9 ms·

Arctic sea ice sets a record low maximum in 2025

135 points by martinpw 2y ago

jmclnx 2y ago
At this rate, oil fields and shipping lanes will open up we can race to toast the planet even more. But at least the billionaires will be happy and not have to worry about just being only multi-millionaires.
- nomel 2y ago
  Billionaires are an insignificant rounding error in the total production of CO2 on the planet. 50 top billionaires make 1200x CO2 of the average person [1]. Considering there's less than 2,200 of them (< 0.000025% of the population), that makes sense. They can could produce over twenty thousand times more than the average person while staying under a percent. They're disproportionate, but shooting them into the sun leaves us precisely where we are, to many significant digits. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-mo...
  - Sabinus 2y ago
    The power of invested Capital protecting itself is what delays climate change action. Billionaires have a oversized influence on the decisions of Capital, for obvious reasons. Looking at their personal co2 consumption multiplied by their number isn't the measure you should be assessing.
    - OgsyedIE 2y ago
      Having done a few deep dives, more than 50% of the lobbying in the UK against green buildouts such as rail freight expansion, onshore wind and ev chargers between 2015 and 2019 was funded by oil and gas companies looking to keep their market share and disproportionately the big consolidations like Baker Hughes. I have no idea whether the ratios break down similarly elsewhere in even the anglosphere given the higher share of primary sector industry in US and Canadian gdp.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Edit: Those pollution numbers don’t really add up to 1,200x on average. Source has Top 50 richest people produced same emissions as bottom 155 million people combined. Page 8: https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/bp-carbon-inequality-kills-281024-en.pdf https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/bp-carbon... For example individual billionaires Yachts alone represent 870x average emissions from someone globally. That’s just in operations and excludes construction.
    - nomel 2y ago
      That 90 minute number includes investments, which doesn't make any sense. Do we blame the CO2 emissions of SpaceX on Elon Musk, which would be included in that, or do we blame NASA/Americans and worldwide Starlink subscribers for paying for something that has CO2 as a byproduct? It's the collective us that's the problem, not wanting to give up our standard of living. Shoot the developed countries into the sun and you save the world.
      - Retric 2y ago
        The pollution from customers shouldn’t be counted, but investments on startups involve real world resources being used. Blue Origin for example has 11,000 employees yet still depends on Jeff Bezos to keep the lights on. For years it looked a lot like an hobby, let alone all the other even less successful rocket companies. Also, Billionaires start up companies for their super yacht’s making them technically investments even if they’re only used by the billionaire themselves it makes sense from tax standpoint. When you have that kind of money the line between hobby, investment, and donation get blurry.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        > Do we blame the CO2 emissions of SpaceX on Elon Musk Of course. 100%. He started it, he could stop it. It’s not even a question. No one was asking for starlink. Humanity could have continued just fine without wireless internet in the middle of nowhere.
        Retric 2y ago
  - walrus01 2y ago
    The difference is that your 'average' billionaire has effectively infinite resources to shield themselves from the repercussions of global climate change, sea level rise, strife, chaos, etc. At least as compared to your average Bangladeshi.
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    That seems somewhat tangential? Some people think that it would be right if the costs of slowing down climate change would be disproportionately borne by “the billionaires” (since they disproportionately benefited from economic growth and barely pay any taxes anyway). Said billionaires obviously would disagree with that due to obvious reasons..
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Normal people benefit far more from cheap energy than the ultra rich. Those people can just buy human labor if that's what is needed. For normal people it might be the difference between having a tractor to plow your field, and plowing it with animal power(possibly your own)
  - jmclnx 2y ago
    True. But at the rate we are going, there will not be many fields to plow :)
  - ljf 2y ago
    The ultra rich benefits from the human labour they need having cheaper energy. The ultra rich are often rich off the backs many many working people below them. If they can pay them less, as their energy costs are lower - that is great for them and makes them richer. If they can keep them using energy resources they are invested in, all the better.
briantakita 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  I think you're on the wrong website sir.
jfengel 2y ago
So they say. But I won't believe it until I see it on an official US government site. To avoid ideological bias, of course.
- defrost 2y ago
  You can still see the original bias on the official US sites if you squint hard and look under the sharpie corrections.
- morkalork 2y ago
  Have you ever seen a glacier before? In real life?
  - jfengel 2y ago
    Yes, many. In case it wasn't clear, my post was sarcasm. I realize that sarcasm plays badly in text forums and on HN in particular, but it's the best way to express how angry I am that the US government is so utterly deranged when it comes to science.
    - sachinjoseph 2y ago
      Poe's Law :-)
    - climb_stealth 2y ago
      I think it's a sign of the times that it is not as obviously recognisable as sarcasm anymore :/
      - milesrout 2y ago
        It was very obviously sarcasm. It only takes one clueless person to generate a thread of comments like this.
        mrguyorama 2y ago
jongjong 2y ago
[flagged]
- aoweirji3j 2y ago
  [flagged]
Animats 2y ago
The Northwest Passage still isn't ice-free. There's more open water, but loose icebergs reportedly clog up the tight spots.[1] [1] https://scitechdaily.com/arctic-ice-wont-let-go-the-surprising-truth-behind-the-northwest-passage/ https://scitechdaily.com/arctic-ice-wont-let-go-the-surprisi...
hdivider 2y ago
