The concurrence of three climatic events

https://climatecasino.net/2023/06/wtf-is-happening-an-overview/

by xemoka • 3 years ago

450 380 3 years ago

xrd• 3 years ago

I read the whole article. I looked at all the graphs and charts. I still don't understand the near term significance, even with the detailed explanations.

Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the population won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many will actually care? Nothing will happen until it is too late.

His final words weren't encouraging and I can't say I feel any better either.

graeme• 3 years ago

Assuming I'm exactly average, that means 50% of the population won't understand it either. Of that 50%, how many will actually care? Nothing will happen until it is too late.

That’s the crux of the dilemma. It’s too hard. Nothing in our daily experience gives us an intuition for it.

For instance, the media often says “solving climate change requires lowering emissions”. Which gives the impression that if we lower emissions we solve it.

But lowering admissions merely slows the speed at which the problem worsens. To solve the problem we would need to go to zero and then actually suck extra co2 from the atmosphere.

And total global emissions, the only number which matters, are at a record high.

Ancalagon3• 3 years ago

Third paragraph from the bottom. Seems pretty clear in layman's terms to me.

As we enter Northern hemisphere summer, large regions of the planet will experience record heatwaves, fires, storms and flooding. These events will set records in intensity, duration and frequency. The planet’s overall temperature will spike to new highs for the modern era, with 1.5°C in sight for 2024. Antarctic polar sea-ice will continue its retreat from “normal”, exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and heating. Crops will fail. Infrastructure will break beyond repair. Climate migration will spike. And all of this is already happening.

soperj7• 3 years ago

We've got 40 years of data on Antarctic sea ice, and over the last 4 decades it's been growing, not retreating. [1]

[1]https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index

juujian• 3 years ago

Interesting. Alberta had plenty of wildfires even before the 'regular' wildfire season even began. Before any other place in NA. Now they are starting to have crop failures and are en route to 'zero production': https://globalnews.ca/news/9761043/dry-spring-southern-alber... . Of course they also reelected their conservative pro-culture war government while in the middle of all of this, Texas of Canada indeed.

TOMDM• 3 years ago

I think this is precisely what is missing in so much of the climate communication from scientists in the space, the "so what" moment.

Drawing a line in the sand is useful for policy (We should target staying under 1.5C above historical records), but the other piece needs to be the why of it all.

So sure, from the figures given in this post we're seeing record antarctic sea ice anomolies, record sea surface temperature anomolies and record temperature mean anomolies.

But what does this mean for the average person?

What portion of our farmland is no longer serviceable? What places can people no longer live, what portion of our fresh water sources no longer work?

How many people will have to move, find other sources of food/water? What other severe downstream effects are coming that I'm not even aware of? Severe weather? Flooding? Ecosystem collapse?

I understand that this blog is likely more dedicated towards the science behind climate rather than communication of the consequences to the layman, but it seems that most science communication is more interested in communicating the science behind predictions (and often failing) than communicating what the outcomes are likely to be.

boilerupnc• 3 years ago

This might be of interest. The opinion contributors on the wraltechwire site [0] do a reasonable job at trying to express outcomes in the context of climate change science concepts.

[0] https://wraltechwire.com/tag/climate-change/

noiv• 3 years ago

near term significance

The North Atlantic heat flux of the air-ocean interface changed and some one more knowledgeable might tell how many terajoule stay in the atmosphere a little bit longer probably altering the weather pattern as we like to know them.

wiredfool• 3 years ago

Ireland is going to have a warm and lovely summer, which is not it's usual climate pattern, leading to water shortages and peat bog /wild fires.

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

I know that this is HN but this isn’t an IQ-guarded secret. People not “getting it” is based on denial and/or a misguided Culture War politics (those people say it is so, and therefore it is not so), not lack of smarts.

oezi• 3 years ago

The near term significance is that 2023 gives everyone a taste of what was supposed the new mean in 2050.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/hwhax

booleandilemma• 3 years ago

This guy's blog is subtitled "Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of Everything Blog".

Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what he's saying true?

giarc2• 3 years ago

Perhaps. I never know what to believe. I've heard smart, knowledgeable people like Bill Gates state that he thinks we won't experience a scorched Earth ending, but that we will solve this crisis. I'd like to believe him, but then I see an article like this and I don't know who to believe, the graphs are pretty damning if only to say "that line is way above the other lines, and that is bad."

djleni• 3 years ago

For what it’s worth, the average interpretation I’ve seen from climate scientists is:

- No, we won’t hit scorched earth Venus-like runaway warming.

- If we don’t reduce emissions drastically, greenhouse gas warming plus various feedbacks will cause extreme weather, render some parts of the world unlivable due to wet bulb temperature, and overwhelm unprepared infrastructure, costing huge amounts of money and creating millions of migrants.

So, not the end times, but definitely dark times.

If you sprinkle a bit of pessimism about current politics it’s not a stretch to assume we probably won’t handle those impacts gracefully, or achieve the drastic emissions cuts required to avoid them.

tovej• 3 years ago

Bill Gates has been buying up water reserves, has investments in polluting industries, and he's got an interest in keeping the public thinking it's "not so bad". It is. Bill Gates is also behind the "our world in data" series on youtube, that consistently misrepresents climate science to make it seem like we can solve it with enough "green industry", when the only real solution is degrowth, we can't afford to keep siphoning the carbon out of the earth. GDP growth is correlated with --- and the main driver of --- the warming.

This message doesn't serve the interests of billionaires, and Gates is no exception.

otikik2• 3 years ago

Oh, I believe him.

"We (the ultra-rich) won't experience a scorched Earth ending"

zzzeek• 3 years ago

a public figure like Bill Gates who is trying to provide solutions (or whatever he is doing, I see some other posts pointing to other less noble agendas he might have) can't exactly come out and say "well, this will probably all not work, most of the observations point to collapse of most farming and mass die-offs due to heat / starvation within ten years", that would work against his goal of getting people motivated and interested in working / voting towards a solution.

thedougd2• 3 years ago

"Eliot Jacobson, Ph.D. Retired professor of mathematics and computer science, retired casino consultant, now a full time volunteer, husband and grandfather. Know-it-all doomer. Born in the year 316 ppm CO2."

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

Seems he was born in 1959.

Hmph. I want to scoff at how easy he has had it on this subject. And I guess I am.

abeppu3• 3 years ago

Why do you think these things are in tension? If the world has been on a decades-long trajectory careening towards disaster with little indication that we can coordinate to respond appropriately, someone _should_ be saying it all the time _because_ it's true.

Trasmatta2• 3 years ago

Climate change is terrifying, but I also have a hard time taking self titled Doomers totally seriously. It makes sense to consider all of the worst case scenarios for any event, and to prepare for them. But Doomers seem to have an obsession with it, and a need to convince others that the worst will happen.

I noticed this a lot in 2020. COVID was (and is) awful, but there was so much shit that Doomers claimed would happen that year that just didn't. They seem to have a bias towards always considering the worst case scenario the most likely.

jazzyjackson4• 3 years ago

Apocalyptic Ideation

see also: the book of revelations

There will always be people fixated on The End, some because they think we all deserve it, others because they can't seperate their own existential crisis from potential global crises

doubled1122• 3 years ago

Personally, I like to prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

I wish more people would take a reasonable middle approach like that. Are we still, as a society, allowed to do things like that?

The reality is rarely "as bad as we imagined" OR "nothing is wrong at all".

no_wizard2• 3 years ago

My take on it is that "well presented doomers"[0], if you will, serve to balance the "well presented optimists"[1] in that they are needed in society so we can have some take on how things could actually go wrong and sound warnings for potentially catastrophic failures. Its important though, that I think it needs moderating, like not everything "Doomers" say needs to be taken at face value, its important that others can come up and really either shore up their case or make a case for different more likely outcomes, for instance. I feel the same way about overly optimistic takes as well.

They serve an important function in society to keep us aware of just how fragile things can be and that we need to be vigilant about understanding the second order affects of our actions as a society.

[0]: Ones that generally rely on nonpartisan facts / science / evidence for making their claims, without resorting to debunked information to further their claims and/or not relying on conspiracy theories, for instance.

