Gulf Stream Could Collapse as Early as 2025, Study Suggests (theguardian.com) 299
The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts. From a report: Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global heating and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021. The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050, if global carbon emissions are not reduced. Evidence from past collapses indicate changes of temperature of 10C in a few decades, although these occurred during ice ages.
Other scientists said the assumptions about how a tipping point would play out and uncertainties in the underlying data are too large for a reliable estimate of the timing of the tipping point. But all said the prospect of an Amoc collapse was extremely concerning and should spur rapid cuts in carbon emissions. Amoc carries warm ocean water northwards towards the pole where it cools and sinks, driving the Atlantic's currents. But an influx of fresh water from the accelerating melting of Greenland's ice cap and other sources is increasingly smothering the currents.
Other scientists said the assumptions about how a tipping point would play out and uncertainties in the underlying data are too large for a reliable estimate of the timing of the tipping point. But all said the prospect of an Amoc collapse was extremely concerning and should spur rapid cuts in carbon emissions. Amoc carries warm ocean water northwards towards the pole where it cools and sinks, driving the Atlantic's currents. But an influx of fresh water from the accelerating melting of Greenland's ice cap and other sources is increasingly smothering the currents.
AMOC is Not Gulf Stream (Score:4, Interesting)
Gulf Stream is part of AMOC (Score:5, Informative)
The Gulf Stream is part of the AMOC.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/... [noaa.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Gulf Stream is part of AMOC (Score:4, Informative)
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*Cough*
Anectodal
*cough*
Re: Gulf Stream is part of AMOC (Score:4, Insightful)
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Thanks, saving this for some Twitter^h^h^h^h^h^h^h X trolling
Re:Gulf Stream is part of AMOC (Score:5, Informative)
"The '70s was an unusually cold decade.
Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.
But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends"
https://abcnews.go.com/Technol... [go.com]
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Weirdly, many of the people who claim to believe this sort of nonsense seem to have lined up behind the American Republican Party completely unironically.
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That's right! Republicans were pro-abortion! Then they figured out how easy it was to manipulate idiots like you when they started courting the evangelical votes.
That was a few years after the Democrats decided to get rid of their pro-slavery wing. The same pro-slavery people the republicans were thrilled to welcome on board because they're easy to manipulate.
As anyone with even a passing knowledge of American history knows.
Re:Gulf Stream is part of AMOC (Score:5, Informative)
Global cooling wasn't *conjecture* in 1975; it was fact. From roughly 1940 to 1980 the Earth's temperature, at least as measured in the instrumental record, dropped. This occurred because up until that time greenhouse warming was getting outpaced by aerosol pollution, which reflected sunlight into space.
The question was whether cooling would *continue* or not. As the numbers (44 of 71 papers) show there was a strong majority of scientists who thought the trend would reverse and that greenhouse warming would overtake aerosol cooling some time in about ten or fifteen years *which turned out to be an accurate prediction*. Predicing something before it happens is a scientific coup, but in 1975 *it hadn't happened yet*, so of course *some* scientists disagreed. 7 out of 71 papers shows this wasn't quite a mainstream position, but it was far from RFK levels of crackpottery.
People like the person posting as AC above simply don't understand science. They think if scientists disagree with each other, it must be because some of them are lying. In fact, they don't understand *honesty*. Changing your mind when you learn new facts isn't dishonest, it's what honest people actually do.
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Re:AMOC is Not Gulf Stream (Score:5, Interesting)
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And in real life on the other hand, current planetary carrying capability is between 24 billion and 30 billion humans depending on estimate source, and it's adding about 1-3% every year due to global warming. Chlorophyll has evolved for 1200-1500ppm CO2 athmosphere of specific planetary state when it evolved. We're at the end of and ice age, the time when life on the planet actually dies. Not at the end of hot season when life on the planet reaches its apex. And so CO2 is about a third of optimal for it, he
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How fitting, our climate will run amoc.
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our climate will run amoc.
... at Tenagra.
Super-clear evidence (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately conservatives will have to witness the Earth breaking bigly before they believe it's "not a hoax".
Unfortunately 2, they'll probably then claim "well, it's too late to do anything, so let us keep our monster gas pickups."
