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.
lopis · 50m ago
Right now we are using renewables essentially at capacity, always. Any extra electricity use therefore needs fossil fuels to power it. It's as simple as that.
The AI computation explosion is completely irresponsible and any claims that it can be green are false unless the data centers produce their own solar/nuclear on-site (and even then it's producing tons of waste heat).
shafyy · 16m ago
Exactly. Why is this so hard to understand? It's about the marignal use. I can't believe anybody who is smart and thought about this for two seconds can make this argument in good faith.
PeterStuer · 12m ago
"AI is a massive waste of power". So is nearly everything of what we do and consume. Not sure why AI would be the 'epitome' besides being this month's flavor of convenient whipping boy.
Especially here in Europe we like to play the 'Greener than Thou' card while for decades have been doing absolutely nothing real besides imaginary 'carbon credit' spreadsheet shenanigans, tipple passing the subsidy handouts for burning our forests in Dutch incinerators, exporting all our 'emissions' to China and paying very dubious buddies on the other side of the world for 'net zero' absolutions while tripling our real pollution.
seviu · 7m ago
We gotta build legislations that force Bitcoin mining facilities or big data centers to massively improve the grid and make sure they have plans to run on self powered nuclear or green energy.
The case of Bitcoin is more damning because pow for just no reason, serves no purpose. Security by consuming massive amounts of power. There is a reason why Ethereum successfully moved away from that. But Bitcoin will never dare to.
Unfortunately as you say the powers are currently focusing on denying what is clearly undeniable.
This article made me fear first time since a while for what kind of future are my daughters live in. I am truly sorry and sad.
newsclues · 31m ago
"It's not necessarily a doomsday cult as long as there is incentive to build green infrastructure."
is building green infrastructure environmentally friendly? The mines, machinery, ships, concrete, steel, the processing plants, etc, really Green, just because it's for EVs or batteries?
netsharc · 16m ago
EVs really are a "slightly better" solution the planet's health can't even afford. ICE cars are worse but EVs aren't helping save the planet either. Ideally we should probably all be cycling or taking trains and buses...
Of course humanity runs on balance between living (and procreating) and saving the planet.. the quickest way to save the planet would be for all of us to drop dead, but very few of us would be in favor of that idea.
saubeidl · 1h ago
A few points here.
If AI were to not use so much energy, we would have a much easier time covering our need with green sources. Yes, we can probably also account for the additional use by AI, but it'll make an already existential challenge so much harder.
Regarding your last paragraph - AI is just the riders of the apocalypse. The doomsday cult is capitalism.
keyringlight · 37m ago
We've already proven we can build huge amounts of renewable generation if we want, the issue I see is that additional huge demands like AI prevent us from making carbon based generation redundant, lowest priority choice in the mix of sources or used exclusively for its strengths to respond quickly to changing needs.
munksbeer · 46m ago
> 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.
What if the pursuit of real AI is what eventually saves humanity and leads to a utopian rather than dystopian future?
shafyy · 14m ago
What are you, 12 years old and just read a sci fi novel? Or been living under a god damn rock? Sorry, but comments like this make me so fucking angry.
nisa · 8m ago
It's crazy reading these comments here. We are really living in some dystopian future to some degree. Let's unite and fight. Act local, do what you can and don't lose hope. The Internet is broken. Not sure if it's just brainwashed people commenting here or bots or some societies just embrace destroying everything for profit and capitalism.
shafyy · 1m ago
For sure! Just do something, even if it's handing out flyers at your local mall once a month for some good cause.
williamdclt · 35m ago
None of the incentive structures of our societies are set up to go on this direction. None of the people in power (politically or privately) are trying to make this happen. As you’d expect, we see in practice that this isn’t the direction in which we’re going.
I see no reason to expect this technology to save us. We don’t even need AI to save ourselves from dystopia, it’s not been about lack of technology for decades, we need to change our societies structurally _somehow_
ChrisMarshallNY · 36m ago
> utopian rather than dystopian future
To that, I must ask: look at the people driving the revolution, and their personal ethics.
What future do you think they will provide?
saubeidl · 43m ago
That is a pretty big if to be betting the house on.
I'm not comfortable with that call being made on my behalf by those with everything to gain from it. The same people that have coincidentally been building doomsday bunkers.
nntwozz · 16m ago
This thinking is on brand with a cult.
Humanity doesn't need saving, it just needs actual humanity.
ohdeargodno · 3m ago
Every single major AI company is led by sociopaths drunk on authoritarianism, fascism and borderline theocracy dreams.
Needless to say, the utopia plan is going badly.
nisa · 41m ago
We know what to do. We don't need to wait for some magic AI that's basically learned from books written by humans to tell us what to do. It's all about power structures, capitalism and money.
Everyone in the oil business knew in the 80ies.
We could probably even figure out how to keep our standard of living but consumerism needs to stop but then capitalism breaks down.
jug · 8m ago
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.
celticninja · 15m ago
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?
saubeidl · 12m ago
Both those technologies consume immense amounts of energy for vague promises of future societal gain.
Our earth is a shared resource. I am not okay with it being wasted on the pet projects of billionaires trying to enrich themselves even more.
energy123 · 16m ago
It's a declaration of war against anyone living near the equator.
saubeidl · 14m ago
Or near an ocean or anywhere too far from any freshwater.
throwpoaster · 53m ago
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.
saubeidl · 52m ago
Consumption drives production.
guappa · 36m ago
We are, but if we keep consuming even more, we're not solving anything.
Yizahi · 36m ago
You can't "decarbonize" anything on this planet, it is not possible by definition. Even green electrical production emits a lot of GH gasses out of the whole production cycle. I'm all for the green tech of course, I just don't like highly misleading terms like "decarbonize", "net zero" etc.
random3 · 1h ago
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.
bo0tzz · 55m ago
We already have clear solutions, the powers that be just don't want to sacrifice their profit margins.
throwaway73848 · 52m ago
There seem to be only two things that we need answers to with regards to dealing with increasing CO2:
1. Can we capture CO2 and prevent it from affecting the climate in a safe way?
2. Could we create a large “blind” between the earth and sun to safely control how much sunlight hits the earth if the temperature gets too hot?
