[causal]

I think climate change is a compelling crisis but I find these types of “could maybe happen according to some models” type of catastrophic scenarios a little frustrating because they soak up a lot of attention with scary headlines, reinforcing hopelessness in those who care while providing ammunition to skeptics when the catastrophe doesn’t materialize.

It’s also easy to question methodology for anyone who has done academic modeling and knows how easy it is to get the result you want. Much harder to argue against the basic first principle that injecting trillions of barrels of oil into the atmosphere is literal geoengineering and it’s gonna have consequences.

[jmward01]

So many of those 'could maybe happen' are, in fact, happening right now. The researcher is also quoted as saying 'more likely than not' which is pretty big when it comes to something like the AMOC shutting down. This really is catastrophic and really should be causing governments to take immediate, massive, steps to avert it including steps to sanction countries that are causing it.

[joquarky]

The government entities that can actually do anything are only reactionary now.

[spwa4]

The big consequence here is for the EU. And the only way to deal with this is for the EU to force US, India and China to seriously reduce energy use, and with that, their economy.

This is not going to happen. The EU can't even convince itself to stop buying from China.

[jmward01]

I don't think China needs convincing. They have likely already hit peak emissions and will start dropping, potentially rapidly, going forward. Europe is big. It just needs to move forward with purpose and things will happen. Getting that purpose is the hard part because world leaders have consistently said 'it will destroy our economy' and never actually tried. China, again, is showing that this isn't true. You can have both, a strong economy and a plan, backed by action, to decarbonize. Had Europe and the US had the forethought to actually invest in solar and batteries then they could be leading the energy transition and profiting, with literal profit meaning hard cash, right now by selling to the rest of the world. Instead the boogyman argument of 'it will destroy our economy' keeps rearing its head. I am absolutely done with that argument.

[spwa4]

I don't get what's with all the China fanboys here. China is increasing it's CO2 output quite a bit. And for completeness, so is India. For both countries the CO2 output is bad enough that it's not just adding to global warming, but this coal plant smoke what's causing the famous smog in Beijing and New Delhi. It's causing breathing problems, cancer, ... in their population.

[runarberg]

They demonstrably are not.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-indias-co2-emissions-in...

[spwa4]

First: look at the CO2 graph for China. That's not falling in any reasonable definition of a word, that's called "flat", even if it is technically less than before.

Second: it's normal for graphs to fall off in their last 1-5 data points because measurements are still coming in.

Third: it's using Chinese data. China has, by the way, publicly declared that they're lying about all public economic data. Please don't use Sinopec data to argue your point.

https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions

China CO2 emissions are rising fast.

Second: India's CO2 emissions are growing according to the article you posted.

[raven12345]

You wouldn't say that if you looked at the data

https://www.statista.com/statistics/690823/china-annual-pm25...

[esseph]

They are not..it has peaked. Coal firing plants are slowing down and renewable generation is outpacing non-renewable. Emissions are dropping as of 2024-2025. They look to have plateaued.

[2ndorderthought]

China has made huge efforts toward sustainable power. Google it.

The us on the other hand is well you know blowing up oil all over the world with military conflicts that are wars but aren't wars but are wars that are over but evolving and over and evolving. They are also rolling back green energy projects , fueling data centers with gas, etc.

[scoofy]

China’s greatest geopolitical weakness is lack of access to petroleum. That’s why they are going so hard on renewables. We just get the benefits for free.

[pipodeclown]

Sure but that doesn't change the fact that they are charging s Ahead while the rest of us sit on our hands.

[spwa4]

China has slowed the rate at which China is making global climate worse. That's where we currently stand. No more than that.

This is not even remotely close to helping the climate.

If your argument is that there should be a "yet" added to that sentence, sure. Let's hope so. But that's still where we currently stand.

[leereeves]

> China has made huge efforts toward sustainable power. Google it.

While also increasing carbon-emissions. China is investing in creating more energy from every source.

