Earth is trapping much more heat than climate models forecast

78 points by GeoAtreides 1 week ago | 39 comments
  • vardump 1 week ago
    I wish people would take this more seriously and understand climate science has nothing to do with politics.
    • klysm 1 week ago
      Unfortunately it has everything to do with politics because fixing it requires political action
      • hedora 1 week ago
        Yeah, but if you’re a human that expects to live another 10-20 years, it’s strongly in your self interest to take action.

        In that sense, it shouldn’t be political.

        • klysm 1 week ago
          I think people use the word political to mean “partisan issue”
          • fzeroracer 1 week ago
            Well, the key thing is that many of them don't expect to live longer than 20 years, which means its strongly in their self interest to instead grab as much power, money and influence NOW no matter the cost.

            It's not an understatement to say a lot of the ultra wealthy almost belong to a cult of nihilism either. We've ceded power to people who only care about things in the immediate future and the end result is disasterous.

            • deadfoxygrandpa 1 week ago
              if its not solvable via your own individual action then it's political
              • toomuchtodo 1 week ago
                What is the age of the average politician?
              • Dig1t 6 days ago
                It’s also an extremely useful political tool. You can convince people to do all kinds of things if you tell them that the world is ending.
              • staticautomatic 1 week ago
                Have you read the IPCC working group reports? It’s hard to conclude the direction of most climate research is anything other than political.
                • vardump 1 week ago
                  Can you elaborate a bit?
                  • nielsbot 1 week ago
                    The research is political in what way?
                    • asacrowflies 6 days ago
                      Citation.
                      • 1 week ago
                      • sieabahlpark 1 week ago
                        [dead]
                        • cyanydeez 1 week ago
                          unfortunately, climate scientists need to model the politics involved in solving the problem.

                          The easiest way to do that is to create two forces, simulating a zombie apocalypse. One force is the "good" guys who want to maximize the number of survivors and the "bad" guys who want to maximize the amount of resources per survivor.

                          You can then see how, as the climate change destroys habitats, forcing good guys and bad guys into closer quarters, the tension between resource allocation and survivability naturally creates strife.

                          Also, the models can't do shit about predicting volcanos, eruptions, ocean burps and a bunch of aperiodic events that can expel methane and CO2 all without billionaires flying their jets around convincing everyone that Technology Jesus will save us.

                          Anyway, it's a seriously bad position to think that "if only we accepted climate change" that there'd suddenly be an agreement on how to implement "fair" controls on the drivers of change.

                          • imtringued 1 week ago
                            Future AIs won't go out of control because they are malfunctioning, they'll attack humans because their hands are forced to do so, since that is the best course of action towards increasing the number of survivors.
                          • devwastaken 1 week ago
                            no amount of “we can fix this!” will magically change humans out of their animal behaviors. at scale, instinct always beats out higher level thought.

                            Climate change is a species consuming too many resources and causing their environment to not sustain their population.

                            Humans will survive, underground with the use of basic climate control tech. the earth will cool again, “humans” come back to the surface.

                            except, humans decided to create artificial materials that are destructive to reproduction. the genome will be so far removed that humans as we know them now wont exist. the fallout universe is an accurate representation.

                            • asacrowflies 6 days ago
                              I for one will NOT go quietly into the night nor will I be passive in allowing these greedy stains to destroy the rest of the non human biosphere. I think your prediction vastly undersells the violence and civil wars that this process of collapse will entail.
                          • vivzkestrel 1 week ago
                            curious question: if suddenly the entire population of the earth went vegan at once, would it cut down emissions by 60%?
                            • WorldMaker 6 days ago
                              60%? Certainly not.

                              Agriculture, total, is 10% of current US estimated greenhouse gas emission: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

                              Of that 10%, a lot of that is livestock, I've heard as high as 75-90%, but vegetable agriculture is still a part of that 10%, too.

                              But assuming all of that was livestock, it's still only 10%.

                              One of the reasons for the emphasis on "go vegan" as an individual choice is that the current industrial approach to cattle (cows for milk and beef) produces more methane than carbon and in some scenarios methane will have a 10x/100x impact on outcomes (making them much, much worse) per volume than carbon. But you can't just rely on eliminating methane production to "solve" climate change, because atmospheric carbon still "sets the tone", the question of atmospheric methane is how bad the "runaway" effects get after carbon has done more than enough damage on its own.

                              • 0xfaded 6 days ago
                                I am unqualified to answer but ran this question through an AI.

                                The rough number is that apparently 10% of CO2 equivalent comes from meat farming, but don’t trust this.

                                What did surprise me though is that a much larger benefit would result from repurposing the feed stock and grazing land, together comprising ~25% of the earths habitable land. Land and ecosystem restoration would likely result in feedback loops in the opposite direction.

