6 ms·
Climate Change Speeds Up as Major Indicators Blow Off the Charts, WMO Warns
- TechTechTech 3y agoMore discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39755758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39755758
- crooked-v 3y agoTime to buy a home in Alaska, I guess.
- madaxe_again 3y agoDepends where in Alaska. An awful lot of it is going to turn into sea as the permafrost melts and land subsides. It’s already happening, and is a positive feedback loop.
- thuridas 3y agoEven in land there can be problems. If you do not consider a new summer flooding area or you calculated that the frozen terrain was estable to build and now it melts. Underground currents can slowly create problems.
- iamthemonster 3y agooh phew that's a relief, I'm glad one of these feedback loops is positive at least
- bamboozled 3y agoWhat do you plan to eat in Alaska ?
- black6 3y agoMoose, caribou, root vegetables (including the largest and sweetest carrots I've ever had), salmon, trout, halibut...
- red-iron-pine 3y agoMany of them, like salmon, aren't doing so well.
- bamboozled 3y agoYeah those things need to survive climate change sorry.
- Super_Jambo 3y agoAs I understand it (and I would like to know if this is wrong). Carbon dioxide emissions take 5-10 years for their heating impact to work through into warming. So even if we could get to net zero today we'd still be in for 5-10 years of worsening impacts. And we're not even talking about getting to net zero today. Even in the UK where we've exported and reduced emissions a long way net zero by 2035 is seen as a wildly optimistic scenario. So it seems to me inevitable that we're going to need to do geoengineering. We mustn't let this delay emission reduction but I think at this point we should get to where we're going asap so we can research it properly.
- adammarples 3y agoI believe that's untrue, stopping emissions stops warming more or less instantly. Co2 captures energy the first day it is floating around in the air.
- Toutouxc 3y agoI don't think you got it right, the rate of warming depends on the concentration (i.e. the total amount) of GHGs in the atmosphere, not the rate at which they're emitted. GHGs basically reflect (actually absorb and re-emit) some of Earth's thermal radiation back to the surface, they act as an "insulator" (a greenhouse) just by being there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
- adammarples 3y agoYes that's what I'm saying
- wiz21c 3y ago> So it seems to me inevitable that we're going to need to do geoengineering. Nobody knows how to do that at scale and for a time frame long enough and safely (although there are experiments all over the place). Stopping fossil fuels, moving to renewable and nuclear, using less energy is the only known and safe way. And for the rest of time, adapt (which, depending on the speed of our efforts, will mean less people in uninhabitable zones and migrations or, if we're too slow: wars).
- bawolff 3y agoAnything will blow off the charts if you have the wrong scale. Not saying this isn't bad, its just such a silly headline.
- skhunted 3y agoIf you measure something that has catastrophic consequences if it gets “too big” and later find out that the measurement understated things then that is disconcerting. The headline seems appropriate.
- solumunus 3y agoLet’s hope we have the wrong scale then.
- bawolff 3y agoWhy? That won't save you. I feel like the responses to my comment do not understand what a scale is or what it means for something to go off it.
- solumunus 3y agoI understand those things. I must be misinterpreting the point in your original comment. Elaborate if you can be bothered.
- yodon 3y ago>Anything will blow off the charts if you have the wrong scale. >I feel like the responses to my comment do not understand what a scale is or what it means for something to go off it. Readers understand the comment and understand what a scale is. HN readers are notoriously critical of comments that don't add substantively to the discussion. Language is often used in ways that extend beyond the direct literal meaning of the words. and maximally pedantic interpretations ceased to be interesting a long time ago for most HN readers. Also, in practice, chart scales and scale heights are generally an implicit measure of historical data range and variability, so if something blows past the top of the chart, even in a maximally literal interpretation, that is commonly a sign that something significant has happened in the signal being charted.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- RamblingCTO 3y agoBanning sulphur from ship exhausts might've been a mistake
- somat 3y agoFor a clarification. as a thought experiment ask the question "Why can volcanoes cause global cooling events." and approach the answer as an engineering challenge.