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It's not just conservatives. It's almost everyone at this point. We have heard so many of these "end of the world" predictions that don't turn out. Nobody really believes it, or worse, cares any more.
That "call me when the world ends" mentality has infected just about everyone.
Re: Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Funny)
You will never ever be able to sue somebody for failing to predict the end of humanity.
It's why I'm thinking of selling apocalypse insurance. If by chance customers are alive enough to crawl into my office to complain, I'll just eat them.
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It doesn't take much to get published.
https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]
And often (depending on field of study) papers are never cited
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impact... [lse.ac.uk]
I don't believe nor disbelieve any paper, I want multiple references with different datasets and perspectives arriving at similar conclusions. So, when I see "a paper" is cited, I don't get excited. Science requires replication, not consensus. Consensus is often worth considering but never absolute.
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"Science requires replication, not consensus."
Good luck, they don't share the source data [even at your expense] so you couldn't replicate this if you wanted to. And if you are their peers you don't want to because the same is true of your work. Besides, they can just tweak a couple parameters and publish a revised doomsday estimate tomorrow.
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"as there is no possible way to generate corroborating or counter evidence."
They could, you know, allow open access to their source data, model, parameters and assumptions. That way others could build models and compare and contrast to see how they tweaked theirs to give a handy doomsday tomorrow value and a range of long enough to not matter.
"Do I think the authors have checked their work to limits of their ability? Yes."
Sure. It's sort of like the various flavors of bullshitting your way through college.
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I tend to disbelieve papers that predict the end of the differential heating of the tropics vs higher latitudes. Because that's what a collapse of the gulf stream would require.
So you disbelieve stuff totally different than the science, and therefore you don't need to pay attention to the science...
Intransigence won't change the outcomes.
No, it doesn't get you published (Score:5, Insightful)
But this isn't the end of the world, it's a much, much harder life for everyone except maybe the top 5%. Nowhere in the article was the end of the world predicted, you're starwmanning. What's predicted is food shortages and everything that goes with it (social unrest, rising prices, war, etc).
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"Nowhere in the article was the end of the world predicted, you're starwmanning."
No, you are just being deliberately obtuse and literal. It's a figure of speech which can encompass any dire scenario within a relevant scope or can be used [but not here] as a contrast point to declare anything to not be a big deal. Obviously the planet is going to be just fine and would be just fine even if every one of us was wiped off the face or the whole thing heated to the point it was basically a magma ball.
"What's pred
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This. Apparently, predicting the end of the world gets you published. Since there is no penalty for being wrong, why not?
Only in the news papers. The vast majority of the "end of the world" predictions were a result of scientific reporting, not the underlying science that was being reported on.
Re:Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
> We have heard so many of these "end of the world" predictions that don't turn out.
Only if you get your science news from sensationalist sources and biased cherry-pickers.
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Like Slashdot? We get one or two of these doomsday articles per week here.
Hotly debated by scientists; not "Super-clear" (Score:5, Informative)
; We have heard so many of these "end of the world" predictions that don't turn out.
Only if you get your science news from sensationalist sources and biased cherry-pickers.
Yep! In this article, you have to ignore the second sentence of the headline: "...but scientists disagree over the new analysis". The speculation is shouted in the headline, and the very worst (and least likely) scenario is highlighted, while the part about "this prediction is still speculative" is buried.
A little bit further along in the article "The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century" and then, "The potential collapse of Amoc is intensely debated by scientists."
Re:Hotly debated by scientists; not "Super-clear" (Score:5, Insightful)
They knew damn well smoking causes cancer, and they knew for a couple of decades before they were forced to admit it.
Fossil fuel companies spend vast amounts of money trying to convince people Climate Science is wrong.
Re:Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just conservatives. It's almost everyone at this point. We have heard so many of these "end of the world" predictions that don't turn out. Nobody really believes it, or worse, cares any more.
That "call me when the world ends" mentality has infected just about everyone.
No one says the gulf stream collapsing will cause the world to end.
Just like a big drought in Africa causing a migrant crisis in Europe didn't cause the world to end.
Nor did brutal heat waves causing forest fires and drought in North America cause the world to end.
