Rising Temperatures Could Melt Most Himalayan Glaciers by 2100 | Hacker News Reader

Rising Temperatures Could Melt Most Himalayan Glaciers by 2100

nytimes.com

28 pointsjuokaz26 comments

I'm curious how much colder we would have to make the planet in order for this not to happen.

https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0

June 29, 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

What is the problem with that article? We failed to stop global warming, and now it's likely that - regardless of what is done, even cutting to zero net carbon emissions - that the Maldives will be lost in the century.

The problem is that there have been alarmist articles like this posted for nearly a hundred years proclaiming gloom for days that are now in the past.

And they did not have the science and data to support them, now we do. Let's just hope we are being a bit too alarmist and it gets us to change our behaviour fast enough and not too late. We'd rather be wrong on this, you know.

> And they did not have the science and data to support them, now we do.

We know more than we knew then. We don't (and can't) know the outcome with current climate science. It's currently impossible for us to model the complex system that is Earth's climate with ranges into the decades. We can't even model weather a month out. Claiming climate science is settled is incredibly disingenuous and it bothers me that more scientists don't step up and say "hey here's what we think might happen but it's impossible to say for sure".

> We'd rather be wrong on this, you know.

Oh I definitely believe you on that, it's just that taking away rights from people to accomplish climate goals is not a zero-sum game and it needs to be treated with care and caution, not alarmism.

A lot of care was taken in the wording of the last IPCC report to communicate what findings have which level of confidence. The range is from 'virtually certain' to unsure, and yes, some parts are indeed not settled yet, but the main findings are more than sufficient to tell humanity that we need to act now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fifth_Assessment_Report#C...

> Oh I definitely believe you on that, it's just that taking away rights from people to accomplish climate goals is not a zero-sum game and it needs to be treated with care and caution, not alarmism.

That is for the politicians to work out. The load must be balanced of course, but if we don't act fast everyone will suffer for it. Calm and fast would be best though.

edit: Oh and the recent report about the ozone hole had some good news: The ozone hole is closing and the gases that were not emitted due to the controls also saved us from ~0.4°C of warming. (If the 'business-as-usual' projections are right, but there is no way to check that.) Plus, these greenhouse gas concentrations go down over time. Much easier than CO2 and methane, but a first win!

> A lot of care was taken in the wording of the last IPCC report to communicate what findings have which level of confidence.

The level of confidence is near zero, and if the IPCC was being honest and unbiased that is what they would say. As I said previously upthread, anybody who claims they can model our climate with any level of accuracy on the order of decades is being completely disingenuous. We can't model weather even a month out. The history of global warming alarmism has nearly a hundred-year long trail of missed predictions. But they have it right this time, right?

Nobody claims accuracy on the timescale of such a high resolution. Aditionally, we don't know about future emissions and land-use changes, and feedback effects, so we cannot predict the exact future.

Please check the wikipedia page for what is actually claimed.

> Please check the wikipedia page for what is actually claimed.

You want to point me to a fact you are trying to refute?

Where did you see written in the report that "The level of confidence is near zero"?

The actual level of confidence is near zero, not what is written. Climate scientists can prove it really easily; give a forecast of the weather more than 30 days out. Anybody claiming to be able to predict decades+ of weather should easily be able to do a 30 day forecast.

That's really low grade logic: models of weather can predict weather, models of climate can predict climate. What don't you understand in this?

What?! Alarmism is sometimes the only reasonable response - like when you're house is invaded by folks shooting guns and a flamethrower. You get alarmed, and do something, anything, that might get you out of that.

So we know that climate change is upon us and will affect billions, upset global economies, cause ocean species collapse and resultant upset to our food chain. And we are advised that people's rights are more important that global survival?

The first state is denial, then bargaining. That's where I see that argument. Grief and acceptance are coming soon.

Half of the anthropogenic CO2 has been emitted in the last 25 years, and emissions continue to accelerate.

We can pretend it isn't happening, we can ridicule older predictions for not being precise to the day or year, or we can acknowledge that study after study increases the weight of evidence. Evidence that makes abundantly clear we should have started doing something decades ago. Even the oil companies had their own internal predictions of severe climate change back in the 70s and 80s. Prediction is always going to be an imprecise science, but that does not invalidate it in the slightest.

Edit: The prediction you highlight still looks sound. "entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000". We didn't reverse the trend by 2000 and it still seems inevitable that the Maldives are on borrowed time.

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/history_legacy/keeling_curve_less...

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

When you put it like that, it sounds as if you mean that these articles are incorrect. Do you actually mean that?

The one quoted by GP seems to be largely right: We didn't reverse by 2000, and various island states are beyond hope now. Even if the CO₂ emissions drop to zero tomorrow, the present amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere will drive the sea level too high for the Maldives and a few more states. If you want to buy real estate there, you should plan on recovering your investment quickly.

Not true. Please cite.

In 1989:

> As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations ...

In 2018 [1]:

> If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100 — enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities ...

So this is an example of mankind having a pretty reasonable estimate of impending disasters back in freaking 1989, and doing nothing, and thirty years later still blaming scientists because the predicted disaster, unfolding as we see now, did not yet hit (some of) us personally... right?

[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2680/new-study-finds-sea-level...

Here's a thought exercise; we are moving into renewables with absolute breakneck speed. At this point, it's essentially cheaper to use renewable energy than fossil fuels. Market forces are moving us towards clean energy at an accelerating rate. Left alone, our economies will rapidly approach 100% renewable energy due to price alone. So ask yourselves why propaganda outlets like the Washington Post (DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS--give me a fucking break) or the NY Times breathlessly run article after article every day preparing citizens to give up their rights to choices; choice of what house they're allowed to live in, what kind of car they're allowed to drive etc.

But you can't criticize the golden calf of global warming^H^H^H^Hclimate change right? What's the saying, show me who you're not allowed to criticize and I'll show you who holds power over you.

Already have people telling me i’m not allowed to live in my 3000sqft house with my 2 vehicles in that tiny house thread.

How much fossil energy are you using with this setup? That is the only relevant question for this topic.

Actually it’s a lot more complicated than that. but to answer your question just gas electric and natural gas is a metric ton a month of CO2 out

> Left alone, our economies will rapidly approach 100% renewable energy due to price alone.

This is a fallacy. Just because renewables in most places are net positive on price today at ~5% market penetration, there's no guarantee that they will remain cheaper than fossil fuels once you start having to pay for grid-scale energy storage. We might well end up with a 30% renewables, 70% fossil fuels situation as the outcome of market forces alone. Furthermore, it's not the total cost of energy from e.g. solar vs. coal power that affects the decision to shut down prematurely a coal powerplant. It's only when the total cost of energy from solar becomes less than the marginal cost of coal power that market forces will shut down the coal powerplant. This means market forces alone will take a very long time to transition towards the future equilibrium.

> What's the saying, show me who you're not allowed to criticize and I'll show you who holds power over you.

How about Mother (fucking) Nature.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

* To be pedantic, it's not that you cannot criticize Nature: you can do it as much as you want, declare it to be invalid, legislate away its right, like those genius NC lawmakers who made sea level rise illegal. Mother Nature doesn't give a damn.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19079410 - this threatens the food supply of 3 billion people. It is an enormous, near term threat to the stability of civilization. This is by 2100. The impact will be sooner. People will not stay in one place to starve to death, and food supplies from other locations will be affected.

If the precipitation patterns stay the same (unlikely), this at least can be fixed with a few dams and proper water management.

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