It seems like so much has been said about climate change, with such comparatively miniscule action by the powerful. Imagine being one of the optimates, the financial ultra-elite. You are at the pinnacle of power in our civilization. You have children, perhaps even grandchildren. You can subvert the rule of law to a huge extent and get away with it. The sheer power of your wealth can take on its own dynamic, allowing you to spend vast amounts on the most ludicrous ideas and still come out OK by sheer artificial demand. Thus, you can will a lot of things into existence. What do you choose to do about climate change? Invest in many potential breakthroughs? Bring the smartest and most capable people in R&D together and partner with government to bring the best solutions to fruition at scale? Make your mark by moderating the impact of climate change and allow your children to live at least in a similar world to what we have today? Nope. Instead, you choose to invest in pollution. The future be damned. The above is actually happening, right now, at enormous scale. I'd urge people to remember this when our culture communicates that the worth of a person correlates with their net worth; it does not. In the rotten competition for more and more, Seneca's words come to mind: "The better man may win. But the winner is bound to be the worse man."
- safety1st 2y ago
  I mean despite constant economic growth, something which fundamentally depends on increased energy consumption, the US has decreased emissions per capita by 30% since 1970: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-person/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon... This despite the fact that energy use has increased by about 60% during that time: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ How do you look at these facts and what you see in them is "The billionaires are destroying our planet and don't care?" How do you not see 30% less emissions on 60% more energy usage as a big win for the environment that should be celebrated? If you look at the rest of the world it generally follows the same trend, with the massive, massive exception of China: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita All this is not to let anyone off the hook - I've long said if there's any one piece of the emission reductions pie that's missing, it's political action against China as a dirty exporter that we've all come to depend on and offshore our dirty industry to. Now we are at least getting some kind of action on that front, even if it's a President and a justification that you don't like. But my real point here is, I'm so sick of these Doomer takes that are just rhetoric about why the world is awful and you need to blame someone convenient. When the reality is that there has been enormous action and enormous progress all over the planet. Developed countries have cleaned up their act in a big way, sure they may have more work to do, but the next big frontier is to solve the China emissions issue in a way other than just moving all the dirty industry to India, and sorry to say this is not something that a random billionaire can fix overnight.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
walrus01 2y ago
See also, trends in atmospheric co2 at Mauna Loa observatory: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
- jgord 2y ago
  The animated history of Co2 levels is stunning : https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/history.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/history.html
  - walrus01 2y ago
    For data going further back, we have deep antarctic ice sheet, ice core samples of atmospheric co2: https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/ https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an... https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-we-know-how-much-co2-was-atmosphere-hundreds-years-ago https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-we-know-how-much-co2-... At about 1:50 in the video linked above, when it zooms out, notice the citations to the ice cores.
astahlx 2y ago
It is good to see this here on HN. We, the hackers and painters, would have the power to build world wide communities for addressing the climate collapse (the climate that provided good conditions for humanity to thrive). We have the wealth to work on solutions, we are the ones also contributing to burn the world, maybe because we have given up or because it is just too comfortable. We sit in our offices, home offices, letting everything collapse as long as the pizza and the next gadget reaches our desk. We control how information is distributed, we are responsible. We would be advised to take action; will we?
- jamesblonde 2y ago
  I think you know the answer to this. It's chilling to think that collective action is just something we do after we have been punched in the face. Unfortunately, we are also so rational, so this will not count as a punch in the face. It should, but it won't.
- femto 2y ago
  According to Andrew Forrest we don't. His view is that there are 999 people in the world, plus himself, who are responsible for climate change and could fix it if they chose to. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-andrew-twiggy-forrest-s-urgent-global-climate-campaign-20231026-p5efbc.html https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-and...
- vasco 2y ago
  This is not a homogenous group that believes some core cannon and lives the same lives. Most devs don't have "wealth" even. I think you watched too many movies. It's interesting also that usually nobody says a "why" that makes sense. You clearly don't think our current lives are that valuable if all we're doing is eating pizza in our offices waiting for a gadget to arrive. So what's the point, to make it so in 3 or 4 generations those guys can eat the pizza and feel like we "solved climate" for them so they can relax?
  - t43562 2y ago
    Living such lives divorces people from what most of humanity are experiencing. i.e. people with power and money and the ability to live virtually are isolated from what's happening. We all have money - just to have a job in software is to be in the top X% of the world's population. I suggest that X is probably smaller than most of us think.
jamesblonde 2y ago
This is why there is a race on for Greenland. (And Svalbard?) Ice melting in the Arctic is not a linear process. There will most likely be ice free summers in the Arctic within most people here's lifetime.
- kulahan 2y ago
  I apologize if this is a joke and I missed it, but Greenland is an important strategic warfare location when considering the defense of the US against Russia. It’s absolutely not because there might be bearable summers 50 years from now.
  - Gud 2y ago
