11 ms·
Rapid warming may tip AMOC at 2°C, slower warming may avert collapse
- wartywhoa23 1mo agoI heard in 1988 that we all must be dead by now from the ozone hole.
- DennisP 1mo agoGood point, we should probably do the same thing with our carbon emissions that we did with the chemicals that deplete ozone. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 successfully phased out over 99% of them.
- OroPla 1mo agoThe hole is still there as far as I can tell, though. I hate it when the news cycle alerts people and then never gives out updates and closure.
- wartywhoa23 1mo agoIt's called agendas. The world is full of issues everyone is okay with until they are presented as apocalyptic to the public. Like seasonal flu whose annual death toll is in the range of 600-1200 thousands. And then, as easily forgotten as soon as there's a new scarecrow on the table. With weather prediction accuracy of 90% for 5 days, 50% for 10 days and basically that of a TRNG for longer terms, what makes you all so sure you're facing a manmade climate apocalypse (you all partook in, by the way) and not a natural harmonic in the weather fractal?
- triceratops 1mo agoBecause climate isn't weather. We don't know the temperature 12 months from now (August 2027) but we know it'll be warmer that it will be 3 months from now (November 2026).* This is common sense. *If you live in the Northern hemisphere.
- Lord-Jobo 1mo agoThis is really embarrassing to write in public, to be frank. Weather and climate are not the same thing, they are several orders of magnitude different in scope. This is first grader information, typically. Predicting weather relies on metrics like wind, pressure, moisture in tight local areas, they can change hundreds of percent in that scope within 24 hours. Predicting climate relies on information like co2 levels, ocean temperatures, or glacier melt rates. If any of those changes hundreds of percent in 24 hours the entire planet would be fucking dead instantly. Weather prediction relies in records going back in the range of 30-70 years. Climate prediction relies on records going back MILLIONS of years. Comparing the two is like comparing the ripples in your bathtub to the movements of the heavenly bodies. It’s asinine.
- wartywhoa23 1mo ago[flagged]
- phtrivier 1mo agoThe news that something is going better is a bit less "selling" than the news that something is going bad. But this is hacker news, we're supposed to be elite, and so, reading news from MIT [1] : yes, the hole is still there, but it's smaller, because WE ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING. Okay, the "something" was really "shift to cheaper stuff as we would have done anyway". But, still. We can do stuff. And people choose to be on the side of doing stuff (or at least trying), the side of doing nothing, or the side of making the problem actually worse. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2025/study-healing-ozone-hole-global-reduction-cfcs-0305 https://news.mit.edu/2025/study-healing-ozone-hole-global-re...
- Lord-Jobo 1mo agoLike a lot of climate sized issues, the ozone hole was a rate based issue, In that our rate of “hole growing” was the real problem that needed addressing immediately. And the rates have MASSIVELY improved thanks to the global CFC actions. Current direction of rate change show that we reach zero depletion (rate of 0.0 ozone loss) by late 203x, with zero hole in late 20xx (rate of -x.x as it heals). That’s a very considerable turnaround for damage we did over the course of 30 years.
- OroPla 1mo agoYes, but the news cycle only liked the topic when it could be outraged. There were no large headlines explaining how things were resolved, which is what I was complaining about.
- podgietaru 1mo agoWE FIXED THAT. We literally listened to professionals, introduced legislation and fixed it. The worst possible example you could use.
- wartywhoa23 1mo agoIf YOU fixed that, what stops YOU from fixing this again?
- podgietaru 1mo agoJust the stupidest take you could ever have, well done.
- karmakurtisaani 1mo agoYou don't deserve downvotes for calling out obvious idiocy.
- gspr 1mo agoPeople like you.
- wartywhoa23 1mo agoHow? By asking what stops you?
- gspr 1mo agoBy derailing the conversation.
- phtrivier 1mo ago"WE" is an interesting word, isn't it ? The author obviously meant "humanity". Not "him and a bunch of friends". That being said, this is hacker news, this is for the elite, and startups can disrupt everything, etc... What can "you and a bunch of friends" do to fix the issue" ? Because, the people "preventing" us from fixing the issue here are, basically, the whole oil and gas industry, plus the electorate. Which, interestingly, is partly... "WE".
- wongarsu 1mo agoAnd we fixed the ozone hole by taking decisive action internationally banning the worst ozone-destroying gases
- VeninVidiaVicii 1mo agoWeird how something was done about that though
- jalk 1mo agoPretty trivial to replace CFC with HCFC gases (which breaks down more easily in the atmosphere) compared to moving away from fossil fuels.
- bakies 1mo agoLuckily the Montreal protocol was implemented and CFCs were banned. Something like that should be considered for more green house gasses. Maybe Paris?
- DangitBobby 1mo agoThis exact sentiment has been expressed and addressed ad nauseum.
