Global warming has accelerated significantly

Global warming has accelerated significantly(researchsquare.com)

1196 points by morsch 72 days ago | 1210 comments

eykanal 72 days ago |

For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra...

Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.

notarobot123 72 days ago | |

Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists

jihadjihad 72 days ago | | |

Because they are practicing the reverse scientific method. They hold a conclusion in their hand, like, man-made climate change is a hoax, and seek to find any threads of "evidence" that support their foregone conclusion.

ai-x 72 days ago | | |

There are various levels of perspectives

- Climate Warming is a hoax

- Climate Warming is happening, but not Man Made and part of larger cycles

- Climate Warming is Man Made, but drastic De-growth strategies cause more harm.

- Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way

- Climate Warming is Man Made and we need drastic de-growth strategies and complete ban of fossil fuels.

For people in the last group, all other groups look like Climate Deniers because they don't agree to their de-growth/ban plans

yfw 72 days ago | | |

Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help

designerarvid 72 days ago | | |

There’s actually research to support the claim you’re making here (Elaboration Likelihood Model).

When forming attitudes in an area where one doesn’t care, one tends to rely more on who is saying it than what is being said. The opposite is true, if you care about [climate change], you listen to the arguments regardless of who is presenting it.

rootusrootus 72 days ago | | |

It's a culture thing, nobody on the right would ever be convinced by science, they will shop around until they find what they need to hear. My sister in law sent me a video and told me that she thought it was a really good explainer and had a lot of good facts and figures to support it. To humor her, I took a brief glance at it, and saw that it was produced by Dr. Shiva. I was thinking "no way, it can't be that Shiva, could it, email guy?" Yes, yes it was.

We are doomed.

amelius 72 days ago | | |

It depends if they can agree with what they are saying.

timr 72 days ago | |

Setting aside the names of the authors, this is a very bad paper. They take temperature data sets, "adjust" [1] them by attempting to remove the biggest recent factors (volcanism, solar and el nino cycles) affecting temperatures, then do a piece-wise regression analysis to look at trends in 10-year chunks. This is just bad methodology, akin to what a junior graduate student with a failing thesis might do to find signal in a dataset that isn't being cooperative to their hypothesis.

Climate data is inherently noisy, and there are multiple interconnected cyclic signals, ranging from the "adjusted" factors to cycles that span decades, which we don't understand at all. "Adjusting" for a few of these, then doing a regression over the subset of the data is classic cherry-picking in search of a pre-determined conclusion. The overall dubious nature of the conclusion is called out in the final paragraph of the text:

> Although the world may not continue warming at such a fast pace, it could likewise continue accelerating to even faster rates.

They're literally just extrapolating from an unknown point value that they synthesized from data massage, and telling you that's a coin toss as to whether the extrapolation will be valid.

I am not a climate scientist so you can ignore me if you like, but I am "a scientist" who believes the earth is warming, and that we are the primary cause. Nonetheless, if I saw this kind of thing in a paper in my own field, it would be immediately tossed in the trash.

[1] You can't actually adjust for these things, which the authors admit in the text. They just dance around it so that lay-readers won't understand:

> Our method of removing El Niño, volcanism, and solar variations is approximate but not perfect, so it is possible that e.g. the effect of El Niño on the 2023 and 2024 temperature is not completely eliminated.

bjourne 72 days ago | | |

Your summary of the article is wrong. The authors model temperature using time series over solar irradiance, volcanic activity, and southern oscillation. They calibrate that model using time series over global surface temperatures. This allows them to isolate and remove each of the three listed confounding factors. The resulting time series fits a super-linear curve -> accelerating global warming.

tgsovlerkhgsel 72 days ago | | |

They also don't seem to account for the reduction of sulfur emissions from ships, which is surprising given how widely this was reported even in mainstream media.

Is this an oversight (or "oversight") or something that is reasonable for some reason that would be so obvious to experts in the field that it's not worth mentioning?

refurb 72 days ago | | |

This has always been the big issue I have with the conclusions draw in climate publications. I encourage anyone with strong opinion on climate change to do a deep dive on the temperature analysis.

The best example I can think of is the "global warming hiatus" that was discussed in depth in the top climate journals in the mid-2010s. Nature Climate Change even devoted an entire month to it.[1]

5 years later publications were saying "there was no hiatus at all".[2]

And as you said, when you dive into the paper, you realize that temperature measures are not objective at all. And I would ask - If everyone was in agreement that temperature increases paused, then 5 years later everyone agrees they didn't, how much confidence do we really have in the measures themselves.*

As someone who conudcted scientific research, this has a ton of inherent problems. It doesn't matter what I'm measuring, if the data collection is not objective, and there is no consensus (or at least trong evidence for adjustments), then the data itself is very unreliable.

If I tried to publish a chemical paper in a top journal and manually went in and adjusted data (even with a scientific rationale) the paper would be immediately rejected.

[1] https://www.nature.com/collections/sthnxgntvp [2] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/global-warming-pause-cli...

tarr11 72 days ago | |

It says this in bold red at the top - "This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal."

I am not a climate scientist - how should I think about this statement? Normally I am looking for some statement that shows a document has been vetted.

epistasis 72 days ago | | |

For non-specialists, I think the most important view on papers is to not view them as nuggets of truth, but communications of a group of people who are trying to establish truth. No single paper is definitive!

Peer review is an important part of scientific publication, but it's also important for the general public to not view peer review as a full vetting. Peer reviewers look for things like reproducibility of the analysis, suitability of the conclusions given the methods, discussions of the limitations of the data and methods, appropriate statistical tests, correct approval from IRBs if there are humans or animals involved, and things like that. For many journals, the editors are also asking if the results are interesting and significant enough to meet the prestige of the journal.

Peer review misses things like intentional fraud, mistakes in computations, and of course any blind spots that the field has not yet acknowledged (for example, nearly every scientific specialty had to rediscover the important of splitting training and testing datasets for machine learning methods somewhat on their own, as new practitioners adopted new methods quickly and then some papers would slip through at the beginning when reviewers were not yet aware of the necessity of this split...)

Any single paper is not revealed truth, it's a step towards establishing truth, maybe. Science is supposed to be self-correcting, which also necessitates the mistakes that need correction. Climate science is one of the fields that gets the most attention and scrutiny, so a series of papers in that field goes a long ways towards establishing truth, much more so than, say, new MRI technology in psychology.

jfengel 72 days ago | | |

I'd say that for a non-scientist, you should treat it as a non-event -- a paper that hasn't happened yet.

The climate is not something for which you need daily, weekly, or even monthly updates. Rather, this paper is just one more on top of a gigantic pile of evidence that that climate change is serious, something that we can and should do something about.

If the paper passes muster, you'll hear about it then, though all it'll do is very slightly increase your confidence in something that is already very well confirmed. Or, the paper may not pass review, in which case it doesn't mean anything at all, and you fall back on the existing mountain of evidence.

If the paper had reached the opposite conclusion, that might merit more investigation by you now, since that would potentially be a significant update to your beliefs. And more importantly, it would certainly be presented as if it were a fait accompli, even before peer review.

Instead, you can simply say, "I don't know what this paper means, but I already have a very well-founded understanding of climate change and its significance."

sleet_spotter 72 days ago | | |

Peer review is still very relevant in climate science. But given it is from well-respected authors, I am more inclined to trust the results at this stage.

juujian 72 days ago | | |

It is already published at Geophysical Research Letters, a highly (if not the most) reputable source in the area. But that journal is behind a paywall: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

jaredklewis 72 days ago | | |

A paper being peer reviewed is a good sign, but I feel like the signal is usually over interpreted.

Peer reviewed does not mean the findings of the paper are established fact or scientific consensus. It does not mean that the findings have been replicated by other scientists. It does not mean that the paper relied on a robust methodology, is free of basic statistical errors, or even free of logical fallacies.

Some of these limitations are due to the limitations of peer review itself. Others are just side effects of the way science works (for example, some ideas start as small, unimpressive experiments that are reported on in papers, and the strength of the findings is gradually developed over time). Obviously sometimes the prestige (or lack thereof) of the journal the paper is in decreases (or increases) some of these issues.

