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157 points Helmut10001 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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Shekelphile ◴[] No.43593684[source]
My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point.

It is worth mentioning that we are already in the last few hundred million years of earth's lifespan -- the sun was much dimmer last time the planet had this much GHG and warming going on. We may have already set the conditions for the oceans to boil away and the heat death of our planet without massive geoengineering.

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banqjls ◴[] No.43593708[source]
> My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point.

Given that the glaciers should’ve all melted by now, and that we can’t even predict with certainty whether it will rain tomorrow, I wouldn’t pay much attention to predictions.

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1. AshamedCaptain ◴[] No.43593793[source]
Ever been in the famous Mer de Glace in France ? In the 1980s they had to build a cable car to descend from the old train station (which the glacier _almost_ reached at some point) to the surface level of the glacier, which had started descending. By the time they finished building the cable car, the glacier had descended so _much_ _more_ that in the 90s an extra 500 steps staircase had to be built to cover the ever-growing gap from the cable car stop to the new surface of the glacier. ~5 years ago, this gap was so large it would take an hour or so to climb up/down, so they had to build _a 2nd cable car_ to cover the new gap.

The new cable car even when it was in construction _already_ did no longer reach the glacier, as the glacier has descended another 20 steps since construction started: https://www.chamonix.net/english/news/chamonix-new-telecabin...

You can see with your own eyes not only how it is disappearing, but how much the speed at it which disappears increases year-by-year. If you ever plan to visit it, better do it so now; I find it unlikely there will be anything visitable left of it by the end of next decade.