[1]: I'd put alot of technologists in this group, for an example. People who constantly hype real breakthroughs and advancements as proof that we will always be trending upward as a species

smolder2• 3 years ago

I think it's an error to regard "doomers" as a cohesive group.

seydor• 3 years ago

High priests always invoked the wrath of god to convince people

p_j_w• 3 years ago

Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what he's saying true?

These two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

bjourne• 3 years ago

As I understand it there is a scientific consensus about both the causes and the potential effects of global climate change. Scientists say that we are headed for 2C degrees of warming in the next years. Scientists say that 2C degrees of warming would be disastrous for millions of people. Any random dude can put two and two together.

pphysch2• 3 years ago

Climate change is many things:

- Real.

- Influenced by human activity, both positively and negatively.

- Difficult to study, because we only have decades of hard data for what is a phenomenon spanning eons.

- A narrative pushed by Western economies to discourage economic development of the Global South and maintain hegemony. If the former were actually serious about mitigating it, it would harshly regulate planned obsolescence which causes astronomical amounts of waste and pollution. Instead, they browbeat poor countries for building durable infrastructure.

- Classic fear-mongering as a means of maintaining control ("follow me or everyone will die").

- An expression of aging "hippy" eschatology; we have one of the most individualistic generations in human history reaching old age and projecting its death onto the world as a coping mechanism.

- A polarizing topic that lures engagement.

I think blogs like this are a manifestation of the latter two or three.

vkou• 3 years ago

As opposed to the narrative pushed by Western economies to encourage limited forms of economic development in the Global South, by facilitating the creation of captive markets and dependent client states? You know, the normal day-to-day economic orthodoxy the world's been running under for two hundred years?

Which one do you think is winning?

(Also, when you say the Global South, do you mean the Global South that tends to be exempt from, or subjected to less stringent carbon limitations than the developed world? Or do you mean the Global South that everyone starts complaining about as soon as I mention that maybe we should reduce our emissions...)

rpenm• 3 years ago

The sea surface temperature data is from NOAA and the sea ice extent data is from JAXA. His claims are not difficult to verify, if you follow the citations.

phkahler3• 3 years ago

> Is this his schtick? Does he just say the world is ending all the time, or is what he's saying true?

I didn't get any "alarmist" signals from this post of his until near the end. If all the data is as it suggests there really does seem to be something going on this year in particular in addition to a trend. But then he said "Infrastructure will break beyond repair." which jumped out as alarmist to me. Like we can't fix or build more infrastructure? I wish people wouldn't do that, as it makes me react with "dude calm down" when they otherwise seem to have a point.

bbor2• 3 years ago

I guess it depends on what you mean by “beyond repair”, I.e. how many pieces of a bridge can you replace before you’re replacing the bridge rather than repairing it?

I am definitely not an expert on infrastructure or civil engineering in general, but I’ve heard lots of stories about heat being bad for our infra, e.g. warped rail lines in the UK. “Beyond repair” seems within the bound of reason

EDIT: also, obligatory dont-look-up-ication:

"I didn't sense any 'alarmist' undertones from this post of his until almost the end. If all the data is as it suggests, there genuinely seems to be an extraordinary astronomical event headed our way this year on top of other celestial trends. But then he said, 'Civilization will crumble beyond repair,' which struck me as alarmist. Like we can't rebuild or adapt our society? I wish people wouldn't resort to such extreme statements, as it prompts me to respond with 'dude, calm down,' even when they otherwise seem to have a valid concern."

data_maan13• 3 years ago

I think the point here is the metaphore. When you say "infrastructure" you think of bridges, roads etc. And for those you have a notion of possibility and difficulty of repairing them.

When he says "infrastructure" he means the nature that we draw on (to build our infrastructure) i.e. the weather, the trophic chains etc.

I would doubt that everything from one type of infra can be translated to the other. E.g. when it comes to nature some things are simply almost irreversible, whereas there is no such thing for man-made infra.

wahnfrieden2• 3 years ago

try discussing the ideas and data, not the guy

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

We should do both. Gates has outsized personal influence and resources, he's not some quirky hermit that publishes startling pamphlets but is otherwise separate from the world. It's rational to consider whether and where his personal interests coincide with his policy proposals.

Havoc• 3 years ago

To be fair it seems to be quite a hot niche right now

EMCymatics2• 3 years ago

whoever is using the ocean as a giant heat sink needs to stop (joke)

tonymillion2• 3 years ago

Turns out AI will be the death of us all, but not in the way we think…

All those GPUs need cooling somehow.

EMCymatics2• 3 years ago

The reason why we cant fight climate change is because the AI wont let us (joke)

htk• 3 years ago

Reading the article I see some very short timeframes being used (e.g. 1991-2020, 1979-2000) as statistically relevant. Might be enough when preaching to the choir, but irrelevant to the skeptics.

jgilias• 3 years ago

Those are standard climatological periods. You need that for data to be comparable and make sense. I would expect the skeptics to put in at least minor surface level effort in trying to understand the thing that they’re skeptical about, but yeah, maybe that’s too much to ask.

lm28469• 3 years ago

Skeptics will stay skeptics whatever we say. Last time the timeframe was too long, this time the timeframe is too short.

"we had ice age in the past", "we had warming in the past", 1990 is too close, -2m years is too far, the sun is closer (it's not), "numbers can say anything", "oooooh spooky graphs ;)" &c.

klyrs• 3 years ago

If we move the goalpost to before we started collecting data, then all studies are invalid and the problem goes away!

coldtea2• 3 years ago

Not so much sceptics as "prejudiced".

mbil• 3 years ago

Interesting that removing sulphur emissions may have resulted in more solar radiation being absorbed by the oceans. Wonder if cargo ships could purposely emit some benign material that would reflect away sunlight. Although I suspect there could be unintended consequences.

rjmunro2• 3 years ago

Just spraying seawater upwards to make clouds might do the trick:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-conceptual-Flettner-sp...

londons_explore• 3 years ago

Even if scientists agreed that spraying seawater upwards from every ship would mitigate say 10 years of climate change, can you imagine world governments coming to an agreement to do it, and how to fund it?

phtrivier3• 3 years ago

As of January 1, 2020, the International Maritime Organization put a limit on the sulfur content in shipping fuels, reducing the global upper limit on sulfur content from 3.50% to 0.50%. Here is a link to an article describing this change. This reduced limit was mandatory and led to over a 75% drop in sulfur oxides. While great for the environment in many respects (e.g. less acid rain and ocean acidification), there was also a not-so-unexpected consequence.

What is actually beyond my understanding here, is that an international organization implemented a very strict environmental standard, one that probably applies to notoriously uncooperative countries (hint: China), one that applies to a notoriously uncaring industry (cue the oil-spills and dirt ships transporting crap around the world), and, _somehow_ , the standard was respected, and the restriction had the "desired" effect (less SO2 in the air.) ?

That's my WTF: since when do environment standard work ?

What did the IMO do ?

Why didn't the cargo coorporation simply bribe and cheat and lie, as usual ? Didn't using "cleaner" fuels cost _more_ money ? How did they let this kind of communist nonsense of a regulation happen ? Where are the freedom fighters ? Why don't we have an "airpollutionskeptics.org" site that denies the link between cargo ships and SO2 level in the air, on the ground that SO2 levels have always changed in the past, and that the IMO is an evil governement body of elitists who want to take again our gunships ?

Or is it only that we're slaves to irony, that no good deed should go unpunished, and that the only way we can solve any environmental problem is by inadvertently making another one even worse ?

Daishiman• 3 years ago

Regulation of CFCs was successful at helping to recover the ozone layer. Likewise the Clean Air Act.