Anyway, peer review is a very noisy channel (IMHO).

tialaramex 72 days ago | | |

For one thing, some of the places which would publish this kind of thing will authorize authors to provide anybody and everybody pre-prints but not the final copy they published.

In principle you could go (pay to†) read the actual final published copy, maybe it's different, but almost always it's basically the same, the text is enough to qualify.

If you go to https://eel.is/c++draft/ you'll find the "Draft" C++ standard, and it has this text:

Note: this is an early draft. It's known to be incomplet and incorrekt, and it has lots of bad formatting.

Nevertheless, the people who wrote your C++ compiler used that "draft" document, because it isn't reasonable to wait a few years for ISO to publish the "real" document which is identical other than lacking that scary text and having a bunch of verbiage about how ISO owns this document and it mustn't be republished.

And you might be thinking "OK, I'm sure those GNU hippies don't pay for a real published copy, but surely the Microsoft Corporation buys their engineers a real one". Nope. Waste of money.

† If you have a relationship with a research institution it might have this or be willing to help you order it from somewhere else at no personal cost.

bjourne 72 days ago | | |

Pre-prints exists because it can take up to 18 months to get a paper published in a journal or reputable conference. Since lots of people can publish pre-prints[1] what you should think depends on the authors. If they have a record of publishing good research you should think highly of the paper.

[1] - Actually, there are hoops on pre-print repositories, such as arXiv, so not everyone can post there. I guesstimate that 99% of the public has no means of posting on arXiv.

mold_aid 72 days ago | | |

Are you? How many preprints are posted here every day?

yanhangyhy 72 days ago |

The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) outline draft has listed making new and significant progress in building a Beautiful China as one of its main objectives, with achieving the carbon peaking target on schedule being a crucial aspect of this goal.

In 2020, China made a commitment to the world: to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Last year, China announced its 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for addressing climate change.

"The outline draft clearly emphasizes actively and prudently advancing and achieving carbon peaking, proposing that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will be reduced by 17%, and a preliminary clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient new energy system will be established. This clear roadmap will help us achieve high-quality 'dual carbon' phase goals and lay a solid foundation for carbon neutrality," said Wei Yuansong, member of the CPPCC National Committee and Director of the Water Pollution Control Laboratory at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

from： https://www.news.cn/20260305/7ad8d5ee3a6d4b28b1b62230199f1d0...

this is in china's next 5 year plan

ecshafer 72 days ago |

The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries.

My proposal is thus: create a supranational treaty organization with a EPA like authority(or whatever the European equivalent is) that can inspect and fine companies in member organizations. Then any treaty members agree with the following conditions: The EPA can enter their nation freely, inspect, and are able to fine companies that break rules. Members send delegates to a session to create new rules democratically. And most importantly all members act as a cartel, imposing large tariffs on any country outside of the organization. So if US was in and Mexico was out, you couldn't just pollute in Mexico, without some massive tariff. This creates an economic incentive to be in and clean.

nancyminusone 72 days ago |

Don't kid yourself - we closed this one with "Won't Fix" a while ago.

"But what about <technology/option>?"

No. Full stop. We're not going to do it, and we're not even going to apologize for it either.

All we can do now is prepare, not that I've seen a lot on this front either.

sph 72 days ago | |

Worse, even if we’re going to do it, the next idiot in power is going to roll it back and declare to big fanfare and applause that coal is back.

You can’t change the world with plans that last no longer than a presidential term.

apublicfrog 72 days ago | | |

Thankfully most of the world ignores America and does their own thing.

billywhizz 72 days ago | | |

the chinese can

drdaeman 72 days ago | |

Don’t give up!

I have this gut feeling the world had finally got to the point it decided to fix this pesky warming issue among other things, with a nice and cozy nuclear winter.

(/s, obviously)

boxedemp 72 days ago | |

We'll fix it if it become cost effective. It might, but probably won't because if the scale.

nielsbot 72 days ago | | |

we're going to chose the most convenient path. if climate disaster becomes inconvenient, we'll attempt to do something about it.

it will be a disaster.

kaiwen1 72 days ago | |

"But what about <technology/option>?"

That blank will not be filled in with today's technologies, but with technologies we cannot conceive of today and with an energy abundance that we can hardly imagine.

Even in this apparently dire predicament, optimism is warranted.

wolvesechoes 72 days ago | | |

No tech will fix it because, as all important problems, it is not a tech problem.

ares623 72 days ago | |

Just need a map for all the bunkers. It's gonna be the future version of open-world video games.

afandian 72 days ago |

This is open access. No need to post a researchgate link.

Here's the original: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6079807/v1

Kiboneu 72 days ago |

Let’s not pretend anymore.

The uncomfortable truth is that that people in affluent countries don’t want to change their lifestyle. Affluent countries are less affected by global warming than countries responsible for a fraction of global emissions. All the emissions from manufacturing follow suit.

fasterik 72 days ago | |

It's not primarily a lifestyle issue, and the problem is no longer primarily developed countries. Per-capita carbon emissions in developed countries have decreased 30% in the past 20 years, and energy demand has remained relatively constant, in fact decreasing slightly in some places due to increases in efficiency. Meanwhile, developing countries like China and India are projected to account for 35-40% of total global emissions in the next decade, far outweighing the impact of individual lifestyle choices in the West.

Of course, people should do everything they can to reduce or offset their own emissions. But the solution is going to have to be societal, keeping up with energy demand by adding more nuclear, solar, and wind to the grid.

brewdad 72 days ago | | |

China and India currently make up 35% of the global population. So saying they account for 35%of emissions is to be expected.

budududuroiu 72 days ago | | |

> Meanwhile, developing countries like China and India are projected to account for 35-40% of total global emissions in the next decade, far outweighing the impact of individual lifestyle choices in the West.

Sure, but that's still mostly driven by Western demand for... Stuff. I'd like to see that share of global emissions if the West was still industrialised and didnt rely on China to be its factory

Ekaros 72 days ago | | |

35-40% considering their population and Africa still not getting their people to same consumption level as west seems entirely reasonable.

jwrallie 72 days ago | |

It also includes social pressure, try to have a kid and no car, people will look at you like you are crazy. I even live in a country with great public transportation.

aniviacat 69 days ago | |

The EU has less than half the emissions per capita compared to the USA.

The USA has uniquely high emissions (matched only by a couple oil states). This is not solely explained with affluency.

yowayb 72 days ago | |

As a nomad, can confirm. Coming back to America, the scale and quality of materials is remarkable.

grosswait 72 days ago | | |

Could you elaborate on your observations?

standeven 72 days ago |

The main driver of this is human-produced CO2, and there are meaningful ways to reduce usage.

-Switch to an electric vehicle -Migrate from gas appliances (range, furnace, water heater) to electric (induction, heat pumps) -If your power grid isn’t clean, add rooftop or balcony solar -Encourage friends and family to do the same

sulam 72 days ago |

FWIW my personal assessment is that this acceleration is both real and largely out of our control. Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions, but as we experience further warming, most especially in the Arctic, feedback loops and tipping points mean that this (carbon emissions caused by “natural” processes) are becoming more evident. This is especially sensitive because a large proportion of such emissions are methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas vs CO2, albeit with a much shorter expected effect time once airborne (~12 years). Consider also that warming is not uniform and the polar regions are warming significantly faster (3x) than lower latitudes, making permafrost melting a very significant climate tipping point. The last point I’ll mention is not about non-anthropogenic emissions but rather absorption. The world’s oceans have been a significant absorber of CO2 however that process is sensitive to temperature and is less effective as the planet warms, not to mention acidic ocean waters prevent shell formation, which is a minor but meaningful carbon sink all by itself.

I’m of the opinion that direct air capture is the primary escape hatch we have for not hitting 3 or even 4C warming in the next 100-200 years, which mean major dieoffs in warm latitudes, even for humans, due to exceeding wet bulb limits. Oh and roughly 65M of sea level rise as the planet shifts to a snow/ice-free mode.

shashurup 72 days ago |

To be honest, looking at Paleogene climate reconstruction I believe it was the best time in earth history. The way things go shows us that all attempts to resist burning fossils are quite futile. It takes some kind of catastrophe to change people habits. The level of coordination required to achive the goal of lowering emissions looks unachievable to humanity. We have enough time to adapt, adaptation is more reasonable and pragmatic approach.

adrian_b 72 days ago | |

During the Paleogene, the terrestrial plants and animals were very different from those of today.

