'We Don't Know Where the Tipping Point Is': Climate Expert on Potential Collapse of Atlantic Circulation 147
Scientists from 15 countries warned in an open letter that the potential collapse of the Atlantic Ocean's main circulation system (AMOC) has been "greatly underestimated" and could have devastating global impacts, according to oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf who spoke to The Guardian. The AMOC system, which moves heat through the northern Atlantic and influences weather patterns across Europe, has shown signs of weakening over the past 60-70 years due to global warming, with indicators including a persistent cold spot in the northern Atlantic and record-low salt levels in seawater.
Rahmstorf, who heads the Earth system analysis department at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, estimates a 50% chance of the system reaching a critical tipping point this century, which could trigger severe consequences including regional cooling in northwestern Europe, shifting rainfall patterns, and rising sea levels.
Rahmstorf, who heads the Earth system analysis department at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, estimates a 50% chance of the system reaching a critical tipping point this century, which could trigger severe consequences including regional cooling in northwestern Europe, shifting rainfall patterns, and rising sea levels.
An accurate headline (Score:4, Informative)
An accurate headline, for a change. In fact, we don't know where the tipping points are.
This is a real problem. Should we worry about worst case scenarios when we don't know when, exactly, they get triggered?
Another thing to note is that we don't really know for sure what the effect of the AMOC on European climate is. This is still debated. (Good article here, though: https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org] )
Re:An accurate headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus.
"There's this potentially really, really bad thing that is going to happen, but we aren't 100% certain about the exact timing or effects so let's just forget about it".
That has to be the absolute dumbest thing I've read on the Internet this month. And I periodically read about cryptocurrency on Slashdot.
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I didn't realize you "Peak Oil" people still existed after having spent the past 50 years screaming that the sky is falling while oil reserves continued to grow, and now we've finally more or less hit a demand peak as transportation starts to electrify (~12% of all new car sales now).
TL/DR:
1) The "harder" the resources you draw from, the exponentially more (not linearly more) is available
2) Advancing technology makes extraction cheaper, and thus puts exponentially more online for the same price
3) Oil can be
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You mean this movie isn't a documentary?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
Disappointing... I was looking forward to a world powered by alternative enegy sources like this.
Re: An accurate headline (Score:2)
Keep cheering for fracking, that will make sense any day now
We may not hit peak oil, but not doing so hastens the occurrence of peak naturally available fresh clean water.
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Thanks to geothermal fracking a couple kilometers from me, my house is warm.
I'm very thankful for fracking.
Re: An accurate headline (Score:2)
Now you're deliberately conflating geothermal with oil? What the actual fuck? Were you always this full of shit and I just never noticed?
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Your opposition was to fracking. This geothermal was fracked. E.g. injection of high pressure fluids, proppants, etc into a reservoir.
If your opposition is to oil, not fracking, then say "oil", not "fracking".
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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man’s inability to understand the exponential function. " ~ Prof. Al Bartlett
you obviously need to watch and understand the Arithmetic, Population and Energy lecture ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I'd argue it's that we don't have an instinctive understanding of probability. We suck at rational assessment of odds.
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i think it's greed, which seems to be our undoing every time ...
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If you can't explain your point beyond "Go watch some 1h 14m long Youtube video" don't bother commenting.
If you want to understand the exponent function, start with understanding my point above: 1) The "harder" the resources you draw from, the exponentially more (not linearly more) is available.
With essentially any resource, the easiest stuff to harness is extremely rare. The next easiest stuff is vastly more abundant. The next easiest after that is vastly more abundant still. This scaling rule doesn't end
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I'm sorry that facts bother you so much.
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transportation starts to electrify (~12% of all new car sales now).
Plugin hybrids have about 6%, and battery electric about 12% of the market, so together that makes about 18% of 2023 world sales. But that is increasing quickly. In percentage, it went up 54% from 2022 to 2023.
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Yeah, I was just referring to BEVs, but you're right, I probably should have included PHEVs as well (at least some fraction of them).
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And yet, energy costs keep going up, as predicted by peak oil chicken littles.
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It is TECHNICALLY true that we will never run out of oil (at least while the planet is still in a habitable state), however it will get more expensive and that will make alternatives more attractive.