[2ndorderthought]

When is the last time you checked the statement you just made for truthfulness? All sources I've seen for years is decreased carbon emissions and stabilized output.

[kjetijor]

It seems naive to think this will only have big consequences for the EU, it'll be disastrous for everything around the Atlantic, and likely beyond.

[pllbnk]

It won't be the case that a global scale ocean current collapses and its impact is local. It's like a butterfly effect where the butterfly is the size of an ocean - its wing flap will resonate throughout entire world with unpredictable natural and social consequences. There will be no winners, only losers.

[fatuna]

While there is definitely a big consequence for the EU (and surrounding countries), the article mentions big impacts for the whole world. When it comes to climate, nobody is left untouched...

[t0bia_s]

I guess all those goverment actions should limit freedom of individuals more and more. Excellent strategy for tyranny.

[tommit]

What do you mean? What kind of limiting of your freedom are you afraid of regarding steps that should be taken to avoid this?

I fear we need some government imposed limitations. Hoping that every individual will do the right thing doesn't really work it seems.

Or do you mean the policies should affect companies more so than individuals? In that case I agree fully.

[t0bia_s]

I believe law cannot teach behaviour. Education, dialogue, trust, transparency could. Any kind of centralised regulations and governance do more harm than good. Cognitive shame and collective guilt killed millions in 20th century, we should learn from it.

[xoa]

>I guess all those goverment actions should limit freedom of individuals more and more. Excellent strategy for tyranny.

...what?? Are you ok with murder and theft as well and whine about how laws against that limit your freedom and are "tyranny"? It's a pretty basic tenet of any groups of humans that's it's fully compatible with freedom to have limits on the extent to which people can cause harm to others. As with all complex dynamic things there are very debatable shades of gray at the edges, but total anarchy objectively does not work.

And it's a fundamental to a functional Free Market that costs be internalized, not externalized. Producers and consumers determine value and generate wealth by comparing the total price of production to the utility offered, but that only works if (amongst other things) the sticker price really is the total price (or at least quite close). If a producer is able to stick their costs onto others then their product will be artificially cheap even if they are less efficient, which will warp the market. That's what we are seeing in energy: fossil fuel producers are dumping cost (in terms of, global warming, ocean acidification, and other forms of pollution) onto the present and future world that they don't have to pay, artificially depressing the cost and alternative solutions that would be net more productive. We could for example be far along on the path of wind and solar power, with enough excess to generate net neutral synthetic hydrocarbons using atmospheric CO2 and water that could then be used in applications like jet engines where they might remain superior.

But the whole point is the market would then be able to determine that naturally, the cost would be built into the price so where and when syngas vs electric vs whatever else provided the best value could emerge. That's not "tyranny", to the extent there is tyranny in the market it's in allowing selfish actors to ruin other people's lives with pollution and preventing those harmed from retaliating.

[t0bia_s]

No, I'm not ok with murder or theft and I don't understand why you write about it. Also I'm not sure why you compare free market, where you are free to participate against centralised governance where you must participate. I really don't understand this "totalitarian" thinking.

[muwtyhg]

> No, I'm not ok with murder or theft and I don't understand why you write about it

Because you seem to think doing ANYTHING to limit people is tyranny, and preventing someone from being able to murder or steal would fall under "anything".

> I really don't understand this "totalitarian" thinking.

Way to avoid engaging with any of the things the poster said, instead nitpicking their first sentence.

> where you are free to participate against centralised governance where you must participate

Adding regulations to what companies can do regarding pollution is not a "centralized government" ala the USSR. All functioning societies and governments impose rules like this. The person you are responding to is mentioning that the externality of climate change is not properly factored into the free market, and we need SOME form of regulation/rules to compensate for that.

[t0bia_s]

If consumers find company do more harm than good, they will not buy their products and company ends. If company ends due to regulations and decisions based on ideologies, then yes, it wis hat USSR does and pay for it till today.

[grey-area]

The risk was 5% and is now above 50% according to experts in the field.

