111–120 of 366 posts
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…
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…
no shit sherlock, poor people in those countries have been suffering from starvation, diseases and lack of basic necessities even before the climate change was a thing. For them, it's just another misery on top of their already miserable lives.
Nobody gave a shit about those people in poor countries 20-30 years ago, all of a sudden everyone is worries about climate change because Europe is burning. Had it been a monsoon flooding or a drought in South Asia, nobody in the Economist would even bat an eye, let alone publish an article.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
Hydro is renewable, can deal with peaks and not directly dependent on weather. Use its power down when in need of electricity. Bring water up hill when too much electricity is available.
Besides, not every country can effectively utilize hydroelectric power.
Germany, like other countries, should be investing in a mix of power sources. You probably want your backbone to be nuclear and then renewables where it makes sense with a goal (at least in western countries) of also eliminating reliance on China for renewables/batteries.
Dogmatism about renewables is self-defeating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need to act now. What does this look like, precisely, in practice?
First, we have to accept the facts: * CO2 emissions are screwing the climate, and CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels. We need to stop using fossil fuels. * Our way of life depends on fossil fuels. In some cases it's obvious (we transport food in trucks that need oil), but it's too easy to believe that we may replace that with electricity. It's a lot more complicated than that: everything depends on petrochemical pr…
What do you mean by this?
"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 an…
0. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
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
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What we all need to understand is that after oil, we just won't have enough energy to maintain our current way of life. Not just energy by the way: our way of life relies on petrochemical products (from fertilisers to electronics). Solar panels need electronics, we don't know if we can build/maintain them at scale without computers that need petrochemical products.
So we need as much as we can of everything. Both renewables and nuclear.
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 we emit CO2 And aside the greenhouse effect, we're also using more power than we've ever used before, building 10Msqft boxes that ultimately turn electricity into heat. We could go all-solar and we'd still be warming our environment.
The heat output of every single data centre on earth isn’t even worth thinking about on the scale of the global climate system.
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.