Effectively we will run out of practical, affordable oil.
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Oil prices, while swinging wildly (as oil is prone to do), have remained in basically the same inflation-adjusted range since the 1970s.
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What on Earth are you talking about?
Inflation-adjusted, oil is extremely noisy, but has more or less fluctuated in the same range since the 1970s. Yet every time there's a spike, the Peak Oil nuts come out and insist it's just going to keep going up forever (and then turn remarkably silent when it collapses yet again).
Natural gas and electricity vary by market, so let's look at the US:
Inflation-adjusted US natural gas prices are around record lows [twimg.com], at least for the moder
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Normally it's perfectly normal to see a large part of electricity generation rejected. Thermal plants range from 30% efficiency or less for old coal or low-temperature nuclear, up to 60% or so for modern combined cycle natural gas plants. Solar PV is often ~20%. Wind turbines depend on how you measure them, but for example capture about 50% of the wind energy passing through their rotor area.
But it's weird to see for Washington State, where most of that power is hydro, as hydro plants are ~90% efficient.
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1) If you can't properly quote a person, don't use the blockquote function.
2) Anyone who knows me on this site knows that I'm a liberal and I've been an advocate for (and have been driving) an EV, and took a lot of harassment for my advocacy for EVs, back when the vast majority of Slashdot was laughing them off as impractical pipe dreams.
3) If you can't actually address a person's arguments, don't bother replying.
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First of all, we don't really know when we're going to run out of oil. Estimates vary greatly. But the more important thing is that, we DO know what will happen when we run out of oil, because what we do with oil is known and when there's no oil, we can't do those things anymore. So it's a lot easier to prepare for running out of oil than to prepare for something whose effects we really aren't sure.
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. Efforts like shale oil extraction prove that it's already becoming harder and more expensive to find oil,
We don't have a problem "finding" oil. Oil companies have literally stopped searching for potential new oil fields, because they have a ton of them in North America, which they'll never exploit (and thus never profit) because the federal gov'ts won't allow it.
The "Peak Oil" scenario was always possible, and has, in microcosm, occurred throughout the world, but gas fracking technology has pretty much blown the notion of "imminent" out of the water. Presuming a plateauing of oil consumption as 1st world pop
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That was certainly dumber. Congratulations, you're the new winner - unless you're the same idiot, only posting AC. In that case, I guess you win an award for consistency.
... and no scientific statements either (Score:1, Insightful)
They don't know. And they make no scientific statements — because anything containing a "could" is not falsifiable [wikipedia.org]...
Time to stop listening to these self-important bozos — and to stop funding them too.
Re:... and no scientific statements either (Score:5, Informative)
They don't know. And they make no scientific statements — because anything containing a "could" is not falsifiable...
To the contrary. The phrase "could" indicates a hypothesis, and that hypothesis definitely is falsifiable. The science consists of gathering better evidence and fitting that evidence to models, to either support the hypothesis, or reject it. To do this, quoting from the article [theguardian.com]:
The science consists of getting that data.
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Wrong. A statement "The X could happen" is not falsifiable. Whether X actually happens or not, the statement was not false.
To make it falsifiable, the "could" must be replaced with "will". Amazing, that such basics need to be explained on Slashdot...
And, yeah, most of "Climate Science" is not falsifiable — as admitted by its practitioners [theconversation.com]. Which makes it not a science at all...
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Did you miss the headline? "We don't know"?
"We don't know" is the very start of science.
"Let's find out" is the next step.
This is how science works.
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That's a start of many things, but what I said remains true: "X could happen" is not falsifiable statement, and therefore not scientific.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? The statement that it could happen is not a prediction. It is an assessment of our state of knowledge. The state of knowledge is "we don't know." Understanding what we don't know is the way science starts out.
To be falsifiable, a prediction must use "will", rather than "could".
And that statement would be wrong. Because the correct statement is "we don't know". Which is right there in the headline of the article.
You seem to be deriding scientists for saying 'we don't know' when the accurate state of affairs is, we don't know.
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there are no successes!
Can you name two actually falsifiable predictions made by them, which came true — within, say 15-20% of the predicted values (if quantifiable)?
https://www.nationalacademies.... [nationalacademies.org]
"One way to test how well models perform is to look at older models and see if their predictions came true. A study of 17 climate models going back to the early 1970s found that most of the models did a good job of predicting temperatures in the decades ahead."
