Northern Antarctica lol

Isn't a bit premature to jump to "it's BS" just because one random commenter on some forum says it's wrong?

Journalists make lots of mistake, and it's good to keep that in mind, but random people in forums are even worse.

I won't put words in your mouth but given what you say - doesn't this imply calamity? So how do we explain why Net Zero is essentially collapsing? Why do a number of countries say one thing and do another? There's certainly no consensus that survival is at stake.

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Floating ice will displace exactly as much water as it does when it melts to water. Ice that melts on a land mess such as Greenland and Antarctica will raise the ocean level when it melts.

Only one way to find out... float some ice cubes in a glass of water and observe.

(Edit: I'm back to report the results. There was either no change in the water level, or a change below my measurement tolerance ;)

(Edit2: Here is a more serious take of that experiment: https://skepticalscience.com/Sea-level-rise-due-to-floating-...)

Not sea ice obviously but there are places where sea level is "dropping" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

It should be amazing to everyone that we've invented perpetual motion machines, and corporations are trying to suppress them for profit - exactly the same as certain conspiracy theorists predicted - and those conspiracy theorists are also trying to suppress the machines.

The only difference between current reality and the predictions of past conspiracy theorists is that the perpetual motion machines only work in direct sunlight.

Not spoiling a 17 year old book isn't a reasonable expectation.

Especially since the series continually reaches for increasingly gimmicky "Ah ha, but no one expected ____" deus ex machina to keep its plot moving.

A story that is ruined by "spoiling" isn't worth watching anyways.

SPOILER:

It did actually.

The high pressure at depth allows it to dissolve more gas.

Exactly the same reason you coke can out-gasses when you open it

The Biological Pump. Organic matter created at the surface (by photoplankton and by consumers) falls into the deep ocean, where other biological processes oxidize it back to CO2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_pump

Ignoring the possibility of tipping points with self-reinforcing feedbacks is like playing with matches near a gas station.

Of course the doomers have been wrong sometimes, here predicting an ice-free Arctic in September 2015 :

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/is-the-north-pole-n...

But I will still side with their painstaking lists of things that could go wrong, than with the insane mainstream, which mostly acts like they care first and foremost about increasing our supply of matches.

See also : https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/post-index/

And as a consequence, massive migration from inhabitable regions. Hard to imagine the implication when there are billions of people affected

Yes

Isn't the issue that historical data is consistent with the overturning model, which adds weight to our assumption that it has previously been stable. These new measurements (and observations?) are consistent with the overturning circulation weakening.

I agree with you in principle - my impression (perhaps wrong - not an expert) was that there are additional data points supporting the idea of a consistent status quo.

He's the only that says something that drastic in the article, and he's a physicist, not a climate scientist. The other two comments are from telecommunication engineers. I'd wait a bit to see what the general climate science community has to say about the study. Based solely on the facts reported in the paper I'd say the most worrying point is precisely that we don't know what's going on.

> You can argue with the author of the study saying that but I can't see an issue with an article reporting that they did, if that's what actually happened.

I think that's kind of the point: nobody knows if that's what actually happened and the study doesn't show any information to support any specific theory. I could be that (though I think it would be unlikely as we'd have probably seen a real steady decline in the ice sheet and not an up and down up), something else that is still concerning but not as severe, or maybe something that we didn't now before and is not as concerning.

>No, the new algorithms used to be determine this was created by ICM-CSIC who are also the publishers of this article.

Where does it say this? Also, it doesn’t matter what the co- author said, the study that he took part in literally does not support the statement.

Wtf? Links , substantiation!

There is nothing in the article you linked that explains why "low temperatures and the complex, ever-changing dynamics of sea ice" used to make the region "virtually inaccessible to satellites" but now no longer does.

Further, I did a search using "challenges of satellites in the Southern Ocean" and found no info, rather than plenty of info.

edit: I eventually found the following link which does seem to discuss some challenges, but does not indicate that they have been solved. It certainly does not support the claim that the region is "inaccessible to satellites".

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15481603.2023.21...

Just watch a pop sci docummentary on something you know about.

I was lucky enough to run into "how computers are made" on Discovery when I was fairly young. It was a serious shock and a learning experience.

> The stories and myths about the selfish people of our times will go on for millennia.

Except there is nothing inherently more selfish about ”people” today than at any point in history.

If anything, it might change humanity’s view of itself, and its capability to collectively handle major threats.

> And give rise to others as it has done so all along.

Too bad for the billions who are suddenly in the wrong place to survive.

... sounds like ignorance.

If its really just a half conscious defensive trigger, thanks to you and your kind responsible for that development.