    Donald trump wants to build casino resorts for himself and exploit whatever resources are there. Plus, by annexing Greenland, he will have made the US bigger, which will look good for him in the future. Do you really think Donald trump gives a shit about strategic interests? Do you really think he sees Russia as a threat?
  - cactacea 2y ago
    I refuse to believe it is anything other than Greenland looking big on most maps. There's nothing strategic about this.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    If it was a "strategic warfare" reason, there would be no talk of anything, since Greenland has been very involved in NATO efforts for decades and we literally have a military base there already, and have worked hard to build infrastructure there to deny Russia the ability to escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIUK_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIUK_gap If the Trump admin was concerned about Russia, we would be cozying up to NATO, Canada, Europe, Denmark, Greenland etc, not fucking with them. So why are we fucking with them if it's so important to work with them to defend against Russia? The obvious answer is that Fascists ALWAYS do this bullshit. Because they are morons that can't conceive of power on the world stage in a way OTHER than outright ownership of territory.
tonyhart7 2y ago
russian people would love this
- defrost 2y ago
  They're already training up rodeo riders and ranch hands for the anticipated Siberian cattle ranges. https://miratorg.ru/en/events/rodeo/ https://miratorg.ru/en/events/rodeo/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_XWZjqG2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_XWZjqG2Y
wasmainiac 2y ago
Unfortunately we needed large scale climate engineering a decade ago. Oil is a key driver of economic activity, how would we ever convince governments, businesses, and finally individuals to cut their earnings before they “get theirs”. Sure we can get a significant portion of individuals to live a net-zero life, but there are far too many people who don’t care since everything seems normal if you are not paying attention. I want carbon neutrality, but I have no hope to achieving this before we face large scale ecological collapse (look at the GBR).
- imtheopposite 2y ago
  [dead]
- tpm 2y ago
  Climate engineering won't help (there is a million of unsolved and unsolvable issues with it). We have to stop emitting CO2 (etc), there is no other way. Why? Because if the warming won't kill us, ocean acidification will, and that is directly connected to the C in CO2.
aoweirji3j 2y ago
And this is why trump keeps ranting about greenland. It's not just a distraction. He wants to invade greenland and canada, and he wants global warming to accelerate so it becomes more accessible.
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  I'm amazed that these people have no advisors briefing them about Jet Stream collapse or the release of methane as permafrost melts etc. No one's gonna be mining anything up there and if they are there won't be much of a market anywhere to sell it in.
  - vjerancrnjak 2y ago
    To expand, permafrost melting emits CO2 equivalent that is 100s of years of modern human activity. It’ll obviously happen in less than 100 years.
    - chneu 2y ago
      And that's just what we know about. There are still sources that we're discovering. Our sources don't match what we measure yet, which means it's likely worse than we know.
- namaria 2y ago
  Spot on. The trouble with accelerationists is that they assume they know what will happen. The French revolution was pretty much unleashed with that mindset. Upper class figures wanted to get rid of the nobility/royalty monopoly on power. They thought they could profit from a new arrangement. Then the terror began. I'm afraid this is what we're in for here. The oligarchs think they can steer this. They want to speed up climate change, treat the world to some shock therapy and come up on top. If they're right, we're screwed. If they're wrong, we're even more screwed.
chneu 2y ago
Stop blaming the rich and the corporations. They love when 8 billion people throw up their hands and give up, while continuing to buy cheap stuff. Blaming the rich/corps is exactly what they want. They'll gladly be your bad guy as long as you keep buying their goods, which people do. We are blasted by capitalist logic that we are shaped by. The second anyone says "maybe everyday people need to consume less?" people freak out like they're being assaulted. But nobody seems to call out corporations for their, "You deserve this environmental disaster of a hamburger" propaganda advertisement. The world's few thousand illionaires don't consume like the other 8 billion people. Using the rich as an excuse just perpetuates the destruction and let's the rich continue. The absolute worst part? Most people idolize the rich and pretend that one day they too will be rich. Capitalism has convinced us that we are entitled to excess. Calling out how insane this is is a social no-no because it makes people fee-fees hurt.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
singularity2001 2y ago
Direct link to their fantastic tool: https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...
zcar 2y ago
I wonder how the results would be if they measure the average for the year instead of only the coldest months. I say that because I suppose that ice, just like snow doesn't exactly match with temperature.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-year-record-about-155degc-above-pre-industrial-level https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-...
  - zcar 2y ago
    The article is about the artic sea and so was my comment. That link is about global temperature.
- martinpw 2y ago
  You can see it on the interactive tool here: https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter... You can click on individual years, but the decade average plots are the most revealing. You can see the average has dropped significantly each decade, and the drop is actually larger in the warmer months (~35%) than in the colder months (~10%) for the year range 1980 to 2020.
  - zcar 2y ago
    Just checked the link. While average is decreasing for the artic sea, average is slightly increasing in the Antarctic. Which makes me think, since most of the ice is on actual land and not on the ocean. Is there another tool that tracks ice on land?
gmuslera 2y ago
It is not just surface, but thickness too, what makes the whole picture. But what will matter in the end is exposing more (dark, albedo-wise) water to sunlight rising a notch global warming and melting even more Arctic sea ice. Positive feedback loops should be scary.

