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Just before visiting HN I read a news article about our glaciers in Norway also melting. One glacier has moved back 83 meters in a year, and the last ten years

Just before visiting HN I read a news article about our glaciers in Norway also melting. One glacier has moved back 83 meters in a year, and the last ten years it's moved back 483 meters. A glacier that normally melts a meter in thickness each year and gains it back during winter, has melted 4 meters. We've lost 20 glaciers here the last decade. It's scary. https://www.nrk.no/klima/breforsker-sjokkert-over-hvor-mye-isbreer-har-smeltet-i-ar-1.17142107 https://www.nrk.no/klima/breforsker-sjokkert-over-hvor-mye-i...

baq 2y ago
The election cycle, at least in a small part a function of a human’s expected life span btw, is way too short for governments to be incentivized to do anything about it. It’s going to be a wild ride for our grandchildren.
- adrianN 2y ago
  It’s going to be a wild ride for anyone under fifty.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  This makes me wonder if society would be improved by radical life-extension therapies or technologies. Detractors generally say it would result in stagnation, but at least people would have a very good incentive to think long-term if they knew they had a good chance of still being alive in 200 or 1000 years and having to deal with the long-term effects of current policy.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    I think it would also allow "careers" to detach from mistakes like papers published on the wrong side of a paradigm as "junior" mistakes.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    That incentivizes not so much long-term thinking as the politics of the permanent stagnation bunker. You'd get a caste of mortal disposable workers who live in the flood plains, working for a tiny group of immortals who have locked down the top positions and made themselves effective rulers for life. Think Japanese stagflation but for centuries. Reiwa era 200.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      This seems to assume that only the very richest people would have access to life-extension technologies. This makes about as much sense to me as the idea that only the very richest people have access to computers, telecommunications, and software.
  - thanksgiving 2y ago
    To play the devil's advocate, imagine if politicians (US senators / House members) could live for and hold their positions for a thousand years... I don't know if that is a good thing. Or Xi of Mainland China...
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >could live for and hold their positions for a thousand years... I don't know if that is a good thing. I think it's a good thing: if the people continue to elect them, then obviously the people want those politicians to continue representing them for that long. Why should they be deprived of that? Objecting to this seems like objecting to democracy. If this produces bad results long-term, that's the fault of the voters. Democratic systems are only as good as the voters who choose its leaders. When the voters are idiots, you get bad leaders. If the people don't like their 1000-year-old senator, they should vote for someone else. As we've seen in the USA, people don't have much trouble voting for a new President when they're mad at the current one for whatever reason (and the US also switched many seats in Congress in that same election). >Or Xi of Mainland China... Unfortunately, that's a possibility too, but by the same token, if Deng Xiaoping had been immortal, he could have stayed in that position and Xi might never have gained power and things in China (and worldwide in things related to China) would be a lot better right now. Basically, your objection is one I usually see raised when the idea of immortality or radical life-extension comes up, but I honestly don't see how it'd be that much different either way.
- lifeinthevoid 2y ago
  Meanwhile the most popular politician in Belgium claims that climate activists are overly dramatic and that we should trust technology to save us. Just great.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Delusion is always an easier sell than hard work.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Which is a inherently insane argument, to trust on the exploration of a labyrinth (research) to uncover ever more powerful hot potatoes, to save you from the hot potatoes you already juggle with. One missed juggling motion and you are stuck in a position you are unlikely to get out of because the failure to juggle reveals the original tribal societies inability to hold it together and propel a scientific society under stress.
    - trueismywork 2y ago
      That has been humanity forever now though
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Yeah, also here I've seen commenters having faith that "some technology will come along and save us!". It's a different sort of "climate denial"[1]. OK, my faith that we're totally fucked is also based on guesstimate, just in the opposite direction (it can be viewed as a denial of the idea that there's something we can do to rescue this extravagantly luxurious modern life). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/what-if-there-just-is-no-solution-how-we-are-all-in-denial-about-the-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/...