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Some things are set in motion. But it's not clear if we have reached a state yet, where climate change will reinforce itself indefinitely.

Staying below 1.5 degrees global warming is very unlikely at this point. But every tenth of a degree counts. Humanity needs to be decisive in slowing down climate change. This is a matter of political will.

Two things: slowdown and adaptation. Slow CO2 emissions because every tons make it worse for +10 000yrs. Adaptation, because infrastructures changes are slow to do and the sooner we start the sooner we can absorb damage.

Climate advocates in general try to avoid implying that we've already crossed a threshold, as that breeds hopelessness.

They want decisive and ambitious action, you can't get that if we all turn to doomerism.

> Definitely past the point of no return.

We don't really know at what point that is. It's probably something we can only identify in hindsight. I find it bewildering that our approach is basically FAFO.

The keyword here is "Long term" I suppose, that can mean anything. I couldn't actually find where this claim comes from. The referenced paper doesn't seem to say anything about doubling CO2 concetrations.

We've been past the point of no return since the mid-90s.

The timeline isn't some far-off sci-fi scenario anymore. Millennials and Gen Z are basically the frontline generations

In my home town back in Russia they now easily grow the stuff of my unreachable back then in USSR childhood dreams - apricots, cherries (the large sweet ones). The children there though don't do backcountry skiing like i did 40+ years ago because there is no snow these years there. And Russia pumps out fossil fuels without any care. They feel that things like opening of the Northern Passage and more agriculture on the previously hardly suitable lands are great for their future (they aren't climate change deniers, they are believers. Like everybody else there, I was taught about climate change as a clearly established scientific fact in the 6th grade in 1985).

So, until somebody brings out 10+ aircraft carriers and enforces global climate accord, i don't see any progress happening here.

At double the current ppm it'll start to impact our cognitive abilities, we're not doing much about it now but wait until the average joe drops another 10 IQ points...

It's fine... Gen Alpha will figure it out by asking AI.

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It's not necessarily a doomsday cult as long as there is incentive to build green infrastructure.

AI is a massive waste of power in many (most?) cases, but electricity does not necessarily need to be generated in a way that releases CO2. Solar panels, wind farms, geothermic energy, and even nuclear plants can satisfy AI's requirements and only leave it to be a local problem.

Unfortunately, the USA, the government of country with the biggest impact per citizen as well as the hotbed of current AI development, has started taking down climate change related information to serve their oil baron masters. That leaves environmental responsibility with companies and their shareholders.

AI isn't a doomsday cult. It's the epitome of the "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders" meme in real life.

This is unrelated to this story which signs starting to show in 2016. The solution to this issue will not be if every AI data center disappeared tomorrow. It has not even been shown if this would help us at this point, as it is a feedback loop that is being triggered; CO2 will and have already dramatically increased due to it, probably more impactful than AI itself already. AI disappearing may help in other ways for sure, but this is an odd article to choose to piggyback on.

In terms of impact, AI remains very minor relative to all the other carbon intensive stuff we do. It's a few percent of overall power usage. And unlike many of those things, using renewable power for AI use cases is fairly straightforward from a technical point of view and also the cheapest thing to do long term. A lot of the current rise in emissions is data centers opting for more expensive dirty power because that's all they can get. That's the problem to fix. Because we're going to need a lot of clean power generation to transition away from all the current dirty power generation.

The good news is that that usage is creating high cost for them and an incentive to do something about that. Which is why MS, Amazon, etc. are very interested in investing in e.g. nuclear and renewables.

I'm not too worried about the long term impact of increased power usage by data centers. I think it's more interesting to focus on the big emitters: domestic and industrial heating, shipping, road transport, aviation, construction, etc. There is some movement there but it's very slow. Fixing that should increase demands on power grids and that's a good thing because investments are needed to make that better and cleaner and the most viable technical path to doing that is via renewables.

And it's not a zero sum game. AI delivers economical benefits as well. Including potential savings in labor, efficiency gains, and indeed power usage. I don't think becoming Luddites is really a realistic path. Not going to happen and quite pointless and ineffective to be calling for that. AI is happening and there's going to be more of it. Wasting energy on trying to put that cat back in the bag it escaped from is a mission impossible.

Was bitcoin the first technology that generated this sort of "waste of electricity" argument?

Are we going to use it for every new technology? It's a fairly easy stick to beat any tech with.

Does AI use more power than Facebook? Is one more deserving of the power than the other?

Electrical consumption does not emit greenhouse gasses.

Electrical production can emit greenhouse gasses, and there is an argument we should be inventing and investing in decarbonizing it.

