9 ms·

‘Something weird is going on’: Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows

59 points by tda 3y ago

the_70x 3y ago
The damage to the atmosphere was made long ago and we just started to see the hard consequences.
tda 3y ago
“It is very much outside our understanding of this system.” This is what worries me: climate change leading to entirely new regimes that we don't understand and thus can't model or predict with any accuracy. You just can't build a seawall for a sealevel rise of between 50 and 300 cm somewhere in about 20 to 50 years. Or for heatwaves of maximum 35 to 45 degrees, precipitation of max 20-100mm/hour, etc. Climate adaptation will be even more challenging if we don't know what we are adapting to
- BasedAnon 3y ago
  faster... than expected you say? https://www.fasterthanexpected.com/ https://www.fasterthanexpected.com/
- myshpa 3y ago
  > in about 20 to 50 years That's the optimistic timeline :) I've read somewhere that up to half of Antarctic sea ice could easily disappear in hours or days, given right conditions. Greenland is not looking good either. https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/coming-soon https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/coming-soon When Greenland melts completely global sea levels will rise about 20 feet, or 7 meters. We aren’t talking about “if” anymore. We are way past that. Now, we are discussing “how fast”. It could happen much faster than we used to think. With “Global Warming” temperature is only half of the equation. The other half is speed. With Global Warming, the faster it happens, the worse it is. Very funny clip on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    The sheer banality of the situation is astounding.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That's the big problem with anything involving feeback loops. There is a domain where it's unstable and then a small change can cause big and surprisingly rapid effects. Nature is full of such tricky stuff and there is unfortunately no manual so we are learning a lot of this stuff by experiencing it first hand.
    - _y5hn 3y ago
      Analogy time: You use a wooden chair for reaching up in high places. Imagine you're a short person and utterly dependent on this chair. It works for 20 year, and it helps you reach what you need in all that time. You never notice much except for some familiar creaking. The chair works every time, and you just take it for granted as a handy tool to have around. But when the wood in that chair snaps, it happens all at once. Even if just a single part of that chair momentarily fails. Gravity, leverage, falling backwards with no way to protect your head. And it happens so fast, there's no time to think about it while it happens. Luckily your husband put a cushion on the floor exactly where you'd fall with your neck, because he anticipated this happening. He just didn't know when it'll happen. You wake up a bit dazed, and a bit wiser to how the world works. How fragile and complex systems can fail all at once and too fast.
      - myshpa 3y ago
        Analogy time: You fall, and the floor gives way. You plummet through the floor, down to the basement, and sever an artery on the way down.
        6510 3y ago
        All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
- basisword 3y ago
  If we aren’t able to predict it then we need to assume the worst. Start moving inland/to higher areas now. I’m not optimistic though. I don’t understand why people (with the means) continue to live and rebuild in areas that regularly get savaged by hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I think of Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" concept of how we are all the crew on a spaceship and need to work together, and Jim Morrison's quote, "I'm just trying to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames", and I believe the model that humanity operates under is most accurately summarized as "Shithouse Earth".
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > Start moving inland/to higher areas now ... hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters Crop failures, famines, civilization collapse, wars, violence, slavery ...
- lm28469 3y ago
