Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest

sshymaple about 4 hours ago 22 commentsRead Article on science.org

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hellzbellz123•about 3 hours ago

no shit eh? This seems so wildly obvious that i don't really know how to read it. the Pacific North West hasn't seen significant snow in years, instead of our daily fall rain we've been getting awful downpours that flood everything followed by weeks of dry. snowpacks gone, reservoirs are running dry, fires are more and more devastating every year.

when are we going to acknowledge this catastrophe that we are barreling towards?

i can only hope that things start improving. between this and government im gonna lose it

BugsJustFindMe•about 2 hours ago

> when are we going to acknowledge this catastrophe that we are barreling towards?

Not to be a total downer, but probably never unless all the Republicans in the US suddenly disappear? Like, remember who the "we" is in your question. Remember what policies they stand for and what methods they employ.

igortg•40 minutes ago

It's crazy because while the US is one of the biggest emitters per capita, it's also home of the brightest minds and have by far the most efficient research ad development capacity. So US govt. denial is a huge hit in our already tiny chances to save the planet from hell in the next 50yrs.

wwwald•about 1 hour ago

This.

I'm appalled that there still seems to be the need to find _evidence_ for this.

olalonde•21 minutes ago

There's evidence of global warming. There's no evidence of a climate catastrophe. Personally, I'm not sure I would even notice climate change if it weren't for all the news about it. If there was a catastrophe, why is humanity steadily progressing on every metric? We've already 1.4°C of warming in...

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:sfhb7ll...

kuerbel•23 minutes ago

Those people are not convinced by evidence.

sixtyj•about 2 hours ago

Decarbonization, reduction of produce (spending less), trash collection and reduction, less plastics… and hoping for the best that mankind wont mess it up more til 2050 - then the following 100 years (after 2050) shouldn’t be so hell as it seems so now…

Unfortunately we as people cannot see our older ones so future planning is not so easy…

Guns and ammo was the conclusion how to prepare for the future - in the book “10 Billion” by Stephen Emmott.

MachineMan•about 2 hours ago

I’m pretty sure nonviolence is the way for the future. There is always someone with a bigger gun.

imeron•about 2 hours ago

It's pointless to look for solutions that's against human nature.

mrkeen•about 1 hour ago

'Against human nature' is where every intervention begins! Otherwise you wouldn't bother intervening.

sixtyj•about 2 hours ago

Law of conservation of energy can be applied here as well. So you can’t expect something else if you produce and consume more.

I don’t dispute capitalism and democracy.

Just trying to figure out what I (as person) really need.

Every weekend travelling by plane just to experience something else?

Ordering some stuff across the globe from Temu, Aliexpress just because it is cheap(er)?

Eating e.g. tuna because it is healthy that had to be transported around the globe?

Drinking wine from South Africa because I don’t like Californian? (Blind tests by Wine Spectator magazine confirm that even a sommelier doesn’t recognize cheap from expensive ones.)

Global export-import statistics is staggering… just a few: all metals, honey, fish, vegetables from Spain, avocados from Peru, almonds from California, cheaper than local milk transported across Europe , bananas from everywhere you can imagine… supply and demand - a lot of people have a much more money.

Vessel and plane trackers show so many vehicles moving around that I wonder how whales can handle this traffic.

There is chemical and industry that is real spin doctors.

(Almost) everyone wants to have house, car, cheap everything, travel everywhere. Those who can’t afford do everything to become rich.

Wealth is good. Plundering to get more money not so much. And mankind plunders like there is no tomorrow. All the CSR, circular economy etc is nice but brainwashing and stuff for distraction so people could feel better.

noir_lord•about 2 hours ago

> I don’t dispute capitalism and democracy.

I do the capitalism part, or more specifically what form of capitalism because there is a vast range between "society should work for capitalism" and "capitalism should work for society".

I'd likely argue that on the whole capitalism in it's current form isn't working for society and the trend is towards that getting worse over time.

dns_snek•about 1 hour ago

> I don’t dispute capitalism

But we should. This is a taboo topic but pretending that these consequences are either disconnected from capitalism or that capitalism is some natural law of the universe that should never be challenged is, for lack of a better word, delusional.

These consequences are inherent to capitalism because people benefiting from it demand infinite growth and nobody is incentivized to care about the environment. People who care about it get outcompeted by those who don't in ruthless pursuit of "efficiency".

We can try to regulate it to the point that people wouldn't call it capitalism anymore but the nature of a system where the only incentive is maximizing profit will always have a natural tendency to harm the environment, so it should be disputed.

soco•about 2 hours ago

So the human nature is to kill ourselves or otherwise let ourselves die out? Sorry dude, I don't want to accept that - I don't even believe it.

satvikpendem•about 2 hours ago

You don't have to accept it but seems like that's what is happening. Humans just don't seem to have the capacity for long term collective action against individual interests. Ultimately that may be what the Great Filter for us ends up being, maybe it'd have been different were we a hive mind.

burnt-resistor•about 2 hours ago

Leadership by the Tokugawa shogunate saved the forests of Japan. Leadership saved the ozone layer. Leadership can save the climate, although civil war(s) maybe necessary to overthrow corrupt elites who put us all at risk.

MachineMan•about 2 hours ago

Earth has an immune system called the atlantic meridian overturning cycle. When meltwater dillutes the salt concentration too much, it collapses and creates an ice age. Short term catastrophe, long term it will be OK.

nielsbot•about 2 hours ago

Not sure why these reports always say things like "suggest" instead of "is".

defrost•about 2 hours ago

Because this is science, not religion.

The thesis: Climate change is strengthening El Niño clearly uses the word "is".

Everything else is evidence, both for and against the thesis subject to interpretation.

Here it's "Something we can see in coral records correlates with what we'd expect given the thesis"

  The study doesn’t prove climate change is the culprit. But because the intensification coincides with rapid postindustrial warming and exceeds El Niño’s natural variability, the authors argue that human-driven warming is the leading explanation.

These observed correlations may be directly or indirectly linked to the thesis, or (and this does happen) they may be an unrelated coincidence.

As the weight of evidence in favour of a thesis builds, so does the confidence in the thesis itself.

phtrivier•19 minutes ago

In this case, even the authors seems to agree that the finding is not "consensus-level" yet.

That being said, consensus would not necessarily settle the thing.

Even when the worldwide scientific community reaches a consensus and accepts using plain language (as in "It _is_ unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land" [1]), you still have a number of politicians begging to differ. [2]

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/summary-for-polic....

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/de-pire-en-pire-sur-france-5-... (Sorry, fr-fr)