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Venezuela's last glacier, Humboldt, has melted away
- andrewstuart 2y agoDeeply depressing.
- layer8 2y agoI think it’s the opposite now that the weight of the glacier is gone?
- BodyCulture 2y agoBut look, big rocket makes happy! Also ChatAI hallucination big fun for everyone! Not bad time!
- wegfawefgawefg 2y agoThat's awesome.
- nuz 2y ago[flagged]
- grumpyprole 2y agoYes. Our imagination allows extraordinary levels of doublethink. We know there is crisis underway and yet Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple are the most valuable companies in the world.
- dartos 2y agoI wouldn’t jump to that just yet. We just need to discover the right set of incentives and I’m sure we’d coordinate and figure it out. It’s a race at this point.
- hobs 2y agoOnly on HN would I think this is a serious comment. "We have a problem with the system, that's why we need to apply more of the system as hard as possible!"
- nilamo 2y agoIt's a race that we haven't started running yet. By the time we decide to hit the track, it might already be too late to change anything. It's pretty sad that our solution is probably going to end up being "build a colony ship and leave Earth".
- admissionsguy 2y agoWasn’t there a HN rule against comments that are both dumb and negative?
- megabless123 2y agoI find your comment to be both dumb and negative, now what?
- silverquiet 2y agoThe rules are written down, so I’d imagine that if such a rule exists, it could be referenced.
- 34679 2y agoHumans have already survived about a dozen of these cycles. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/hasnt-earth-warmed-and-cooled-naturally-throughout-history https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/hasnt-earth...
- grugagag 2y agoNot at this scale and this population though
- alexey-salmin 2y agoBigger population if anything increases the chance of survival
- grugagag 2y agoIm not worried we won’t survive as a species, but more worried about an imminent population collapse, it has the potential to be catastrophic for a large part of it. And very ugly for the survivors too. It has the potential to alter what it means to be human.
- alexey-salmin 2y agoThe Bronze Age Collapse (now largely attributed to natural climate change) didn't seem to alter what it means to be human. Iliad and Odyssey portrays normal human beings busy with love, politics and war. Greeks lost almost everything including their writing system, had to pass these poems orally for centuries until a completely different alphabet was invented, and yet nothing changed much in the end. Same for surviving Egyptian texts or the famous "wrong grade of copper" cuneiform tablet. Given how similar were societies across the globe even before globalization have started, I doubt you'll get something different even from humans on an isolated island if the island can support a big enough population to develop culture.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoThis is the best illustration of the problem I’ve seen with historical context: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ We can still survive this, but it is unprecedented.
- bbor 2y agoThat’s just negativity IMO. “Things are hard so we’re definitely doomed for extinction” is... well, at the very least it’s not very scientific. There are good things too! We recently launched the biggest rocket ever - that was pretty cool. Also we invented computers that can think, which seems likely to be useful! Giving up now would be like giving up in 1924 because corruption was rampant and the Spanish flu was still recent in the mind… our “polio vaccine” or “penicillin” is just around the corner, my friend
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoIt's a conundrum. Lot of good an bad news. Renewable energy is growing. Yet CO2 emissions are accelerating. 1 Step forward, 2 back. It seems we are on the 'business as usual' trajectory. Which on any given day can seem ok.
- bartekrutkowski 2y agoWho and where invented a computer that can think? I must be missing something?
- croes 2y ago>Also we invented computers that can think, No, we didn't. They produce useful text but can't think. And to create these texts we produce more carbon dioxide in the process. And not all AI generated text are useful.
- estebank 2y agoIf your timeline holds, so is the rise of fascism and WW2.
- bbor 2y agoYup… hopefully history turns out to not repeat just this one time. Idk how many more “world” wars we can survive now that we have autonomous weaponry
- BodyCulture 2y agoBig rocket make big CO2, no good.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoJust part of the Great Filter's plan, all praise the Great Filter.
- layer8 2y agoYou mean it’s why we don’t see sentient glaciers traveling the galaxy? ;)
- dudeinjapan 2y agoThis glacier had a good run but party’s over for it. Humanity parties on…
- csmpltn 2y agoCoordinate against what? Glaciers melt, it's a cycle. What are you on about?
- croes 2y agoThe speed of change is the problem. If glaciers melt a source of drinking water is gone, that has an impact on the people who depend on it.
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoIf the glacier does not melt it is definitely not a source of drinking water either...
- croes 2y agoMelting isn't the problem, melting away is. https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/glacier-recession/glaciers-as-a-water-resource/ https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/glaci...
- toxicunderGroov 2y agoEnd of days was predicted by a nile delta farmer named Billy or Jason about 7256 years ago. It was eventually debunked by a dam. We'll figure something out when confronted by x catastropha
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoYeah we're doing so well at facing this one now. Half the people who might do something about it are still denying it (while updating their air conditioning)
- silverquiet 2y agoPeople keep telling me that one day I’ll die but I never have. Therefore I never will?
