Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 278 posts

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#41

Post by CyanBird »

radu_floricica wrote: post #32
politelemon wrote: post #5

> enjoyed the warmest October I abhor this kind of language that news sites use. It takes away from the seriousness of the underlying cause (and its effects), and associates hot/warm weather with "good". Public apathy towards climate change starts here.

Ok, since you started, let me challenge that head on: so far climate change is good . Cold-related deaths decreased something like 1-2 orders of magnitude more than a paltry increase in heat deaths. You're trying to make me fill guilty for enjoying nice weather? Really? Well, how do you feel about advocating for literally more dead people in the foreseeable future? And before you try bringing doomsday scenarios into…

>Cold-related deaths decreased something like 1-2 orders of magnitude more than a paltry increase in heat deaths

I think this might be important to mention

Most of the world indeed does not live in the US or Europe

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#42

Post by nerdponx »

birracerveza wrote: post #35

I'm surprised I haven't come across conspiracy theories that use this as confirmation that "they" control the weather...

I literally know someone who believes global warming is a hoax to cover up the fact that "they" control the weather. That belief is so entrenched that this is more like passive confirmation of an obvious fact than an evidentiary bombshell.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#45

Post by tsimionescu »

radu_floricica wrote: post #32
politelemon wrote: post #5

> enjoyed the warmest October I abhor this kind of language that news sites use. It takes away from the seriousness of the underlying cause (and its effects), and associates hot/warm weather with "good". Public apathy towards climate change starts here.

Ok, since you started, let me challenge that head on: so far climate change is good . Cold-related deaths decreased something like 1-2 orders of magnitude more than a paltry increase in heat deaths. You're trying to make me fill guilty for enjoying nice weather? Really? Well, how do you feel about advocating for literally more dead people in the foreseeable future? And before you try bringing doomsday scenarios into…

Wow, that's almost delusional. It's like you don't understand what drought is, or haven't looked at any of the predictions about heat waves, the mass extinction events, the extreme weather, the fires...

This is a new level of madness from the fight against the fight against climate change.

Don't look up, my friend.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#46

Post by theCrowing »

bheadmaster wrote: post #37
birracerveza wrote: post #35

I'm surprised I haven't come across conspiracy theories that use this as confirmation that "they" control the weather...

I'll admit it has passed my mind several times. I never said it out loud (until now), but the coincidence that the very year EU loses its main gas supply we get sunny winter without snow at all... I know it's probably a coincidence, but my mind doesn't like coincidences. There's always this "what if" voice inside my head.

I admit it I am working at a secret European agency with the purpose of climate control. We can only make it warmer right now but there is a commit open that could fix our issues with the overheating. They fired the guy who wrote it for cost saving measures, his LOC over year was a bit low but I bet the junior refactoring some legacy code can do it. His LOCs are of the fucking chart. /s

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#47

Post by Tade0 »

rasz wrote: post #33

Joke being Russian flagrant disregard for climate change contributed to warmer winter.

To be completely fair they were mostly just the drug dealers, not the drug addicts.

That being said my Russian friend who moved to the EU a few years ago was shocked with the prices of fuels around here and promptly sold her 20yo Camry, which was quite the gas guzzler by EU standards.

Fuel is cheap in Russia and for Moscovites like her doubly so.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#48

Post by eecc »

dtech wrote: post #26
thefz wrote: post #3

On the other hand, if we could stop considering only the economic aspect of everything and see that the downside of this is that we are destroying our water reserves that took thousands of years to accumulate...

Can you expand on this or provide sources? At least in my countries the gas storage is now-empty gas fields that used to contain natural gas anyway, I have a hard time seeing how that could contaminate water sources.

The mild weather after a scorching summer is turning the continent into a desert. Without an exceptionally wet and cold winter the European water basins will be toast next year. The italian Pianura Padana has seen one of the worst droughts in centuries.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#49

Post by cinntaile »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #25
dan-robertson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t enjoy warm autumn weather because The Economist tells me to. I don’t think avoiding talking about the weather like a human is necessary or helpful for dealing with climate change. But perhaps part of this is that I generally don’t believe that fixing climate change has much to do with terrifying the public about it. Furthermore, it’s generally untrue that any particular warm October is due to climate change b…

Yes, it feels like cherry picking when people say something like "climate change makes severe weather events more likely" in connection with a drought or unusually hot spell but ridicule anyone who tries to use a particularly cold winter as evidence that climate change is not happening. We should avoid the association between climate and short term weather phenomenon altogether. And yes, the COVID lockdowns showed th…

> Yes, it feels like cherry picking when people say something like "climate change makes severe weather events more likely" in connection with a drought or unusually hot spell but ridicule anyone who tries to use a particularly cold winter as evidence that climate change is not happening.

Climate change results in more extreme weather, both warm and cold. So a particularly cold winter can be a result of climate change as well.

Re: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

#50

Post by photochemsyn »

One major theme in the ongoing US-Russia conflict over the past decade-plus (dating back to at least 2008) is a fight over who gets to sell oil and gas to Europe. With the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, and with countries like Qatar refusing to alter long-term energy contracts to increase supplies to Europe, and with Iran still under the Trump-era sanctions (which Biden continued), that mostly leaves the USA as the primary supplier. See this from past summer:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-exports-europ...

> "...the United States has already sent more gas to Europe during the first six months of 2022 than it did in all 12 months of 2021. If exports to Europe continue at the same pace through the second half of 2022, the total increase over 2021 would be around 45 bcm [billion cubic meters]."

> "Benchmark gas prices in Europe have averaged $34.06 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) so far in 2022 compared with $29.99 in Asia and $6.12 in the United States. That compares with average 2021 prices of $16.04 in Europe, $18.00 in Asia and $3.73 in the United States, data showed."

This also results in U.S. electricity ratepayers having much larger bills, driving across-the-board inflation - but fossil fuel shareholders and executives are certainly raking in the profits. Mission accomplished?

https://energynews.us/2022/10/12/natural-gas-prices-are-risi...

Post reply on HN