Regulation works remarkably well in many spaces. Skepticism is warranted as usual but the cynics that claim it almost never works usually have a hidden agenda.

beepbooptheory• 3 years ago

Just curious really, but sources on China being particularly uncooperative with this kind of stuff? Totally take your word for it, of course. I'm mainly just surprised I hadn't heard this particular point before in the various and constant Bad-China discourse.

lavela• 3 years ago

AFAIK in the maritime space the lever is usually seaworthiness and it's connection to insurability[1]

Your _really_ don't want your vessels to go uninsured so you better comply and the big insurers are in europe/usa (not that I don't think that there are some black sheep). That's also the mechanism by which sanctions work in regards to maritime traffic (like against russia last year [2])

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43546-022-00334-y

[2] https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2022/06/eu-sanctio...

pfdietz• 3 years ago

This could work in combination with emission of Iron Salt Aerosols (ISAs). These would have two beneficial effects: increase of phytoplankton growth in iron-poor regions of the oceans, and increased photogeneration of OH and Cl radicals in the troposphere to increase the rate of removal of methane.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

Maybe those guys advocating a sulfur dioxide pipe to the stratosphere had the right idea. We clearly aren't conserving our way out of this mess.

roflyear6• 3 years ago

I'd be careful buying into the "whys" here, as I'm not sure they are qualified to come to these conclusions. It seems speculation.

However, the data seems to be real...

vichu• 3 years ago

I fear that this is the year "wet-bulb temperature" becomes a term regular households across the world become deeply familiar with. It may be as ubiquitous as the term "social distancing" became.

I've always naively thought that climate disaster was still 10-20 years out, but it seems like it's going to begin in earnest now and instead be completely catastrophic after these next 10 years.

What can I as an individual do? Move to Saskatchewan or Alaska? I already know from a friend in Alaska that the melting permafrost is causing many native villages to sink and collapse, and it's only gotten worse in the past few years. Check out this article on Newtok, AK by National Geographic from 2019: http://archive.today/1enHh

kfrzcode3• 3 years ago

Keep calm, carry on, adapt.

Slow-moving crises are not crises, they're problems, not emergencies.

----

Here, have some literature, down-voters! ----

[1] Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea level for 1904–2003. These records were found to capture the variability found in a larger number of stations over the last half century studied previously. Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003). The highest decadal rate of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on 1964 (−1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of change was 1.74 ± 0.16 mm/yr. [0]

----

We compare estimates of coastal and global averaged sea level for 1950 to 2000. During the 1990s and around 1970, we find coastal sea level is rising faster than the global average but that it rises slower than the global average during the late 1970s and late 1980s. The differences are largely a result of sampling the time-varying geographical distribution of sea level rise along a coastline which is more convoluted in some regions than others. More rapid coastal rise corresponds to La Niña–like conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean and a slower rate corresponds to El Niño–like conditions. Over the 51 year period, there is no significant difference in the rates of coastal and global averaged sea level rise, as found in climate model simulations of the 20th century. The best estimate of both global average and coastal sea level rise remains 1.8 ± 0.3 mm yr−1, as found in earlier studies. [1]

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Kemp et al. (1) note that recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports emphasize sub-2 °C scenarios. Simultaneously, IPCC reports also overemphasize catastrophic scenarios, as does broader discourse. For example, the cataclysmic Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 5-8.5 (SSP5-8.5) scenarios—now widely considered implausible (2)—account for roughly half of the scenario mentions in recent IPCC Assessment Reports’ impacts (Working Group II) sections (Fig. 1A), similar to underlying scientific literature (3). The SSP3-7.0 emissions pathway, which Kemp et al. (1) use in their analyses, assumes a world in 2100 heavily reliant on coal and with no climate policy—an implausible future (3, 4). It projects vastly higher emissions than the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated policies scenario, which has continually been revised downward in recent years (4) (Fig. 1B). [2]

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[0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200... [1]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200... [2]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2214347119

Cherry-picked because hey, why not?

_djo_4• 3 years ago

This isn’t moving that slowly any more.

plagiarist• 3 years ago

This is not slow-moving.

oldstrangers• 3 years ago

Slow moving relative to your sense of time, sure. Extremely fast moving on a planetary timeline.

pcdoodle• 3 years ago

Wake me up when the banks stop giving 30 year loans for coastline property.

Who do you trust? Bankers or the "experts".

hunter2_2• 3 years ago

I am very familiar with how a wet-bulb thermometer works and some of the ways it's useful (like at altitude for weather forecasts, and as one of the ways to build a hygrometer) but I'm struggling to make the connection that you've made as to why it'll be a household term. Mind explaining?

roflyear6• 3 years ago

At a certain wet bulb temp humans cannot cool themselves off - they die without access to some other means to get cool (like cold water, air conditioning, etc).

flerchin• 3 years ago

Because a wet-bulb temperature of 35C is generally considered deadly, perhaps as low as 31C. Global warming that kills large swathes of Burma or India would be a household term I'd think.

guerrilla3• 3 years ago

I dount it'll help you much to move. We've got drought and fire here in Sweden already. Never rains anymore. Slaugherhouses fullbooked already becauae the probability of being able to keep the livestock fed and watered looks pretty bad already...

roflyear6• 3 years ago

These issues are going to impact livestock around the world - which is a big contributor to global warming. I suppose some issues are self-correcting.

genman• 3 years ago

I hope they make canned meat then.

hammock3• 3 years ago

Never rains anymore

Sweden average rainfall seems to be trending up on a 100-year scale. https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/precipitation

We've got drought and fire here in Sweden already

Forest fires in Sweden are a complex dynamic and the risk factor from climate change is only one part. Here is an interesting discussion https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-020-01718-2

Droughts in Sweden have been on a downtrend for the last 60 years, with quite a bit of variability. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221458182...

ardrak• 3 years ago

People usually get angry with this view, but I think soon enough meat consumption will become too expensive to be viable to most of the population.

kfrzcode3• 3 years ago

There's literally nothing a "bottom-up" approach will do to effectuate any serious change on the climate. The climate is a dynamic system, and "climate change" is a tautology. At which point, ever, is any "climate" in a static state?

Never, because systems are dynamic, and it's chaotic. Now, if anyone (the State powers and corporate interests) actually WANT to "solve" this "problem," it's, uh, very very clear where to start. Nuclear.

But like many other scissor issues, it will continue to be used as a lever to slice apart groups so's they can fight each other.

When was the last time you asked yourself "What made and or makes me confident in my belief that this is actually a crisis? Why?"

Which papers and statistical analyses have you written? Are you "trusting the science?" Are you versed enough to truly understand how we'd even be able to measure this? Or is it just esoteric enough that it can be used as an engine of disruption, corruption, etc...

uw_rob2• 3 years ago

Double pendulums are a great example of complex, chaotic, and dynamic system. Given an initial state, I wouldn't be able to predict the outcome. However, I could easily go over and smash the toy and then have a pretty good prediction of the outcome state.

Anyone who is interested in having a deeper understanding of climate change I would recommend checking out IPCC AR6.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...

defrost• 3 years ago

Weather (short term local fluctuations) is chaotic.

Climate (long term parameters) isn't.

As an example of how this can be so, consider the classic images of spinning wingnuts in space ( Dzhanibekov effect | Tennis racket theorem ).

The tumblings of the wingnut, moment to moment, are chaotic and unpredictable.

The long term trajectory of the wingnut is clear to see, the centre of mass arcs in a smooth manner and the eventual impact point on the hull can be marked in advance.

( In answer to your question, I've spent decades in geophysics and related disciplines, I've measured gravity, ground radiation, cosmic radiation, continent scale tides to determine mean sea levels, etc. )

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

concordDance• 3 years ago

Unless you live in the select few poor equatorial countries with high humidity and heat you have little to worry about personally.

Climate change is a long term problem. We're going to see hundreds of millions of climate refugees before the end of the century, but the bulk will be after most of us are dead.

detrites2• 3 years ago

I've always naively thought that climate disaster was still 10-20 years out

You can hardly be blamed for that, they've been saying it was one way or another since at least the 1970's.

Literally none of their doomsday scenarios have occurred as stated yet.

My bet is, rather than bovine farts and air for plant-life, the major climate driver will turn out to be what it always has been... 1 million earths-worth chaotic searing nuclear eruption, boiling atop hidden internal processes 4b+ years.

And if there is a human aspect to it, I'd first investigate the large-scale weather-modifying experiments creating and directing precipitation in arbitrary and unaccountable ways over large landmasses for decades. Eg, look at China's.