    - suzzer99 2y ago
      What is it to have no faith in humans to make shared sacrifice on a global scale, but at least some hope in mitigation technologies?
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  We are going to be THAT generation that dropped the ball.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  In general very small part of population will choose certain suffering now to avoid uncertain suffering in future. Actively doing enough against climate change will have very real and likely significant quality of life change now. And if lot of people don't think their quality of life is high enough now, why would they want it to go lower. And sadly rich are always insulated either way.
  - orwin 2y ago
    They truly won't be. global supply lines will probably be the first casualties that will trigger mainstream realization, and however deep your Hawaiian bunker is, feeding your plumber without those will be difficult.
    - triceratops 2y ago
      That's probably why they want AGI and robotics.
      - ianburrell 2y ago
        AGI and robotics will have the worst supply situation. They depend on expensive GPUs and complicated machinery from across the world.
  - suzzer99 2y ago
    It's not that they know they're sacrificing their grandchildrens' future for their current quality of life. It's that they'll believe the flimsiest arguments that climate change isn't happening. Cognitive dissonance is undefeated.
- noelwelsh 2y ago
  Birth rates are dropping faster than predicted, which means both fewer grandchildren to suffer and fewer grandchildren to produce carbon. A lot of environmental issues just go away with fewer people around. We'll have to adapt the current ponzi scheme of government pensions but that seems a small price to pay. https://x.com/_alice_evans/status/1849668492951220483 https://x.com/_alice_evans/status/1849668492951220483
  - baq 2y ago
    This just means less people to handle the consequences of the last two decades of reckless exponential growth. It'll matter for their grandchildren, maybe.
    - noelwelsh 2y ago
      Not quite. A big issue with global warming is we have been taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere. We have the technology to stop doing that, but not the technology to capture carbon already in the atmosphere. Fewer people means more vegetation that will capture some of that carbon.
      - baq 2y ago
        While I agree this works (we have very good evidence in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event), the timescales for that to matter are two orders of magnitude too long assuming we figure out the scale and genetics.
- zaik 2y ago
  Enough people run for office who want to do something about climate change. But a plurality of the population seems to be mainly concerned with being angry about immigrants and wanting lower taxes.
  - pastage 2y ago
    Food riots is a thing. It is hard to govern when everyone is upset that it costs too much to live. To do something about climate change we need to do somethings 10 times worse than the pandemic for 10 years. No more visiting grandma who lives 5 hours away.
- fractallyte 2y ago
  These are all natural cycles, noooothing to worry about... :-/ (Sorry, sarcasm... I've had immense battles with deniers...)
- keybored 2y ago
  Assuming that the government is to a large part motivated by the electorate. Some governments certainly aren’t (e.g. the US).
MrVandemar 2y ago
We won't save ourselves. It's just not cost effective to do so.
dagurp 2y ago
They are shrinking at an alarming rate here in Iceland as well. This is causing sandstorms and possibly increased volcanic activity.
- noelwelsh 2y ago
  Y'all need to get some trees planted to stabilise the soil. I know some people in Iceland are attempting to do that.
  - dagurp 2y ago
    There's been plenty of effort put into that but it's not easy. Iceland is very windy and the temperature fluctuates a lot but the main problem is the sheep which are allowed to run around where they like. It's also difficult to find good places to plant them. We don't want to destroy moors and wetlands that bind more CO2 than trees ever will or the bird habitats.
ponector 2y ago
It is the end of the recent ice age, those glaciers are set to melt anyway. With human contribution they melted slightly faster.
- propater 2y ago
  We should be at the end of the current inter-glacial, temperatures should be going down, not up and glaciers should be growing, not shrinking. If you are talking about the Wurm/Winsconsin glaciation, it has been pretty much over for 12000 years and the climate has been pretty stable since.
mooreds 2y ago
If you are interested in a prescient look at how climate change will impact geopolitics: https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/dp/1851688145 https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats... The author intersperses nonfiction summaries (from 2011, so a bit dated) with fictional accounts of geopolitical conflict. Super scary but eye opening.
- Hilift 2y ago
  A bit more recent. Soylent Green was set in the year 2022, and was about how humans and climate killed the ocean as the world's largest food source. In the film, they are always sweating and it's 90 degrees F at night.

