Arctic sea ice sets a record low maximum in 2025
152 comments
·March 28, 2025astahlx
CalRobert
The allure of lucre and status convinced us we were better off making more addictive dopamine machines than bettering the human condition.
Gud
Not all of us. I refuse to work for corporations fueled by advertisements and so should you.
There are companies doing genuinely good out there. Maybe the pay is less(though I’m well compensated), at least you’ll work towards a better future.
CalRobert
Absolutely, I was speaking in generalities.
I actually think the bigger problem is artificial scarcity. Say you and someone else are bidding on a house. Your job is a net good to society and pays x, and someone else has a job which is a net harm and pays 2x. Now you need to decide whether you want a home or want to do something good.
This is only possible because homes (which are not hard to build) have an artificially constrained supply.
jamesblonde
I think you know the answer to this.
It's chilling to think that collective action is just something we do after we have been punched in the face. Unfortunately, we are also so rational, so this will not count as a punch in the face. It should, but it won't.
gmuslera
We always think that technical approaches will eventually fix things that should be dealt by administrative means. You will be busy, but the core problem is still unaddressed.
johndevor
> We always think that technical approaches will eventually fix things that should be dealt by administrative means.
Administrative means created the problem. Nuclear was on a path to lower cost until the administrative state came and helped. Now we haven't built a nuclear plant in decades.
metalman
nothing will advise people like the effects that are inevitable in the polar ice(all ice) collapse picking up speed this summers low will be "last call" Russia will very likely take a chunk of trade from both the suez and panama canals, through what is there EEZ exclusive ecomonic zone, coridore in the artic carbon and methane release from formerly frozen deposits will continue to feed the green house effect sea level rise will start to cause regular disruptions, and collapse of coastal land values where insurance premium costs are already rendering high end luxury homes from assets to liabilitys in some coastal areas, now fisheries will,??, are moving north, but there is less fish certain farming is moving north human technology is on the rise, and solar plus desailination will allow for agriculture(and other things) in desert regions around the mid lattitudes...ie: shifts in resources and habitability for landlocked and or arid countrys the advantage goes to countrys that have no electrical grids, or distribution and transport systems, as they can leapfrog over the western model, that requires centraly controlled/powered, wired conections everywhere vs, development at the scales supporting local imfrastructure requirements, that due to the nature of renewable solar, battery technology, can be scaled up, bit by bit as needs and capital coinside, rather than the masssive investments needed for traditional industrial infrastructure it's a heady, complex mix, where entrenched societies with fixed positions could be overwhelmed quickly
vasco
This is not a homogenous group that believes some core cannon and lives the same lives. Most devs don't have "wealth" even. I think you watched too many movies.
It's interesting also that usually nobody says a "why" that makes sense. You clearly don't think our current lives are that valuable if all we're doing is eating pizza in our offices waiting for a gadget to arrive. So what's the point, to make it so in 3 or 4 generations those guys can eat the pizza and feel like we "solved climate" for them so they can relax?
t43562
Living such lives divorces people from what most of humanity are experiencing. i.e. people with power and money and the ability to live virtually are isolated from what's happening. We all have money - just to have a job in software is to be in the top X% of the world's population. I suggest that X is probably smaller than most of us think.
vasco
If I earn say $15k / yr (just as an example, I have friends making less producing software), in a regular Western country, half goes to a landlord, a quarter to general expenses, and the other quarter for emergency savings. Illustrate how those €3750 per year of disposable income can be used to help climate change and not live "divorced from what most of humanity is experiencing"?
For what it's worth some calculators say those €15k/yr would put one above 92% of people in the world. There's so much extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa that it's very easy to be in top single digit % and still be getting fucked by the system every day.
And then after you make the case of "what" you still need a "why". Almost nobody cares about those starving people we have at the moment in said Sub-Saharan Africa, so why would they care about future people?
femto
According to Andrew Forrest we don't. His view is that there are 999 people in the world, plus himself, who are responsible for climate change and could fix it if they chose to.
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-and...
imtheopposite
[dead]
hulitu
> We have the wealth to work on solutions
yeah, right. /s
wasmainiac
Unfortunately we needed large scale climate engineering a decade ago.
Oil is a key driver of economic activity, how would we ever convince governments, businesses, and finally individuals to cut their earnings before they “get theirs”. Sure we can get a significant portion of individuals to live a net-zero life, but there are far too many people who don’t care since everything seems normal if you are not paying attention.
