It’s also easy to question methodology for anyone who has done academic modeling and knows how easy it is to get the result you want. Much harder to argue against the basic first principle that injecting trillions of barrels of oil into the atmosphere is literal geoengineering and it’s gonna have consequences.
This is not going to happen. The EU can't even convince itself to stop buying from China.
The us on the other hand is well you know blowing up oil all over the world with military conflicts that are wars but aren't wars but are wars that are over but evolving and over and evolving. They are also rolling back green energy projects , fueling data centers with gas, etc.
Given the significant consequences this is worth paying attention to.
They’ve blown their attention budget for the layman and aren’t getting it back unless someone serious guides their attention.
the things are happening though.
e.g. if you read a headline in the 70s that said something like "ski seasons will shorten by an average of 1 day per year, leading to only 5 inches of snow water equivalent in Colorado resorts by 2026, and eliminating the economic viability of skiing in the northeast by 2060" that would have been completely correct.
That's what the headlines said the last 49 times. Why should the average person care now? What are they supposed to do?
Al Gore got on a scissor lift and showed the hockey stick graph. Millions of people saw it. Then the data was bad. Then the average person didn't see anything happen that they could point to and be like "That's what Al Gore warned us about". What you're asking for already happened, over and over. It's useless now.
If you lived under a big precarious rock and people always talked about the big rock falling on you would you ignore the big rock because the big rock people keep crying wolf?
This is honestly the most baffling worldview.
You are constantly seeing all manner of predictions. When someone makes a wrong prediction that is not a indicator that the thing will never happen. Otherwise I would bet that I will suffer no problematic effects if I stop paying a mortgage.
The point is that it's unactionable. The people who care could all pour their life savings into climate action and commit suicide to cancel all future carbon footprint and it still wouldn't move the needle. Even if the Democrats in the US took over both branches of Congress, the white house, and the supreme court, they wouldn't move the needle. There isn't any practical action any ordinary person could take.
So why are we writing about it for general consumption? Convince billionaires, politicians, oil execs, other scientists, literally anyone with the ability to do anything. If we're at the point the research claims, trying to get people to go vegan or fly less often isn't even shaving off fractions of a percent.
There is and should be pressure to decarbonise at this point - it is still going to help and we can vote to make that happen.
Tyrants like Putin want you to think you are powerless, but you are not.
Politicians thought (and some think to this day) that climate warming is "too political" to listen to experts. Most of them will think that Atlantic current is too political, till it stops.
It is easy to say "convince a politician", but it is hard to do. Politicians think politics, and you have to be a genius among politicians to transform a game field, so some concerns of scientists became a political issue that is not possible to ignore. Geniuses among politicians as as rare as in any other discipline, the most of them will just play existing games, without even thinking of rewriting the rules of the game. BTW, when they try to rewrite, the boring old "play by the rules" might start to look pretty good.
Politics is the hardest unsolved problem the humanity faces. We could send humans to the Moon, or it seems increasingly likely we can create an AGI, but we can't make politicians to listen to the reason.
But when we speak about climate science, or something else "close to Earth", then it is impossible to imagine how they may not be concerned with good and bad.
Theoretically speaking, science is looking for a truth, and any truth, but practically it seeks useful knowledge, and if you look into any scientific article, it starts with an argument that the results presented in the article are useful, and not just the authors of the article think so, but there are (were) other people too. Undergraduates are explicitly taught to write articles like that.
Many sciences are concerned with the consequences of human actions and it's hard if not impossible to describe these in meaningful ways without applying some criteria for what outcomes are good (desirable, positively evaluated) and what outcomes are bad (not desirable, negatively evaluated).
Besides, there is a whole area of science that maybe is more like engineering but is clearly worthwhile, too, even if it's not strictly a natural science only. For example, urban planning might not be a science in the strict sense but it's clearly important and involves scientific studies.
If policy makers can't get from climate scientist's an evaluation of the potential consequences of climate changes, then who else would produce these for them? Should they just make it up on the fly?
It is concerned with understanding health. It is unable to decide what is "good" or "bad" as that is in the eye of the beholder. That is why medicine presents the options gleaned from the gained understanding, leaving the individual to decide for themselves what is "good" amid all the different tradeoffs. The universe has no fundamental concept of "good" or "bad". It is something humans make up. It is curious that someone who seems to have an interest in science doesn't realize that.