  > This is what worries me: climate change leading to entirely new regimes that we don't understand and thus can't model or predict with any accuracy. People have been talking about that for a while, we're playing god right now but we have no idea what's coming. It's the same thing every time we try something with nature, what seems easy and simple turns out to have massive side effects we couldn't imagine because every little thing is inter dependant
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Meanwhile HN will freak out over some loose study about aspartame or nano plastics, but dismiss extremely sound research on climate change. Clearly brainwashed by decades of corporate marketing.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Yes. We have lots of models, some of the biggest super computers crunching them. But models are still estimates. There can still be un-knowns. Scientist have been writing about un-known, or difficult to model feedback loops for awhile. That is the movie-style doomsday, where we hit some un-foreseen tipping point and climate change takes off. Instead view climate as a large dynamic system, you hit it hard enough, maybe it moves to a different stability point. Even with small systems this can be hard to estimate with a model. Of course, this is the plot to the movie "Day After Tomorrow". But just because it was the plot to a movie doesn't mean it can't be a real risk.
- fragmede 3y ago
  All models are wrong, some are useful. At the scale we're talking about, with the number of cases we have (one, Earth), all our models are going to become more and more wrong the further off from our current equilibrium we get. But yes, Day After Tomorrow.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Yeah. didn't mean to say models are wrong. Just that because they are estimates, that it is likely that some unknown variable, or unknown feedback, could dramatically shift climate more than the model would show. So this worse than expected melting in Antarctica could be some 'disaster-movie-level-unforeseen-event'.
ChatGTP 3y ago
Another day passes, another day nowhere near enough is being done to get on top of this situation. If the US government had any brains, they'd be setting up a WW2 style mobilization against climate change and moving towards almost immediate decarbonization. This is an international effort working with NATO allies. It would only benefit everyone. New industry, safer economic outcomes long term, nicer world to live in. Lastly, it would be a sign that America are capable of leading the world into the future. IMO the longer the US drops the ball on this, the less competent it's starting to look. If China didn't follow suit, it would look equally weak, especially to it's own people so it would also need to respond. I'm picking on the US here because they're happy to be leaders in war, arms, tech and economics, but in this case, we're hardly anywhere to be seen and showing pretty much zero meaningful leadership. If we don't, who will? Looking what is going on around the world, I really can't even imagine a functioning economy in 20 years. Looking at how many heat records have fallen this year, it's really hard to even imagine what the world will look like in 2043. Look at parts of Europe, they seem pretty much uninhabitable during summer now. Phoenix, AZ... yes it's a hot place to being with but I mean, will people just be living there in the 130s?
- myshpa 3y ago
  The worse the situation becomes, the less will be done. We could have taken action even 10, 20, or 40 years ago, but so far, we have done nothing significant to prevent it from happening. The longer we wait, the more expensive and complicated the solutions will become. Politicians are often reluctant to make unpopular moves that might anger their base, so they tend to focus on short-term goals rather than long-term sustainability (though Bernie might have been an exception, imho). We are searching for solutions that maintain the status quo. One of the most significant issues is the exponential growth driven by our financial system's need for constant growth. Yet, we have not even begun to start discussing that. https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_accel-12graph-SE.png https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc... > If we don't, who will? Those few who'll somehow manage to stay alive.
  - basisword 3y ago
    >> We've so far done nothing to stop it from happening. That is completely untrue. We’ve certainly not done enough but the world of 40, 20 and even 10 years ago was much worse. Unfortunately most of the changes have been ones forced on individuals while businesses and governments continue to pollute and cause damage.