I want carbon neutrality, but I have no hope to achieving this before we face large scale ecological collapse (look at the GBR).
tpm
Climate engineering won't help (there is a million of unsolved and unsolvable issues with it). We have to stop emitting CO2 (etc), there is no other way. Why? Because if the warming won't kill us, ocean acidification will, and that is directly connected to the C in CO2.
imtheopposite
[dead]
jamesblonde
This is why there is a race on for Greenland. (And Svalbard?)
Ice melting in the Arctic is not a linear process. There will most likely be ice free summers in the Arctic within most people here's lifetime.
kulahan
I apologize if this is a joke and I missed it, but Greenland is an important strategic warfare location when considering the defense of the US against Russia. It’s absolutely not because there might be bearable summers 50 years from now.
cactacea
I refuse to believe it is anything other than Greenland looking big on most maps. There's nothing strategic about this.
Gud
Donald trump wants to build casino resorts for himself and exploit whatever resources are there. Plus, by annexing Greenland, he will have made the US bigger, which will look good for him in the future.
Do you really think Donald trump gives a shit about strategic interests? Do you really think he sees Russia as a threat?
mrguyorama
If it was a "strategic warfare" reason, there would be no talk of anything, since Greenland has been very involved in NATO efforts for decades and we literally have a military base there already, and have worked hard to build infrastructure there to deny Russia the ability to escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIUK_gap
If the Trump admin was concerned about Russia, we would be cozying up to NATO, Canada, Europe, Denmark, Greenland etc, not fucking with them.
So why are we fucking with them if it's so important to work with them to defend against Russia?
The obvious answer is that Fascists ALWAYS do this bullshit. Because they are morons that can't conceive of power on the world stage in a way OTHER than outright ownership of territory.
jamesblonde
Basically legacy. I re-built mother russia. I built mother north america - "trumpland".
hdivider
It seems like so much has been said about climate change, with such comparatively miniscule action by the powerful.
Imagine being one of the optimates, the financial ultra-elite. You are at the pinnacle of power in our civilization. You have children, perhaps even grandchildren. You can subvert the rule of law to a huge extent and get away with it. The sheer power of your wealth can take on its own dynamic, allowing you to spend vast amounts on the most ludicrous ideas and still come out OK by sheer artificial demand. Thus, you can will a lot of things into existence.
What do you choose to do about climate change? Invest in many potential breakthroughs? Bring the smartest and most capable people in R&D together and partner with government to bring the best solutions to fruition at scale? Make your mark by moderating the impact of climate change and allow your children to live at least in a similar world to what we have today?
Nope. Instead, you choose to invest in pollution. The future be damned.
The above is actually happening, right now, at enormous scale. I'd urge people to remember this when our culture communicates that the worth of a person correlates with their net worth; it does not.
In the rotten competition for more and more, Seneca's words come to mind:
"The better man may win. But the winner is bound to be the worse man."
graeme
This kind of cynicism just encourages inaction. First, it frames the problem as only that of the powerful.
But largely, opinion polls are against the kind of action that would be useful. Nuclear, for example, is the only baseload tech we currently have at scale that doesn't burn carbon. It is widely opposed and public pressure has led to regulations blocking it or even expanding it.
Second, a lot of ultra wealthy ARE funding research. Bill Gates contributed substantially (though pulled back recently).
Stripe notably has made Stripe Climate, which lets businesses contribute shares of revenue to carbon sequestration tech, which is absolutely vital to removing CO2 from the air if we somehow got to net zero. They promoted it heavily and made great UI to allow businesses to list it as a marketing expense.
The real block is us. Public opinion is very powerful. Now, specific companies have worked mightily to convince the public not to act, particularly from the oil sector.
But the convenient message of gloom posting is not to do anything not to believe in doing anything and fob it off to the rich.
(I use Stripe Climate, it's great)
bigthymer
> But largely, opinion polls are against the kind of action that would be useful. Nuclear, for example, is the only baseload tech we currently have at scale that doesn't burn carbon. It is widely opposed and public pressure has led to regulations blocking it or even expanding it.
