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- Hacker News
- Does anybody else feel like this is the answer to the Fermi paradox? Advanced civilizations simply exploit, consume, and pollute their way of existence.
- It has been brought up before and it seems plausible. There is no guarantee that we have to leave the planet in any meaningful way or even survive for that matter.by ColdStream
- Most probably it's because the universe is vast and as humans we cannot comprehend how far the stars are. No matter how advanced an alien civilization is, physics prohibits objects with mass travelling faster than light and that's tru for any civilization.
- It's as easy of an answer to accept as any other hypothesis. I think we're all living within a simulation to create, solve, and document as many problems as we can with the technologies our specific environment allows us to develop; that our simulation is air-gapped away from the others performing the same work so as to not contaminate the data.by jesse_dot_id
- 14 billion years and not a single piece of evidence of a prior civilization.by swingboy
- What if we found ourselves on a planet that didn't have fossil fuels?by 2OEH8eoCRo0
- Honestly, I think an easier answer is that intelligent life is simply very rare and interstellar travel is very hard. We may be the only intelligent life within our galaxy. Or perhaps just 1 in 100. In either case, it'd take a LONG time before we ever found or met another civilization.by cogman10
- Nah, they can't go multiplanetary because faster than rocket powered travel in space must be impossible and they die of radiation during the journey.
Planetary runaway heating can be worked with with underground cities.
- As they say, “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Perhaps humanity shouldn’t have absolute power over the planet. Perhaps we should check our own power to save ourselves. We’ve done it with government, to insure stability and longevity, why not the planet?
- I remember watching a documentary which talked about feedback loops in the climate. It might have been in the context of history. If the ocean warms up enough, it causes the CO2 in the ocean itself (either in the deposits or the gas saturated in the water) to get released into the atmosphere. Maybe I'm not using the right technical words, but there is a certain amount of CO2 that sits within the ocean that is separate from the atmosphere. In any case, after a certain point it becomes a feedback loop: warmer climate -> more CO2 joins the atmosphere -> warmer climate.by zero-sharp
- Warmer water holds less dissolved gases of all kinds, including CO2. You can see this yourself by heating water in your kitchen. Well below the boiling point, you can observe tiny bubbles, which are composed of nitrogen and oxygen dissolved in the water coming out of solution. The oceans will eventually become carbon sources, not carbon sinks, if they warm enough, but that's not projected to happen this century.
However, there are regions of the oceans which currently absorb lots of CO2 which will absorb much less as time goes on. One important example is the AMOC, which, by turning over lots of water, helps sink surface dissolved CO2 into the deeper ocean. In recent years, oceanographers have observed a weakening of the AMOC, which was predicted but is happening much earlier than expected. This is one of the important planetary tipping points, which could cause a dramatic shift in the planet's climate.
But don't worry -- the Trump administration is defunding programs like the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, decommissioning the Ocean Observatories Initiative, and is planning to shutter NOAA's research arm altogether -- thus solving the problem once and for all.
by igor47 - You may be thinking of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesisby jeffbee
- We don't even need the oceans temperature to rise, as the arctic tundra permafrost melts the amount of plant material ready to release its CO2 is massive. Some estimate think it would double the amount of our total emissions if all of it defrosts.
But this did lead to one of the more ridiculous head line from a few years back.
Thawing Permafrost Is Artificially Chilled to Stabilize Alaska Oil Pipeline
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thawing-permafros...
by ColdStream - The "scatter line plot" in TFA is all same shade of red on white with no year labels. This seems like a missed visualization opportunity. Using some kind of color scheme/gradient to represent the 1979-2026 years in a way that can show long-term "trend". (A 50 frame movie at, say, 5 fps with same axes or maybe "all years" as faded background as the current year pops around in bold is another possibility, but a scientific paper format doesn't let people do .mp4s.) I know I've seen multi-colored "scatter lines" in IPCC reports. Seemed worth asking rather than doing it myself.by cb321
- Yeah, kinda like the spirals used for (air?) temperature:
- This El Niño is going to be interesting come Christmas time. Lot's of weather and climate unpredictability coming to a region near you!by willmeyers
- A preview of 2035.by ColdStream
- I hope so! The area I live in has been experiencing drought and everyone seems to be predicting a wet period coming from this.
Personally, I don't put much faith in weather predictions that are more than a week away.
by didgetmaster - Incidentally, the term El Niño came from Christmas time (the waters warm around Christmas time, or when the baby boy comes).by defgeneric
- According to a client scientist on a news program, 2027 will be the hottest year on record.
Expect lots more chaos and death of wildlife in the ocean as we are seeing in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, sharks migrating to places where they don't normally and surprising humans, gray whales are washing up on the shores at larger and larger rates, jellyfish to have a lot more food so there will be a lot more jellyfish, invasive beetle species will have a lot more food, algae blooms will be a lot more prevalent so the ocean will become more toxic.
by ncr100 - "highest temperature on record"... so far.
There are still ~4 months till peak El Niño, and then some months to spread effects.
by gmuslera - > ... so far That's what "on record" meansby WithinReason
- With the growth in solar, it is easy to think that we can solve it, we just do more renewables, but the decline of fossil fuels is negligible: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7438918221...
Globally, fossil fuels supply 81.1% today (2023). Only marginally down from 81.4% in 2000. Fossil fuels are not on track to end by 2050. But rather in 4-10 centuries.
- > With the growth in solar, it is easy to think that we can solve it,
90% of things you can buy/use would not exist without fossil fuels, including food, medicine, clothes, roads, tires, electronics, solar panels, windmills, etc.
by toasty228 - Guys, stop trying to solve climate change. You can't solve "wanting the wrong thing".by Voultapher
- Not long ago fossil fuel use was growing exponentially. The fact that its flatlined is a major turn in the course of history. There's no reason it can't begin to decline exponentially at any time.by breakyerself
- Solar + wind were 99% of new generation capacity last year. Fossil fuel usage dropped for one of the first times ever. Renewables generated more than coal.
Solar installation is huge and the increase continues to accelerate. Every year has seen a record amount of installed solar. Solar started at zero two decades ago and is already curbing other sources.
by 0cf8612b2e1e - Recent studies estimate climate warming is happening faster than it was, ballpark +0.3C per decade.
As we are at or nearing +1.5C now, with global emissions at an all time high [ perhaps peaking soon ] theres a good chance we are headed toward +2.6C by ~2060.
Keep in mind the CO2 stays up there for a long time, centuries, so when we get to net-zero its max-CO2 and therefore max-heat.
by jgord - But in 50 years we'll defo have technology to remove that CO2.by Valakas_
- does it stop? the more co2 the more heat is retained. so the relation between co2 and temperature is an integral over time. were we suddenly to stop burning things how far does it go up before infrared emissions equilibrate with the larger thermal flux? that and the lower albedo and other knockoff effects may continue to make things worse even if we were to stop.by convolvatron