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Record low sea ice led to catastrophic breeding failure of emperor penguins

deleted 3y ago
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toomuchtodo 3y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256449
willsmith72 3y ago
Now I'm depressed again
- RGamma 3y ago
  I'm trying really hard to give all this a comedic spin as copium, but the joke will not get to me quite yet.
agentultra 3y ago
Eventually we’re going to learn that we can’t eat money. Right?
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Eventually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122796 https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32 https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries#Nine_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries#Nine_boun...
- deleted 3y ago
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- TheBlight 3y ago
  [flagged]
boredpeter 3y ago
Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
- anoxor 3y ago
  Or, we are given a constant stream of the absolute worst news around the world. How about the earth has greened by 15% in the recent decade, turning semi arid regions into forests. How about the coral reefs that were in absolute collapse are coming back? Somehow only the maximum gloom and doom is communicated…
  - hobs 3y ago
    Maximum? No - the fact that global climate change will likely lead to the collapse of globalization in some of our lifetimes is the "worst news" from our standpoint, we barely give a crap about the penguins. Talking about the positives doesn't negate the negatives, and frankly looking on the bright side of climate change is like talking about how great the last dinner on the titantic was.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Where I live is in the worst drought in living memory with record breaking heat almost every day this month. A co-worker's well ran dry a week or two ago. Trees are dying and I've never seen so many dead animals, presumably from heat or dehydration. Why would I need to watch the national news for calamity?
    - Sporktacular 3y ago
      So you, and others, can know it's a global problem, needing more real leadership than ever before.
      - hotpotamus 3y ago
        I think my feelings these days are more along the lines of trying to enjoy what time is left, but I'm not doing so well at that.
renewiltord 3y ago
The crucial thing for me to remember is that it wasn't my fault. I can do whatever I want because 100 companies are responsible for 71% of GHG. It is their fault and their shareholders' fault and my behaviour has no effect. Once I remember this, I stop worrying because of that piece of the Prayer of Serenity: > God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference Since I cannot change this, I just need the wisdom to know the difference and the serenity to accept it.
- jerojero 3y ago
  But what are you doing that actually is in your power to change things? What political options and movements do you support, for example? Have you gone out and participate in climate protests and the like? It's not much, but it's what we can do as citizens. The world changes through politics, and we should do more to participate actively in it.
  - beachy 3y ago
    I believe you are responding to some rather lame sarcasm.
    - haswell 3y ago
      Perhaps, but it’s a position that quite a few people misguidedly take very seriously. I think it’s good to counter these arguments where they come up if only to leave behind something for a future curious reader unsure of what to do.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - clnq 3y ago
    With our highly individualistic and stratified society, I don’t think we have the voting power or any negotiating power against deeply capitalistic corporations. They simply follow the capitalistic imperative - optimize capital gains. We - the society - on the other hand, have no such imperative to follow and can’t even decide what we want. Some think the capitalism needs to restricted to ethical boundaries, others think the former are evil communists. If people weren’t so echo-chambered and isolated to ideas different than their own, perhaps one day we could decide what our universal priorities and values as humanity are. Are they about maximizing capital, or preserving our planet and survival? Or maybe they are about something else. But we can’t even begin to have a serious discussion about this with the overwhelming majority of people today. And that would be just the first step to change. So I really think we are powerless to change how capitalism is dooming the planet. There are probably some people in the world capable of changing this - governments, presidents, kings, hedge fund managers, religious figures, and maybe some other leaders. I can’t make the needle move much even if I spend my life doing it. I’m just not in a position of power large enough to steer capitalism itself on a global scale.
bix6 3y ago
Who needs penguins when we can just watch a nature documentary!! Amazing that we are watching all these other species go extinct but think we will somehow survive.
- beachy 3y ago
  > Amazing that we are watching all these other species go extinct but think we will somehow survive. Far from watching them all go extinct, we don't even know how many species there are - most people only pay attention to the cute and cuddly anthropomorphised ones like penguins and koalas. Many species will be gone without humans ever having been aware of them or their role in the ecosystem. Truly humans are the virus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ
  - derivagral 3y ago
    There's something funny about realizing that we're the paperclip AI everyone's afraid of.
- deleted 3y ago
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oatmeal1 3y ago
How long is the record for sea ice? I wasn't able to find it. Edit: Looks like since 1978.
andrewstuart 3y ago
It's not just the penguins. The entire global ecosystem faces collapse IMO within 10 years or so. The heating seems to have reached a tipping point. The best thing for every non-human plant and animal on the planet would be for all humans to vanish overnight.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
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- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I do agree completely.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- bentcorner 3y ago
