Just checked the Glacier Blanc in the Massif des Écrins. The map's glacier vector perimeter is completely wrong : the glacier has retreated hundreds of meters already.
I hope this is just a map thing, and not the base for these predictions :/
The CMIP7 scenarios were just released. AR7 is not yet completed but it's the input for it.
The "worst" RCP8.5 / SSP5-8.5-style futures (coal-dominated, ~4.4–4.9 °C) are no longer treated as plausible given policy already in place, renewable cost declines, and observed emissions.
The policy changes have changed the projections.
Warming will continue, yes. The consequences will have to be dealt with. In some regions this will be problematic. It's still political and economical factors that determines the outcome.
It's worth noting that there is a fair amount of eschatology or even apocalypticism going on. It's built into the human mind somehow.
Indeed. Specifically, in the region called “Earth”. Even if some region is magically unaffected by climate change, what do you think will happen when the people in the other regions move to run for their lives? Everyone will be affected.
> The "worst" RCP8.5 / SSP5-8.5-style futures (coal-dominated, ~4.4–4.9 °C) are no longer treated as plausible
That's a strange way of structuring such a comment. The temperature increase and concomitant catastrophes are still on the table, what was considered the plausible worst-case scenario with regard to how early that particular milestone might be reached has (apparently) been pushed back.
If you're going to go networking in New York, maybe see if anyone is interested in running a study / pilot project on pushing carbonated water into ultramafic rock to kick start self powered (via hydrogen) carbon capture.
This does seem to be the result of human activity. But I'm not really sure how the words 'we' and 'choose' work in a sentence like that. The collective of humanity doesn't really make choices the way I understand that word -- at least not any more than an individual trader chooses the direction of the market. And, while individual citizens make choices that contribute to this, and business people and politicians make choices that prioritize the short-term over the long term, it's not really correct to say they prefer and therefor choose the climate change. It seems like we don't have a good vocabulary for talking about the cumulative results of small choices.
I get what you’re saying, but that doesn’t seem helpful. We don’t need to discuss better words to describe the intricacies of the situation, we need to do something about it.
It also doesn’t help to keep saying “this does seem to be the result of human activity”. “Seems to be”? It is, the science has been clear on that for a long time. But even if it wasn’t our fault, it would still be our responsibility to fix it. Because, you know, we live on the planet.
If I’m inside a house and it catches on fire, I’m not going to kick back on the sofa and not do anything because I didn’t start the fire. If it started because a group of idiots decided to launch fireworks inside, I’m not going to argue semantics about who exactly thought it was a good idea and who didn’t—the fucking house is on fire—what we need is for everyone to work together right now to put it out.
The problem is that saying "we need to do something" is equally unhelpful because "we" isn't a thing that takes action in any ordinary sense of the word. You are just putting words together in a syntactically correct order that are devoid of actionable meaning. The way this sentence is normally interpreted is, somebody needs to do something, but it's not clear who that somebody is, or what power they need in order to act on a large enough scale to be effective.
If you can't say with any clarity what action needs to take place and by whom, then you aren't really contributing to a solution. Reacting to a fire in a house is much easier because it is clear how individual action can help. For example: you can call the fire department, I can get a fire extinguisher. Notice the word "we" is not in those sentences.
A very significant change everyone can make is to consume more plants and less animal products. Diet is one the most impactful changes one can make individually.
Second, if you live in a cold country, improve your house heating efficiency and/or switch to heat pumps.
Third, consider a more efficient method of transportation, like bikes, walking, eletric vehicles, public transit, etc.. (bikes, walking and transit have the benefit of also being very good for our health)
Fourth, vote for politicians aware of the issues and enacting changes.
There's a lot everyone can make individually and collectively :)
>Second, if you live in a cold country, improve your house heating efficiency and/or switch to heat pumps.
Almost everything is inconsequential compared to living in a (detached) house. The detached house increases consumption of all kinds by orders of magnitude due to greatly increasing the distance everything moves to and around the house.
Ironically I live in a model of suburban bliss with tons of green space and it works because the houses are mostly row houses (terrace houses, tussenwoning, etc). It’s even easy to be car free here. Houten, NL
Right (I grew up in US suburbia) but to people who visit us it feels suburban. Which I hope can help sell the idea that you can have the upsides of suburban life without living in a sea of asphalt.
