
Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to climate change - lelf
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-iceland-commemorates-glacier-lost-climate.html
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adrianN
And with the worldwide loss of ice and snow, less sunlight is reflected,
leading to more warming. And yet no country is doing what's necessary to
prevent catastrophe.

~~~
skilled
It's naive to say a 'country' is responsible for this. In the end, people like
you and me have to decide what the future is going to look like.

But who has time or integrity to stand up against things like climate change,
right?

~~~
cyphar
The only people who have enough power to solve the problem are the leaders of
a handful of countries.

So, while obviously only people can solve the problem, it's only a select few
people that actually can do anything about it. You or I have no more power
than that which democracy affords us.

~~~
RickJWagner
In the end, it will be the individual who makes the final decision. And we are
going to decide to be comfortable now, rather than save the current state of
the planet for future generations.

I am a pick-up-the-litter kind of guy, but I am not going to do without air
conditioning.

Leanardo DiCaprio feels passionately about climate change, but he's not giving
up his private jet flights.

Barack Obama feels strongly too, but he's not going to give up yacht
vacations.

Human nature dictates the final result. Perhaps we'd better devote our
energies towards ways to deal with the inevitable. Because nobody's going to
voluntarily live 100 years in the past for the benefit of those 100 years in
the future.

~~~
cyphar
Only 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions[1]. Individual
decisions have such a vanishingly small impact on the environment that it's
actually counter-productive to make this type of argument.

People have a limited amount of time to spend on different aspects of their
lives. If you dedicate all of your "saving the planet" time to minor personal
changes, you won't have the time to do what is actually necessary -- push for
political change which will actually address the problem. Yes, you aren't
saying "don't try to solve the bigger problem (lack of action by governments)"
but you are saying "focus on the smaller problems (what type of laundry liquid
you use)" \-- which would inevitably result in the bigger problems being
neglected by most people.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2017/jul/10...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-
responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change)

~~~
RickJWagner
The 100 companies include Shell, BP, Chevron, etc.

They are only producing the means for abusing the environment-- it's the end
users that are doing the damage.

I suppose you could argue that if we outlawed petroleum production that it
wouldn't allow the abusers anything to work with, but it would also deny the
world of most of the progress made in the last 150 years.

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Inu
A different perspective:

"Björnsson describes how Ok shrank rapidly during the 20th century, as shown
by its area on various maps: 38 sq. Km. in 1901, 15 in 1910, 5 in 1945, and
under one Km. in 2016. Most of this was before anthropogenic warming became
the dominant cause of warming. [...] If Ok died during the Medieval Warm
Period, it was born again during the Little Ice Age. It may have lived and
died countless times during its long life. Its latest death is another example
of weather converted into propaganda."

[https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/07/24/we-killed-
okjokull/](https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/07/24/we-killed-okjokull/)

~~~
Retric
Shrinking is not a linear process that would have continued indefinitely at
1910 temperature levels.

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tzs
Suppose we manage to stop increasing the greenhouse gas levels in the
atmosphere, and then even manage to lower them back to, say mid 20th century
levels.

Will the glaciers come back? Or does forming glaciers, as opposed to just
maintaining them once formed, require another ice age?

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kipqi
This topic is to HN what bees was to Reddit. An endless stream of karma-
grabbing comments that don't really add anything new to the conversation.

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lazyjones
Our thoughts and prayers are with this former patch of ice on the harsh island
of Iceland.

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FartyMcFarter
> Sigurdsson said he feared "that nothing can be done to stop it."

I've seen this claim a lot in the last few years.

Good news everyone! We don't need to stop global warming anymore.

~~~
Sharlin
That basically what the Trump administration is now saying.

