Venus by Tuesday

TokenBoomer@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1540 points –
125

For being so smart, we are so dumb

Huge difference between raw intellectual capacity and exercised utility.

You can have a 10 gallon bucket, but it'll only carry that much water if you fill it.

The solution to global warming, then, is clearly to just set up a massive ring of fans all pointed in the same direction in a ring around the North Pole, to keep the jet stream going

Not the worst geoengineering idea.

Not a good idea, but I've heard worse

That is the worst geoengeniering idea. https://whatif.xkcd.com/162/

Outer space is a lot higher up than Niagara Falls,^[citation ^needed]

Lmao

Isn't that literally just a thinly veiled Futurama reference? Like, there was an episode where planet Express was sent out to fetch ice from Haley's comet to dump in the ocean to combat global warming which fails and they end up just pushing the earth farther away from the sun to cool things down?

This will also fix the wind turbines using up the all the wind!

We should point those fans at the wind turbines so we can at least gather the power from fans! Why waste it!

Finally a solution! Now what to do about the turbines murdering whales?

I am in love with the elegance of this idea that would not work even a little bit. Occam, eat your heart out.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/understanding-arctic-polar-vortex

As of 2021 the science was not settled on the ice loss as a cause or an affect. This article goes into both theories.

That's a bit like the investigation into whether lethal bear attacks are because of their teeth or their claws - probably really interesting, but not critical to the question of avoiding the bear.

But a fair point when someone says it's due to one as part of their argument

Interesting. I would love to work on that kind of data model, as there is an interesting thing to point out with the movement of the polar vortex:
It dips further south to follow along land mass.

I wonder if the wind currents have an easier time maintaining speed along flat surfaces or if the water being warmer causes pockets of higher pressure further north than usual pushing the vortex to be more unstable looking.

It feels like it makes sense that the current would be much more stable along a surface that is more consistent and thus loss of ice smoothing the surface would cause it to wobble but inertia still remains the same meaning it needs to push down elsewhere where there is less resistance.

So I would lean towards ice loss as a cause of changing polar vortex stability but I kinda gave up that ability to do anything about this or study such things a while ago.

I was led to believe it's both. Global warming causes ice loss which contributes to global warming which causes more ice loss which contributes to global warming which causes more ice loss ...

Don't worry, the Earth will heal >!once we're gone!<

If those people could read they'd be very upset.

Yeah I've actually lost faith in 100% of folks in 2024 who still think it's a scam. I used to think it was just boomers, it's not. Every climate change related post from NASA on their social media accounts is literally full of young people making fun of them for 'lying to the public' and how it's all a hoax. There's no depth to these people, we truly live in a society full of complete morons who will believe in a conspiracy theory because of a 5 minute badly edited YouTube video, but refuse to trust anything that is widely accepted in the scientific community because of their need to feel important, intelligent, and 'in' on something that the rest of the world isn't in on.

the fellow students in school growing up that always blew off paying attention in school and disrupting class didn't just disappear.. sure i saw less of them when i wasn't confined to those public grade school walls, but it's been a harsh realization for me as I'm seeing them again as adults buying into and spreading the misinformation.

I just hope we’re not seeing the start of a shutdown of the North Atlantic current, which is likely what led to the Younger Dryas ice age, which marked a dramatic climate shift and widespread extinction event over just a couple of decades:

The change was relatively sudden, took place over decades, and resulted in a decline of temperatures in Greenland by 4–10 °C (7.2–18 °F), and advances of glaciers and drier conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. A number of theories have been put forward about the cause, and the hypothesis historically most supported by scientists is that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, was interrupted by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America into the Atlantic.

Right now, it’s looking like that may have already started: Study: Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. If that’s the case, things will become very hot and then abruptly freeze, not over the course of a century, but virtually overnight.

e: better link

The thing I keep thinking about, and I feel like I've never been able to properly communicate, is that the machines our society runs on are built to run in a certain temperature range.