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
I don't believe there is anything we can do about the impending climate changes. In my opinion all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt.
- danny_codes 3y ago
  I agree there is nothing we can do to prevent the next 30 years or so of climate change. However, there is plenty we can do longer-term. Step 1: USA via coalition (or alone, it doesn't matter) goes Nuclear (Fission). Global energy consumption is 17.4 Terawatts. About 4 Terawatts of that is us. We therefore need about 4000 nuclear power plants to cover our usage (which, given the economy of scale, would probably cost about 4 Trillion or so). It would take 15 years to build them out, so that's about $280 billion a year. Not particularly expensive, given the overall federal budget is $6 trillion. In addition to domestic construction, we offer generous construction deals to all other countries at-cost with shared IP. Any country can sign up, and the US will use it's hegemony to backup all deals in a "too big to fail" kind of way. Note that we only need about $24 trillion to build out power for the rest of the world, which again isn't a substantial component of anyone's budget (except for developing countries, for which we would just provide the reactors for free/via loan schemes). China will probably do it themselves, so that's like another 5TW capacity we don't need to build. Step 2: We change out the infrastructure. Massive funding, drowning-in-money level funding for Hydrogen aircraft. Massive funding for electric cars & electric grid improvements. Build out HSR between all cities & build out public transit to sap down air travel / car travel. Cut energy use & de-carbonize. Step 3: Turn the CO2 in the air back into fossil fuel, or capture it into some other form. We build 17 TWatts of nuclear capacity, so we have plenty of energy. We need only scale up the chemical processes for doing the conversion. Once completed, we can now "tune" CO2 levels, giving us a lever for global weather control. This will likely be a useful tool for humanity & will let us dynamically control mean surface temperature.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > I don't believe there is anything we can do about the impending climate changes. But there is (something we could do). Climate change is caused by pollution and overconsumption. We're perfectly capable to change that ... we just don't want to. If we don't, the nature will force us. As it does with every species in overshoot. > all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt But we don't know how it will play out. Imagine building a jenga tower. You'll remove a brick from the base and put it on top. The more you build the less stable the structure becomes. Our society is an extremely complex system. We don't know when and how, but we know it will collapse. And nobody can even know how it will look, what to expect, and what to prepare for. Even those bunkers of our tech elites won't do them much good.
kardianos 3y ago
The ethical skeptic talks about this: https://theethicalskeptic.com/ https://theethicalskeptic.com/
- myshpa 3y ago
  Don't look up!
  - aaron695 3y ago
    [dead]
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Gah what a load of drivel. Seriously, if this is the kind of site that informs you there are other priceless nuggets on there such as 'China’s CCP Concealed SARS-CoV-2 Presence in China as Far Back as March 2018'. I'm all for engaging the argument but in this case there is this torrent of nonsense that doesn't even begin to compute and which it would take you a lifetime to properly debunk, at which point I don't doubt the author has created some more masterpieces. The name of the blog already sets you up for being gullible.
- defrost 3y ago
  That's a whole boatload of misdirection and but maybe. Yes, the sun shines and brings energy from above, yes the core is hot and brings energy from below. This was known centuries ago and is accounted for. "The ethical skeptic" is just parroting another form of denialism; it's not us, it's the flucuations from the sun, it's not us, the core is suddenly radiating more heat outwards, maybe it's the volcanos, perhaps it's cosmic rays. The thermodynamics here is straightforward enough, we have put a measureably significant volume of thermal insulating gas into the atmosphere and have the records to prove it, more energy from the sun is being trapped, the land | sea surface layer has more energy for storms, tipping climate cell behaviour, heating, etc.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    Yep, and in fine doesn't matter if it comes from the sun, the earth core or too many cow farts, the end result is the same