There have been advances in #1 and propositions for #2, but I think most either want to cast blame, bury our heads in the sand, or wallow in self-pity because they think we’re not capable of figuring out a safe solution and/or don’t believe that we could work together to accomplish it.
nisa · 45m ago
1. No we can't - at least not enough that it matters and it's energy intensive. There is no technical solution here but the powers that be want you to believe that to continue generating profits.
2. That's not how it works. It's more like a greenhouse and climate gases absorb more energy. Also look up after how many meters a steel cable ruptures under it's own weight. It's not exactly easy. Thermonuclear war might help.
m5 · 23m ago
> Also look up after how many meters a steel cable ruptures under it's own weight.
This assumes that the solution would involve a single structure. It could instead be composed of many parts.
fliederman · 33m ago
1. To state there is no technical solution is assuming you have all of the knowledge there ever will be in the world to make that assessment. A more proper way to state that is that you don’t know a technical solution, and there may or may not be one. There’s no reason not to do everything we can and research all options.
2. Having the ability to control the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth would help prevent overwarming, which is one possible outcome, and neither thermonuclear war nor any culling of humanity would be a solution, as in fact we’re responsible for this, so we must fix it. You’re basically suggesting killing all the life that could help.
nisa · 28m ago
1. You can't bend physics and the known solutions don't work out in scale. It's magical thinking to continue doing what we are doing.
2. We can already fix this but for this we need to radically change the power structures that are in place and figure out a way to peacefully solve the problem. Reducing emissions should be the biggest priority everywhere.
saubeidl · 26m ago
There might theoretically be a technological solution, but the search for it is a distraction to prevent working structural societal changes from being made.
panstromek · 8m ago
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.
qwertox · 59m ago
> 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.
saubeidl · 53m ago
We are intelligent enough. The solution has been out there for a while. The power structures we have put in place just don't allow for it to happen.
dottjt · 1h ago
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?
atwrk · 59m ago
Whose rationale? More efficiency leading to less resource use never happened, it always leads to more resource use (jevons paradox).
AI companies currently simply are a major contributor to climate crisis, justified by racing for future riches for a few people, provided by some imaginary moat. Probably right near the one built by Uber.
qwertox · 49m ago
> it always leads to more resource use
It does, but this due to the demand created by humans. If you create a technologically advanced civilization, with robots doing a lot of the work, and considering their lack of desire to own things like pretty houses, it could be possible to scale down civilization to a few select millions in such a way that the entire system is then respecting earth's resources.
If you were to ship a big group of people through the galaxy, you'd also have to put some constraints on how many people will be on that ship, yet it will have to function regardless of how little people exist on that ship. The same could be applied to earth.
This would also give animals more room on this planet.
saubeidl · 47m ago
How are you envisioning this "scaling down"? Chinese-Style One Child Policy? Large scale purge?
qwertox · 36m ago
No vision here, but it looks like developed countries are already working on it by themselves, with the demographic change we're able to observe. If that were the way, strong borders would need to be built.
saubeidl · 33m ago
What about the not developed countries? That's where most of the population growth is happening.
Should the developed world do frequent culls of the less fortunate in addition to the strong borders?
qwertox · 26m ago
IDK. Maybe let them develop until they also reach the state of lack of desire to procreate.
saubeidl · 25m ago
That's what China has been doing. It's greatly increased its emissions.
guappa · 30m ago
Maybe what trump is doing is it
rebuilder · 1h ago
That would be a compelling argument if procreation was somehow primarily driven by a need for people.
As it is, we already have quite a lot of people and they’re not going anywhere, however many terawatt-hours we pump into AI.
saubeidl · 1h ago
The rationale I've heard is that AGI is gonna come around any day now and will fix all our climate issues through its superior intellect.
Which seems like a very strenuous proposal to be betting the future of humanity on.
flir · 38s ago
> The rationale I've heard is that AGI is gonna come around any day now and will fix all our climate issues through its superior intellect.
Skynet says: Get rid of the people
arp242 · 36m ago
The "we will invent our way out of this"-argument goes back way before AI, at least to the early 00s, but probably earlier.
It's a great strategy that works fantastically well and saves a lot of time and money, except when it doesn't.
saubeidl · 32m ago
In my eyes it is a cop-out to delay the necessary structural changes until the point of no return.
At that point the structural changes will be denied with a "oh well, it's too late now anyways!"
ohdeargodno · 1h ago
Do you see fewer humans working ? Fewer humans taking their cars to do groceries, fewer humans going to school, fewer humans cooling down their houses ? All AI does is potentially make said humans jobless, with a job here and there created with a bullshit title like prompt engineer. The energy you're "saving" is absolutely nothing. When you pay someone to do data entry, the majority of their energy expenditure isn't the computer they're working on, it's the transportation systems they use, the food they eat, etc. These never go away. Well, not unless you kill said person. The current AI trend is purely additional energy consumption, without any tangible benefits.
Capitalism as a system is fundamentally incapable of functioning without continously running forward, and stopping means the system collapses. It needs consumption, it needs perpetually renewing debt, perpetually working humans. It's a death cult.
cess11 · 1h ago
Is that what happened with oil (and coal and fossil gas)?
Or did human labour instead come to resemble machine labour?
bertili · 51m ago
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.
"In the polar Southern Ocean, cold, fresh surface waters overlay warmer, saltier deep waters (Fig. 2A). During winter, surface cooling and sea ice formation reduce stratification, allowing vertical mixing to transport heat upward, either melting sea ice from below or limiting its growth (8). However, decades of surface freshening strengthened stratification, trapping subsurface heat at depth, sustaining expanded sea ice coverage (7, 9) and limiting deep convection along with open-ocean polynyas (10). Here, we show that since 2015, these conditions have reversed: Surface salinity in the polar Southern Ocean has increased, upper-ocean stratification has weakened, sea ice has reached multiple record lows, and open-ocean polynyas have reemerged."