(Cue the brigade claiming sensible observations are madness because there's a "consensus"... among only scientists that agree...)

sgu9992• 3 years ago

And if there is a human aspect to it

lol

sensible observations

Please share how you've conducted your observations in a rigorous way, no one will blame you for it, that's how science progresses...

"consensus"

lol

matthewdgreen2• 3 years ago

"The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don’t."

That's a pretty terrifying ending. Many of these trends (reducing sea ice causing increased ocean warming, burning of forests and permafrost) may be irreversible once things pass a certain point. At very least we may need to engage in some sort of large-scale solar radiation management project to stop them, and worryingly we may need to start that project very soon before it's too late.

c1sc0• 3 years ago

IF the correlation between sulphuric oxide contents in shipping fuel and these measures changes are true then we have the solution in the article right there. The best day to start solar radiation management was yesterday, the second-best is now.

matthewdgreen2• 3 years ago

I don't actually disagree with this. My concern is that right now the public is very far from accepting the idea that we should engage in these projects, and they only exist at the research stage. Worse: convincing the world to accept near-term SRM (or even "use dirtier fuel again" SRM) may be a tough sell, since some portion of the world isn't convinced that climate change is very serious, let alone an existential threat that needs immediate action. Even if SRM works and is safe, getting from our current situation to one where we deploy SRM could take years, and I'm getting worried that we might not have those years.

coldtea2• 3 years ago

Don't worry. Magically awesome, yet uninvented, or in perpetual "in the next ten years" state technology, with Star Trek scope, will save us with a technical solution. If not, we're all just going to Mars in 10-15 years, with colonies and terraformings. Even if we haven't managed to even get back to the moon for 50 years.

That's what everybody insisted for the past 20-30 years, so must be true. All we need to do is keep expanding consumption/production!

data_maan13• 3 years ago

I think not everyone here understood the irony...

Aaronstotle• 3 years ago

The record fire season in 2020 is why I decided to hedge my bets on living a long life and smoke 1 cigarette per day.

abeppu3• 3 years ago

The IPCC suggests that current sulfur aerosol levels are contributing in the neighborhood of 0.5° C to total global cooling, offsetting warming that would otherwise rapidly occur.
By cleaning up shipping fuels, massive regions of the world’s oceans that were protected from heating by shipping sulfate aerosols are now experiencing rapid warming. This includes the main shipping routes between Asia and the Western US as well as the major routes from the Easter US to Europe and the Middle East. And that’s where the warming is happening. This rapid heating is known as “termination shock,” and it appears to be what’s happening right now.

It's frustrating that we've argued a lot about the hazards of intentional geoengineering responses without reaching a consensus that we should do it, and meanwhile the shipping industry was cavalierly doing it along-side their other emissions. Yes, we need to rapidly cut emissions. Yes, we need to in parallel invest in carbon capture. But if every fraction of a degree matters, shouldn't we also be at least continuing if not scaling up these these albedo-increasing changes?

(edited for grammar)

pyrale2• 3 years ago

Climate change is just one of the things that will get us if we don't find a way to live in our environment. We can't just fuck every other issue to solve that one problem, and hope everything will be fine.

creato2• 3 years ago

You could include the cost of energy in your statement, and then it says nothing.

LatteLazy2• 3 years ago

This baffles me too but it is the way of things. Smart people refuse to support action unless they're 100% sure no one will dislike it. Meanwhile morons wreck things without pause or consequence. I don't know what it is but I think it will doom our species. You see the same thing from climate change to deficits to wars.

colechristensen• 3 years ago

This isn't really the case. The people who study climate are having to censor themselves from the loud idiots who took the bait and turned a scientific concern into a creed.

In the 21st century if you have to frame your solution as a fight against something, you're part of the problem not part of the solution. "Fighting" is now a bigger problem than the contested topic. Idiots fight and the bigger the idiot, the bigger the fight. So the contest is over two extremes that have nothing to do with reality and whomever is doing the real discussion gets labelled as the enemy by both camps because they don't belong to the extreme.

volkl48• 3 years ago

But if every fraction of a degree matters, shouldn't we also be at least continuing if not scaling up these these albedo-increasing changes?

Acid Rain is also a bad thing with bad consequences.

While I'm not necessarily that opposed to cautious attempts at some geoengineering, I don't think "scale up the sulfate emissions" is a viable solution.

TSiege4• 3 years ago

The argument the OP was really making was, could we at least not scale down sulfur emissions

abeppu3• 3 years ago

Acid rain _was_ bad, and I'm not trying to ignore it. However, my understanding is that we've already brought down sulfur emissions by an enormous amount over the past 30 years, and the 2020 value was a very small fraction of our peak sulfur emissions [1]. The IMO change took place in 2020, and it's my understanding that the IPCC statement about 0.5C of cooling coming from sulfur emissions is relatively recent. I think our current level of sulfur emissions is closer to being acceptable than our current warming trend.

I'm not pretending that cooling via sulfur emissions is without costs -- but e.g. if living at 2018 levels of sulfur emissions (which were already 90% down from peak) can give us 0.5C of cooling, that's a deal I'm willing to take, especially in light of how hard it is proving to reduce carbon emissions. It especially seems like we're hitting a number of tipping points with warming, and if sulfur emissions (or any other albedo-increasing intervention) can keep us from crossing those lines, we should, in my view. Would we be better off with 2014-level sulfur emissions? 2008? At _some_ point, trading sulfur emissions for cooling becomes a bad deal, and we shouldn't scale up without limit. But is it a good direction to move from where we are now? I think so.

[1] https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/07/09/whatever-happened-acid-...

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

The calculus changes. One day it might look very attractive to ecologists

giraffe_lady2• 3 years ago

It's pretty easy to predict how and how quickly "reduce emissions and begin effective-but-insufficient-on-its-own geoengineering" becomes "only do geoengineering."

It's relatively much easier, especially politically. And the entities most poised to begin it are exactly the behemoths who benefit from fossil fuel use in the first place. It'll rapidly become another money-and-PR funnel for the same couple hundred individuals who got us here in the first place.

TSiege4• 3 years ago

I completely agree with this sentiment. We should either remove the sulfur scrubbers from ships, start solar dimming around the poles, or both. It's an emergency and we're feeling the shocks right now.

Another example, the war in Ukraine is accelerating the clean energy revolution in Europe, cutting down on air pollution. How's that going to help their drought? Will the EU act on national interests?

hutzlibu• 3 years ago

"Another example, the war in Ukraine is accelerating the clean energy revolution in Europe, cutting down on air pollution."

Maybe in the long run it helps, but right now, not really:

"European coal-fuelled power generation climbed last year as countries scrambled to replace Russian gas, but the increase was smaller than feared as renewable energy helped to plug the gap, ...Outright coal generation in the EU increased by 7%, or 28 terawatt hours (TWh), in 2022, pushing up power sector CO2 emissions by nearly 4%."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-coal-rebound-smal...

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

What’s the implied EU national interests here? Start some geo-engineering projects unilaterally?

bioemerl• 3 years ago

It was hilariously and recklessly irresponsible for these guys to basically use a regulation to put a geoengineering experiment into play that is the exact opposite of what we want to be doing right now.

raverbashing• 3 years ago

Sulfur emissions also cause acid rain, so it's not as simple as "keep the emissions as is"

tooltip-penguin• 3 years ago

Also approximates the theme of Neal Stephenson’s most recent book of the same name, Termination Shock.

kersplody2• 3 years ago

The macro challenge is that we have already overshot and the IPCC appears to be massively understating the current state. According to Hansen et. al.'s Global warming in the pipeline [under peer review], "Equilibrium global warming including slow feedbacks for today’s human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing (4.1 W/m2) is 10°C, reduced to 8°C by today’s aerosols. Decline of aerosol emissions since 2010 should increase the 1970-2010 global warming rate of 0.18°C per decade to a post-2010 rate of at least 0.27°C per decade." For context, this 10°C is over the next 1500 years, but it does imply at least 4.3°C of warming by 2100.

