17 ms·
Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest
- hellzbellz123 22d agono shit eh? This seems so wildly obvious that i don't really know how to read it. the Pacific North West hasn't seen significant snow in years, instead of our daily fall rain we've been getting awful downpours that flood everything followed by weeks of dry. snowpacks gone, reservoirs are running dry, fires are more and more devastating every year. when are we going to acknowledge this catastrophe that we are barreling towards? i can only hope that things start improving. between this and government im gonna lose it
- BugsJustFindMe 22d ago> when are we going to acknowledge this catastrophe that we are barreling towards? Not to be a total downer, but probably never unless all the Republicans in the US suddenly disappear? Like, remember who the "we" is in your question. Remember what policies they stand for and what methods they employ.
- igortg 22d agoIt's crazy because while the US is one of the biggest emitters per capita, it's also home of the brightest minds and have by far the most efficient research ad development capacity. So US govt. denial is a huge hit in our already tiny chances to save the planet from hell in the next 50yrs.
- FrustratedMonky 21d agoIs this still true? China seems to be winning now. And lead in solar, and robots.
- drstewart 21d agoChina seems to be winning in brightest minds by what metric? >And lead in solar, and robots. And new coal, don't forget about that.
- tialaramex 21d ago> And new coal, don't forget about that. For the last full year where we have data (2025), China made slightly less electricity from coal than the one before. Unlike Trump, China's authoritarian leadership seem to have their eye on the ball, China is on Earth so if we trash Earth's climate that's China's climate too. But also, more so than the gas which powers so much of Europe and America's electricity generators, coal is obviously poison, even the unburned coal looks like a movie prop to signify "Mysterious evil" The toxic waste from a gas power plant is a transparent gas that readily mixes with the atmosphere. Does it cause problems? Yes. But compared to "And here's a mountain of radioactive and highly toxic coal ash that's produced by our coal power plant" it's rather subtle.
- cryptopian 21d agoIt's important to remember how radical a change to electricity generation is. Apart from just new plants, you've got to keep the existing grid going, create new distribution infrastructure, reorganise supply chains and labour forces, and you'll also have old infrastructure aging out. It's not ideal, but a long term plan may involve building new fossil fuel generators in the immediate term
- tialaramex 21d ago> a long term plan may involve building new fossil fuel generators in the immediate term In all but some very extreme cases this is unaffordable because the fossil fuel generator is expensive to build and yet is increasingly stranded destroying any further value.
- FrustratedMonky 21d agoDo your own research. There are metrics. I'm done explaining to Republicans what they could just as easily go read in a book themselves.
- Arodex 21d agoA lot of the "brightest minds" are, and have always been, immigrants. Guess who is the main target of a purge in the US now.
- drstewart 21d ago[flagged]
- breakyerself 21d agoFor decades the US has managed to be the most powerful economy in the world while taking in tons of these immigrants. Rejecting them is likely to have a negative impact. Xenophobia comes at a cost.
- drstewart 21d agoWow. Powerful statement. Now, for those same decades was the US also using gas powered cars and coal fired plants? Sounds like we need to continue using those too! Also, wait till you see how badly the Canadian economy is poised to collapse: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-mobile.php?story=20260302153358551 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-mobile.php?story=20...
- breakyerself 21d agoIn that same time period we discovered global warming and ocean acidification as well as developed better ways of getting power. The only downside we've discovered for having an accepting immigration policy is xenophobic backlash. I don't know what point you're trying to make with that article. Less immigrants is causing hardship for their higher-ed system. How does that make your point?
- collinmcnulty 21d agoWhich is why foreign student visas are being handed out in greater numbers, right? Right? Oh. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/21/international-student-enrollment-us-visa-policies.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/21/international-student-enroll...
- bulatb 21d agoThe brightest minds in STEM are often loudly, proudly, confidently wrong on every single thing except their narrow specialty in STEM. Many of the people still rejecting climate change are scientists and engineers whose egos make them obligate contrarians.
