Can you point out what you are talking about? Because the only old papers on climate change that I've seen (e.g. Hansen et al, 1988, https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html) say basically exactly the same as climate science today (with less precision and certainty).
"NYC under water by 2030" is NOT a prediction that I have ever seen in those papers, much less the scientific consensus at ANY point in time.
> Wrong again: 50 Years of Failed
Ecopocalyptic Predictions
> Myron Ebell Steven J. Milloy 09/18/2019
is:
> 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway
underwater by 2019
> While doing research 12 or 13 years ago,
I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in
1988 predicted the greenhouse effect
before Congress. I went over to the
window with him and looked out on Broadway
in New York City and said, "If what you
are saying about the greenhouse effect is true,
is anything going to look different down
there in 20 years?" He looked for a while
and was quiet and didn't say anything for
a couple of seconds. Then he said, "Well,
there will be more traffic." I, of
course didn't think he heard the question
right. Then he explained, "The West Side
Highway [which runs along the Hudson
River] will be under water."
That quote continues on with some more
extreme predictions.
Uh, that's not a primary reference. CEI
gives a link to a Salon article. And the
Associate Press may have been involved in
the quote.
While I applaud your phraseology, I think the quantity of breathless, non-expert media coverage of this issue over the past decades simultaneously make it difficult to determine the past state of the scientific research (absent reading of relevant papers) and make it wise to reject other than peer-reviewed primary source articles out of hand. At very least, that's my strategy.
Given that you haven't said when scientists predicted this I think this comment is a bit of a strawman. When atmospheric CO2 levels were at this level, 3-5 million years ago, sea levels were 30 feet higher than today. So why hasn't that happened yet? Because it takes A LOT of energy to melt that amount of ice, but just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't or can't. It just will likely not happen in one lifetime.
I've read everything I can about climate change at this point, having both been actively trying to keep aware of the issue for over a decade and really accelerating my knowledge as much as someone who isn't a climate scientist can.
The thing I will say about this is that the communication often given to traditional news outlets is actually holding back[0]. Things are already much worse than they thought it would be, and its accelerating faster than they thought it would, but many in the community feel that if they didn't include some positive messaging - even if subtle - that the average person (and therefore, most of society) would lament to doom and do nothing, as opposed to trying to move the needle as much as possible, even though we can't escape many (if not all?) the worst issues wrought by climate change.
I'm willing to bet that the models on this have or are converging on within 5-10 years as opposed to multiple decades, given the propensity to report on best case scenarios
I think this idea made sense in the era of the time, when climate science had to beg and be polite to survive on the airwaves, lest they be obliterated once again by people like Rupert Murdoch.
That era is, to an extent, gone. May as well be clear about the challenge at this point - because the issue isn't people, its organizational.
To move the needle at those depths of power, the regular joe needs large, coordinated power.
in a graduate program for green minded people, this was discussed in detail for months on end. Basically from a mass communication point of view, you are right. You cannot simply declare unsolvable doom and expect results. It is psychologically and emotionally too much. You get polarized people who argue, deny, mock or despair, commit slow or fast suicide, etc..
Skilled communicators start and stop with something that is accessible to the listener. There has to be a binding element of some kind to cause the listener to be bonded to the speakers, in some way, directly or indirectly... even if the path forward is not clear
Based on past events that we assume were caused by similar events:
> Modelled 21st century warming under the "intermediate" global warming scenario (top). The potential collapse of the subpolar gyre in this scenario (middle). The collapse of the entire Atlantic Meriditional Overturning Circulation (bottom).
The truth is whatever happens will fuck us up big time, we're way too dependant on existing infrastructures/agricultures/city hubs/&c. none of it would be moveable in such a short period. Allies were fighting on airports tarmacs for masks during covid, imagine what would happen in this scenarios
I really wonder what the best mitigation strategy in this time line is going to be for individuals. My own is to have an EU passport and an American passport. It's hard to tell which of these regions will fare better, but having a hedge strategy seems to be the way. The US has more climate zones, but Europe is far more socially functional and might do better in terms of collective action and survival. Not to mention car dependency in the US might prove to be a death blow to many types of sustainable living models. Also, Americans are going to fall to pieces when even the smallest amount of convenience is ripped away from them.