It's false and somewhat naive to claim that such evaluations play no role in science, they are a crucial part of many sciences. For instance, they're needed to find worthwhile subjects of study. Not everything is theoretical physics.
You're talking about a consultant now. Yes, consultants take scientific understanding and help translate it into what the customer wants to hear: doing their best to interpret what the other person is likely to think is "good" or "bad". It is technically possible for someone to be both a scientist and a consultant, of course. Humans can do many things. But generally medical doctors are focused on operating consultancies alone. There usually isn't enough time in the day to be both deeply engrossed in science and other professions at the same time. Generally speaking, medical doctors are not scientists in any meaningful sense. That's why we call them medical doctors instead of scientists... Yes, there are some exceptions, as there always is.
Scientists are also humans with their own value judgment which is sometimes very flawed (see e.g. Richard Lynn and his race science) and sometimes with revolutionary insights that expands our shared empathy for the world around us (see e.g. Jane Godall).
Often when I hear a statement like this I see it as a thought terminating cliché. The value judgement of a scientists is often disregarded only when it is contrary (or inconvenient) to the speaker’s argument.
The solar panel install stats give me hope. It’s unfortunate the US is burying its head on new alt energy projects but our grifting culture is just too strong.
I think generally the effects climate skeptics have over climate policy is overstated. And corporations with vested interest in being able to continue releasing massive amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere have much more say over climate policy then climate skeptics. Now these companies often do weaponize climate skeptics in order to lobby government into continued inaction, but that behavior will continue regardless of how scientists frame their climate models.
This would be compeling if they were actual sceptics who care about evidence. We are talking about people who will bad faith deny everything.
Censoring yourself is exactly what they wanted to achieve and did achieved.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx4298
Basically newer modeling has shown a stronger weakening of the system. Lots of uncertainty, but 1/3rd loss by 2100. There's a lot of unknowns with feedback loops and tipping points where the whole thing might collapse if a threshold is crossed.
One of the issues with slow moving catastrophes is that we get used to it and then we stop worrying about it.
I believe this is because humans are not good generally at long term planning past a couple years when there is no clear feedback (or it is purposely muddied.)
So essentially we are likely screwed.
Many climate change skeptics like to claim that Earth’s climate has been radically different at various points in its history, therefore current anthropogenic climate change is fine. Other climate change skeptics like to claim that we’re currently in an ice age, therefore warming the planet is not a bad thing. Yet others claim that this is natural and humans shouldn’t try to stop it.
What these arguments miss is that all available evidence suggests that CO2 levels and global temperatures have never changed this fast outside of mass extinctions. All available evidence strongly supports the ideas that humans released the excess CO2, that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas, and that human-produced CO2 is causing the planet to retain more heat. There are competing theories on how catastrophic anthropogenic climate change will be and how fast it will happen, but the broad consensus is that these drastic changes will impact both humans and the broader environment.
People argue against preventative measures to slow down anthropogenic climate change because it can harm economic growth. The attitude seems to be “we shouldn’t sacrifice profits for the polar bears”. I argue that it’s not a matter of trying to save other species, it’s about saving our own species. Given the overwhelming evidence that humans are causing climate change and that the results will involve drastic changes in climate patterns, I don’t think we’re panicking enough. For the vast majority of us who are not ultra wealthy capitalists, faster economic growth won’t matter if extreme weather events threaten our lives every year and large areas of agricultural land become unusable. We need to slow down our production and consumption and study climate change more carefully, not defund climate research and charge blindly into a future we can’t control or predict.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/contour/
I am seeing changes, unprecidented changes, in my decades of watching, and they do not match any predicted scenario.
I would love someone to stitch years of these images together in a video to help me get better context.
The answer can't be, let's just consume 10x less. We have to engineer our way out of it.
And at least in the US we do not have it and are actively going in the opposite direction, mostly in the name of money.
Yes tech can help but implementation depends on human nature.
We will have to do both I am afraid
I love technology but optimism about it is incompatible with the current capitalist system. Tech is exploited to make capital not to further our optimism.
Edit: if you’re gonna downvote at least offer a counter. lol pathetic.