That trapped warmth doesn't mean the deep water is "hot" in an absolute sense, just that it's saltier and denser and relatively warmer than the surface
user070223 · 2h ago
In general at high enough depth the ocean temperature is constant[0].
At high latitude like the southern ocean it's constant at whatever depth.
I think the surface ambient temperature is below(cooler) the temperature where the water density is the highest around 4 degrees for pure water(water has negative thermal expansion which causes it to expand and float!), for southern ocean salinity is between 33-34 and maximum density is below 0[1] but still ambient might be lower which means the colder water is lighter.
If deep water is now rising and releasing centuries of stored CO2, we're talking about a major shift in Earth's climate plumbing. Also wild that this only became visible thanks to a novel satellite processor
geysersam · 57m ago
Why would the deep water have more dissolved CO2 than the surface water?
bo0tzz · 53m ago
The high pressure at depth allows it to dissolve more gas.
topato · 4h ago
Did it actually say it will DOUBLE the CO2 concentration?
Definitely past the point of no return. I guess us millennials WILL actually see the worst climate change outcomes WELL within our lifetimes...
taylorlapeyre · 3h ago
The deep-ocean vent south of Antarctica is real but small, on the order of a few-tenths Pg C yr⁻¹. The claim that it could double atmospheric CO₂ exaggerates the flux by three orders of magnitude relative to observed values and known physical limits.
The most optimistic estimate of deep-water outgassing south of 60 ° S is 0.36 Pg C yr⁻¹. Even if that rate tripled and persisted unabated, it would take more than 800 years to add 895 Pg C (which would be what it would require to justify the press release’s claims of “doubling”)
I believe the deep-ocean vents you mention are beside the point. The article is discussing the upwelling of cold, CO2-rich water in the Southern Ocean - not emissions from vents.
Also, it’s worth noting that the PNAS article does not mention CO2 per se, only upwelling. The article summary of the press release does draw the CO2 connection.
Besides the connections you mention, the PNAS article points out that this result illustrates that current models of ice/ocean interaction are not producing these observational trends.
ImaCake · 3h ago
Thanks for the clarification, these click-bait titles pop up again and again around very interesting technical climate science, causing not only pointless panic but allowing denialists to drive doubt by pointing out the BS.
Its doubly frustrating because these studies invariably indicate that climate change is happening, getting worse, and triggering feedback loops that amplify CO2.
cedilla · 1h ago
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.
vixen99 · 3h ago
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.
eastbound · 3h ago
It is true. My personal test is to ask climate believers what the wage gap is. If they answer women earn .77 cents on the dollar -> Not science.
If I really witness New York flooded to the 3rd floor in my life, it’s really sad, because no-one told me [who didn’t also make spurious science on other topics of life].
bryanrasmussen · 2h ago
Your personal test for someone making a technical claim on one matter is to ask them a technical question on another thing that they have not claimed any expertise in. If they guess and guess wrong you ignore their claims on the thing they supposedly know something about because.. points I guess.
Hey, I do a lot of crazy stuff myself, so not exactly blaming you but I don't think your "flooding == really sad" claim holds up here, because of the crazy.
lm28469 · 5m ago
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...
zamalek · 3h ago
> 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.
chneu · 1h ago
We've been past the point of no return since the mid-90s.
panstromek · 3h ago
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.
bertili · 1h ago
If it "Short Term" becomes obvious that we are past the point of no return it doesn't really matter if "Long Term" units is 100 or 1000 years. Most future living things will be suffering. There could have been more future things than past things to enjoy this beautiful planet.
SwtCyber · 2h ago
Still serious, but yeah, the headline might be running ahead of the data a bit
SwtCyber · 2h ago
The timeline isn't some far-off sci-fi scenario anymore. Millennials and Gen Z are basically the frontline generations
trhway · 4h ago
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.
Ringz · 2h ago
> So, until somebody brings out 10+ aircraft carriers and enforces global climate accord, i don't see any progress happening here.
If we look at the enforcement and outcomes of former climate action „plans“ this is unfortunately a valid option.
ndsipa_pomu · 2h ago
I see the major problem isn't that there will be just warmer temperatures, but that the climate will become unpredictably changeable. For the moment, it can be beneficial for agriculture in some areas, but it's likely that our global food production will have to massively change to take into account times of drought and flooding that will destroy crops in some areas. Whereas now we can just grow crops in fields, we may have to grow food in greenhouses just to be able to provide the plants with consistent growing conditions.
bbarnett · 1h ago
There are a lot of variables here, and one is the sun. The other is time.
We can certainly, even without genetic engineering breed crops more suited for shorter growing time frames.
There are a lot of corn hybrids, some mature fast, others far slower. Some require more sun, others less. For example, some of the faster growing varieties only take 60 days to mature, others 100+. But here's the thing. Those are 60 "good weather" days. As in not too much cloud, not too unseasonably cold or warm, reasonable amounts of rain and water, and so on.
As corn takes time to grow and mature, it doesn't matter how much sun you throw at it, it still only grows so fast. Up North, even if it's warmer, you still need enough sun too. Compressing the sun around the summer solstice doesn't help. Giving it 22 hour long days of sun doesn't just magically make the corn grow 2x as fast as an area with 11 hours of usable sun.
And the spring is still "rainy season". Some crops can't take too much rain.
Where I live, a local farmer grows traditional yellow corn, as some prefer it over newer, 'peaches and cream' hybrids. But some years? It just doesn't mature. Too much cloud, or other inclement weather (too hot, too cool, to much sun, etc) and being further north means there is little wiggle room in the growing season.