135 points by martinpw 2y ago

At this rate, oil fields and shipping lanes will open up we can race to toast the planet even more. But at least the billionaires will be happy and not have to worry about just being only multi-millionaires.

nomel 2y ago
Billionaires are an insignificant rounding error in the total production of CO2 on the planet. 50 top billionaires make 1200x CO2 of the average person [1]. Considering there's less than 2,200 of them (< 0.000025% of the population), that makes sense. They can could produce over twenty thousand times more than the average person while staying under a percent. They're disproportionate, but shooting them into the sun leaves us precisely where we are, to many significant digits. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-mo...
- Sabinus 2y ago
  The power of invested Capital protecting itself is what delays climate change action. Billionaires have a oversized influence on the decisions of Capital, for obvious reasons. Looking at their personal co2 consumption multiplied by their number isn't the measure you should be assessing.
  - OgsyedIE 2y ago
    Having done a few deep dives, more than 50% of the lobbying in the UK against green buildouts such as rail freight expansion, onshore wind and ev chargers between 2015 and 2019 was funded by oil and gas companies looking to keep their market share and disproportionately the big consolidations like Baker Hughes. I have no idea whether the ratios break down similarly elsewhere in even the anglosphere given the higher share of primary sector industry in US and Canadian gdp.
- Retric 2y ago
  Edit: Those pollution numbers don’t really add up to 1,200x on average. Source has Top 50 richest people produced same emissions as bottom 155 million people combined. Page 8: https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/bp-carbon-inequality-kills-281024-en.pdf https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/bp-carbon... For example individual billionaires Yachts alone represent 870x average emissions from someone globally. That’s just in operations and excludes construction.
  - nomel 2y ago
    That 90 minute number includes investments, which doesn't make any sense. Do we blame the CO2 emissions of SpaceX on Elon Musk, which would be included in that, or do we blame NASA/Americans and worldwide Starlink subscribers for paying for something that has CO2 as a byproduct? It's the collective us that's the problem, not wanting to give up our standard of living. Shoot the developed countries into the sun and you save the world.
    - Retric 2y ago
      The pollution from customers shouldn’t be counted, but investments on startups involve real world resources being used. Blue Origin for example has 11,000 employees yet still depends on Jeff Bezos to keep the lights on. For years it looked a lot like an hobby, let alone all the other even less successful rocket companies. Also, Billionaires start up companies for their super yacht’s making them technically investments even if they’re only used by the billionaire themselves it makes sense from tax standpoint. When you have that kind of money the line between hobby, investment, and donation get blurry.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      > Do we blame the CO2 emissions of SpaceX on Elon Musk Of course. 100%. He started it, he could stop it. It’s not even a question. No one was asking for starlink. Humanity could have continued just fine without wireless internet in the middle of nowhere.
      - Retric 2y ago
- walrus01 2y ago
  The difference is that your 'average' billionaire has effectively infinite resources to shield themselves from the repercussions of global climate change, sea level rise, strife, chaos, etc. At least as compared to your average Bangladeshi.
- wqaatwt 2y ago
  That seems somewhat tangential? Some people think that it would be right if the costs of slowing down climate change would be disproportionately borne by “the billionaires” (since they disproportionately benefited from economic growth and barely pay any taxes anyway). Said billionaires obviously would disagree with that due to obvious reasons..
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Normal people benefit far more from cheap energy than the ultra rich. Those people can just buy human labor if that's what is needed. For normal people it might be the difference between having a tractor to plow your field, and plowing it with animal power(possibly your own)
- jmclnx 2y ago
  True. But at the rate we are going, there will not be many fields to plow :)
- ljf 2y ago
  The ultra rich benefits from the human labour they need having cheaper energy. The ultra rich are often rich off the backs many many working people below them. If they can pay them less, as their energy costs are lower - that is great for them and makes them richer. If they can keep them using energy resources they are invested in, all the better.

