3 ms·

Climate change already feels chaotic in a sense that earth is heading towards so many tipping points that it is impossible to keep track. In addition, each aspe

by rtutz 3mo ago

Climate change already feels chaotic in a sense that earth is heading towards so many tipping points that it is impossible to keep track. In addition, each aspect resides in a niche of a complex system, difficult to grasp. AMOC collapse, melting permafrost methane release, species extinction, intense El Niño, ... All of them are not easily to follow, let alone understand. It's getting wild. To my surprise, media coverage nowadays is mostly about heat waves as a phenomenon, leaving human impact on it aside. A couple years ago, I would have expected some kind of awakening with global efforts, but the opposite is the case.

colechristensen 3mo ago
>A couple years ago, I would have expected some kind of awakening with global efforts, but the opposite is the case. The only thing we can do is slightly tweak the exponential adoption curve of solar, it's already here, already the cheapest option, already growing exponentially. We're right in the meaty part of the growth phase of solar and "moral" adoption pushes really don't have much to do with growth any more. And also there are positives, CO2 is a potent fertilizer and there is plenty of land area which is uninhabitable and unsuitable for farmland which is going to boom with population and agriculture. We're up for a century of change and migration and people need to change their tune from "oh no!" to "what's next?" What's next is a lot of migration to the likes of Canada and Siberia and perhaps some active geoengineering building up the new locations around the globe for rainforests. You have to let go of the past and embrace the future because crying about losing the Earth as it was 200 years ago will get you exactly nowhere.
- littlexsparkee 3mo ago
  That new land has thin, acidic, waterlogged soil with few nutrients, is unstable and prone to collapse (see thermokarst), with photoperiods not suited for what those crops need. What's next is a world of hurt, especially if approached with techno-optimist myopia.
  - gtowey 3mo ago
    It's fine. We can just add fertilizer -- made from petroleum extraction of course then fire up some coal power plants for artificial grow lights. Thus solving the problem once and for all.
  - colechristensen 3mo ago
    Thanks Gemini for your reply. It is not worth discussing anything with a doomer that has no knowledge besides what an LLM can tell them.
    - littlexsparkee 3mo ago
      That's a cheap dismissal - if you had any good counters, you would have attacked the reasoning instead of reaching for that.
      - colechristensen 3mo ago
        No it's not, I'm perfectly willing to discuss the sibling comment. I'm not willing to discuss with an LLM with a human intermediary. Your answer parrots what Google (gemini) says when you search with a question targeted as disagreeing with me. (I tried, out of curiosity)
        littlexsparkee 3mo ago
        I already had the topsoil argument in mind before involving an LLM but your argument is that I shouldn't adopt more precise language or add claims I didn't originally think of because of the source? How is information from a search engine different? Should people purposely have shallower debates whereby they pretend not to know new information simply to appear organic / avoid LLM allegations? You would put an expert into the same bucket for having a comprehensive argument.
        colechristensen 3mo ago
        If you start with a doomer mentality it is already very unlikely that you have any wish to discuss anything, you just want to create a list of arguments that all end with some variation of "we're doomed". Paired with an LLM which regardless will generally be ~80% agreeable with you, the conversation will literally be unending. After each point there will be a rebuttal of doom and very little reason involved on the human side in the middle. Unable to be convinced of anything and paraphrasing LLMs all along the way, the conversation is pointless. If I wanted an endless disagreement with an LLM I could set that up in my own time, I don't have to do it in public. Or I could find a friendly toddler in their "Why?" phase. If you'd like we can prime a couple of LLMs with our opinions and watch them go back and forth without us.
- leonidasrup 3mo ago