But if every fraction of a degree matters, shouldn't we also be at least continuing if not scaling up these albedo-increasing changes?

Humanity is running the experiment in real time with a sample size of one. Aerosol dimming is good but acid rain is bad: we have a bad vs a worse choice so someone will be harmed, thus any project has liability and the default of doing nothing happens.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474 if you want some light reading.

NoboruWataya• 3 years ago

It's frustrating that we've argued a lot about the hazards of intentional geoengineering responses without reaching a consensus that we should do it, and meanwhile the shipping industry was cavalierly doing it along-side their other emissions.

Was there a debate about this that the IMO ignored? As a layman, I have heard before that cutting emissions of certain particulates could increase global warming in the short term but I don't recall seeing any real discussion of its dangers or strong calls against it. I mean at a societal level - I'm sure there has been discussion of it within the scientific community, but what were the conclusions of that discussion and how were they communicated to the IMO and the rest of society?

I worry that this could further undermine public support for climate change initiatives. The skeptics will spin this as "they said we should cut emissions, then we did and now they are saying that cutting emissions led to climate change". You and I both know that's a flawed message but that's the story they will tell and a lot of people will probably buy it.

DrThunder4• 3 years ago

He forgot the 4th event - Social Contagion Resulting in Climate Sensationalism.

Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate change? I'm so sick of these "scientists" acting like we're in "Day After Tomorrow" and every normal weather event is suddenly a precursor to the Armageddon that'll take us all out in the next decade or less. You scientifically cannot look at individual weather events and determine they're climate change, that's pseudoscience.

People like this author only manage to turn rational individuals into deniers due to their over the top claims that never come true.

pc862• 3 years ago

Can we please have a realistic discussion on climate change?

No we can't, because of the people who actually care about it, half are "everyone is going to be dead before your toddler goes to college unless we dismantle capitalism across the globe" and half are "humans haven't caused any warming at all and dumping trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere has zero measurable effect I bet you voted for Biden." Both are idiots, but the problem is if you're not in one of those camps, and you want to have a rational discussion about climate change, you're in such a small minority you look like the crazy one.

Even here where I'd like to think the users are generally intelligent, the thread is either jokes, apocalyptic predictions about billions of climate-migrants, or nonsense about communism.

It would be interesting to compare this trend in US politics as a whole and how it can also be applied to this specific issue (and other divisive issues like gun rights or abortion rights) if it wasn't so goddamn depressing.

Convolutional• 3 years ago

every normal weather event

San Francisco and the PNW being covered by smoke every summer is not a normal weather event, and now it is starting on the East coast. The east and southeast is also being hit harder by hurricanes, and they are not stopping at the Gulf of Mexico any more. These are just the events people have been able to see in the US in past years and they're not normal and with ever-increasing carbon output it is undoubtedly going to get worse.

I'll take the entire northeast being covered in smoke as an "over the top" claim that just came true.

monknomo• 3 years ago

I feel like for US folks to take climate change seriously requires that climate change directly impact NYC and Washington DC so that the media and policy makers can have some lived experience.

Smoke in SF or Seattle doesn't seem to move the needle for whatever reason

selimthegrim4• 3 years ago

The Australian wildfire smoke also had climatic effects on ozone when combined with Cl radicals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00700-2

DrThunder4• 3 years ago

Actually it is and because you decided to cover forested areas in homes that usually get burned out regularly and stop the natural fires occurring you made it WORSE.

California has ALWAYS been a dry fire ridden state. This idea that it shouldn't be getting wildfires is ridiculous.

michaelmrose• 3 years ago

If someone tells you that cigarettes are going to give you cancer the fact that you aren't dead yet isn't a good indication that they are wrong. Furthermore the climate is incredibly complex. Waiting until we are absolutely certain of the exact trajectory of our fuckery will surely result in us being too fucked to take much corrective action. Basically you are asking to much and you're wrong.

DrThunder4• 3 years ago

Nice strawman.

coding123• 3 years ago

tipping point - some line crossed

whalesalad• 3 years ago

NAC Collapse? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Current

- https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/14/1041321/climate-...

- https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/huge-atlantic...

lsh1234• 3 years ago

Yet another alarmist article. These predictions are so easy to make and nobody cares if you are wrong. From the past (you can google more yourself):

https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/18/world/scientists-say-eart... https://nypost.com/2021/11/12/50-years-of-predictions-that-t...

abm53• 3 years ago

The article is mostly about current conditions, not predictions.

lsh1234• 3 years ago

Last 2 sentences from the article:

"... The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don’t."

its-summertime• 3 years ago

Predictions end up being wrong if things change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol and others for example

(besides, "Will happen" is very different from "Could happen")

lsh1234• 3 years ago

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

"The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations agree with or conflict with the expectations deduced from a hypothesis"

josho3• 3 years ago

Let's see, you don't want people to be alarmist on events that could remap the world as we know it? Okay, if we aren't alarmist then governments won't take action. It sounds like there is no way to win with people like you, and evidently there are enough people like you that we've done nothing.

Regarding your specific complaint, let's look at the AP article. The article is based off an interview with a director, not a scientist. I'm not sure if it's poorly written or the director poorly communicated the issue. The article implies that by 2000 we'd see all of these extreme outcomes, that wasn't what was intended to be communicated. Instead it was that we had until 2000 to stop these events from happening in the future. Which is a very different message. Regardless here we are in 2023 and we are getting ever closer to those events occurring, with some leading indicators already taking place.

lsh1234• 3 years ago

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

idlewords6• 3 years ago

As this post hints at in the discussion of sulfur emissions at sea, all it takes to significantly slow global warming is one country or sufficiently motivated non-state actor deciding to go all-in on geoengineering (like seeding the stratosphere with sulfur dioxides).

Compare this to the collective action problem of everyone, including rapidly industrializing poorer countries, spending trillions to decarbonize their economy and it's pretty clear which outcome is more likely. The only question is which country (or countries) will be first to attempt it, and what will trigger them to act.

detritus2• 3 years ago

According to the 'novel' The Ministry of The Future, that could be a state Actor... .

I put 'novel' in quotes because it's a really weird novel.

giraffe_lady2• 3 years ago

A lot of novels are weird. It's straightforwardly a novel you don't need to put it in quotes.

blacksmith_tb• 3 years ago

A novel novel, got it. I actually thought it was a pretty straightforward read, but to each their own. According to the novel Termination Shock it could just take an eccentric billionaire to launch a geoengineering effort like that (though with some blowback from state actors) - of course there aren't any of those around, so that's clearly fiction...

candiddevmike• 3 years ago

Every time humans try and fix nature, we tend to make it worse due to not understanding the problem or consequences.

theropost• 3 years ago

Do we though? Up until very recent history, we thought of nature as deadly, and unforgiving. The wilderness would mean almost certain death. We did not master the environment, we were afraid of it.

I wouldn't say we make things worse, I think we make things our own. Is that worse? I'd tend to disagree. I prefer human environments over the deep wilderness. Most of us love nature, but we love the human version of that.. groomed trails, modest temperatures, light breezes, and having all the human comforts within reach. Humanity does certainly do things wrong, but we also do things right.

tptacek3• 3 years ago

That's not the point of the comment you're responding to.

Climate-driven austerity isn't going to happen, because it's an intractable global-scale collective action problem.

If you believe that anthropogenic climate change is going to be a global disaster, you should probably reasonably assume that some country in the world is going to allocate serious resources to mitigating it.

There are 50 countries in the world with resources exceeding that of Portugal or New Zealand. Any of those countries could fund and implement a large-scale geoengineering project. No mechanism exists to ensure that any of those countries get permission to do so.

So it doesn't much matter whether we think it's a good idea. Either:

(1) Anthropogenic climate change isn't going to impose unacceptable costs on the industrialized world, and we'll just blow it off, or

(2) Some country is going to intervene directly in the climate.

rednerrus2• 3 years ago

Isn't that exactly what's happening with limiting the sulfur output of ships?

idlewords6• 3 years ago

I don't know, the rural poor in America used to all get malaria and intestinal parasites, and now they don't anymore. And it's rare now to lose a child to disease, where it used to be normal. Our current rosy view of nature is skewed by the fact that so many generations of people worked to rid ourselves of its worst shortcomings, and largely succeeded.

e448582• 3 years ago

Sulfur dioxide + water + oxygen = sulfuric acid, which is not something you want in the atmosphere where rain clouds form.

idlewords6• 3 years ago

Rain clouds don't form in the stratosphere, and there's very little water there.

