5 ms·

Anthropogenic warming is increasing at a non-linear rate. If you are not preparing practically, financially, and emotionally for this fact, you are being myopi

by timst4 4y ago

Anthropogenic warming is increasing at a non-linear rate. If you are not preparing practically, financially, and emotionally for this fact, you are being myopic. I still hold out hope for fusion-based geo-engineering or radical innovation to battery technology. However, with every day that passes the potential for these solutions seems to further elude us.

swader999 4y ago
Source on that first sentence?
- medion 4y ago
  There are thousands. Plus, just look around.
  - drno__ 4y ago
    That doesn't answer their question.
    - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
      Your account was one minute old when posting this retort. I think that answers something. As for curious folks, they're highlighting the text in Q and r-clicking their way to answers.
- culi 4y ago
  actually seems pretty linear so far (tho extremely steep) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... But most climate scientists agree there are many runaway effects we're headed for pretty directly like - the runaway greenhouse effect - ocean acidification causing the ocean to be less able to take up CO2 (the ocean is estimated to have offset 30-50% of co2 emitted by fossil fuels) - more droughts -> deforestation -> hotter temperatures -> more droughts, etc I could go on but you could also just read the IPCC reports. Believe it or not their quite easy to parse even for a layman. They make two versions of them, one for policymakers and one for academics but in my experience the academically oriented reports are actually more readable and useful https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ If you want to skip to the most depressing/dooming one check out the 2019 report on oceans and the cryosphere
  - swader999 4y ago
    IPCC reports tell a fairly good story imo. The earth is much greener for instance due to CO2.
xyzelement 4y ago
When I was a kid in the 90s I had a teacher who was freaking out about peak oil. He was "preparing frantically" for it through extreme measures like not having children. A few decades out, all those who were too "myopic" to freak turned out to be the winners. Like, if you were too dumb to know about peak oil you ended up making smarter decisions. I think there's a healthy chance we'll look at our current mindset in a similar way a few years/decades out. Frankly, I think the tide is already shifting. Even in this thread, enough folks are comfortable to say "just ain't that worried about it" which would have been unthinkable to admit even a few months ago.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  > which would have been unthinkable to admit even a few months ago. That's more about feeling safe to be publicly seen to dissent. For people's actual beliefs you'd have to look at "revealed preferences" sort of things.
- culi 4y ago
  > unthinkable to admit even a few months ago not sure what social groups you spend time in but I'd have guessed the majority of Americans don't really care. While two thirds of Americans think the government should do more to address it. In Gallup polling asking Americans which issue is the most important to them, only 2% put climate change as their top issue. The peak in 2022 was 5%. Also in May: - the govt/leadership, 19% - inflation, 18% - economy in general, 12% - immigration, 8% - unifying the country, 5% As someone who's organized climate strikes and protests I am definitely not surprised by these results. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp...
  - rcme 4y ago
    I've gone from caring about climate change to complete apathy. The reason for my change in mindset is that I don't want to live in a world envisioned by climate change activists. A few examples: 1) I want to live in a world where people can fly. I want my children to see the world and experience different cultures. 2) I want to eat meat. 3) I want to enjoy the benefits of concrete. There aren't any practical methods of achieving carbon-neutral air travel, meat, and concrete (among many, many other things). The changes often proposed by climate activists are to stop flying and eating meat (I don't often see it suggested to stop using concrete because most people realize it's impossible). I don't know what the world will be like if we continue on our path. Perhaps climate change will ruin everything, perhaps it won't be as bad as predicted, or maybe we'll find a solution (e.g. geoengineering) I do know that life without modern conveniences is worse than life today. So to me, the choice is between something that might not have a future vs. something that definitely doesn't have a future.
random314 4y ago
How does one prepare for this financially? I am at a total loss!
Schroedingersat 4y ago
No miracle technology is needed. Just the will to use the solutions we have. Solar + wind + pumped hydro + transmission is better than any thermal neutron based fusion generator could ever be, and the toolkit does not end there. The only ingredients that really need improving are iron nitride magnets and undersea Al cables. The grossest excesses of the wealthiest 10% need reigning in, but other than that, abundance can exist for all.
todd8 4y ago
I agree that it is unlikely to be increasing precisely linearly, but do you have a more specific claim? It is my understanding that the GCMs in use have many “tunable” parameters some of which are strongly stochastic, the component of the models are coupled, there are feedback loops that are poorly understood—some positive some negative, these feedback loops operate over all possible time scale from minutes to centuries. The systems of differential equations describing the models will not be analytic and worse will have chaotic solutions. The dozens of existing GCMs don’t agree, but I’m not an expert so I can’t know which ones to trust. Furthermore, expert climate researchers very careers are at stake so there is no effort that I can detect to make all the data sets, source code, and design justifications open in ways to allow inspection by outsiders like myself. I have worked professionally on environmental models only twice (over 40 years ago). One had the worst code I ever had to review (and I’ve taught CS at the university level!) and the other made simplify assumptions so ridiculous that the results were meaningless. I used to be able to download pictures of hand written recorded weather station temperature data from 100 years ago. Now, I can no longer get to it from NOAA or NASA websites. What happened to it? (Perhaps, my Google-foo is failing me.) I think many would agree that climate research is important or even existentially important for humankind. We already fund the research with our tax dollars. Why can’t the research be performed as openly as free software foundation projects? If I’m curious about the kind of LRU algorithm used by the ZFS file system cache, I can just clone the repo and read it myself. If I don’t understand why an Emacs feature has been deprecated, I can peruse the emacs-dev mailing list archive. I want everyone (and especially those that are climate scientists) to have easy access to the data and climate models.