My suspicion is that no one really knows; telling the future is always difficult. The consequences of adding carbon to the atmosphere will continue to accumulate as more carbon is added (and the really scary part is when feedback loops kick in that then add more carbon on their own). In 5 years, it will be a bit worse, and then in 10, a bit more. I think about what it must feel like to be a teenager today to be staring down decades of this.
My impression is more of the same: stronger storms, weirder weather, extremer extremes. If the Atlantic Ocean current does collapse (probably won't happen in the next ten years, but there's a good chance it does by the end of the century) then northern latitudes on the Atlantic will freeze and farming may well become infeasible there.
> I'm willing to bet that the models on this have or are converging on within 5-10 years as opposed to multiple decades, given the propensity to report on best case scenarios
It's true that historically climate science (especially UN climate science) has been politically-intertwined, which has colored the message.
But you can't apply a global adjustment to all reported results, with the expectation that everything is underreported.
It may be underreported. It may be overreported. But the reported results are the results.
Without digging into the model (and likely having climate modeling expertise), it's impossible to classify the error direction and magnitude more closely.
... that said, I think ocean currents are one of the more reliable models, because of their scale and the amount of sampling that's been and is being done.
The AMOC is one of the most studied climate phenomenon. We have known for decades that with a large enough freshwater forcing in models you can shut it down. The question is how big is the forcing needed and do the models accurately represent the important processes (namely convection in the North Atlantic which is difficult to get right). Unfortunately, there is a long history of sensationalized AMOC headlines.
The scientific consensus according to the IPCC AR6 is that the AMOC is currently slowing down not shutting down but models disagree wildly on the magnitude of that slowdown
“ The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will very likely decline over the 21st century for all SSP scenarios. There is medium confidencethat the decline will not involve an abrupt collapse before 2100. For the 20th century, there is low confidence in reconstructed and modelled AMOC changes because of their low agreement in quantitative trends. The low confidence also arises from new observations that indicate missing key processes in both models and measurements used for formulating proxies and from new evaluations of modelled AMOC variability. This results in low confidence in quantitative projections of AMOC decline in the 21st century, despite the high confidence in the future decline as a qualitative feature based on process understanding. {9.2.3}”
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/
Imagine you live in a quaint little neighborhood. Everyone mostly gets along. You’ve got a nice neighborhood watch. You look out for each other.
Except this one guy over the hill who is kind of a dick. Let’s call him Vlad. Everyone tolerates him because he provides heating oil at a good price.
One day he kicks in his neighbor’s door, decides it’s his house now and threatens dude’s family. (“He’s my cousin so I can do anything I want, besides we speak the same language so this is my house now”) his neighbor (of course) fights back. Now they’re in a stalemate.
The neighborhood comes together and sends him a stern letter. “Nobody’s going to buy your heating oil if you keep on” Vlad laughs and keeps on firing into his cousin’s house.
Everyone claims to stop buying oil but somehow vlad keeps getting oil money (there’s probably someone in Chinatown not playing by the rules) Vlad promptly spends all his extra money on more guns.
On the one hand you can just let Vlad mess with his cousin. On the other hand Vlad is a bully and a bully doesn’t stop with intimating one dude. Besides, he also keeps threatening the neighborhood watch. Whenever he gets drunk he rants about rolling tanks across everyone’s pansies.
The fact is, Vlad will continue to be a dick and your best move is for everyone to throw rooftop solar on the roof and install a heat pump.
When the global demand for oil plummets, Vlad won’t have money to keep stockpiling ammo and his relevance will fade.
It should be really obvious by now that trying to prevent problems that will happen AFTER most of us are dead is an exceedingly futile exercise. Most humans aren't even capable of saving for retirement. How did anyone expect we were going to solve the next generation's climate problems? Humans are just not wired that way.
Taking this a little further though, I'm not even sure we're up to the challenge technologically. Imagine how laughable it would have been to ask Civil War era scientists to figure out flight, or nuclear power, or rocketry, or telecommunications.
That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to go to the moon in hot air balloons.
We have not cracked unlimited, clean, fusion energy; we have abysmal battery technology; our high-efficiency transportation infrastructure sucks; but somehow we're going to solve the next generation's climate problem?
I don't know - maybe it's overly optimistic of me, but I think the next few generations are going to solve this problem and they're going to do it in ways that will make anything we could muster look utterly unserious.
> but I think the next few generations are going to solve this problem and they're going to do it in ways that will make anything we could muster look utterly unserious.