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
"Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming"
https://news.harvard.edu/gazet... [harvard.edu] / https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org]
"Assessing ExxonMobil’s Global Wa
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Are you cherry-picking?
Yes, I cherry picked reports from reputable sources.
Science sources, and not, say, a report by a "think tank" funded by oil companies.
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Are you calling NOAA a think tank funded by oil companies?
I think you must be replying to something in a different thread? The question I was addressing was to "name falsifiable predictions made by climate science that came true."
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We regret to inform you, that your submission violates the rules of the contest — there are no pairs of links in it.
"The evidence you submitted isn't up to par with my completely made-up demands despite not even providing anything even remotely legitimate myself, therefore I refuse it." Fixed it for you.
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Nah, I think I won't, because you have yet to be right about anything you've ever said since I've started following you. Literally everything you said has either been wrong or led you to the wrong conclusions. So, I'm going to keep following and correcting you.
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Right, no successes, but yet it's definitely way hotter on average now than it was 30 years ago. It doesn't need to make accurate predictions to study and know things are going towards bad. How bad and how fast? We don't know for sure, but we also don't want to find out in practice, because it may also be much worse than they predict.
Keep trying crayon eater. Maybe you'll be right about something one day.
Re: ... and no scientific statements either (Score:3)
Since you apparently don't know how making plans works, listen up.
You use the best information you have.
If the information changes you make a new plan.
The best information we have now says that climate change is occurring, we are driving it, it is threatening our systems, and we can do something about it.
If you want to help clarify the situation then go do some science. If you find that no one is interested in your results it will probably be because they know you don't know shit.
You certainly can't make a
Re: ... and no scientific statements either (Score:2)
Yeah, I write a comment and some dumbshit comes out of the woodwork to say something stupid about it
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Incorrect. e.g., the statement "Sally could get pregnant and give birth" would be falsified by the facts "Sally is a mule" and "mules are infertile".
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"They don't already know so we should stop trying to find out" says Mi.
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I sure do. It was great news for that particular area they studied. But it's not the same everywhere. Nor is it a reason to not listen to the scientists or stop funding them. All it means is that there is still more to learn.
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What if I get real happy thinking of an earth without stupid humans screwing everything on it up?
I do too. But none of that is reason to punish all the other organisms as well.
Re:An accurate headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Accurate but perhaps highlighting the wrong point.
Typical human would react to "we do not know" with "so nothing to worry about yet". However, we do know that there will be a tipping point and we may have already crossed it. Or be close to it. Or not, but certainly we still contribute to keep going towards it.
The article though is more about effect of the collapse.
Better title: "Collapse of AMOC will be catastrophic and we do not know when exactly it will happen."
It's an old trick bad actors use (Score:5, Insightful)
The tobacco industry did it. The leaded gas industry did it. Religious Extremists do it. And of course the oil industry does it.
This is why it's so important to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy in public schools. We need better information consumers.
And it's also why we're not doing that. Reagan's people literally said they didn't want an educated proletariat [reddit.com] (their words, not mine).
They want you and your kids dumb and pliable so you'll do as they say.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Scientists speak in definitives all the time.
Pick up a freshman physics or chemistry book. There is nothing fuzzy in them.
As far as your Reagan link goes, this is what the guy actually said (from your link):
"Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be sel
70% of middle class jobs (Score:2)
The Democrats were going to try to solve it with lots and lots and lots of education. The Republicans on the other hand were just going to have a huge underclass that was basically unemployable.
That's what Freeman was talking about. My kid makes about twice what I did adjusted for inflation because they have a college degree and I
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Luddites have been screaming about automation killing jobs since at least the cotton gin,
Every time we have a major technological advance, we end up with more people working, not fewer.
Oh gosh, think of all those telephone switch board operators who can't get a job today thanks to modern fully automated telco switches.
The guy in the link you posted but didn't read didn't say no one should get a degree or degrees are worthless. He said (again since you ignored it because it is inconvenient to your world vie
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This is why it's so important to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy in public schools. We need better information consumers.