The only country that seems to be having an honest conversation about how to adapt to climate change is France. They've been having society-wide conversations about it over the last few years and support for nuclear has gone up substantially.
jamesblonde
It's the Germans who are showing leadership in Europe. The French and Swedish have most nuclear, but not because of green policies. Just historical. Germany have had the "Energiewende", which everybody in the world should marvel at - but not enough know about. It's shat on, and public opinion even in Europe has been shaped against it. But it really is an 'energy turnaround'. It is leadership by taking unilateral action in the face of our common enemy.
pfdietz
There's been a lot of talk about more nuclear in France. But talk is cheap, and financial commitment to new nuclear starts has been notably lacking. The problem, as always, is very high cost and low dependability of the nuclear construction process. The EPR was a disaster, so France would have to go with a redesign. This adds to the risk and reduces confidence in yet another set of assurances that this time it will be cheaper.
I predict France will inevitably slide over toward a renewable dominated grid, just like everyone else.
bryanlarsen
Nuclear isn't "baseload" because it's not load, it's supply.
Baseload demand does not need consistent supply. Google in the late 90's proved that reliable results may be created from unreliable components.
aaomidi
Yes. Opinions are significantly influenced by the marketing powers of the rich.
Now you’re cooking with gas.
pfdietz
> Nuclear, for example, is the only baseload tech we currently have at scale that doesn't burn carbon.
Renewables + storage is also, when combined, a baseload tech.
If you are implying nuclear fills a niche on the grid that cannot be filled by renewables + storage, you're mistaken.
null
milesrout
There is no such thing as storage. Current storage is tiny. Batteries are insanely expensive.
nine_k
A lot of Europe lies in northern areas where solar is simply insufficient, especially in winter.
Solar / wind + huge batteries + huge transmission lines would compare: capture sunlight in places like Bulgaria or Greece, feed places like Norway or Britain. But this is way more disruptive, and likely expensive, than a nuclear power plant.
bryanlarsen
$2.1 trillion dollars was spent on the global energy transition in 2024. That's not miniscule.
https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-investment-in-the-energy-...
barbazoo
Perhaps those personality traits are incompatible with each other or at least very unlikely. It reflects badly on our species but hopefully we’re just going through a dip on a grand scale of things but toward a more peaceful and equitable world. A world where we don’t fetishize wealth accumulation.
hdivider
The world in your last sentence may be possible. Consider: we have entire libraries full of psychological research about all sorts of behaviors and disorders. And quite often, how to deal with them.
Now: do we use any of this expensively acquired knowledge in our political processes, in any consequential way? Nope. :) Do we use it in the corporate world? Nope. Anywhere else, outside of the ivory tower? Also nope. For the most part, it just sits there unused.
But suppose we did use our psychological knowledge at great scale and fidelity. Then we should be able to treat many systemic issues. Because ultimately, it is merely human psychology that holds us back, rather than any physical resource limitations.
namaria
You're right but you're also missing the fact that the currently predominant mindset of selfish resource accumulation was actually manufactured. In the early 20th century, psychological and psychiatric research was weaponized by large corporations to solve overproduction crisis by creating consumerism.
There's a great documentary about it called "The Century of Self"
This isn't the inevitable product of human psyche. This is an engineered state devised to do precisely what's driving climate change: consume resources at an accelerating rate.
imtheopposite
[dead]
junelle
[flagged]
safety1st
I mean despite constant economic growth, something which fundamentally depends on increased energy consumption, the US has decreased emissions per capita by 30% since 1970:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...
This despite the fact that energy use has increased by about 60% during that time:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
How do you look at these facts and what you see in them is "The billionaires are destroying our planet and don't care?"
How do you not see 30% less emissions on 60% more energy usage as a big win for the environment that should be celebrated?
If you look at the rest of the world it generally follows the same trend, with the massive, massive exception of China:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
All this is not to let anyone off the hook - I've long said if there's any one piece of the emission reductions pie that's missing, it's political action against China as a dirty exporter that we've all come to depend on and offshore our dirty industry to. Now we are at least getting some kind of action on that front, even if it's a President and a justification that you don't like.
But my real point here is, I'm so sick of these Doomer takes that are just rhetoric about why the world is awful and you need to blame someone convenient. When the reality is that there has been enormous action and enormous progress all over the planet. Developed countries have cleaned up their act in a big way, sure they may have more work to do, but the next big frontier is to solve the China emissions issue in a way other than just moving all the dirty industry to India, and sorry to say this is not something that a random billionaire can fix overnight.
toomuchtodo
The Texas legislature is currently attempting to pass legislation that disadvantages solar and batteries in preference of fossil gas. They don’t care about climate change or the future.
https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=89...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-markets/texas-bi...
toomuchtodo
Additional citation:
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/will-texas...
defrost
> When the reality is that there has been enormous action and enormous progress all over the planet.