Given the significant consequences this is worth paying attention to.

[Eji1700]

Which the average person doesn’t know because this is the 50th headline they’ve read on how we’re screwed today that hasn’t happened.

They’ve blown their attention budget for the layman and aren’t getting it back unless someone serious guides their attention.

[postflopclarity]

> the 50th headline they’ve read on how we’re screwed today that hasn’t happened

the things are happening though.

e.g. if you read a headline in the 70s that said something like "ski seasons will shorten by an average of 1 day per year, leading to only 5 inches of snow water equivalent in Colorado resorts by 2026, and eliminating the economic viability of skiing in the northeast by 2060" that would have been completely correct.

[graemep]

The problem is that those were not the headlines. There were headlines in the 80s saying AMOC would collapse by now.

[idiotsecant]

"I read a headline that turned out to be wrong, all headlines adjacent to that original one are now wrong"

You are constantly seeing all manner of predictions. When someone makes a wrong prediction that is not a indicator that the thing will never happen. Otherwise I would bet that I will suffer no problematic effects if I stop paying a mortgage.

[Eji1700]

You are giving way too much credit to the average headline. Most headlines are wrong/misleading, full stop. They have incentive to be, this isn't a secret.

The "quality" headlines aren't the one the average person is reading. It's even worse in climate discussions. Fuck "An Inconvenient Truth" was probably the largest exposure to climate issues for my generation and is STILL a problem because a some claims were made that, oops, even then were called vast exaggerations by the IPCCS. No snow on Fuji within a decade comes to mind, which basically nothing but the most extreme models predicted. Well it's a decade later and to the layman, there's still snow on the mountain. It's at some of it's worst levels EVER, but when you make bold and verifiable claims and then go "oh well you see actually..." you lose people.

Even worse are the "THIS TERRIBLE THING WILL HAPPEN!...in 100 years". That's still fucking awful, but when the layman has been reading the first part for over a decade now, or ever hears the second part, it often just loses their attention entirely. Climate science trying to get real change needs to manage expectations, but media is mostly about grabbing attention. It's obvious how at odds those goals are.

[joquarky]

You're assuming most people think critically.

[esseph]

It's a frog/boiling water problem with the timescale.

[mlhpdx]

Maybe, but that’s a far stride or two from the “doomsday” pitched at laypeople.

[anadem]

The issue is not that that itself is the doomsday, but that when the current collapses the climate trajectory changes and aims at catastrophe, and changing that will be beyond our ability

[mlhpdx]

I’m not saying it isn’t bad. I clearly understand it’s bad.

My point is that this kind of headline doesn’t help the cause. It’s hyperbolic nonsense to laypeople, though they may use the more colloquial term “bullshit”. Getting people to pay attention is really, really hard given the tremendous volume of hyperbole they see every day.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I know this kind of headline works against it.

[bastawhiz]

> the things are happening though.

That's what the headlines said the last 49 times. Why should the average person care now? What are they supposed to do?

Al Gore got on a scissor lift and showed the hockey stick graph. Millions of people saw it. Then the data was bad. Then the average person didn't see anything happen that they could point to and be like "That's what Al Gore warned us about". What you're asking for already happened, over and over. It's useless now.

[pjmlp]

Use paper straws, because that is how we save the world. /s

[Izkata]

It's like the climate people never heard the fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It's exactly that.

[idiotsecant]

Who are 'The climate people' you seem to think are doing this? Do you think there is a club where the climate people president takes a vote from the climate people council on how many news stories hacknews user Izkata should read?

If you lived under a big precarious rock and people always talked about the big rock falling on you would you ignore the big rock because the big rock people keep crying wolf?

This is honestly the most baffling worldview.

[postflopclarity]

except that every time the boy cried wolf, there actually was a wolf and it ate some people, but then the people it didn't eat were like "idk what you're talking about, I'm doing just fine" and then plugged their ears.

[ohnei]

This isn't some accident, the public could understand many complex situations that just don't have billions of dollars in FUD propaganda networks that takeover the Whitehouse whenever the public is starting to get what it wants.