No. That's why its important for you to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy to your children. When you outsource your responsibilities (as a parent) to gov't institutions co-opted by corporate interests, our current American political morass is the result.
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Re:An accurate headline (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely. You never plan for the worst case scenario. You just assume it will never happen. It's like in IT where there's no need to test your backup procedures, or disaster recovery, or anything else which might bring your entire system down. It will never happen so need to plan for it.
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The thing about pessimists is that the are correct much more often than optimists, and their pessimism results in worst case planning, which usually results in better outcomes
In regards to the effect of shutting down warm water circulation in the Atlantic ocean... one thing is abundantly clear which is that the English Isles will become much colder than they are now
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The pessimist thinks it is pretty dark and hard to figure anything.
The optimist convinces him to look at the light at end of the tunnel.
The train driver only sees two idiots on the rails in the middle of the tunnel.
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Yeah. My first DR exercise for a banking count, I show up after the shower only to be flagged over by the VP about a mile away (Main Street, they had the other routes covered). The exercise would emulate a water main break. The offices, motel marshalling point, and alternative parking lot were lost.
I offered my office, 15 miles away. "Too far...". Um, without physical resources, it didn't matter where. We went.
You prepare, sometimes, to be flexible. I dunno where we put Europe though...
Worst case scenario is more or less extinction (Score:1)
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The guy in the article specifically says we will not go extinct from the shut down.
Do you even bother to read before posting?
Re: An accurate headline (Score:2)
What you don't know can't hurt you (Score:2)
The reality is that what you don't know is one of the likeliest things to hurt you.
That's actually why we bother to try to know things, evolutionarily speaking.
So yes, we should model and try to prevent the worst-case scenarios of AMOC collapse, despite not being certain when it is likely to be triggered.
So long as it is a highly plausible mechanism in the atmosphere+ocean system on current temperature trends, and carries plausible high risks, we sho
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Should we worry about worst case scenarios when we don't know when, exactly, they get triggered?
If anything, not having a clue where the tipping point is for AMOC is an argument not to be embarking on a costly radical economic course of action. If we're "content" to increase global average temperature by 2 degrees C by 2050 (the general public isn't, but the oil companies are, as well as solar and wind zealots), why are we going to "move" when the AMOC trigger point happens in 20 years or last year? As it is, its already been decided that southern Florida homeowners won't have their houses covered f
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Sooo, you think a rather major upcoming catastrophe is somehow less concerning because we know less about it? For a person with a working brain, the opposite should be the case.
It's a key question [Re:An accurate headline] (Score:2)
Sooo, you think a rather major upcoming catastrophe is somehow less concerning because we know less about it? For a person with a working brain, the opposite should be the case.
I posed the question. I did not answer it.
I am ironically amused that roughly half the responses are saying "of course we should be worried about this worst-case scenario even though we don't know if it's going to happen" and roughly half saying "we shouldn't worry about this worst-case scenario because we don't know if it's going to happen".
(And the people saying the one are not engaging with the people saying the opposite.)
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Well, true. Your language made me think you are a denier, but if not (even if undecided), all the better. The thing is though, that most people suck extremely at risk-management. This is a risk-management question and yes, I have some expertise and experience in that area. From historical and current observations, not doing risk management competently, sooner or later kills the organization affected, because at some time something is going to go wrong you are not prepared for and that exceeds your capabilit
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In fact, I had a long discussion with another slashdotter about worst-case scenarios two weeks or so back. He pointed me to this paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/... [pnas.org] , which makes a case that yes, we should be looking at worst-case scenarios.
My own opinion is that it's clear that we should be working to stop burning of fossil fuels regardless of whether the AMOC is or is not near a tipping point. There are a dozen other potential tipping points (of which we also don't know exactly where the tipping poin
Sources [Re:An accurate headline] (Score:5, Informative)
The story is from the guardian.
The article is about the open letter from 44 climatologists... but didn't give a link to the letter. That is annoying. For reference, the link is here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/geograph... [ucl.ac.uk]
(but, the bulk of the Guardian article is a discussion from Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, not the letter itself.)
Was there no semi-reputable news source willing to publish this?
A couple of other sources:
https://www.euronews.com/green... [euronews.com]
https://oceanographicmagazine.... [oceanograp...gazine.com]
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What, it's not being discussed on Newmaxx?