  In the global share of primary energy solar is this very small player (less the hydro, much less then coal, or natural gas, or oil), data from 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption How much does the increase solar production decrease world-wide CO2 emmisions? Because CO2 emissions in 2025 were still increasing. I see that in many growing countries solar power is not seen as a replacement for fossil power, but as an addition to fossil power. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-emissions https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-em... There are many places where the photosynthesis is not limited in CO2 amounts, but in amounts of other elements, like iron (about one third of the surface ocean), phosphorus (tropical rainforests). https://www.us-ocb.org/microbial-iron-limitation-otz/ https://www.us-ocb.org/microbial-iron-limitation-otz/ https://www.jircas.go.jp/en/release/2022/press202218 https://www.jircas.go.jp/en/release/2022/press202218 Warming of Siberia could increase methane leakage, which could increase global warming and then increase in methane leakage, the “methane time bomb” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ticking-timebomb-siberia-thawing-permafrost-releases-more-methane-180978381/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ticking-timebomb-s... In the Earths history, we know of periods of emission of large magnitudes of CO2. One of them is Permian–Triassic extinction event (level of atmospheric carbon dioxide rose from around 400 ppm to 2,500 ppm), extinction of 57% of biological families, 62% of genera, 81% of marine species, and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin... Lets hope we don't reproduce the PT event.
  - colechristensen 3mo ago
    Solar energy production has increased 20-30% year over year every year for the last decade. If this continues peak oil production will occur in the next five years, if not 2026 itself. The wars in Iran and Ukraine are added global motivation for this change. The velocity and acceleration of CO2 and energy production are the far more important metrics. >Lets hope we don't reproduce the PT event. When/if we really need to we can spend tens of billions to fertilize ocean deserts and trigger thousand mile scale algae/jellyfish blooms and maybe nuke a few mountain ranges in the right places to hard accelerate biological and chemical capture of CO2. If the ice caps actually melt we can replicate the Azolla event when, to simplify, the arctic ocean became much less salty and freshwater essentially duckweed covered the ocean causing global climate change. Enacting forced major climate change in a restorative direction is entirely within our grasp to prevent mass extinction events, they just have their own caveats which have to make it worth it before we go for it.
pstuart 3mo ago
It's beyond disheartening. In a sick way, we totally deserve getting hit now because it seemed like a lot of climate "reasoning" was "this is going to be bad for future generations, we don't have to worry about it now". > A couple years ago, I would have expected some kind of awakening with global efforts, but the opposite is the case. I'm a literal greybeard who has lived in liberal bubbles on the Left Coast my entire life, and the past ten years or so has rudely educated me at how horrible a large segment of humanity is. We have the resources, science, technology and people to live in an approximation of utopia, but instead we have.... this.
- blooalien 3mo ago
  > We have the resources, science, technology and people to live in an approximation of utopia, but instead we have.... this. I've argued this exact thing (and been ridiculed as "naive" and "tree-hugging hippie" for it) most of my adult life (until recently where I no longer care because humanity has already made the choice now and nothing I can say or do will change it). We've had the technology, and we've been adding to it for decades now, but still we choose to use it in the worst possible ways, to (further) enrich the worst possible people and burn the world to the ground.
  - pstuart 3mo ago
    I'm too stupid to stop caring -- but it's a delicate dance because it's so easy to have one's hopes crushed these days. A small bright spot is that solar and battery tech is improving at a rate far greater than was forecast earlier. The economics of that can only be denied for so long.
- netsharc 3mo ago
  > how horrible a large segment of humanity is. The well-off don't want to give up even an inch of luxury. Climate refugees from South America, Africa, Middle East (1)? Why not view them as people who are trying to steal jobs, live off of social benefits, and eat our cats and dogs, if we manage to dehumanize them, then we don't have to see their human suffering... (1) The Syrian conflict happened after prolonged drought drove farmers to the cities to find work, creating a lot of social friction, the larger Arab Spring happened because of food price hikes after 2010 forest fires in Russia made the country reduce wheat exports.

