4 ms·

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. Assu

by xrd 3y 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 3y 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.
Ancalagon 3y 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.
- soperj 3y 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 https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    https://github.com/ICESAT-2HackWeek/sea-ice-tutorials https://github.com/ICESAT-2HackWeek/sea-ice-tutorials
  - thedougd 3y ago
    Perhaps you could be more specific with your citation. Nothing jumped out at me. Is this what you're referring to? https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png
    - soperj 3y ago
      Yes, that's it. Slope is positive.
  - hedgehog 3y ago
    That's an accurate but misleading characterization of the data. Anyone can go eyeball the chart you linked and then read this for context to form a more complete opinion: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/understanding-climate-antarctic-sea-ice-extent https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
    - soperj 3y ago
      How is it misleading when they're talking about "exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and heating" specifically? How is it misleading at all when I've literally just quoted data from a really good site?
      - hedgehog 3y ago
        Presenting a very slightly increasing average antarctic coverage trend over specifically 40 years as a refutation that antarctic polar ice is in retreat is misleading for a couple reasons. First, the last ten years appears to show strongly decreasing coverage trend which shows variability or a change in trend to integrate into any conclusions. Second, over that whole period the minimum coverage has a clear decreasing trend, again that should inform any expectations about where we are going. Are you staking out a claim that antarctic ice is going to increase over the next few decades?
- juujian 3y 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-albertan-farmers-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 3y 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.
- 0zemp3c 3y ago
  [flagged]
- boilerupnc 3y 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/ https://wraltechwire.com/tag/climate-change/
noiv 3y 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 3y 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.
avgcorrection 3y 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 3y ago
The near term significance is that 2023 gives everyone a taste of what was supposed the new mean in 2050.

by xrd 3y ago

graeme 3y 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.

Ancalagon 3y 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.

soperj 3y 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 https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index
- mistrial9 3y ago
  https://github.com/ICESAT-2HackWeek/sea-ice-tutorials https://github.com/ICESAT-2HackWeek/sea-ice-tutorials
- thedougd 3y ago
  Perhaps you could be more specific with your citation. Nothing jumped out at me. Is this what you're referring to? https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png
  - soperj 3y ago
    Yes, that's it. Slope is positive.
- hedgehog 3y ago
  That's an accurate but misleading characterization of the data. Anyone can go eyeball the chart you linked and then read this for context to form a more complete opinion: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/understanding-climate-antarctic-sea-ice-extent https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
  - soperj 3y ago
    How is it misleading when they're talking about "exposing more open ocean to incoming solar radiation and heating" specifically? How is it misleading at all when I've literally just quoted data from a really good site?
    - hedgehog 3y ago
      Presenting a very slightly increasing average antarctic coverage trend over specifically 40 years as a refutation that antarctic polar ice is in retreat is misleading for a couple reasons. First, the last ten years appears to show strongly decreasing coverage trend which shows variability or a change in trend to integrate into any conclusions. Second, over that whole period the minimum coverage has a clear decreasing trend, again that should inform any expectations about where we are going. Are you staking out a claim that antarctic ice is going to increase over the next few decades?
juujian 3y 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-albertan-farmers-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 3y 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.

0zemp3c 3y ago
[flagged]
boilerupnc 3y 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/ https://wraltechwire.com/tag/climate-change/

noiv 3y 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 3y 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.

avgcorrection 3y 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 3y ago

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