[2ndorderthought]

Steve bannon figured this out a while back. I was reading about it in the Epstein files in a discussion between the two of them. If they can keep the average person dizzy with bad news they can do more bad things easily. Cute trick

[bastawhiz]

The GP didn't say not to pay attention to it. Clearly people are.

The point is that it's unactionable. The people who care could all pour their life savings into climate action and commit suicide to cancel all future carbon footprint and it still wouldn't move the needle. Even if the Democrats in the US took over both branches of Congress, the white house, and the supreme court, they wouldn't move the needle. There isn't any practical action any ordinary person could take.

So why are we writing about it for general consumption? Convince billionaires, politicians, oil execs, other scientists, literally anyone with the ability to do anything. If we're at the point the research claims, trying to get people to go vegan or fly less often isn't even shaving off fractions of a percent.

[idiotsecant]

Its perfectly actionable. Its just inconvenient. Imagine if tomorrow we discovered that internal combustion engines produced a gas which immediately killed everyone with 200 feet. What would change?

[senordevnyc]

If it’s perfectly actionable, why haven’t you fixed it yet?

[idiotsecant]

I'm not claiming it's easy, only that it's actionable. Emotional hyperbole does nobody any good.

[senordevnyc]

My point is that it’s theoretically “actionable”, but like all collective action problems (this being perhaps the most challenging example, because the scope is global, the timeline is decades to centuries, and the economic incentives are misaligned with taking action), it’s very difficult for an actual person to take any meaningful action. So pragmatically speaking, it’s not really actionable. Which is why I basically think we’re fucked in the short-term, and will really just be saved by cheap renewables changing the incentives, as they have been. We’re not going to magically solve the most intractable collective action problem of all time.

[Swenrekcah]

What kind of response is this?

Why haven’t you fixed healthcare or all the potholes in your town?

[joquarky]

Those with the ability to do something about it have the means to avoid it long enough to not matter to them.

[grey-area]

I don’t think it’s unactionable, just as one example, sadly investing in Northern Europe on a long time frame is pretty risky as a result of this.

There is and should be pressure to decarbonise at this point - it is still going to help and we can vote to make that happen.

Tyrants like Putin want you to think you are powerless, but you are not.

[bastawhiz]

Writing news articles that desensitize the public has the opposite effect of empowering them. Moreover, it's not an article that's written in a way that changes anyone's mind. If you're a climate denier (of whatever flavor) you're not going to be persuaded by this article or any other like it. In fact, it might make you more staunch.

[grey-area]

The truth has power. Never give up on wanting to know the truth.

As to staunch climate deniers, why should we care what they think? The changing world around them (e.g. Florida flooding) will persuade them even if the majority who do believe in it doesn’t first.

[astahlx]

In the past, these climate models were mostly on the conservative side. So I would stop questioning them and ask for more actions to take toward implementing existing climate solutions.

[runarberg]

I would argue the opposite. The number one frustration I have with climate change is the continued and persistent inaction by our world leaders. I would argue that modeling out worst case scenarios is more likely to reach our leaders and finally break this decades long inaction.

I think generally the effects climate skeptics have over climate policy is overstated. And corporations with vested interest in being able to continue releasing massive amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere have much more say over climate policy then climate skeptics. Now these companies often do weaponize climate skeptics in order to lobby government into continued inaction, but that behavior will continue regardless of how scientists frame their climate models.

[joquarky]

Paying off debts is too politically unpopular.

We can't even balance the budget in the US.

Orchestrating climate change mitigation is likely an order of magnitude more difficult than balancing budgets.

[runarberg]

That has nothing to do with science communication and whether or not scientists should avoid sounding too alarmist when publishing their models for the purpose of getting their desired climate policy enacted by governments.

[stouset]

What, exactly, do you expect scientists researching these things to do? Bury their findings?