  > The best thing for every non-human plant and animal on the planet would be for all humans to vanish overnight. I have good news and I have bad news...
- tmountain 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - buzzerbetrayed 3y ago
    And people have been saying “only 5 more years” for decades. Turns out hyperbole in either direction is unhelpful.
    - h0l0cube 3y ago
      I haven't heard this particular phrase. There's definitely been a lot of talk about water levels being X metres higher by 2100, or worldwide average temperatures being X by 2050. What's actually happened is that all prior projections have been found to be underestimated and we're probably already 5 years ahead of where we should be.
gregor384 3y ago
[flagged]
bayesianbot 3y ago
That's in 2022, doesn't sound good as 2023 Antarctic sea ice extent is lowering old records by a huge margin so far. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151692/exceptionally-low-antarctic-sea-ice https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151692/exceptionall...
nemo44x 3y ago
Antarctic sea ice extent had been rising from 1979 (when satellite data started) to 2015. It regressed for a few years and then expanded again in 2020 and 2021 and then regressed again. There's a lot of causes of this and there are studies looking at it going back many hundreds and thousands of years, but they aren't as accurate as satellite data. Additionally, different seas in the antarctic have had different behaviors. Some have regressed and some have expanded at different times. https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/1729/2022/ https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/1729/2022/ > ...changes in atmospheric circulation, wind stress and thermodynamic processes linked to the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) >...Thus, projections of future Antarctic sea-ice extent and the associated climate implications are highly uncertain. Steady rise then big rise and then a crash regressing to the mean. Point is - we don't know.
- TravHatesMe 3y ago
  Can the down voters explain themselves? I genuinely want to hear more discussion on both sides, and this commenter has provided some interesting points..
  - yongjik 3y ago
    GP posted the exact same comment twice - AFAIK that's generally frowned upon. Duplicate comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251025
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      It’s a duplicate story. And this one raised to #1. So yeah I’m going to post this interesting information again. Nothing in response to it challenged it well. I did change the last sentence to clarify the data a bit.
- scythe 3y ago
  >Steady rise then big rise and then a crash regressing to the mean. Point is - we don't know. What's being observed is not a regression to the mean, it's a system under external forcing. That's hard to predict, but it doesn't justify pseudoscientific denialism. >The long-term increase in sea ice near the coast of Antarctica has been explained by a delayed response to orbital forcing and the long memory of the SO (Renssen et al., 2005). The "rise" since 1975 also has not been "steady", as can be seen clearly in the graph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClimateDashboard-Antarctic-sea-ice-summer-minimum-graph-20230307-1400px.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClimateDashboard-Ant...
donjigweed 3y ago
Two readings are relevant here: 1) Tragedy of the Commons by Harding 2) Overshoot by William Catton There is a sliver of hope that we can successfully decommission fossil fuel energy and master climate engineering, i.e. employ technology to solve global, systemic problems created by technology. But it is hard today to distinguish optimism from delusion. Oh well, better luck next time humans…
- slantedview 3y ago
  It's worth noting that the promise of mastering climate engineering is largely being pushed by fossil fuel interests, and it appears to be delusional at this point that climate engineering will be our savior. For that reason, we can't let hope get in the way of taking actions that we know will help.
  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    Unfortunately the practical answer is probably both. We've collectively f*cked up by failing to curtail emissions more quickly. The only path forward now is to continue to move to carbon neutral fuel sources as quickly as possible while using geoengineering to buy ourselves time. Unfortunately, if we successfully pause global warming via geoengineering, my bet is that'll give us the excuse to slow down or stop CO2 emission curtailment, and that way lies disaster as oceans acidify and food chains fall apart.
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    We could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow and it would already be a continuing problem. The only savior here is both transitioning to green energy and geoengineering.
    - labster 3y ago
      It would be a worsening problem if we stopped burning fossil fuels today; we’re already committed to more warming. Seas take a while to get up to the new thermal equilibrium.
  - 3y ago
systemvoltage 3y ago
[flagged]
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  Edit: I don't know who's downvoting this comment, but the parent is a climate change denier and I was responding to their (now flagged) claim that HN doesn't allow for "critical" comments about CC. I agreed: HN users flag disinformation, specifically false claims that CC isn't happening or isn't anthropogenic. The reply is rebutting that same user's reply to this comment (which is now also flagged). ---- Critical about what? Like, denying the basic fact that CC is happening and carbon dioxide emitted by humans is driving it? If so, yeah, I'm all for flagging disinformation on HN as a general rule. Critical of the nature or conclusions of this specific study? Well, now, that depends. One thing I didn't find in the abstract that bugged me was the total number of known penguin colonies. Four of five failed, here, but is that four of twenty? Or four of a thousand? The article does mention that the penguins aren't projected to go extinct from the effects of climate change until the end of the century, which suggests there's still time to save the species.
  - systemvoltage 3y ago
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  - systemvoltage 3y ago
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  - defrost 3y ago
