asaegyn

So there's a big question here (beyond the obvious, existential one) for the VC and startup community. What role do we play in all of this? Can we play a constructive role? What might that look like?

So there's a big question here (beyond the obvious, existential one) for the VC and startup community. What role do we play in all of this? Can we play a constructive role? What might that look like?

This sent chills down my spine.

We don't have much time left. Link to academic paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1198-2

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We know that global warming is forcing many animals around the world to flee their normal habitats, but now, an exhaustive analysis has shown marine species are booking it for the poles six times faster than those on land.

Drawing together 258 peer-reviewed studies, researchers compared over 30,000 habitat shifts in more than 12,000 species of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals.

The resulting database, named BioShifts, is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, and while the database is limited by our own, human research biases, the data we have certainly suggests marine species are following global thermal shifts much closer than land animals.

...

In the review, amphibians were found to be moving up slope at over 12 metres a year, while reptiles seem to be headed towards the equator at 6.5 metres a year.

Insects, which incidentally carry many diseases, were found to be moving poleward at 18.5 kilometres per year.

Relatively, that's a lot, but in the bigger picture, marine species were moving towards the poles at an average pace of nearly 6 kilometres per year, while land animals were only shifting upslope at a mean pace of nearly 1.8 metres per year (slightly faster than previous estimates for land species, but still comparatively slow).

This sent chills down my spine.

We don't have much time left.

========

We know that global warming is forcing many animals around the world to flee their normal habitats, but now, an exhaustive analysis has shown marine species are booking it for the poles six times faster than those on land.

Drawing together 258 peer-reviewed studies, researchers compared over 30,000 habitat shifts in more than 12,000 species of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals.

The resulting database, named BioShifts, is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, and while the database is limited by our own, human research biases, the data we have certainly suggests marine species are following global thermal shifts much closer than land animals.

...

In the review, amphibians were found to be moving up slope at over 12 metres a year, while reptiles seem to be headed towards the equator at 6.5 metres a year.

Insects, which incidentally carry many diseases, were found to be moving poleward at 18.5 kilometres per year.

Relatively, that's a lot, but in the bigger picture, marine species were moving towards the poles at an average pace of nearly 6 kilometres per year, while land animals were only shifting upslope at a mean pace of nearly 1.8 metres per year (slightly faster than previous estimates for land species, but still comparatively slow).

Obviously not in a pleasurable way.

It's disheartening / devastating / infuriating that the genocide of 120-40M people barely pierces the consciousness of the dominant culture when talking about apocalypses or genocides...

Always amuses me how the apocalypse of Inidgenous Americans never seems to make the cut...

As the other comment points out, some of the major GHG's CO2 and CH4 are comprised of carbon. It is often used as a catch-all.

For example, the news earlier this year about treeplanting, spoke about removing Carbon from the atmosphere. Typically, the GHG's will be rolled up into either CO2e (CO2-equivalent) or just C. In the latter case, you often just have to do some molar math to get the CO2e from C.

What a ridiculous comment. The CBC is reporting on this article published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0592-8

Wow, people are desperate for good news. Well, this is a July article, and the idea that this "stops" the climate crisis is nonesense.

The treest would remove about 10-15 years worth of emissions over 40-100. Emissions are increasing (in fact, accelerating).

Moreover, that carbon would be removed over 40-100 years, and in that time, none of those trees could be cut, nor could they burn.

Now, it should be done! But it is by no means a way of stopping climate.

Fundamental systemic change is requied.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/16/china-is-doing-a-lot-be...

As long as GDP is related to emissions and globally advanced countries engage in zero sum competition, exploiting others by pressing their historical power advantage, there is a very strong incentive for China, India and the rest of the developing to catch up by any means necessary.

Seems like consistent suppression of climate related news on hackernews increasing noticeably over the past few months.

I don't understand how this isn't a bigger story. This purging is massive, and smaller purging arguably had a bigger effect on the 2016 election than any Russian interference.

It was most recently pulled off in Georgia as well: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/10/georgia-elec...