Now on all continents and islands most of the big animals and plants are humans, domestic animals and cultivated plants. The wild animals and plants, even if they are much more varied, with many thousands times more species than the domestic ones, are much smaller in quantities, with only a few kinds that are non-negligible, e.g. ants, termites, rodents.

So if we will return in a short time to the Paleogene climate, the main question is how this will affect the few dominant animal species, like chicken, humans, pigs, sheep, cattle, dogs and the main cultivated plants, all of which are not adapted to a Paleogene climate and which will not be able to adapt in such a short time.

It is likely that places like Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, Antarctica might become nicer places where to live and practice agriculture, but the few people who live now there would not welcome invaders coming from places that are no longer habitable.

shashurup 72 days ago | | |

I don't see that everything except Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Siberia and Antarctica was inhabitable. For instance in Eocene the climate remained fairly warm and homogeneous (the most uniform in the Cenozoic).

From the equator to the poles, forests grew. Fossilized remains of cypress and sequoia have been found on the Arctic Ellesmere Island, and palms — in Alaska and northern Europe.

Equatorial and tropical forests (with palms, fig trees, and sandalwood trees) persisted in Africa, South America, India, and Australia.

Eucalypts, sequoias spread widely, and new types of broad‑leaved trees appeared.

By the end of the Eocene, rainforests were preserved only in the equatorial parts of South America, Africa, India, and Australia — due to the onset of cooling.

throwaway5752 72 days ago | | |

The only outcome is advanced human civilization will go extinct, with the carrying capacity of the world to support enough humans to specialize. Maybe that's the AI rush and drive to distract everyone with divisive presidents and pointless wars.

taeric 72 days ago |

Wasn't this attributed pretty much directly to cleaning of the shipping lanes? With more direct sunlight on the ocean, we are getting warmer oceans. With warmer oceans, we get everything that goes along with that.

I didn't see it mentioned in the article, though I did do a very brief read through. And it has been a while since I looked at the shipping lanes thing.

I hasten to add this is not to claim we should not have cleaned the shipping lanes. I don't know enough to say on that front. My gut would be that it was still the correct move.

blueeon 72 days ago |

I am in Wuhan, China. This past winter, I was able to bike along the lake all day. In previous winters, due to the cold and strong winds, we rarely exercised by the lake. This has had the biggest impact on me, and it's still a positive one.

apt-apt-apt-apt 72 days ago | |

Isn't this like a frog in a pot saying, ah the water was cold but now it's warm!, moments before getting cooked?

blueeon 72 days ago | | |

Some say that when encountering difficulties, one should either change them or adapt to them, and be able to distinguish between the two. It is obvious that we cannot change climate change, and even if individuals can do some environmental protection, they still cannot change it.

tgsovlerkhgsel 72 days ago |

The paper doesn't seem to account for the reduction in sulfur emissions from ships, which was widely reported to be the cause for some of the recent warming?

moffkalast 72 days ago | |

The worst thing you can do when you're actively geoengineering is to abruptly stop doing it. So naturally we found a way we were already doing it and cut it immediately to make sure we fuck ourselves as much as possible :)

I'm almost convinced it's intentional at this point, the rich are busy building their offbrand vault tec bunkers and starting random wars for no real reason. Longtermism nonsense over the today.

zahlman 72 days ago | | |

Airborne sulfur comes with its own negative environmental consequences, though.

tsoukase 72 days ago |

This ship has sailed, warming is irreversible. Developing nations mainly in Asia (China, India etc) are, well, developing and burn like there is no tomorrow. But they are not to blame. It is their turn to live nicely, like the US and Europe did for decades. Nobody can remove this right from them.

dismalaf 72 days ago |

Let's be real, this won't be solved by reducing consumption, only carbon capture technology (likely well into the future).

It's in no nation's interest, from a game theory perspective, to stunt their own growth to reduce emissions. If the US stops, Russia and China will destroy the west. If China stops, they'll never catch up technologically. Ditto for India. Smaller nations have even less incentive (they'll easily be conquered by neighbours), except for the ones surrounded entirely by friendly nations...

chinathrow 72 days ago |

Companies are setting up constantly running gas turbines for powering AI datacenters - insanity.

bakies 72 days ago | |

Billionaires just ignore any laws in place to stop it. Fines don't affect them.

TacticalCoder 72 days ago |

There's a huge hypocrisy in wanting others to pollute less, yet still have a lifestyle that pollutes, but just less than those polluting the most.

I personally won't criticize people who take flights to go on vacation (I don't but I accept those who do). But I'll be pointing out the hypocrisy of those who take flights to go on vacation and yet want to micro-manage how others should live their lives so that they'd be "polluting less".

Recently some infographic made the round for it showed the act a human can take and the pollution it generates. The reason it circulated a lot is because the first item was highly controversial: "having a kid". And yet there's lots of truth in that.

For example my wife and I we got one kid and my wife is now in her forties and we won't have a second one. And I'll never ever take a single lesson about pollution from anyone who had two kids or more.

I'm the one who don't fly. I'm the one who only had one kid. And I'm not criticizing other people's lifestyle and choices. But if you open your mouth, I'll point out the hypocrite you are if you either fly or had two kids or more.

Dansvidania 72 days ago | |

> There's a huge hypocrisy in wanting others to pollute less, yet still have a lifestyle that pollutes, but just less than those polluting the most

> And I'll never ever take a single lesson about pollution from anyone who had two kids or more.

rizpanjwani 71 days ago | | |

You think you’re clever but I don’t see a contradiction here. He is not asking anyone to pollute less and won’t let anyone, especially someone with two kids or more to preach to him.

JackSlateur 70 days ago | |

This is a serious question: have you ever consider killing people ?

jokoon 72 days ago |

Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.

And I don't think it's going to hurt enough in 10 or 20 years.

The pain will come slowly, people won't see it.

It's like going back to the middle age so slowly, that the population don't realize or feel it.

And honestly, wars and trump are making climate concerns so difficult to think about.

sourcegrift 72 days ago |

I wish more people understood the severity of the situation but all we ever get is that "New York has been underwater since 2010". Do people really want to take action only after the problem is irreversibly bad!?

tastyfreeze 72 days ago | |

Adding a lot of weigh in the form of buildings causes land to sink. Apparently 1-2 mm/year on average. How much of "New York has been underwater since 2010" is the land sinking and how much is water rising from climate change?

lambdaone 72 days ago |

This is terrifying, and those fighting against stopping or reducing global warming should at this point be regarded as hostis humani generis

jongjong 72 days ago |

Unfortunately, I can't accept the climate change narrative because I've been doing my own research.

I've lived in multiple countries and came back to visit after decades. I didn't notice any change of temperature. Some years are slightly warmer, some years are slightly cooler but they all feel within the norm from how I can remember. I remember some very bad heat-waves during my childhood which I've never experienced again.

I know this is anecdotal evidence, but it's MY anecdotal evidence which I gathered first-hand and therefore I can trust. I gathered many data points over several decades.

Also I have many alternative narratives which better fit the data. I've identified some critical flaws in climate models related to simulation complexity and also plant evolution, both backed by professional insights and independent scientific observations.

So unfortunately, I just don't believe current narratives about climate change. The data doesn't fit that narrative, it fits other narratives much better.

epolanski 72 days ago |

World is plagued by consumerism and gaslighted into over focusing on relatively smaller energy savings instead of overall habits.

I have friends shoving sausages and burgers into them while ordering countless things on Amazon every day, yet they think they help by buying a hybrid car, couldn't even be bothered by using public transport even though it's faster and cheaper where they live, because "too many people, dirty".

Go figure.

bakies 72 days ago | |

All my friends drive pick up trucks to the office and drink all their water from 12 oz single use plastic bottles. The hybrids were too complicated or something.

