> “The more the ice melts, the more sea surface is exposed, the more iodine is emitted, the more particles are made, the more clouds form, the faster it all goes,” Kirkby said.
A positive feedback loop. Not good.
Reminds me of a passage from Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael". A man jumps off a cliff in a winged contraption. As he plummets to the ground, he truly believes for a short period that he is flying. If our biosphere is more fragile than once thought, I wonder if our current period will be humanity's short flight?
Meta - I only recently discovered Quanta Magazine, and I'm very much enjoying it.
Many years ago I abandoned Scientific American when it became overtly politicized. I don't necessarily disagree with the values they demonstrated, but part of the reason I enjoy reading science publications is for the opportunity to get away from political polarization for a while, and their editorial change took that enjoyment away from me.
So I left SA, and found American Scientist magazine, which up until the last issue or two had maintained a separation from politics. However, they've now become explicitly political, as demonstrated in conversation here on HN about a recent article [1]. Not only have they dragged in the woke politics, but if this issue, and this article especially, are any indication, they've also drastically affected the quality of the science reporting.
In disgust from AS's capitulation, I looked around for other sources of science journalism that could deliver something a couple notches more in-depth than, say, Discover or Pop Mech, but still stay aloof from politics. So far Quanta Magazine is the only thing I've found, but they are pretty good.
I've noticed that too about Scientific American. Its like circa 2015 a switch flipped and they became a completely different magazine. Anyway I found it much more informative to just go straight to the source in most cases and subscribing to peer-reviewed scientific journals. For example, can select any subject in Nature and get a RSS feed
As arctic ice has decreased over the last couple of decades, I wonder if there is now noticably more cloud coverage over the arctic, and/or whether, over that period, the coverage has diverged upwardly from what current models would predict for the period.
I imagine that the latitude matters, too. Near the poles, the sun is coming in at such an oblique angle that any given surface area isn't getting much heating effect from it anyway, so it's easier for the insulating blanket effect to be a net positive.
I only skimmed the article, but it had me wondering about the same.
There's been talk before about trying to form artificial clouds over the ocean in order to reduce warming. I'd be very curious to hear how this might relate to that. Is it possible that man made clouds could drift to the poles and make everything worse?
They can be relatively localized. Consider contrails, which with the grounding of air travel in the US after 9/11 had climate impacts that could be studied.
Climate change deniers are not the problem. The problem are people who admit that climate change exists and is a serious problem but then do nothing substantial about it. Very few of our politicians are climate change deniers, but all of them fail to implement appropriate measures to reduce CO2 emissions quickly enough.
> Very few of our politicians are climate change deniers
No idea whether 10 years made much of a difference, but in 2011 it was "more than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators" said "that the threat of global warming, as a man-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter "hoax"" https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/magazine/27FOB-WWLN-t.htm...
I agree, they are not doing climate science. Instead, they are equating changes in global climate over time with differences in local climate in space and then extrapolating that "simplifying assumption" into absurd conclusions, such as that a 5 degree increase in the average temperature of the globe would only reduce global GDP by 5 percent.
> In reality, we only have about 10-15 years before complete ecological collapse.
"In reality, climate change is a pre-text for Marxist takeover of the economy.... Question is, what's in it for you to repeat the lies of communist revolutionaries?"
If we just ignore the scientific consensus, we can play this game all day.
> Climate change deniers are not the problem. The problem are people who admit that climate change exists and is a serious problem but then do nothing substantial about it.
But those are climate change deniers.
The stages of denial are denying that the problem exists, admitting it exists but denying we're responsible, admitting we're responsible but denying anything need be done, admitting something need be done but saying it's too late.... and so on. All of these different excuses are put forth by the same people on different days of the week and as the needs of the current argument demand. We saw the same thing with cigarette makers, leaded gasoline makers, or any other public health issue.
It's just a blizzard of justifications for why humans shouldn't do anything about the Earth getting 5-6-7-8 degrees C warmer so that my transnational corporation can keep making money now. They're all climate change deniers.
They should be imprisoned as well. The Earth does not belong to us, rather we belong to the Earth. The Earth is more important than we are, we should put the Earth's needs ahead of our own needs. We must stand up for the rights of the Earth, or else human rights will be impossible to maintain. Anyone sacrificing the Earth for profit is committing genocide as well as ecocide.
For that you need support from a large majority of the general populace, who unfortunately are just fine with the status quo (or the politicians would need to act differently to get reelected).
The majority of the world's populace is scared of climate change. There's more than enough of us to eliminate the rich if we work together. Countries are an outmoded and unsustainable concept that only serve to artificially empower the rich. Global Ecosocialism is the only way to avert climate catastrophe.
The way to eliminate the rich is for us to band together and strip them of their assets, then they will no longer be rich.
I updated my comment to clarify that eliminating the rich does not mean killing them. We must become a planet of equals, working together to be sustainable. Anyone working against sustainability should be thrown in prison. Technology will not save us, only drastically reducing our consumption and pollution will.
> Anyone working against sustainability should be thrown in prison.
