[banqjls]

> My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point.

Given that the glaciers should’ve all melted by now, and that we can’t even predict with certainty whether it will rain tomorrow, I wouldn’t pay much attention to predictions.

[AshamedCaptain]

Ever been in the famous Mer de Glace in France ? In the 1980s they had to build a cable car to descend from the old train station (which the glacier _almost_ reached at some point) to the surface level of the glacier, which had started descending. By the time they finished building the cable car, the glacier had descended so _much_ _more_ that in the 90s an extra 500 steps staircase had to be built to cover the ever-growing gap from the cable car stop to the new surface of the glacier. ~5 years ago, this gap was so large it would take an hour or so to climb up/down, so they had to build _a 2nd cable car_ to cover the new gap.

The new cable car even when it was in construction _already_ did no longer reach the glacier, as the glacier has descended another 20 steps since construction started: https://www.chamonix.net/english/news/chamonix-new-telecabin...

You can see with your own eyes not only how it is disappearing, but how much the speed at it which disappears increases year-by-year. If you ever plan to visit it, better do it so now; I find it unlikely there will be anything visitable left of it by the end of next decade.

[hkpack]

> we can’t even predict with certainty whether it will rain tomorrow

It is very similar to the birthday paradox - it is an order of magnitude easier to predict average weather, than the exact weather at a specific time.

Despite that, we care about the former for our long term survival, and for the latter on whether to put on a rain coat today.

[Shekelphile]

It isn't a prediction as much as it is a simple fact. Runaway greenhouse is inevitable, if we continue doing things to increase the greenhouse effect while simultaneously dropping the planet's albedo then the runaway greenhouse will happen much sooner.

Pretty much every 'breakthrough' in climate research in the last few decades has been finding new data showing we are dropping the planet's albedo much faster than expected. The biggest climate shock we have experienced in the last 20 years has been reduction in use of bunker oil fuel in ships which was masking the albedo loss from ice melt by flooding the upper atmosphere with reflective particulate pollution.

I am not worried about the increase in severe weather as much as I am worried about runaway greenhouse pretty much instantly destroying all multicellular life on the planet.

[mikestew]

Anyone that has revisited a glacier they visited 10-20 years ago can see with their own eyeball(s) that the glaciers might still be there, but not for long at this rate. Besides, it begs the question of who made this “prediction” to begin with (yes, the U. S. National Parks Service at Glacier NP, which they’ve since corrected after much-deserved ridicule.)