The 2021 texas winter fiasco was a perfect demonstration of what happens when we try to run a society's machinery outside of it's expected temperature range. Yes, the ERCOT goofballs were trying to save money by narrowing that expected operating range because "It never gets that cold" and "It never gets that hot", but my badly articulated point still stands - a system was made to operate in a temperature range outside of it's capability, and it started to fail. They were minutes away from losing very expensive and hard to replace equipment. What we don't want is for one of the more competently-run power grids in the world to start to buckle due to temperatures, because the same thing that happened in texas could happen on a larger scale.

And that's just talking about the power grid. Anything with a heat exchanger in it, including your car and air conditioner and all the refrigeration that is needed to keep everyone fed, is designed to run in a certain temperature range, and will stop working if you run it outside of that range for too long.

But wait, we can just design stuff to run in a wider temperature range! We certainly can. But we would have to redesign everything that moves heat around.

Holy shit I've never considered this until now. Survival skills intensify...

When you stop and actually think about our situation you realise how thin our operating margins are, we are at the mercy of whatever the planet does and our safety is subject to immediate dismissal should the conditions change. Worse of course are the random cosmic whims which could wipe us out instantly at any time e.g. comets, the sun going weird, etc.

The Day After Tomorrow.

The day after tomorrow was related, but relied on a no longer mainstream idea that the Arctic vortex could become a whole northern hemisphere storm, so big it would liquify nitrogen in its central low

We really hope that's not a thing that can happen. It would render most of the northern hemisphere dead

Is there any resource for forecasting what will likely occur in a given area? I don't see how we can stop climate change now, so I want to prepare my family for it.

Not that I’m aware of. From what I understand, that scenario would affect the entire planet.

Yeah, but the changes to weather patterns will vary from location to location, right?

This is what I mean:

Warming is already occurring in all areas of the globe, but models of future temperatures show that the changes will not be distributed equally. Polar regions and land areas are expected to see the largest temperature changes.

IPCC Working Group I, 2021

Right, but if that current shuts down, that means the transfer of warm and cold currents that power weather patterns across the entire northern hemisphere will be disrupted.

The last time that happened, the entire northern hemisphere basically froze over. If you live north of the equator, whether it’s North America, Europe, or Asia, the result would be similar: no more warm seasons and freezing to the point of glaciation, from what I understand. I’m not a climatologist, though.

HEY!!!! Get your science and facts out of here!

~ ~Places fingers in ears and closes eyes~ ~ laalalalalalalal

reference

I was trying to look up why less polar ice causes shifts in the jet stream and this article cites an active debate around our understanding on this.

The tweet does not really address that point, and makes the cause and effect sound definitive.

What, are you saying a website called X where I can easily share both amateur porn, shitpost, and fight with other keyboard warriors isn't a solid source for factual information? smh what are you talking about

Next you're going to tell me that drinking diesel fuel is bad for my longevity or something.

The Xcretion says that less ice "is consistent with" a weaker jet stream, which does not imply a casual relationship. If A causes B and Y, then B is consistent with Y; or, more accurately, we can produce a useful model of the system that includes both less ice and a weaker jet stream, and have it be internally consistent.

Which is the flaw of social media science these past few years. Theories evolve as new data is presented and new hypotheses are formed. The average twitter denizen won't have that, no sir, and will with glee smack you with an outdated textbook with equal zeal as a Bible basher.

"FACTS DONT FUGGING CHANGE YOU BIGOT" == "THE WORLD IS ONLY 6,000 YEARS OLD SAYS SO IN THE BIBLE"

Y'all ready to be gouged for survival items until money becomes irrelevant?

P.S. 'A Capitalist Apocalypse' would be a fun title for a political comedy song.

I'll start writing that play. We won't even have to splurge on the stage as the wasteland will provide a natural setting.

Even as the US hits record setting lows, the temperature of the planet as a whole remains above average. If it's -20°F across the entire US, how hot must the rest of the planet be?

-20F? Where?

That was hyperbole, I don't know if it's been -20°F across the entire country at any one time, but there was a couple years ago when we had that big freeze and Texas almost died

But also gets that low in my own city sometimes

3 more...
4 more...

If this were common, it would increase the Earth's albedo, reducing warning

1 more...
6 more...

New next level science unlocked.