- kakacik 21d agoMaybe step down from that ultra high horse a bit and smell the proverbial coffee - let say we do a public vote, I would trust say population of Switzerland 100000000x more than US one on any decent vote. Chinese will take over US in those aspects you write, if they already haven't done so. US population voted trump, lets not forget that. We (rest of the world, >95% of mankind) will never forget that, and the fact that he still has >5% support tells everybody all they need to know about current US and what to expect from it in future. All that says more than any wishful thinking that feels good and fuzzy warm inside.
- hyperhello 21d agoConsidering the open shenanigans they’ve been trying on the voting systems, it’s reasonable to believe they have been doing shenanigans the public hadn’t known about. The machinery of vote suppression is well known to these Jim Crow loving fascists.
- wwwald 22d agoThis. I'm appalled that there still seems to be the need to find _evidence_ for this.
- kuerbel 22d agoThose people are not convinced by evidence.
- criddell 21d agoWhich is why it's a bummer that the last good communicator on the topic was probably Al Gore. Lots of great science that I'm happy to see done, but there's nobody out there doing a very good job of making people care.
- breakyerself 21d agoI think Al Gore did more harm than good. He made himself the face of global warming and it helped spark a partisan backlash. There was a time when Republicans were not particularly skeptical of global warming. That shifted as climate change and Al Gore became more and more synonymous in the public consciousness.
- criddell 21d agoI thought Gore's road show was pretty good. It certainly changed how I thought about climate change, but I can understand your argument. Probably the last person who was able to effect big positive change was Nixon.
- Daishiman 21d agoIs that Al Gore's responsibility or is the Republican's responsibility of their policies being basically "anything that Democrats do is bad and therefore we oppose it"?
- breakyerself 17d ago
- p1dda 22d ago[flagged]
- rimworld 22d ago[dead]
- sixtyj 22d agoDecarbonization, reduction of produce (spending less), trash collection and reduction, less plastics… and hoping for the best that mankind wont mess it up more til 2050 - then the following 100 years (after 2050) shouldn’t be so hell as it seems so now… Unfortunately we as people cannot see our older ones so future planning is not so easy… Guns and ammo was the conclusion how to prepare for the future - in the book “10 Billion” by Stephen Emmott.
- imeron 22d agoIt's pointless to look for solutions that's against human nature.
- soco 22d agoSo the human nature is to kill ourselves or otherwise let ourselves die out? Sorry dude, I don't want to accept that - I don't even believe it.
- satvikpendem 22d agoYou don't have to accept it but seems like that's what is happening. Humans just don't seem to have the capacity for long term collective action against individual interests. Ultimately that may be what the Great Filter for us ends up being, maybe it'd have been different were we a hive mind.
- Timon3 21d agoOr: humans do have that capacity, but our system is explicitly set up to give the most power to the greediest among us, and these greedy people in power don't have that capacity.
- MachineMan 21d agoWhich means those greedy people don’t have power, but the illusion of power, and the positions at the top are gatekept by intermediaries that serve the one who actually holds the power.
- nielsbot 22d agoNot sure why these reports always say things like "suggest" instead of "is".
- defrost 22d agoBecause this is science, not religion. The thesis: Climate change is strengthening El Niño clearly uses the word "is". Everything else is evidence, both for and against the thesis subject to interpretation. Here it's "Something we can see in coral records correlates with what we'd expect given the thesis" The study doesn’t prove climate change is the culprit. But because the intensification coincides with rapid postindustrial warming and exceeds El Niño’s natural variability, the authors argue that human-driven warming is the leading explanation. These observed correlations may be directly or indirectly linked to the thesis, or (and this does happen) they may be an unrelated coincidence. As the weight of evidence in favour of a thesis builds, so does the confidence in the thesis itself.
