meaning very small lakes will fail to support species like trout which need cool, oxygen rich water.

Logging has done incalculable damage to our watersheds, and it won’t recover quickly. Warming conditions are compounding the damage from that and perhaps reducing the ability of forests to recover and protect our watersheds.

I’m taking my son fishing this weekend for a couple days, and I’ve spent so much time researching to find out which lakes and rivers are doing well or aren’t experiencing too much fishing pressure. There is virtually nothing on the South Island. It’s very sad. We will probably spend a significant amount of time snorkeling and pulling out garbage, especially monofilament from near the shores.

I think we’ll see ecological collapse in major rivers like the Cowichan in the next decade. Some years the levels are so low, comparing it to records is shocking. Crayfish (which serve as a sort of canary species and food web foundation) have begun to have die outs and decreasing populations with some regularity.

kfjman• 5 years ago

Is this a joke? Do nothing, keep living and producing. Is it too hard to live sustainably? Oh that's okay, nobody is perfect, surely everything will go fine :)

You feeling bad while reading these articles is smallest of our problems.

alistairSH• 5 years ago

1. Process your emotions and thoughts. Do you care enough to do anything?

2. Assuming you answered yes above, take small steps... eat less meat, drink less milk. Vote for politicians who care about the environment. Push for changes locally - bike lanes, mass transit, less car-based society. None of these take massive amounts of effort. Yes, none have a dramatic or immediate impact. But, you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Robotbeat7• 5 years ago

And electrify what cars we have.

p_j_w• 5 years ago

Unpopular truth time: don't have kids. That's any given individual's biggest impact to the environment... creating more mouths to feed. If you insist that you need to raise a family, there are plenty of kids out there that need adopting.

meristohm3• 5 years ago

Lobby for change in regulations to make it easier for all of us to change our behavior.

cogman103• 5 years ago

Vote for politicians that will either take action or won't stand in the way of action.

jayspell3• 5 years ago

One thing you can do is realize that experts are often wrong. The prevailing knowledge of twenty / thirty years ago has been proven wrong. Experts never admit they were wrong, they just modify their certainty to whatever the new study says. The fact that their previous certainty was disproven never comes up (think the crisis of bee colony collapse or insect die off). Another thing you can do is accept that changes to the climate have occurred since the beginning, and they will continue to happen regardless of what we do. The last thing you can do is turn off the endless reporting on climate change. The media has a vested interest in working you up (this includes social media). They make money off your attention, don't give it to them.

cogman103• 5 years ago

I downvoted and here's why.

For starters, experts do admit when they are wrong. That comes in the form of later studies and more refined models. Experts in the field of science and research let the data speak.

A lot of distrust in "experts" has come from the fact that as new data comes in experts have changed the models they used (for example, abandoning global cooling back in the 70s).

What we are seeing in climate change is the evidential weight equivalent to what we have for evolution. It's massive, it's conclusive, and it's undeniable. It's not something that's just one study or a few scientists pet theories, it's accepted by all serious climate scientists.

To overturn that amount of evidence, you'd need an equal amount of evidence and, frankly, nothing has been found that comes close to disproving it.

If there's been any evidence of the experts being "wrong" it is in fact pointing towards them having underestimated the impacts.

The media has a vested interest in working you up (this includes social media). They make money off your attention, don't give it to them.

Or you could do like I've done and look up the research for yourself. It's bleak.

Rather than burying your head in the sand and rejecting news that makes you feel upset, it's important to make sure you aren't letting your own biases drive your opinions.

I say all this as someone that was formerly a climate change denier. Funnily, it was an "askscience" reddit question that ultimately moved me and changed my opinion here. The responders gave me a plethora of scientific evidence and data which all points to exactly the same conclusion. Man made greenhouse gases are heating up the earth which, in turn, is causing a higher rate of natural disasters.

Experts can be wrong, they usually aren't, and when they are they update and change their models to explain both why they are wrong and how the new data fits in. That's how science works. It's a constant process of "being wrong" or learning more and refining the models and predictions.

GnarfGnarf2• 5 years ago

What do you do with the info?

If you live in Europe, start planning on a furnace for your home. Wear gloves when installing fiberglass insulation, it itches. The vapour barrier goes on the outside.

London is at the same latitude as Calgary, AB, Canada. Have you been to Calgary? Winter temp. hits -40°C (but it's a dry cold). Every outdoor parking stall has an electric plug for your block heater. Spray ether in the carburetor to get the car started.

