• LillyPip@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    I just hope we’re not seeing the start of a shutdown of the North Atlantic current, which is likely what led to the Younger Dryas ice age, which marked a dramatic climate shift and widespread extinction event over just a couple of decades:

    The change was relatively sudden, took place over decades, and resulted in a decline of temperatures in Greenland by 4–10 °C (7.2–18 °F), and advances of glaciers and drier conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. A number of theories have been put forward about the cause, and the hypothesis historically most supported by scientists is that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, was interrupted by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America into the Atlantic.

    Right now, it’s looking like that may have already started: Study: Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. If that’s the case, things will become very hot and then abruptly freeze, not over the course of a century, but virtually overnight.

    e: better link

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      10 months ago

      The thing I keep thinking about, and I feel like I’ve never been able to properly communicate, is that the machines our society runs on are built to run in a certain temperature range.

      The 2021 texas winter fiasco was a perfect demonstration of what happens when we try to run a society’s machinery outside of it’s expected temperature range. Yes, the ERCOT goofballs were trying to save money by narrowing that expected operating range because “It never gets that cold” and “It never gets that hot”, but my badly articulated point still stands - a system was made to operate in a temperature range outside of it’s capability, and it started to fail. They were minutes away from losing very expensive and hard to replace equipment. What we don’t want is for one of the more competently-run power grids in the world to start to buckle due to temperatures, because the same thing that happened in texas could happen on a larger scale.

      And that’s just talking about the power grid. Anything with a heat exchanger in it, including your car and air conditioner and all the refrigeration that is needed to keep everyone fed, is designed to run in a certain temperature range, and will stop working if you run it outside of that range for too long.

      But wait, we can just design stuff to run in a wider temperature range! We certainly can. But we would have to redesign everything that moves heat around.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      10 months ago

      When you stop and actually think about our situation you realise how thin our operating margins are, we are at the mercy of whatever the planet does and our safety is subject to immediate dismissal should the conditions change. Worse of course are the random cosmic whims which could wipe us out instantly at any time e.g. comets, the sun going weird, etc.

      • PotjiePig@lemmynsfw.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        10 months ago

        It’s a thought that gives me comfort that we, as a species, will be evicted before we can do irreparable damage so that life can continue to evolve without us.

    • slingstone@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      Is there any resource for forecasting what will likely occur in a given area? I don’t see how we can stop climate change now, so I want to prepare my family for it.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        Not that I’m aware of. From what I understand, that scenario would affect the entire planet.

        • slingstone@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          Yeah, but the changes to weather patterns will vary from location to location, right?

          This is what I mean:

          Warming is already occurring in all areas of the globe, but models of future temperatures show that the changes will not be distributed equally. Polar regions and land areas are expected to see the largest temperature changes.

          IPCC Working Group I, 2021

          • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            10 months ago

            Right, but if that current shuts down, that means the transfer of warm and cold currents that power weather patterns across the entire northern hemisphere will be disrupted.

            The last time that happened, the entire northern hemisphere basically froze over. If you live north of the equator, whether it’s North America, Europe, or Asia, the result would be similar: no more warm seasons and freezing to the point of glaciation, from what I understand. I’m not a climatologist, though.

  • Doombot1@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    The solution to global warming, then, is clearly to just set up a massive ring of fans all pointed in the same direction in a ring around the North Pole, to keep the jet stream going

    • DTFpanda@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      Yeah I’ve actually lost faith in 100% of folks in 2024 who still think it’s a scam. I used to think it was just boomers, it’s not. Every climate change related post from NASA on their social media accounts is literally full of young people making fun of them for ‘lying to the public’ and how it’s all a hoax. There’s no depth to these people, we truly live in a society full of complete morons who will believe in a conspiracy theory because of a 5 minute badly edited YouTube video, but refuse to trust anything that is widely accepted in the scientific community because of their need to feel important, intelligent, and ‘in’ on something that the rest of the world isn’t in on.

      • mmagod@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        the fellow students in school growing up that always blew off paying attention in school and disrupting class didn’t just disappear… sure i saw less of them when i wasn’t confined to those public grade school walls, but it’s been a harsh realization for me as I’m seeing them again as adults buying into and spreading the misinformation.

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    10 months ago

    Even as the US hits record setting lows, the temperature of the planet as a whole remains above average. If it’s -20°F across the entire US, how hot must the rest of the planet be?

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        That was hyperbole, I don’t know if it’s been -20°F across the entire country at any one time, but there was a couple years ago when we had that big freeze and Texas almost died

        But also gets that low in my own city sometimes

  • SoupBrick@yiffit.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Y’all ready to be gouged for survival items until money becomes irrelevant?

    P.S. ‘A Capitalist Apocalypse’ would be a fun title for a political comedy song.

  • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    10 months ago

    Al Gore and many others said there wouldn’t be any ice at all in the polar regions by 2013.

    Obviously climate change it happening, but the computer models they keep showing have been proven to be bullshit over and over.

    • ChewTiger@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      Doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. The process of developing those models can be incredibly useful in learning about complex steps. They help us understand what conditions and variables are important to look into. We can figure out what we know a lot about and what is still a complete mystery.

      Turbulent airflow is an incredibly complicated thing, we still haven’t fully solved the Navier+Stokes equations. I hope to be alive when someone does.

      Just because they don’t perfectly figure it out the first time doesn’t mean we should stop putting effort into incremental improvements. Though we do have to be careful that we are not wasting resources when there is a more efficient path forward. Simulations are one of many important tools, we just have to use them wisely.

      • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Whatever benefits you get out of letting an AI write code for you, is lost as soon as the corporate overlords claim your work as theirs because they own the AI that wrote it.