[bastawhiz]

The scientists aren't journalists. Convince a politician to start planning for national security considerations. Tell them how it'll affect supply chains. Frame it in a way that literally anyone who has a vested interest in doing something would care about.

[ordu]

It is easier said than done. Politicians do not like to be disturbed by some pesky experts. Mentor Pilot discusses 2025 D.C mid-air collision[1], and finds the most disturbing reason for it: experts tried to escalate issues with too much traffic for years, but they were repeatedly told that it was "too political", so, in other words "just shut up and deal with the traffic, don't bother congressmen and congresswomen, they are too important to be bothered with limits of possible stemming from physics or engineering".

Politicians thought (and some think to this day) that climate warming is "too political" to listen to experts. Most of them will think that Atlantic current is too political, till it stops.

It is easy to say "convince a politician", but it is hard to do. Politicians think politics, and you have to be a genius among politicians to transform a game field, so some concerns of scientists became a political issue that is not possible to ignore. Geniuses among politicians as as rare as in any other discipline, the most of them will just play existing games, without even thinking of rewriting the rules of the game. BTW, when they try to rewrite, the boring old "play by the rules" might start to look pretty good.

Politics is the hardest unsolved problem the humanity faces. We could send humans to the Moon, or it seems increasingly likely we can create an AGI, but we can't make politicians to listen to the reason.

[1] https://youtu.be/41UYPeTr96s

[munksbeer]

> but we can't make politicians to listen to the reason.

You're stopping too early. Politicians exist for one reason only, to get elected. If they don't get elected, they're not a politician, so everything they do is is selected with that as their fitness function.

So why won't they listen about climate change? Because the public doesn't want to be told they have to make their lives slightly worse. There are "politicians" in the UK who constantly warn about climate change. Guess what? They won't get elected.

In other words, you're blaming the symptom, not the cause. The general populous is the real reason.

[joquarky]

> Because the public doesn't want to be told they have to make their lives slightly worse.

Especially right now when everything seems to already be declining.

[bastawhiz]

Convincing politicians might be hard, but at least it's not as pointless as trying to convince the general public. See: the last thirty years.

[9rx]

I suppose they could refrain from injecting their feelings into it. The science doesn't change if it is presented as simple information and not as a warning.

[embedding-shape]

So they should be more like "Atlantic currents might shut down, we'll see what happens and if it'll be good or bad" when they already can tell the effects will be pretty bad? Wouldn't that be basically burying the lede?

[9rx]

You'd have to ask the one who raised concern with this in the first place. What is apparent, though, is that "good or bad" is contrary to science. Science seeks to understand what is, not how you might feel about it. It is interesting that things went there.

[ordu]

Theoretically speaking, yes. But practically science is very interested with good and bad, because the goal of science is to bring as much good and to avert as many bad as possible. There is abstract science, there is fundamental science, which are studying things far from our everyday concerns, but even they are not free from "good and bad": ITER has all its funding, because we believe that fusion can bring a lot of good to us. Scientists cannot just forget where the money came from, and what the goal was attached to them.

But when we speak about climate science, or something else "close to Earth", then it is impossible to imagine how they may not be concerned with good and bad.

Theoretically speaking, science is looking for a truth, and any truth, but practically it seeks useful knowledge, and if you look into any scientific article, it starts with an argument that the results presented in the article are useful, and not just the authors of the article think so, but there are (were) other people too. Undergraduates are explicitly taught to write articles like that.

[9rx]

> it starts with an argument that the results presented in the article are useful

Except here the appeal to emotion suggests that it isn't useful. The results would be useful on their own without having to fabricate additional information to make it useful otherwise.

It is understandable why scientists are getting wrapped up in their emotions, but anyone in science is intended to learn how to separate logic and emotion. That is what the education system is for. That breakdown we're seeing leads to complex communication issues.

[13415]

So medicine is not a science because it's concerned with what's "good" and what's "bad" for someone's health? I find this kind of argument principally flawed.

