Let me preface this by saying that I believe climate change and decarbonization to be one of the critical challenges of our time. That said…
This article’s title and its content are completely at odds. Here’s a critical passage:
> As the ice sheet melts, its surface will be at ever-lower elevations, exposed to warmer air temperatures. Warmer air temperatures accelerate melt, making it drop and warm further. Global air temperatures have to remain elevated for hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective; a quick blip of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) wouldn’t trigger it, Höning said. But once the ice crosses the threshold, it would inevitably continue to melt. Even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were reduced to pre-industrial levels, it wouldn’t be enough to allow the ice sheet to regrow substantially.
> “We cannot continue carbon emissions at the same rate for much longer without risking crossing the tipping points,” Höning said. “Most of the ice sheet melting won’t occur in the next decade, but it won’t be too long before we will not be able to work against it anymore.”
So…we potentially have hundreds of years to bring temperatures back down before the “tipping point” triggers? Forgive me for not being super alarmed.
100 years ago we’d just barely started dumping carbon into the atmosphere. That is a long time.
EDIT: to be clear, yes of course it not enough to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere in the next hundred years, but it does give us (potentially) decades to figure out large-scale carbon capture and sequestration even if we exceed the thresholds described here (1000 gigatons).
Every time there's an article about climate change, it's always about how we're "close to the point of no return." It's felt like the Truck Almost Hitting The Pole GIF[1] for like 10 years now. Has anything actually gone past the point of no return?
I'll almost be relieved when we're officially inevitably fucked... at least these "nearly there!" articles won't keep popping up.
The way to visualize this is that the truck is instead a hundred-mile long train whose engine is in the back and we are all on it in different cars.
The front of the train has already hit the pole. Cars nearest the front are already crumpling, killing thousands and leading millions to migrate farther back into the train.
Meanwhile, those of us fortunate enough to be in cars farther down the line are starting to get cynical about doomsaying because when we look around us, all of our cars seem mostly fine. Sure, maybe we hear a little rattling (food prices, heat waves, more hurricanes every year), but that's just random chance, right?
And, sure, maybe it seems like more and more people keep showing up from cars closer to the front with the luggage and settling into our cars, which are—if we're totally honest—starting to get a little crowded.
But the train is fine, right? We look out the window and the scenery is still trundling by just fine so there's no reason to stop the engine, right?
That's because you're reading about different 'points of no return'. Originally, we were trying to keep the world as we knew it. There was a big push for 'absolutely no more than 350 ppm!'. That came and went. Then it was '1.5c', or a world that looks vaguely as healthy as what we have now, but every scientist who's actually done the research knows this is a pipe dream'. Year by year, we're slowly dooming ourselves to a worse and worse fate. It's still worthwhile to act, because things can always get worse. What happens when Pakistan and India are nuclear armed nations each others throats over water rights to the Indus river?
Nobody says 'game over' because that's not helpful. It can always get worse, and hope and action is the only way it ever gets better.
I imagine to the people watching and warning it's a lot more visible and obvious. I also think there's varying degrees of fucked, so we're already fucked, but we can be more fucked so even as things indeed get fucked we still read articles about how there's still fucking on the docket.
We already are officially inevitably fucked. If you corner a climate scientist in private and point out the real implications of their work, they might even admit it.
The problem is you can't admit that we're officially inevitably fucked in public. If you did that, funding for climate science and climate mitigation would dry up, because there's nothing we can realistically do about it. Trust in governments would evaporate - the purpose of a government is to keep us all safe, but if we're all fucked anyway, it'll quickly become every man for themselves. Currency would lose its value, because it assumes that there will be a future better than the present where you might want to buy things. So everybody has an incentive to parrot the "Things are looking bad, we have a serious problem, but if we all band together and lower our emissions we can solve it!" line.
A lot of this can be explained by our moving of the goalpost towards still attainable goals. At the moment it's the 1.5C goal, that is becoming more and more unrealistic. But of course we will aim for 2C after that, because its still better than 2.5C, etc. This communication strategy backfires to some degree, but it is not inconsistent.
This article talks about 7m of sea level rise over the next couple hundreds of years. That's pretty bad, but its easy to imagine something even worse.
> Has anything actually gone past the point of no return?
We won't know when we pass points of no return until well after we're past them (and even then, living in denial may be an understandable option). To know if the brakes will work, you have to actually step on the brake first.