Slow but inexorable [Re:An accurate headline] (Score:2)
Climate emergencies are always "almost", "soon",
And, in fact, they're not. Global warming is a slow but inexorable thing. It's real, it's happening now, but it is decades long. It took decades to build up and will continue for decades more.
...We've passed the point of no-return so many times and we're all still here.
From politicians and non-scientific pundits, maybe. From actual scientists, no.
The point everybody's focused on right at the moment is the 1.5 degrees (C) warming point. Staying below 1.5 C is the goal in the Paris accords. But, nothing particular happens at 1.5 C, it's a nice tidy number, but just a number. Worse th
It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
It is exceedingly clear that humanity is completely incapable of cooperating to stop making things worse, never mind attempt to undo the damage done in the last century.
We are taking steps, but only where it makes economic sense in the short term. There is no will to say, "we're all going to suffer together to get this done so things aren't much, much worse in 50-100 years".
We will find the tipping point when it is crossed. We will deal with consequences when they happen, and not one minute sooner, so long as there is an immediate economic benefit to doing so.
I'm fine - I'm going to be dead before real problems happen. Right now it's "more powerful and more frequent storms, a bit more heat on average, and the glaciers are disappearing". That's not enough to motivate enough people to drive change. When people are starving because their local agriculture isn't productive enough any longer, when they're migrating in mass to avoid newly inhospitable regions and triggering wars as they cross borders... people will starve and kill each other.
The billionaires will be FINE. And even my kids will be OK, because like many (if not most) people enjoying the luxury of posting on an Internet forum, I'm fucking rich compared to the average human being on this planet. And it's people with money who determine policy while the people without it will suffer.
It's wrong, and there's fuck all a single person can do about it because it's human nature. I vote where it seems like it might help. I try to reduce my personal environmental impact where I can without ending up living in a tent in the woods. And I expect things to continue to show signs of getting worse throughout the rest of my life regardless.
3 mile island and chernobyl hurt clean nuke power! (Score:2)
3 mile island and chernobyl hurt clean nuke power!
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The mis-understanding that 3 Mile Island was in any way like the movie, China Syndrome, which was released in similar time frame did hurt public perception of nuclear energy
Chernobyl, on the other hand, showed the effects of incompetent management and the dangers of testing without safety guidelines
In both cases, the fossil fuel industries profited by funding anti-nuclear environmental groups and delaying the adoption of nuclear power, which in turn will depress fossil fuel profits
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Chernobyl, on the other hand, showed the effects of incompetent management and the dangers of testing without safety guidelines
Yep. Quoting Douglas Adams, "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
In both cases, the fossil fuel industries profited by funding anti-nuclear environmental groups and delaying the adoption of nuclear power, which in turn will depress fossil fuel profits
Mostly nuclear power doesn't compete with oil, which is the big money driving political disinformation.
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Notice that I said, Fossil Fuels, which includes Coal, historically the largest power producer and polluter, and natural gas, which has grown to 43% of US power production. [epa.gov]
Just look how hard the coal industry tried to fight to remain relevant, even though they were the worst polluters (including mercury and uranium in the exhaust, aside from CO2) [ucsusa.org], and leaving a long term legacy of fly ash ponds and methane leaking abandoned mines, which will require further remediation that is unfunded. [energynews.us]
Natural Gas will do t
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Chernobyl also had no containment structure, so an accident with that reactor design will result in a release (unlike TMI or any other western design reactor).
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Stop lying to yourself and read up on what has been going on [wikipedia.org]
Fossil fuels industry
The fossil fuel industry starting from the 1950s was engaging in campaigns against the nuclear industry which it perceived as a threat to their commercial interests.[35][36] Organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and Marcellus Shale Coalition were engaged in anti-nuclear lobbying in the late 2010s[37] and from 2019, large fossil fuel suppliers started adverti
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, you nailed it. There's only so much one person, or even the entire group of environmental activists, can do if we aren't going to mandate dramatic change from the top of our society, and enforce those changes with the powers they have at their disposal. Personally I would vote in favour of massive austerity in order to meet some of our targets, but that's not even given as an option at the ballot box; that's how far we are from it happening.