by timst4 4y ago

swader999 4y ago

Source on that first sentence?

medion 4y ago
There are thousands. Plus, just look around.
- drno__ 4y ago
  That doesn't answer their question.
  - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
    Your account was one minute old when posting this retort. I think that answers something. As for curious folks, they're highlighting the text in Q and r-clicking their way to answers.
culi 4y ago
actually seems pretty linear so far (tho extremely steep) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... But most climate scientists agree there are many runaway effects we're headed for pretty directly like - the runaway greenhouse effect - ocean acidification causing the ocean to be less able to take up CO2 (the ocean is estimated to have offset 30-50% of co2 emitted by fossil fuels) - more droughts -> deforestation -> hotter temperatures -> more droughts, etc I could go on but you could also just read the IPCC reports. Believe it or not their quite easy to parse even for a layman. They make two versions of them, one for policymakers and one for academics but in my experience the academically oriented reports are actually more readable and useful https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ If you want to skip to the most depressing/dooming one check out the 2019 report on oceans and the cryosphere
- swader999 4y ago
  IPCC reports tell a fairly good story imo. The earth is much greener for instance due to CO2.

xyzelement 4y ago

When I was a kid in the 90s I had a teacher who was freaking out about peak oil. He was "preparing frantically" for it through extreme measures like not having children. A few decades out, all those who were too "myopic" to freak turned out to be the winners. Like, if you were too dumb to know about peak oil you ended up making smarter decisions. I think there's a healthy chance we'll look at our current mindset in a similar way a few years/decades out. Frankly, I think the tide is already shifting. Even in this thread, enough folks are comfortable to say "just ain't that worried about it" which would have been unthinkable to admit even a few months ago.

tbrownaw 4y ago
> which would have been unthinkable to admit even a few months ago. That's more about feeling safe to be publicly seen to dissent. For people's actual beliefs you'd have to look at "revealed preferences" sort of things.
culi 4y ago
> unthinkable to admit even a few months ago not sure what social groups you spend time in but I'd have guessed the majority of Americans don't really care. While two thirds of Americans think the government should do more to address it. In Gallup polling asking Americans which issue is the most important to them, only 2% put climate change as their top issue. The peak in 2022 was 5%. Also in May: - the govt/leadership, 19% - inflation, 18% - economy in general, 12% - immigration, 8% - unifying the country, 5% As someone who's organized climate strikes and protests I am definitely not surprised by these results. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp...
- rcme 4y ago
  I've gone from caring about climate change to complete apathy. The reason for my change in mindset is that I don't want to live in a world envisioned by climate change activists. A few examples: 1) I want to live in a world where people can fly. I want my children to see the world and experience different cultures. 2) I want to eat meat. 3) I want to enjoy the benefits of concrete. There aren't any practical methods of achieving carbon-neutral air travel, meat, and concrete (among many, many other things). The changes often proposed by climate activists are to stop flying and eating meat (I don't often see it suggested to stop using concrete because most people realize it's impossible). I don't know what the world will be like if we continue on our path. Perhaps climate change will ruin everything, perhaps it won't be as bad as predicted, or maybe we'll find a solution (e.g. geoengineering) I do know that life without modern conveniences is worse than life today. So to me, the choice is between something that might not have a future vs. something that definitely doesn't have a future.

random314 4y ago

How does one prepare for this financially? I am at a total loss!

Schroedingersat 4y ago

No miracle technology is needed. Just the will to use the solutions we have. Solar + wind + pumped hydro + transmission is better than any thermal neutron based fusion generator could ever be, and the toolkit does not end there. The only ingredients that really need improving are iron nitride magnets and undersea Al cables. The grossest excesses of the wealthiest 10% need reigning in, but other than that, abundance can exist for all.

todd8 4y ago

I agree that it is unlikely to be increasing precisely linearly, but do you have a more specific claim? It is my understanding that the GCMs in use have many “tunable” parameters some of which are strongly stochastic, the component of the models are coupled, there are feedback loops that are poorly understood—some positive some negative, these feedback loops operate over all possible time scale from minutes to centuries. The systems of differential equations describing the models will not be analytic and worse will have chaotic solutions. The dozens of existing GCMs don’t agree, but I’m not an expert so I can’t know which ones to trust. Furthermore, expert climate researchers very careers are at stake so there is no effort that I can detect to make all the data sets, source code, and design justifications open in ways to allow inspection by outsiders like myself. I have worked professionally on environmental models only twice (over 40 years ago). One had the worst code I ever had to review (and I’ve taught CS at the university level!) and the other made simplify assumptions so ridiculous that the results were meaningless. I used to be able to download pictures of hand written recorded weather station temperature data from 100 years ago. Now, I can no longer get to it from NOAA or NASA websites. What happened to it? (Perhaps, my Google-foo is failing me.) I think many would agree that climate research is important or even existentially important for humankind. We already fund the research with our tax dollars. Why can’t the research be performed as openly as free software foundation projects? If I’m curious about the kind of LRU algorithm used by the ZFS file system cache, I can just clone the repo and read it myself. If I don’t understand why an Emacs feature has been deprecated, I can peruse the emacs-dev mailing list archive. I want everyone (and especially those that are climate scientists) to have easy access to the data and climate models.