OrwellianChild2• 3 years ago

In which idlewords basically cites the plot of "Termination Shock" by Neal Stephenson... :-)

idlewords6• 3 years ago

Please don't make me read another one of his books. I'm still recovering from the Seveneves fiasco.

scythe• 3 years ago

The only question is which country (or countries) will be first to attempt it, and what will trigger them to act.

The capability + motivation factors certainly point to India as the most likely candidate, since they're among the closest to disastrous wet-bulb temperatures and have a domestic nuclear umbrella that allows them to say "and what are you going to do about that?". If a heat wave makes it impossible or deadly to harvest crops at a critical moment, panic is a possible outcome.

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

No world leader is going to stick their neck out and spend billions to rain acid (even if thats exactly what the country needs), especially if their country is in a climate crisis. They mind as well hand in their resignation.

black_puppydog• 3 years ago

You do realize that even if it might work, and even if there weren't any other side effects like acid rain, this would essentially make every piece of sky on every day hazy. We'd essentially trade the very concept of "blue sky" for a livable temperature. Kinda hard to put a price on that for me. Maybe I'd prefer living with genuinely less comfort but blue skies.

idlewords6• 3 years ago

You can get a lot of darkening without perceptible effect on the sky, and as a bonus you get amazing sunsets. This happens naturally every time there's a major volcanic eruption; this would just be hurrying the process along a bit.

deanCommie5• 3 years ago

Kinda hard to put a price on that for me. Maybe I'd prefer living with genuinely less comfort but blue skies.

If all you have to trade off is comfort, maybe you can't.

If you were one of the literal HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people who are living in parts of the world that could become unsurvivable in the next few decades, or get flooded by rising sea levels, you'd have a different perspective.

For what it's worth, I agree with you that reckless geoengineering could easily cause more harm than good. But aesthetically desiring a blue sky is a bit silly when up to a billion human lives are on the line (and that's a low estimate)

callmeal• 3 years ago

I don't think people watching their cars rust before their eyes will go over well. Did we forget acid rain already? 1991 was not that long ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/09/news/new-paint-new-cars-a...

idlewords6• 3 years ago

This is about stratospheric SO2, the stratosphere by definition doesn't mix (on short timescales) with the air we park our cars in.

isp• 3 years ago

In this article is the first time I've seen a graph with units "Hiroshimas per Seconds". https://climatecasino.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Ocean_H...

dj_gitmo• 3 years ago

very poor taste IMO.

gautamcgoel• 3 years ago

I found it very striking - it's a number that someone like me (not a physicist) can grasp.

diydsp• 3 years ago

It's been suggested to state things in terms of 9/11/2001 for Americans who don't understand the distaste in such discussions. E.g. each "Hiroshima" would be worth 65 "9/11/2001"s. The scale of the graph's Y-axis would run from 195 to 585 "9/11/2001"s.

Derivation: Hiroshima: 129,000–226,000 deaths. E(death_Hiroshima) ~= 180k. 9/11/2011, NYC: 2,753 people died. 180k/2753 ~= 65.

gmuslera• 3 years ago

I don't think it is a bad measurement of energy for transmitting a scale. It was an actually used nuclear bomb and with enough understanding of its power and consequences in our current culture. Your message have a target public, and that target must understand it properly.

A Tsar bomb or a long number with an unit attached won't be as graphically understood as this one. Scientists may grasp those numbers, but they already know how bad this is, you must reach everyone else.

connorgutman6• 3 years ago

What would you rather have us measure a mass-extinction event in, "sad puppies per second?" This shit is life-and-death. I'm sorry that reality offends you.

dzamo_norton• 3 years ago

I agree, Little Boys or Fat Mans per second would be make me think more of physical power and less of kill rate.

brindidrip• 3 years ago

So given this context and assuming it is accurate, where do you think would be the most viable areas to live? If I were to consider for the US, I'd say inland northern states like Wisconsin and Michigan thanks to the Great Lakes...

sverona• 3 years ago

I moved to Grand Rapids for precisely this reason.

jtolds2• 3 years ago

I made a bunch of maps to answer this question! https://www.jtolio.com/2022/07/anthropocene-calamity-part-8-...

jtolds2• 3 years ago

Here's my wizard if you want to tweak the maps yourself: https://climatedash.fly.dev/?selection=tmean_avg_2050+&filte...

data_maan13• 3 years ago

Wonderful read!

But a few thing I'm missing are: - second (higher) order availability: even if the hospital you need to go to is within biking distance, is the hospital itself sourcing it's materials (needles, plasters etc.) locally? Otherwise you might end up at a hospital that can't treat you - in your modelling you only accounted for weather effects and elsewhere assumed that, hopefully, immigration will somehow be managed well. Suppose it will not - how will you manage that and ensure you will not loose everything, when everyone suddenly moves to where you are and all wealth is taken from people who have some? Is Traverse city perhaps sufficiently insulated so that people won't easily reach it? Does it have a strong police?

Lastly, I'm recommending the "nodes of persisting complexity" article, if you're interested. They carry out an analysis like you do, but at country level. Sadly, the US doesn't score too high.

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

The first WTF is in the Antarctic, where sea-ice extent is setting record lows daily, now fully over 2 million kilometers below the 1991-2020 mean. This is not some one-off event. A decline like this has long been predicted. The impact is that there is a lot more open ocean than normal for this time of year. Open ocean means the ability to absorb incoming solar radiation, and that means further heating in a well-known feedback loop.

We already knew that it would get this bad, but then some other curveball came and made it worse.

In other words just another Monday in the 2020s.

tonymet2• 3 years ago

if someone can explain how global temps are measured and weighted i’ll give you a cookie

jazzyjackson4• 3 years ago

it's satellite photography of infrared emmission, no? combined with ground station measurements to calibrate?

dredmorbius7• 3 years ago

The source listed by TFA for SST, surface sea-water temperature, is <https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/>

From the note on that page:

The page provides time series and map visualizations of daily mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from the NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) dataset version 2.1. OISST is a 0.25°x0.25° gridded dataset that estimates temperatures based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations. The OISST data product includes SST anomalies based on 1971–2000 climatology from NOAA. The datset spans 1 January 1982 to present with a 1 to 2-day lag from the current day. OISST files are preliminary for about two weeks until a finalized product file is posted by NOAA. This status is identified on the maps with "[preliminary]" showing in the title, and applies to the time series as well.

Which further references <https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/optimum-interpolation-sst>

can haz cooky plz?

tonymet2• 3 years ago

thanks we’re on the right track but it’s still lacking the stats. ie what is the distribution of the instruments and how are they weighted ? are dense and sparse weighted equally? how about close and distant instruments to settlements ?

to me collapsing thousands of observations to a single average loses most of the signal

billiam• 3 years ago

He tries a little too hard to make gradual global changes more tangible (what does 930 Hiroshimas even mean?), but in general he does a good job of stating the obvious for us lunkheads. The developed world is nearly at civil war in large part about the tiny number of refugees we have today---we will be completely unable to deal with climate refugees in the tens or hundreds of millions, and it won't be wet bulb temps that finish our society off, it will be us doing it to each other.

civilitty2• 3 years ago

There is another possible input to this heating worthy of note. Dust from the Sahara typically blows west this time of year, blocking incoming radiation while trapping existing heat. So far this year the dust has not come. The lack of dust is notable and could also be a direct cause of some of the North Atlantic heating.

This caught my eye as a potentially much worse catastrophe in the short term than the extreme temperatures. That Saharan dust feeds several ecosystems like the Mediterranean and the Amazon with crucial micronutrients like iron and phosphorus. If that transfer stops for very long, they could start to collapse

ratg132• 3 years ago

This was the only part of the post that I wasn’t relating to.