Nor did increased wildlife extinction, partially driven by climate change, cause the world to end.
The climate has already changed quite a bit, and the effects have generally been for the worse. Just because you've gotten used to the new normal doesn't mean it's not a big deal that it's going to keep happening.
Re:Testable predictions (Score:5, Informative)
So here we have a prediction about the gulf stream overturn current, we can claim that it will happen sometime in the next 2 years
But Their time range between 2025 and 2050 is Not a prediction that it happens in two years specifically. It turns out that you can't make such predictions with precision down to the year.
Furthemore.. If it does happen within that time range, then skeptics are likely to say that the result is Coincidence.. People would argue Just because it turns out to happen they maybe just got lucky, does not necessarily mean it happened due to the reasons predicted and the proposed solution is right, etc.
So what good is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
So here we have a prediction about the gulf stream overturn current, we can claim that it will happen sometime in the next 2 years
But Their time range between 2025 and 2050 is Not a prediction that it happens in two years specifically. It turns out that you can't make such predictions with precision down to the year.
Furthemore.. If it does happen within that time range, then skeptics are likely to say that the result is Coincidence.. People would argue Just because it turns out to happen they maybe just got lucky, does not necessarily mean it happened due to the reasons predicted and the proposed solution is right, etc.
All fair points. And I mean that.
Then what good is the theory anyway? If it can't make testable predictions, if anything that it says happen is indistinguishable from chance or coincidence, why is everyone worried about it?
The scientific method tests theories against randomness, that's literally the definition of the P value.
If you can't distinguish results from randomness, then it's not a theory, it's a religion.
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So here we have a prediction about the gulf stream overturn current, we can claim that it will happen sometime in the next 2 years
But Their time range between 2025 and 2050 is Not a prediction that it happens in two years specifically.
No, the summary said between 2025 and 2095, not 2025 to 2050. It was with a central estimate of 2050
All fair points. And I mean that. Then what good is the theory anyway? If it can't make testable predictions, if anything that it says happen is indistinguishable from chance or coincidence, why is everyone worried about it?
The point is that you took a prediction of “between 2025 and 2095” and turned it into:
here we have a prediction about the gulf stream overturn current, we can claim that it will happen sometime in the next 2 years ... Let's give it 4 years just to be sure.
Turning a prediction with a range of “sometime in the next 72 years, but not earlier than 2 years from now” into a prediction of “sometime in the next 2 years (4 years just to be sure)” is more than a little disingenuous.
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"The scientific method tests theories against randomness, that's literally the definition of the P value."
To nitpick that is the *purpose* of the P value, the value itself is simply what it would have needed to be in order to find meaning in an arbitrary problem for which we knew the real answer. We use it because there are problems which are many dimensional and for which we can't apply any meaningful control and while we undoubtedly want such a tool, it was never actually established that there is any kin
Re:Testable predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
For anyone to believe in climate change it has to make testable predictions about future events. If you can do that, then everyone will get on board.
Lol. We can't get everyone on board with the fact that the earth is a globe. There are very very large portions of the population that wouldn't believe the science no matter what evidence you gave them, just because it disagrees with their worldview.
Re: Super-clear evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
Climate change is arguably the biggest catastrophe humanity has ever faced. It touches all and is not going away during our lifetimes and for generations after us. This is reality.
One reason for the tiredness is how the media chooses what science about it is published and how it is portrayed. For example the title says 2025,but that s at the extreme end of the uncertainty.
Later when new research says otherwise or improves the estimate a lot of people will again lose some trust to the science, even though th
Existential threats (Score:2)
Climate change is arguably the biggest catastrophe humanity has ever faced. It touches all and is not going away during our lifetimes and for generations after us. This is reality.
And so is AI.
And so is nuclear war.
And so is the next pandemic.
And so is another Carrington event.
And so is an asteroid impact.
And so is population collapse.
You don't see everyone arguing that we should put all our efforts into diverting asteroids, and you see *lots* of people saying that AI will result in a catastrophe and no one worries about that either.
Existential threats come and go. We're going green at an amazing pace, and there's no evidence that we need to do it any faster.
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We're going green at an amazing pace
We most certainly are NOT going green at an amazing pace.