But we have lost a lot of biodiversity as a result of global warming, yes. Things like palsa bogs which won't come back for a long time even if climate returns to preindustrial tomorrow.
15 to 20 years ago the world was on the brink of collapse due to peak oil. And well that didn't happen..... I'm not trying to dismiss the climate change issue, but remember the media loves sensationalist articles, as that's what sells views. And what's more sensational than selling the story that we are on the brink of extinction?
Case in point, if you've watched the news over the past week you'd expect Paris to be a warzone with protests everywhere and the city burning to the ground. A freind visited last week, going to all the usual tourist places, and said they didn't see a single protest or building burning. There was uncollected trash though - in neat piles next to the bins.
The headline is talking about a point of no return for a specific threshold or feedback loop, and there seem to be no end of those, for decades to come. As for the "we're fucked" point of no return, we'll still need to first precisely define it.
The mass of the Greenland ice sheet is about 2.5 E15 tonnes. The average melt rate between 2003 and 2016 was about 2.5 E11 tonnes/year. At this rate it would take 10,000 years to melt completely.
But the melt rate is increasing with increasing average temperatures. Wikipedia quotes a melt of 5 E 11 tonnes in 2019. Perhaps the doubling time is about 10 years? At that rate it'd take about 5,000 years to melt away.
Five thousand years is a long time only if the melt rate remains the same. If the melt rate continues to double every decade, then 12 doublings increases the melt rate to 4000 * 5 E 11 = 2 E 15 tonnes/year. Then the Greenland ice cap could be gone in about 120 years.
> But the melt rate is increasing with increasing average temperatures. Wikipedia quotes a melt of 5 E 11 tonnes in 2019. Perhaps the doubling time is about 10 years? At that rate it'd take about 5,000 years to melt away.
At that doubled rate it would take 5,000 years, but if that rate doubles every 10 years, at the rate 10 years from now, it would take 2,500, at the rate 20 years from now 1,250, at the rate 100 years from now about 5.
Does anyone have suggestions for how an individual can feel like they’re actually doing something. I already make donations to organizations that advocate for climate activism, vote at local and national level for candidates what support climate action, and in my own live I try to be conscious about the environment impacts or my lifestyle and purchases. Despite all that I still feel like I'm changing nothing. I still feel like there are theses colossal and obvious problems bearing down on our species and all I can do is watch it happen. I hate this feeling of helplessness.
I work in climate change. I changed my job in order to do so. The pace of change feels glacial (badum-bum). The same can be said of politics, and everything else that involves way too many interests fighting over a very small set of resources. You will never not feel helpless.
Greta Thunberg probably felt helpless. But she turned that feeling into anger, and that anger into action. Henry Rollins said he stays angry, because he doesn't want to accept what's wrong with the world. (I don't think he has as positive an impact as Greta, though)
You, yourself, cannot fix the world's problems. Neither can Greta or Rollins. But if you really feel like you're not doing enough, then hold yourself accountable. List the things you do every day to affect change. Just write down what you're doing. Then when your inner voice says "What the hell are you doing about it?", answer it. If your inner voice says "That's not enough", then do more. Or don't! But be at peace with your decisions.
The best thing you can do in continue to innovate and build more efficient things. We can use that technology to stop wasting resources, stop pushing negative externalities to the environment, and rapidly bring the entirety of the planet out of abject poverty where they are more concerned about where dinner is coming from than their environment, local or global.
Daydream: Chain all the politicians to rocks within a foot of sea level, so they'll actually care.
More practically, try to downsize your life and carbon footprint. Avoid the performative virtue of buying lots of "green" things. (Many goods like EV's have a huge carbon footprint to manufacture. And eco-tourism via airplane is right out.)
And maybe donate to a non-profit or two that are trying to mitigate the harm that climate change is causing to people much less fortunate than you.
Turn off the feeds; don't listen to the talking heads. I'm not saying to be ill informed or under informed, but curate your information feeds such that they're challenging you to do due diligence; read journal articles that cite sources and avoid anything that has an advertisement like the bubonic plague.
Distend social media and focus on high-quality, low-throughput content. Rationality is not based in the vox of the masses.
I mean whatever about the physical reality, politically the ice sheet is guaranteed to melt. There is essentially zero chance of humans coordinating a global response to climate change that achieves anything until things get much much worse
And still here we are, and no one yet has found an effective argument that convinces people that: yes, this climate catastrophe is real, on track to happen, and within our lifetime.