- nozzlegear 2y agoThe philosophy of solipsism has yet to be debunked.
- dang 2y agoOk, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
- DarkmSparks 2y agoso we can conclude we definitely are not entering a new ice age yet then. great news.
- throwup238 2y agoWe are, but this interglacial period is going to last another 200,000 years
- DarkmSparks 2y agonah, ice ages come and go with the earths gyroscopic precession. next ice will come as we tilt such that the sun is mostly over the sea through the year. 26,000 year period if I recal correctly, which we are nearly at the end of this phase since the last one finished.
- micromacrofoot 2y agosource?
- DarkmSparks 2y agoyou need a source for land being hotter than water during the day really? Please dont tell me you need a source to prove it snows in winter. seasons are caused by the earths tilt, that tilt changes over a 26000 year period, giving ice ages and periods like now, thats like primary school geography. I know most of the media guys were too busy eating crayons to listen to basics like that in school, but I expected better from here.
- BodyCulture 2y agoWrong information.
- DarkmSparks 2y agoFeel free to launch into all the sources you have explaining how the earth is flat and created 6,000 years ago by a dude with a beard. No need to hold back.
- behnamoh 2y agoLooking at the scale legend on the photo, this seems like a relatively tiny glacier. What is the significance of it melting away? (I mean, obviously, the smaller the glacier, the easier it melts.)
- reportgunner 2y agoIt's very scary I guess.
- pimlottc 2y agoThis is just the final glacier. There's a previous article [0] linked in the piece that shows the decline of multiple glaciers in other areas since 1975. 0: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/31169/ https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/31169/
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoBeen there for tens of thousands of years? So that means, this is as warm as it's been in that long?
- 0ne0407 2y agohttps://ipsnoticias.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Merida-2.jpg https://ipsnoticias.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Merida-2.... You are comparing a 2015 picture versus a 2024 picture. It was not a tiny glacier. The glacier you see on that picture I sent was not on Peak Humboldt, it was one of the many other glaciers that covered the Venezuelan Andes. None of them exist anymore.
- photochemsyn 2y agoYes, we're heading back to Pliocene conditions at full tilt, no doubt about it, and the trigger has been pulled, the tipping point is in the past, so better start adapting to these new conditions. Don't buy property in flood zones, or in wildfire zones, or in low-lying coastal hurricane zones, and if you do, expect to evacuate regularly at the very least. However, life was abundant in the Pliocene, so hysteria about 'existential threat' is overblown - at least, it is if we stop using fossil fuels over the next half-century or so. Given the boom in solar led by China, this is entirely feasible. Climate change and tropical Andean glaciers: Past, present and future Vuille et al., Earth-Science Reviews 89 (2008) 79–96 > "Temperature in the Andes has increased by approximately 0.1 °C/ decade, with only two of the last 20 years being below the 1961–90 average. Precipitation has slightly increased in the second half of the 20th century in the inner tropics and decreased in the outer tropics. The general pattern of moistening in the inner tropics and drying in the subtropical Andes is dynamically consistent with observed changes in the large-scale circulation, suggesting a strengthening of the tropical atmospheric circulation. Model projections of future climate change in the tropical Andes indicate a continued warming of the tropical troposphere throughout the 21st century, with a temperature increase that is enhanced at higher elevations. By the end of the 21st century, following the SRES A2 emission scenario, the tropical Andes may experience a massive warming on the order of 4.5–5 °C. Predicted changes in precipitation include an increase in precipitation during the wet season and a decrease during the dry season, which would effectively enhance the seasonal hydrological cycle in the tropical Andes."
- fch42 2y agoIt's easy to say to "start adapting [ not the least by ] not buy property in [ negatively impacted ] areas". If only there weren't gazillions worth of property, and billions of people, in such areas. The Pliocene had a distinct advantage there, I believe. While there might well be (personal) value in "prepping", as a solution that doesn't "scale" to all of humanity, unfortunately.
- Sharlin 2y agoWell, the degree of "existential threat" depends on whether you're a rich industrialized country at mid-to-high latitudes or not. And even that is conditional on the question of how many hundreds of millions of climate refugees there will be in the next 50 years, and what exactly can be done about them. A nontrivial fraction of Earth's land area, currently populated by a billion+ humans, will almost certainly become incompatible with such density. No matter how sedentary a part of humanity has become, people will not just sit down and die when conditions become unbearable; they will start walking. I'm reminded of Sagan's poignant words, even if spoken in a much more optimistic context: Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. [...] has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. The refugee issue is something that many people have either not thought about at all, or try their best not to think about to avoid cognitive dissonance, or think that it can be solved by building high enough walls and shooting anyone who tries to get through. Even without regard to the practicality of the latter solution, it is morally abhorrent enough to make it incompatible with any reasonable definition of a civilized society. Particularly because it's the rich industrialized societies that are directly responsible for the crisis in the first place!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]