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Europe's fires are just the start

economist.com

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#251

Post by [deleted] »

Hasz wrote: post #172
wongarsu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there are all that many winners. There are those that lose big time with some places potentially becoming uninhabitable, and those that merely have to spend a fortune on new flood prevention infrastructure, deal with massive changes to how they do agriculture and forestry in a new climate, and in the future deal with streams of climate refugees from countries on the list of even bigger losers. Russia and…

Climate change will almost surely increase growing seasons and agricultural productivity in higher latitudes (for some crops). It will be extremely crop and cultivar dependent, I expect lots of R&D to go into crops that can deal with wider vairety, and generally hotter, conditions. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4974

[deleted]

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#252

Post by teravor »

liendolucas wrote: post #132

I'm a firm believer that sooner or later we will be extinct by extreme heat and suffocation. Two weeks ago here in Umbria, Italy the heat was extreme. It was 40°C without a breeze of air, it literally felt like braathing hot air. One morning while I was walking I couldn't believe the amount of dry leaves on the street, by pictures people would have guessed that it was autumn. I have a really good tolerance to high te…

above ~35 C a breeze makes it worse.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#253

Post by teravor »

BurningFrog wrote: post #163
adrianN wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One not very well known fact is that even if we stop emissions today, the elevated CO₂ levels will remain for many centuries. They way I think/hope we can fix this is two parts: 1. The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale is to permanently sequester it underground. The oil/gas industry can cheaply deposit huge amounts of gas there. The unsolved problem is extracting enough CO₂ from the atmosphe…

    > Spray the stratosphere with SO₂
it will probably be more effective to introduce additives to jet fuel that form aerosols. something like sodium.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#254

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

palata wrote: post #215
BurningFrog wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One not very well known fact is that even if we stop emissions today, the elevated CO₂ levels will remain for many centuries. They way I think/hope we can fix this is two parts: 1. The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale is to permanently sequester it underground. The oil/gas industry can cheaply deposit huge amounts of gas there. The unsolved problem is extracting enough CO₂ from the atmosphe…

> The only way I think you can get rid of the excess CO₂ at scale [...] The unsolved problem is extracting You answered it yourself: it's not possible to get rid of the excess CO2. Think about conservation of energy: we extracted energy by burning stuff and producing CO2. We cannot revert that with less energy than we extracted from doing it in the first place. > It sounds scary, but is actually safe Famous last word…

It is possible to get rid of excess CO2. Yes it goes against entropy, isn't very efficient and requires a ton of energy but we do have sources of tbe energy required in the form of the sun, nuclear, geothermal etc.

But that doesn't matter while we're still emitting.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#255

Post by ericmay »

riedel wrote: post #242
ericmay wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok... but now we're damaging ecosystems by installing hydroelectric power stations and dams and such in these areas. 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 re…

We should make sure that the indirect cost for CO2 are added to the price of energy and imported products depending on the mix. It is one of the few areas where I think a market can fix things.

I’ve always thought that was a decent idea but Americans can’t even stomach higher gas prices because of the Iran war. How are they going to handle $7-$8 per gallon or more?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#256

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

palata wrote: post #151
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

The theory is that it can reach a point where it won't be able to survive, and therefore it will die. We are around that limit. It may well be that it has already passed it and therefore it will die. I didn't mean "it is not there anymore", I meant "we won't be able to preserve it, it may already be too late for that".

How is the Amazon going to die? Don't plants kinda like co2? Do you think it'll just become a desert somehow or something?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#257

Post by card_zero »

throw310822 wrote: post #214
card_zero wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I've left the petro-states in the list because the fact that they have such high per-capita emissions is interesting even if not surprising, but I agree that as small countries they don't really contribute that much to global emissions. I find more interesting the position of Australia, Canada and the US close to the top, and the surprisingly low position of the UK. As for China, an average Chinese citizen is already…

I know the UK has a lot of wind and solar, and then there's short transport distances: those other countries are famous for hauling goods over long distances through sparsely populated terrain, which the UK doesn't have any of.

I wonder which country is considered to own the emissions from a cargo ship?

But anyway, about China, we agree on one thing: there are a lot of Chinese who are pretty much not participating in emissions. Then there are cities, factories, power stations for factories, and the government which, and this is the important point, has control over those sources of emissions.

If you split it into two nations, what that does is to remove the single point of control, and as a result remove the opportunity to do something about a huge portion of global emissions. Politically speaking splitting China in two sounds like an improvement, and lots of fun, but if you want some entity to control a really large amount of emissions, it's surely a giant authoritarian state that has the power to do it.

If the two halves were different in industrialization - if one had all the peasants and the other had all the factories and factory workers - that would help, since then you have a country that tops both lists, and can be firmly blamed by everyone, and we can stop getting lost in the weeds of "per capita" and the mad idea that individual scum like me and you have any responsibility to solve climate change by reusing plastic bags and so on.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#258

Post by kingleopold »

Hasz wrote: post #101

bah, all is not lost. Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt. Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it). It's going to get worse before it gets bet…

that carbon capture tech is called tree/forest btw. if we plant trillions of trees, we win, not sure how many millions of people and years it would take. probably less than half a war

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#259

Post by jamesdwilson »

tremon wrote: post #200
einszwei wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All human-caused fires aren't arson, most of these are usually negligence (source: worked in operations at fire service). Not discounting the risk of arson but I find it is used a lot to distract from conditions making the forests a tinder box.

A comment from an earlier thread alleged that Spanish policy says that forests that are destroyed due to fire don't have to be rebuilt, the land can be re-purposed. That's what's driving the arson in Spain. I have no way to evaluate the veracity of this site, but https://inspain.news/spains-wildfire-tragedy-now-has-a-human... says: > In some cases, arson is linked to economic gain: land clearance, insurance fraud, or…

this is really interesting. i bet they want to put dc's on it.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#260

Post by wolvoleo »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #240
zeristor wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would happen if there was one of those large volcanic eruptions. There’s been a few over the last few hundred years. If there’s dust and haze it might be a respite, apart from famines due to poor harvests. I guess we’ll find out should it happen. We’re in a more precarious state, and these random natural events could be very tricky.

>. If there’s dust and haze it might be a respite, apart from famines due to poor harvests. When the Canada haze hit here the temp dropped from "forecasted 90s" to "pleasant 70s" and not only were the temps lower but there was no direct sun beating down. Me and the boys were expecting some outdoor work we had planned to suck and take a long time. We ran through it in no time flat.

You're breathing that 'haze' the whole time though. That can't be good.
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