hermannj314 3y ago
In other news, population is declining among Japanese and this is a huge crisis as well. What exactly does life look like per capita if population continues to increase or stay the same? How is the solution to this problem not exactly what the Japanese are doing? Time to kill off our pyramid scheme economic growth models and barbaric bronze age "be fruitful and multiply" religions.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  This is a bit of a conspiracy-laden, incoherent approach to the problem. How about we don't try to control the population (but still take good care of the environment?) Perhaps by now we could already be building space colonies if it weren't for these kind of reactionary, knee-jerk responses to problems.
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    Then you need to deal with every nutjob pushing the whole “spread your seed and raise obedient children in the name of $prophet”
- brmgb 3y ago
  You are 30 years late. The world at large didn’t wait for you. Fertility has been declining worldwide for decades and been subreplacement in the USA and Europe for quite sometimes. South East Asia and Africa are slowly getting there too. Population is only an issue because of demographic lag. It’s already sorted out. We just have to pass the bump.
  - 7e 3y ago
    The U.S. population is still growing, which of course may be lag, but can also be caused by immigration. Countries need to keep the population growing to support Ponzi-schemes like retirement benefits. I expect poorer countries to continue to be baby factories indefinitely.
    - 3y ago
mynameishere 3y ago
Whatever disaster you might want to impose on the world to solve the problem--and decarbonization without fusion power would be a terrific disaster--will be as bad as the sea levels rising a few feet. Actually, much worse. The real solution, of course, is population control. And step one in population control is shutting down immigration. Very few politicians want that, and basically none on the left. So it won't happen. They will continue demanding that the government seize control of the means of production and distribution, and not actually fix anything.
- danny_codes 3y ago
  How does preventing immigration effect the global population?
  - mynameishere 3y ago
    Countries with high birth rates will hit their local maximum carrying capacity. Immigration allows it to "blow off". As a past example, there are about 100 million people of Irish descent in the world. This is many more than there would be had they been limited to Ireland itself, when Ireland's birth rate was very high.
    - danny_codes 3y ago
      I assume you are white and live in America. Seems a smidge hypocritical. Also this doesn't make much sense. We live in a globalized world. Singapore, for example, gets 80% of its food from abroad. Their "carrying capacity" is not particularly limited, except for literal space. For a country-sized country, space is functionally unlimited.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > step one in population control is shutting down immigration Yes, overconsume so much, that it heats the entire planet. Live in an area where is isn't as bad as elsewhere. Build walls around borders to keep those suckers threatened with loss of livelihood to keep them our of our utopia. Bad news, buddy. Once those hundreds of millions/billions start moving, no walls are gonna stop them. https://i.imgur.com/LaEFQmV.png https://i.imgur.com/LaEFQmV.png The relevant overpopulation is the overpopulation of rich people (curable by removal of wealth).
simonblack 3y ago
While the floating ice in the northern Arctic has behaved as scientists and climate models expected in a warming world – that is, on an apparent terminal decline – Antarctica’s sea ice has held steady. So now the lag in the Southern Hemisphere is going away, and the Southern Hemisphere is finally playing 'catch up' with the Northern Hemisphere. Except that in geological terms where thousands of years are the norm, those decades of lag are negligible, really.
the_third_wave 3y ago
[flagged]