Many sciences are concerned with the consequences of human actions and it's hard if not impossible to describe these in meaningful ways without applying some criteria for what outcomes are good (desirable, positively evaluated) and what outcomes are bad (not desirable, negatively evaluated).

Besides, there is a whole area of science that maybe is more like engineering but is clearly worthwhile, too, even if it's not strictly a natural science only. For example, urban planning might not be a science in the strict sense but it's clearly important and involves scientific studies.

If policy makers can't get from climate scientist's an evaluation of the potential consequences of climate changes, then who else would produce these for them? Should they just make it up on the fly?

[9rx]

> So medicine is not a science because it's concerned with what's "good" and what's "bad" for someone's health?

It is concerned with understanding health. It is unable to decide what is "good" or "bad" as that is in the eye of the beholder. That is why medicine presents the options gleaned from the gained understanding, leaving the individual to decide for themselves what is "good" amid all the different tradeoffs. The universe has no fundamental concept of "good" or "bad". It is something humans make up. It is curious that someone who seems to have an interest in science doesn't realize that.

[stouset]

This has serious “your dad and I are for the jobs the comet will provide” energy.

Sometimes, the outcome of a scenario will be unambiguously tragic for humanity. The collapse of the AMOC would be one such event.

[9rx]

> Sometimes, the outcome of a scenario will be unambiguously tragic for humanity.

Whether or not it is tragic depends on the beholder. Some people are quite happy to watch the demise of humanity. Science is only interested in what is. How you feel about it is up to you. Certainly scientists are going to have their personal feelings about the science. They are but simple humans, after all. But those feelings are no more useful than your arbitrary feelings.

[joquarky]

Everything is tragic right now. What's one more thing on the heap?

[SiempreViernes]

> Science seeks to understand what is, not how you might feel about it. It is interesting that things went there.

No, it's not interesting at all: the clamouring for climate scientists to not use words like "bad" about increased severity and frequency of forest fires, flash floods, droughts, etc is just the expected outcome of boring old corruption. There's really no other reason for someone to object to calling tornadoes "bad" than them or theirs getting paid to say it.

[runarberg]

“Good” or “bad” is not contrary to science. For example scientists will evaluate the risks vs. benefits of a cancer treatment to determine if the benefits are worth the risk. They will do the same for vaccine efficacy etc.

Scientists are also humans with their own value judgment which is sometimes very flawed (see e.g. Richard Lynn and his race science) and sometimes with revolutionary insights that expands our shared empathy for the world around us (see e.g. Jane Godall).

Often when I hear a statement like this I see it as a thought terminating cliché. The value judgement of a scientists is often disregarded only when it is contrary (or inconvenient) to the speaker’s argument.

[fatuna]

Who then should inject their feelings? Journalists don't care because it's too abstract, politicians don't care because it won't happen in their term, business doesn't care because there's no money to be made, and the people don't care because of all of the above people telling them to ignore it.

[watwut]

> providing ammunition to skeptics when the catastrophe doesn’t materialize.

This would be compeling if they were actual sceptics who care about evidence. We are talking about people who will bad faith deny everything.

Censoring yourself is exactly what they wanted to achieve and did achieved.

[scoofy]

You don’t like honesty?

Effectively everything in life is a balance of uncertainty. Surgeries can do more harm than good. Drugs have varying efficacy. Investments are uncertain. Careers can disappear.

Nobody can tell you the future, but nearly all the scientists freaking out about a potential major issue should me worrying.

[joquarky]

As long as it doesn't interrupt the next season of Love Island, few will care.

[t0bia_s]

Frightened mind is easily manipulated. For limit freedom of individuals, control masses and so on.

[bix6]

Except the catastrophes are materializing now so those fools are increasingly wrong.

The solar panel install stats give me hope. It’s unfortunate the US is burying its head on new alt energy projects but our grifting culture is just too strong.

[mlhpdx]

Agreed. This kind of provocative story gives many people the sense that science is unreliable, full of shifting narratives and unmet prophesies. That undermines the confidence we need in it as a society.