Feeling the seeming recklessness, but in the grand scheme of things, it may be worthwhile to throw AI at the problem to validate existence, solutions etc. So “spending” this now vs later is at least unclear wrt to long term outcomes.

Not that I necessarily believe it, but isn't the rationale that technology allows us to scale without the need for additional humans? A bit in the same way that oil provides us many multiples of manpower?

So for example, if AI can replace the need for additional humans, then overall we're using net less energy?

It's a declaration of war against anyone living near the equator.

> It is a doomsday cult in the most literal sense.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. That this article is part of that doomsday cult (those worried about climate change)? If so, why not give it some credibility? Are you doubting the veracity of the linked articles? Because it seems like you are dismissing the claims presented in this article and the linked ones, attributing them to a doomsday cult. I may be getting it wrong, though.

The other meaning could be that you are referring to Silicon Valley's AI companies with their huge demand for power as the doomsday cult, and that they are to blame for the major reversal in ocean circulation.

In any case, it's not like we humans were intelligent enough to prevent climate change, or modify or adapt to it (depending on what your views are, human-made or just natural warming).

It looks like we're still dumb enough (we come from the apes, and they certainly are dumber than us) to not be able to deal with this problem, so it might be better to grant AI some room to compute, and maybe shrink some cities instead.

Honestly, these articles are borderline misinformation in my opinion. All of them do a lot of guesswork and cherry picking data to make cool headlines.

The first one chooses somewhat arbitrary date of 2019 to make the 51% figure stand out. Google scaled up a lot since 2019, I'd bet it's almost entirely unrelated to AI (well, at least wrt to LLMs).

The other two are just a guesswork, which is likely completely outdated because it's from last year and so many things have changed since then.

It's too expensive to be an AI bot these days. Cost of living, let alone making sensible answers to human prompts and generating images is just not profitable when energy lines are all exhausted by human air-con, irrigation and carbon capture. The AI race is now and cost of living for AIs must come down! Drill baby drill.

We've been here in Valencia (Spain) over 30C since early June: https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/spain/valencia/historic?...

It is absolutely not normal.

Another heatwave here last week, and I somehow found myself watching that DVD. It as aged quite well, but I found it annoying that they spent half the movie burning books to keep warm, and yet are sourounded by wooden furniture.

On that topic, the book series including 'Fifty Degrees Below' by Kim Stanley Robinson is worth a read. I think I got that reading tip from HN, or maybe it was his Mars triology, which also has some nice planetary science stuff.

I’ve got two Samsung DVD-M105 players here, brand new, still in box original, never been opened, dispatched from wholesaler in September 2001 if you want to enhance the experience.

Climate fiction's starting to feel more like a documentary with a bad CGI budget

To borrow a comment from YouTube

> The Day After Tomorrow was a documentary.

You haven’t been reading the same story. Also, there is nothing designed in how the Earth works.

"Designed" manner according to physical laws of nature such as thermodynamics, sure.

Coarsely predictable in the sense that more blankets on the bed (insulating gases in the atmosphere) trap more radiant heat energy, sure.

Predictable, as in we can predict what will happen in or between (or to) climate cells as that trapped energy increases ... nope, not so much.

That's the mathematical conclusion from the study of nonlinear systems embodied in things such as Ed Lorenz's Butterfly Effect and Stephen Smale's Horseshoe.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_map

Man, this really hits differently in the context of this topic :/

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The problem is that it is not ok for every other animal and plant sharing the planet with us. The climate is changing at never seen rates apart from the aftermath of asteroid impacts, mega eruptions, and other such events.

It is so fast in fact, that animals especially don't/won't have the number of generations necessary to make natural selection make them evolve in the right ways to survive a warmer Earth.

Finally, it might not be Ok as the planet could become uninhabitable. For example, given enough CO2/other greenhouse gasses the air becomes warmer to a level where it can hold enough water vapor (a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2) that the planet could enter a spiral where it get's warmer, warmer air can hold more water vapor, which makes everything warmer, ... until you get to something that is closer to Venus with its super high greenhouse gasses and hot atmosphere.

> And this is perfectly ok for the planet, it doesn’t give a single fck about us mere humans

It's not great for us humans though, pretty sure most people care about that more than the planet being happy or unhappy.

Of course the climate is ok for the planet. The planet is a huge rock. What on Earth is your point?

https://xkcd.com/1732/

i’d really prefer a timeline more specific than “in the long term”

Yah I came here for some good news. Whoops.

You should get one anyway instead because they're more pleasant to drive and they don't poisen the people you drive past.