I'm resigned to it at this point. It's a shame when you know your actions (or inactions) will cause massive suffering to people in the not too distant future... but I guess that's humanity for you.
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>There's only so much one person, or even the entire group of environmental activists, can do if we aren't going to mandate dramatic change from the top of our society, and enforce those changes with the powers they have at their disposal.
This is it - a tragedy of the commons situation. Everyone does a little bit of damage knowing that if they don't... they alone suffer the effects of austerity without the benefit of any significant change.
The solution must be top-down, it must be enforced strictly and
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Every person is individually doing a little bit of damage.
What are you doing to personally eliminate the damage you do?
And before you ask, I power my AC, my Tesla and everything else from solar, returning extra power to the grid even on overcast days, don't have any gas appliances, and avoid unnecessary long trips.
We all have a part to do. You don't have to force other people to live a life of austerity to do something useful. Just do it. Live by example. Every bit counts.
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Unfortunately, you nailed it. There's only so much one person, or even the entire group of environmental activists, can do if we aren't going to mandate dramatic change from the top of our society, and enforce those changes with the powers they have at their disposal. Personally I would vote in favour of massive austerity in order to meet some of our targets, but that's not even given as an option at the ballot box; that's how far we are from it happening.
I'm resigned to it at this point. It's a shame when you know your actions (or inactions) will cause massive suffering to people in the not too distant future... but I guess that's humanity for you.
It's beyond that, even. If the AMOC is at risk of imminent collapse then we're past the point where it can be stopped. You're now talking about a world where it will happen, with no meaningful mechanism to delay it.
Actions required to halt any more CO2 emissions within our lifetimes require either massive and sudden suffering to developed populations, or forced deprivation of undeveloped populations. Probably both. The reality is there's going to be a coast-down period on fossil fuels, and that's likely to
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Sorry, but there are lags in the system. We won't find the tipping point until well after it has been crossed. And it's not like we haven't known about this problem for a long time.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
It is exceedingly clear that humanity is completely incapable of cooperating to stop making things worse, never mind attempt to undo the damage done in the last century.
We are taking steps, but only where it makes economic sense in the short term. There is no will to say, "we're all going to suffer together to get this done so things aren't much, much worse in 50-100 years".
We will find the tipping point when it is crossed. We will deal with consequences when they happen, and not one minute sooner, so long as there is an immediate economic benefit to doing so.
I'm fine - I'm going to be dead before real problems happen. Right now it's "more powerful and more frequent storms, a bit more heat on average, and the glaciers are disappearing". That's not enough to motivate enough people to drive change. When people are starving because their local agriculture isn't productive enough any longer, when they're migrating in mass to avoid newly inhospitable regions and triggering wars as they cross borders... people will starve and kill each other.
The billionaires will be FINE. And even my kids will be OK, because like many (if not most) people enjoying the luxury of posting on an Internet forum, I'm fucking rich compared to the average human being on this planet. And it's people with money who determine policy while the people without it will suffer.
It's wrong, and there's fuck all a single person can do about it because it's human nature. I vote where it seems like it might help. I try to reduce my personal environmental impact where I can without ending up living in a tent in the woods. And I expect things to continue to show signs of getting worse throughout the rest of my life regardless.
We *COULD* change things. The problem is that we have somehow equated wealth with morality. More wealth = more morally upright = more equipped to make decisions for the rest of us. If we stopped prioritizing wealth above all else, maybe actually paid attention to science, actual science, and attempted to find mitigation strategies without prioritizing wealth consolidation over them, we could have a chance.
But priority #1 is and remains "wealth consolidation." We *MUST* make sure profit potential is not negatively impacted. Wall Street is more important than the biosphere. Even if 99.9% of humanity dies, so long as we have a few protected uber-rich, it's full steam ahead and forget about it until it impacts you directly.
Like you, I do what I can to stem my own personal negative impact on the planet, without living in a tent in the woods. I try to vote for candidates that pay lip service to the environment, though not a god damned one of them do anything to actually help once elected. All of them prioritize Wall Street above all. Seems pretty hopeless.