We, as humanity, know what causes it, why it happens, what can be done to stop it, and even a few things to revert parts of it. The knowledge is there. Scientists proved things. Engineers built stuff.
The literally only thing is that we are currently unable to stop this madness because of a lack of… motivation to do so.
There are numerous reasonings why this is the case, from inequality to geopolitics over profitmaximization up to straight out lying and denial. Many indeed have a point somewhere. It’s just that it doesn’t matter if they have a point - the global problem must be stopped, now.
Maybe… while many of us here on HN are busy prompt engineering AIs… could we use that momentum to craft arguments for every single person not willing to act for humanity?
Unfortunately, the only proof I see is that you’re expecting too much from humans. We’re just not very rational, and have a problem doing the right thing. We believe in unproven stories about gods, kill millions of people for temporary greed, power or believing the wrong lies, and we lie and deceive to gain power or wealth, and have a hard time sharing with those in need (actually sending fugitives back to sea knowing they’ll drown). We’ve pretty much destroyed all life on earth, and are close to destroying our ability to survive. Sometimes people surprise you in a positive way, but overall it’s pretty sad. Maybe it’s unavoidable, as these are the ‘qualities’ that made humans successful, but it seems they’ll now destroy a large part of us (not for the first time, but at an unprecedented scale).
And still here we are, and no one yet has found an effective argument that convinces people that: yes, this climate catastrophe is real, on track to happen, and within our lifetime.
Everyone who 'doesn't believe in' climate change has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo - they profit from fossil fuels or from misinformation, or they're narsessistically enjoying other people's discomfort from their arguments, or they're just stupid. There is no point trying to convince them. We have to fix the problems without their help.
These reports are the modern versions of the men walking around the city with sandwich boards proclaiming the end of the world [1]. When you asked them what it was which made them believe so you'd get some rambling story of how the lord had given them signs in their breakfast porridge, ask these climate prophets what makes them believe the point of no return has come and they point at their models which have shown them the end is coming. The difference between these two is that the former at least got a good breakfast out of their medium.
Is the climate not changing then? Of course it is, always has and always will. Do humans not influence the climate then? Of course they do, especially since the industrial revolution. Does this portend a catastrophe? Well... there opinions vary. I'm convinced the changing climate will poise some problems which will be dealt with - just like humans have always dealt with the changing climate. The difference here is that there are more humans - which could make things more difficult - who have more advanced technology - which will make things easier. Assuming cooler minds prevail and the sabre rattling around the world does not lead to a bigger conflict I'm convinced humanity as a whole will make it through whatever changes the climate makes to come out richer and more advanced still.
Would we be better off if we were not as reliant on fossil energy sources? Yes, we certainly would given the pollution - and I'm talking about true pollution here, not CO₂ - involved in the winning and use of these sources. Build more nukes, get serious with fusion, develop a sane form of hydrogen storage, go for it. Not because of the climate boogeyman but because of the above reason as well as the fact that these energy sources are concentrated in some of the more troublesome regions in the world where they have already led to numerous conflicts.
Do I trust climate models? No, I do not and with reason. I did study this stuff a few decades ago when the models were 'less advanced' than they are now. I know
of too many fudge factors in these models, too many adjustments which are made to make them follow the observations where the reason for and effect of those adjustments are not understood. From what I have been able to keep up with things are not much different now - apart from far faster computers and more complex models with more parameters and their accompanying fudge factors.
For reference, high tide where I am is ~20ft. Winter storms bring it up another 20. This will definitely require moving inland, but definitely not a “thanks for all the fish” scenario.
There are a lot of reporting going on about taking ice samples from these areas. What do those ice samples say about the last few thousands of years. How temperature fluctuated, can they estimate the ice sheet coverage for the last x thousand years and if so, what does it say? What if it melts, can it ever freeze again, creating the same block of ice as before?
[+] [-] zamfi|2 years ago|reply
This article’s title and its content are completely at odds. Here’s a critical passage:
> As the ice sheet melts, its surface will be at ever-lower elevations, exposed to warmer air temperatures. Warmer air temperatures accelerate melt, making it drop and warm further. Global air temperatures have to remain elevated for hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective; a quick blip of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) wouldn’t trigger it, Höning said. But once the ice crosses the threshold, it would inevitably continue to melt. Even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were reduced to pre-industrial levels, it wouldn’t be enough to allow the ice sheet to regrow substantially.