Last year the world had the highest human CO2 emissions on record. There is no indication that global CO2 emissions are actually going to drop at all.
There are no painless ways reduce emissions enough to make a significant difference, so given the shortsightedness of the average human, emissions won't drop until civilization has been decimated by the consequences. They will finally drop after most people are dead (most likely in the wake of nuclear w
Re: Existential threats (Score:2)
Yes, the structural change in energy production and other processes is happening.
The catastrophe will not end when the extra amplification of the greenhouse effect ends. Then starts a cooling-off period. Return to a steady or natural state would mean living in a complete balance with the inherent feedback processes of the earth.
There is still a lot of learning to do in how dealing with climate change is not a one-sided political process or an agenda but a common mission. The incoherence and nationalist illu
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It's not just conservatives. It's almost everyone at this point. We have heard so many of these "end of the world" predictions that don't turn out. Nobody really believes it, or worse, cares any more.
That "call me when the world ends" mentality has infected just about everyone.
Look at the global temperatures over the last 65 million years. Look at the overall trend of global temperature since after the impact.
There are graphics available from reputable sources.
Let me know what you find.
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Do you mean like Y2K? The reason why it didn't turn out was because we fixed it. But that hasn't stopped anybody from complaining about it.
It's best to just ignore the deniers and move on.
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This is actually a fine example. The parameters on these can be tuned to give just about any outcome they want. This one gives a picture perfect world cataclysm as early as 2025 so it is super scary but as late as 2095 so it is also super far away. Get out of jail free cards include
Them being retired by 2050 so who cares.
We can also publish a revision based on new data [collected every year]
By 2095 we'll actually be dead.
We don't have to release the source data it's built on so nobody can actually replicate
Re:Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Informative)
Time to face consequences.
Time to face reality: you can blame anyone you want, but the "solution" of "less carbon" isn't achievable so is no solution at all.
US CO2 emissions hit their peak in 2007, and are down around something like 20% in the last 15 years. In the same period, China's emissions (which were about 15% higher than the US in 2007) have increased by >65%. If US emissions went to 0 today, it would roughly offset China's increases over the last 15 years. China is commissioning a new coal powerplant a week, their emissions continue to rise, and nothing the West can do will meaningfully impact the fact that more and more carbon is going into the atmosphere.
Re:Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to face consequences.
Time to face reality: you can blame anyone you want, but the "solution" of "less carbon" isn't achievable so is no solution at all.
US CO2 emissions hit their peak in 2007, and are down around something like 20% in the last 15 years. In the same period, China's emissions (which were about 15% higher than the US in 2007) have increased by >65%. If US emissions went to 0 today, it would roughly offset China's increases over the last 15 years. China is commissioning a new coal powerplant a week, their emissions continue to rise, and nothing the West can do will meaningfully impact the fact that more and more carbon is going into the atmosphere.
Well, the one thing we could do is stop buying so much Chinese product. If we, as a specie, want to start taking ourselves seriously, we're going to have to get the world together to say, "If a country is screwing up badly enough, we need to cut them off from the world market." Is that doable quickly? Nope. Is it something we could take some steps toward instead of constantly trying to find new ways to force more manufacturing to move to China and other "not so environmentally focused" countries? Yes.
But it's currently more profitable to stick our fingers in our ears, close our eyes, and go "LA LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU" when it comes to the continued global crises we're creating by our greed.
As I get older I think we may have found our answer to the Fermi paradox. If a specie refuses to drop it's tendency toward greed as it develops technology? It screws its environment up to the point of no return and kills itself off before it can reach out. Greed is a good thing when you're in the wild and trying to deal with constant scarcity issues. As you develop the technological means to get pretty much anything you want given enough time and developmental work, greed becomes a huge detriment. And we, as a specie, don't just have great pride in our greed, but we've come to worship it as a vital and important part of our entire society. We treat it as our greatest asset.
If we can't mature ourselves away from that greed? It will eventually kill us. Sadly, I don't know that the collective of humanity has the compassion and intelligence to overcome our base instincts and set greed aside. We'd rather just go ahead and kill ourselves off. Sigh.
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Stopping imports from China does nothing. Unless you have a more carbon-efficient way of making the same thing, you're just moving CO2 production from China to somewhere else.