All to say, Capital at large seeks out the profit. Until climate change effects the profit considerably, mitigation will be the path less traveled.
The only real way to approach this problem is to reduce consumption across the board which as you might guess, isn't profitable.
my semi-superstitious take is that the race to achieve ai is grounded in needing something that knows whats going on and is able to make decisions aligned to generational time horizons. whether that works out or not time will tell, but i get the sense a "good enough" ai is probably our best shot at saving us from ourselves. it's clear we can't do that on our own.
We need a human civilization that is run for the benefit of human beings, not paper-clip maximizing overlords.
Government is the only apparatus that can govern unregulated motivations of capital, and we need regulations on pollution and investments in clean energy and waste creation/collection to stop things like climate change.
Gen X and forward grew up in a world that by default was cleaner due to regulations like the Clean Water Act, better for seniors due to things like Social Security and Medicare, and safer due to things like food regulations and vaccine mandates. The people who rail against these things are railing against the very things that made their world safer and in some instances kept them alive.
Energy absolutely is something that you can engineer. It is one of the most fundamental things engineering is about. Nothing we can do will make a difference without serious investment in carbon-free power systems. There is a lot of money being invested in energy technology, the real question is if we will build enough of it.
Selfish humans. "Capital" is a mental model, it's not some force of nature or hand of god.
EDIT: got to love how anytime you write something even remotely critical of capitalism you get auto-downvoted. Fine, "climate change is only because of bad, selfish people". Is this explanation more palatable?
It's very real, but the notion that it's changing over a 5 year period is nonsense.
things aren't "shutting off".
In the same place where I live now, when I was young there was permanent snow cover for 3 to 4 months.
During the last 10 years, there have been years with no snow and in the others a little snow has been present for 3 or 4 days of a year, when it melted the second day after falling.
I have not used again my winter boots and my winter jackets for the last 15 years or more.
This is really a huge change during less than a human lifetime.
What you perceive as change isn't macro, it's micro.
It doesn't mean macro change isn't happening, but it's not happening on our timescale.
I'm 50 FWIW.
Talk to anyone over 30 and they'll tell you the climate has already changed.
Well anyone that doesn't have a political agenda or shares in ExxonMobil.
But also, what you wrote is just wrong. There are plenty of measurable, significant, ood effects in the last few decades on the climate and its impact.
Here’s one study onglacier retreat over the last 20 years.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL09...
And here’s a paper on the effects of the mechanism:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02282-5
I’m sure you’ll read them earnestly.
What has no value is to pretend it is not happening because ones favorite ideological movements said so.
Maybe climate is more stable wherever you live
When I was a kid in the midwest USA, 100 degrees in the summer happened every once in a while. Still does. July and August were always hot. Still are. As a kid the heat didn't bother me so much, I'd go out and play in the sprinkler or go to the pool. Now, I've got to wear clothes and work. Makes the heat more noticable.
Whether we'd get snow before January has always been a toss-up, and I'd hazard we've gotten it more often recently than when I was a kid. Like about 10 years ago I even remember a huge blizzard in November.
Summers are actually hotter and winters are actually warmer on average, that's real.
I wonder how people like you end up so hostile to experts.
(1) Gulf Stream is a wind-driven western boundary current and the equatorial Atlantic is getting warmer and warmer so heat delivery is probably stable;
(2) Greenland melt rates are real and fresher ocean water won’t sink as much and could push northern surface currents south;
(3) Wind-driven upwelling (other end of the AMOC) is likely to stay stable so you have the suction pump effect;
(4) Atmospheric warming and overall climate conditions today are very different from that 12,000 ya system the article cites;
Regardless, dumping all this fossil CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere is definitely changing the climate system; but rather than cooling Europe and the UK I’d guess this will just reduce the warming rate in that region over the next 100 years, and it might cause problems with ocean hypoxia due to slower rates of deep water formation, impacting fish populations.
P.S. If you want to vet these claims, plug it into an LLM with this header: “ As an expert in global planetary science, give me some critiques with positive/negative paper references that both support and push back against each point (eight papers total please, prefer recent, then critique summary).”