BurningFrog 72 days ago |

Coordinating shared sacrifice between 7 billion people was always unlikely to achieve much. There are good workarounds though. I think this is what will/should happen:

1. For now, we can cool Earth artificially. 1 gram of SO₂ in the stratosphere offsets the warming effect of 1 ton of CO₂. It's known to be safe and effective. This company is already doing it: https://makesunsets.com

2. Fossil fuels will be phased out over the next few decades, but CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for several centuries. The practical solution will probably have to be "carbon sequestration", where you capture CO₂ from the air and pump it underground where it stays forever. Such storage is mature tech in the natural gas industry, but the capturing CO₂ tech needs a lot of work.

b0ner_t0ner 72 days ago |

We're cooked:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aivideos/comments/1r4g8xq/prioritit...

yowlingcat 72 days ago |

I'd be interested to see what things look like on a longer timescale, say 500, 1000, 2000, 7000 years. 80 years of time feels like a long time on a human lifescale, but on a civilizational timescale it is a lot shorter.

notjes 72 days ago |

> Our data is "approximate"

> and there can be "no longer any doubt".

Who has written this?

lunias 72 days ago |

It's my understanding that if you look at a large enough historical time window, although warming has accelerated recently (and we are in part to blame); the Earth is still relatively cool compared to historical averages.

pcl 72 days ago | |

Of course, the relevant thing for us as a species is whether or not the forecast temperatures are sustainable for us.

The planet as a whole will do just fine. We're not going to break the planet. The reason that people bring up the huge anthropogenic spike in temperature is because us anthropoids evolved in the context of a narrow band, and it would seem as though we're moving the global climate out of that band.

casey2 72 days ago | | |

We aren't hunter gather's, mammals have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and

Modern Humans can just use air conditioning tech, most people in india already have a tanki, people will just dig as far as they need to keep their water cool like they already do. Irronically the people most affected are the affluent in places like dubia, if the grid fails and they don't have backups.

HerbManic 72 days ago | |

That is very true, but the issue really is the speed of change not the total amount of it. If we were to raise 2c over 10,000 years, that would be a non issue for the most part, adaption time would be so slow that many civilisations will come and fall between then. That it is happening over a hundred or so years, that is a huge whip lash and thats where the problem lay. We built a large but somewhat fragil industrial system assuming continued stability. Dumping 2 trillion tons of CO2 into an already barely stable system will not go down as the brightest idea we have had.

If you go from the top of a building to the bottom, it isnt the height that is the issue but the speed of change. You take the lift, not jump of the side of the building.

tencentshill 72 days ago | |

Milankovitch cycles? What time frame? Did humans live in the same areas during that time? At -4C cooler new york city was under 2000 feet of ice. +4C would be devastating for most of humanity.

crims0n 72 days ago | |

I don't know why you are getting downvoted, you are absolutely correct: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/1...

muwtyhg 72 days ago | | |

Because from a human perspective, it doesn't matter. The planet used to be a ball of molten rock at one point, it doesn't mean we should shrug our shoulders at the thought of it returning to a molten state. It may be "natural" but it's not suitable for humans.

acdha 72 days ago | | |

It’s a common fossil fuel industry talking point, which hopes that the listener doesn’t realize that the climate changes in the past which weren’t deadly happened on much slower time scales. We have a much larger human population now so if you’re saying “nature will survive” you’re also saying that you’re okay with millions of people dying or becoming refugees.

lunias 72 days ago | | |

People like to get worked up about this topic haha. All I'm sayin' is, it might get a lot hotter. Or maybe it will get cooler? I think it's important to put things in context because it's not some monotonically increasing function even if there is a local trend. I'm pro doing what we can to correct our impact on the environment; I'm even pro going beyond and attempting to control for other non-human externalities. My point is actually that nature doesn't care, but I think we should. Although, even if we try our hardest, we still might not like the outcome.

moffkalast 72 days ago | |

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Not during our civilization's existence.

storus 72 days ago |

I am wondering how much did war in Ukraine contribute to it? On one hand, EU is pushing green agenda, on the other hand there are daily oil storage facility explosions evaporating weeks of oil consumption in a few hours.

WindyTree 72 days ago |

I’ve heard hints of this same thing, the rates are described as quadratic, not linear. The feedback mechanisms I do not know, but it’s something related to a high degree of released ocean warming that was stored.

throwway120385 72 days ago |

We might actually hit the jackpot from The Peripheral.

FrustratedMonky 72 days ago | |

I don't buy it. I read the Peripheral, and through the whole thing I was always asking "who actually built all the stuff these guys were inheriting"??? Are we assuming robots got to a level where incredible magical worlds could be built to server just a few people?

ceejayoz 72 days ago | | |

> Are we assuming robots got to a level where incredible magical worlds could be built to server just a few people?

Given the other tech in the novel, that seems highly likely. It includes nanobot "assemblers".

giraffe_lady 72 days ago | | |

We built it, before we were intentionally allowed to die of climate change and flu pandemics. If you sell your labor for money you are building it, there is no plan for you afterwards.

giraffe_lady 72 days ago | |

It really does seem to be the goal.

alansaber 72 days ago |

Only good news these days eh

vogu66 72 days ago |

The article has comments on pubpeer (below) and comments on the pre-print page. https://pubpeer.com/publications/973ABFB81F504E8CB1B50E941CF...

The gist of several comments is that the paper does not actually demonstrate an accelerated global warming, but instead an acceleration of anthropogenic global warming, when removing the influence of several natural factors. To be clear, they are not discussing the fact that there is global warming, just saying that currently, we cannot say that global warming has been getting faster after 2010 with statistical certainty.

pstuart 72 days ago |

There's plenty of money to be made mitigating this, unfortunately, there's plenty of money currently being made causing this, and those moneymakers are the ones in power and are happy to kill the planet as long as they themselves can live in luxury while it happens.

nsxwolf 72 days ago |

We already mined enough uranium for 500+ years of energy but people want to bury it in a mountain instead.

bigattichouse 72 days ago |

I'm hoping the current oil-war will cause people to re-assess fossil fuel use as expense becomes untenable and we start choosing electric vehicles and renewables.. which will just become "normal" and oil can stick around for synthetic chemistry routes.

thinkcontext 72 days ago | |

Agreed, it's a big sovereignty issue. Once a solar panel is installed it keeps working for 20+ years. It doesn't get cut off if there's a political problem that interrupts supply.

shevy-java 72 days ago |

I think it is already pretty clear to everyone, save a few scientistis who keep on preaching "we can prevent this!!!" that global warming will continue. I am all for being more energy efficient and what not, but the reality of the situation is that there are factors that are orthogonal to this - as well as a few states that sabotage everyone else. The USA in particular; the US government is by far the biggest troublemaker here. China and India are also troublemakers because they are so huge, although to be fair, China also invested a lot into green energy.

We need to adjust strategies here. The "zero emission" strategy failed; it is not practical. Politicians love them because they are in the media, but everyone sees that this strategy is not working. Same with carbon tax - it drove prices up but didn't really help much at all otherwise. We need to stop pursuing strategies that do not work here.

amelius 72 days ago | |

> We need to stop pursuing strategies that do not work here.

We tried top down. Didn't work.

We tried bottom up. Didn't work.

rcMgD2BwE72F 72 days ago | | |

What did we even try? We did talk a lot though.

vorticalbox 72 days ago | | |

i think the only real strategy is that people take a hit to their standard of living but i don't think anyone will sign up for that.

trakkstar 72 days ago |

As a meteorologist with a PhD in solar energy modelling, currently working as a quant developer in the energy industry: I hate to break it to you but I don't think this information is anything new.

ben5 72 days ago |

I think we're well past the point of no return. In my part of the world, this year's weather has been ---- weird. Global warming doesn't mean warming per se - but it does mean unpredictability.

Aachen 71 days ago | |

More extreme weather events are a consequence I've seen mentioned before, as the main thing to expect besides a slightly higher average temperature. Is that what you mean by unpredictable?

madman2890 72 days ago |

We need the government to release the alien technology to the public now.

santiagobasulto 72 days ago |

What! you're saying that my selective recycling of paper and having the plastic caps attached to the bottles didn't work? SHOCKING

(only europeans will understand)

vrganj 72 days ago | |

It did work. There's wayyyyyy fewer lose plastic caps littering the streets now.