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Is that doable quickly? Nope. Is it something we could take some steps toward instead of constantly trying to find new ways to force more manufacturing to move to China and other "not so environmentally focused" countries? Yes.
Not really, no. At least not in democratic countries. There are a lot of stuff made in the US and the EU already (or still), but it is more expensive (usually better quality though). Do people buy it? Yes, enough so that the factory stays in business. However, a lot of people do not make enough money to buy expensive things and instead buy cheap things made in China. Those things can be crap, but they can also be surprisingly good value for money.
If the government, let's say, heavily taxed imports from Chin
Re:Super-clear evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
The people in China only want the same things that you already have. If you look at per capita carbon emissions you would realize that you are the greedy one.
If everyone in the world were willing to live the same way that the average Chinese person lived 10 years ago the problem would be solved. You would just have to give up your car, your access to the Internet, any traveling via plane, air conditioning, beef, and who knows what else. Of course, that doesn't sound like nearly as good a plan as keeping the Chinese in the third world forever. Clearly we should have access to all of this awesome lifestyle-changing technology, but they should be happy with a rice paddy and a water buffalo to plow with.
Re:Super-clear evidence (Score:4, Informative)
I recognize that the planet doesn't care who creates the CO2. But the Chinese certainly care. Any plan that says that Westerners can emit 4 or 5 times as much per capita as the Chinese can is unlikely to be very popular in China, and since their cooperation is going to be critical in any plan that actually moves the needle, I think that we have to care about what they think.
Blaming the Chinese for the problem when there per capita emissions are so much lower than western emissions is hardly fair. Asking other people to make sacrifices that you are not willing to make basically never works.
So here we are, headed for a cliff. You aren't willing to give up your comfortable life. Heck, if you look closely at your life you'll probably find that at least some of the money you have comes from allowing third world countries to emit more CO2 than they ever have before. You can't hardly blame the Chinese (or the Indians, or Brazilians, or whoever) from wanting to buy the same sort of lifestyle that we have enjoyed basically forever. If you work in technology chances are good that you, at least at some level, profit from marketing that lifestyle to the rest of the world.
If the scientists are right, and we do change the climate, then it will probably eventually come to war. The only other alternative is that we preemptively go to war to force the third world back into their agrarian pre-industrial lifestyles. I suppose that if we kill enough of each other then the problem will sort itself out.
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It's not a false dichotomy at all. If we are going to reduce CO2 emissions then people are going to have to make sacrifices. If your plan is to tell the Chinese that they have to continue to live like they did in the 9th century then it is going to fail. I've lived in the highlands of Peru, and the reality is that I would like to think that I would have risked anything to give my family a better life than that.
Not to mention that the West is falling all over itself trying to sell our lifestyle to the C
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I agree with pretty much all this except that the word "species" is itself singular -- "a class of individuals having common attributes and designated by a common name" (Merriam-Webster).
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And every single Chinese person can say they can increase personal GHG emissions fivefold, and still won't fuck up the planet as much as an average US citizen.
So, we're going to have increasingly shit lives because of an entirely solvable problem.
Re: Super-clear evidence (Score:2)
Re: Super-clear evidence (Score:2)
Re: The world isn't going to end (Score:2)
Exactly that.
And there's been precursors. One example: 10y ago MENA had Arab Spring, where food crisis was, IMO, the main cause. Because for long, governments of northern Africa had immensely subsidized the import of basics like wheat, but due to risen prices on the global market they couldn't keep up. So prices went up, up to the point where food became too expensive. I remember this symbol of the Tunisian uprising, a man waving a loaf of bread in the air. The people got hungry, and overthrew their governm
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I don't believe climate change is a hoax - but I am 100% certain most of the suggestions for how we should respond are.
Slapping a heat pump on all the new hot water tanks is going to f*** all for our over all carbon foot print, as will trying to rapidly shift to EVs when we don't even have the supply of basic materials laid out or the generating capacity to run them if we did - using NOT fuels at the generating stations.
Joe average is supposed to 'decarbon' while the slightly better off are busy putting AIR
Yes, reducing CO2 would help (Score:5, Insightful)
If we stopped emitting today, there is no guarantee that anything constructive would happen for many years in the future.