by rtutz 3mo ago

colechristensen 3mo ago

>A couple years ago, I would have expected some kind of awakening with global efforts, but the opposite is the case. The only thing we can do is slightly tweak the exponential adoption curve of solar, it's already here, already the cheapest option, already growing exponentially. We're right in the meaty part of the growth phase of solar and "moral" adoption pushes really don't have much to do with growth any more. And also there are positives, CO2 is a potent fertilizer and there is plenty of land area which is uninhabitable and unsuitable for farmland which is going to boom with population and agriculture. We're up for a century of change and migration and people need to change their tune from "oh no!" to "what's next?" What's next is a lot of migration to the likes of Canada and Siberia and perhaps some active geoengineering building up the new locations around the globe for rainforests. You have to let go of the past and embrace the future because crying about losing the Earth as it was 200 years ago will get you exactly nowhere.

littlexsparkee 3mo ago
That new land has thin, acidic, waterlogged soil with few nutrients, is unstable and prone to collapse (see thermokarst), with photoperiods not suited for what those crops need. What's next is a world of hurt, especially if approached with techno-optimist myopia.
- gtowey 3mo ago
  It's fine. We can just add fertilizer -- made from petroleum extraction of course then fire up some coal power plants for artificial grow lights. Thus solving the problem once and for all.
- colechristensen 3mo ago
  Thanks Gemini for your reply. It is not worth discussing anything with a doomer that has no knowledge besides what an LLM can tell them.
  - littlexsparkee 3mo ago
    That's a cheap dismissal - if you had any good counters, you would have attacked the reasoning instead of reaching for that.
    - colechristensen 3mo ago
      No it's not, I'm perfectly willing to discuss the sibling comment. I'm not willing to discuss with an LLM with a human intermediary. Your answer parrots what Google (gemini) says when you search with a question targeted as disagreeing with me. (I tried, out of curiosity)
      - littlexsparkee 3mo ago
        I already had the topsoil argument in mind before involving an LLM but your argument is that I shouldn't adopt more precise language or add claims I didn't originally think of because of the source? How is information from a search engine different? Should people purposely have shallower debates whereby they pretend not to know new information simply to appear organic / avoid LLM allegations? You would put an expert into the same bucket for having a comprehensive argument.
        colechristensen 3mo ago
        If you start with a doomer mentality it is already very unlikely that you have any wish to discuss anything, you just want to create a list of arguments that all end with some variation of "we're doomed". Paired with an LLM which regardless will generally be ~80% agreeable with you, the conversation will literally be unending. After each point there will be a rebuttal of doom and very little reason involved on the human side in the middle. Unable to be convinced of anything and paraphrasing LLMs all along the way, the conversation is pointless. If I wanted an endless disagreement with an LLM I could set that up in my own time, I don't have to do it in public. Or I could find a friendly toddler in their "Why?" phase. If you'd like we can prime a couple of LLMs with our opinions and watch them go back and forth without us.
leonidasrup 3mo ago
In the global share of primary energy solar is this very small player (less the hydro, much less then coal, or natural gas, or oil), data from 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption How much does the increase solar production decrease world-wide CO2 emmisions? Because CO2 emissions in 2025 were still increasing. I see that in many growing countries solar power is not seen as a replacement for fossil power, but as an addition to fossil power. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-emissions https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-em... There are many places where the photosynthesis is not limited in CO2 amounts, but in amounts of other elements, like iron (about one third of the surface ocean), phosphorus (tropical rainforests). https://www.us-ocb.org/microbial-iron-limitation-otz/ https://www.us-ocb.org/microbial-iron-limitation-otz/ https://www.jircas.go.jp/en/release/2022/press202218 https://www.jircas.go.jp/en/release/2022/press202218 Warming of Siberia could increase methane leakage, which could increase global warming and then increase in methane leakage, the “methane time bomb” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ticking-timebomb-siberia-thawing-permafrost-releases-more-methane-180978381/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ticking-timebomb-s... In the Earths history, we know of periods of emission of large magnitudes of CO2. One of them is Permian–Triassic extinction event (level of atmospheric carbon dioxide rose from around 400 ppm to 2,500 ppm), extinction of 57% of biological families, 62% of genera, 81% of marine species, and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin... Lets hope we don't reproduce the PT event.
- colechristensen 3mo ago
  Solar energy production has increased 20-30% year over year every year for the last decade. If this continues peak oil production will occur in the next five years, if not 2026 itself. The wars in Iran and Ukraine are added global motivation for this change. The velocity and acceleration of CO2 and energy production are the far more important metrics. >Lets hope we don't reproduce the PT event. When/if we really need to we can spend tens of billions to fertilize ocean deserts and trigger thousand mile scale algae/jellyfish blooms and maybe nuke a few mountain ranges in the right places to hard accelerate biological and chemical capture of CO2. If the ice caps actually melt we can replicate the Azolla event when, to simplify, the arctic ocean became much less salty and freshwater essentially duckweed covered the ocean causing global climate change. Enacting forced major climate change in a restorative direction is entirely within our grasp to prevent mass extinction events, they just have their own caveats which have to make it worth it before we go for it.

pstuart 3mo ago

It's beyond disheartening. In a sick way, we totally deserve getting hit now because it seemed like a lot of climate "reasoning" was "this is going to be bad for future generations, we don't have to worry about it now". > A couple years ago, I would have expected some kind of awakening with global efforts, but the opposite is the case. I'm a literal greybeard who has lived in liberal bubbles on the Left Coast my entire life, and the past ten years or so has rudely educated me at how horrible a large segment of humanity is. We have the resources, science, technology and people to live in an approximation of utopia, but instead we have.... this.

blooalien 3mo ago
> We have the resources, science, technology and people to live in an approximation of utopia, but instead we have.... this. I've argued this exact thing (and been ridiculed as "naive" and "tree-hugging hippie" for it) most of my adult life (until recently where I no longer care because humanity has already made the choice now and nothing I can say or do will change it). We've had the technology, and we've been adding to it for decades now, but still we choose to use it in the worst possible ways, to (further) enrich the worst possible people and burn the world to the ground.
- pstuart 3mo ago
  I'm too stupid to stop caring -- but it's a delicate dance because it's so easy to have one's hopes crushed these days. A small bright spot is that solar and battery tech is improving at a rate far greater than was forecast earlier. The economics of that can only be denied for so long.
netsharc 3mo ago
> how horrible a large segment of humanity is. The well-off don't want to give up even an inch of luxury. Climate refugees from South America, Africa, Middle East (1)? Why not view them as people who are trying to steal jobs, live off of social benefits, and eat our cats and dogs, if we manage to dehumanize them, then we don't have to see their human suffering... (1) The Syrian conflict happened after prolonged drought drove farmers to the cities to find work, creating a lot of social friction, the larger Arab Spring happened because of food price hikes after 2010 forest fires in Russia made the country reduce wheat exports.