Welcome to the 51st parallel.

aaronax• 5 years ago

Hopefully you mean that the vapor barrier faces the "outside" (side out towards you) of the wall cavity as you work on it from inside the house, meaning actually that the vapor barrier is on the side of the insulation nearest the building occupants. The vapor barrier is supposed to go on the warm/moist side of the wall to keep the insulation dry, which in a cold climate is on the inside.

Almost no one should be spraying ether in their cars; carburetors are quite rare nowadays. I have found that a fuel injected car will reliably start in extreme cold (North Dakota) as long as you can get the engine to crank well. And I never use a block heater.

baron_harkonnen2• 5 years ago

The problem with the collapse of our ecology (and the collapse of our future) is it forces us to deal with existential questions that were always there, we just used to have good ways of keeping ourselves distracted.

Every society has developed systems of meaning and value to help us individually deal with the fact that we will die and nothing we will have lived for matters. For many societies the future and present where not all that interesting. These societies typically focused on worship of ancestors, and focused on how their daily actions connected them with their past. This develops into more complex systems of religion and spirituality that help give us meaning.

Industrial society has increasingly abandoned these with a new system of meaning: progress. Much of our personal meaning is derived from things like career, contributions to society, our own projects, personal fame etc. We belief we are playing our small part in the future of humanity and that gives us meaning. But now, as that future starts to come into question, so do these essential sources of personal meaning.

The trouble is that we can't trivially go back to older systems. This is the crisis of nihilism we see across America, and people will beat on the empty symbols of blind nationalism, religious extremism etc trying to resurrect lost meaning. This is what Nietzsche was trying to warn us of in his frequently misunderstood "God is dead" aphorism. We have destroyed our old systems of meaning but the new ones we have he correctly saw were fragile, and when they break he knew there would be a crisis.

The comments to view this as grieving are in many ways correct. You can see the stages of grief everywhere:

- denial: "climate change isn't real" or "climate change won't be so bad"

- bargaining: "If we just recycle more, development more green energy, etc we'll be fine!"

- anger: "It's those damn republicans! they did this!"

- depression: "what's the point of doing anything if we're going to lose everything"

The trouble is that getting out this grief isn't as simple because there's no return to normal. The loss is part of our world. One approach is study what the existentialists have talked about, their immediate post-WWII felt similarly lost. My HNers like the stoics which is another path to explore. But either way the long term project is to work on establishing systems of meaning that work for you... else you risk falling into a feverish insanity which I think we'll see more and more common place.

tribler• 5 years ago

Here is a 2003 paper I found that discusses implications of ocean current collapse: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2003.123... "Abrupt climate change: can society cope?" Mike Hulme Published:22 July 2003

Full Text PDF https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Hulme/publication/...

Robotbeat7• 5 years ago

The stages of grief you describe are something you go through after a change completely out of your control. But stoicism and acceptance in the face of climate change is NOT what we need! We have to act. The status quo is murder, and it’ll keep getting worse without action. We, collectively, do not have time to grieve while our house is on fire and we can still put it out. We must act!

notabee2• 5 years ago

This is a really good comment that encapsulates a lot of things I've been trying to express before. Thank you.

david4222• 5 years ago

What do I even do with this information? Something I haven’t seen articles or research about is how to psychologically cope with the slow collapse of our ecology.

Personally, I do what I can and then just accept that I can't control the rest. I try to reduce, I try to re-use, I switched to vegetarian. I own a new house and I'm going to try to get solar, I have an electric lawn mower and I'm planning on my next car to be electric. I try to vote for people that I think will do the best job.

I'm sure there is a lot more that I _could_ be doing, or attempting to be doing. But I am only a drop in the bucket. I just do the best I can.

Robotbeat7• 5 years ago

Let it spur you to action. I’ve started to reduce beef consumption, eat more vegetarian, replaced fossil fueled cars with electric, replaced flights with my family to see extended family with road trips in an electric car (at high occupancy, this is an extremely efficient mode of transport). Next steps are adding some solar power and transitioning my house’s gas heater to electric heat pump. Started planting trees and offsetting the rest of my carbon with planting trees. (I already live in a dense housing area, which is helpful.)

Of course, as one person, this does little. But I’ve convinced about 5 other people to go from gasoline to electric for their cars. And taking solid personal steps to address climate change (without the highly ascetic lifestyle, which isn’t as attractive to many) helps give your calls for policy action more intellectual and moral authority. Taking action, beyond “flee for your lives!”, is effective in mustering the political and mental energy we’ll need to address climate change, both in the preventative sense and in the adaption sense.