I guess my point is, Northern areas will require only certain crops. That's fine of course, and it will indeed feed people, but some crops won't be on the table.
One thing that may have already helped Russia, is the extensive work the Soviets put into breeding crops to grow further north:
While I do not doubt the weather is more mild in Russia these days, it's also quite erratic. At least it is here in Canada. Some winters mild, then bam a winter of "old". So I wonder if the above breeds have given Russia a leg up on taking advantage?
globular-toast · 3h ago
It's fine... Gen Alpha will figure it out by asking AI.
Tokkemon · 4h ago
Gotta blow the dust off that Day After Tomorrow DVD.
In London it has barely rained since the start of May, after the sunniest and warmest spring on record. Obviously as an Englishman that sounds pretty great to me but it is not typical at all.
As sure as eggs is eggs, there will be sightings of exotic predators (puma, leopard) by little old ladies in the next weeks ...
ta1243 · 1h ago
Great for people sitting out on their patios and having barbecues.
Not great for food production. The UK is close enough to a wealthy nation that we should be able to import our food or make enough with high energy/resource requirements. There is a general problem with a lack of resources (hence all the global conflict going on now. Trump doesn't want Greenland because he looked at a Mercator map and got size envy due to his tiny hands, the resources there will go to China, Russia, Europe or the US), but that can be overcome.
The dirty secret of global warming is that Europe can't take a billion climate refugees - even the most bleeding heart liberals will baulk at the UK population increasing from 70m to 200m in a generation, its not sustainable.
America has less of a problem - the population of Central and South America between about 30N and 30S is 500 million. The population of Africa and Asia in that boundary is about 4.5 billion, and as those areas become uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and water scarcity, people will either die or try to move north - mainly to Europe.
zelphirkalt · 1h ago
Close to where I live they declared the dryest year in more than 100 years, as it rains so rarely.
whitehexagon · 2h ago
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.
arethuza · 1h ago
I recommend KSR's The Ministry for the Future
CalRobert · 1h ago
Perhaps it was an attempt at symbolism
nandomrumber · 4h ago
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.
dottjt · 3h ago
what's so special about that model?
SlowTao · 3h ago
I'm guessing nothing in particular other than being period correct hardware. Would want to check if the power capacitors are still in good shape.
mkagenius · 3h ago
Full bridge rectifier as well
dzhiurgis · 2h ago
What happens to them?
pastage · 5m ago
FWIW the decade of capacitor plague destroyed at least two of my AC/DC Converters. I haven't seen magic smoke since 2010, and honestly know little about it.
lovich · 4h ago
I have a non zero desire to take you up on that
SwtCyber · 2h ago
Climate fiction's starting to feel more like a documentary with a bad CGI budget
leke · 4h ago
To borrow a comment from YouTube
> The Day After Tomorrow was a documentary.
anvandare · 4h ago
And to Man was said: "Because you did not listen to wisdom and disobeyed that which was commanded to you 'You must work and keep it', "cursed are the sea and the earth because of you; no matter painful toil you will eat food from it no more. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."
- Phthora 3:12
climb_stealth · 1h ago
Man, this really hits differently in the context of this topic :/
moffkalast · 1h ago
Religious quotes are like astrology, horoscopes vague and generic enough to apply to just about anyone and anything at any point in time.
lm28469 · 4m ago
Yeah, almost as if some of them were just plain dumb common sense, which makes them even more relevant
whatever1 · 4h ago
That is the sh* that happens when we move the system too far away from its previous equilibrium. It might settle to a drastically different one that will decimate huge proportions of population.
SlowTao · 3h ago
The example I use is this. Falling of a building is harmless, standing on the ground is harmless. It is the transition that matters.
I'm sure we can survive fairly reasonably in whatever climate we end up with in a few hundred/thousand years, but the gap in between is a really doozy. The stories and myths about the selfish people of our times will go on for millennia.
It is the book series 'Carbon Ideologies' by William T Volleman, the opening few pages are written to those that read them in a few hundred years. Those that read these today are already convinced, those in the future will want answers. All he does is use examples of how we live to point out that we are not inherently evil, just looking out for our more immediate needs.
hnarn · 1h ago
> 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.
lancewiggs · 1h ago
Look at London. Draw a line west. Compare climates. Now do the same for New York and go East. Ocean currents are what keeps London warm and NYC cool.
So this is a huge deal. I’ve been down to the Southern Ocean, lectured all the way by scientists.
North of the Antarctic is the only place on earth where the sea can rotate completely around the world without hitting a land mass, and it is deemed the engine of the world’s oceans. Those oceans are what have absorbed most of the excess CO2 that we’ve emitted, and a lot captured has been buried in deep ocean. But the ocean warms, and can capture less CO2, and bad days are ahead.
This news signals not just a slowing in that absorption for an area, which not just sends more CO2 into the atmosphere, but has more terrifyingly unknown downstream implications for other ocean streams.
yosito · 51m ago
I asked for no more unprecedented world events in my lifetime.
Ringz · 2h ago
Most climate research studies provide a range from optimistic to pessimistic outlooks on climate impacts. It would be interesting to know how the studies from the last 30 years have fared.
I have the feeling that rather the pessimistic estimates have come to pass.
Old articles. Nowadays I'd say there's an even stronger current against "doomerism", which acts as a force suppressing sufficiently bad news. Don't look up!
Can someone explain in simple terms what this means? Like what is happening (like am 5) and what are the consequences of this.
ashoeafoot · 4h ago
You get unreliable weather patterns . monsoon in dry places, and monsoon dependent countries falling dry..
And thus unreliable investment, a house or factory might be flood prone in a dessert valley, a dam with power stations might fail to provide.
So you have uninsureable riches, that might aswell no longer be there.
signalToNose · 3h ago
And as a consequence, massive migration from inhabitable regions. Hard to imagine the implication when there are billions of people affected
jonathanstrange · 26m ago
Not important, but I want to briefly point out as a Grammar Nazi that you mean uninhabitable regions. Inhabitable and habitable mean the same and their opposites are uninhabitable and not habitable. This is one of those bizarre oddities of the English language.
