7 ms·

Ocean Warming Study So Distressing, Some Scientists Didn't Want to Talk About It

77 points by Paul-Craft 4y ago

saulpw 4y ago
> In March, researchers examining the ocean off the east coast of North America found that the water's surface was 13.8°C, or 14.8°F, hotter than the average temperature between 1981 and 2011. How does 13.8°C translate into 14.8°F, in any way? I thought at first maybe they were converting absolute temperatures, but that doesn't check out either. I'm sure ocean warming is hugely terrible but this casts doubt on the whole article.
- GreedClarifies 4y ago
  Not to mention that water being either "13.8°C, or 14.8°F" at similar times is laughable. I suspect that they are taking some point in time and comparing it to average temperatures, which is beyond comical. What a farce.
  - throwbadubadu 4y ago
    Who they, the scientists? Come on, that is just some strange error in this commondreams article, neither in the data or in the BBC article... The right translation would be 24.8F, so wow... this study must be false and scientists beyond comical because an article made a typo (:
  - eep_social 4y ago
    here’s the actual paper https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/ https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/
- eep_social 4y ago
  I checked the BBC article linked else-thread, this should read, “.. was 13.8° C, or 24.8° F, hotter than..”
  - coolspot 4y ago
    13.8 C is 56.84 F tho
    - eep_social 4y ago
      Yes indeed and the difference between (eg) 10°C and 23.8° C is 13.8° C, or 24.8° F.
    - acchow 4y ago
      (Rewriting the other comment in an easily digestible format) 23.8C (78.8F) - 10C (50F) = 13.8C (78.8F - 50F = 28.8F)
- akiselev 4y ago
  It's also completely meaningless even if the conversion was right. They're comparing the average ocean surface temperature off the east coast of North America to just "the average temperature between 1981 and 2011." The average temperature of what and where? The ocean? Water surface? Air? Globally? Off the coast of North America? Then a few paragraphs later: But that doesn't account for the average global ocean surface temperature rising by 0.9°C from preindustrial levels, with 0.6°C taking place in the last four decades. I can't even. They went from 14 to 0.6 in the span of two sentences.
cloudripper 4y ago
Data only runs back to the early 80s, but its pretty stark: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
gary_0 4y ago
The original BBC article is less editorialized, but just as alarming: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934
matthewdgreen 4y ago
One thing mentioned in this article is that some of the warming may be due to regulations in 2020 that mandated cleaner (less sulfur) shipping fuel. The particulates from this fuel apparently reflected a significant amount of light both directly and through cloud formation, the loss of which may have caused a kind of termination shock and jump in ocean temperatures. If this is true, we should figure this out and do something about it ASAP. ETA: To be clear, if true this is just the cherry on the thermonuclear bomb we've set off under our feet. But it's still significant and something we might be able to address.
- mturmon 4y ago
  > One thing mentioned in this article... I think you mean not mentioned? (The linked article, and the scientific publication that it references, don't mention sulfur.) The increases they show span decades (see Fig. 2 in the publication), and indeed end at 2020, so this would not seem relevant to their result. It would be surprising if this kind of point change could have a significant impact on overall ocean heat content, but I'd be interested in your source. The effect of various gases and aerosols to climate forcing can be hard to determine, not just in magnitude, but also in sign (e.g., https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/science/objectives/ https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/science/objectives/).
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    It's mentioned in the original BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 A couple of other articles: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9307247/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9307247/ http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/Simons.2021.RiskOfATerminationShockAerosolConference.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/Simons.2021.RiskOfAT... https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2022/nasa-study-finds-evidence-that-fuel-regulation-reduced-air-pollution-from-shipping https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2022/nasa-study-finds-evid...
- ccleve 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
Common dreams is a progressive activist organization. Anything you read there should not be considered unbiased, accurate, or objective.
junon 4y ago
I really don't get what is supposed to happen. The folks that can do something about this have no incentive to do so - instead, they're often incentivized to do something against it. So what's the solution? Me recycling cans and using public transportation and going vegan and ... isn't going to solve this problem. The people who aren't already convinced aren't going to change their habits. Pardon my french, but are we just completely and collectively fucked? What does a solution, long or short term, look like - realistically, not as per Musk et al?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Maybe the Great Filter was inside us the whole time!
  - Teknoman117 4y ago
    That is one of the Great Filter thought examples already, right? A civilization whose technology advances faster than its understanding of the impacts of said technology may blot themselves out early on.