    For anyone inerested in a rebuttal to the cited book claiming climate science is unsettled: A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’ By one of Koonin's own students and now research professor at both Los Alamos National Laboratory and at the University of New Mexico. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/05/a-critical-review-of-steven-koonins-unsettled/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/05/a-critical-review... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Boslough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Boslough Koonin tilts at 30 year old strawmen.
_y5hn 3y ago
Some stats show excess heat being trapped in global troposphere. Sea ice extent (click Switch Hemisphere - they like to hide this info): https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice/ Sea temperature (breakout of seasonal cycle): https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ Air temperature (lingering at all-time-highs): https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/
- landosaari 3y ago
  Thank you for this info. The Antarctic sea ice for 2023 has a noticeable delta. Comparing between Aug 23, 2022 and Aug 23, 2023 the difference is 1,452 million km^2 which is hard to visualise. If it were a country it would be the 19th largest country [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area#Countries_and_dependencies_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
lettergram 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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czbond 3y ago
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xwdv 3y ago
The rate of climate collapse has greatly sped up in the past year, I’d say 2023 is the first time you can’t really ignore the effects of climate change anymore. It’s all around.
- musha68k 3y ago
  The movie "don't look up" was very prescient in a way. I can see denial and unfounded optimism everywhere, including myself. As long as we keep falling for the illusion of continually being able to always "buy ourselves out of this" we won't impose any of the drastic changes that would actually be called for. "we'll just set up HEPA filters everywhere in our house", "we've got good AC", "we'll move to a safer area, where x is unlikely", etc Our consumer mindset won't solve this issue, eventually this will get even the richest and the smartest.
  - labster 3y ago
    Don’t Look Up is a great movie. Like, okay, I’ve never been so full of furious rage while watching a comedy before, but I studied climatology. Explaining climate to people was my life, and I’ve lived through every frustrating part of that film. It was very cathartic, because it said the things I can’t say— not if I still want to try to save this rotten world.
    - musha68k 3y ago
      It's both rotten and awesome though. I'm sure we could collectively still pull this off somehow. Defeatist or dystopian mindsets won't get us anywhere. In a way the current trend of "let's keep everything as it was, at all costs" is its own form of utopian ideology for example. Why can't we create other more productive and smart utopian stories instead? Something to aspire to? I'm always reminded of (old) Star Trek. As the delivery channel for those stories, my hope lies in computer games and maybe even VR computer games. I'm probably out of the loop though, could be that watching TV / movies really is that important again / still. Whatever the channel then, actually new stories are what we need.
dottjt 3y ago
I wonder at what point humans go "enough is enough" and actual change happens. Or maybe it's one of those things that won't go out with a bang. It'll just be a slow whimper, as life degrades and there is no emergency "declared". Ultimately this is a failure of collective action. The mechanism simply isn't there. It certainly isn't democracy.
- atleastoptimal 3y ago
  Humans have gone "enough is enough", but not the ones with the power to change things, as they're all wealthy/connected enough that neither they or any of their children will suffer negative effects. Imagine telling them they'll have to cut their 4 European vacations a year down to 2.
  - wslack 3y ago
    I don't think climate action controls majorities in many countries.
  - dottjt 3y ago
    Hence why democracy in it's current form (assuming democracy is the answer) doesn't work.
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    > Humans have gone "enough is enough", but not the ones with the power to change things, as they're all wealthy/connected enough that neither they or any of their children will suffer negative effects. Which "humans" exactly? First they elect politicians for feel-good green promises, but then when time comes to actually pay the price of becoming "greener" they lose their shit like "I meant all _other_ people to make sacrifices for green future, not _me_!!!". For good examples see Gilets jaunes or recent German walkback from fossil fuel heating systems ban that was supposed to start from 2024.
- cebert 3y ago
  I listened to part of the US Republican Debate last night and some of the candidates, such as Vivek wouldn’t even acknowledge that climate change is real. We have a long way to go.
tcfunk 3y ago
Perfect time to ramp up those generative AI models!
h2odragon 3y ago
How fast would the penguins need to walk to have reached safety? how fast was the ice breaking? took more than a month, right?
musha68k 3y ago
We just saw them for the first time with our own eyes at the Montreal biodome. Absolutely spectacular beings, hard for me to put in words how special they are.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] Lots of discussion on this already on earlier posts referencing this report: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434
yongjik 3y ago
This page interactively shows antarctic sea extent all the way from 1979 to now. https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-... (Click on "Antarctic", and then click "Show all years.") Kinda hard to spin as "it's all a part of natural variability" when the graph looks back at you like that. * The Arctic graph is also interesting. At first sight it doesn't look that bad, until you zoom in and realize that the bottom of the graph is pretty much entirely 2010s and 2020s. Edit: Oh, actually you can just change the color scheme and see the Arctic graph sliding down over time! Neat.
barefootjoey 3y ago
Short next season's new polar bears & sea lions due to food supply concerns.