- lostlogin 3y agoI’m not sure I want a man made volcano. What exactly do you have in mind?
- somat 3y agoIt is one of those things that is a terrible supervillain type idea. Ill founded and very prone to be hit the worst way by the law of unintended side effects. But it is also fun to think about as a sort of evil what if. Volcanoes emit a lot... I mean an extreme amount of co2. They are also associated with global cooling events. This does not match general greenhouse carbon theory. So you go digging in to find out why. and the answer is complex but one major reason is that they also emit a lot of sulfur dioxide and sulpher dioxide has a negative greenhouse coefficient. that is, when found in the upper atmosphere it has a net cooling effect. So you do a little mustache twirl, give an evil cackle, and proclaim "It is a shame we worked so hard to remove sulfur from our fuels." I mean acid rain was not really all that bad, was it? When really in the mood I also like to conclude with "The obvious thing to do is to add additional sulfur into jet fuels" The final fun thing to do after you have just become an internet expert(that is you read the wikipedia page) on greenhouse theory. Is to inform people that water vapor has 10 times the greenhouse coefficient of co2. I will leave it to the reader to figure out why this both is and is not a problem.
- fnordian_slip 3y agoFrom previous discussions here on hn and their linked sources, it seemed to me like sulphur only made up for a small amount of the total change, even though it was sometimes touted as an "obvious solution" by the kinds of people who think climate change is no problem, since we can easily geoengineer our way out of it. I generally approach such claims with scepticism, as i feel like they often start with a conclusion and then work backwards from there, with an unrealistic dose of optimism on the way. That type of discussion tends to delay the discussion of more serious and practical measures.
- shp0ngle 3y agoI'm just so surprised On one hand it seems we do so many "green deals" that it's basically impossible to manufacture anything in Europe anymore, and every house has a solar panel (made in China), and there are electric cars roaming the streets On the other hand it seems it doesn't really help?
- Toutouxc 3y ago> impossible to manufacture anything in Europe anymore > every house has a solar panel > there are electric cars [in significant amounts] Not one of these things is true.
- Yizahi 3y agoWhy are you surprised? The amount of greehouse gasses in the atmosphere is only increases, and nobody is meaningfully removing it. Of course heating will continue, even if emissions will suddenly really go to zero (which they are not).
- solumunus 3y agoThe vast majority of cars I see burn fossil fuels and I rarely see a solar panel on a house. Where are you living to have such a radically green experience?
- aaomidi 3y agoAlso, the worst polluters are militaries and various industries that arguably may or may not actually need to exist.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThe big "4" climate change sources: - transportation - electricity generation - heating - agriculture everything else is single digit percentages. Those single digit percentages can still be massive numbers (aka a billion tons of CO2e per year for cement production), but they aren't "worst polluters".
- tdudhhu 3y agoDisclaimer: I am 100% convinced climate change is real and humans have some influence in it. My question: do we even know what the baselines are? If we look at the history of the world climate has never been constant. So on one hand I am afraid humans messed up, on the other hand it's very difficult to see if the current climate change is totally caused by humans. Especially now El Niño is causing changes all around the world.
- silverquiet 3y agoAdding a disclaimer to a denialist "just asking questions" talking point doesn't really convince me of sincerity these days. I suppose it could depend on what you mean by history though. If we look at the history of the world, humans basically haven't existed and I'm thinking probably won't for very long.
- holsta 3y agoYou don't need our permission to read the literature on ice core drilling and DNA sampling going back 800K - 2 million years.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoYou're asking the wrong question. There is no baseline, no natural temperature. The "baseline" temperature has and will change over millions of years. The right question is about the rate of change. If the temperature changes slowly, ecosystems adapt and migrate. If it changes quickly, they cannot. Changing a degree or two over ~10,000 years appears to have happened relatively often. This causes some species loss, but in general the ecosystem thrives. Changing a few degrees over hundreds of years is a leading theory of the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the largest extinction event since the oxygenation of the atmosphere. Changing a few degrees over decades? We're going to find out.