Anyone working against the state, against the current of history, has forfeit his right to exist. This is justified by the beacon on the hill, which is communism ("a planet of equals"). Sounds familiar.
On some level I admire you because you're really just extending commonly held ideas to their logical conclusion. That's something most people don't have the guts to do. But the lesson here is that we absolutely cannot extend these "big ideas" as you've done. We have to exist in an indeterminate state and avoid totalizing our worldviews. In other words, you should find a way to advocate for measures to deal with climate change without sounding like a psychopath.
a psychopath would be calling for executions of these people, not simply stripping their assets and throwing them in prison.
We only have about 10-15 years until complete climate collapse. The time for advocating gentle measures was 50 years ago. Which was done, and ignored by the ruling classes.
Now we only have time for drastic measures: An end to countries, and end to capitalism. Global Ecosocialist cooperation of the working classes, taking the means of production by force and ensuring only sustainable processes are continued.
There is no evidence that socialism (the variety that actually exists in the real world and not in your head) is any more ecologically friendly than capitalism.
I think it's deeply sad that you haven't learned the lessons of the 20th century. "Gentle measures" are the only way to make progress, we can't sever our connection to the past, drastic measures of the kind you're proposing have always resulted in the vivisection of actual human communities based on a quasi-religious understanding of what's going to happen in the future.
The Earth does not belong to us, rather we belong to the Earth. The Earth is more important than we are, we should put the Earth's needs ahead of our own needs. We must stand up for the rights of the Earth, or else human rights will be impossible to maintain.
Ecosocialism has never been tried, and it is now long past time. Stalin and Mao certainly didn't even try. And even if human communities are vivisected, so what? The Earth is more important.
The Earth is very much my religion and I stand by Her.
that is in terms of the pandemic and masks. this is a different discussion with broader goals.
Calling me a troll is a personal attack designed to discredit me. I have very different ideas and motivations than you do, but I am a true believer, not a troll.
The purpose of my discussion is to educate and inspire a global Ecosocialist revolution. The purpose of my account in general is to have interesting discussions. I have some pretty extremist views and I'm quite vocal about them in some discussions, that doesn't make me a troll.
Now, do you have anything constructive to say or are you just going to continue personal attacks?
I think you're being called a troll because you're proposing incarceration as a solution, and that's a fundamentally antiscientific position. Inconsistency + agression usually passes the duck test for a troll.
I'm not a scientist and have never claimed to be one. Having antiscientific positions is not a problem for me because science is, in this country, primarily a tool of capitalists.
I'm a Earth-worshipping socialist, but not a Maoist. if I were a Maoist I'd be calling for executions of climate change deniers, but I don't believe in killing for any reason, so instead I am calling for imprisonment of those who seek to harm the Earth. these beliefs are internally consistent, though perhaps not what you expect.
Climate change exists. It has always existed. Most of the northern hemisphere used to be covered with ice. Prior to that, it wasn't covered with ice.
Is it a serious problem? No. Is the Earth getting warmer because of human activity? Probably not.
Things that are a serious problem: Pollution, pesticides, increasing water scarcity due to population growth in (already) arid areas, loss of biodiversity due to a number of things, the corporate take over of government and society, over criminalization of society with unjust laws, endless wars where western nations kill the inhabitants of non-western nations.
There's much to be concerned about. Climate change is last on the list.
> Is the Earth getting warmer because of human activity? Probably not
This is just wrong. You are free to argue that 3° warming is no big deal, like one of your sibling comments does, but saying that humans are not responsible for climate change is factually wrong.
You can of course continue to believe whatever you like. You will most likely just have a harder time convincing other people of your beliefs if they are in contradiction with reality.
By reality, do you mean how the Earth was already warming, as evidenced by the fact that North America is no longer under miles of ice? Or is there a different reality where that warming magically stopped?
The reality that most of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels is due to humans. We know this because different CO2 sources have different carbon isotope ratios.
The reality that increased CO2 results in increased warming. We know this from various experiments and direct measurements.
The reality were we have satellites that can measure the incoming and outgoing solar energy and see that the Earth is gaining energy.
I don't know that many dispute the specific data you reference. I think the oppositional perspective is something along the lines of:
We have good measurements of various recent phenomena.
We have bad, inferred, or proxy data of various past phenomena.
We have limited data on cyclic global and extraterrestrial phenomena.
We mash these data into computer simulations of the earth, hit "run", and observe the result.
Herein lies the problem: we're feeding good, not so good, and incomplete data into an incomplete model of a chaotic system the size of the entire planet and projecting this data many years into the future to a result of impressively narrow margins.
We frequently update these models as we learn about new phenomena and interactions. We refine the data we input as we learn to better calibrate or infer its correctness. We run the simulation again and observe the results.
While the desire to improve our methods in the face of new information is a very scientific process, I think the objection is that there is a combination of a tremendous amount of hubris to trust such a large model of such a chaotic system, as well as an incentive structure that is tremendously vulnerable to abuse or corruption.
Of course it is absolutely scientific to be skeptical; that is, after all, a crucial component of the scientific process. That skepticism of this particular process exists is not only to be expected, but should also welcomed.