Workaccount2 · 4h ago
The consequences of the reversal of the current or the consequences of CO2 in the atmosphere doubling?
notfed · 4h ago
Yes
cyberlimerence · 4h ago
Next up, AMOC collapse.
SlowTao · 3h ago
There was a report that said the AMOC could collapse between 2025 and 2075. That said the 2025 mark was said to be very unlikely, I hope it still is...
moffkalast · 1h ago
We thought the currents would run AMOC but got a SMOCdown instead?
Well as long as we keep pretending that the most conservative of the already downplayed IPCC estimates is the real trajectory we'll keep getting surprised over and over. It's not really a coincidence that most climate scientists are depressed.
ars · 3h ago
If this is the very first time this part of the ocean has ever been imaged/studied, how do we know that this is unusual and not something that happens periodically?
bronco21016 · 2h ago
Exactly the same thought I had while reading the article. They mention multiple times this is the first time ever that they’ve been able to measure anything in this area. My take on science is that we need to measure for some period of time before we jump to conclusions about the normal state of affairs.
This isn’t to argue against climate change, but I think journalism like this only fuels skeptics.
rob_c · 3h ago
Omg it's a headline just like that movie...
Please let's not repeat 2020 with the flu again.
anilakar · 3h ago
> surface water is being replaced by deep water masses rising to the surface, bringing with them heat and carbon dioxide (CO₂) that had been trapped for centuries.
True or not, this will be yet another asset in the the climate change deniers' toolbox.
IAmGraydon · 3h ago
Be warned, this article is misleading. The actual scientific paper shows a salinity‑driven weakening of stratification that likely allows more subsurface heat to reach the surface and melt sea ice. The article describes this as a complete overturning‑circulation reversal with dire carbon release consequences. These are claims that the paper itself does not make or substantiate. The paper actually does not use the words carbon or CO2 even once. The authors of the article took such liberties with this that I really believe this should be considered disinformation.
zmmmmm · 2h ago
The article is about the overall findings and their implications, not just the specific paper istelf. Scientists will always be conservative in what they publish, scoping it down to the minimum interpretation that is supported by their evidence. The article directly interviews authors of the study and quotes them, eg:
> We are witnessing a true reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere—something we’ve never seen before,” explains Antonio Turiel, ICM-CSIC researcher and co-author of the study.
If you incorporate these statements it seems quite reasonable to me. 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.
ffwd · 2h ago
No, the new algorithms used to be determine this was created by ICM-CSIC who are also the publishers of this article.
Also the authors of the paper is involved with the article, there is for example this quote:
“We are witnessing a true reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere—something we’ve never seen before,” explains Antonio Turiel, ICM-CSIC researcher and co-author of the study.
panstromek · 3h ago
Glad I'm not the only one to see the disconnect here. I thought I'm somehow missing rest of the paper text, it really doesn't say all that much compared to the article interpretation.
robk · 3h ago
It doesn't reflect their existing views so many will pile on with glee sadly.
scottgg · 4h ago
> In the long term, this process could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries—potentially with catastrophic consequences for the global climate.
Well, fuck
jes5199 · 4h ago
i’d really prefer a timeline more specific than “in the long term”
fzeroracer · 1h ago
Well, part of the problem is that so much of what's going on is unprecedented, unknown and undetectable. We're trying to plot an estimate for an entire planets climate system and it's hard enough to get even local predictions correct.
But what we can rationalize about is that our current effects on the climate are already having dire effects, worsening disasters and increasing extremes. The bug windshield phenomenon is one example of a potential downstream shift.
By the time we have a more concrete timeline the odds are that it'll already be here and far too late.
troyvit · 4h ago
Yah I came here for some good news. Whoops.
ykonstant · 3h ago
Good news everyone! We have a delivery to the new beachside resort at Mt Washington!
kergonath · 4h ago
You should probably avoid any article about climate, then. Good news is scarce these days.
ninetyninenine · 2h ago
I'm not getting an EV because it's already done. The worst consequences of our actions cannot be stopped.
integricho · 4h ago
It does not sound like a subtle signal or warning about crossing a threshold, more like a we are already past the point of no return and now we can just sit back and watch as the apocalypse unfolds, first row seats for all recent generations.
vaylian · 3h ago
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.
gjadi · 3h ago
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.
delusional · 4h ago
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.
anon-3988 · 4h ago
For me its very clear that something will happen given that we fundamentally will never give up our lifestyle. I am not even talking about the ultra rich lifestyle, but lets say the bottom 70% of the world's population.
thanhhaimai · 3h ago
I think you overestimate how rich the bottom 70% of the world is.
The bottom 70% of the world's population would have less than $X00 in the bank, and wouldn't have much control over their lifestyle.
smt88 · 3h ago
We don't need to give up our lifestyle. We could switch to renewables, which would create jobs and save money in the process.
The reasons we haven't done this are because China and India are hungrily industrializing, and the Republican Party in the US is captured by fossil fuel companies.
chneu · 1h ago
Stop blaming China and India. They're an easy excuse.
And yes, we do need to give up several aspects of our lifestyles. Meat consumption absolutely must come down. Air travel must come down. Disposable goods, and consumer plastics, must come down. Our lifestyles must change. Capitalism encourages status symbol goods such as beef, travel/tourism, excessive consumption goods, etc.
We need widespread consumer behavioral change before we have any hope of governments listening to people. As long as half of the population doesn't care about the climate then nothing meaningful will get done. For real change to happen people need sunk cost. Right now people have far too many excuses and denials to actually do much. There is always a China to blame, or a company to blame, or a mega rich person to blame.
padjo · 1h ago
Look at per capita and historical emissions. The problem isn’t India and china, the problem is western greed.
integricho · 4h ago
That sould be the least we do, some sort of coordinated global action to slow down, stop, eventually recover? The damage, and yet not a single country is willing to do anything serious in that regard. Politicians are exclusively focused on their political career, not thinking about the greater benefit to Earth, life, the human civilization. Pretty hopeless how things stand right now.
panstromek · 4h ago
> The damage, and yet not a single country is willing to do anything serious in that regard.
