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Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

fortune.com

81–90 of 471 posts

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally? Almost certainly no one. Ethically? The corporate executives who deliberately covered up evidence of global warming, starting back in the 70s.[1] 1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...

Including executives that still refuse to price in the environmental externalities of their business practices.

Why would they do that? That would make their shareholders angry and give their competitors an edge. (No /s)

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#82
post #44
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU currently emits only 5% of the globally emitted greenhouse gases. You can cut all the city hopping you want and it won't make the slightest difference.

More like 6%, roughly in line with its population share (5.4%). Not sure if that includes air travel, international air travel often isn't included in national statistics. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

Whenever I see those statistics, I always find them very weird. Many of our products are made in China, but those are counted towards China's global emission, not Europe's. It also applies to the need of power generation for delocalized industry or importing food. A country handling a lot of industry will have a very high per-capita emission, but the people living there may actually have very low individual emissions.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#83
post #76

AMOC collapse [0] is Europe's potential big climate challenge. Nasty business. I wonder how to help prevent that from happening. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...

Bluntly: too late. You'd have to rewind to 2001 or so and go on the strictest measures worldwide. But we are utterly unequipped to deal with global issues, the Ozon layer success notwithstanding.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#84

Just took a train ride from Vienna to Budapest for a few days, and couldn’t help but notice how very, very dry everything is .. as an Australian living in Europe for a few decades now, I’ve always been intrigued by just how green everything is, literally something growing in every single crack in the pavement, or endless rolling green fields of prosperity during spring - whereas, where I’m from its year-long spinifex…

To be honest, it's not unusual for that part of the Europe to be pretty yellow in August. I was taking train rides to Budapest regularly between 2010-2020. But it's getting worse for sure.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#85
post #76

AMOC collapse [0] is Europe's potential big climate challenge. Nasty business. I wonder how to help prevent that from happening. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...

Get in a time machine. Go back to 1970. Make sure world starts phasing out all coal power by 2000, replacing with nuclear and what renewables are available then, and make sure modular scalable reactors are available for China so they use that instead of coal to power their rise. Convince everyone that late 20th century unscientific greens are full of shit and nuclear power is better than coal.

(Renewables were not fully competitive with fission until the 20teens, too late.)

It’s dialed in.

That’s not to mean replacing stuff with non carbon emitting sources today is worthless. It’s very important. Right now we are dialing in the next escalation of the problem, and we can still blunt that if we give a damn.

One thing you can do today is keep arguing against the romantic anti industrial unscientific greens. Degrowth and “abstinence based” policy will never work. People will never go for it, and we are never returning to pre industrial times. It’s a fantasy. If you try to force it people will elect anti environmental populists (as they have) and you will get the opposite of what we need.

Fantasies displace realistic solutions in the discourse, and “everyone needs to become poorer” gives anti environmental and fossil fuel industry shills a way to frame their case as “we are on the side of human development.” Don’t give them that argument. Stop it. It also won’t work with developing nations. “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one.

The solution is to replace fossil fuels with non carbon emitting sources, not to stop people from using energy.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#86

Just a friendly reminder that Fortune has been owned since 2018 by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon, a member of the Chearavanont family that controls the CP Group conglomerate. CP Group created Siam Land Flying in 1991 as its in-house flight department for executives. It later added charter (Executive Wings) and air-ambulance services and still operates King Air 350 and Hawker jets. These owners don't care abo…

I’m sorry but the gotcha here is that.. the owner is in a family that also owns an air charter business with all of four small private jets and an air-ambulance business?

Give me a break, what does this have anything to do with the content of the article.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#87
post #82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 6%, roughly in line with its population share (5.4%). Not sure if that includes air travel, international air travel often isn't included in national statistics. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

Whenever I see those statistics, I always find them very weird. Many of our products are made in China, but those are counted towards China's global emission, not Europe's. It also applies to the need of power generation for delocalized industry or importing food. A country handling a lot of industry will have a very high per-capita emission, but the people living there may actually have very low individual emissions…

They aren't, most emission statistics are counting imported emissions.

China's figure aren't that great on their own, with exportation deducted.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#89

Atmospheric injections of Sulphur is going to be the only answer.

oh, yes. Anything but stopping the extraction, trade or combustion of fossil fuels. Even if the workarounds have unforeseen consequences.

Any solution relying on collective sacrifice is unrealistic IMO. I believe in geoingineering because it's better compatible with how economy works. Either that or we discover a magic abundant non-polluting energy source, but I woldn't rely on that

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#90
post #36

The timing of this article is a bit unfortunate. It's been raining here (France) every day for the past week, sometimes heavily.

That's been long overdue. I really doubt a few days of rain would make anyone in France forget the rest of this summer.

I don't know, the last few years have taught me that humans have exceedingly short memories
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