The reality is that emissions are still increasing .. they need to stop increasing, they need to decrease considerably, and some of the emissions we've already put into the atmosphere need to be clawed back.
While we can acknowledge that the US is now (14.3 tonne per person) rolling less coal per person than it was in the 1970s (21 tonne per US citizen a year) it is still the case that the US is still emitting more per person than any other country on the planet.
Developed countries have "cleaned up their act" largely by outsourcing emissions intensive industry to developing countries ("the China emissions" issue has a sizable component that is really "a US consumption" issue).
I'm no doomer, I have a career in geophysics and have a pragmatic grounded view of the world. That said the take you have presented is papering over the very real issues.
tonyedgecombe
>Developed countries have "cleaned up their act" largely by outsourcing emissions intensive industry to developing countries
That's only partially true and has flattened off in recent years. In the US the deficit of goods and services imports vs exports only represents 2.8% of total GDP.
chneu
You basically just said we're still polluting enough to destroy the livable environment while championing a small efficiency gain.
Wild thing to be enthusiastic about. Very short sighted.
AdieuToLogic
> I mean despite constant economic growth, something which fundamentally depends on increased energy consumption, the US has decreased emissions per capita by 30% since 1970
And the US population has grown from 203 million in 1970 to 331 million in 2020[0] - an increase of over 60%.
I can have fun with statistics too!
How do you look at these facts and what you see in them is
"The billionaires are destroying our planet and don't care?"
How do you not see 30% less emissions on 60% more energy
usage as a big win for the environment that should be
celebrated?
Air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the
Industrial Revolution. While natural variability plays some
part, the preponderance of evidence indicates that human
activities—particularly emissions of heat-trapping
greenhouse gases—are mostly responsible for making our
planet warmer.[1]
1 - https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-tem...
gmuslera
It is not just surface, but thickness too, what makes the whole picture. But what will matter in the end is exposing more (dark, albedo-wise) water to sunlight rising a notch global warming and melting even more Arctic sea ice. Positive feedback loops should be scary.
singularity2001
Direct link to their fantastic tool:
https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...
aoweirji3j
And this is why trump keeps ranting about greenland. It's not just a distraction. He wants to invade greenland and canada, and he wants global warming to accelerate so it becomes more accessible.
AlecSchueler
I'm amazed that these people have no advisors briefing them about Jet Stream collapse or the release of methane as permafrost melts etc. No one's gonna be mining anything up there and if they are there won't be much of a market anywhere to sell it in.
vjerancrnjak
To expand, permafrost melting emits CO2 equivalent that is 100s of years of modern human activity. It’ll obviously happen in less than 100 years.
chneu
And that's just what we know about. There are still sources that we're discovering. Our sources don't match what we measure yet, which means it's likely worse than we know.
namaria
Spot on. The trouble with accelerationists is that they assume they know what will happen.
The French revolution was pretty much unleashed with that mindset. Upper class figures wanted to get rid of the nobility/royalty monopoly on power. They thought they could profit from a new arrangement. Then the terror began.
I'm afraid this is what we're in for here. The oligarchs think they can steer this. They want to speed up climate change, treat the world to some shock therapy and come up on top. If they're right, we're screwed. If they're wrong, we're even more screwed.
jfengel
So they say. But I won't believe it until I see it on an official US government site.
To avoid ideological bias, of course.
wqaatwt
I’ll wait for it to be reported on Fox News and then an announcement from the White House.
bobsmooth
Front page of nasa.gov
jfengel
Huh, there it is.
Good for them. I hope they find a new job soon.
morkalork
Have you ever seen a glacier before? In real life?
jfengel
Yes, many.
In case it wasn't clear, my post was sarcasm. I realize that sarcasm plays badly in text forums and on HN in particular, but it's the best way to express how angry I am that the US government is so utterly deranged when it comes to science.
climb_stealth
I think it's a sign of the times that it is not as obviously recognisable as sarcasm anymore :/
sachinjoseph
Poe's Law :-)
irrational
Yes. Quite a few. But I'm old enough that I've seen them go from quite large to almost gone.
defrost
You can still see the original bias on the official US sites if you squint hard and look under the sharpie corrections.
zcar
I wonder how the results would be if they measure the average for the year instead of only the coldest months. I say that because I suppose that ice, just like snow doesn't exactly match with temperature.
martinpw
You can see it on the interactive tool here: https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...