This just doesn't correspond to reality. A lot of serious stuff is happening in this space.
We are now in the "hunker down" phase of global warming.
signalToNose · 3h ago
The five stages of grief, often referred to as the Kübler-Ross model, are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
chneu · 1h ago
Be aware this isn't really what mental health teaches anymore.
kadoban · 4h ago
> Climate advocates in general try to avoid implying that we've already crossed a threshold, as that breeds hopelessness.
None of that means it's not true.
Who is left to take decisive and ambitious action in say, the next decade?
jes5199 · 4h ago
okay then why is it taboo to suggest geoengineering interventions like injecting sulfer into the upper atmosphere? The climate advocates don’t have any decisive and ambitious actions that they actually are willing to try.
padjo · 1h ago
Because we consistently over estimate our ability to understand the impact of our interventions in complex systems. Look at Cane Toads in Australia or tumbleweed in the US.
Now that we've established that, what's your decisive and ambitious action you've made towards addressing climate change, so we can learn from the example you've set?
colordrops · 4h ago
It's a bad idea, the best way to deal with problems is to face them directly, no matter how desperate. This is a similar failure to COVID where they thought lying to the public would make for better outcomes but ended up sowing distrust. In the case of climate change this sows complacency.
taxicabjesus · 3h ago
> This is a similar failure to COVID where they thought lying to the public would make for better outcomes
I'm curious which lies you're referring to. "Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve" reminded me of the time I had fun with my passenger's ignorance of celestial mechanics. She thought the moon really was done for, but after a few more minutes had passed it started to come back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881670
> but ended up sowing distrust.
Because most people eventually caught on that they were being lied to?
atoav · 3h ago
Yes sure. But as someone who was a kid in the 90s all my life I learned about how climate change is the biggest challenge to humanity. Yet all my life I have seen grown adults pretend it doesn't exist, and when that was no longer avoidable they pretended is was natural and when that was no longer defendable... You get the idea. And I grew up in a part of the world where you could see the glaciers melting with your own eyes.
The doom of climate change is mostly people to dumb to understand the most basic of models or (worse) unwilling to do so on ideological grounds. I already decided not to have children in my life because I think it is irresponsible to put them into this world. We will have enough climate migration anyways.
The truth is that there are tripping points that are extremely hard to reverse and may or may not trigger other tripping points. Reading these risks as a reason not to care is the opposite of what should happen.
And then you figure out what the real reason is to burn the world: some rich fucks trying to extract a few thousand dollars per second more f4om the r3st of us.
UberFly · 3h ago
I'll bet that while measuring CO₂, the BEC and the ICM-CSIC will verify that the SMOC and the AMOC in the North Atlantic is not just weakening, but has reversed. This would be an interesting discovery. Truly.
* Data centers powering artificial intelligence could use more electricity than entire cities [0]
* Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green [1]
* AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand [2]
It is a doomsday cult in the most literal sense.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/23/data-centers-powering-ai-cou...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/google-em...
[2] https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-...
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.
Especially here in Europe we like to play the 'Greener than Thou' card while for decades have been doing absolutely nothing real besides imaginary 'carbon credit' spreadsheet shenanigans, tipple passing the subsidy handouts for burning our forests in Dutch incinerators, exporting all our 'emissions' to China and paying very dubious buddies on the other side of the world for 'net zero' absolutions while tripling our real pollution.
The case of Bitcoin is more damning because pow for just no reason, serves no purpose. Security by consuming massive amounts of power. There is a reason why Ethereum successfully moved away from that. But Bitcoin will never dare to.
Unfortunately as you say the powers are currently focusing on denying what is clearly undeniable.
This article made me fear first time since a while for what kind of future are my daughters live in. I am truly sorry and sad.
is building green infrastructure environmentally friendly? The mines, machinery, ships, concrete, steel, the processing plants, etc, really Green, just because it's for EVs or batteries?
Of course humanity runs on balance between living (and procreating) and saving the planet.. the quickest way to save the planet would be for all of us to drop dead, but very few of us would be in favor of that idea.
If AI were to not use so much energy, we would have a much easier time covering our need with green sources. Yes, we can probably also account for the additional use by AI, but it'll make an already existential challenge so much harder.
Regarding your last paragraph - AI is just the riders of the apocalypse. The doomsday cult is capitalism.
What if the pursuit of real AI is what eventually saves humanity and leads to a utopian rather than dystopian future?
I see no reason to expect this technology to save us. We don’t even need AI to save ourselves from dystopia, it’s not been about lack of technology for decades, we need to change our societies structurally _somehow_
To that, I must ask: look at the people driving the revolution, and their personal ethics.
What future do you think they will provide?
I'm not comfortable with that call being made on my behalf by those with everything to gain from it. The same people that have coincidentally been building doomsday bunkers.
Humanity doesn't need saving, it just needs actual humanity.
Needless to say, the utopia plan is going badly.
Everyone in the oil business knew in the 80ies.
We could probably even figure out how to keep our standard of living but consumerism needs to stop but then capitalism breaks down.
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?
Our earth is a shared resource. I am not okay with it being wasted on the pet projects of billionaires trying to enrich themselves even more.
Electrical production can emit greenhouse gasses, and there is an argument we should be inventing and investing in decarbonizing it.
1. Can we capture CO2 and prevent it from affecting the climate in a safe way?
2. Could we create a large “blind” between the earth and sun to safely control how much sunlight hits the earth if the temperature gets too hot?
There have been advances in #1 and propositions for #2, but I think most either want to cast blame, bury our heads in the sand, or wallow in self-pity because they think we’re not capable of figuring out a safe solution and/or don’t believe that we could work together to accomplish it.
