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.
None of that means it's not true.
Who is left to take decisive and ambitious action in say, the next decade?
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?
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?
https://www.ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/its-too-late-david-suzuk...
We are now in the "hunker down" phase of global warming.
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.
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.
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, until somebody brings out 10+ aircraft carriers and enforces global climate accord, i don't see any progress happening here.
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?
If we look at the enforcement and outcomes of former climate action „plans“ this is unfortunately a valid option.
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).
Its doubly frustrating because these studies invariably indicate that climate change is happening, getting worse, and triggering feedback loops that amplify CO2.
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.
Journalists make lots of mistake, and it's good to keep that in mind, but random people in forums are even worse.
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.
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.
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.
> The Day After Tomorrow was a documentary.
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.
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.
- Phthora 3:12This isn’t to argue against climate change, but I think journalism like this only fuels skeptics.
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.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ThermoclineSeasonDepth.pn...
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.
> 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.
True or not, this will be yet another asset in the the climate change deniers' toolbox.
Please let's not repeat 2020 with the flu again.
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!
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.
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.
* 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-...
So for example, if AI can replace the need for additional humans, then overall we're using net less energy?
Or did human labour instead come to resemble machine labour?
Which seems like a very strenuous proposal to be betting the future of humanity on.
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!"
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.
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.
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?
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.
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'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.
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.
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 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_
Humanity doesn't need saving, it just needs actual humanity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This assumes that the solution would involve a single structure. It could instead be composed of many parts.
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.
Electrical production can emit greenhouse gasses, and there is an argument we should be inventing and investing in decarbonizing it.
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.
scottgg•4h ago
Well, fuck
troyvit•4h ago
kergonath•4h ago
ykonstant•3h ago
jes5199•3h ago
fzeroracer•54m ago
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.