My only practical contribution to fixing this issue is to upvote this article.. and write a message on HN.
I'm in Spain.
I really hope that after this summer, people of Europe will wake up and make fixing the climate their highest priority - at home, at work, in politics. We have very little time left, maybe a few years.
I can still see news articles everywhere blaming 'climate change' and 'CO2 emissions', pointing the finger at the oil companies and the likes.
But those 'bad' guys are not operating in a void - they supply the products which are in high demand from me and you and our families - our entire lifestyle is built around them. So what needs to change is our life styles, philosophy, economic order .. drastic changes.
Consumerism needs to go, tourism needs to go, advertising needs to go, travel and logistics needs to be reinvented, industrial production needs to drop by orders of magnitude, everything replaced with healthy and efficient alternatives.
How can this be done peacefully is beyond me, it probably can't.
We've had precedent during covid, when the whole world stopped because everyone was scared that they're going to die. It's not so different now.
Much of what you suggest is a drop in the ocean and requires people's habits to change in ways people are not happy to listen to - and - again - it's a drop in the ocean. Go vegetarian, it helps the environment - but don't expect anyone to follow, and don't expect it to mean anything.
Massive electrification - production (solar+wind+storage) and usage (EVs, as people won't stop driving no matter what, and heat pump heating and cooling) can be successfully driven with incentives and would have meaningful impact. People love to save money without losing comfort, incentives are ultimately budget neutral on a timescale, and for Europe this also ties into strategic energy sovereignty which is a nice added driver. Vote out and call out politicians not prioritizing this.
Bonus, you get to call them unpatriotic as they reinforce dependence on people who we're no longer on friendly terms with (no matter whether you look west or east)
What you're proposing (ending consumerism, tourism) is nothing short of revolutionary. I don't imagine that the future is going to be bloodless with or without a revolution.
I’m convinced one of the best ways is to make the right choices financially easier, and make the wrong ones (much) more expensive.
Fully subsidise trains and tax the crap out of flying.
Do the same for cars running on fossil fuels
Tax carbon heavy foods like meat.
Repeat until this starts changing consumer behaviour
I agree that this is a reasonable place to start. Unfortunately, I don't think that politicians will be able to implement reforms like this without severe backlash from the public. So the ones that do might just get voted out in the next election. But it's what we need to do at a minimum.
I suspect consumerism and tourism would mostly evaporate bloodlessly if advertising were successfully banned.
I'm not sure a successful ban is even possible, given e.g. influencers. However, ending social media may inherently solve this pathway?
Reworking an economy so that wasteful overproduction on gadgets and (specifically: over-engineered) hobby equipment* ceases, without also breaking the supply of industrial capacity that allows a military to ramp up fast in a hot war, is I think completely unsolved?
* see Mrwhosetheboss videos about, well, a lot; but specifically all the things he goes back to after a while and reveals were over-rated and didn't really solve problems despite being shiny at first glance
The biggest issue that keeps accelerating climate change is that people buy too much stuff, travel too much, and more importantly eat in a way that is bound to destroy the climate.
Now go tell people to buy less crap, use more public transport and stop filling their mouths with beef and fish every day, good luck.
And even that would merely slow the progress, not stop or revert climate change.
Sincerely this is a disaster, each generation just keeps doing worse than others, gen z may actually be the firsts to really give 2 damns, or pretend better.
I think the biggest issue is actually even further that these ones: it's the population itself. Overpopulation has been a huge driver, and it's a problem without a solution ; but it's still too absent from the conversation, especially because the system and the economy rely a lot on the population growing.
But i agree, in absence of a good solution for this part, the next best thing is a change of habits for the people.
> Overpopulation has been a huge driver, and it's a problem without a solution
Population is predicted to reach a peak and then start declining according to all the modelling I have seen so overpopulation is not a problem without a solution.
