I've seen too many videos of people deliberately creating these fires to believe a single "this is because of human made climate change".
The climate change part is the heat making the forests more dry so the manmade fires get bigger.
Europe's fires are just the start
321–330 of 366 posts
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#322Arson is the main culprit not climate change
Climate change made the forests drier so the effects of arson are worse.
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the neat thing is that this isn't at all true. The total annual CO2 budget of the earth is tremendous; less than 5% of CO2 emissions each year into the atmosphere are from humans. Volcanism, photosynthesis, and other natural sources outweigh humans by far. In numbers, ballpark 730gigatons from natural sources and about 30gt from humans. If you look at the amount the CO2 levels increase each year in the atmosphere,…
> So the neat thing is that this isn't at all true. Then goes ahead explaining something completely different.
You were talking about how it'll be impossible to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere without burning unreasonable amounts of energy.
I say that's not so. We need only to sufficiently reduce emissions.
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
The propaganda has done it's job here, because your base assumption is that dealing with climate change is a cost. But all the research suggests dealing with climate change is the cheaper option. There's complexities there but you're effectively saying that you're too poor to pay off a credit card. Okay, but your only going to get poorer by not engaging with reality.
You can label it anyway you want, if you want pay it with all your credit cards be my guest, but one thing for sure is that paying for it even more is not going to make me any richer or even elevate my living standards. That’s the hard reality. Normal people are F’ed either way so absolutely no incentive for me to care at all
Not paying off your credit cards makes you poorer
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
well I have good news! normal people don't have to sacrifice, fossil fuel companies do. if the govt mandates something (like with the ozone layer, or with lead acid battery recycling), something that was once impossible becomes possible.
and then what? are people going to ride horses to work? beg on the street because the manufacturing companies have closed and they lost their source of income? or are you just dumb or maybe naive to think that banning CFC and fossil fuel consumption would have the same effect on the everyday lives of normal people?
more developed countries are already prepared for what you describe: people would (continue to) take public transit, and rich people would (continue to) pay for the unemployed to live and retrain until they get new jobs. If a country was missing these basic features it would be scarier.
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#326bah, 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…
there are other factors at play like AMOC halting and breakdown of habitats that are codependent with other habitats. you dont get to pick and choose regions since earth is a huge interconnected system itself. stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.
I recently read capitalist realism by Fisher, and I think it is impossible (or very close to it, barring major war/plague/thanos snap) for something like degrowth to be seriously considered. There are simply waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to many incentives at multiple levels and across traditional alliances against it.
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So the neat thing is that this isn't at all true. Then goes ahead explaining something completely different.
You were talking about how it'll be impossible to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere without burning unreasonable amounts of energy. I say that's not so. We need only to sufficiently reduce emissions.
> We need only to sufficiently reduce emissions.
Well I agree on that. And even if we cut them to zero, the temperatures will not go down. So the very best we can hope is to keep the temperatures at the current level, and that's assuming that we cut all our emissions.
And the fact remains that we would need unreasonable amounts of energy to extract CO2 from the atmosphere (it was suggested with solar panels and stuff).
I didn't know that if we completely cut emissions, then CO2 would go down (and temperature would not during our lifetime, but they would at least stop rising). But "humans extracting CO2 from the atmosphere to compensate for their emissions" is impossible for the reasons I mentioned.
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense Is it? The economy is what we produce and consume. The economy grows when we produce and consume more, it shrinks when we produce and consume less. How do we produce stuff nowadays? With fossil fuels. There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point. Economy "does well" when we have easy access to fossil fuels, it doesn't when…
> There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point This is sort of like saying the economy is air or the economy is sand. (What is closer to correct is the economy is, within approximation, energy.) > the truth is that it is slowing down because of fossil fuels American emissions per capita have been falling alongside rising GDP/capita. Europe’s malaises are broader than this. >…
> American emissions per capita have been falling alongside rising GDP/capita
GDP is artificial. Did you ever check how they correct for inflation? GDP is worth nothing for science, it's just there for economists to do... whatever they do.
> If action requires literally replacing and restarting the global economy, there is no hope. Might as well party.
I don't know how you read that from what I say. I say, "if we don't do anything, we're completely screwed. The more we do, the better it gets". But yeah, if we keep doing what we are doing, we're doomed, that's certain.
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense Is it? The economy is what we produce and consume. The economy grows when we produce and consume more, it shrinks when we produce and consume less. How do we produce stuff nowadays? With fossil fuels. There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point. Economy "does well" when we have easy access to fossil fuels, it doesn't when…
Fossil fuels can be replaced for every use case by electricity from carbon-free sources and some chemistry. The price point for replacement of course varies by application. There is no reason to assume that we can't have the same kind of economy we have today without fossil fuels. Some things will naturally become more expensive, but other things might also became cheaper.
> There is no reason to assume that we can't have the same kind of economy
Has there been, in history, the same kind of economy we have today without fossil fuels? No. That's a first reason.
Are there practical replacements for every use case of fossil fuels? Most definitely not! I don't know where you get that. For those replacements we know, it has never been done at scale, so we don't know if it's possible or not. And for those we don't know... well we don't know. Just have a look at what petrochemicals are used for. And how do you make fertilisers without fossil fuels, at today's scale?
Re: Europe's fires are just the start
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
Where can I find details on this theory?