However, there is exceedingly little dissent within the scientific community. This alone should raise skepticism.
Now, I'm not talking about dissent about CO2's thermal properties or ways in which we measure things. Obviously these are testable, so we can maintain a certain level of confidence in their methods or results.
The global models—and actual, physical global system—are not testable. We cannot "try a little of this and a little of that" to pull apart how the emergent sum of all the parts affect this great chaotic system.
So we have a majority of the scientific community vociferously defending our projections—mostly because of unrelated but adjacent social reasons—and very few pushing the narrative that yes, in fact this is a very brittle process that ultimately thrives on faith.
At least, this is how I imagine a reasoned skeptic may form the justification for their skepticism...
We don't know that increased CO2 results in increased temperature. The temperature was already increasing long before human-based CO2 was increasing.
There is evidence in the geological record that CO2 increases lagged temperature increases. There is evidence in the geological record that CO2 levels, and temperatures, were much higher than they are today.
Water vapor and the sun are the two biggest inputs into the greenhouse effect on Earth, not CO2. CO2 is infinitesimal by comparison.
Go ahead, put those fingers in your ears. You'll be starving soon enough along with the rest of us.
You might want to check the news. The arctic has melted, temperatures have topped 100 degrees. The sea ice, where still present, is less than an inch thick. Commercial shipping is happening in winter without the aid of icebreaking ships. The Polar Vortex has gotten completely destabilized, sending the Jet Stream careening deep into southern latitudes (which is why Texas froze).
This is ecological doom knocking at our door. There are multiple, overlapping positive feedback loops occurring. You really should be paying attention and not just smugly pretending that you can "own the libs".
Willful blindness packaged as cleverness won't save you. Climate models show that we only have about 10-15 more years before complete climate collapse. Welcome to the anthropocene.
> Climate models show that we only have about 10-15 more years before complete climate collapse.
and here i am, waking up every day putting on my stupid pants and my stupid hoodie and meandering to my stupid laptop to make stupid little websites.
like normally i'm just going with the flow with this knowledge that the future is gonna suck but somedays like today it hits harder than it usually does when i see it written out this way
Don't fret. 'Scientists' (politicians that pretend to be scientists?) have been making this 'climate emergency' claim for generations now. It's all click-bait fearmongering.
At the risk of excessive snark, are those the same models that predicted the ice caps melting in the 90s? Speaking purely historically, climate models and scientists predicting global catastrophe has happened multiple times, actual global catastrophe has not.
Were this issue not highly politicized, I could openly question the implications of kind of failures without qualification :/
See, that last insult is exactly what I was hoping to avoid. "Hey, this particular field of endeavor has a poor track record of making bad predictions of doom" is a verifiable fact, and you just turned it into partisan shit-flinging.
Nobody's attempting to own anyone here, but thanks for lowering the standard of discourse substantially.
>Temperatures have topped 100 at the North Pole
No they have not. The highest temperature ever recorded was 56. Cite your sources.
sep_field silently edited their post to change "North Pole" to "the arctic".
Here are four countries that have given nature the same legal rights as humans. #BeLikeThem. Solutions are everywhere. Let's implement them and protect people and the planet. #ActOnClimate #nature #forests
After this covid fiasco, im done with models. You guys have fun supporting the climate austerity that is to come, I'm going to just believe that the earth has it's own regulation magic that we have not uncovered yet.
I share your pain in society's mishandling of covid, and understand your skepticism towards poorly applied models. Society is much more complex than most models can address.
The issue with the faith in the earth's own regulation magic is that it also assumes that the regulation magic is friendly to us, and/or that the goal of the regulation is to maintain a steady state which is good for humanity, or that it is even to maintain a steady state (maybe it's idea of 'regulation' is maintaining a chaotic cycle).
I used to joke that climate change was really the dinosaurs trying to come back; we are pumping FOSSIL fuels into the air with an end result of recreating a climate more similar to the warmer days when the dinosaurs roamed.
by issue, I mean "problems even if we assume that the earth's regulatory/homeostatic mechanisms are properly functioning."
That assumption is also problematic, if one allows for the possibility that our technological powers and population size mean we are pushing on the system faster than its regulatory mechanisms can compensate. Our bodies have highly tuned regulatory mechanisms to control body temp, which work amazingly well as long as ambient temps stay within a certain range. Outside that range, not so well.
> I'm going to just believe that the earth has it's own regulation magic that we have not uncovered yet.
Well, it, er, does, but it isn't very good (see ice ages), and operates on timescales that would be inconvenient to us. If humanity died out tomorrow, then CO2 levels would likely get back to normal eventually, but it's not really a _great_ solution, is it? We can hopefully do better.
This type of 'extinction leade' typifies why i switched teams. no one thinks that earth will become Venutian. flooding, soil loss, bio loss, whatever the worst part will be; extinction is not even on the table. fuck these models and the horses they ride in on.
A positive feedback loop. Not good.
Reminds me of a passage from Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael". A man jumps off a cliff in a winged contraption. As he plummets to the ground, he truly believes for a short period that he is flying. If our biosphere is more fragile than once thought, I wonder if our current period will be humanity's short flight?