briantakita 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bongodongobob 2y ago
I think you're on the wrong website sir.

jfengel 2y ago

So they say. But I won't believe it until I see it on an official US government site. To avoid ideological bias, of course.

defrost 2y ago
You can still see the original bias on the official US sites if you squint hard and look under the sharpie corrections.
morkalork 2y ago
Have you ever seen a glacier before? In real life?
- jfengel 2y ago
  Yes, many. In case it wasn't clear, my post was sarcasm. I realize that sarcasm plays badly in text forums and on HN in particular, but it's the best way to express how angry I am that the US government is so utterly deranged when it comes to science.
  - sachinjoseph 2y ago
    Poe's Law :-)
  - climb_stealth 2y ago
    I think it's a sign of the times that it is not as obviously recognisable as sarcasm anymore :/
    - milesrout 2y ago
      It was very obviously sarcasm. It only takes one clueless person to generate a thread of comments like this.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago

jongjong 2y ago

[flagged]

aoweirji3j 2y ago
[flagged]

Animats 2y ago

The Northwest Passage still isn't ice-free. There's more open water, but loose icebergs reportedly clog up the tight spots.[1] [1] https://scitechdaily.com/arctic-ice-wont-let-go-the-surprising-truth-behind-the-northwest-passage/ https://scitechdaily.com/arctic-ice-wont-let-go-the-surprisi...

hdivider 2y ago

It seems like so much has been said about climate change, with such comparatively miniscule action by the powerful. Imagine being one of the optimates, the financial ultra-elite. You are at the pinnacle of power in our civilization. You have children, perhaps even grandchildren. You can subvert the rule of law to a huge extent and get away with it. The sheer power of your wealth can take on its own dynamic, allowing you to spend vast amounts on the most ludicrous ideas and still come out OK by sheer artificial demand. Thus, you can will a lot of things into existence. What do you choose to do about climate change? Invest in many potential breakthroughs? Bring the smartest and most capable people in R&D together and partner with government to bring the best solutions to fruition at scale? Make your mark by moderating the impact of climate change and allow your children to live at least in a similar world to what we have today? Nope. Instead, you choose to invest in pollution. The future be damned. The above is actually happening, right now, at enormous scale. I'd urge people to remember this when our culture communicates that the worth of a person correlates with their net worth; it does not. In the rotten competition for more and more, Seneca's words come to mind: "The better man may win. But the winner is bound to be the worse man."