deleted 3y ago

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Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37254315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37256449

willsmith72 3y ago

Now I'm depressed again

RGamma 3y ago
I'm trying really hard to give all this a comedic spin as copium, but the joke will not get to me quite yet.

agentultra 3y ago

Eventually we’re going to learn that we can’t eat money. Right?

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Eventually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122796 https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32 https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries#Nine_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries#Nine_boun...
deleted 3y ago
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TheBlight 3y ago
[flagged]

boredpeter 3y ago

Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

anoxor 3y ago
Or, we are given a constant stream of the absolute worst news around the world. How about the earth has greened by 15% in the recent decade, turning semi arid regions into forests. How about the coral reefs that were in absolute collapse are coming back? Somehow only the maximum gloom and doom is communicated…
- hobs 3y ago
  Maximum? No - the fact that global climate change will likely lead to the collapse of globalization in some of our lifetimes is the "worst news" from our standpoint, we barely give a crap about the penguins. Talking about the positives doesn't negate the negatives, and frankly looking on the bright side of climate change is like talking about how great the last dinner on the titantic was.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Where I live is in the worst drought in living memory with record breaking heat almost every day this month. A co-worker's well ran dry a week or two ago. Trees are dying and I've never seen so many dead animals, presumably from heat or dehydration. Why would I need to watch the national news for calamity?
  - Sporktacular 3y ago
    So you, and others, can know it's a global problem, needing more real leadership than ever before.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      I think my feelings these days are more along the lines of trying to enjoy what time is left, but I'm not doing so well at that.

renewiltord 3y ago

The crucial thing for me to remember is that it wasn't my fault. I can do whatever I want because 100 companies are responsible for 71% of GHG. It is their fault and their shareholders' fault and my behaviour has no effect. Once I remember this, I stop worrying because of that piece of the Prayer of Serenity: > God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference Since I cannot change this, I just need the wisdom to know the difference and the serenity to accept it.