There's more than one aspect to the environment. Plastic pollution and global warming are two separate concerns with separate ways of dealing with them.

bakies 72 days ago | |

Caps attached is to keep litter down. Plastic needs to stop being manufactured, recycling plastic is not effective and not green.

spwa4 72 days ago |

Was anybody really expecting anything else? The only factor that would matter is if oil producing nations STOP producing oil entirely. Not reduce, not limit, stop. Same with coal and other small contributions. Note: limiting exports, CO2 limits in oil customer states, ... all of that just doesn't matter. And, obviously, this is just not on the table. There is no way these nations will make such a decision because what it would mean for their economy. Plus it wouldn't matter unless they all make that decision.

briansm 72 days ago | |

People are losing their minds at the prospect of oil availability dropping just 20% for a month or two with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz - even just this could collapse the global economy.

So yea, no way is oil stopping or even dipping slightly any time soon.

DrBazza 72 days ago | |

And when we've somehow stopped using fossil fuels for electricity, what next?

Guess what a lot of plastic is made from? And how planes fly, and boats move?

And there's lots of countries that aren't at 'Western' living standards. So we have decades of those countries building and emissions to come.

Plus of course there's a lag in CO2 emissions to climate change. The next couple of decades are going to get a lot worse, before they get better, if at all.

https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas...

ncr100 72 days ago | |

Your initial question is a fantastic thought focus.

The intention of the United States and the world is divided.

We love our money too much to care about the Next generation, In my view.

spwa4 72 days ago | | |

"The intention of the United States and the world is divided."

What do you mean?

The intention of the United States is maximizing oil use.

The intention of the World is maximizing oil use. Even EU countries are panicking over maybe being forced to use just a little less oil.

So where do you see this difference? Clearly, the entire world agrees: global warming is less serious than higher prices on oil. Much less important.

tantaman 72 days ago |

How are people handling this... mentally? and preparedness wise? I can't imagine what the next generation may have to live through.

casey2 72 days ago | |

Most serious people realized decades ago that you just build a bunch of nuclear powered DAC and require oil companies sequester it. What occurred for last 30 years was a bunch of nonsense political BS and signaling that annoys effective people but they largely ignore.

mbgerring 72 days ago |

The only extant “X-risk” is, and always has been, climate change. “AGI” is science fiction, and actually-existing AI is making climate change harder to deal with, by increasing electricity demand on our fossil-fuel-powered grid with no attendant increase in clean generation.

Serious engineers need to stop whatever they’re doing and work on this problem.

Also, if you’re hiring: I’m an expert on the U.S. regulated utility industry, demand management, and solar & battery system design, fabrication and deployment.

shrubby 72 days ago |

We could chop of a quarter of total emissions (directly + rewilding effect) by ending factory animal production and swapping to plant based.

Another quarter from the top 5 percent emissions that have practically nothing to do with the wellbeing, but only social comparison mechanisms (envy, herd mentality).

But for that humanity would need leaders that are not either idiots, corrupt or spineless and toothless.

But hey, I guess that's too much to ask, after all we're talking about unconscious reactive species that's only rumored to have brains or morals.

xandrius 72 days ago | |

I can barely get some people to do a week off eating red meat, imagine going cold turkey completely. If people haven't revolted about other stuff they definitely will for saving their meat consumption.

shrubby 72 days ago | | |

People are guided by two things. What others do first and after some programming what they're used to or comoulswd or addicted.

So not a conscious one.

Vietnam war shows us what's possible in terms of collective change.

During the Vietnam War, heroin usage among U.S. enlisted men was high, with estimates indicating that 34% to 43% of service members tried the drug, and roughly 10% to 20% were addicted.

Nixon was in panic about bringing heroin addicted killers back home.

Which they did. And nothing happened. The ones who had issues before leaving to Nam continued using but almost everyone who started there quit and perhaps tried again.

With conscious design of the society I don't think there's any habit we can't change should we decide.

Just remove the AG subsidies and this will be mostly fixed in no time.

We just need to collectively make a connection with the future outcome and Bob's your uncle.

bakies 72 days ago | | |

I think lab grown may be getting more promising?

JackSlateur 70 days ago | |

Do you know what it takes for plants to grow ? fertilizer

Do you know how can fertilizer be produced without animals ? Oil

paganel 72 days ago |

It's also closely correlated with this not very happy decision put in place in 2020 [1]:

> On 1 January 2020, a new limit on the sulphur content in the fuel oil used on board ships came into force, marking a significant milestone to improve air quality, preserve the environment and protect human health.

bobson381 72 days ago | |

well we can stick planes in the upper atmosphere and sprinkle sulfur around to get some cooling, but it'll get worse before then. gonna be interesting.

TimorousBestie 72 days ago |

A weird title.

The content of the paper is summed up as “everyone felt like the climate changed after 2015, the data up to 2023 was inconclusive; we finally have enough to prove it with 95% confidence.”

EDIT: The title is weird because it’s generic to the point of being unsearchable. I’m not disputing the facts of the paper.

epistasis 72 days ago | |

It's one of those titles that makes perfect sense to a scientist working in the field, but which is quite inscrutable to those not working in the field. (Just like the titles of most HN submissions)

Since manuscripts are written for those working in the field, and need to be, it's one of the big challenges of science communication. In the past these articles would be in a library and mailed out to the subscribing specialists, which minimized the confusion. In the age of the internet, even our dogs can read highly specialized scientific pre-prints that haven't even been peer reviewed yet.

tjnaylor 72 days ago | |

The title is a fair summary. The paper isn't simply confirming the "climate changed [warmed]" since 2015. The paper is showing the climate warmed the past decade twice as fast as it had between the decades from 1960-2000.

"This 58 indicates that the warming trend has been accelerating from a rate of 0.15 – 0.2 ◦C 59 per decade during 1980-2000, to more than twice that rate [0.4°C] most recently."

guenthert 72 days ago | |

"inconclusive" only regarding the significant acceleration. The warming part wasn't in question.

The actual abstract reads: "Recent record-hot years have caused a discussion whether global warming has accelerated, but previous analysis found that acceleration has not yet reached a 95% confidence level given the natural temperature variability. Here we account for the influence of three main natural variability factors: El Niño, volcanism, and solar variation. The resulting adjusted data show that after 2015, global temperature rose significantly faster than in any previous 10-year period since 1945."

TimorousBestie 72 days ago | | |

Man, I get definition-lawyered a lot on HN but this is something special.

dcchambers 72 days ago |

There's literally nothing that can be done about it. The people with actual ability to make a change don't care.

We're going to have to figure out how to adapt to it. Expect many of the things you love now (seafood, coffee, etc) to be gone within your lifetime.

n8cpdx 72 days ago | |

There were voters who could do part of it. Long term, having a US President that doesn’t cancel wind projects, tear up EV subsidies, and promote coal would probably be a difference maker for US emissions.

And if the voters were just a bit smarter and not bought into the “China bad” narrative, we might even get proper, nice, affordable EVs in the US.

dcchambers 72 days ago | | |

Here's the thing: NOTHING we do in the US matters when various Southeast Asian countries are rapidly industrializing. And in the rapid growth phase sustainability and clean energy is not a priority.

Then there's a billion and a half people in Africa, also rapidly growing, that may be next.

tencentshill 72 days ago | | |

Trump is still all bluster and words. He can't change the math. I've convinced 2 people to get EVs over ICE this year. They still make economic sense even without federal subsidies (dependent on your home/work situation). Though I don't deny that most OEMs are likely selling at a loss now. It's foolish how foreign wars directly affect how much it costs you to get to work.

JohnMakin 72 days ago |

Don't Look Up

jjtheblunt 72 days ago |

curiosity rabbit hole spawned from the article, which got me wondering if the earth axis precession over ~26k years influences ice ages and those cycles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

ck2 72 days ago |

Basically the oceans are way way way too hot which is melting even the most ancient ice and that can never be undone in our lifetimes (well maybe from a nuclear winter)

USA is about to have another El Nino summer which will be scorching from overheating oceans

But don't worry, USA is solving the problem by Biden banning cheap electric cars and Trump ending electric subsidies entirely, forcing coal plants to restart

_heimdall 72 days ago | |

Electric cars aren't a magic bullet. We need to drive less, not scrap ICE vehicles and buy new electric vehicles made on the other side of the planet with globally sourced materials and shipped to the US.

bojan 72 days ago | | |

Do they have to be a magic bullet?