safety1st 2y ago
I mean despite constant economic growth, something which fundamentally depends on increased energy consumption, the US has decreased emissions per capita by 30% since 1970: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-person/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon... This despite the fact that energy use has increased by about 60% during that time: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ How do you look at these facts and what you see in them is "The billionaires are destroying our planet and don't care?" How do you not see 30% less emissions on 60% more energy usage as a big win for the environment that should be celebrated? If you look at the rest of the world it generally follows the same trend, with the massive, massive exception of China: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita All this is not to let anyone off the hook - I've long said if there's any one piece of the emission reductions pie that's missing, it's political action against China as a dirty exporter that we've all come to depend on and offshore our dirty industry to. Now we are at least getting some kind of action on that front, even if it's a President and a justification that you don't like. But my real point here is, I'm so sick of these Doomer takes that are just rhetoric about why the world is awful and you need to blame someone convenient. When the reality is that there has been enormous action and enormous progress all over the planet. Developed countries have cleaned up their act in a big way, sure they may have more work to do, but the next big frontier is to solve the China emissions issue in a way other than just moving all the dirty industry to India, and sorry to say this is not something that a random billionaire can fix overnight.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

walrus01 2y ago

See also, trends in atmospheric co2 at Mauna Loa observatory: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

jgord 2y ago
The animated history of Co2 levels is stunning : https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/history.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/history.html
- walrus01 2y ago
  For data going further back, we have deep antarctic ice sheet, ice core samples of atmospheric co2: https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/ https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an... https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-we-know-how-much-co2-was-atmosphere-hundreds-years-ago https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-we-know-how-much-co2-... At about 1:50 in the video linked above, when it zooms out, notice the citations to the ice cores.

astahlx 2y ago

It is good to see this here on HN. We, the hackers and painters, would have the power to build world wide communities for addressing the climate collapse (the climate that provided good conditions for humanity to thrive). We have the wealth to work on solutions, we are the ones also contributing to burn the world, maybe because we have given up or because it is just too comfortable. We sit in our offices, home offices, letting everything collapse as long as the pizza and the next gadget reaches our desk. We control how information is distributed, we are responsible. We would be advised to take action; will we?

jamesblonde 2y ago
I think you know the answer to this. It's chilling to think that collective action is just something we do after we have been punched in the face. Unfortunately, we are also so rational, so this will not count as a punch in the face. It should, but it won't.
femto 2y ago
According to Andrew Forrest we don't. His view is that there are 999 people in the world, plus himself, who are responsible for climate change and could fix it if they chose to. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-andrew-twiggy-forrest-s-urgent-global-climate-campaign-20231026-p5efbc.html https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-and...
vasco 2y ago
This is not a homogenous group that believes some core cannon and lives the same lives. Most devs don't have "wealth" even. I think you watched too many movies. It's interesting also that usually nobody says a "why" that makes sense. You clearly don't think our current lives are that valuable if all we're doing is eating pizza in our offices waiting for a gadget to arrive. So what's the point, to make it so in 3 or 4 generations those guys can eat the pizza and feel like we "solved climate" for them so they can relax?
- t43562 2y ago
  Living such lives divorces people from what most of humanity are experiencing. i.e. people with power and money and the ability to live virtually are isolated from what's happening. We all have money - just to have a job in software is to be in the top X% of the world's population. I suggest that X is probably smaller than most of us think.

jamesblonde 2y ago

This is why there is a race on for Greenland. (And Svalbard?) Ice melting in the Arctic is not a linear process. There will most likely be ice free summers in the Arctic within most people here's lifetime.

kulahan 2y ago
I apologize if this is a joke and I missed it, but Greenland is an important strategic warfare location when considering the defense of the US against Russia. It’s absolutely not because there might be bearable summers 50 years from now.
- Gud 2y ago
  Donald trump wants to build casino resorts for himself and exploit whatever resources are there. Plus, by annexing Greenland, he will have made the US bigger, which will look good for him in the future. Do you really think Donald trump gives a shit about strategic interests? Do you really think he sees Russia as a threat?
- cactacea 2y ago
  I refuse to believe it is anything other than Greenland looking big on most maps. There's nothing strategic about this.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  If it was a "strategic warfare" reason, there would be no talk of anything, since Greenland has been very involved in NATO efforts for decades and we literally have a military base there already, and have worked hard to build infrastructure there to deny Russia the ability to escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIUK_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIUK_gap If the Trump admin was concerned about Russia, we would be cozying up to NATO, Canada, Europe, Denmark, Greenland etc, not fucking with them. So why are we fucking with them if it's so important to work with them to defend against Russia? The obvious answer is that Fascists ALWAYS do this bullshit. Because they are morons that can't conceive of power on the world stage in a way OTHER than outright ownership of territory.