You can click on individual years, but the decade average plots are the most revealing. You can see the average has dropped significantly each decade, and the drop is actually larger in the warmer months (~35%) than in the colder months (~10%) for the year range 1980 to 2020.
zcar
Just checked the link. While average is decreasing for the artic sea, average is slightly increasing in the Antarctic. Which makes me think, since most of the ice is on actual land and not on the ocean. Is there another tool that tracks ice on land?
bryanlarsen
zcar
The article is about the artic sea and so was my comment. That link is about global temperature.
jmclnx
At this rate, oil fields and shipping lanes will open up we can race to toast the planet even more. But at least the billionaires will be happy and not have to worry about just being only multi-millionaires.
IncreasePosts
Normal people benefit far more from cheap energy than the ultra rich. Those people can just buy human labor if that's what is needed. For normal people it might be the difference between having a tractor to plow your field, and plowing it with animal power(possibly your own)
jmclnx
True. But at the rate we are going, there will not be many fields to plow :)
ljf
The ultra rich benefits from the human labour they need having cheaper energy. The ultra rich are often rich off the backs many many working people below them. If they can pay them less, as their energy costs are lower - that is great for them and makes them richer.
If they can keep them using energy resources they are invested in, all the better.
nomel
Billionaires are an insignificant rounding error in the total production of CO2 on the planet. 50 top billionaires make 1200x CO2 of the average person [1]. Considering there's less than 2,200 of them (< 0.000025% of the population), that makes sense. They can could produce over twenty thousand times more than the average person while staying under a percent. They're disproportionate, but shooting them into the sun leaves us precisely where we are, to many significant digits.
[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-mo...
Sabinus
The power of invested Capital protecting itself is what delays climate change action. Billionaires have a oversized influence on the decisions of Capital, for obvious reasons. Looking at their personal co2 consumption multiplied by their number isn't the measure you should be assessing.
OgsyedIE
Having done a few deep dives, more than 50% of the lobbying in the UK against green buildouts such as rail freight expansion, onshore wind and ev chargers between 2015 and 2019 was funded by oil and gas companies looking to keep their market share and disproportionately the big consolidations like Baker Hughes. I have no idea whether the ratios break down similarly elsewhere in even the anglosphere given the higher share of primary sector industry in US and Canadian gdp.
wqaatwt
That seems somewhat tangential? Some people think that it would be right if the costs of slowing down climate change would be disproportionately borne by “the billionaires” (since they disproportionately benefited from economic growth and barely pay any taxes anyway).
Said billionaires obviously would disagree with that due to obvious reasons..
Retric
Edit: Those pollution numbers don’t really add up to 1,200x on average. Source has Top 50 richest people produced same emissions as bottom 155 million people combined. Page 8: https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/bp-carbon...
For example individual billionaires Yachts alone represent 870x average emissions from someone globally. That’s just in operations and excludes construction.
nomel
That 90 minute number includes investments, which doesn't make any sense. Do we blame the CO2 emissions of SpaceX on Elon Musk, which would be included in that, or do we blame NASA/Americans and worldwide Starlink subscribers for paying for something that has CO2 as a byproduct?
It's the collective us that's the problem, not wanting to give up our standard of living. Shoot the developed countries into the sun and you save the world.
walrus01
The difference is that your 'average' billionaire has effectively infinite resources to shield themselves from the repercussions of global climate change, sea level rise, strife, chaos, etc. At least as compared to your average Bangladeshi.
walrus01
See also, trends in atmospheric co2 at Mauna Loa observatory:
jgord
The animated history of Co2 levels is stunning :
walrus01
For data going further back, we have deep antarctic ice sheet, ice core samples of atmospheric co2:
https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-we-know-how-much-co2-...
At about 1:50 in the video linked above, when it zooms out, notice the citations to the ice cores.
tonyhart7
russian people would love this
defrost
They're already training up rodeo riders and ranch hands for the anticipated Siberian cattle ranges.
https://miratorg.ru/en/events/rodeo/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_XWZjqG2Y
It is good to see this here on HN. We, the hackers and painters, would have the power to build world wide communities for addressing the climate collapse (the climate that provided good conditions for humanity to thrive). We have the wealth to work on solutions, we are the ones also contributing to burn the world, maybe because we have given up or because it is just too comfortable. We sit in our offices, home offices, letting everything collapse as long as the pizza and the next gadget reaches our desk. We control how information is distributed, we are responsible. We would be advised to take action; will we?