I'm a climate idiot. Does this somehow relate to ice ages, I wonder?

Ice ages typically happen due to very low insolation or the ability of solar energy to reach the surface of our planet. Insolation is a term often used when describing how much energy a solar panel can create.

Right now we have a big problem with too many greenhouse gases, which exacerbate the insolation we already have. It is heating our oceans rapidly, thus causing the break up of ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica. At some point the oceans won't be able to absorb the heat we are receiving and air temperatures will begin to rise as well. Equilibrium. Hence Venus by Tuesday.

(like how ice keeps your drink from heating up)

Narrator: ... Thus solving the problem once and for all.

Suzie: But--

Narrator: Once and for all!

We are in an ice age, you can tell because there is an ice cap at both poles.

We are in an interglacial period, which if we fixed carbon pollution today would still continue for tens of thousands of years beyond it's expected end

There used to be a theory that this sort of weather reinforces the northern ice and glaciers and could start glaciation, but that's not supported by modern models

3 more...

Not even a shitpost

Define “shitpost.”

Toilet humor. That's literwlly what a shitpost is. I enjoyed seeing this post on my feed but it definitely belongs in a different community

The sidebar says “Anything and Everything.”

Oh, I'm sorry, did c/lemmyshitpost coin the term "shitposting"?

/b/ is "anything and everything" too, there's no rule against porn there, but that doesn't necessarily mean it belongs there though does it?

Al Gore and many others said there wouldn't be any ice at all in the polar regions by 2013.

Obviously climate change it happening, but the computer models they keep showing have been proven to be bullshit over and over.

Doesn't mean we can't learn from them. The process of developing those models can be incredibly useful in learning about complex steps. They help us understand what conditions and variables are important to look into. We can figure out what we know a lot about and what is still a complete mystery.

Turbulent airflow is an incredibly complicated thing, we still haven't fully solved the Navier+Stokes equations. I hope to be alive when someone does.

Just because they don't perfectly figure it out the first time doesn't mean we should stop putting effort into incremental improvements. Though we do have to be careful that we are not wasting resources when there is a more efficient path forward. Simulations are one of many important tools, we just have to use them wisely.

Whatever benefits you get out of letting an AI write code for you, is lost as soon as the corporate overlords claim your work as theirs because they own the AI that wrote it.

Great, but what is the "Great Plains" and how is it affecting me?

The "Great Plains" is where a lot of your food comes from, and humans must eat food in order to survive

And the southern US is where a lot of our produce comes from in the winter BUT now that they are losing the consistency of the jet stream maintaining milder temperatures they are seeing crop failure due to hard freezes they otherwise wouldn’t even have to contemplate worrying about.

In the United States, the Great Plains is the large stretch of land east of the Rockies, it contains parts of 10 states: Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming , Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. It also extends up into Canada.

Weather is too hot? It's because of global warming.

Weather too cold? Also global warming.

I'm not denying global warming or climate change, I'm just playing Devil's advocate to show how a climate denier might view this.

It just looks dumb when they claim that any/all evidence proves their point. Maybe it's just cold because it's January? December was very mild where I live and it's supposed to be unusually warm next week. I suppose that also proves global warming?

That’s why people moved away from global warming and use climate change.

Yes, overall the earth is warming but that destabilization affects the climate making summers hotter, winters colder, storms stronger etc.

smh they should have moved to global cooling, then we wouldn't be in this situation. Next time you are upset about the temperature just know that there were rows of homes just waiting there, but nooooo you had to be equal and give climate change a try. See how that worked out don'tcha?

I agree, but the tweet in the OP said warming

The planet is warming overall. This causes climate change as the polar ice melts. It means more extremes in temperatures and localized colder temperatures, and OP explained why. OP wasn't wrong, and you're being deliberately obtuse.

Thats why it’s been called climate change for decades now and not global warming.

As a natural pedant, I have to point out that that's not quite true. Decades ago, people talked about global warming (due to the greenhouse effect) because we feared that it would lead to major climate change.

Then, it led to major climate change. Now we talk about that. Global warming is still a thing, it's just the effects have upstaged it as a topic.