2. That's not how it works. It's more like a greenhouse and climate gases absorb more energy. Also look up after how many meters a steel cable ruptures under it's own weight. It's not exactly easy. Thermonuclear war might help.
This assumes that the solution would involve a single structure. It could instead be composed of many parts.
2. Having the ability to control the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth would help prevent overwarming, which is one possible outcome, and neither thermonuclear war nor any culling of humanity would be a solution, as in fact we’re responsible for this, so we must fix it. You’re basically suggesting killing all the life that could help.
2. We can already fix this but for this we need to radically change the power structures that are in place and figure out a way to peacefully solve the problem. Reducing emissions should be the biggest priority everywhere.
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.
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.
So for example, if AI can replace the need for additional humans, then overall we're using net less energy?
AI companies currently simply are a major contributor to climate crisis, justified by racing for future riches for a few people, provided by some imaginary moat. Probably right near the one built by Uber.
It does, but this due to the demand created by humans. If you create a technologically advanced civilization, with robots doing a lot of the work, and considering their lack of desire to own things like pretty houses, it could be possible to scale down civilization to a few select millions in such a way that the entire system is then respecting earth's resources.
If you were to ship a big group of people through the galaxy, you'd also have to put some constraints on how many people will be on that ship, yet it will have to function regardless of how little people exist on that ship. The same could be applied to earth.
This would also give animals more room on this planet.
Should the developed world do frequent culls of the less fortunate in addition to the strong borders?
As it is, we already have quite a lot of people and they’re not going anywhere, however many terawatt-hours we pump into AI.
Which seems like a very strenuous proposal to be betting the future of humanity on.
Skynet says: Get rid of the people
It's a great strategy that works fantastically well and saves a lot of time and money, except when it doesn't.
At that point the structural changes will be denied with a "oh well, it's too late now anyways!"
Capitalism as a system is fundamentally incapable of functioning without continously running forward, and stopping means the system collapses. It needs consumption, it needs perpetually renewing debt, perpetually working humans. It's a death cult.
Or did human labour instead come to resemble machine labour?
A 2023 study https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230330102327.h... observed slowdown in Antarctic overturning, in which cold water sinks down at the south pole and then spreads north in the deeper parts of the ocean.
The slowing of this process would cause deep ocean water to become warmer.
edit: the publication linked in the article https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2500440122 makes this a bit clearer:
"In the polar Southern Ocean, cold, fresh surface waters overlay warmer, saltier deep waters (Fig. 2A). During winter, surface cooling and sea ice formation reduce stratification, allowing vertical mixing to transport heat upward, either melting sea ice from below or limiting its growth (8). However, decades of surface freshening strengthened stratification, trapping subsurface heat at depth, sustaining expanded sea ice coverage (7, 9) and limiting deep convection along with open-ocean polynyas (10). Here, we show that since 2015, these conditions have reversed: Surface salinity in the polar Southern Ocean has increased, upper-ocean stratification has weakened, sea ice has reached multiple record lows, and open-ocean polynyas have reemerged."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumpolar_deep_water
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ThermoclineSeasonDepth.pn...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:T-S_diagram.pdf
The most optimistic estimate of deep-water outgassing south of 60 ° S is 0.36 Pg C yr⁻¹. Even if that rate tripled and persisted unabated, it would take more than 800 years to add 895 Pg C (which would be what it would require to justify the press release’s claims of “doubling”)
What the salinity reversal can do is:
- Expose ice shelves to warmer subsurface water, accelerating sea-level rise.
- Reduce the Southern Ocean’s role as a sink by a few tenths Pg C yr⁻¹, nudging the global ocean sink (~2.7 Pg C yr⁻¹) downward.
- Perturb atmospheric circulation patterns, with knock-on effects for the Atlantic overturning (but those links remain speculative).
I believe the deep-ocean vents you mention are beside the point. The article is discussing the upwelling of cold, CO2-rich water in the Southern Ocean - not emissions from vents.
Also, it’s worth noting that the PNAS article does not mention CO2 per se, only upwelling. The article summary of the press release does draw the CO2 connection.
Besides the connections you mention, the PNAS article points out that this result illustrates that current models of ice/ocean interaction are not producing these observational trends.
Its doubly frustrating because these studies invariably indicate that climate change is happening, getting worse, and triggering feedback loops that amplify CO2.
Journalists make lots of mistake, and it's good to keep that in mind, but random people in forums are even worse.
If I really witness New York flooded to the 3rd floor in my life, it’s really sad, because no-one told me [who didn’t also make spurious science on other topics of life].
Hey, I do a lot of crazy stuff myself, so not exactly blaming you but I don't think your "flooding == really sad" claim holds up here, because of the crazy.
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.
So, until somebody brings out 10+ aircraft carriers and enforces global climate accord, i don't see any progress happening here.
If we look at the enforcement and outcomes of former climate action „plans“ this is unfortunately a valid option.
We can certainly, even without genetic engineering breed crops more suited for shorter growing time frames.
There are a lot of corn hybrids, some mature fast, others far slower. Some require more sun, others less. For example, some of the faster growing varieties only take 60 days to mature, others 100+. But here's the thing. Those are 60 "good weather" days. As in not too much cloud, not too unseasonably cold or warm, reasonable amounts of rain and water, and so on.
As corn takes time to grow and mature, it doesn't matter how much sun you throw at it, it still only grows so fast. Up North, even if it's warmer, you still need enough sun too. Compressing the sun around the summer solstice doesn't help. Giving it 22 hour long days of sun doesn't just magically make the corn grow 2x as fast as an area with 11 hours of usable sun.
And the spring is still "rainy season". Some crops can't take too much rain.
Where I live, a local farmer grows traditional yellow corn, as some prefer it over newer, 'peaches and cream' hybrids. But some years? It just doesn't mature. Too much cloud, or other inclement weather (too hot, too cool, to much sun, etc) and being further north means there is little wiggle room in the growing season.