And the vast majority of that population is not consuming most of the energy. India's per capita consumption is less than one tenth of that of the US [1]. Even though they have three times the population they still consume less than one third of what the US does.
that's all nice, now tell it to Americans, Chinese, Indians and most of the developing world, EU residents won't fix a thing besides ruining their economy
people are not going to die over hotter weather, at least not if they won't resist adapting to it instead of trying to change it, I would say it's easier to different climate/weather than trying to change it
Roads were not paved because people had bought cars and now were complaining that they only had cobblestone roads—crowded with meatbags—and dirt to drive them on. Look at the US. A “car-centric” culture. What, but how? Because making huge roads, bulldozing communities to make ugly and inefficient highways right through cities, giant parking lots—it was policy. Infrastructure. Top-down, with politicians and the Car Lobby.
Then continue to look at the the US. Huge, dangerous, and not at all used for “sport utility” SUVs. Yeah, people were blameworthy for starting to buy them. But the drive to make them dominate the whole car market was driven by the industry; much lower safety standards meant less cost and much fatter profits. But they were just meeting consumer demand...?
The global economy, very integrated, fucking giant container ships shipping raw products across the world to be slightly refined to then be shipped back again. Was that designed by anyone. Or just meeting consumer demand? That must have been some giant mass delusion of post hoc agentic reasoning; economists taking the credit for a globalized economy, every corner specialized and competing at what they can do best, exporting that and importing the rest. But I guess they are wrong? Just meeting consumer demand?
Consumer Capitalism. Curious name. It’s not Capitalism with a consumerist culture. It is Capitalism predicated on the mass of workers to “consume”. But I guess it is really optional after all? This economy of ours, the forever-servant of the collective us—it will just metamorphize itself organically to adjust to the realities of your fantasy of mass and uncoordinated consumer behavior change?
> My only practical contribution to
The only practical input you have is in the service of obfuscation. Of division. Of cheap reasoning. I saw someone litter once; that must be at the heart of the problem. I saw someone drive a sport car once; that must be at the heart of the issue. Of scapegoating.
You know your practical input is worthless. And still you will feel vindicated in ten years time when your practical input has yielded fucking nothing.
There's an outdated statement: 50% of the fossil fuel civilization has burned, we burned after 1992. Outdated, so that percentage is probably a lot higher now.
Now does that translate to better crops? I don't know, but humans will do whatever it takes to adapt, so we really need to stop with the climate scaremongering.
I just came back from Hungary and Slovakia and it really caught my attention that the grass everywhere was just yellow. I wasn't sure if it's normal by this time of the year, but truely, both countries look like Greece now.
Same in Northwest France: I've never seen the grass so yellow, and now the ground is even becoming bare brown. Some tree species are yellowing/browning. With the prolonged lack of rain and extreme heat for the region, it's a summer like I've never seen before. And it's probably one of the coolest of the rest of my life.
Same in Ireland. I think the country grass is fields or near woodlands or rivers is still holding on to its green but urban grass in parks is scorched. I've never seen this before.
Ireland is fundamentally a wet country and always has been.
Hello from Slovakia. Yellow grass by the middle of august is not that exceptional here. The current drought is much worse though; the trees are already shedding leaves and we've had wild swine come to our appartment building (in the middle of the capital city) to drink water from lawn irrigation, which has never happened before. Most of the smaller creeks and rivers are completely dry. We didn't have much wildfires luckily but that's just a question of time I'm afraid.
Southern Slovakia and a large part of Hungary are fucked if it keeps getting warmer, and given their governments there is 0% chance they will even try to adapt their agriculture
why are they fucked? you can just switch to plants grown previously further down the south, you can already now grow figs, lemons, etc. for instance, let alone tomatoes/peppers
No you cannot "just" do things like that sadly... you still need water, as much as 10L/day/sqm during a heat wave. Also you need proper night/day temperature cycles, a reasonable early/late frost timing as to not kill your new plants, the soil has to match what you want to grow, etc. it's a whole dance between many many factors.
Flowers and pollen also get absolutely fucked by high heat, tomatoes stop growing when it's too warm. I know a farm where they lost most of their tomatoes, they cooked on the plant and fell to the ground.