True. It's a long-term problem, and the solution will also be a long term thing.
If at all.
The greenhouse effect is now pretty well understood. The current warming trend is caused by greenhouse gasses put into the atmosphere by humans, and stopping doing so will stop the effect. But, as you correctly point out, it will not be stopped in an instant.
The Earth is heating for some reason;
And the reasons are now known. The greenhouse effect is not speculation; it is well supported by measurements. We know the infrared absorption spectra of trace gasses in the atmosphere, and we measure the solar input to the planet. The warming is due to the addition to the greenhouse effect caused by gasses (primarily carbon dioxide) we're putting into the atmosphere.
it was heating before there was an Industrial Revolution.
Yes, there are other effects that cause changes in climate other than human-emitted greenhouse gasses (although most of the other effects tend to be regional, not global). But no, this doesn't mean that the anthropogenic greenhouse effect isn't real and measured.
Freezing time at 1970 or some arbitrary year in the past isn't going to work, and anyone smart knows this. It's only the idiots swayed by the warmist propaganda that are somehow believing this. It's all a political lever. The limits of political leverage are about to be demonstrated. Either the first time someone ever convinced society to use less energy and accept a lower standard of living is about to happen, or a lot of people are going to die from various causes. My bet is on #2.
Neither. We are going to switch to technologies more efficient than burning fossil fuels to produce energy. We can do this slowly, or we can do this quickly.
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yeah, it's totally just about white people driving trucks. Imagine the carbon reductions if all the effete urban progressives just disappeared one day.
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Unfortunately conservatives will have to witness the Earth breaking bigly before they believe it's "not a hoax".
Unfortunately 2, they'll probably then claim "well, it's too late to do anything, so let us keep our monster gas pickups."
When the glaciers start rolling over North America the 'murcans will say "See, global warming was a scam all along!"
Re: Super-clear evidence (Score:3)
The silliest thing is that if there was a group of aliens injecting Earth atmosphere with greenhouse gases we would be at war footing and everyone would be worried about the planet and understand the issue.
But when that is done by the humanity itself the topic has become amazingly convoluted.
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Nah, even then they'll just claim it is the End-O-Times and there's nothing we can do except await Jesus to save us. Hint: no one has seen hide nor hair of him for 2000+ years, so don't get your hopes up.
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Really, you people are going to have to start shooting if you want something different. It isn't happening peacefully.
Don't hold your breath. They're too cheap to use their own guns and ammunition and too chickenshit to shoot anyone.
They're all fapping to the idea that John Wayne, Rambo, and the A-Team will rescue them like the pathetic princesses they are.
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They're interested in the economy a tiny little bit. If Wall Street is happy, they're happy. It's tied directly to their profit centers, so it matters. But you're absolutely right that neither main party right now has any other real concerns. Power and money. That's it. The Democrats just tend to be slightly more articulate than the Republicans. That difference isn't 100% across the board true, but for the most part it is. The Republicans love to play the stupid card. "I'm every bit as dumb as you morons. V
Another day, another Msmash Guardian Post (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like clockwork, another breathless headline from The Guardian submitted by msmash.
So, lets dig into the article. "The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used sea surface temperature data stretching back to 1870 as a proxy for the change in strength of Amoc currents over time. The researchers then mapped this data on to the path seen in systems that are approaching a particular type of tipping point called a “saddle-node bifurcation”. The data fitted “surprisingly well”, Ditlevsen said. The researchers were then able to extrapolate the data to estimate when the tipping point was likely to occur. Further statistical analysis provided a measure of the uncertainty in the estimate."
Well I'm convinced. But those denialists at the IPCC aren't: "The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century."
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The thing with IPCC is that they are actually quite conservative in their predictions.
If they say that something isn't likely to happen, it could happen.
If they say that something is about to happen, then there is weight behind it.
Re:Another day, another Msmash Guardian Post (Score:5, Informative)
Well I'm convinced.
Nobody cares.
But those denialists at the IPCC aren't: "The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not collapse this century."
