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

fortune.com

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

#281

Post by jacquesm »

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #269
jacquesm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with people constantly pointing to the Ozone layer is that it was only really addressed because it cost virtually nothing to do so. All we had to do was switch from one bad thing to another good thing, which was already becoming cheaper. Climate change as a whole requires a fundamental shift from the basis of almost all chemical manufacturing and transport logistics. And doing so will cause cataclysmic ch…

> And doing so will cause cataclysmic changes to the socioeconomic standings of entire regions of the world.

We're going to have those anyway. Might as well make them count for something.

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

#282

Post by georgemcbay »

tsunamifury wrote: post #266
bjourne wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if Clarkson's farm has much of a following outside of the UK. Last year they had several crops fail due to the drought over summer and honestly this year was far worse. The Clarkson who ran a popular car show and for years mocked Greta Thunberg and called her an "idiot" that deserved a "smacked bottom" for raising the alarm on global warming? Oh, noe, I feel so sorry for him. Couldn't have happened to…

Only a fool gloats about being right about the end of the world.

I don't know if it is gloating so much as it is recognition that unlike most injustice that happens in the world the people most responsible for it are going to suffer at least some of the consequences along with the hoi polloi.

A refreshing change of pace, even if the end result is horribly tragic for everyone.

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

#283

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

uv-depression wrote: post #253
api wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying nothing will ever change. That's a misreading. I'm saying asking people to sacrifice will both be rejected and will not do enough, and that the only answer is changing where we get energy. Environmentalists have been making the "abstinence first" guilt trip argument for decades and it's done absolutely nothing and it will never do anything. That approach is a total failure. I use the abstinence framing…

> I'm saying asking people to sacrifice will both be rejected and will not do enough, and that the only answer is changing where we get energy. But energy source isn't the only problem. The problem is partially that energy use is high in and of itself. Solar panels (which only generate electricity; energy use is much bigger than just electricity) require materials like cobalt, which is mined (partially using child sl…

> Solar panels (which only generate electricity; energy use is much bigger than just electricity) require materials like cobalt, which is mined (partially using child slavery) in Africa (DRC) in ecologically devastating ways (since you clearly care so deeply, I'm sure you knew that already).

Cobalt isn't used in solar panels.

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

#285

Post by insane_dreamer »

IshKebab wrote: post #166
pluc wrote: post #79

But at least we can talk to search engines now

This has nothing to do with AI really. It's a century of pumping out CO2, not 2 years. Maybe in the future... but you can't blame AI for this year.

But we can blame AI for making it much worse in 5 years instead of making it less bad as everyone agreed to ~10 years ago (until an idiot ascended the throne)

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

#286

Post by pvaldes »

epolanski wrote: post #237
ddorian43 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beef is not the source of this. Ruminant meat is the best food there is for humans. (i eat daily as part of ketovore diet)

As you seem to be unaware: 1. a single cow produces 250 grams of methane per day. Methane is insanely more dangerous to the environment than CO2. A single adult cow pollutes in a day as much as a car driven for 165 miles. And that's only for emissions . 2. As a cow does not pollute just what it emits, you need to add the lifecycle: cows need to be fed. 80% of the food we humans grow goes to feed animals, not humans.…

I see many recycled misheard clichés here, starting by the "red meat is carcinogenic" mantra, that nobody serious has proven still, and that at this point is just pseudoscience.

> By mass, beef alone, outmatches every single land animal on this planet, combined

This is most probably false. To start you are repeating a claim that you didn't really understood. One problem is that you are confusing animals with mammals. Other is that you are confusing animals with vertebrates. In fact, we really don't have decent data on most invertebrates, and almost no reliable data in many vertebrates.

> Cows produce a lot of waste, that ends up in rivers

In the real life, most people use this on fields and agriculture, as crop fertilizers.

And the point 2 is missing a couple basic rules of ecology.

1) Big animals use energy more efficiently than small animals on the same category and,

2) Herbivores suffer a lot of pressure to feed themselves accurately. We can't just eat enough zucchini to replace beef, because we can't digest cellulose, because our small gut is not well adapted to this, and because most vegetables are basically water. The day is just too short.

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

#287

Post by freehorse »

SECProto wrote: post #260
bwindels wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't taking about ideology, I was talking about what is already happening. Here's a graph of total freight volume (a proxy for the real physical economy) in the EU 15 countries since 2000, notice the peak around 2008: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/road_go_ta_to...

> Here's a graph of total freight volume (a proxy for the real physical economy) In 2008, people and businesses were still buying new computers every year or two, printing everything on paper, buying physical media. I don't know anyone that does this anymore. I don't think that is a good proxy.

In the US there was a slight drop around that time, but not close to 25% in the eu. If it was due to businesses buying less physical media wouldn't it be sth seen in the US data in some year too?

https://www.bts.gov/us-tonne-kilometers-freight

(a bit easier in table form as the graph does not aggregate accross all means of transport).

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

#288

Post by insane_dreamer »

formvoltron wrote: post #105

How do we get Earth back to something resembling the steady state we know can work long term? 1. Electrify almost everything that can reasonably be electrified. Move quickly to EVs, and replace anything that can practically become electric with an electric version. Self driving & fleet utilization will push transportation cost per mile lower than ever before. For the power grid, data centers, and other large 24/7 con…

We've known what to do for a couple of decades now. But when the world's largest economy is run by a madman who just cares about lining his and his buddies pockets instead of the future of humanity, it's hard to make progress.

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

#289

Post by coryrc »

api wrote: post #220
uv-depression wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps instead of using one of the hallucination machines that's aggravating the climate crisis, you could have done some research: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-worlds-top-1-of-emitter... > Globally, the top 10% of emitters were responsible for almost half of global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2021, compared with a mere 0.2% for the bottom 10%. The top 10% is quite a bit more than billionaires, it's true…

I'm not saying nothing will ever change. That's a misreading. I'm saying asking people to sacrifice will both be rejected and will not do enough, and that the only answer is changing where we get energy. Environmentalists have been making the "abstinence first" guilt trip argument for decades and it's done absolutely nothing and it will never do anything. That approach is a total failure. I use the abstinence framing…

All I can say is, I'm sorry Cassandra.

Here in Washington State, a decade ago we had an initiative (I-732) to do a carbon tax and lower regressive taxes (we have one of the most-regressive tax structure in the USA). The environmental groups opposed it because it wasn't handing out money to them and it lost narrowly.

Eventually the legislature passed a complicated cap-and-trade scheme and they spend the money on bullshit and lie about it: "The projects the department touted amounted to just under 4% of their original estimates." https://phys.org/news/2026-01-washington-state-overestimates...

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

#290

Post by bjourne »

consumer451 wrote: post #278
bjourne wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pure fiction. Cite your sources.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f... https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun-robert-anderson/ https://truthout.org/articles/top-oil-and-gas-lobby-spent-mo... http://climatecoalition.org/how-american-petroleum-institute... (sorry, no https) Russia has huge influence in German politics. I believe there is connection there as well, but I cannot find any public information to cite regarding fund…

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