In Georgia, Kemp won by ~58,000 votes, yet in a similar tactic, they:

• In the three months leading up to election day, more than 85,000 voters were purged from rolls under Kemp. During 2017 668,000 voters were purged, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

• Of those 2017 numbers, investigative reporter Greg Palast told Salon, 200,000 people left the state, died or moved out their district, making them legitimate cancellations. However, through litigation, he got the entire purge list. “Of the 400,000 who supposedly moved, our experts will tell a court that 340,134 never moved – wrongly purged,” Palast told the Guardian, saying people had been purged for not voting in an election or two.

• Furthermore from 2012 to 2016, 1.5 million voters were purged – more than 10% of all voters – from records, according to a 2018 report from the Brennan Center for Justice. In comparison, 750,000 were purged from 2008 to 2012.

To be clear, this is a report by Joëlle Gergis, an IPCC contributor, one of Australia's expert contributors to the IPCC. She is reporting on new interim developments on the IPCC's simulations across Europe, Canada, the US and other modelling centres.

Basically, the last models and sims were run in 2013 and reported in 2015. They have since been updated (and will be officially reported in 2021).

As we have updated our scientific models, it looks like the old ones were quite optimistic. Seems very newsworthy.

Someone above claimed it was "off-topic". Any idea how to get it unflagged or bring it to mod attention?

This seems like a very important article. Just as a point of comparison, tree planting is great and all, but something like ~100 entities are responsibly for 71% of all emissions.

I thought it meets the guidelines.

It's by Joëlle Gergis, one of Australia's climate experts who contributes to the IPCC reports.

She is reporting on recent developments in IPCC model simulations that are being run, and her perspective on this new information and how it should change our understanding of climate change.

Seems highly newsworthy and relevant to HN.

So the article is by an ACTUAL IPCC climate contributor, one of Australia's experts. Joelle has access to the newest IPCC models and is raising the flag (no pun intended) on new developments in the IPCC models.

Seems like a very important bit of information to disseminate to the public!

The positive tree planting story (with less engagement + comments) is now #1.

Really weird, I don't get this algorithm. We don't even have a downvote for stories.

Hmmm, this post was briefly the #2 in HN, and now it's completely disappeared.... Any idea how that might happen?

Hmmm, given that the USDA is talking about crop yields falling 80% due to climate change, you'd think it's relevant...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/usda-report-sees-dire-climate-c...

Midwest farmers are being punished by adverse weather this year. Extremely wet weather this spring left many unable to fully plant their crops, and now summertime heat could kill a sizable portion of the plants that managed to sprout. The USDA is still determining how many acres will be left unplanted as a result of this year’s tough weather, but estimates place unplanted acres as high as 15 million for corn—well above the 2013 record of 3.6 million corn acres.

Grain prices have risen since weather problems during the planting season began to surface in May. Corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade have risen 16% since May 1, while soybean futures are up 3%. According to Mr. Crane-Droesch, the models used by the ERS show that farmers are in for more difficult springs as climate change gets more severe.

Thanks for clarifying.

On that point of what we need to do not affecting normal people - I don't think that's accurate either.

We WILL need to live different lives in the developed countries. Our lifestyles (beyond carbon emissions) are not sustainable.

If everyone on earth lived as those in the US did, we'd need 4-9 earths. So long as higher quality of life looks like how we live, people around will strive to adopt that. China is by volume, now the largest emitter, but it's only 1/6 of the US in per capita emissions!

I find it hard to see a scenario where we've addressed climate change and ecological collapse, while we live the way we live today.

Hey,

Not sure what you mean by "no impact on ordinary people's lives." The evidence we see seems to suggest the exact opposite.

We're seeing a massive uptick in the amount and intensity of "once in a century natural disasters." These disasters destory homes, destroy crops and cause serious life loss and economic damage to everyone directly affected.

But these disasters also lead to the downstream effects: We're seeing significant inflation in food prices and insurance prices. In Canada last year, vegetable prices increased by ~16%. In comparison, inflation was ~2.5%. Throughout the world we see higher prices in food - this makes everyone poorer. Especially "normal" people.

Similarly, we're seeing insurance rates go up. This is for insuring farms, for insuring houses and anything else that is affected by climate. This is a real economic cost. Moreover, if your home is no longer insured from flooding - when that more frequent and devastating natural disaster happens, you're not covered!

We have all these hidden "taxes" from climate change that affect us all.

It took me about 30 min and >15 captcha's before I could register for this site. The audio didn't help either...

They are getting ridiculous.