The goal of the IPCC is to look at all the science available at a point in time, collect it, and summarize it in several reports. The recent study about AMOC shutting down between 2025-2095 is likely to be included, and some of its conclusions/impacts, in the next IPCC reports.
Also, you conveniently left out the sentence after the one you quoted, which addressed exactly that: "But Divlitsen said the models used (by the IPCC) have coarse resolution and are not adept at analysing the non-linear processes involved, which may make them overly conservative."
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Also, you conveniently left out the sentence after the one you quoted, which addressed exactly that: "But Divlitsen said the models used (by the IPCC) have coarse resolution and are not adept at analysing the non-linear processes involved, which may make them overly conservative."
... and in turn you left out the sentence after that: "The potential collapse of Amoc is intensely debated by scientists."*
Disregarding all the attacks on scientific consensus by the right wing, this is important. This is one study; wait until it's analyzed by other scientists to see if it holds up before accepting it uncritically
--
* (followed by "who have previously said it must be avoided 'at all costs',” on which which I think everybody agrees.
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Fuck dude, stop being fucking stupid.
The IPCC uses a coard-grained model.
This doesn't preclude individual studies from using finer-grained ones.
What it means, is that the IPCC cannot refute a more precise study of any particular event- and they don't try to.
That is why the reply to you was relevant. You presented a context-free statement that had a misleading effect. If it was an accident, whoops, and move on. Defending it just means you're a fucking moron, or you're trying to gaslight.
The guy who wrote this study doesn't say the IPCC is wrong, he just gave his reasons why he believes the IPCC analysis MAY be overly conservative. You are drawing a conclusion based on what you imagined he said, not what he actually said. Try reading the article and the study.
So soon... (Score:2)
2025!? That's like, the day after tomorrow!
Seriously, though, they are claiming 2060 +/- 35 years. That's a pretty big error band.
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It's OK to worry about how the consequences of your choices today may affect people after you're long dead.
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You know, that they simply say it will break down within the next 70 years is enough to worry about.
The oldest Slashdot post I can find about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
...was from 2005. Referring to a web page that no longer exists.
And it's been a recurring prophecy since the late 1980s.
So the answer is "probably not."
Private Jets (Score:2)
Gulfstream could collapse
[Citation needed]
(Or Dassault Falcon or Learjet)
utter crap (Score:3, Interesting)
The currents will continue in one form or another, whether it moves, goes deeper, spreads out or whatever, it will still be there. It the gulf stream is 'weakening' because it has shifted away from where your sensors are placed, then maybe you should figure out where it went, instead of pointing at the usual boogeymen.
Unlikely & nothing we can do anyway (Score:2)
2025 is basically tomorrow, from a climatological perspective.
If it's going to happen that soon or even if it's a certainty within the next 10-20 years, there's NOTHING short of extreme geoengineering we could do & I have no idea what that would be.
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2025 is basically tomorrow, from a climatological perspective.
But the prediction wasn't 2025. The model's prediction was between 2025 and 2095; that is, no sooner than 2025.
The way this is being discussed needs to change (Score:5, Interesting)
The doom and gloom isn't helping motivate young people to be properly engaged in finding solutions. The doom and gloom is being ignored by the old people. The doom and gloom doesn't make the problems easier to solve or even prepare. In many ways it encourages bad behavior-- protecting yourself at the expense of the community. The doom and gloom is being manipulated by the politicians.
Some other approach is really needed. The people that know and understand this stuff already know we are fucked; which and how many of the 20 ways it might happen is a different animal. How do we figure out low-carbon ways to improve resilience and prepare for the likely outcomes?
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Perhaps throwing a few oil execs and directors in jail until there was some meaningful change might encourage some action.
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So, if there is no supply-side solution and the demand-side solutions are too slow to have sufficient impact, what should we be doing? Adaptation is a fraught approach and far from universal in either design or practicality. We have over 1 billion people living in places that are unlikely to be above sea level in 100 years, another billion who will be faced with extreme heat and/or cold that could be unsurvivable, and at least another billion that will face regular weather and fire events so destructive to
Refilling Aral sea and increasing salinity. (Score:2)
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In real world, Gulf Stream "stopping" fear mongering has existed as long as I lived. And it always had those incredible error margins of "it may happen in a couple of years, or in such a long time that no one will remember our study so we'll never have to answer for being wrong about it".