Yes that's exactly why I throw my trash on the streets, someone else will pick it up later, why bother ? /s
It should also be really obvious that there are many ways to prevent these problems at the source. We can ramp up regulations on pollution to be much, much stricter than they are now, and give them real teeth. We can combat overseas pollution with sanctions and trade agreements. We can reject politicians who stymy these efforts, and sometimes even backpedal efforts by leaving the Paris Agreement and making a fuss.
There are many avenues open to solving climate change problems that don't involve inventing global terraforming.
The Gulf Stream doesn't shut down, it's a physical phenomenon driven by geostrophic gyres and is an example of an intensified western boundary current (pdf):
If you don't have bottom water formation in the North Atlantic due to increased glacial melt off Greenland, then the Gulf Stream influence on Northern Europe gets blocked somewhat. The claim in the paper is that this will result in North Atlantic sea ice having a larger winter extent thus leading to climatic extremes in the winter in the region.
However, this goes against the trend of decreasing summer ice coverage in the Arctic, so you have some countervailing forces involved, and predicting the outcome of this struggle is a difficult thing to model, so this would be a 'maybe' outcome. Note also that the Gulf Stream is currently warming so the struggle between opposing forces has another component:
Best bet seems to be increasing climatic instability on a seasonal basis, a kind of whip-saw situation, and thus the best policy options (given that fossil fuel combustion is apparently going to remain constant for the next three decades by all estimates) is to invest in hardening infrastructure, preparing for heat waves and agricultural impacts as well as floods and cold snaps.
Another long-term effect of decreased ocean circulation is oceanic hypoxia and anoxia, which of course is also enhanced by fertilizer runoff.
37 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 83.6 ms ] thread"NYC under water by 2030" is NOT a prediction that I have ever seen in those papers, much less the scientific consensus at ANY point in time.
> "NYC under water by 2030" is NOT a prediction that I have ever seen in those papers, much less the scientific consensus at ANY point in time.
There is a low quality quote for
>1989: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019
So via CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute) at
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...
with
> Wrong again: 50 Years of Failed Ecopocalyptic Predictions
> Myron Ebell Steven J. Milloy 09/18/2019
is:
> 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019
> While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, "If what you are saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?" He looked for a while and was quiet and didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. Then he said, "Well, there will be more traffic." I, of course didn't think he heard the question right. Then he explained, "The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water."
That quote continues on with some more extreme predictions.
Uh, that's not a primary reference. CEI gives a link to a Salon article. And the Associate Press may have been involved in the quote.
I think you watch too many movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Tomorrow
HOWEVER, we could be in for a rude awakening since sea level rise is likely exponential. See this article for an explainer: https://johnenglander.net/how-long-to-fill-a-soccer-stadium-...
Where did you hear this prediction, Coast to Coast AM?
Over what timeframe? NYC will, in fact, be underwater eventually.
I believe you are confused or being disingenuous.
The country that spent 15b on dams ? The country which is planning 1b/year from now to 2100 to avoid being submerged ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee_Works
https://www.oecd.org/environment/resources/financing-water-s...
The thing I will say about this is that the communication often given to traditional news outlets is actually holding back[0]. Things are already much worse than they thought it would be, and its accelerating faster than they thought it would, but many in the community feel that if they didn't include some positive messaging - even if subtle - that the average person (and therefore, most of society) would lament to doom and do nothing, as opposed to trying to move the needle as much as possible, even though we can't escape many (if not all?) the worst issues wrought by climate change.
I'm willing to bet that the models on this have or are converging on within 5-10 years as opposed to multiple decades, given the propensity to report on best case scenarios
[0]: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/10/03/1-5-degrees-celc...
That era is, to an extent, gone. May as well be clear about the challenge at this point - because the issue isn't people, its organizational.
To move the needle at those depths of power, the regular joe needs large, coordinated power.
Skilled communicators start and stop with something that is accessible to the listener. There has to be a binding element of some kind to cause the listener to be bonded to the speakers, in some way, directly or indirectly... even if the path forward is not clear
> Modelled 21st century warming under the "intermediate" global warming scenario (top). The potential collapse of the subpolar gyre in this scenario (middle). The collapse of the entire Atlantic Meriditional Overturning Circulation (bottom).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Sgubin20...