- phtrivier 22d agoIn this case, even the authors seems to agree that the finding is not "consensus-level" yet. That being said, consensus would not necessarily settle the thing. Even when the worldwide scientific community reaches a consensus and accepts using plain language (as in "It _is_ unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land" [1]), you still have a number of politicians begging to differ. [2] [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/#A https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/summary-for-polic.... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/de-pire-en-pire-sur-france-5-marion-mar%C3%A9chal-ugcPost-7478477285617025026-f_7G/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/de-pire-en-pire-sur-france-5-... (Sorry, fr-fr)
- indianwashlets 22d ago[flagged]
- pfdietz 21d agoThis is quite sad, so I've felt a bit guilty for enjoying the summer we've had in upstate NY. Local farmers seem happy even though spring was a bit wetter than optimal. The corn is looking very good and the apple crop promises to be large. I will not be surprised if we get a lot of snow this winter.
- FrustratedMonky 21d agoWith climate change, there will be some winners. Until there is not. /edit. The meaning is, as the earth gets hotter, there will be winners, until it gets too hot for them too. Eventually it is too hot for all areas. But for a time, northern climates will be nice. Siberia could become a vast farm land, at same time there are no humans left at the equator. But that wont last either.
- pfdietz 21d agoTo be clear, I wasn't trying to sugarcoat climate change, just expressing some (mild) guilt.
- exhumet 21d agowhich is also totally fine, like unless you are running for president what can YOU as a single person do besides trying to do the right thing and living with the outcome of whatever whims of someone in charge will do.
- drstewart 21d ago[flagged]
- adrianN 21d agoPeople and ecosystems adapt to the status quo. The problem with climate change is not the temperature per se (earth has been hotter in the past) but the rate of change that makes adaption very difficult.
- deleted 21d ago
- Turfie 21d agoEach day I'm thinking, global politics and unification would solve this. And yet, every day, I see us getting removed further and further away from it.
- Squarex 21d agoThey would, but it is not going to happen. We need solutions that don't count on that.
- alansaber 21d agoAh yes no way global unification could go wrong. Send in the thunder warriors.
- bamboozled 21d agoSometimes I feel the same, and then sometimes I wonder if that "moving away feeling" is the last of the old breed who are hanging onto power, maybe the next step after this massive wave of ultra right wing stupidity is something much brighter ?
- kingleopold 21d agonice joke. yes they will solve their private jet fuel and private yacht fuel cost, they will solve all
- bko 21d agoThe western world has more or less come together to reduce emissions. If you look at US for instance emissions are down in abs terms. Not relative to gdp or per capital but total emissions. This holds even if you adjust for trade. The “problem” is there will always be independent upcoming nations like china and India that don’t really care to make sacrifices for collective goals. Their people are finally experiencing materially better lives and that comes w energy consumption. This will ultimately be solved by markets and technology. People 100y ago were concerned about horse crap flooding the streets and what solved that wasn’t some agreement to limit horses but the invention of the automobile. Same will happen here and it’s already beginning to happen https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states
- jdw64 21d agoWith climate change, it seems like poor people will die faster from 'climate poverty.' Science clearly points to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, but certain groups frame it as just another natural cycle of the Earth. When I was younger, I learned that science was something pure. But as I've grown older, it seems like science is really about how it's used—and who gets to use it.
- oliculipolicula 21d agohttps://philofecon.substack.com/p/notes-towards-a-definition-of-scientism https://philofecon.substack.com/p/notes-towards-a-definition... https://publish.uwo.ca/~jbell/univ.pdf https://publish.uwo.ca/~jbell/univ.pdf Otoh I think Grothendieck's point would be stronger today if his tribe of scientists are expanded or even replaced by "programmers" Fossil fuelled Data Centers might soon surpass shipping as CO2 producer, given that shipping might even be peaking Hackerism as the New Universal Church? Then you can hope to go to a (emotionally) warm place on Sunday, everyday Where the categorical imperative would be: if people want it, build it..
