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Europe's fires are just the start

economist.com

91–100 of 366 posts

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings It's been predicted for decades, in multiple reports, over and over and over and over again... No excuses > can anyone predict specifically what will happen "next" and "where" and prepare to mitigate the impact? Something bad, duh? And reduce emissions, duh? The things people have been predicting and advocating for during the past…

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#92
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…

> Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene?

The thing is, the obsession with the AI race is making this problem so much worse. We're using up so much more energy and burning so much more fossil fuel as a direct result of AI mania.

We're so obsessed with becoming king of the ashes we're not even noticing we're burning the whole damn place down.

It's tragic, it's irresponsible and many here are at the very least complicit.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#93
Don't worry we will end up spraying the atmosphere to buy more time, and the Earth will cool, and people will believe that the problem is solved and we can just go back to burning fossil fuels.

So the fighting will continue while we keep duct taping and band aiding the problem.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#94
post #76
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere. Good luck doing any work in the winter in places like, oh say, the Rocky Mountains.

Every forest has different needs. OP is in Portugal, I don't know much about forest there, but the plan seems reasonable for there. The Rocky Mountains need a different plan, but it isn't much different.

Portugal is 35k square miles. The Rockies are 300k square miles, much of it, notably, is mountainous.

I do not think “cleaning” it is going to work, so I’m curious what this “not much different” plan looks like.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#95
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…

> and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries.

In and around winter? I think that's a fantasy.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#96
post #7
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.

Nuclear Power is useless in a climate change scenario.

France and Spain are having to shut down their nuclear plants because they can't cool them during heatwaves: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/fra...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#97

People are truly having a climate change discussion fatigue. They hear all the time from politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. that they should stop eating meat, should not drive non-electric vehicles, should not use AC, reduce consumption, and all other bullshit while the people preaching those have started wars that emit billions of tons of carbon, travel on their private planes to climate change summits, tak…

Well climate change is happening whether wealthy people are hypocrites or not. Also there a lot of people in very poor countries (india, south east asia, africa) that are already feeling the effects and need to worry about it a lot.

I would actually say rich people can afford the most to not worry about climate change, because they can stave off the effects better than poor people (moving to colder climates, building cooling systems, or fleeing to mars [1])

[1] https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#98
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…

> (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?)

Not even close. Look at satellite imaging.

Not only is the Amazon far from lost, the jungles in Africa/Borneo/PNG all look to be doing surprisingly okay.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#99
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no? Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault.

> let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe

What... you know you could've looked this up pretty easily before posting?

https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#100
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is completely wrong. The climate experts are not surprised by this at all . We've known about it for decades. We just didn't give a shit because it was not impacting us directly. Now it's starting to impact us directly, but we still don't really give a shit. In a few weeks it will be business as usual. It will get worse every year, and we will be more and more willing to do something as it gets worse. But we wil…

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