As someone that grew up with big hopes for where humanity might take itself? Now my biggest hope is that someone preserves the best of our knowledge, our creative output, and our scientific discoveries as we start to decimate our own population. IF we pooled our resources and worked together, we could do amazing things. Instead our main concentration is developing wealth for those who have plenty, and finding new, more efficient ways to kill one another in their name. Humans are like cockroaches. We'll survive in some way or another as long as there's any way to do so. But it's gonna be an ugly ride while we get to that future that no longer looks so bright and shiny.
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Most are busy living their lives fixing their own personal problems, and then we die. And I suspect humanity won't really start doing much of anything until the population starts to shrink - and shrink significantly.
Don't give up (Score:2)
We fixed the ozone hole, so we're not total basket cases. Education is increasing, lowering birth rates are making workers and people in general more valuable.
You can't reduce your personal impact. That's not how this works. You've bought into right wing propaganda where we're all just individuals and systems do not exist. So you're trying to solve a systemic problem with individu
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Of course individuals exist and have impact. We're not ants or bees. I'm sure you'd love a society where everyone was exactly the same no matter what effort they put in or value they provide but that's not how the world has ever worked anywhere at any time.
Society is many individuals agreeing to work together to some extent because groups are generally more successful on the whole than individuals but that does not mean individuals are subsumed into the mindless fog of society. Individuals have impact an
Re: It doesn't matter (Score:2)
"I'm fine - I'm going to be dead before real problems happen"
I take it that you don't eat and you live on a mountaintop where climate refugees and other hungry people can't find you?
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Right now it's "more powerful and more frequent storms,
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/glob... [noaa.gov]
"We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes."
First, that's a great link, thanks. A very careful analysis of the data.
But, second, the sentence you quote needs the qualifier "yet". Just about all of the measurements they looked at show storms and hurricanes getting stronger, but the statistical evidence is not yet strong enough to confidently attribute it to human activity ("anthropogenic forcing").
Fossilista response (Score:1)
Consider the opportunities for skiing in the Cotswolds. Cotswolds are definitely hilly. They are characterized by their rolling hills, picturesque villages, and stunning countryside. This hilly terrain is a major part of their charm and contributes to the region's unique beauty. And with the perfectly natural collapse of the Gulf Stream, there will be plenty of snow.
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And with the perfectly natural collapse of the Gulf Stream, there will be plenty of snow.
Except for this case there may not be much snow, since the reduction in temperature comes with a huge reduction in precipitation, so your picturesque rolling hills may become a cold barren dessert scene -- frozen ground, some ice, hardly any snow though.
Easy solution (Score:2)
Just keep adding more and more until it tips. Then you know where the tipping point is.
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There's a certain logic to your solution that can not be refuted.
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we remember (Score:1)
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Obviously the situation has changed rapidly in the last few weeks. Please begin to panic .... now.
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Follow the money. The money is almost always behind 'status quo' because the current environment is how that money was acquired in the first place.
The more likely conspiracy is one we've seen many times before - where industry funds FUD studies and propaganda to make the population resistant to change.
Certainty is not truth, and confidence is not competence. When someone says, "well if you're not 100% sure then it's bullshit", they're telling you they're an idiot and you should ignore them. When someone
What's the big deal all of a sudden? (Score:3)
Regardless of the real danger, we've had AMOC reversal models with absolutely zero predictive value for decades. There's a couple more every year and the ones this year don't seem special to me.
tipping point (Score:2)
I think there is way too much tipping any more. I'd say the optimal tipping point is probably 15% or maybe 20%.
Carte blanche to try any hare-brained scheme (Score:2)
to correct the situation. This revelation seriously ups the ante, the stakes are super high!
So let's try any and everything. Nothing's off the table, we can just do whatever because that's better than doing nothing, right?
Think things are bad now? You ain't seen nothing yet.
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Yeah, we can't know anything for certain, so let's just stop doing science and stop trying to take care of ourselves.
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Can you name anything in the universe that isn't flawed?
You can make accurate vague predictions about lots of things, but when you try to get precise, flaws show up.
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Mostly you find it funny because you lack the mental capacity to understand that warmer on average doesn't mean that every point on earth must be warmer. Basically you can't think beyond the most trivial of things and so anything complex strikes you as absurd and you laugh.
We on the other hand are laughing at you not with you.
Lol.