59 points by tda 3y ago

The damage to the atmosphere was made long ago and we just started to see the hard consequences.

tda 3y ago

“It is very much outside our understanding of this system.” This is what worries me: climate change leading to entirely new regimes that we don't understand and thus can't model or predict with any accuracy. You just can't build a seawall for a sealevel rise of between 50 and 300 cm somewhere in about 20 to 50 years. Or for heatwaves of maximum 35 to 45 degrees, precipitation of max 20-100mm/hour, etc. Climate adaptation will be even more challenging if we don't know what we are adapting to

BasedAnon 3y ago
faster... than expected you say? https://www.fasterthanexpected.com/ https://www.fasterthanexpected.com/
myshpa 3y ago
> in about 20 to 50 years That's the optimistic timeline :) I've read somewhere that up to half of Antarctic sea ice could easily disappear in hours or days, given right conditions. Greenland is not looking good either. https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/coming-soon https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/coming-soon When Greenland melts completely global sea levels will rise about 20 feet, or 7 meters. We aren’t talking about “if” anymore. We are way past that. Now, we are discussing “how fast”. It could happen much faster than we used to think. With “Global Warming” temperature is only half of the equation. The other half is speed. With Global Warming, the faster it happens, the worse it is. Very funny clip on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYp6oc37ds
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  The sheer banality of the situation is astounding.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That's the big problem with anything involving feeback loops. There is a domain where it's unstable and then a small change can cause big and surprisingly rapid effects. Nature is full of such tricky stuff and there is unfortunately no manual so we are learning a lot of this stuff by experiencing it first hand.
  - _y5hn 3y ago
    Analogy time: You use a wooden chair for reaching up in high places. Imagine you're a short person and utterly dependent on this chair. It works for 20 year, and it helps you reach what you need in all that time. You never notice much except for some familiar creaking. The chair works every time, and you just take it for granted as a handy tool to have around. But when the wood in that chair snaps, it happens all at once. Even if just a single part of that chair momentarily fails. Gravity, leverage, falling backwards with no way to protect your head. And it happens so fast, there's no time to think about it while it happens. Luckily your husband put a cushion on the floor exactly where you'd fall with your neck, because he anticipated this happening. He just didn't know when it'll happen. You wake up a bit dazed, and a bit wiser to how the world works. How fragile and complex systems can fail all at once and too fast.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      Analogy time: You fall, and the floor gives way. You plummet through the floor, down to the basement, and sever an artery on the way down.
      - 6510 3y ago
        All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
basisword 3y ago
If we aren’t able to predict it then we need to assume the worst. Start moving inland/to higher areas now. I’m not optimistic though. I don’t understand why people (with the means) continue to live and rebuild in areas that regularly get savaged by hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I think of Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" concept of how we are all the crew on a spaceship and need to work together, and Jim Morrison's quote, "I'm just trying to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames", and I believe the model that humanity operates under is most accurately summarized as "Shithouse Earth".
- myshpa 3y ago
  > Start moving inland/to higher areas now ... hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters Crop failures, famines, civilization collapse, wars, violence, slavery ...
lm28469 3y ago
> This is what worries me: climate change leading to entirely new regimes that we don't understand and thus can't model or predict with any accuracy. People have been talking about that for a while, we're playing god right now but we have no idea what's coming. It's the same thing every time we try something with nature, what seems easy and simple turns out to have massive side effects we couldn't imagine because every little thing is inter dependant
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Meanwhile HN will freak out over some loose study about aspartame or nano plastics, but dismiss extremely sound research on climate change. Clearly brainwashed by decades of corporate marketing.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Yes. We have lots of models, some of the biggest super computers crunching them. But models are still estimates. There can still be un-knowns. Scientist have been writing about un-known, or difficult to model feedback loops for awhile. That is the movie-style doomsday, where we hit some un-foreseen tipping point and climate change takes off. Instead view climate as a large dynamic system, you hit it hard enough, maybe it moves to a different stability point. Even with small systems this can be hard to estimate with a model. Of course, this is the plot to the movie "Day After Tomorrow". But just because it was the plot to a movie doesn't mean it can't be a real risk.

fragmede 3y ago
All models are wrong, some are useful. At the scale we're talking about, with the number of cases we have (one, Earth), all our models are going to become more and more wrong the further off from our current equilibrium we get. But yes, Day After Tomorrow.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Yeah. didn't mean to say models are wrong. Just that because they are estimates, that it is likely that some unknown variable, or unknown feedback, could dramatically shift climate more than the model would show. So this worse than expected melting in Antarctica could be some 'disaster-movie-level-unforeseen-event'.

ChatGTP 3y ago

Another day passes, another day nowhere near enough is being done to get on top of this situation. If the US government had any brains, they'd be setting up a WW2 style mobilization against climate change and moving towards almost immediate decarbonization. This is an international effort working with NATO allies. It would only benefit everyone. New industry, safer economic outcomes long term, nicer world to live in. Lastly, it would be a sign that America are capable of leading the world into the future. IMO the longer the US drops the ball on this, the less competent it's starting to look. If China didn't follow suit, it would look equally weak, especially to it's own people so it would also need to respond. I'm picking on the US here because they're happy to be leaders in war, arms, tech and economics, but in this case, we're hardly anywhere to be seen and showing pretty much zero meaningful leadership. If we don't, who will? Looking what is going on around the world, I really can't even imagine a functioning economy in 20 years. Looking at how many heat records have fallen this year, it's really hard to even imagine what the world will look like in 2043. Look at parts of Europe, they seem pretty much uninhabitable during summer now. Phoenix, AZ... yes it's a hot place to being with but I mean, will people just be living there in the 130s?

