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Europe's fires are just the start

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#351

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

BurningFrog wrote: post #345
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure what you mean by "cleans up itself" as it doesn't just disappear. What is likely is that it gets distributed through various ecosystems and thus is no longer in the stratosphere. What concerns me is our lack of knowledge about that process and secondary effects on ecosystems.

Humanity has a track record of making assumptions about complex systems and treating them like a simple engine.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#352

Post by pvaldes »

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 narrative is part of the disinformation campaigns and smoke curtains that pour after the wildfires.

Is was a possibility in the past, but the current situation is different. More often than not, when we examine the coordinated internet rage bait about sinister projects to build in the burnt areas (solar farms, AI plants, etc...) this projects don't exist really. Houses will be simply rebuilt by their owners, no soil change expected.

More often than not, the people starting the rage bait post from a different country also.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#353

Post by OKRainbowKid »

hamper653 wrote: post #225
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…

> wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? How about taking the money spent on fossil energies and invest it in both nuclear and renewables?

Why not spend it on the most cost efficient option with the best long term prospects?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#354

Post by hamper653 »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #353
hamper653 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? How about taking the money spent on fossil energies and invest it in both nuclear and renewables?

Why not spend it on the most cost efficient option with the best long term prospects?

It’s not either/or. We must spend on all options.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#355

Post by JumpCrisscross »

palata wrote: post #342
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics?

Yes. I’d argue inflation metrics are about as easy to fuck with as any emissions math I’ve seen. That doesn’t make either fundamentally wrong. But if one is irredeemably wrong, so is the other.

(In any case, you can deflate your own GDP. Nominal GDP contains zero deflation. There is no similar easy fix for emissions calculations, which I read with much wider error bars than any OECD inflation print.)

> Which I'm sure is important for economists doing economy stuff

Not the billions of people employed in services?

> indicators like gross tonnage have been slowing down, and that is correlated with the evolution of fossil fuels

Global gross tonnage is growing [1]. On the sea, your correlation works because that fleet runs on fossil fuels. If you were trying to measure Chinese economic activity using fossil-fuel metrics, on the other hand, you’d fail.

(Again, your instinct isn’t wrong. Energy is, more or less, the economy. That’s why we can decarbonise without lowering living standards. We can keep energy constant or even growing while reducing fossil-fuel use.)

[1] https://unctadstat.unctad.org/insights/theme/107

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#356

Post by spwa4 »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #349
spwa4 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> how they manage to force everybody else to do their bidding while having no actual power

Oh the traditional European way. "You need 50% of the votes in parliament of a government. It's either us or the extreme right. Here's our list of demands, and a phone number. Kthxbye"

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#357

Post by BurningFrog »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #351
BurningFrog wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SO₂ cleans up itself in ~2 years.

I'm not sure what you mean by "cleans up itself" as it doesn't just disappear. What is likely is that it gets distributed through various ecosystems and thus is no longer in the stratosphere. What concerns me is our lack of knowledge about that process and secondary effects on ecosystems. Humanity has a track record of making assumptions about complex systems and treating them like a simple engine.

The process is well understood: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/25/3821/2025/acp-25-3821...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#358

Post by palata »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #355
palata wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics? Yes. I’d argue inflation metrics are about as easy to fuck with as any emissions math I’ve seen. That doesn’t make either fundamentally wrong. But if one is irredeemably wrong, so is the other. (In any case, you can deflate your own GDP. Nominal GDP contains zero deflation. There is no similar easy fix for emissions ca…

> Global gross tonnage is growing [1]

In Europe?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#359

Post by pvaldes »

pvaldes wrote: post #348

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. Cri…

The new wildfire started in Extremadura two days ago has been provoked also.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#360

Post by pvaldes »

teravor wrote: post #253
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…

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

Look, finally a good, decent and new idea. If we could remove lead from gas, and put addblue on every car in 5 years, we surely could build better plane engines via increasing the regulatory laws pressure and change the type of fuel used.

Raining salt over terrestrial ecosystems is not the way, but over the ocean, may work.

You have my applause teravor.

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