jerojero 3y ago
But what are you doing that actually is in your power to change things? What political options and movements do you support, for example? Have you gone out and participate in climate protests and the like? It's not much, but it's what we can do as citizens. The world changes through politics, and we should do more to participate actively in it.
- beachy 3y ago
  I believe you are responding to some rather lame sarcasm.
  - haswell 3y ago
    Perhaps, but it’s a position that quite a few people misguidedly take very seriously. I think it’s good to counter these arguments where they come up if only to leave behind something for a future curious reader unsure of what to do.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- clnq 3y ago
  With our highly individualistic and stratified society, I don’t think we have the voting power or any negotiating power against deeply capitalistic corporations. They simply follow the capitalistic imperative - optimize capital gains. We - the society - on the other hand, have no such imperative to follow and can’t even decide what we want. Some think the capitalism needs to restricted to ethical boundaries, others think the former are evil communists. If people weren’t so echo-chambered and isolated to ideas different than their own, perhaps one day we could decide what our universal priorities and values as humanity are. Are they about maximizing capital, or preserving our planet and survival? Or maybe they are about something else. But we can’t even begin to have a serious discussion about this with the overwhelming majority of people today. And that would be just the first step to change. So I really think we are powerless to change how capitalism is dooming the planet. There are probably some people in the world capable of changing this - governments, presidents, kings, hedge fund managers, religious figures, and maybe some other leaders. I can’t make the needle move much even if I spend my life doing it. I’m just not in a position of power large enough to steer capitalism itself on a global scale.

bix6 3y ago

Who needs penguins when we can just watch a nature documentary!! Amazing that we are watching all these other species go extinct but think we will somehow survive.

beachy 3y ago
> Amazing that we are watching all these other species go extinct but think we will somehow survive. Far from watching them all go extinct, we don't even know how many species there are - most people only pay attention to the cute and cuddly anthropomorphised ones like penguins and koalas. Many species will be gone without humans ever having been aware of them or their role in the ecosystem. Truly humans are the virus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ
- derivagral 3y ago
  There's something funny about realizing that we're the paperclip AI everyone's afraid of.
deleted 3y ago
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oatmeal1 3y ago

How long is the record for sea ice? I wasn't able to find it. Edit: Looks like since 1978.

andrewstuart 3y ago

It's not just the penguins. The entire global ecosystem faces collapse IMO within 10 years or so. The heating seems to have reached a tipping point. The best thing for every non-human plant and animal on the planet would be for all humans to vanish overnight.

systemvoltage 3y ago
[flagged]
vouaobrasil 3y ago
I do agree completely.
- deleted 3y ago
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bentcorner 3y ago
> The best thing for every non-human plant and animal on the planet would be for all humans to vanish overnight. I have good news and I have bad news...
tmountain 3y ago
[flagged]
- buzzerbetrayed 3y ago
  And people have been saying “only 5 more years” for decades. Turns out hyperbole in either direction is unhelpful.
  - h0l0cube 3y ago
    I haven't heard this particular phrase. There's definitely been a lot of talk about water levels being X metres higher by 2100, or worldwide average temperatures being X by 2050. What's actually happened is that all prior projections have been found to be underestimated and we're probably already 5 years ahead of where we should be.

gregor384 3y ago

[flagged]

bayesianbot 3y ago

That's in 2022, doesn't sound good as 2023 Antarctic sea ice extent is lowering old records by a huge margin so far. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151692/exceptionally-low-antarctic-sea-ice https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151692/exceptionall...

nemo44x 3y ago

Antarctic sea ice extent had been rising from 1979 (when satellite data started) to 2015. It regressed for a few years and then expanded again in 2020 and 2021 and then regressed again. There's a lot of causes of this and there are studies looking at it going back many hundreds and thousands of years, but they aren't as accurate as satellite data. Additionally, different seas in the antarctic have had different behaviors. Some have regressed and some have expanded at different times. https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/1729/2022/ https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/1729/2022/ > ...changes in atmospheric circulation, wind stress and thermodynamic processes linked to the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) >...Thus, projections of future Antarctic sea-ice extent and the associated climate implications are highly uncertain. Steady rise then big rise and then a crash regressing to the mean. Point is - we don't know.