I guess my point is, Northern areas will require only certain crops. That's fine of course, and it will indeed feed people, but some crops won't be on the table.
One thing that may have already helped Russia, is the extensive work the Soviets put into breeding crops to grow further north:
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cul...
While I do not doubt the weather is more mild in Russia these days, it's also quite erratic. At least it is here in Canada. Some winters mild, then bam a winter of "old". So I wonder if the above breeds have given Russia a leg up on taking advantage?
It is absolutely not normal.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-media/media-c...
Not great for food production. The UK is close enough to a wealthy nation that we should be able to import our food or make enough with high energy/resource requirements. There is a general problem with a lack of resources (hence all the global conflict going on now. Trump doesn't want Greenland because he looked at a Mercator map and got size envy due to his tiny hands, the resources there will go to China, Russia, Europe or the US), but that can be overcome.
The dirty secret of global warming is that Europe can't take a billion climate refugees - even the most bleeding heart liberals will baulk at the UK population increasing from 70m to 200m in a generation, its not sustainable.
America has less of a problem - the population of Central and South America between about 30N and 30S is 500 million. The population of Africa and Asia in that boundary is about 4.5 billion, and as those areas become uninhabitable due to wet bulb temperatures and water scarcity, people will either die or try to move north - mainly to Europe.
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.
> The Day After Tomorrow was a documentary.
I'm sure we can survive fairly reasonably in whatever climate we end up with in a few hundred/thousand years, but the gap in between is a really doozy. The stories and myths about the selfish people of our times will go on for millennia.
It is the book series 'Carbon Ideologies' by William T Volleman, the opening few pages are written to those that read them in a few hundred years. Those that read these today are already convinced, those in the future will want answers. All he does is use examples of how we live to point out that we are not inherently evil, just looking out for our more immediate needs.
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.
So this is a huge deal. I’ve been down to the Southern Ocean, lectured all the way by scientists.
North of the Antarctic is the only place on earth where the sea can rotate completely around the world without hitting a land mass, and it is deemed the engine of the world’s oceans. Those oceans are what have absorbed most of the excess CO2 that we’ve emitted, and a lot captured has been buried in deep ocean. But the ocean warms, and can capture less CO2, and bad days are ahead.
This news signals not just a slowing in that absorption for an area, which not just sends more CO2 into the atmosphere, but has more terrifyingly unknown downstream implications for other ocean streams.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-uns-devastating-climate-...
Old articles. Nowadays I'd say there's an even stronger current against "doomerism", which acts as a force suppressing sufficiently bad news. Don't look up!
And thus unreliable investment, a house or factory might be flood prone in a dessert valley, a dam with power stations might fail to provide.
So you have uninsureable riches, that might aswell no longer be there.
Well as long as we keep pretending that the most conservative of the already downplayed IPCC estimates is the real trajectory we'll keep getting surprised over and over. It's not really a coincidence that most climate scientists are depressed.
This isn’t to argue against climate change, but I think journalism like this only fuels skeptics.
Please let's not repeat 2020 with the flu again.
True or not, this will be yet another asset in the the climate change deniers' toolbox.
> We are witnessing a true reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere—something we’ve never seen before,” explains Antonio Turiel, ICM-CSIC researcher and co-author of the study.
If you incorporate these statements it seems quite reasonable to me. 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.
Also the authors of the paper is involved with the article, there is for example this quote:
“We are witnessing a true reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere—something we’ve never seen before,” explains Antonio Turiel, ICM-CSIC researcher and co-author of the study.
Well, fuck
But what we can rationalize about is that our current effects on the climate are already having dire effects, worsening disasters and increasing extremes. The bug windshield phenomenon is one example of a potential downstream shift.
By the time we have a more concrete timeline the odds are that it'll already be here and far too late.
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.
They want decisive and ambitious action, you can't get that if we all turn to doomerism.
The bottom 70% of the world's population would have less than $X00 in the bank, and wouldn't have much control over their lifestyle.
The reasons we haven't done this are because China and India are hungrily industrializing, and the Republican Party in the US is captured by fossil fuel companies.
And yes, we do need to give up several aspects of our lifestyles. Meat consumption absolutely must come down. Air travel must come down. Disposable goods, and consumer plastics, must come down. Our lifestyles must change. Capitalism encourages status symbol goods such as beef, travel/tourism, excessive consumption goods, etc.
We need widespread consumer behavioral change before we have any hope of governments listening to people. As long as half of the population doesn't care about the climate then nothing meaningful will get done. For real change to happen people need sunk cost. Right now people have far too many excuses and denials to actually do much. There is always a China to blame, or a company to blame, or a mega rich person to blame.
This just doesn't correspond to reality. A lot of serious stuff is happening in this space.
https://www.ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/its-too-late-david-suzuk...
We are now in the "hunker down" phase of global warming.
None of that means it's not true.
Who is left to take decisive and ambitious action in say, the next decade?
Now that we've established that, what's your decisive and ambitious action you've made towards addressing climate change, so we can learn from the example you've set?
I'm curious which lies you're referring to. "Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve" reminded me of the time I had fun with my passenger's ignorance of celestial mechanics. She thought the moon really was done for, but after a few more minutes had passed it started to come back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881670
> but ended up sowing distrust.
Because most people eventually caught on that they were being lied to?
The doom of climate change is mostly people to dumb to understand the most basic of models or (worse) unwilling to do so on ideological grounds. I already decided not to have children in my life because I think it is irresponsible to put them into this world. We will have enough climate migration anyways.
The truth is that there are tripping points that are extremely hard to reverse and may or may not trigger other tripping points. Reading these risks as a reason not to care is the opposite of what should happen.
And then you figure out what the real reason is to burn the world: some rich fucks trying to extract a few thousand dollars per second more f4om the r3st of us.