I’m just coming back from a trip to the Caribbean where during my trip the sky was hazy for some days and all of the locals were claiming the weather effect to be the Sahara dust.

I’m not a local so I don’t know if it is more or less than usual, but my personal experience makes me take issue with the “never come” part.

fps• 3 years ago

The eastern islands of the Caribbean are currently getting hit with smoke from Canadian wildfires: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/smoke-maps-canad.... Smoke is covering everything from Puerto Rico to Barbados.

deanCommie5• 3 years ago

It's super important to not rely on individual data points when talking about year-long trends.

Whatever the effect of the Saharan dust, it's not going to be all manifested in "some days".

Just as in years of overall climate warning there can still be record cold streaks too.

phkahler3• 3 years ago

Fair point, but what if the desert starts greening again? I don't expect it to, but having what nutrients there are NOT blow away would be a start right?

411111111111111• 3 years ago

The issue is water and sand. While it's currently supplementing other ecosystems with nutritions, these by themselves won't magically become greenery.

It would definitely have an incredible effect on the climate if you could magically make Africa into a Forest again though. Might even make some parts of Europe uninhabitable with that cooling alone. Not gonna happen though.

emmelaich• 3 years ago

The Sahara has started greening. The desert advanced in the 70s and 80s but more rainfall has resulted in it retreating since the 90s.

foxandmouse• 3 years ago

How is this on the front page? It's as poorly rooted in science as anti-global warming articles.

This level of alarmism is dangerous because thoughts of others imprison us if we’re not thinking for ourselves... why would a young person care about the climate if it's already too late.

kzrdude2• 3 years ago

What we have already done is enough to keep the momentum of global warming going the next centuries. That's a very difficult political reality, it is a great challenge. How can we deal with politics and everything else when the facts look like this?

When the best we can do is to "not make it worse", then it's very hard for people to see the benefits of the changes we have to make.

jchmrt2• 3 years ago

The fun thing about climate change is that it is never really too late to make a difference, since every reduction in emitted CO2 results in less warming (even if not in a perfectly linear fashion due to various feedback loops). This means that even when we've already locked in 2C, it is still worth preventing it from going to 2.5C.

So alarmism is good and necessary, we just need to make sure that we also need to take action based on it.

distortionfield5• 3 years ago

How is it poorly rooted? They cite all of the data they used for their sources, and link to research supporting their broad claims. You can’t just call something poorly sourced and alarmist because it’s actually alarming. That’s the problem, right now. Alarming is very much the word I should hope this article is.

brightball• 3 years ago

Can somebody explain this part?

By cleaning up shipping fuels, massive regions of the world’s oceans that were protected from heating by shipping sulfate aerosols are now experiencing rapid warming. This includes the main shipping routes between Asia and the Western US as well as the major routes from the Easter US to Europe and the Middle East. And that’s where the warming is happening. This rapid heating is known as “termination shock,” and it appears to be what’s happening right now.

adregan• 3 years ago

Certain chemicals in the atmosphere can increase the planet's albedo, meaning that less of the sun's energy is absorbed. When people speak of geoengineering, they are referring to intentionally spraying these elements (sulfur) into the atmosphere to reflect more of the sun's energy and temporarily cooling the earth.

However, the problem with this system is that the second you stop, you get a huge bump in temperature. Like a whip, you get a quick increase.

Turns out, the shipping industry may have been inadvertently geoengineering and now that there are regulations on the amount of sulfur expelled, we may be experiencing that snap to warmer temperatures.

You may think "Let's just spray some sulfur of our own," but there are unintended consequences associated with it. In my mind though, the biggest issue is that without a reduction in emissions, you'll need more and more sulfur sprayed into the atmosphere and eventually it will not be effective. Supposing you've continued to emit all that time and are still emitting, then the snap would be even greater.

selimthegrim4• 3 years ago

I guess this geoengineering has left the ozone stable.

Glyptodon• 3 years ago

I shared it with my dad. He's basically a socialist boomer.

His response? "I don't read articles starting with 'WTF'".

I wish people were in general more intentional in writing for a broad audience.

latchkey• 3 years ago

Warm water fish death happening now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/us/dead-fish-texas-climat...

lettergram2• 3 years ago

Let’s see the last 200-400 years of climate data. Curious the fluctuations 1991-2020 has decent variance, there’s also 30 year solar cycles. We only see one cycle in this data, we need more data tip make conclusions

josho3• 3 years ago

we need more data tip make conclusions

Skeptics have been raising questions like yours for decades. If you are truly interested in answers then it is only one or two google searches away. In short scientists have already factored those concerns into their analysis.

lettergram2• 3 years ago

Oh I fully know they have a lot more data than 1991-2023 (as is this chart). But of course they have no way to factor beyond like 1900. They don’t have the data and it’s why the models are always off. It’s also why I’m asking for it. It’s obviously constructed data designed to reach a pre-determined conclusion. The 1960-1991 data and 1930-1960 data is available (though likely using different sensors, locations, etc to calculate temp)

carlosjobim2• 3 years ago

I was skeptical, but when the author introduced "Hiroshimas per second" as a scale to measure temperature I understood that this was a truly scientific article.

distortionfield5• 3 years ago

Why does converting units for convenience nullify a scientific hypothesis? Please explain.

carlosjobim2• 3 years ago

Who said it was nullifying the scientific hypothesis? On the contrary, it strengthens it significantly. I suggest he further strengthens his science by converting carbon emissions to Auschwitz' per minute, so that the everyday Joe gets a better grip on the numbers.

data_maan13• 3 years ago

Post your companies that are withdrawing because of climate change here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36297304

golemotron• 3 years ago

These next two years are a pre-amble to what it will mean for the world to pass the Paris 1.5°C barrier. The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don’t.

This isn't going to age well.

giarc2• 3 years ago

This article and discussions here in the comments motivated me to send off 3 emails to relevant ministers of my provincial government.

When I had my first kid, the environment and what our Earth would look like when she was my age really got to me. I realized that small, individual actions aren't going to cut it (ex turning off a light). It's not to say I don't do those things, but I had to do more, things that may actually move the needle.

I pay for Bullfrog power to my house (https://bullfrogpower.com/) and I now email my local representatives to make sure they know their constituents care about this. What will you do today?

data_maan13• 3 years ago

We need more people like you!

Most of us (me included) just lurk on HN and post the odd comment, without pushing for change. We're pathetic!

jonplackett• 3 years ago

Is there anywhere on earth I can move to where it’ll take longer to get terrible?

jgoodhcg2• 3 years ago

I chose to live in Michigan mostly for climate crisis and natural disaster reasons. One of the largest fresh bodies of water, no earthquakes, hardly any tornadoes, no hurricanes, ocean levels won’t impact directly, forest fires aren’t common in the scale of California. Projections show it will still be farmable in 50 years. The downside is it’s a Midwest flyover sate, and the winters can be tough. The lack of sun and abundance of snow can be impactful on mood.

jcpst• 3 years ago

Michigan is where my research led me on this. In several ways looks an improvement to my current life in Kansas.

ejb999• 3 years ago

non-coastal new england - especially VT, Maine and Western Mass are some of the safest areas based on articles I have read.

intalentive2• 3 years ago

What's up with the straight line across the equatorial Pacific?

https://climatecasino.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/GLOBAL_...

jazzyjackson4• 3 years ago

Lack of wind, since the trade winds of the north and south hemispheres converge or cancel each other at the equator

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zo...

intalentive2• 3 years ago

TIL. Thanks.

thx-2718• 3 years ago

"The end of global industrial civilization is where we are headed right now, not at some future dystopian moment. I wish I had a hopeful word to end with. But I don’t."

Sunshade:

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

I'm not too concerned with climate change destroying us all within a 100 years.

I'm excited to see the innovations and discoveries to be made while we develop technology to mitigate disaster.

Edit:

Furthermore I am excited to see the ROI I will receive from investing in mitigation technology.

dbmnt• 3 years ago

You realize the Sunshade is science fiction, right?