TravHatesMe 3y ago
Can the down voters explain themselves? I genuinely want to hear more discussion on both sides, and this commenter has provided some interesting points..
- yongjik 3y ago
  GP posted the exact same comment twice - AFAIK that's generally frowned upon. Duplicate comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251025
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    It’s a duplicate story. And this one raised to #1. So yeah I’m going to post this interesting information again. Nothing in response to it challenged it well. I did change the last sentence to clarify the data a bit.
scythe 3y ago
>Steady rise then big rise and then a crash regressing to the mean. Point is - we don't know. What's being observed is not a regression to the mean, it's a system under external forcing. That's hard to predict, but it doesn't justify pseudoscientific denialism. >The long-term increase in sea ice near the coast of Antarctica has been explained by a delayed response to orbital forcing and the long memory of the SO (Renssen et al., 2005). The "rise" since 1975 also has not been "steady", as can be seen clearly in the graph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClimateDashboard-Antarctic-sea-ice-summer-minimum-graph-20230307-1400px.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClimateDashboard-Ant...

donjigweed 3y ago

Two readings are relevant here: 1) Tragedy of the Commons by Harding 2) Overshoot by William Catton There is a sliver of hope that we can successfully decommission fossil fuel energy and master climate engineering, i.e. employ technology to solve global, systemic problems created by technology. But it is hard today to distinguish optimism from delusion. Oh well, better luck next time humans…

slantedview 3y ago
It's worth noting that the promise of mastering climate engineering is largely being pushed by fossil fuel interests, and it appears to be delusional at this point that climate engineering will be our savior. For that reason, we can't let hope get in the way of taking actions that we know will help.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  Unfortunately the practical answer is probably both. We've collectively f*cked up by failing to curtail emissions more quickly. The only path forward now is to continue to move to carbon neutral fuel sources as quickly as possible while using geoengineering to buy ourselves time. Unfortunately, if we successfully pause global warming via geoengineering, my bet is that'll give us the excuse to slow down or stop CO2 emission curtailment, and that way lies disaster as oceans acidify and food chains fall apart.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  We could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow and it would already be a continuing problem. The only savior here is both transitioning to green energy and geoengineering.
  - labster 3y ago
    It would be a worsening problem if we stopped burning fossil fuels today; we’re already committed to more warming. Seas take a while to get up to the new thermal equilibrium.
- 3y ago

systemvoltage 3y ago

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BaseballPhysics 3y ago
Edit: I don't know who's downvoting this comment, but the parent is a climate change denier and I was responding to their (now flagged) claim that HN doesn't allow for "critical" comments about CC. I agreed: HN users flag disinformation, specifically false claims that CC isn't happening or isn't anthropogenic. The reply is rebutting that same user's reply to this comment (which is now also flagged). ---- Critical about what? Like, denying the basic fact that CC is happening and carbon dioxide emitted by humans is driving it? If so, yeah, I'm all for flagging disinformation on HN as a general rule. Critical of the nature or conclusions of this specific study? Well, now, that depends. One thing I didn't find in the abstract that bugged me was the total number of known penguin colonies. Four of five failed, here, but is that four of twenty? Or four of a thousand? The article does mention that the penguins aren't projected to go extinct from the effects of climate change until the end of the century, which suggests there's still time to save the species.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
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- systemvoltage 3y ago
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- defrost 3y ago
  For anyone inerested in a rebuttal to the cited book claiming climate science is unsettled: A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’ By one of Koonin's own students and now research professor at both Los Alamos National Laboratory and at the University of New Mexico. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/05/a-critical-review-of-steven-koonins-unsettled/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/05/a-critical-review... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Boslough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Boslough Koonin tilts at 30 year old strawmen.