- jdw64 21d agoThe truth is, the more a developed country is positioned at the consumer end, the more inescapable these problems become in our lives. Our world relies on outsourcing the production of manufactured and consumer goods to developing nations. But separate from that structural reality, vested interests refusing to acknowledge their faults is an entirely different issue. Furthermore, I disagree with the radical ecological claims in the link. Humans might be developing technology that ends up destroying the public commons we call nature. However, I firmly believe there must be a better path to coexistence.
- olalonde 21d agoGreenhouse gas emissions also coincide with the greatest poverty reduction period in human history. Climate science is pretty close to a "pure" hard science. What's not pure are the sloppy geopolitical and socio-economic predictions built on top of it.
- alkonaut 21d agoWas snorkeling this winter in some tropical waters in asia and noticed how dead everything looked, compared to the same place 20 years ago. When I asked about it, the locals said "It's all from the same El Niño in 2015. It all died the same year". So there are vast areas of Coral that used to be fantastic in 2014 and which is dead since the 2015-16 season. It takes many decades to grow back if it ever does. And now we're about to have another.
- shymaple 8d agoYes, I totally agree with you. I had the same experience, the coral cover has decreased significantly over the last 1–2 decade, and the EL Nino is just accelerating it.
- sensanaty 21d agoI think there's a certain cohort of people who, quite literally, just want to watch the world burn for whatever reason, be it greed or simply misanthropy. Unfortunately they're the ones that seem to grasp for the reins of power the world over. It'd probably help if we didn't allow boomers any power whatsoever, considering they're not the ones that have to live with the consequences of their decisions and they hardly seem wiser than most.
- egonschiele 21d agoI have been door knocking in a swing county in Wisconsin, and the first question we ask is, "what is the top issue you care about?" I've had one person say "the environment", and a couple have said, "what's happening in America right now." Almost everyone else answers "cost of living". So if you're waiting for things to change, you will be waiting a while. Historically, something like 3.5 percent of the population need to be really engaged to make change happen, and the US isn't there right now, because we're all on our computers. The election coming up is an important one, so if you want to do something, start door knocking, become an election judge, sign up to be an observer at the polls, donate money. Indivisible is doing a lot of great, local, on-the-ground stuff, join your local chapter.
- pennomi 21d agoThe reason so few people care about climate change is that so few people truly understand it. They can see the grocery and housing bills, but CO2 in the atmosphere is some sort of invisible bogeyman to them, even though it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.
- criddell 21d agoLots of people understand the problem and even then it's hard to get them to care because the personal harm vs utility balance is so uneven. If I drive my car around today I contribute an infinitesimally small amount to the climate change problem while enjoying tremendous utility.
- abeppu 21d agoI think we gotta get people to see past the false dichotomy: part of their increased cost of living is due to climate change: - your home insurance is more expensive b/c fire/hurricane/etc risk is worse in your state - and you probably don't have flood insurance but the risks there are worse too - your electricity bill is worse b/c you're using AC more b/c it's hotter - climate change does have healthcare impacts, including expanded geographic range of a bunch of vector-borne illnesses, as well as acute issues during heat events. Even if you're not directly one of these patients, your health insurance costs will increase in part due to these risks. - replacing key infrastructure which is damaged by extreme weather is expensive - during extreme weather events, your ability to earn may be disrupted - and every business you spend at also has increased costs due to the same factors, which they pass on to you It turns out that multiple generations of emitting without paying attention to the externalities has created literal costs that we _all_ now bear, and these costs will continue to increase.
- radford-neal 21d ago[flagged]
- program_whiz 21d agothe link works for me
- radford-neal 21d ago.
- radford-neal 21d agoSorry, fumble fingering on my part...
- anonymousiam 21d agoIt would be easier to support making changes to our lifestyles to protect our future if the climate change alarmists weren't so bad about making outlandish predictions of doom. https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-clima...