Picking two examples from the Wikipedia article you linked, the Fresnel lens is a proposed object that would float in space between the Earth and Sun, approximately 1000 km wide and only a few mm thick. The article notes "at a science fiction convention in 2004, Benford estimated that it would cost about US$10 billion up front, and another $10 billion in supportive cost during its lifespan." Lol. This idea is pretty hilarious, just in general. A lens so wide as to span the entire US state of South Dakota. Please explain how you'll launch and/or assemble that at the L1 point. (This was a subplot of a Simpsons Episode by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Shot_Mr._Burns%3F#Part_One)

Or there's the "Lightweight solution", "a distributed sunshade with a mass on the order of 100000 tons, composed of ultra-thin polymeric films and SiO2 nanotubes", which "estimates that launching such mass would require 399 yearly launches of a vehicle such as SpaceX Starship for 10 years." Also lol!

phkahler3• 3 years ago

Not doubting any of it, but what do we know about the effects of:

1) The war in Ukraine - changes in air travel routes will affect cloud cover.

2) Wild fires in Canada - this is really huge at the moment.

3) That giant blob growing in the Atlantic Ocean.

josho3• 3 years ago

The wild fires represent a massive positive feedback loop. The fires are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, that I believe effectively doubled Canada’s emissions for this year.

redtriumph• 3 years ago

while the world attempts to recover from a pandemic that is still ongoing but ignored by global media.

I wonder what parts of world are still going through the pandemic. Without citations, some of the facts in article come up as alarmists.

forgetfreeman5• 3 years ago

Literally everywhere on the planet where it is still trivially possible to catch covid, so....everywhere.

shawabawa3• 3 years ago

By that logic we've been in a common cold pandemic for the last 200+ years

orwin2• 3 years ago

I will start this post saying i'm not a techno-solutionist guy, nor a denier. My last post on the subect was basically:

* This is why Co2 do not have any effect until it reaches the high troposphere. That takes 20 years. The average climate we have right now is caused by emissions from 2003. *

However: we never had this meteorology scenario before. We cannot predict what will happen this summer. Yes, if you're a public servant or work with them or whatever, prepare for the worst please. But ultimately, we cannot know. we started an experiment that will bring us fast changes, lead us to discover retroaction loops and a lot of different things. Some will help, some wont, we can't know. If it wasn't this dangerous and violent, the uncertainty would be fascinating (it still is, somehow).

rednerrus2• 3 years ago

Accelerating global warming through means meant to slow down environmental degradation would be peak human behavior.

Ancalagon3• 3 years ago

A lot of comments deriding this article as alarmist. Excuse me if I'm incorrect in saying so, but even the data seems to tell me that alarmism is where we are at:

This articles data.

Incredible floods in Pakistan.

Heat domes over the PNW.

Fires in Australia, Canada, California.

And now a warming event in the North Atlantic unlike any other.

All of that and this is likely to be one of the coolest summers for the remainder of our lives. Its only getting warmer from here (barring geoengineering).

What about this is not alarming? As disheartening as it is, this is what is needed for action at this point.

nomel3• 3 years ago

Fires in Australia, Canada, California.

Please don't use California as an example here. It's supposed to be on fire. Several species of trees and plants here cannot germinate without fire. The loooong known problem [1] is mismanagement, building houses where places burn, and blaming the wrong people, which leads to overgrowth from lack of fire. Fires aren't, by any measure, optional. If you impede them, they will come back harsher the next time around, which has very recently been addressed with laws to help increase the frequency of fires [2][3].

I don't see how it's possible to even measure global warming impact with the mismanagement that has accumulated.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-s...

nomel3• 3 years ago

Please read the links. I'm not some anti climate nut. This isn't some controversial take, if you're at all familiar with local politics/policies.

civilitty2• 3 years ago

Same with Australia. There’s so many pyrophytes that the Eucalyptus tree adapted to produce an oil that burns especially hot in order to wipe out competitors and prevent them from sprouting after the fire.

Canada, on the other hand, is a powder keg waiting to blow. The ecosystem is too wet to have any fire adaptations and as the peatlands dry, they expose meters thick layers of undecomposed plant matter that are dense enough to be used as a cheap and dirty fuel in some parts of world. It’s one of the largest carbon stores on the planet and we’ll soon have months long fires a the peat burns.

throwaway57522• 3 years ago

Fires in CA are normal, but not all fires are equal, and the fires that have been in CA recently are worse than they would have been even with the excess ground litter.

The fire season is longer, the droughts are worse, the fires are more intense, fires are happening outside of their historic range, and trees are not surviving the fire assuming they weren't dead already due to drought.

Timely article, "Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California" (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120)

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

It's about 5⁰C cooler here today than yesterday. Crisis averted .

What I am trying to say is you cannot use specific weather events to talk about climate. And of course once you go into statistics, you will lose 55.3% of your persuasiveness.

enraged_camel• 3 years ago

Weather events, by themselves, are just individual data points. But once you start looking at the big picture, it's difficult to not notice patterns. And said patterns are extremely alarming.

SergeAx• 3 years ago

What kind of action do you have in mind?

Ancalagon3• 3 years ago

Maybe actually meeting the Paris climate commitments to start...

q1w2• 3 years ago

Climate Change is a real threat, but listing individual weather perturbations as data points is like giving personal anecdotes as evidence of societal changes.

The strongest and most accurate evidence for global climate change are GLOBAL indicators, such as sea level rise, global average temperatures, etc...

Every weather event you list, can probably be countered with a mild weather event somewhere else. It's mock science, and it's the most obvious sign of hyperbole.

data_maan13• 3 years ago

This post is wrong as it downplays the severity of individual events and only focusses on global ones.

Last year's floods in Pakistan that displaced millions (barely reported on in the west) were such a local event.

Saying "oh, this is fine, because somewhere else the weather was mild" is disturbing.

The whole reason why climate change is so problematic is that the change in the global indicators will cause many many "individual weather perturbations", as you call them, which will displaced millions and disrupt supply chains.

The fact that there is some mild weather event somewhere else doesn't offset these negative effects in any way!

It is not mock science!

wrycoder• 3 years ago

The cool summers are the ones to watch out for - a harbinger of global cooling.

ciconia• 3 years ago

There's this paradox where, on the one hand humanity is convinced it can overcome any problem nature throws at us, and can completely subjugate nature; and on the other hand, human beings are tragically grossly understimating the impact of their actions on their environment.

This is really what stands out to me when people on HN suggest that global warming is totally solvable with just enough technological innovation. The sad truth, and what this article is really driving home, is that while we're waiting for a deus ex machina, we continue to trash our planet, as if we can just move to Mars or something when earth is done.

I'm quite skeptical about the whole "collapse of industrial civilisation" schtick, but I am worried, most of all for my children and their generation.

Invictus0• 3 years ago

The deus ex machina is the coming global population decline. By 2100 the population could be 6 billion.

bioinformatics• 3 years ago

Garbage, that the highbrow Reddit users here, adore

freestate• 3 years ago

Here goes the planet

stefek99• 3 years ago

"pandemic that is still ongoing but mostly ignored by global media"

That is good right? Watch the PART 2: https://plandemicseries.com/ (Event 201)

Putin captured media headlines. Speaking of Putin, Russia is probably the only country that benefits from melting Arctic - opening Northwest Passage - figured it out after debating with a bunch of climate change deniers on Twitter.

(I enjoy debating, I had fun doing it, at some point they were quitting, if they were like me they would continue debating)

In all seriousness, I'm working on Metacrisis - a new term reaching mainstream consciousness:

— Runaway climate change + food system + global hunger

— Economic inequality + compound interest + exponential growth on finite planet

— Nuclear proliferation + pandemics + lost trust in media + lost trust in government

— Regulation of AI + polarisation and engagement metrics + mental health

Problem well defined is problem half solved

Aerbil313• 3 years ago

Haha! It’s relieving to finally see the optimistic technologists of HN finally getting a taste of their own medicine. This is what your much-praised technology did to the world, folks, and no, this was inevitable due to the very nature of it. If you fear what lies ahead, know that it’s not a fear in vain! Collapse is finally getting mainstream.

The concurrence of three climatic events

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