Switching from ICE to electric is a much smaller ask than switching from personal cars to... bicycles?

e1ghtSpace 72 days ago | |

Maybe we can nuke a handful of countries and try to go for just a light nuclear winter to get everything cooled down again.

pcthrowaway 72 days ago | |

I suspect the reason Trump is talking about annexing Canada is because of our vast swathes of land which have historically been too cold for settlement, which are going to become much more temperate in the near-ish future.

hnfong 72 days ago | | |

That explains the 300 IQ attempt on claiming Greenland.

ActorNightly 72 days ago | | |

I really wanna know the kind of person you are that thinks that Trump makes logical decisions.

willhslade 72 days ago | | |

Soil is generally garbage though. Just saying.

everdrive 72 days ago | |

>But don't worry, USA is solving the problem by Biden banning cheap electric cars and Trump ending electric subsidies entirely, forcing coal plants to restart

People really think if they just buy the right products we'll solve this problem. People are really fundamentally unable to solve global warming issues. There are a few fundamental problems:

- Broad, collective action is not possible in just any direction. People can broadly get behind causes that are related to some fundamental human motivation, but generally cannot be guided towards nuanced political topics except via general tribalism and coalitions. (eg: you can go to the moon, but there's only broad support for this in the sense that it has consequences for national pride. You didn't have a whole nation helping the the logistics; you just had broad coalitional support.)

- People think that merely buying the right product will help, but major impacts to climate would require a serious modification in quality of life and material wealth. This will never have broad support. People will always scrape out the most comfort and most material wealth that is possible, and will only allow themselves to be constrained by hard limits. Technology can help here to a degree, but once technology helps, people just advance to the next hard limit. For instance the use of insecticides, industrial fertilizer, and large-scale factory farming just allowed for more population boom. Rather than arriving at a place where where had near infinite abundance, we just ate up the gains with expanded population and luxury products. (sort of how computers don't get faster; once the computer is made faster, the software does more and the actual UI responsiveness just stays in the same place.)

- People would need to intentionally decrease population and find healthy limits with the environment. No living thing does this. If you watch population curves in predators and prey, they occur because the hard limits force starvation and population decline. (ie, if the wolves eat too many deer, then the wolf pups starve, the wolf population declines, and then the deer can rebound.) In other words, nature is not "wise and balanced" but instead the balance is a mere fact of competition and death. The moment we produce an abundance, we use up that abundance. This may not be true in the case of some individuals, but broadly this is true for any population.

- No political body, even an authoritarian regime could force these things. People would revolt. Authoritarians themselves often get into power by promising abundance they can never actually deliver on. No authoritarian has gained power by promising to reduce abundance and material wealth.

bobson381 72 days ago | | |

So I've been on a journey of discovering basically this - limits to growth - for the last few years. It's been .... an emotional roller coaster as someone living in the developed world. I'm following the work of Nate Hagens and others in the space, but The Dread still ebbs and flows.

How do you hold this dispassionately? How do you get to a point of wanting to reproduce, or even wanting to continue, as an act of radical hope? Absurdism? Pure interest in watching it all unfold? I'm pretty aware that we are going to have constraints forced on us as like, a thermodynamic function, but ... how to cope? Go back to the tragedy?

-confused, interested, fascinatedly dreading

mrlonglong 72 days ago | |

Biden?!

whynotmaybe 72 days ago | | |

It reminds me of what I used to say whenever I've completed a contract for a client.

"And remember, now that I'm gone, every problem that occurs is my fault. So stop looking for the culprit, find a solution"

TimorousBestie 72 days ago | | |

They’re referring to this: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/bidens...

The Republicans are even more protectionist and sinophobic, however. Nobody ever had the option to vote for importing Chinese EVs.

FrustratedMonky 72 days ago | | |

Remember when Republicans blamed 9/11 on Obama, not remembering that it happened when Bush was president?

djoldman 72 days ago |

Basically this is the slowest train wreck in history that just won't be stopped. By 2050 (only 24 years away), these cities are projected to flood more than 1/3 of the days of every year:

  Galveston, Texas
  Morgan’s Point, Texas
  Annapolis, Maryland
  Norfolk, Virginia
  Rockport, Texas
  Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Big cities close behind the above:

  Miami and Miami Beach, Florida
  Charleston, South Carolina
  Atlantic City, New Jersey

pvaldes 72 days ago |

Dropping bombs has accelerated significantly. The last one to leave, turn the light off.

Duplicake 71 days ago |

We're cooked

beastman82 72 days ago |

the good news is that nuclear power is coming soon

lapcat 72 days ago |

See also from yesterday, "Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47261968

Bombthecat 72 days ago | |

This is good! Better to be numb and stupid when we die of hunger on the streets

luxuryballs 72 days ago | |

It’s these dang seltzer waters I can’t quit them!

ndiddy 72 days ago |

I don't see the US doing anything about global warming regardless of who's in charge. China has won on manufacturing cheap wind/solar energy and is scaling up their cheap EV manufacturing right now. Trump is definitely accelerating China's future dominance by completely forgoing anything related to developing or manufacturing green tech in favor of fossil fuels, but I think both parties would rather get into a conflict with China than cooperate with them and purchase their energy tech to deploy domestically. Solar and wind power are already far cheaper than coal or natural gas, and are much quicker to deploy, but the US government would much rather prop up the domestic fossil fuel industry than cooperate with China on renewables because fossil fuel is where all the incumbent money is.

zer0zzz 72 days ago |

This entire thread is a demonstration in how doomed we are.

0ckpuppet 72 days ago |

Until they ban private jets, why take this seriously?

sealthedeal 72 days ago |

Oh no!!! The Earth is Earthing!

BLKNSLVR 72 days ago |

Can we hope that the Strait of Hormuz remains essentially blocked to oil exports for an extended amount of time...?

mrs6969 72 days ago |

So some people made up something called ai, made millions of people out of jobs, big scams in market, filled internet with rubbish things, killed people with delusional chatbots, killed the planet, and all to make themselves rich.

If I do this, this would have been a crime. Nothing more.

kulahan 72 days ago | |

Literally none of those things you wrote are inherently a crime. Granted, maybe that’s the problem, but no - it’s not illegal to get rich, or to use a lot of energy, or to make low quality products.

mrs6969 70 days ago | | |

Making scams in market by creating fake cycles is.

Also killing peple with chatbots; what crime are you looking for?

kai_mac 72 days ago |

capitalism is going just great

SoftTalker 72 days ago |

"since 1945"

bleuchase 72 days ago | |

Surely such a small variable wouldn't change anything about the conclusion. And the method used to calculate global mean surface temperature has never changed either.

a456463 72 days ago |

And yet yesterday people were gushing about more toxic waste from Apple!

captainbland 72 days ago |

Today: this

Tomorrow: trillions invested in new technology for simulating human torture accurately at the molecular level, requiring twice the level of all consumer electricity use on the planet. Advocates claim "all use is valid".

FrustratedMonky 72 days ago | |

Is this a reference to "Torment Nexus"?

captainbland 72 days ago | | |

While I'm sure that subconsciously influenced what I wrote, it was more a general jab at the sentiment that negative externalities can always be justified so long as a technology has users who prefer to use it.

inciampati 72 days ago | | |

I prefer to think of it as a reference in the Torment Nexus.

heavyset_go 72 days ago | | |

It would also work as a jab at Roko's basilisk

oofbey 72 days ago | |

Actually “last year: this”. It was published in early 2025.

inetknght 72 days ago | |

Arguments against call it immoral, while counter-arguments call it "legitimate".

Meanwhile, three-time Billionaire claims he's solved the problem using soylent green while fifty thousand people react in awe at the live presentation.

pjmlp 72 days ago |

What a surprise with all the wars going on, and AI depleting Earth resources, what a change from about the pandemic era when everyone was into paper straws and cups and promising to be a better person, because that is what was going to change anything.

gedy 72 days ago |

All those RTO commuters /s

draw_down 72 days ago |

Oops you forgot this part:

> Here we account for the influence of three main natural variability factors: El Niño, volcanism, and solar variation.