myshpa 3y ago
The worse the situation becomes, the less will be done. We could have taken action even 10, 20, or 40 years ago, but so far, we have done nothing significant to prevent it from happening. The longer we wait, the more expensive and complicated the solutions will become. Politicians are often reluctant to make unpopular moves that might anger their base, so they tend to focus on short-term goals rather than long-term sustainability (though Bernie might have been an exception, imho). We are searching for solutions that maintain the status quo. One of the most significant issues is the exponential growth driven by our financial system's need for constant growth. Yet, we have not even begun to start discussing that. https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_accel-12graph-SE.png https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc... > If we don't, who will? Those few who'll somehow manage to stay alive.
- basisword 3y ago
  >> We've so far done nothing to stop it from happening. That is completely untrue. We’ve certainly not done enough but the world of 40, 20 and even 10 years ago was much worse. Unfortunately most of the changes have been ones forced on individuals while businesses and governments continue to pollute and cause damage.

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

I don't believe there is anything we can do about the impending climate changes. In my opinion all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt.

danny_codes 3y ago
I agree there is nothing we can do to prevent the next 30 years or so of climate change. However, there is plenty we can do longer-term. Step 1: USA via coalition (or alone, it doesn't matter) goes Nuclear (Fission). Global energy consumption is 17.4 Terawatts. About 4 Terawatts of that is us. We therefore need about 4000 nuclear power plants to cover our usage (which, given the economy of scale, would probably cost about 4 Trillion or so). It would take 15 years to build them out, so that's about $280 billion a year. Not particularly expensive, given the overall federal budget is $6 trillion. In addition to domestic construction, we offer generous construction deals to all other countries at-cost with shared IP. Any country can sign up, and the US will use it's hegemony to backup all deals in a "too big to fail" kind of way. Note that we only need about $24 trillion to build out power for the rest of the world, which again isn't a substantial component of anyone's budget (except for developing countries, for which we would just provide the reactors for free/via loan schemes). China will probably do it themselves, so that's like another 5TW capacity we don't need to build. Step 2: We change out the infrastructure. Massive funding, drowning-in-money level funding for Hydrogen aircraft. Massive funding for electric cars & electric grid improvements. Build out HSR between all cities & build out public transit to sap down air travel / car travel. Cut energy use & de-carbonize. Step 3: Turn the CO2 in the air back into fossil fuel, or capture it into some other form. We build 17 TWatts of nuclear capacity, so we have plenty of energy. We need only scale up the chemical processes for doing the conversion. Once completed, we can now "tune" CO2 levels, giving us a lever for global weather control. This will likely be a useful tool for humanity & will let us dynamically control mean surface temperature.
myshpa 3y ago
> I don't believe there is anything we can do about the impending climate changes. But there is (something we could do). Climate change is caused by pollution and overconsumption. We're perfectly capable to change that ... we just don't want to. If we don't, the nature will force us. As it does with every species in overshoot. > all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt But we don't know how it will play out. Imagine building a jenga tower. You'll remove a brick from the base and put it on top. The more you build the less stable the structure becomes. Our society is an extremely complex system. We don't know when and how, but we know it will collapse. And nobody can even know how it will look, what to expect, and what to prepare for. Even those bunkers of our tech elites won't do them much good.

kardianos 3y ago

The ethical skeptic talks about this: https://theethicalskeptic.com/ https://theethicalskeptic.com/

myshpa 3y ago
Don't look up!
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
jacquesm 3y ago
Gah what a load of drivel. Seriously, if this is the kind of site that informs you there are other priceless nuggets on there such as 'China’s CCP Concealed SARS-CoV-2 Presence in China as Far Back as March 2018'. I'm all for engaging the argument but in this case there is this torrent of nonsense that doesn't even begin to compute and which it would take you a lifetime to properly debunk, at which point I don't doubt the author has created some more masterpieces. The name of the blog already sets you up for being gullible.
defrost 3y ago
That's a whole boatload of misdirection and but maybe. Yes, the sun shines and brings energy from above, yes the core is hot and brings energy from below. This was known centuries ago and is accounted for. "The ethical skeptic" is just parroting another form of denialism; it's not us, it's the flucuations from the sun, it's not us, the core is suddenly radiating more heat outwards, maybe it's the volcanos, perhaps it's cosmic rays. The thermodynamics here is straightforward enough, we have put a measureably significant volume of thermal insulating gas into the atmosphere and have the records to prove it, more energy from the sun is being trapped, the land | sea surface layer has more energy for storms, tipping climate cell behaviour, heating, etc.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Yep, and in fine doesn't matter if it comes from the sun, the earth core or too many cow farts, the end result is the same

