Europe's fires are just the start • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#31

Post by kleiba2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #7

palata wrote: post #4

There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables.

Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt):

    | China         | 5,565 |
    | United States | 1,737 |
    | India         | 1,395 |
    | Russia        |   536 |
    | Japan         |   492 |

In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt.

All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad.

[0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#32

Post by dncornholio » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

cbmuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

While I would agree that it is regrettable Germany sunset their nuclear early when they should've extended the runtime for another 5-10 years to avoid excess carbon emissions since shutdown, but clean energy has already surpassed coal in Germany and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. [My note: The US states of Illinois and California got this righ…

You realize that "green energy" in EU is dependent on gas and/or coal? When there's no wind or sun, we will gladly burn gas or coal, and call it green energy.

Nuclear doesn't have this requirement. It's truly zero carbon.

Unless you can show me plans to fill this gap with batteries on a national scale, renewables < nuclear

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#33

Post by adrianN » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #4

There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…

Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#34

Post by tuco86 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

toasty228 wrote: post #2

As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse

I always find it interesting when politicians mention temperature target goals.. what are you still talking about, it's done. We now need to worry about the hundreds of millions of people that are neither asylum migrants or economic migrant but survival migrants. The real discussion will become how we keep those out very soon. And since there are no good solutions from the "good" people who ignored everything and got us into this mess it will be the bad people giving us the only remaining "solution": violence.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#35

Post by palata » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

ifwinterco wrote: post #18

nancyminusone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways I wonder if these timescales are "beyond comprehension" for most people. You can tell people the temperature will go up in 20 years, but you can't make them feel what it will be like. In the same way you can tell a 10 year old what it's like to be age 35 but they don't get it, and I've heard what it's like to be age 80 but I don't really know and won't for some time.

Arguably it's rational (though selfish) to think like this. Life is short, there's no point freezing and living off leaves for the next few decades when you'll be old in the blink of an eye anyway

> Arguably it's rational (though selfish) to think like this.

Is it? We are not talking about screwing the climate for the people who will come in 200 years, right? In the last decades we have been saying "if we don't change the trend, your children will most likely die because of the climate change".

Is it rational to be 30 and not care about the fact that we will be screwed long before we reach the age of retirement?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#36

Post by xyzsparetimexyz » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #7

palata wrote: post #4

There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

While I agree that the ban is stupid, Hungarys nuclear power plant closed today due to lack of water: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#37

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #23

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would agree that it is regrettable Germany sunset their nuclear early when they should've extended the runtime for another 5-10 years to avoid excess carbon emissions since shutdown, but clean energy has already surpassed coal in Germany and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. [My note: The US states of Illinois and California got this righ…

> they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. X to doubt, I'll believe it when I see it, for now they are like a galaxy away from that goal. And also that'll be even harder to reach if they want to improve their atrociously low electricity heating rate.

You're free to doubt, healthy skepticism is a good thing imho, there is no will to spend what nuclear would cost and renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper. We're locked on a hockey stick trajectory of their uptake purely through the economics. Spain is phasing out the last of their nuclear for more renewables, for example.

Fossil gas will fill the gap until solar, wind, batteries, and transmission push the last of fossil generation out of the mix, and every year less and less gas will be used until remaining fossil gas generators sit idle.

Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 18.79% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#38

Post by calvinmorrison » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #27

cbmuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

> As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power Frankly, it doesn't matter what Germany or other European nations do - their carbon footprint has dramatically decreased. The issue is everyone else [0]. China (12 GT), the US (5 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent over half of all global carbon emissions. The EU and UK's combined carbon emissions are half of Asia (excluding China and…

Lets just name names. China. India.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#39

Post by foco_tubi » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #11

toasty228 wrote: post #2

As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse

> As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, The "people in charge" as well as the "climate experts" are generally aligned on the climate crisis, but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings. Put differently, you can predict and act, according to the trend, but the…

While we haven’t known the exact trajectory of the crisis, it has been known for decades that the trend would generally and increasingly point towards “future is bad” if we didn’t reduce emissions. World leaders bet on having more time to shift away from harmful policy and lost.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#40

Post by world2vec » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

"Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough."

Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere.

I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again...

It's only going to get worse.