So far, they have all been wrong. Artic ice has been receding nicely. A lot of nations have already understood that Gulf Stream pseudo-scientific wankery is bunk, and are preparing for the time when there's a path to traver
And on the other side (Score:2)
Actually right next door,
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun’s rays on the island’s northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea level was much higher then, between 20 and 40 feet above today’s levels.
Praise Cthulhu! (Score:2)
Never mind the climatista bollocks: we need to spaz like it's our job.
I recommend more government power, additional constraints on liberty, and taxation on the air itself, so that it can quite literally take our breath away.
It's time to have a beer with Fear. [youtube.com]
Re:Sponsored by... (Score:5, Informative)
Who sponsored the research? I think the new standard on research papers should be to show your sponsors at the top. If I can't tell who's funding your research, I'm not interested in whatever you're trying to sell.
If only it was an actual research paper, which contains stuff like competing interests, who funded it, information about authors, peer reviewers...
Oh wait, this is the case. [nature.com]
You only had to click on the link, download the PDF and scroll down to the last page of the paper to see who funded it.
If only slashdot readers were smart and not so lazy, maybe they would learn a thing or two.
Re:Sponsored by... (Score:5, Informative)
Nice try.
The authors belong to University of Copenhagen, which is a public funded university.
The paper is peer-reviewed, with references and mathematical equations. If you want to attack anything, you can attack those.
Re:Sponsored by... (Score:5, Informative)
Who sponsored the research?
The paper is here: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
I think the new standard on research papers should be to show your sponsors at the top.
This is usually at the end. Scrolling down to the acknowledgements, here:
This work has received funding under the project Tipping Points in the Earth System (TiPES) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 820970. This is TiPES contribution #214. Furthermore, funding was provided by Novo Nordisk Foundation NNF20OC0062958; and European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No 956107, “Economic Policy in Complex Environments (EPOC)”.
The authors are with Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, also at the University of Copenhagen.
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> This work has received funding under the project Tipping Points in the Earth System
Imma go out on a limb here, but I betcha they were looking for tipping points in the Earth system.
OP is on to something - sponsorship should be at the top. NASCAR does it right.
Next I'm going to read an article about how meat causes heart disease. It's from the American Sugar Council.
Re:Can I pay a guilt tax to the vatican (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have children, and planning for more, because really, I do not give a rat fuck, we'll adapt (maybe).
Projecting todays' problems into the future, 1894 edition: https://www.historic-uk.com/Hi... [historic-uk.com]
Each horse also produced around 2 pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around 3 years. Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal. The streets of London were beginning to poison its people.
But this wasn’t just a Brit
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and boomers are in charge. They outnumber Gen XMZ combined as voters, if only because of Gerrymandering & Voter suppression. So we can't do much of anything for at least another 6-8 years, after which they'll have aged out of voting and we can try to clean up their mess.
But hey, the suburbs sure are nice, and who wants to live in a walkable city? That's basically The Projects (tm).
There are some nice walkable cities. There are also a lot of expensive to live in hellholes I wouldn't want to be in.
That's the problem (Score:2)
All cities should be like that. I shouldn't have to spend 15-20 minutes in traffic to go grocery shopping after work. To say nothing of the commutes if you're not WFH.
The possibility of getting laid as a teenager driving out to makeout point isn't worth 40 years of servitude to the Car Gods.
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the only cities that are at all walkable are a handful of cities with so many people they had no choice but to do it. Really just San Francisco & NYC. I've heard Denver & Seattle aren't bad.
All cities should be like that. I shouldn't have to spend 15-20 minutes in traffic to go grocery shopping after work. To say nothing of the commutes if you're not WFH.
The possibility of getting laid as a teenager driving out to makeout point isn't worth 40 years of servitude to the Car Gods.
Walking to go grocery shopping sounds ok when you are single, or maybe a couple. Shopping for a family means supermarket runs to buy mass quantities of stuff. Just getting it in from the car requires multiple trips. I hit ShopRite weekly, costs around $275/week. And then there is Costco. Traffic in my area is fine.
It's fine when you're a family too (Score:2)