- gmuslera 4y ago
  Sometimes substractive approaches work better than additive ones. It may not be about what else you can do, but what things that you are doing you may stop to do so to push a change. Less consumption, travel, driving and so on, done on scale, may eventually hit the ones that do the biggest damages. 2020 was the biggest setback to some of the most nasty trends in recent years because we collectively did a lot less on those and other categories.
  - llsf 4y ago
    2020 was a setback. 2020 was forced on us, and there is no way that any country would willing decide to apply such a setback on itself, voluntarily for the sake of saving the planet. The tricky part is to find a path that does not impede the economy and yet reduces the CO2 (to zero or even start capturing it). Most of the CO2 emissions are linked to fossil fuel, and so the economy in general. We are addict to fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is the life blood of all the economies. There is a say that there are 2 ways to limit your consumption: 1. You are willing to reduce your consumption => Sobriety 2. The consumption reduction because you cannot afford => Poverty Sobriety is hard, but as time passes, the climate consequences are getting more expensive. If we ignore sobriety, we will eventually fell in poverty as fossil fuel is a limited resource and we will not be able to afford it for ever. The sooner we get rid of it, the better. To govern is to foresee. Our government should plan accordingly.
j_crick 4y ago
> it's not yet well established, why such a rapid change, and such a huge change is happening Humans thought they might be apex predators, but what if the actual apex predator for humans is the planet itself? philosoraptor.jpg > scientists are just people with lives and families who've learnt to understand the implications of data better. If only they could do something meaningful about it. Oh, wait...
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
We will be ok. Tax increases or destruction of our economy is unreasonable and unnecessary.
- llsf 4y ago
  The scientists are just telling what they see. If they scream "Iceberg ahead!", of course someone like you and me, in our cabin, can say "Is making noise is reasonable and necessary?" right ? there is nothing we can really do from our cabin to meaningfully improve the situation. But the captain (government) should take a cue, and maybe consider changing course.
_8j50 4y ago
Put some ice in the ocean then. But seriously, how impractical is it for sub-arctic nuclear power plants to convert ocean water into icebergs and shove it off so it can go melt and cool other parts of the polar ocean water and keep caps from melting. The goal not being cooling the ocean but at least slowing down the rate of warming. I know the oceans are insanely huge but nuclear power is also very powerful, build a dozen or more nuclear powerplants that each are powrerful enough to power NYC year round and use that energy to boil and the water for energy and then use that energy to freeze water. ELI5 on why this is impractical technically? Because politically getting money and support is difficult but at least it not impossible. Telling the world to take it easy in capitalism on the other hand is delusional. Not gonna happen. Scientists are always like "take is seriously" but most of the time it isn't that decision makers don't take them seriously but that they present problems not a bunch of solutions that decision makers can evaluate and you know... decide.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- generativenoise 4y ago
  Your understanding of the physics is so bad I don't know where to start. Though for a first step where do you think that energy you extract from the water to turn it into ice goes? If you want to use ice cubes they have to either be made in space, or you have to get extremely good radiative cooling to space. There have been plenty of solutions proposed but the most favourable "solution" that has mostly been chosen is to make it the futures problem to figure out how to adapt.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    ELI5 means assume I have zero understanding of anything! > is so bad I don't know where to start. Though for a first step where do you think that energy you extract from the water to turn it into ice goes You are not extracting energy from water, the energy comes from nuclear fission in nuclear powerplants. > If you want to use ice cubes they have to either be made in space Why? You have a giant power plant getting energy from nuclear radiation and it's entire purpose is to generate 1-2 square km of ice sheets each 1M thick along with 10-20 other plants you have 300-600 sq km of ice per year that is intended to keep polar surface ocean water cool (not the whole world). The goal is not to cool the air but to essentially use nuclear energy to transfer heat from the ocean into steam into the atmosphere.
bullen 4y ago
Nuclear is heating the oceans, we are litteraly boiling ourselves like frogs in a kettle. We are terraforming a perfectly functional planet with matter into energy, like the sun.
contehcamara 3y ago
[flagged]

77 points by Paul-Craft 4y ago

> In March, researchers examining the ocean off the east coast of North America found that the water's surface was 13.8°C, or 14.8°F, hotter than the average temperature between 1981 and 2011. How does 13.8°C translate into 14.8°F, in any way? I thought at first maybe they were converting absolute temperatures, but that doesn't check out either. I'm sure ocean warming is hugely terrible but this casts doubt on the whole article.