tonyhart7 2y ago

russian people would love this

defrost 2y ago
They're already training up rodeo riders and ranch hands for the anticipated Siberian cattle ranges. https://miratorg.ru/en/events/rodeo/ https://miratorg.ru/en/events/rodeo/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_XWZjqG2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_XWZjqG2Y

wasmainiac 2y ago

Unfortunately we needed large scale climate engineering a decade ago. Oil is a key driver of economic activity, how would we ever convince governments, businesses, and finally individuals to cut their earnings before they “get theirs”. Sure we can get a significant portion of individuals to live a net-zero life, but there are far too many people who don’t care since everything seems normal if you are not paying attention. I want carbon neutrality, but I have no hope to achieving this before we face large scale ecological collapse (look at the GBR).

imtheopposite 2y ago
[dead]
tpm 2y ago
Climate engineering won't help (there is a million of unsolved and unsolvable issues with it). We have to stop emitting CO2 (etc), there is no other way. Why? Because if the warming won't kill us, ocean acidification will, and that is directly connected to the C in CO2.

aoweirji3j 2y ago

And this is why trump keeps ranting about greenland. It's not just a distraction. He wants to invade greenland and canada, and he wants global warming to accelerate so it becomes more accessible.

AlecSchueler 2y ago
I'm amazed that these people have no advisors briefing them about Jet Stream collapse or the release of methane as permafrost melts etc. No one's gonna be mining anything up there and if they are there won't be much of a market anywhere to sell it in.
- vjerancrnjak 2y ago
  To expand, permafrost melting emits CO2 equivalent that is 100s of years of modern human activity. It’ll obviously happen in less than 100 years.
  - chneu 2y ago
    And that's just what we know about. There are still sources that we're discovering. Our sources don't match what we measure yet, which means it's likely worse than we know.
namaria 2y ago
Spot on. The trouble with accelerationists is that they assume they know what will happen. The French revolution was pretty much unleashed with that mindset. Upper class figures wanted to get rid of the nobility/royalty monopoly on power. They thought they could profit from a new arrangement. Then the terror began. I'm afraid this is what we're in for here. The oligarchs think they can steer this. They want to speed up climate change, treat the world to some shock therapy and come up on top. If they're right, we're screwed. If they're wrong, we're even more screwed.

chneu 2y ago

Stop blaming the rich and the corporations. They love when 8 billion people throw up their hands and give up, while continuing to buy cheap stuff. Blaming the rich/corps is exactly what they want. They'll gladly be your bad guy as long as you keep buying their goods, which people do. We are blasted by capitalist logic that we are shaped by. The second anyone says "maybe everyday people need to consume less?" people freak out like they're being assaulted. But nobody seems to call out corporations for their, "You deserve this environmental disaster of a hamburger" propaganda advertisement. The world's few thousand illionaires don't consume like the other 8 billion people. Using the rich as an excuse just perpetuates the destruction and let's the rich continue. The absolute worst part? Most people idolize the rich and pretend that one day they too will be rich. Capitalism has convinced us that we are entitled to excess. Calling out how insane this is is a social no-no because it makes people fee-fees hurt.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

singularity2001 2y ago

Direct link to their fantastic tool: https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...

zcar 2y ago

I wonder how the results would be if they measure the average for the year instead of only the coldest months. I say that because I suppose that ice, just like snow doesn't exactly match with temperature.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-year-record-about-155degc-above-pre-industrial-level https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-...
- zcar 2y ago
  The article is about the artic sea and so was my comment. That link is about global temperature.
martinpw 2y ago
You can see it on the interactive tool here: https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter... You can click on individual years, but the decade average plots are the most revealing. You can see the average has dropped significantly each decade, and the drop is actually larger in the warmer months (~35%) than in the colder months (~10%) for the year range 1980 to 2020.
- zcar 2y ago
  Just checked the link. While average is decreasing for the artic sea, average is slightly increasing in the Antarctic. Which makes me think, since most of the ice is on actual land and not on the ocean. Is there another tool that tracks ice on land?

gmuslera 2y ago

It is not just surface, but thickness too, what makes the whole picture. But what will matter in the end is exposing more (dark, albedo-wise) water to sunlight rising a notch global warming and melting even more Arctic sea ice. Positive feedback loops should be scary.