                                I have a friend in Denmark that used to run a small carbon neutral farm, where the carbon offsets were all generated by other activities on his land. His all in cost for a kilo of pork was 700kr, or over $100 dollars. Meanwhile, you can but a kilo of port at a supermarket for ~$20. He could only sustain this because he ran a farm restaurant selling the best burgers in town, and even these were probably a loss leader for his best-in-town fries and mayonnaise making up the difference.

                                • yesfitz 6 days ago
                                  https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...

                                  "...following a phaseout of livestock production would, through the end of the century, have the same cumulative effect on the warming potential of the atmosphere as a 25 gigaton per year reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, providing half of the net emission reductions necessary to limit warming to 2°C." (emphasis mine)

                                  • 4gotunameagain 1 week ago
                                    Yeah because bacon is surely a larger factor in emissions that let's say, SUVs or private jets xD
                                    • collingreen 1 week ago
                                      How do the emissions from the meat+dairy+husbandry+fishing industries compare to the emissions of suvs (and/or the car industry) and private jets (and/or the airline industry)?

                                      I think that is the actual question being asked.

                                      • 4gotunameagain 1 week ago
                                        To that add the increased costs of logistics, because above some latitude you can only survive with a vegan diet with "exotic" produce brought to you with.. huge ass trucks.

                                        The northerners did not all converge to meat eating diet out of taste, but because very few things grow up there.

                                        I don't have the numbers but even then, 60% is simply funny.

                                    • eutraveler 1 week ago
                                      [flagged]
                                      • lazide 1 week ago
                                        No
                                      • bmacho 1 week ago
                                        > Why has it changed so fast?

                                        > We don’t yet have a full explanation. But new research suggests changes in clouds is a big factor.

                                        > Clouds have a cooling effect overall. But the area covered by highly reflective white clouds has shrunk, while the area of jumbled, less reflective clouds has grown.

                                        > It isn’t clear why the clouds are changing. One possible factor could be the consequences of successful efforts to reduce sulfur in shipping fuel from 2020, as burning the dirtier fuel may have had a brightening effect on clouds.

                                        ...

                                        It seems to me that the climate change will be totally solvable by releasing some random gas into the atmosphere. No need to fret about it.

                                        • slv77 1 week ago
                                          There have been proposals to inject sulfur into airline engines at high altitudes so this approach has been well studied. The first challenge is that even if it addresses the problem of global temperatures rising it does nothing to address other issues such as ocean acidification. At some point C02 levels become physiologically relevant to humans and it feels like living in a stuffy room all the time. The second problem is that it has to be maintained forever. Any technological glitch and the planet goes into run-away heating. Basically we’d be making a decision for humans 100 to 1000 years in the future to maintain a specific lifestyle.

                                          It would be the equivalent of people in the 1970s deciding to not move away from ozone-layer destroying CFCs and deciding to fit all humans and animals with permanent sunglasses to prevent cataracts instead.

                                          • bmacho 1 week ago
                                            > There have been proposals to inject sulfur into airline engines at high altitudes so this approach has been well studied. The first challenge is that even if it addresses the problem of global temperatures rising it does nothing to address other issues such as ocean acidification. At some point C02 levels become physiologically relevant to humans and it feels like living in a stuffy room all the time.

                                            What about wars and cancer?

                                            > The second problem is that it has to be maintained forever.

                                            Any solution should be "maintained forever", at least until we have the ability to undo it, so basically everything while there are humans on the planet.

                                            • asacrowflies 6 days ago
                                              You are missing the point or being purposefully dense. Many of the solutions to climate change are self sustaining . Like the biosphere itself regulating the climate. Your dumb statement about "maintaining forever" highlights the type of engineer brain /economics PhD arrogance that got us into this mess in the first place. While disregarding basic science and common sense.
                                          • vardump 1 week ago
                                            > It seems to me that the climate change will be totally solvable by releasing some random gas into the atmosphere. No need to fret about it.

                                            Yeah, what could go wrong...

                                            • bmacho 1 week ago
                                              Honestly, if they choose this option, they surely will run a bunch of simulations before it, unlike the current path, when they are just randomly substracting gases from the atmosphere.
                                              • AnimalMuppet 6 days ago
                                                Well, they "randomly subtracted" a gas that they were previously "randomly adding". In fact, even "subtracted" is wrong - they randomly stopped adding a gas that they had been randomly adding.

                                                They did not run a bunch of simulations before randomly adding the gas.

                                                • isthatafact 1 week ago
                                                  In addition to the likely high costs and predictable negative side-effects, one could extrapolate from the article title that climate engineering could also have unpredictable negative effects.

                                                  Making big changes to a complex system that we do not fully understand seems very dangerous to me.