_y5hn 3y ago

Some stats show excess heat being trapped in global troposphere. Sea ice extent (click Switch Hemisphere - they like to hide this info): https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice/ Sea temperature (breakout of seasonal cycle): https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ Air temperature (lingering at all-time-highs): https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/

landosaari 3y ago
Thank you for this info. The Antarctic sea ice for 2023 has a noticeable delta. Comparing between Aug 23, 2022 and Aug 23, 2023 the difference is 1,452 million km^2 which is hard to visualise. If it were a country it would be the 19th largest country [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area#Countries_and_dependencies_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

lettergram 3y ago

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czbond 3y ago

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xwdv 3y ago

The rate of climate collapse has greatly sped up in the past year, I’d say 2023 is the first time you can’t really ignore the effects of climate change anymore. It’s all around.

musha68k 3y ago
The movie "don't look up" was very prescient in a way. I can see denial and unfounded optimism everywhere, including myself. As long as we keep falling for the illusion of continually being able to always "buy ourselves out of this" we won't impose any of the drastic changes that would actually be called for. "we'll just set up HEPA filters everywhere in our house", "we've got good AC", "we'll move to a safer area, where x is unlikely", etc Our consumer mindset won't solve this issue, eventually this will get even the richest and the smartest.
- labster 3y ago
  Don’t Look Up is a great movie. Like, okay, I’ve never been so full of furious rage while watching a comedy before, but I studied climatology. Explaining climate to people was my life, and I’ve lived through every frustrating part of that film. It was very cathartic, because it said the things I can’t say— not if I still want to try to save this rotten world.
  - musha68k 3y ago
    It's both rotten and awesome though. I'm sure we could collectively still pull this off somehow. Defeatist or dystopian mindsets won't get us anywhere. In a way the current trend of "let's keep everything as it was, at all costs" is its own form of utopian ideology for example. Why can't we create other more productive and smart utopian stories instead? Something to aspire to? I'm always reminded of (old) Star Trek. As the delivery channel for those stories, my hope lies in computer games and maybe even VR computer games. I'm probably out of the loop though, could be that watching TV / movies really is that important again / still. Whatever the channel then, actually new stories are what we need.

dottjt 3y ago

I wonder at what point humans go "enough is enough" and actual change happens. Or maybe it's one of those things that won't go out with a bang. It'll just be a slow whimper, as life degrades and there is no emergency "declared". Ultimately this is a failure of collective action. The mechanism simply isn't there. It certainly isn't democracy.

atleastoptimal 3y ago
Humans have gone "enough is enough", but not the ones with the power to change things, as they're all wealthy/connected enough that neither they or any of their children will suffer negative effects. Imagine telling them they'll have to cut their 4 European vacations a year down to 2.
- wslack 3y ago
  I don't think climate action controls majorities in many countries.
- dottjt 3y ago
  Hence why democracy in it's current form (assuming democracy is the answer) doesn't work.
- caskstrength 3y ago
  > Humans have gone "enough is enough", but not the ones with the power to change things, as they're all wealthy/connected enough that neither they or any of their children will suffer negative effects. Which "humans" exactly? First they elect politicians for feel-good green promises, but then when time comes to actually pay the price of becoming "greener" they lose their shit like "I meant all _other_ people to make sacrifices for green future, not _me_!!!". For good examples see Gilets jaunes or recent German walkback from fossil fuel heating systems ban that was supposed to start from 2024.
cebert 3y ago
I listened to part of the US Republican Debate last night and some of the candidates, such as Vivek wouldn’t even acknowledge that climate change is real. We have a long way to go.

tcfunk 3y ago

Perfect time to ramp up those generative AI models!

h2odragon 3y ago

How fast would the penguins need to walk to have reached safety? how fast was the ice breaking? took more than a month, right?

musha68k 3y ago

We just saw them for the first time with our own eyes at the Montreal biodome. Absolutely spectacular beings, hard for me to put in words how special they are.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] Lots of discussion on this already on earlier posts referencing this report: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37250434

yongjik 3y ago

This page interactively shows antarctic sea extent all the way from 1979 to now. https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-... (Click on "Antarctic", and then click "Show all years.") Kinda hard to spin as "it's all a part of natural variability" when the graph looks back at you like that. * The Arctic graph is also interesting. At first sight it doesn't look that bad, until you zoom in and realize that the bottom of the graph is pretty much entirely 2010s and 2020s. Edit: Oh, actually you can just change the color scheme and see the Arctic graph sliding down over time! Neat.

barefootjoey 3y ago

Short next season's new polar bears & sea lions due to food supply concerns.