People who say which specific, effective actions should be taken by the common person have a tendency to get their accounts deleted. That is why they don't.
Ok, so what are YOU doing about it? If YOU are apart of WE, then please tell me how you’re fixing climate change? To the other posters points, this language does make it more difficult to process.
If I’m a carpenter ant eating away at this house, just like all other carpenter ants in the group, and I recognize that continued eating will collapse the house and kill all of us, what can I, a singular ant, do to stop everyone from munching away? I can say “we the ants must stop eating this house.” They just keep on eating. It’s not helpful.
I do all those and more. For example (relevant to your analogy), I speak with the people around me (never preachy, that’s no way to change someone’s mind) about why I do what I do, and adjust myself to be reasonable to the situation. It has instilled change in others, who in turn change others themselves. You the single ant are not alone. Motivate the people around you, there are other single ants in other parts doing the same. Expand your area until you meet, then keep going. If you look online in your area, you may be able to find other like minded people and groups with whom you can take collective action.
Yes, us - maybe scroll down to the part that points out Milankovitch cycles alone predict the earth should be cooling now (it isn't) and that
non-orbital effects can be important (for example, the human impact on the environment principally increases greenhouse gases resulting in a warmer climate)
I wonder what caused the glitch. Maybe the temperature increase was caused by the increase in concentration of a gas that raises the temperature. Nah, must be magic pixies.
The system is highly non-linear and has a lot of flippable components. For example, average temperature increase will cause the AMOC to collapse which will make parts of Europe cooler (while also increasing extreme weather events).
Similar things could happen with whichever glacier you are looking at.
The data comes from this paper, I don't immediately see an answer to this question though: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02513-9. My guess is that the climate is complicated and the planet doesn't warm evenly, so different emissions scenarios might imply different regions warm more quickly. Not all the glaciers on the site survive longer in the +4 scenario, it's only some parts of the world.
Okjökull is considered extinct, yet according to this website it should survive until the 2070s at least? It also gives 2079 for 1.5°C vs. 2075 for 2.7°C (I know that the local dynamic is not the same as the global one, but still).
The data is somewhat outdated:
Extinction is defined relative to the initial glacier outlines from the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI v6.0): released July 28, 2017.
Reviewed this and it is quite impressive. The map adds much more reality to the data as opposed to regular climate maps. The one feature that I think would be awesome to add would be an interactivity layer to the bottom-right panel indicating the extinction years where you can click or hover over the warming period to view the affected glaciers on the map and their numbers.
ofc it's not the singular reason, but it does feel like the past 3 years have been silicon valley brain geniuses really stepping on the gas w/r/t datacenter buildup instead of using those big brains to figure out how to reduce single use plastics or whatever. like, we know climate change is real. and yet these giant powerhungry buildings, using so much compute they literally cause shortages on the consumer market, are continuously being built to unclear ends.
In 2004, I visited New Zealand. It was my first international trip as part of a 6 week long geology field camp. One of the coolest experiences was getting to visit the Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier on the South Island.
Checking this out, I don't see the Fox Glacier or Franz Josef Glacier specifically listed in the search field, but moving the map around, I was able to find the ice fields.
I see that they both will "survive" to 2100, but I wonder in what state. Check out this time lapse video from 2013 to 2018 showing its drastic retreat! [3]
There was an episode of Northern Exposure where an entire frozen mammoth was exposed. Before the main character could report this amazing find to anyone to be preserved in a museum one of the locals dragged it to house and butchered it for steaks.
For anyone here looking to "do something" about global warming...One thing we're working on is how to avert the worst impacts of the 2026 El Niño, and use that as a way to break open a new conversation about the warming planet and what we can do about it.
One thing we need help with today is finding any other events at New York Climate Week that are about El Niño to feature on our site: https://elninoready.earth/
It's funny that your kinds of ideas were heresy a decade ago. Back then, we weren't supposed to think there was anything we could do about the effects of global warming in case we started to think mitigation was possible and stopped panicking. I suppose now that's politically permissiable?
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 3.1 ms ] threadI hope this is just a map thing, and not the base for these predictions :/
The "worst" RCP8.5 / SSP5-8.5-style futures (coal-dominated, ~4.4–4.9 °C) are no longer treated as plausible given policy already in place, renewable cost declines, and observed emissions.