baq 2y ago

The election cycle, at least in a small part a function of a human’s expected life span btw, is way too short for governments to be incentivized to do anything about it. It’s going to be a wild ride for our grandchildren.

adrianN 2y ago
It’s going to be a wild ride for anyone under fifty.
shiroiushi 2y ago
This makes me wonder if society would be improved by radical life-extension therapies or technologies. Detractors generally say it would result in stagnation, but at least people would have a very good incentive to think long-term if they knew they had a good chance of still being alive in 200 or 1000 years and having to deal with the long-term effects of current policy.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  I think it would also allow "careers" to detach from mistakes like papers published on the wrong side of a paradigm as "junior" mistakes.
- pjc50 2y ago
  That incentivizes not so much long-term thinking as the politics of the permanent stagnation bunker. You'd get a caste of mortal disposable workers who live in the flood plains, working for a tiny group of immortals who have locked down the top positions and made themselves effective rulers for life. Think Japanese stagflation but for centuries. Reiwa era 200.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    This seems to assume that only the very richest people would have access to life-extension technologies. This makes about as much sense to me as the idea that only the very richest people have access to computers, telecommunications, and software.
- thanksgiving 2y ago
  To play the devil's advocate, imagine if politicians (US senators / House members) could live for and hold their positions for a thousand years... I don't know if that is a good thing. Or Xi of Mainland China...
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >could live for and hold their positions for a thousand years... I don't know if that is a good thing. I think it's a good thing: if the people continue to elect them, then obviously the people want those politicians to continue representing them for that long. Why should they be deprived of that? Objecting to this seems like objecting to democracy. If this produces bad results long-term, that's the fault of the voters. Democratic systems are only as good as the voters who choose its leaders. When the voters are idiots, you get bad leaders. If the people don't like their 1000-year-old senator, they should vote for someone else. As we've seen in the USA, people don't have much trouble voting for a new President when they're mad at the current one for whatever reason (and the US also switched many seats in Congress in that same election). >Or Xi of Mainland China... Unfortunately, that's a possibility too, but by the same token, if Deng Xiaoping had been immortal, he could have stayed in that position and Xi might never have gained power and things in China (and worldwide in things related to China) would be a lot better right now. Basically, your objection is one I usually see raised when the idea of immortality or radical life-extension comes up, but I honestly don't see how it'd be that much different either way.
lifeinthevoid 2y ago
Meanwhile the most popular politician in Belgium claims that climate activists are overly dramatic and that we should trust technology to save us. Just great.
- lazide 2y ago
  Delusion is always an easier sell than hard work.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  Which is a inherently insane argument, to trust on the exploration of a labyrinth (research) to uncover ever more powerful hot potatoes, to save you from the hot potatoes you already juggle with. One missed juggling motion and you are stuck in a position you are unlikely to get out of because the failure to juggle reveals the original tribal societies inability to hold it together and propel a scientific society under stress.
  - trueismywork 2y ago
    That has been humanity forever now though
- netsharc 2y ago
  Yeah, also here I've seen commenters having faith that "some technology will come along and save us!". It's a different sort of "climate denial"[1]. OK, my faith that we're totally fucked is also based on guesstimate, just in the opposite direction (it can be viewed as a denial of the idea that there's something we can do to rescue this extravagantly luxurious modern life). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/what-if-there-just-is-no-solution-how-we-are-all-in-denial-about-the-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/...
  - suzzer99 2y ago
    What is it to have no faith in humans to make shared sacrifice on a global scale, but at least some hope in mitigation technologies?
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
We are going to be THAT generation that dropped the ball.
Ekaros 2y ago
In general very small part of population will choose certain suffering now to avoid uncertain suffering in future. Actively doing enough against climate change will have very real and likely significant quality of life change now. And if lot of people don't think their quality of life is high enough now, why would they want it to go lower. And sadly rich are always insulated either way.
- orwin 2y ago
  They truly won't be. global supply lines will probably be the first casualties that will trigger mainstream realization, and however deep your Hawaiian bunker is, feeding your plumber without those will be difficult.
  - triceratops 2y ago
    That's probably why they want AGI and robotics.
    - ianburrell 2y ago
      AGI and robotics will have the worst supply situation. They depend on expensive GPUs and complicated machinery from across the world.
- suzzer99 2y ago
  It's not that they know they're sacrificing their grandchildrens' future for their current quality of life. It's that they'll believe the flimsiest arguments that climate change isn't happening. Cognitive dissonance is undefeated.
noelwelsh 2y ago
Birth rates are dropping faster than predicted, which means both fewer grandchildren to suffer and fewer grandchildren to produce carbon. A lot of environmental issues just go away with fewer people around. We'll have to adapt the current ponzi scheme of government pensions but that seems a small price to pay. https://x.com/_alice_evans/status/1849668492951220483 https://x.com/_alice_evans/status/1849668492951220483
- baq 2y ago
  This just means less people to handle the consequences of the last two decades of reckless exponential growth. It'll matter for their grandchildren, maybe.
  - noelwelsh 2y ago
    Not quite. A big issue with global warming is we have been taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere. We have the technology to stop doing that, but not the technology to capture carbon already in the atmosphere. Fewer people means more vegetation that will capture some of that carbon.
    - baq 2y ago
      While I agree this works (we have very good evidence in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event), the timescales for that to matter are two orders of magnitude too long assuming we figure out the scale and genetics.
zaik 2y ago
Enough people run for office who want to do something about climate change. But a plurality of the population seems to be mainly concerned with being angry about immigrants and wanting lower taxes.
- pastage 2y ago
  Food riots is a thing. It is hard to govern when everyone is upset that it costs too much to live. To do something about climate change we need to do somethings 10 times worse than the pandemic for 10 years. No more visiting grandma who lives 5 hours away.
fractallyte 2y ago
These are all natural cycles, noooothing to worry about... :-/ (Sorry, sarcasm... I've had immense battles with deniers...)
keybored 2y ago
Assuming that the government is to a large part motivated by the electorate. Some governments certainly aren’t (e.g. the US).