GreedClarifies 4y ago
Not to mention that water being either "13.8°C, or 14.8°F" at similar times is laughable. I suspect that they are taking some point in time and comparing it to average temperatures, which is beyond comical. What a farce.
- throwbadubadu 4y ago
  Who they, the scientists? Come on, that is just some strange error in this commondreams article, neither in the data or in the BBC article... The right translation would be 24.8F, so wow... this study must be false and scientists beyond comical because an article made a typo (:
- eep_social 4y ago
  here’s the actual paper https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/ https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/
eep_social 4y ago
I checked the BBC article linked else-thread, this should read, “.. was 13.8° C, or 24.8° F, hotter than..”
- coolspot 4y ago
  13.8 C is 56.84 F tho
  - eep_social 4y ago
    Yes indeed and the difference between (eg) 10°C and 23.8° C is 13.8° C, or 24.8° F.
  - acchow 4y ago
    (Rewriting the other comment in an easily digestible format) 23.8C (78.8F) - 10C (50F) = 13.8C (78.8F - 50F = 28.8F)
akiselev 4y ago
It's also completely meaningless even if the conversion was right. They're comparing the average ocean surface temperature off the east coast of North America to just "the average temperature between 1981 and 2011." The average temperature of what and where? The ocean? Water surface? Air? Globally? Off the coast of North America? Then a few paragraphs later: But that doesn't account for the average global ocean surface temperature rising by 0.9°C from preindustrial levels, with 0.6°C taking place in the last four decades. I can't even. They went from 14 to 0.6 in the span of two sentences.

cloudripper 4y ago

Data only runs back to the early 80s, but its pretty stark: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

gary_0 4y ago

The original BBC article is less editorialized, but just as alarming: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934

matthewdgreen 4y ago

One thing mentioned in this article is that some of the warming may be due to regulations in 2020 that mandated cleaner (less sulfur) shipping fuel. The particulates from this fuel apparently reflected a significant amount of light both directly and through cloud formation, the loss of which may have caused a kind of termination shock and jump in ocean temperatures. If this is true, we should figure this out and do something about it ASAP. ETA: To be clear, if true this is just the cherry on the thermonuclear bomb we've set off under our feet. But it's still significant and something we might be able to address.

mturmon 4y ago
> One thing mentioned in this article... I think you mean not mentioned? (The linked article, and the scientific publication that it references, don't mention sulfur.) The increases they show span decades (see Fig. 2 in the publication), and indeed end at 2020, so this would not seem relevant to their result. It would be surprising if this kind of point change could have a significant impact on overall ocean heat content, but I'd be interested in your source. The effect of various gases and aerosols to climate forcing can be hard to determine, not just in magnitude, but also in sign (e.g., https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/science/objectives/ https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/science/objectives/).
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  It's mentioned in the original BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 A couple of other articles: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9307247/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9307247/ http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/Simons.2021.RiskOfATerminationShockAerosolConference.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/Simons.2021.RiskOfAT... https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2022/nasa-study-finds-evidence-that-fuel-regulation-reduced-air-pollution-from-shipping https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2022/nasa-study-finds-evid...
ccleve 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

Common dreams is a progressive activist organization. Anything you read there should not be considered unbiased, accurate, or objective.

junon 4y ago

I really don't get what is supposed to happen. The folks that can do something about this have no incentive to do so - instead, they're often incentivized to do something against it. So what's the solution? Me recycling cans and using public transportation and going vegan and ... isn't going to solve this problem. The people who aren't already convinced aren't going to change their habits. Pardon my french, but are we just completely and collectively fucked? What does a solution, long or short term, look like - realistically, not as per Musk et al?