Whoops! Whoopsies! Oopsy doodles!

pluc 72 days ago |

Yeah but now you can ask a question instead of providing a search term!

azan_ 72 days ago | |

It's not a great idea to blame AI, which is small addition to the global emissions. I suggest focusing on what's really important, not what's currently trendy.

topaz0 72 days ago | | |

This is like saying in 1910 "cars are a tiny fraction of our emissions, you should be focusing on the steam train and the woodstove"

xyzelement 72 days ago |

As an observation, global warming has completely disappeared as social concern in the last few years. Great that someone is still publishing research, but it seems like being a climate scientist has gone from hottest field to nobody cares.

latexr 72 days ago | |

Are you based in the US? Seeing how the current regime is doing its best to gut climate protections I get how it could seem that way, but it’s definitely not the case in e.g. Europe where energy from renewables continues to grow.

stfp 72 days ago | | |

Anecdotally, as I spend time between the US and the EU, the divide is large and clear now. It feels like folks in the US sort of just gave up (me included to an extent), whereas in Europe there seems to be a stronger resolve at a personal level and institutional level, to keep reducing energy use, plastics, driving, waste, etc. The US on the other hand is accelerating overconsumption in all directions.

It's especially depressing for me when it comes to younger folks. In Seattle where I live (not the suburbs, actual Seattle) some teenagers drive to school in 6 seater SUVs and spend their lunch time in there, with the engine on. A minority of students of course but that's still a mindfuck... in Europe they would get so much shit from other kids and neighbors. Drop in the bucket in terms of actual emissions but a very strong symbol of the lack of awareness/motivation.

missedthecue 72 days ago | | |

Most countries including the US are deploying record amounts of renewables. But the climate conversation is definitely reduced, and that's global. Its been a good while since I saw angsty euro teens throwing tomato soup on paintings or gluing themselves to motorways. That used to be a monthly occurance.

marginalia_nu 72 days ago | |

Everyone and their mother is running digital influence operations, so the overall media landscape is just extremely noisy right now.

This is an art that has been refined with every election cycle and every major political event since the early 2010s, and it had already gotten dang bad 5-6 years ago[1], and definitely did not get an ounce better once LLMs came along and drove the down the cost of this type of op.

The result is that it's very hard to get any sort of coherent message across.

[1] 'member the absolute clown fiesta surrounding COVID?

pjc50 72 days ago | |

Well, yes, due to systematic propaganda efforts and the general shift from being against mass death to being in favor of it.

(the Iran collapse that led to mass protests and then mass murder of the mass protests is itself a climate driven issue https://www.unicef.org/iran/en/climate-change )

mchaver 72 days ago | |

I assume because the public has been consumed by narratives over data. Narratives have probably always been more powerful than data for us humans, but we now have really powerful tools to generate the narratives we like. Combine that with algorithmic feeds that prefer certain types of narratives, boring and/or annoying data gets ignored.

mixdup 72 days ago | |

This is the biggest headscratcher about AI. Before 2020 every big tech company had a net neutral, if not net negative, carbon goal. And many of them were talking about not just buying offsets but actual neutrality. And others were talking about even accounting for the emissions caused by their customers using their products

LLMs hit the market and you never hear anyone talk about carbon at all. At all. Maybe Apple will mention it a little bit but they're not in the big datacenter game

The costs of LLMs are just being completely paved over. We don't let manufacturers dump cadmium into the rivers in the US anymore, even if it would enable cheap or magic products, it's insane that we're just ignoring all the external impacts in this particular area

jordanb 72 days ago | | |

They're grifters. They thought climate tech would be a big grift. When that slowed down they dropped it like last season's trendy outfit and jumped on the AI bandwagon.

avereveard 72 days ago | |

as soon as there was money to be made by concentrating data center, no matter the energy density impact on environment, the once philanthropist changed tune real quick

https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three...

with gems like "Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. "

dboreham 72 days ago | |

I'm in the US and even here this is absolutely not true. It has disappeared as a government concern, because the government has been subverted by vested interests.

alberto467 72 days ago | |

I think a lot of people have lost faith in the ability of the world to come all together and make the necessary sacrifices to make a difference. Especially when some parts of the world are in competition with each other and not making these sacrifices allows them an edge.

Also another group of people have realized they are not willing to forgo all their petty and unnecessary comforts nor are they willing to pay any price increases that would be required to adopt less economical but more sustainable services or production methods.

I don't think there's been any big change in climate change believers/deniers, but i do think some people have started accepting that we're doomed and that there is no "practical" solution. And if you think you're doomed, you might as well skip the sacrifices and enjoy your last days (decades) to the fullest.

ActorNightly 72 days ago | | |

Its not that.

Basically, on the average, people don't have ability to think rationally into the future. Most people think only 1 level of cause and effect.

Right now, for the vast majority of people, global warming isn't a problem when your house has AC, your car has AC, your workplace has AC. When you are forced to do things that you see no direct effect of, it makes it seem less important, and its a self reinforcing cycle where you see other people not doing it and you wonder why you have to make your life harder.

People will start caring only when their direct lives are affected. So unfortunately, the only way to fix global warming is to let it get bad enough to where there is enough death and destruction for people to start paying attention.

bondarchuk 72 days ago | | |

"People aren't willing to pay price increases" is interesting. Of course that's what they say when you ask them directly. Yet everyone is currently paying massive price increases as a result of covid-era money printing. I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily but what it shows it that it has been possible in very recent times that a collecive decision was made which increased general prices for everyone.

mitthrowaway2 72 days ago | |

Well, this did hit #1 on HN. A bunch of us might actually still be worried about it.

bena 72 days ago | |

We've had other existential threats to worry about of late.

People are way more alarmed by Rapid Local Temperature Rises By Mechanism of Thermonuclear Energy Being Suddenly Released.

f6v 72 days ago | |

The problem is, no amount of climate policies in the West is going to offset burning fuel in the developing counties. It’s a global phenomenon and addressing it locally is futile. That, and you don’t have the luxury of green solutions when energy prices were going through the roof.

hackyhacky 72 days ago | | |

> addressing it locally is futile.

Imagine what could be accomplished if Americans used their global influence to affect global change on climate issues with the same zeal that they pursue manipulative trade deals.

rounce 72 days ago | | |

Surely it's better to be more reliant on domestically/locally produced wind and solar when oil and gas production by 3rd party countries is plummeting?

acdha 72 days ago | | |

This is not only wrong but you are bending over backwards to maintain the state of ignorance which makes it possible to say that. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere did not come from developing countries, and every reduction buys more time to deal with the problem so, yes, local measures matter: as an example, the U.S. transportation sector is so carbon intensive that getting our average efficiency up will reduce global emissions by more than entire other countries produce.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1118464/transportation-c... shows the American trend, then look at which other countries that’s similar to assuming we electrify a given fraction of the transportation sector:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

This is even more wrong when you look at how Africa is electrifying. Unlike the United States, China continued to invest in solar panel production and so they’re now the cheapest option for electrical power for millions of people since solar panels run for decades and don’t require trucking diesel fuel around or building out power grids. Investments in batteries are having the same cycle: richer countries have the research universities and product development but then anyone can buy the product.

https://apnews.com/article/solar-energy-china-imports-batter...

That’s why the fossil fuels spend so much money spreading messages like yours: they grew fat on government subsidies and they need those subsidies to continue or even expand as the basic economics increasingly favor renewables. Trump has to force coal plants to stay open because otherwise the operators would switch to cheaper options.

wolttam 72 days ago | | |

Someone needs to set the example and be the model?

triceratops 72 days ago | | |

So pay for developing countries to go green. If they can get free solar energy they won't spend their money on gas.

nyeah 72 days ago | | |

Nice take on the trolley problem. "No amount of pulling the emergency brakes is going to prevent passengers from dying when this runaway train finally crashes. So let's be responsible adults and put the pedal to the metal."

mrweasel 72 days ago | |

Denmark is having a parliamentary election in 18 days, and other than one of the left wing parties, it seems like no one gives a shit about environmental issues right now. Even the debate about clean drinking water is a bit one sided, where part of the left want to implement measures to secure it, while the right is "Fuck it, fixing it will hurt our heavily subsidized farmers".