1. even if there was something humans could do about it, we won't, ever
2. insurance rates are the only "control". they will skyrocket and thereby the only change to select behavior
human society allows "privatize the profits, socialize the costs"
so that scales from the smallest to the largest models
There are many solutions.
There are, but none that will be accepted. Will you give up your car, your air condititioning, your AI agents, your uber eats, your year-round fresh produce at the supermarket, meat as a regular part of your diet, all the imported stuff you are accustomed to having?
As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of methods, including limiting repairability, deliberate planned obsolescence through things like fast fashion and equipment designed to break down, and psychological manipulation to encourage consumption. Small ‘d’ democratic efforts to limit these techniques have been defeated by powerful lobbies backed by these billionaires.
Billionaires aren’t just responsible for consumption-driven climate change, they’re also responsible for subverting the democratic processes that could have reversed it at large scales.
What is the name for the theory that the most fantastically wealthy do not rule society? No kind adjectives come to mind.
Even if the 4000 billionaires are ruling society, they're destroying the planet with the help of 8 billion poors.
If the executive branch of the government is commanding the military, and generals are commanding the military, they’re killing people with the help of tens of thousands of soldiers.
After COVID it feels doom is unavoidable.
We can actually make petty good estimates because of things like carbon layers in the ice. It's happened in the past, you're right, and usually it precedes large scale extinction events.
But when making actual predictions, the models need to make assumption about anthropogenic parameters like CO2 and methane emissions. That's the largest remaining uncertainty at this point. Given the same assumptions, climate models generally agree on the outcome.
Science is best when it’s purely that, I’ve seen plenty of living examples and read about past ones where science mixed with politics or overt profit motives don’t end well. Surely there must be examples where the contrary has been the case, but I am biased, and I would wager that it ended poorly more often than well.
I would much rather have politicians that heed scientific results than scientists springboarding into politics.
https://tellusjournal.org/articles/10.3402/tellusa.v13i2.949...
It’s going to shut down
The ice caps and antartic ice are going to melt entirely
The Gulf Stream is going to collapse
Global emissions have skyrocketed with no brakes since then
1.5C target was a joke. 2.0 target is a joke. There is no world where humans can coordinate in a way that reduces global emissions
MAYBE by accident with enough selfishness around not wanting to die. I don’t see it though
We will be spending much of our upcoming years trying to get people and capital to accept that fact, before we can even start thinking about what little we can even do. By which point, we may actually just be having to scramble to mitigate the immediate sequelae of the changed climate, rather than focus our efforts to fix the underlying cause.
Depending upon timing, if the AOC shuts down, Europe may not be a bad place to live. I am not sure how the AOC will impact NE US and Eastern Canada. But between the 40th parallels could be borderline uninhabitable for humans.
Way things look now, we seem to heading straight to +3C and maybe even +4C.
They seem to have cooperated rather effectively on increasing them, so I wouldn't say "no world"?
We are moving that direction, but a lot of damage will be done before we get there.
Studies of ratios of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere show that there has been a relative increase in carbon-12 and a relative decrease in carbon-13 and carbon-14 consistent with the burning of fossil fuels, which contains no carbon-14 due to radioactive decay and low levels of carbon-13 because plants preferentially fix carbon-12. Research the Suess effect for more information.
We’ve known since John Tyndall’s research in 1859 that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Besides countless other studies since, we also have satellite evidence that the Earth is reemitting less infrared radiation at the exact wavelengths that CO2 absorbs. CO2 as the driver of a greenhouse effect is not in doubt either.
There is also plenty of observational evidence that the oceans now trap more heat, that nights are warming faster than days, that winters are warming faster than summers, and these are all consistent with models of anthropogenic climate change.
How exactly do you propose to prepare for Europe becoming uninhabitable?
"Funny" story, in a few months we'll be moving a few hundred km north, partly due to the summers being unbearably hot and dry the past few years.
Now we're hearing more and more about the area we're going to potentially getting really cold due to the weakening of the Atlantic current.
Good times.
The AMOC has been studied for a long time, including the effects of its possible weakening.
Where the movie is firmly in fantasy land of course is in the timeline, where the effects are nearly instant rather than likely over decades in reality.
I.. _sigh_, my comment was satire I'm well aware of the "science", the modelling, the failures of large amounts of models, the ones that work, the...