- wesleywt 1mo agoGlad you brought that up. Because we fixed it. Now because of ignorance, we are not fixing this. As a person without kids, its not my problem. Strange that anti-science conservatives wants us to have more children while willfully destroying their future.
- toasty228 1mo ago> As a person without kids, its not my problem. If you're under 50 it definitely will be your problem
- quickthrowman 1mo agoCFC elimination worked, but switching refrigerants is a lot easier than not burning hydrocarbons.
- gmuslera 1mo agoToo bad all seems that we are heading to even faster rate of warming. It may end being something we will see by next decade. And it won't be the only big thing that will be sensibly changing by then.
- spwa4 1mo agoWhy? Deindustrializing especially Europe moved factories into coal powered regions. It was put forward as green policy, but how can this result be a surprise to anyone?
- alephnerd 1mo agoIf that was the case, then global GHG emissions would have remained roughly stagnant for over 2 decades. The reality is the world got richer, and households who 30 years ago would have had little access to electricity, finished manufactured goods, and automotive vehicles can now purchase those. Go visit a village in rural China, India, or Vietnam - 30 years ago plastic bags were nonexistent and industrial fertilizers were rationed, and now tetrapaks, plastics, industrial fertilizers, and heavy machinery like tractors and trucks are everywhere. In 2000, China and India's HDIs were comparable to Cameroon and Ethiopia's present HDI. That isn't the case in 2023 (UNDP HDI calculations have a 2-3 year lag because transnational data collection is hard). And large, poor countries like Pakistan (260 million), DRC (100 million), and Ethiopia (139 million) are now hitting developmental indicators comparable to those two in the early 2000s. Most countries have chosen to use both GreenTech and Coal to expand electricity generation from Vietnam [0] to India [1] to Indonesia [2]. You are talking about 3 billion people living in an economic region that is expected to see 6-8% GDP growth rates for at least the next decade. And even countries at the lower end of the developmental cycle like Pakistan [3][4] and Ethiopia [5] are now doing the same. Frankly, it doesn't matter what reduction Europe does (and Europe's GHG emissions reduction has been massive [6]) because India, ASEAN, and LatAm's GHG emissions expansion eats up any reduction from the EU-27 and US. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-allows-coal-miners-raise-output-meet-power-generation-demand-2026-06-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-allows-coal-... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-fuels-global-growth-planned-coal-mining-capacity-report-says-2026-08-13/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-fuels-global-g... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-coal-power-phase-out-plan-risk-due-stalled-international-funding-2025-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-coal-power... [3] - https://www.climatepolicylab.org/climatesmart/2022/1/27/what-drives-pakistans-coal-fired-power-plant-construction-boom https://www.climatepolicylab.org/climatesmart/2022/1/27/what... [4] - https://www.thefridaytimes.com/19-Jun-2026/thar-coal-pakistan-s-imperative-energy-sovereignty-economic-resilience https://www.thefridaytimes.com/19-Jun-2026/thar-coal-pakista... [5] - https://afrinz.ru/en/2026/07/there-is-a-request-to-supply-60-000-tonnes-of-coal-a-month-russian-trade-representative-in-ethiopia-discusses-prospects-for-russian-business/ https://afrinz.ru/en/2026/07/there-is-a-request-to-supply-60... [6] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1980..latest&country=USA~CHN~Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~IND~European+Union+%2828%29~RUS~OWID_AFR~North+America+%28excl.+USA%29~OWID_SAM~OWID_OCE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
- josefritzishere 1mo agoThis is a tepid sort of optimism.
- arjie 1mo agoI went to Glacier National Park a while ago and stood before a sign that said "The glaciers you see will be gone by year 20xx" or something like that. The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone. I understand the motivation. The reality is that an action of strength A is required to create outcome X, but if one expresses this need, it's likely one achieves only an action of strength A- < A and consequently the outcome X- != X. This encourages us to say "we need an action of strength A+ or we will get the outcome X-". The hope is that the discount that people apply on the prediction results in an action of strength A' ~ A and an outcome X' ~= X. But public exhortation is a repeated game and unless you're Heaven's Gate the success of your popularized predictions has a significant effect on the discount that the public applies to your predictions. Failed predictions have an effect on the discount rate asymmetric to the direction. It is likely that a successful public authority allows some number of people to experience catastrophe pour encourager les autres. Attempting a zero error rate by biasing to zero catastrophe is likely to cause repeated discounting until true catastrophe cannot be averted. I'm reminded me of the short story The Wandering Earth. Spoilers to follow so don't read if you care. In the story, a group of scientists determine that the Sun is going to flare enough to kill everyone, so all of humanity mobilizes to install massive engines to move the Earth far enough to survive while creating technology that survives the dark. After years of traveling to past Pluto, no Sun catastrophe materializes, resulting in a massive Earthwide revolt that eventually takes control of the control center and the scientists and government officials are sentenced to death by walking into the cold waste. Just as the last of them dies, the Sun flares as predicted, just a little later. In a democracy, credibility is an important resource. To avert actual existential catastrophe, it is better to err on the side of local under-predicted disaster. It is probably best to let Rancho Palos Verdes fall into the ocean without compensating the homeowners. It is probably best to let the Texan flood plains flood and people to lose their homes entirely. It is probably best to let the Californians lose their homes to the wildfires.