Part of the problem seems to be that many countries won't do shit, so all the improvements that have been made are just completely negated by other poluting more.

superxpro12 72 days ago | |

Seriously? I see anti-global-warming propaganda every day.

Every f'ing time it snows someone has to snide in with "BuT I ThOuGhT GlObAl WaRmInG WaS ReAl!?!?!?!?!" And i have to take a breath.

Pxtl 72 days ago | |

Because of first COVID-19 and the post-peak economic chaos distracting us, and then afterwards Trump and Putin and Netenyahu and the global rise of erratic mayhem as a political platform.

https://xkcd.com/2275/

Eventually we'll have to deal with the Giant Spider Downtown, it's just that the to-do list is growing from the top.

superxpro12 72 days ago | | |

It's foolish to assume this is not a calculated effort. It's make us feel good that there isn't people who are actually evil enough to coordinate these full-blown authoritarian campaigns.

Consider for a moment that there ARE people this straight-up evil....

hackyhacky 72 days ago | |

Nothing like fascism and war to take your mind off the environment.

Octoth0rpe 72 days ago | | |

Because of how policies are grouped together in many countries (particularly the US), the fight against fascism is necessarily concurrent with the fight against climate change.

nDRDY 72 days ago | |

The messaging on "global tipping points" was over-done, and also many people are now aware that enforcing low-carbon policies is costing Western economies a huge amount of money while resulting in very little net reduction in global CO2 output.

Why care when we're already over the edge and there isn't anything we can do about it?

Invictus0 72 days ago |

absolutely nothing can be done about this

htx80nerd 72 days ago |

let me guess we only have 10 more years, again?

karol 72 days ago |

It's gonna be great, when it's warmer.

PowerElectronix 72 days ago |

And yet the minimum extension of artic ice ever recorded was in 2014.

I think there are more effects to account for when extrapolating measured temperatures, mostly made on the ground with cataclismic effects. After all, all the carbon being emitted nowadays was in the biosphere back in the days. Why couldn't it return back to it without the earth becoming inhabitable?

_aavaa_ 72 days ago | |

The argument isn’t that the whole earth becomes inhospitable. But that certain regions do, and the rest will have their climate differ drastically.

If you live on the coast and the water level rises, your home is inhospitable, even if someone 100mi inland is fine.

If you live in a region that usually was 90F in the summer and is now >110F regularly, that’s going to cause problem.

alexk307 72 days ago | | |

There isn't enough fossil fuels in the ground for us to burn to cause a 20F+ increase in annual summer temperatures globally...

oxqbldpxo 72 days ago |

For a 1000 points: For the turkey, what is Thanksgiving? What is a Black swan?

fragkakis 72 days ago |

Isn't it an irony that much of this is in the name of resolving World Problems, such as Global Warming

honkycat 72 days ago |

we have had several manhattan project in the last 100 years, but they have all been for stuff like:

- creating a new addictive form of entertainment we can use to brainwash people

- Creating expensive data centers that MAY end up being extremely useful in the long run

and never for saving the lives of the people on our planet.

Humanity is doomed. We deserve it.

cryptoegorophy 72 days ago |

If it is too late to do anything, why should we care? We can’t reverse it, so why should we care about slow down?

wing-_-nuts 72 days ago | |

This is like punching a hole in your wall and saying 'there's already a hole, why shouldn't I just demolish my entire house'

cryptoegorophy 72 days ago | | |

No. It is like punching a hole in your wall when something else punches the wall daily with increased rate. No matter what you do at this point the wall will be destroyed.

kergonath 72 days ago | |

We must limit the problem, then adapt and mitigate. Some damage is irreversible, it does not mean that it’s a good idea to stop trying to understand what will happen. You don’t stop weather forecasts when a hurricane touches land just because it’s going to happen anyway.

Reality is not binary. There’s a whole spectrum of situations between "everything gets back to normal and all is well" (which was never on the cards after the 1980s) and "all humans die within a century". And the nuances in between still affect billions of people.

cryptoegorophy 72 days ago | | |

From what I understood we are closer to the “all humans will die within a century” and if this is the case then what’s the point of doing anything? Does it matter if our effort just delays the “all humans will die” by let say 50 years? Radical change we need to do if we are serious is going back to caves. 0 consumption. I highly doubt anyone will do that.

cetinsert 72 days ago |

Good! Won't change a thing in how I live my life!

maest 72 days ago | |

You must be American.

r2ob 72 days ago |

El Niño, volcanism, and solar variation.

it's not about us guys, relax.

tomgp 72 days ago | |

Interstingly a paper was published today which confirms accelerated warming whislt accounting for the effects of natural fluctations (el nino, volcanism and solar radiation etc) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2025...

>We remove the estimated influence of three main natural variability factors: El Niño, volcanism, and solar variation. The resulting adjusted and thus less “noisy” data show that there has been acceleration with over 98% confidence, with faster warming over the last 10+ years than during any previous decade.

Dumblydorr 72 days ago | |

I’m not sure if this comment was low effort or sarcasm but it certainly doesn’t further discussion per HN guidelines.

Those are factors in this analysis that weren’t in all prior analyses, and the confidence levels in this analysis have improved greatly and we know much more certainly that global temps are rising faster now than earlier decades.

knowaveragejoe 72 days ago | |

Any excuse to pretend we aren't contributing.

cataflam 72 days ago | |

You're getting downvoted because you didn't read the article.

It is specifically about cleaning up the data by removing these 3 and showing a clearer picture of acceleration without these 3 factors.

code4life 72 days ago |

Where i live, we had the coldest winter on record in 30 years. I’m going with that.

throwway120385 72 days ago | |

The jetstream which prevents the polar vortex from migrating south is getting weaker.

cetinsert 72 days ago | | |

Sure.

bakies 72 days ago | |

Dismissing thousands of years of global temperature averages because you had a cold winter, very smart.

code4life 72 days ago | | |

Im not dismissing anything. I’m just saying, when a measurement was taken in my region in 1925 it was warmer then than it was 100 years later in 2025.

tlogan 72 days ago |

The sad reality is that much of the climate work done in the West does not matter because China, India, and the rest of the world are not involved.

renewiltord 72 days ago |

This is true, but sometimes I wonder if it is the biggest problem. Fortunately, the local environmental organizations explained to me that while it is a big problem it is much more important that we oppose infill housing and embrace sprawl because the former causes shadows to fall on parks used by underserved minorities.

Another thing I have wondered is whether it is ethical to oppose solar power because I don’t like how it looks. Again here the environmentalists have an answer. Yes it is.

Recently I was wondering about geothermal power as well, but I learned that the good people of black rock city believe that we should leave no trace and a geothermal plant would leave a trace so it’s far preferable to drive a large number of ICE vehicles to the desert.

In general, I think that we probably exaggerate climate change a lot. It’s not a big deal, at least when compared to things like sunshine for a park for underserved minorities.

fvv 72 days ago |

I believe that as soon as nuclear fusion becomes operational (and perhaps AI could be of great help in this regard in the next 5 years),

all the carbon storage methods (efficient and otherwise) studied so far could be immediately put into action.

In addition to the immediate reduction in the use of fossil fuels for energy production, the scenario could be completely changed in 10 years, water could be desalinated, desertification reversed, etc.

Free and unlimited energy would be the solution to everything. The question is whether we will get there before it's too late... and perhaps AI is the answer?

DoctorOW 72 days ago | |

> The question is whether we will get there before it's too late... and perhaps AI is the answer?

I won't touch "free and unlimited energy", but is there even evidence that AI produces more energy than it uses? Produces any at all?

bakies 72 days ago | |

Fission is good enough for this.

Sulphur particles contained in ships' exhaust fumes had been counteracting some of the warming coming from greenhouse gases. Lowering the sulfur content of marine fuel weakened this masking effect, effectively giving a boost to warming.

1. Over the time frames we're discussing (even the next 50 years) how many "poor" countries will there be left? We're seeing substantial progress on economic, educational, and other fronts over the past 50 years. 2. Will there ever be a time when the change occurring is direct and over a short enough time frame to matter to "rich" countries? Yes, it will suck if most of Florida is underwater, but this process has already started, and has been going on for 20, 30, 50 years? And most people care very little. If it takes a century for the state to completely submerge, that apathy will continue.