The truth is whatever happens will fuck us up big time, we're way too dependant on existing infrastructures/agricultures/city hubs/&c. none of it would be moveable in such a short period. Allies were fighting on airports tarmacs for masks during covid, imagine what would happen in this scenarios
It's true that historically climate science (especially UN climate science) has been politically-intertwined, which has colored the message.
But you can't apply a global adjustment to all reported results, with the expectation that everything is underreported.
It may be underreported. It may be overreported. But the reported results are the results.
Without digging into the model (and likely having climate modeling expertise), it's impossible to classify the error direction and magnitude more closely.
... that said, I think ocean currents are one of the more reliable models, because of their scale and the amount of sampling that's been and is being done.
See the link below for expert responses:
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-modell...
The scientific consensus according to the IPCC AR6 is that the AMOC is currently slowing down not shutting down but models disagree wildly on the magnitude of that slowdown
“ The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will very likely decline over the 21st century for all SSP scenarios. There is medium confidencethat the decline will not involve an abrupt collapse before 2100. For the 20th century, there is low confidence in reconstructed and modelled AMOC changes because of their low agreement in quantitative trends. The low confidence also arises from new observations that indicate missing key processes in both models and measurements used for formulating proxies and from new evaluations of modelled AMOC variability. This results in low confidence in quantitative projections of AMOC decline in the 21st century, despite the high confidence in the future decline as a qualitative feature based on process understanding. {9.2.3}” https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/
https://images.theconversation.com/files/573569/original/fil...
Northern/eastern Europe, the UK, and the Nordic countries get substantially colder.
North America has much milder changes.
The neighborhood comes together and sends him a stern letter. “Nobody’s going to buy your heating oil if you keep on” Vlad laughs and keeps on firing into his cousin’s house.
Everyone claims to stop buying oil but somehow vlad keeps getting oil money (there’s probably someone in Chinatown not playing by the rules) Vlad promptly spends all his extra money on more guns.
On the one hand you can just let Vlad mess with his cousin. On the other hand Vlad is a bully and a bully doesn’t stop with intimating one dude. Besides, he also keeps threatening the neighborhood watch. Whenever he gets drunk he rants about rolling tanks across everyone’s pansies.
The fact is, Vlad will continue to be a dick and your best move is for everyone to throw rooftop solar on the roof and install a heat pump.
When the global demand for oil plummets, Vlad won’t have money to keep stockpiling ammo and his relevance will fade.
Taking this a little further though, I'm not even sure we're up to the challenge technologically. Imagine how laughable it would have been to ask Civil War era scientists to figure out flight, or nuclear power, or rocketry, or telecommunications.
That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to go to the moon in hot air balloons.
We have not cracked unlimited, clean, fusion energy; we have abysmal battery technology; our high-efficiency transportation infrastructure sucks; but somehow we're going to solve the next generation's climate problem?
I don't know - maybe it's overly optimistic of me, but I think the next few generations are going to solve this problem and they're going to do it in ways that will make anything we could muster look utterly unserious.
Yes that's exactly why I throw my trash on the streets, someone else will pick it up later, why bother ? /s
There are many avenues open to solving climate change problems that don't involve inventing global terraforming.
Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39319867
And alot of discussion 6 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864319
https://www.ess.uci.edu/~yu/class/ess228/lecture.10.ocean-ci...
If you don't have bottom water formation in the North Atlantic due to increased glacial melt off Greenland, then the Gulf Stream influence on Northern Europe gets blocked somewhat. The claim in the paper is that this will result in North Atlantic sea ice having a larger winter extent thus leading to climatic extremes in the winter in the region.
However, this goes against the trend of decreasing summer ice coverage in the Arctic, so you have some countervailing forces involved, and predicting the outcome of this struggle is a difficult thing to model, so this would be a 'maybe' outcome. Note also that the Gulf Stream is currently warming so the struggle between opposing forces has another component:
https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/gulf-stream-is-...
Best bet seems to be increasing climatic instability on a seasonal basis, a kind of whip-saw situation, and thus the best policy options (given that fossil fuel combustion is apparently going to remain constant for the next three decades by all estimates) is to invest in hardening infrastructure, preparing for heat waves and agricultural impacts as well as floods and cold snaps.
Another long-term effect of decreased ocean circulation is oceanic hypoxia and anoxia, which of course is also enhanced by fertilizer runoff.
Too spicy subject? Not of interest to HN community? Something else?