- Noaidi 1mo ago> went to Glacier National Park a while ago and stood before a sign that said "The glaciers you see will be gone by year 20xx" or something like that. The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone. Why is it OK for Elon Musk to blow up spaceship after spaceship and everyone says well that’s the way you get it right, but a couple of Climate scientists put up a sign that is maybe a decade or two too early and all hell rains down on them? What does Elon get credibility yet? Climate scientists don’t? It’s because we choose who we give credibility to. And as a species, we are stupidly optimistic or willing fully blind.
- podgietaru 1mo agoIt'll never be too late to mitigate even worse effects. Remember that the defeatism is what people who want no change want.
- 1attice 1mo agoOh, it can be too late. Positive feedback loops and so forth.
- karmakurtisaani 1mo agoYes, but we don't know that. So mitigation is the only rational action.
- 1attice 1mo agoMaybe, maybe not. Rationality is not settled, and us philosophers argue about it all the time. :) What you want to say is that group survival is less and less likely the more we prevaricate, and acknowledging the severity of the situation may lead some people, perhaps many, to disengage. I would argue that this can be both rational, on an individual level; a dying man might blamelessly and rationally choose to smoke a cigarette, long after the cancer set in. What you are noticing, and rightfully afraid of, is that the window of time in which it is rational to act will close long before the heat kills us. Moreover, I can't think of a way of proving that this window has not yet closed, which means that, pending an argument, it might already have elapsed, or just about to. Scary stuff.
- jmclnx 1mo agoAnother way of saying "thoughts and prayers" :) Drastic mitigations need to start now, talking will do nothing. But with people voting in leaders like Trump, nothing will happen. And remember, when gas prices was high during Biden's Admin. ? He did all he could to get them lower, including opening up new oil fields. So both "sides" are to blame. We should have let the fossil fuel prices rise and force people to change their way of life. Instead our descendants will be force to change in ways that will be far worse then we would have if we started years ago.
- OroPla 1mo agoGiven how we are at the tail end of a small ice age, shouldn't it be expected that temperatures recover to what they were previously? I never quite understood how climate is simultaneously too complicated to understand and predict the weather accurately while also a solved problem that we just need to take action on. And somehow the action we need to take is more taxation? Since I keep hearing about this for at least 30 years now and still nobody took action the whole thing might be a bit more complicated than what the news media would have you know.
- alephnerd 1mo agoNobody took action because the global south (logically) decided that economic growth and rising living standards is worth the global cost.
- triceratops 1mo agoWarming today is because of historic emissions from developed countries. If the global south didn't develop they'd still face climate catastrophe, only maybe 40 years later. And they'd have weaker economies to face it with.
- phlakaton 1mo ago1. The global temperature has never in human history done what it's doing now. 2. Weather isn't the same as climate. They operate on way different scales and timelines. Uncertainty in the one does not necessarily map to uncertainty in the other. 3. Climate change is most definitely not a solved problem. We know some big things we can do, and none of them are easy.
- cachius 1mo agoCan't we just pour the waste water from desalination plants into the arctic abyss to keep AMOC going?
- SlightlyLeftPad 1mo agoOnce warming gets to a point we may not need desalination plants. The boil off from the ocean will perpetuate rainfall. Clean water for everyone. Never mind the 100+ mph winds that go along with that.
- drewg123 1mo agoWe need to get serious about geo-engineering of some form or another. We have seen time and time again that we simply do not have the willpower to reduce climate change. So I'm becoming convinced that the only short- and medium-term solution is geoengineering to stop global warming.
- cachius 1mo agoJust posted the idea for a win-win reuse of desalination waste water in the arctic depths in a sibling comment! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283840#49286264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283840#49286264
- christkv 1mo agoThere is no way geoengineering could go wrong right and make things worse. We really understand complex systems right? No way we would be like toddlers messing with powers we barely understand.
- cachius 1mo ago> geoengineering could go wrong Sure. If one path leads to certain doom and the other into the unknown, which one do you choose?
- Lord-Jobo 1mo agoThe third path that is constantly being pushed against by rubes, dishonest hacks, and large moneyed interests. And intentionally left out of conversations like this by people addicted to simplistic thinking and binary fallacies