> “We cannot continue carbon emissions at the same rate for much longer without risking crossing the tipping points,” Höning said. “Most of the ice sheet melting won’t occur in the next decade, but it won’t be too long before we will not be able to work against it anymore.”
So…we potentially have hundreds of years to bring temperatures back down before the “tipping point” triggers? Forgive me for not being super alarmed.
100 years ago we’d just barely started dumping carbon into the atmosphere. That is a long time.
EDIT: to be clear, yes of course it not enough to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere in the next hundred years, but it does give us (potentially) decades to figure out large-scale carbon capture and sequestration even if we exceed the thresholds described here (1000 gigatons).
[+] [-] ryandrake|2 years ago|reply
I'll almost be relieved when we're officially inevitably fucked... at least these "nearly there!" articles won't keep popping up.
1: https://tenor.com/view/truck-crash-test-pole-doesnt-reach-gi...
[+] [-] munificent|2 years ago|reply
The front of the train has already hit the pole. Cars nearest the front are already crumpling, killing thousands and leading millions to migrate farther back into the train.
Meanwhile, those of us fortunate enough to be in cars farther down the line are starting to get cynical about doomsaying because when we look around us, all of our cars seem mostly fine. Sure, maybe we hear a little rattling (food prices, heat waves, more hurricanes every year), but that's just random chance, right?
And, sure, maybe it seems like more and more people keep showing up from cars closer to the front with the luggage and settling into our cars, which are—if we're totally honest—starting to get a little crowded.
But the train is fine, right? We look out the window and the scenery is still trundling by just fine so there's no reason to stop the engine, right?
[+] [-] wing-_-nuts|2 years ago|reply
Nobody says 'game over' because that's not helpful. It can always get worse, and hope and action is the only way it ever gets better.
[+] [-] libraryatnight|2 years ago|reply
I think a lot about this article from Harpers in 2015: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/04/rotten-ice/
In it there are scientists that more or less say we were in mitigation phase then, not prevention.
[+] [-] nostrademons|2 years ago|reply
The problem is you can't admit that we're officially inevitably fucked in public. If you did that, funding for climate science and climate mitigation would dry up, because there's nothing we can realistically do about it. Trust in governments would evaporate - the purpose of a government is to keep us all safe, but if we're all fucked anyway, it'll quickly become every man for themselves. Currency would lose its value, because it assumes that there will be a future better than the present where you might want to buy things. So everybody has an incentive to parrot the "Things are looking bad, we have a serious problem, but if we all band together and lower our emissions we can solve it!" line.
[+] [-] netrus|2 years ago|reply
This article talks about 7m of sea level rise over the next couple hundreds of years. That's pretty bad, but its easy to imagine something even worse.
[+] [-] vintermann|2 years ago|reply
We won't know when we pass points of no return until well after we're past them (and even then, living in denial may be an understandable option). To know if the brakes will work, you have to actually step on the brake first.
But we have lost a lot of biodiversity as a result of global warming, yes. Things like palsa bogs which won't come back for a long time even if climate returns to preindustrial tomorrow.
[+] [-] vlunkr|2 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
Someone ought to make a parody clock at this point.
[+] [-] fy20|2 years ago|reply
Case in point, if you've watched the news over the past week you'd expect Paris to be a warzone with protests everywhere and the city burning to the ground. A freind visited last week, going to all the usual tourist places, and said they didn't see a single protest or building burning. There was uncollected trash though - in neat piles next to the bins.
[+] [-] wolpoli|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EngManagerIsMe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smitty1e|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phpisthebest|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pharmakom|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] la_fayette|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewstuart|2 years ago|reply
The droughts, the floods, the fires?
[+] [-] gshubert17|2 years ago|reply
But the melt rate is increasing with increasing average temperatures. Wikipedia quotes a melt of 5 E 11 tonnes in 2019. Perhaps the doubling time is about 10 years? At that rate it'd take about 5,000 years to melt away.
Five thousand years is a long time only if the melt rate remains the same. If the melt rate continues to double every decade, then 12 doublings increases the melt rate to 4000 * 5 E 11 = 2 E 15 tonnes/year. Then the Greenland ice cap could be gone in about 120 years.
[+] [-] Someone|2 years ago|reply
At that doubled rate it would take 5,000 years, but if that rate doubles every 10 years, at the rate 10 years from now, it would take 2,500, at the rate 20 years from now 1,250, at the rate 100 years from now about 5.