The policy changes have changed the projections.
Warming will continue, yes. The consequences will have to be dealt with. In some regions this will be problematic. It's still political and economical factors that determines the outcome.
It's worth noting that there is a fair amount of eschatology or even apocalypticism going on. It's built into the human mind somehow.
Indeed. Specifically, in the region called “Earth”. Even if some region is magically unaffected by climate change, what do you think will happen when the people in the other regions move to run for their lives? Everyone will be affected.
That's a strange way of structuring such a comment. The temperature increase and concomitant catastrophes are still on the table, what was considered the plausible worst-case scenario with regard to how early that particular milestone might be reached has (apparently) been pushed back.
~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605466
It also doesn’t help to keep saying “this does seem to be the result of human activity”. “Seems to be”? It is, the science has been clear on that for a long time. But even if it wasn’t our fault, it would still be our responsibility to fix it. Because, you know, we live on the planet.
If I’m inside a house and it catches on fire, I’m not going to kick back on the sofa and not do anything because I didn’t start the fire. If it started because a group of idiots decided to launch fireworks inside, I’m not going to argue semantics about who exactly thought it was a good idea and who didn’t—the fucking house is on fire—what we need is for everyone to work together right now to put it out.
If you can't say with any clarity what action needs to take place and by whom, then you aren't really contributing to a solution. Reacting to a fire in a house is much easier because it is clear how individual action can help. For example: you can call the fire department, I can get a fire extinguisher. Notice the word "we" is not in those sentences.
See here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02084-1
Second, if you live in a cold country, improve your house heating efficiency and/or switch to heat pumps.
Third, consider a more efficient method of transportation, like bikes, walking, eletric vehicles, public transit, etc.. (bikes, walking and transit have the benefit of also being very good for our health)
Fourth, vote for politicians aware of the issues and enacting changes.
There's a lot everyone can make individually and collectively :)
Almost everything is inconsequential compared to living in a (detached) house. The detached house increases consumption of all kinds by orders of magnitude due to greatly increasing the distance everything moves to and around the house.
This is a US suburb:
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/02/127466-changing-shap...
Far less density of people.
Leading to a car centric less active and less communal lifestyle.
If I’m a carpenter ant eating away at this house, just like all other carpenter ants in the group, and I recognize that continued eating will collapse the house and kill all of us, what can I, a singular ant, do to stop everyone from munching away? I can say “we the ants must stop eating this house.” They just keep on eating. It’s not helpful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49662025
I do all those and more. For example (relevant to your analogy), I speak with the people around me (never preachy, that’s no way to change someone’s mind) about why I do what I do, and adjust myself to be reasonable to the situation. It has instilled change in others, who in turn change others themselves. You the single ant are not alone. Motivate the people around you, there are other single ants in other parts doing the same. Expand your area until you meet, then keep going. If you look online in your area, you may be able to find other like minded people and groups with whom you can take collective action.
The part you cite is climate conspiracy theory framing.
It's called "physics".
Similar things could happen with whichever glacier you are looking at.
Climate change has been problem for way longer.
Now, with AI datacenters, no such concern appears in the algorithm.
(tldr properties of how our atmosphere works and the pollution we put in it ends up being a laser beam at the same height as glaciers form)
Paper here: eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/235707/1/NATREVEARTHENVIRON-24-558_-_Pepin_final.pdf
10.1038/s43017-025-00740-4
Pepin, N. et al. (2025). "Elevation-dependent climate change in mountain environments." Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 6(12), 772-788.
Checking this out, I don't see the Fox Glacier or Franz Josef Glacier specifically listed in the search field, but moving the map around, I was able to find the ice fields.
I see that they both will "survive" to 2100, but I wonder in what state. Check out this time lapse video from 2013 to 2018 showing its drastic retreat! [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Glacier
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Glacier
[3] https://youtu.be/LUs_20kRHDw?si=k1nJB2z_kn8T--uT&t=17
Limitation of the data set I guess.
One thing we need help with today is finding any other events at New York Climate Week that are about El Niño to feature on our site: https://elninoready.earth/
What's shifted in the other direction is that it's getting too damn hot here and some people are starting to notice.