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Europe's new climate in seven charts

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111–120 of 247 posts

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#111
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think thats the wrong level of abstraction. The cold war ended, but clima change will not end.

> The cold war ended You wouldn't know it based on how everyone talks about Russia pulling the strings of just about every election (and being a moment away from conquering Europe while simultaneously being too incompetent to beat Ukraine).

Let me remind you that launching nuclear weapons close to your border is an issue, launching them half a continent away not so much.

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#112
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research past heat waves in Europe. Did your grand parents felt the same as you?

Why don't you research past heat waves? We're literally setting new heat records nearly every year. This year the heat record in Germany went from 39 degrees to 42. We're even setting night time heat records because of how bad it is. I don't understand the impulse to ignore what we're experiencing right now. What do you gain by sticking your head in the sand?

Ask your grandparents about "Die große Dürre 1947" in Germany. Near entirely dried-up rivers and reservoirs, lakes three meters below normal, roughly half a million cattle emergency-slaughtered in Bavaria, hydroelectric shutdowns forcing power rationing, and forest fires along the Bavarian–Austrian border. Sure we have an all time high now, but currently there's still too much water as one could stick their head into the soil of the Elbe and Rhine.

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#113
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound like a serious question

It does when people start talking about a heatwave as being the "start of the end of human existence." It strongly implies that these trends will wipe out humanity in very short order. Perhaps even within the lifetimes of people in this thread. What I find most amusing is people somehow think climate change will end humanity faster than what's _actually_ on track to do so, and quickly: people having children well bel…

> people having children well below replacement levels

You do realise that the global population is still increasing? While birthrates are falling, we aren't even predicted to hit the peak for another half-century. Even pessimistic estimates put it in the 2200s before we fall back to current population levels.

Which is ~100 years longer than current estimates give us before the effects of climate change starts taking a bite out of the world population

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#114
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound like a serious question

It does when people start talking about a heatwave as being the "start of the end of human existence." It strongly implies that these trends will wipe out humanity in very short order. Perhaps even within the lifetimes of people in this thread. What I find most amusing is people somehow think climate change will end humanity faster than what's _actually_ on track to do so, and quickly: people having children well bel…

[deleted]

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest that humans could do to steer it away from climate change?

Stop burning fossil fuels? It's pretty easy actually, if you were god-emperor of the world you could structure it in a way where very few fossil fuels have to be burnt. But nobody is god-emperor of the world, nobody is even god-emperor of most countries or even most large companies, people are barely president of most countries or large companies and that's the problem.

So we need a benign world emperor. And there's the risk of an evil world emperor.

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#117
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because rich people want more money. They keep saying it's for the good of humanity and some useful idiots keep repeating that. A more balanced tax policy, regulation of financial markets, incentives to renewals, stopping investment in fossil fuels, increasing energy efficiency, and rewilding could all help, but we won't do a lick of it, because every single one of those things goes against the billionaires who own t…

Voters also don't care much. You might say that rich people and politicians have more responsibility because they have more power for making changes, but politicians are chosen by voters, and wealth doesn't make people more ethical

So I've thought about this a lot. All the news orgs are owned by oligarchs and that's why even on this thread using green energy is equal to going back to stone age

When China India and now Phillipines and rest of South Asia is installing record number of solar and wind

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#118
post #40

What strikes me is the relative sharp change. CO2 has been rising since, what 250 years ? However real effects of global warming seems to be felt since, like 10 years old ?

Keep in mind total emissions grew much much faster in our lifetime (let’s say 1980-2026) than in the prior 200 years, which was before most of the recent huge growth in Chinese and Indian emissions. Also the ocean and arctic were absorbing the majority of the heat. The arctics been going through these heat waves for 10 years, its white albedo decreasing and potentially permafrost melting making more effective emissio…

You aren't going to "stop eating beef" your way out of this. Addressing climate change requires technical solutions that result in clean energy that is cheaper than carbon emitting sources (in reality, not just due to regulations).

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#119
post #54

Why is it that aggressive climate action is not taken still?

What action would be taken by who?

There are literally hundreds of actions that could be (or in some cases have been) taken. I think the vast majority need to be taken by the government. Individuals mainly need to to support and demand these actions from the government, and punch climate change deniers in the face. E.g.

1. Stick to their plan to ban ICE car sales by 2030.

2. Unban on-shore wind power (Labour did this! Not that anyone noticed...)

3. Mandate solar panels and heat pumps for new houses.

4. Mandate bike lanes for new roads (blows my mind that this isn't a policy).

5. Take distribution into account when paying energy suppliers, so we aren't paying for a load of wind power in Scotland that we can't use (I believe this is being considered).

6. Upgrade the grid so we can get power from Scotland (I think this is in progress).

7. Make car charging infrastructure sane. No apps! Fines for broken chargers. More chargers along motorways. Street-side charging.

8. Stop freezing fuel duty.

9. Mandate OpenTherm (or similar) on boilers and thermostats.

10. Create an open, mandatory standard for remote adjustment of power consumption of things like air conditioners, freezers, car chargers and so on, that must be supported and can be used by power companies to optimise grid usage. Some large buildings do this but 99.99% of things that could do it don't.

11. Offer government backed loans for solar power. There are private companies that do it but they're seen as quite sketchy (e.g. if you sell your house...) so uptake is low.

12. Give office employees a right to work from home one day a week where it's possible (similar to how you have a right to change your hours).

13. Ban patio heaters.

14. Ban especially inefficient cars (e.g. less than 20 mpg).

15. Fix the railways... They are working on this tbf.

Re: Europe's new climate in seven charts

#120
post #53

"Europe's rapid warming is partly the result of [...] a drop in the number of tiny polluting particles in the air. This means that less of the Sun's energy is reflected back into space, leaving more energy to heat the Earth's surface." Hmmm...

This is now quite well-studied because we have had two periods in our own lifetimes (OK I guess maybe not in the lifetimes of some HN readers!), where we have cut air pollution radically almost overnight. 9/11 and the COVID pandemic transport shutdown.

In both cases, the pan evaporation rate went up; in the case of 9/11 it went up very noticeably in a short period of time.

Essentially: clean air == less "global dimming". Whether any really recent changes like the increasingly successful rollout of electric cars is yet having an effect, I don't know.

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