Burning fossil fuels right now for our society is a choice. The biggest struggle is convincing everyone, from the public to activists to politicians and other leaders, that it really is a choice and that real, attractive alternatives exist.

It is actively important NOT to cast the solution as something that requires massive societal sacrifice but instead firm, decisive action and hard work. Ultimately, our action sets the stage for luxurious abundance for all, to a level not possible with fossil fuels, while also rewilding the Earth and making most of the Earth’s surface into beautiful National Parks and reserves.

We’ve delayed action at this point that climate change will cause damage, but it is absolutely in our hands to what extent we’ll prevent more and then heal that damage and set the stage for both human abundance and a thriving Gaia.

dvh• 5 years ago

If you replaced your car with electric one, your consumption is at least 10x bigger than mine (assuming you bought $40k Tesla). In 2020 I've spent €4112.09 on everything. Every dollar spent is eventually converted to carbon dioxide, if you spend 10x more, you produced 10x more carbon dioxide. Lower your consumption, that's the only way to save this planet.

kochikame• 5 years ago

I guess it’s not too dissimilar to the nuclear fear felt by kids who grew up in the 70s

Only difference is, that was solvable

marderfarker2• 5 years ago

Unpopular opinion but I think we (as engineers) can start by reducing bloat in our software, optimise running processes, to reduce device churn so that we can use our devices for a much longer time. Avoid bloaty software and reward developers that respects available computing power.

Computer functionality has been stagnant for a long long time yet system requirements are growing exponentially.

rescripting• 5 years ago

This does nothing to alter our trajectory, only slow it by some infinitesimal amount.

Most developers could slave their whole career making optimizations only to have them overshadowed by the carbon they emit driving to the office.

To put it another way: Bitcoin uses more energy than Argentina. Shave 1% off of that and watch it gobbled up by growth in the BTC network within a month.

Trasmatta• 5 years ago

Device churn isn't the fault of software developers.

barkingcat• 5 years ago

Another idea is to keep personal computers that you power on 24/7 to either sleep when not using them or on a power on/power off schedule.

For computers with discrete GPU's this could save a lot of power!

When you aren't using lights, turn them off.

stuntkite• 5 years ago

The only thing that will make any difference is systemic change. It's fine to take shorter showers or turn off your PC, but a handful of companies are causing most of this. Coca-Cola should quit using plastics for instance. That would make a dent. It's not likely to happen.

The rich folks in power want us to feel like we are responsible for their mess. This has been going on for years. Turn off lights, recycle (lol), or do whatever... but feeling guilty or seeing it as actually making a difference doesn't effect a damn thing... unfortunately.

lovecg3• 5 years ago

Serious question, does that make a difference if you heat your house using a thermostat anyway? The furnace should just run for less time to compensate.

I have the same question about incandescent lightbulbs that seem to have been banned in many places.

CalRobert6• 5 years ago

"As a young person, I probably will never be able to own a house."

I hear you there. I was you, some years ago. I graduated in 2008 _just_ as the economy completely fell off a cliff and it SUCKED. I only managed to buy a house 10 years later by looking at very nontraditional properties. I wound up with a cottage on a few acres of land for €68,000. There's bargains to be had if you're OK with something outside the norm.

I had a look at your page at https://charted.space/ - if I may say so, you seem to have a lot of skills that could fetch a good salary - you might wind up able to buy a home (if that's your goal) after all.

taneq• 5 years ago

Turtle and tech. Focus on getting as rich as possible as quick as possible, not for the untold debauchery but to increase your agility for the sudden yet inevitable going to hell.

fogihujy8• 5 years ago

Summer heatwaves, freezing cold winters, decreased crop yields, permafrost further south... The list goes on. If this actually happens, then the situation in the Nordic countries are going to be quite interesting in 10-20 years. I suspect the climate goals will be thrown out the window unless the rest of Europe manages to find homes for 25 million Nordic climate refugees.

It's a good thing I like buckwheat and beetroots.

joelbluminator7• 5 years ago

Is that so different than current weather in Canada?

clajiness• 5 years ago

Probably not. As a Minnesotan, I'd consider a country like Norway, but I fear that a good chunk of the coastal cities will eventually be underwater anyway.

fogihujy8• 5 years ago

Not at all. It's quite different from what the Nordics are like today, though.

When I lived in Denmark the Copenhagen subway was shut down because of a bit of snowfall. 10 cm of snow brought Aalborg to a halt for days. Things we laugh at in Finland, but which they are simply not prepared for.