MrVandemar 2y ago

We won't save ourselves. It's just not cost effective to do so.

dagurp 2y ago

They are shrinking at an alarming rate here in Iceland as well. This is causing sandstorms and possibly increased volcanic activity.

noelwelsh 2y ago
Y'all need to get some trees planted to stabilise the soil. I know some people in Iceland are attempting to do that.
- dagurp 2y ago
  There's been plenty of effort put into that but it's not easy. Iceland is very windy and the temperature fluctuates a lot but the main problem is the sheep which are allowed to run around where they like. It's also difficult to find good places to plant them. We don't want to destroy moors and wetlands that bind more CO2 than trees ever will or the bird habitats.

ponector 2y ago

It is the end of the recent ice age, those glaciers are set to melt anyway. With human contribution they melted slightly faster.

propater 2y ago
We should be at the end of the current inter-glacial, temperatures should be going down, not up and glaciers should be growing, not shrinking. If you are talking about the Wurm/Winsconsin glaciation, it has been pretty much over for 12000 years and the climate has been pretty stable since.

mooreds 2y ago

If you are interested in a prescient look at how climate change will impact geopolitics: https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/dp/1851688145 https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats... The author intersperses nonfiction summaries (from 2011, so a bit dated) with fictional accounts of geopolitical conflict. Super scary but eye opening.

Hilift 2y ago
A bit more recent. Soylent Green was set in the year 2022, and was about how humans and climate killed the ocean as the world's largest food source. In the film, they are always sweating and it's 90 degrees F at night.