Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by ddorian43 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:57 AM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #276

ddorian43 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Red meat is a category 1 carcinogenic It is not. There are no studies with simply meat. They count burgers and processed stuff. I literally do 90% carnivore so eat nothing processed. I only put salt on the meat. > You could put on a scale every single tiger, domestic dog, rabbit, squirrel, horse, hyppo, kangaroo, etc, etc, etc on the planet. Carnivore animals rarely are eaten. Horse/rabbit are low fat. Beef & lamb…

It feels like speaking with a chatbot. The focus of the discussion is topic is how dangerous is cattle farming to the planet. The answer is very, I gave you numbers, you're free to debunk them. The topic of whether red meat is category 1 or 2 carcinogenic is less of an interest to this thread. If you want to keep your diet, keep it, it doesn't change it has an insane impact on the planet in terms of greenhouse gases…

You feel the same way buddy. We both have no ability to verify what we're saying and just choose who to listen to.

At least I eat healthy compared to you (easily verifiable when you have a health issue like epilepsy or diabetes).

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

#362

Post by fangspire » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

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…

Climate change requires building more nuclear power. Which we absolutely can do.

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

#363

Post by cromka » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 7:24 AM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #315

alistairSH wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might be a treasure, but's he's also a prick. He has a long history of letting his on-screen persona leak into meatspace (or maybe it's the other way around) and that's not a good thing. Edit - since people seem to not believe me, at minimum, he punched his producer [1]. Which wasn't the first time he turned violent - he punched Piers Morgan [2] for letting Clarkson's extramarital affairs go public. Oh, he also ha…

I don’t know, in a world where dictators bomb whoever they want, if punching someone is the worst thing you can do. People continue to follow and fangirl the politicians who enact violence, so why should one go on a crusade against a tv star who gets a little hands on?

That's appeal to bigger problems fallacy.

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

#364

Post by mort96 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

fangspire wrote: post #362

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Climate change requires building more nuclear power. Which we absolutely can do.

Building enough nuclear to replace fossil electricity generation is both insanely expensive and not enough to fix the problem because plenty of emissions don't come from electricity generation.

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

#365

Post by Arodex » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 7:47 AM UTC

freehorse wrote: post #292

hdgvhicv wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for the next 20 years been basically unneeded. How much AC does Alaska have?

This is not a good argument. AC is needed every summer for some years now for much of northern europe, the only question is how many days per year. The last heatwave was not in 2003. You do not need AC in every house necessarily. You need ACs in public buildings and in places that matter for the most vulnerable population. You need at least places this population can go during the hottest part of the day. Solutions a…

And how does that solve the topic of this article: desertification?

That was the point of my snark, that you completely missed.

But please, tell us how we are supposed to AC the fields, the stables, the forests, the rivers...

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

#366

Post by scoofy » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 7:54 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #356

scoofy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is naturally a desert. It is only unnaturally green and lush.

A desert with the tallest trees in the planet.

Trees that evolved to survive wildfires because of the near year-long dry periods.

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

#367

Post by VBprogrammer » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 7:57 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #263

VBprogrammer wrote: post #113

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. I believe he may not have even bothered planting the normal cash crops, so it will be interesting to see how that works out. That said, the year before I think it was so wet early in the year that farmers really struggled to get crops in…

> 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…

> Oh, noe, I feel so sorry for him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!

In reality he now has the most popular show on Amazon. Even his brewer is probably a bigger contributor to his income than the "farming" side of his farming.

The difficulty he faces though is very common amongst British farmers but most don't have a camera crew producing 4k video of the entire growing season.

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

#368

Post by lukaslalinsky » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

tyrabound wrote: post #99

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

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…

It’s not really a common perspective, but I have a theory that the primary cause of especially this kind of drought has way more to do with Europe essentially draining itself through all of the river straightening projects of the 19th century. How could it not be. Before all the industrial age river straightening that has gone on until even rather recently with damming and concrete encasement projects in I think even…

The concept of winter pretty much stopped existing where I live. It's just colder autumn. The ground doesn't freeze. Snow doesn't accumulate. No amount of meandering is going to compensate for the fact that the mountains do not hold water. Something needs to feed the springs and rivers. And the source is gone. Europe is shifting into a different climate, where water primarily comes as rainfall, causing floods. I imagine it's similar to Asian countries, and we will have to learn to deal with that.

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

#369

Post by notTooFarGone » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:32 AM UTC

fangspire wrote: post #362

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Climate change requires building more nuclear power. Which we absolutely can do.

Ah yea, let's start that and reap the benefits 2050 when it's already in the shitter.

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

#370

Post by aziaziazi » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:33 AM UTC

ddorian43 wrote: post #357

Dylan16807 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think meat is a very serious cancer risk, but: > They count burgers Do you think grinding up a piece of cow changes whether it's carcinogenic?

No, ground meat is good, it's also cheap. But in burgers you get bread, potatoes, seed oils, etc, which are all bad. Example: its extremely hard & rare to become or remain fat in keto/carnivore.

Heme iron and its link to oxidative stress has been re-evaluated over time.

Vegetables contain non-heme iron (Fe 3+), which is reduced to (Fe 2+) by the body on demand for absorption. In contrast, heme iron is already in its reduced state (Fe 2+). Because of its high bioavailability excess heme iron reacts with peroxides to produce highly reactive free radicals (Fenton reaction).

You can keep on potatoes safely.