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Europe's fires are just the start

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#341

Post by JumpCrisscross »

palata wrote: post #340
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GDP is artificial …all economic metrics are artificial. Society is artificial. How are you defining an economy? Or is your original statement (“economy is fossil fuels”) just a tautology? > don't know how you read that from what I say There is no political system on the planet that can enact and survive economic collapse. If that’s what’s required, this is a fool’s errand. Fortunately, again, you’re wrong. It’s not…

> How are you defining an economy? I said it above. The economy is what we produce and consume. Because the metrics economists use (like GDP) make no sense does not mean that the economy does not exist. There are physical metrics to measure how the economy is doing (that I mentioned above). For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks. If many trucks move a lot of stuff, then it mean…

> For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks

Gross tonnage is a good input into "what we produce and consume." It's incomplete, however. Grossly. It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

(A better one is electricity production, which you can estimate remotely from fuel levels and thermals. It’s also woefully incomplete—the nutters trying to forecast based solely on it are influencers, not fund managers or policymakers, for good reason.)

> Do you know how they correct for inflation?

Yes.

> There is no way to "measure" inflation

This is nonsense. It must be estimated. But so must e.g. "the surface that is being constructed" depending on how one defines surface construction.

There are various measures of inflation of various utility. Some are used to deflate GDP.

Mankiw's Principles of Economics might be a good start if you're serious about your questions. Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#342

Post by palata »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #341
palata wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are you defining an economy? I said it above. The economy is what we produce and consume. Because the metrics economists use (like GDP) make no sense does not mean that the economy does not exist. There are physical metrics to measure how the economy is doing (that I mentioned above). For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks. If many trucks move a lot of stuff, then it mean…

> For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks Gross tonnage is a good input into "what we produce and consume." It's incomplete, however. Grossly. It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution. (A better one is electricity production, which you can estimate remotely from fuel levels and thermals. It’s also woe…

> Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

Not sure if you're consciously being manipulative or not.

Sure, you are more eloquent than I am. But do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics? Making me say that "any kind of metrics is always folly" is just manipulative, I'm sure you understand that it is not what I mean.

> It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

Which I'm sure is important for economists doing economy stuff. But I am convinced that there is value in seeing that after 2007, indicators like gross tonnage have been slowing down, and that is correlated with the evolution of fossil fuels.

We cannot eat services, or use them to heat our apartments, can we? Services are a luxury for when everything below works. The risk with the end of fossil fuels is that it will disrupt everything on top of which services are built. I don't think GDP is bringing much in those discussions.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#344

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

Maybe it's not clear that I'm talking about what to do with the excess CO₂ after we've stopped emitting more!

The stratospheric injections of SO₂ can bring temperatures down to healthy levels. This fixes most of the negative effects of high CO₂, and can go on for centuries if need be...

... but I'd prefer to get that CO₂ out once and for all. Solar powered machines that extracts it from the air and pumps it down to eternal underground cavities should be able to do that once we have much better tech. If it takes decades or centuries doesn't matter too much.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#345

Post by BurningFrog »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #295
BurningFrog wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mt Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991 actually did inject huge amounts of SO₂ to the stratosphere, and it disappeared over the next few years. While it remained, northern hemisphere temperatures lowered by ~0.5°C. USGS report: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/self/ Since the stratosphere is far above the rain cycle, it's very hard to imagine a mechanism whereby this could produce acid rain, and even if it did, acid…

Yes, volcanoes are relevant data points, but that's also very different to proposed methods of seeding. It does raise the question of whether someone will decide to set off bombs in fault-lines to try and set off an eruption - I recall Trump asking why hurricanes couldn't be disrupted by the early use of bombs. > acid rain is a much smaller problem than global warming Possibly, but acid rain can devastate marine ecos…

The SO₂ cleans up itself in ~2 years.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#346

Post by adrianN »

palata wrote: post #337
adrianN wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to believe that proof of feasibility is impossible before actually finishing the task. I disagree. And for the record, profit oriented market economies are extremely old. Much older than any large scale use of fossil fuels.

> And for the record, profit oriented market economies are extremely old. Of course it works if you take the part that is convenient to your argument. What about globalised economies?

Trade routes spanned Eurasia before we invented writing. Faster transportation and communication only expanded economic ties. Transportation is something that is fairly easy to do without fossil fuels.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#347

Post by pornel »

palata wrote: post #148
pornel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've ran out of time. Even if political will shifted immediately, getting new nuclear plants on the grid is going to take a decade or more. In the meantime batteries + solar or wind can be built quickly and hooked up pretty much anywhere. Even if we had nuclear fusion , solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy!

> Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy! In a world with abundant fossil fuels on which globalisation relies. The question is: what happens when it stops? Can renewables win in a world without abundant oil? We don't know, we haven't tried.

"we"? Looking at electricitymaps, everyone except maybe Nebraska and Mongolia is making progress.

The supply chain already exists, available worldwide as long as you don't bomb your suppliers.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#348

Post by pvaldes »

Natural causes discarded in the wildfire of Vall d'Uixó in Castellon, Spain. The police suspects that this was (also) provoked.

With a perimeter of 67 Km, the wildfire started in several points at the same time, has devastated 7500 hectares and displaced or confined 38000 people.

This is not even a start, is a: will continue until we address the elephant in the room: Too much of this wildfires are arson by proxy. Crime is always the biggest category in the chart of known causes, and natural causes are always the smaller one (and a very small one indeed, between 5 and 10% or so).

So without criminals, lets say 90% of those forests would keep evolving towards a less and less flammable state and the soil would keep sequestrating carbon, that is exactly what we want and need. Or would be logged, sequestrating carbon also.

Instead to pour acid raining over Europe, why if we try first to harden the current laws, remove the economical rewards, and fight the disinformation campaigns of farm trolls (always deployed at the same periods), until the incentives to burn are reduced?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#349

Post by OKRainbowKid »

spwa4 wrote: post #285
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but your comment to me just reads like a long rant about the Green party.

Sorry, let me put a short rant then. The Green party of Germany forced through the shutdown of nuclear power in Germany and stood by that decision, even when it became clear the already bad impact on climate change it had was made 10x worse by the war in Ukraine (forcing Germany to switch to Coal and LNG). Meanwhile this "Green" party, unwilling to make compromises themselves, is using climate change to demand enormo…

They do make for a good boogeyman, that's for sure. Other parties really should study them for how they manage to force everybody else to do their bidding while having no actual power. The exit from nuclear and the hated "GEG" / heating act were both conservative CDU initiatives after all, who are now retroactively being attributed to the greens to fuel the conservative culture war.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#350

Post by pvaldes »

einszwei wrote: post #174
jamesdwilson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it primarily arson? == Europe is currently facing a dual crisis of arson-driven wildfires and coordinated sabotage operations. In the summer of 2026, extreme heatwaves have exacerbated wildfire seasons in France, Spain, and Italy, where authorities have linked many blazes to deliberate human ignition. French Interior Minister Sébastien Lecornu reported 162 arrests for suspected arson since early July, noting th…

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.

But too much still are still arson, and people should know better yet than "I will burn my home and destroy my future for ten juicy bucks that this kind stranger is offering me".

And not all crimes are solved. Some on the 'negligence', 'natural causes' and 'unknown' could be also still arson on disguise.

Ukraine's treat to start bombing 'Ozon' ware stores and to finish with 'Wildberries' actual misery, could do more for stopping this wildfire waves than any of the current measures deployed.

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