hermannj314 3y ago

In other news, population is declining among Japanese and this is a huge crisis as well. What exactly does life look like per capita if population continues to increase or stay the same? How is the solution to this problem not exactly what the Japanese are doing? Time to kill off our pyramid scheme economic growth models and barbaric bronze age "be fruitful and multiply" religions.

thelastparadise 3y ago
This is a bit of a conspiracy-laden, incoherent approach to the problem. How about we don't try to control the population (but still take good care of the environment?) Perhaps by now we could already be building space colonies if it weren't for these kind of reactionary, knee-jerk responses to problems.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Then you need to deal with every nutjob pushing the whole “spread your seed and raise obedient children in the name of $prophet”
brmgb 3y ago
You are 30 years late. The world at large didn’t wait for you. Fertility has been declining worldwide for decades and been subreplacement in the USA and Europe for quite sometimes. South East Asia and Africa are slowly getting there too. Population is only an issue because of demographic lag. It’s already sorted out. We just have to pass the bump.
- 7e 3y ago
  The U.S. population is still growing, which of course may be lag, but can also be caused by immigration. Countries need to keep the population growing to support Ponzi-schemes like retirement benefits. I expect poorer countries to continue to be baby factories indefinitely.
  - 3y ago

mynameishere 3y ago

Whatever disaster you might want to impose on the world to solve the problem--and decarbonization without fusion power would be a terrific disaster--will be as bad as the sea levels rising a few feet. Actually, much worse. The real solution, of course, is population control. And step one in population control is shutting down immigration. Very few politicians want that, and basically none on the left. So it won't happen. They will continue demanding that the government seize control of the means of production and distribution, and not actually fix anything.

danny_codes 3y ago
How does preventing immigration effect the global population?
- mynameishere 3y ago
  Countries with high birth rates will hit their local maximum carrying capacity. Immigration allows it to "blow off". As a past example, there are about 100 million people of Irish descent in the world. This is many more than there would be had they been limited to Ireland itself, when Ireland's birth rate was very high.
  - danny_codes 3y ago
    I assume you are white and live in America. Seems a smidge hypocritical. Also this doesn't make much sense. We live in a globalized world. Singapore, for example, gets 80% of its food from abroad. Their "carrying capacity" is not particularly limited, except for literal space. For a country-sized country, space is functionally unlimited.
myshpa 3y ago
> step one in population control is shutting down immigration Yes, overconsume so much, that it heats the entire planet. Live in an area where is isn't as bad as elsewhere. Build walls around borders to keep those suckers threatened with loss of livelihood to keep them our of our utopia. Bad news, buddy. Once those hundreds of millions/billions start moving, no walls are gonna stop them. https://i.imgur.com/LaEFQmV.png https://i.imgur.com/LaEFQmV.png The relevant overpopulation is the overpopulation of rich people (curable by removal of wealth).

simonblack 3y ago

While the floating ice in the northern Arctic has behaved as scientists and climate models expected in a warming world – that is, on an apparent terminal decline – Antarctica’s sea ice has held steady. So now the lag in the Southern Hemisphere is going away, and the Southern Hemisphere is finally playing 'catch up' with the Northern Hemisphere. Except that in geological terms where thousands of years are the norm, those decades of lag are negligible, really.

the_third_wave 3y ago

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