[+] [-] adrianN|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neerd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|2 years ago|reply
Greta Thunberg probably felt helpless. But she turned that feeling into anger, and that anger into action. Henry Rollins said he stays angry, because he doesn't want to accept what's wrong with the world. (I don't think he has as positive an impact as Greta, though)
You, yourself, cannot fix the world's problems. Neither can Greta or Rollins. But if you really feel like you're not doing enough, then hold yourself accountable. List the things you do every day to affect change. Just write down what you're doing. Then when your inner voice says "What the hell are you doing about it?", answer it. If your inner voice says "That's not enough", then do more. Or don't! But be at peace with your decisions.
[+] [-] khaki54|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbgerring|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bell-cot|2 years ago|reply
More practically, try to downsize your life and carbon footprint. Avoid the performative virtue of buying lots of "green" things. (Many goods like EV's have a huge carbon footprint to manufacture. And eco-tourism via airplane is right out.)
And maybe donate to a non-profit or two that are trying to mitigate the harm that climate change is causing to people much less fortunate than you.
[+] [-] kfrzcode|2 years ago|reply
Distend social media and focus on high-quality, low-throughput content. Rationality is not based in the vox of the masses.
[+] [-] runesofdoom|2 years ago|reply
"Stage 1: We say nothing is going to happen.
Stage 2: We say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage 3: We say maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage 4: We say maybe there was something, but it's too late now."
[+] [-] robocat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] padjo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonyfox|2 years ago|reply
We, as humanity, know what causes it, why it happens, what can be done to stop it, and even a few things to revert parts of it. The knowledge is there. Scientists proved things. Engineers built stuff.
The literally only thing is that we are currently unable to stop this madness because of a lack of… motivation to do so.
There are numerous reasonings why this is the case, from inequality to geopolitics over profitmaximization up to straight out lying and denial. Many indeed have a point somewhere. It’s just that it doesn’t matter if they have a point - the global problem must be stopped, now.
Maybe… while many of us here on HN are busy prompt engineering AIs… could we use that momentum to craft arguments for every single person not willing to act for humanity?
[+] [-] ako|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|2 years ago|reply
Everyone who 'doesn't believe in' climate change has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo - they profit from fossil fuels or from misinformation, or they're narsessistically enjoying other people's discomfort from their arguments, or they're just stupid. There is no point trying to convince them. We have to fix the problems without their help.
[+] [-] climate_meme|2 years ago|reply
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...
[+] [-] the_third_wave|2 years ago|reply
Is the climate not changing then? Of course it is, always has and always will. Do humans not influence the climate then? Of course they do, especially since the industrial revolution. Does this portend a catastrophe? Well... there opinions vary. I'm convinced the changing climate will poise some problems which will be dealt with - just like humans have always dealt with the changing climate. The difference here is that there are more humans - which could make things more difficult - who have more advanced technology - which will make things easier. Assuming cooler minds prevail and the sabre rattling around the world does not lead to a bigger conflict I'm convinced humanity as a whole will make it through whatever changes the climate makes to come out richer and more advanced still.
Would we be better off if we were not as reliant on fossil energy sources? Yes, we certainly would given the pollution - and I'm talking about true pollution here, not CO₂ - involved in the winning and use of these sources. Build more nukes, get serious with fusion, develop a sane form of hydrogen storage, go for it. Not because of the climate boogeyman but because of the above reason as well as the fact that these energy sources are concentrated in some of the more troublesome regions in the world where they have already led to numerous conflicts.
Do I trust climate models? No, I do not and with reason. I did study this stuff a few decades ago when the models were 'less advanced' than they are now. I know of too many fudge factors in these models, too many adjustments which are made to make them follow the observations where the reason for and effect of those adjustments are not understood. From what I have been able to keep up with things are not much different now - apart from far faster computers and more complex models with more parameters and their accompanying fudge factors.
[1] https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/lead64.j...
[+] [-] adrianN|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nomel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] horsh1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] andrewstuart|2 years ago|reply
Nothing has worked on a scale large enough to make any difference.
Greed and nationalism and small mindedness and selfishness and war prevent humanity from addressing its fate.
It's going to be nasty future for those who survive and this period will simply be the time in history in which humanity knew and did nothing.
[+] [-] dvh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maximinus_thrax|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] el_don_almighty|2 years ago|reply
Every time you lay down on your pillow,
your eyes close on a world to which you can never return
Thus it has always been and always shall be
[+] [-] fwungy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lofaszvanitt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meghan_rain|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaa_aaa|2 years ago|reply