I'm afraid good old-fashioned -30C Siberian cold front would cause serious disruptions in Denmark and the southern half of Sweden (and possibly southern Norway -- not sure how used they are to cold weather, being blessed with ice-free coasts and all that). And without the North-Atlantic current to keep things nice and warm, it's just a matter of time before proper winters become a regular thing.

nodejs_rulez_1• 5 years ago

Also sleeping super-volcanos, gigantic asteroids, viruses in permafrost, strangelet particles and traveling bursts of annihilating energy in space.

fogihujy8• 5 years ago

Those go beyond 'intetesting' tbh.

balsam• 5 years ago

Thats a lot oxalate :( if you also like your milk but fruits not so much welcome to kidney stones

refurb4• 5 years ago

Pretty sure they predicted the collapse of another ocean current like 5 years ago, yet here we are.

sadness3• 5 years ago

Has never happened != will never happen.

refurb4• 5 years ago

Yes, but when predictions fail to materialize one needs to weigh future predictions appropriately.

mschaef2• 5 years ago

It's a large system and operates on timescales that are at least generational in human terms. So it feels slow to us, even if it's very, very fast in geologic times.

refurb4• 5 years ago

Imminent collapse means?

surfsvammel• 5 years ago

Comments like this add absolutely nothing to the discussion. You are ‘pretty sure’ someone predicted something similar some time?

What value does that bring to the table?

mrow84• 5 years ago

It would have been the AMOC, which is the most significant component of the overturning circulation system in the global ocean, and the one whose weakening would have a clearest and most immediate impact.

Unfortunately, predicting its behaviour is difficult, for a variety of reasons. However, that doesn't mean such predictions should not be made, nor that alarm bells shouldn't be rung when it appears that things might be going awry, especially given the AMOC's global significance. Surely we can agree that insisting on only considering dangers of which we are entirely certain is a foolish approach to risk management?

Strilanc2• 5 years ago

This sort of comment should include a source showing the 5 year old prediction.

(For example, there'd be a big difference between a five year old article saying "we're worried this thing is going to collapse over the next two decades" and one saying "this will collapse by 2017". Also it matters if it's a peer reviewed publication, a pop sci article, some rando youtube video talking about another youtube video, or etc. But there's no way to tell from your comment unless you give a source.)

refurb4• 5 years ago

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20170104/global-ocean...

Unspecified timeline.

I mean, someone could say “asteroid could hit earth and end civilization” but that’s not actionable and this useless information.

Popegaf• 5 years ago

Which ocean current, when was it predicted to collapse, and what do they mean by collapse?

outside1234• 5 years ago

On the positive side does this possibly mean that glaciers would start growing again in Europe and the longer winters would in general mean more snow and reflected sunlight?

fsloth• 5 years ago

No glaciers. This won't cause an iceage. Just more calamitous weather patterns.

astrophysics• 5 years ago

What if people stop having so many children?

adwn• 5 years ago

In those countries that are most responsible for climate change, they already did.

_Microft2• 5 years ago

They already do. Peak population growth rate (i.e. new humans relative to existing ones per year) was over 50 years ago and it was decreasing most of the time since then. We now only suffer from the fact that the base number is now much larger (leading to higher absolute growth numbers).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#/media/File:...

adrianN• 5 years ago

That won't make us become carbon neutral before we've hit tipping points that take the problem out of our control.

alkonaut• 5 years ago

So I was happy my house isn’t in the path of hurricanes, at risk of flooding or forest fires. An extreme summer heatwave doesn’t kill many it just means maybe 30C so I swim a bit more. But if the Gulf Stream stops it’s still almost uninhabitable.

wazoox• 5 years ago

Like future, collapse is unevenly distributed, but it's already here. Unfortunately, people who aren't experiencing it directly prefer believing it's just not happening.

Biodiversity is collapsing right now at unprecedented rates; we're in the 6th Extinction. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur...

Arthropods are collapsing wordlwide: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur...

Ocean life is in grave danger: https://hyperaxion.com/biology/ocean-biodiversity-collapse-n...

A study concluded that Syria's civil war was in large part driven by climate change and ecological problems (i.e. society collapse is already among us). https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/150302-sy...

Our way of life WILL change dramatically in the coming years. The alternative is as follows: either we choose to reduce drastically our individual and collective impact, or nature and the law of physics will achieve it anyway in much harsher ways. The option to go "business as usual" simply isn't available.

yread• 5 years ago

Is there like a consensus behind this or is it just one guy saying it? I can't really evaluate the claims in the paper.

It got published in highly-impacted peer-reviewed journal, ok, but so does a lot of stuff that turns out not true later so that's not much a signal

Warning Signals for Collapse of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

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