bee_rider 4y ago
Maybe the Great Filter was inside us the whole time!
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  That is one of the Great Filter thought examples already, right? A civilization whose technology advances faster than its understanding of the impacts of said technology may blot themselves out early on.
gmuslera 4y ago
Sometimes substractive approaches work better than additive ones. It may not be about what else you can do, but what things that you are doing you may stop to do so to push a change. Less consumption, travel, driving and so on, done on scale, may eventually hit the ones that do the biggest damages. 2020 was the biggest setback to some of the most nasty trends in recent years because we collectively did a lot less on those and other categories.
- llsf 4y ago
  2020 was a setback. 2020 was forced on us, and there is no way that any country would willing decide to apply such a setback on itself, voluntarily for the sake of saving the planet. The tricky part is to find a path that does not impede the economy and yet reduces the CO2 (to zero or even start capturing it). Most of the CO2 emissions are linked to fossil fuel, and so the economy in general. We are addict to fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is the life blood of all the economies. There is a say that there are 2 ways to limit your consumption: 1. You are willing to reduce your consumption => Sobriety 2. The consumption reduction because you cannot afford => Poverty Sobriety is hard, but as time passes, the climate consequences are getting more expensive. If we ignore sobriety, we will eventually fell in poverty as fossil fuel is a limited resource and we will not be able to afford it for ever. The sooner we get rid of it, the better. To govern is to foresee. Our government should plan accordingly.

j_crick 4y ago

> it's not yet well established, why such a rapid change, and such a huge change is happening Humans thought they might be apex predators, but what if the actual apex predator for humans is the planet itself? philosoraptor.jpg > scientists are just people with lives and families who've learnt to understand the implications of data better. If only they could do something meaningful about it. Oh, wait...

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

We will be ok. Tax increases or destruction of our economy is unreasonable and unnecessary.

llsf 4y ago
The scientists are just telling what they see. If they scream "Iceberg ahead!", of course someone like you and me, in our cabin, can say "Is making noise is reasonable and necessary?" right ? there is nothing we can really do from our cabin to meaningfully improve the situation. But the captain (government) should take a cue, and maybe consider changing course.

_8j50 4y ago

Put some ice in the ocean then. But seriously, how impractical is it for sub-arctic nuclear power plants to convert ocean water into icebergs and shove it off so it can go melt and cool other parts of the polar ocean water and keep caps from melting. The goal not being cooling the ocean but at least slowing down the rate of warming. I know the oceans are insanely huge but nuclear power is also very powerful, build a dozen or more nuclear powerplants that each are powrerful enough to power NYC year round and use that energy to boil and the water for energy and then use that energy to freeze water. ELI5 on why this is impractical technically? Because politically getting money and support is difficult but at least it not impossible. Telling the world to take it easy in capitalism on the other hand is delusional. Not gonna happen. Scientists are always like "take is seriously" but most of the time it isn't that decision makers don't take them seriously but that they present problems not a bunch of solutions that decision makers can evaluate and you know... decide.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
generativenoise 4y ago
Your understanding of the physics is so bad I don't know where to start. Though for a first step where do you think that energy you extract from the water to turn it into ice goes? If you want to use ice cubes they have to either be made in space, or you have to get extremely good radiative cooling to space. There have been plenty of solutions proposed but the most favourable "solution" that has mostly been chosen is to make it the futures problem to figure out how to adapt.
- _8j50 4y ago
  ELI5 means assume I have zero understanding of anything! > is so bad I don't know where to start. Though for a first step where do you think that energy you extract from the water to turn it into ice goes You are not extracting energy from water, the energy comes from nuclear fission in nuclear powerplants. > If you want to use ice cubes they have to either be made in space Why? You have a giant power plant getting energy from nuclear radiation and it's entire purpose is to generate 1-2 square km of ice sheets each 1M thick along with 10-20 other plants you have 300-600 sq km of ice per year that is intended to keep polar surface ocean water cool (not the whole world). The goal is not to cool the air but to essentially use nuclear energy to transfer heat from the ocean into steam into the atmosphere.

bullen 4y ago

Nuclear is heating the oceans, we are litteraly boiling ourselves like frogs in a kettle. We are terraforming a perfectly functional planet with matter into energy, like the sun.

contehcamara 3y ago

[flagged]