I agree, but the tweet in the OP said warming

Global warming and climate change are the same thing, not understanding that is not an excuse for ignorant arguing

If this is you playing Devil’s Advocate, then I have to voice my concern that the Devil has retained a lawyer that makes Trump’s attorneys look competent by comparison.

Charlotte Richards was a good lawyer!

::: spoiler spoiler And I wholeheartedly love anyone who gets that ❤️ :::

Weather is too hot? It's because of global warming.

Weather too cold? Also global warming.

Literally yes. It's not our fault if people are too stupid to realize weather =! climate, are too skeptical to trust the science. Regardless of whether people believe it, it's literally the facts of the matter that global warming is the cause of these extreme weather events.

I'm really confused what your point is. Climate change deniers looking at objective facts and rejecting them because they can't comprehend a warmer climate could cause colder weather means they are fucking stupid, not that the facts are wrong. We don't need to play advocate for dumbassery

Maybe it's just cold because it's January?

January had been super mild near me, average lows in the 30s with actual average being like 50, up until this past week when the cold front came in from the north and literally overnight temps dropped to the negatives. I was closely monitoring weather radars this week, I literally watched the cold front coming in... and look at that, the cold front has finally mostly passed over me and it's once again in the comparatively balmy 30s, and supposed to be even warmer next week. Huh, guess it's not just because it's January, who knew?

The whole winter has been super mild actually, besides literally this weeks cold front it's been warmer on average than it would've been in early Autumn here 15ish years ago. We used to frequently get the first blizzard of the year in October, now it takes an abnormal cold front coming down from the literal arctic to even get a blizzard at all, in January! That's fucking alarming.

You're getting downvoted to oblivion, but I do see and agree with your point: "Branding matters"

A significant portion of the population will not rub two brain cells together to understand the "warming -> change" connection, as reasonable as it is. Same thing with the "defund the police" slogan. Yes, when you understand the concept you can see the meaning, but for those that don't bother to understand the concept, the "brand name" is the beginning and the end of thought applied. When the "brand name" is easily attackable, the idea is dead so far as they're concerned.

As frustrating as it is, persuasive arguments need to also appeal to those who are persuaded by quips and jokes as well as those who are persuaded by logic and reason. Unfortunately "Global Warming", the "old brand" is still sticking around, and still able to be joked away by many people, hence the reason for the image post in the first place.

weather is a heat engine, more heat in the air makes weather more extreme and powerful. Colds colder amd further south. hots hotter and further north, etc

just like nitrous in a car engine makes it more extreme and powerful

Its not a hard concept to grab if you dont have a cultish politically motivated "NUH UH" mindset to anything you hear that didnt come from the 3 lying fucking conmen you listen to ( general you, not you specific)

The problem with that position is that it's anti-scientific. If someone is scientifically illiterate then their opinion doesn't count anymore than my opinion on the supremacy of reading Tolstoy in the original Russian. I can't read Russian so it doesn't matter what I say. If, however, the majority of bilingual Russian/English speakers tell me that the best way to enjoy War and Peace is to learn Russian, I will believe them, even if I don't bother taking the time to learn that language.

Why play devil's advocate? Why advocate for the devil in the first place?

Instead of trying to mask any ignorance or opinions of your own, simply share your actual opinion, and don't try to think or speak for others, please.

Yeah, still way to many people being contrarious just to help push a side they dont even believe in for the reason of.... They think it's annoying that other people care?
Truly a great use of time. /s

Truly, it might just be that they believe what they pretend to not and just want someone to confirm they are wrong because otherwise it's such not a worthwhile position to hold unless we are all getting paid to think about it.

The reason it goes both ways is the heat puts more energy in the weather. My country is getting rain like it was a la Niña year, in an el niño year. Air currents move and America gets snow

The climate is changing. That affects weather. Weather is chaotic, small influences can have large effects. Climate change is a large influence.

Don't poke the echo chamber too hard. The mods might ban you for reasonable discussion.

not an echo chamber, you're just a couple of dipshits. you really think the jury is still out on this one? go to grill

You're making my point for me thanks.