Though the rest of the year will be hot and dry, the winters will still be freezing, which limits what you can do, and late spring frost which kills fruit buds is very common.
I think the cows are very stressed here in Switzerland. I make cheese every now and then - ricotta and paneer. It's simple. I buy the milk from a "milch-Automat" - farms around here (Zurich) have machines where you can buy a liter of raw milk from the farm for cheap. So, the milk I'm using is direct from the cows.
I made paneer a week ago. Normally I can cut it up and brown it and make the edges crispy. But for this batch I got far less cheese than normal and it was wet - I had to let the molded paneer dry out longer than normal. Then when I went to brown it the entire batch just melted into a gloopy mess - that just doesn't happen.
I had to look this up:
In European and Alpine agrarian traditions, sudden, inexplicable failures in dairy processing - such as milk refusing to curdle, butter failing to churn, or cheese spoiling unexpectedly - were historically interpreted as serious bad omens. They were seen as portents of impending drought, blighted pastures, severe livestock distress, or famine.
Climate change affects geographies unequally. Seems like Europe and the tropics have been the first to suffer, year after year, and with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years, can't help but wonder what is on European minds.
The main thing I have in mind is that human civilization is completely fucked. What is needed to ensure things aren’t too horrible in the next century is so drastic and requires such a global coordinated effort that will never happen. There is no technology or super authority that will magically save us from a climate catastrophe this century.
Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity, and developed countries are ready to sacrifice pretty much everything to the AI compute gods we are truly fucked
>the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity
I'm pretty convinced that lots of people would be willing to make sacrifices. But not while Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to feed his Angus beef Macadamia nuts on Hawaii and all the invitees fly in separate private jets to COP26 instead of making it an online event.
The message of "sacrifice for thee, but not for me!" should not be underestimated here.
You can only control your own actions. Reducing your meat consumption by like 80% is very low effort. It’s honestly ridiculous that still has to be argued about
The ridiculous is that we talk about this individual change nonsense when we should be talking about actual regulations and restrictions of industries.
Yes, hit the biggest poluters who incidentally put so much money into anti-climate agenda. Stop distracting with tiny individual crap.
I mean, it's a collective action problem. Individual consumption of normal people is a huge contributor to global energy demands / pollution / etc. You don't have to change your behavior but if no one does in the coming decades then we're pretty fucked.
Not to let the 1% off the hook. Por que no los dos
You cannot solve societal problems with individual actions.
It's about time to cut the crap that each person can make a difference while governments keep subsidizing all sorts of activities that damage the environment.
I will vote for forbidding beef, but will keep eating it until it is forbidden.
I somewhat agree, and I have not stopped eating beef entirely. I think that forbidding is overkill but agree that lots of related subsidies should be eliminated (honestly, if meat were just priced w/o current subsidies, we'd be in far better shape).
But you have to have some public consensus or the government will never implement such changes due to their unpopularity. This is why I think promoting some reduction in individual meat consumption is still valuable - it is good for average people to reflect on their consumption or they will vote out anyone who attempts to change it.
I don't think that the focus should be on individual blame (even just for the reason that this is politically nonviable). But you at least need to amass some collective awareness.
I love beef. I absolutely adore cheese, and I would be unfathomably sad to never again taste a nice piece of Gorgonzola.
But I know that the meat and dairy industry are hellish for the environment. You don't need to win me in that argument, I accepted that already.
But that's the catch - either we are all in this together, or we will burn in this oven-earth of our making. There's no between. I am not becoming vegan just to die scorched anyway because meat and dairy were still subsidized and consumed.
Governments are surprisingly good to set proper incentives when they want. It could make beef and dairy economically ruinous with taxes instead of forbidding. Consumption would lower dramatically the moment a striploin beef is costing 30 bucks.
If society needs several environmental catastrophes to wake up, then I can only hope I see the other side of it.
Changing peoples culture is about as simple as changing peoples religion. Getting people who eat meat to switch to vegetarianism is like trying to get vegetarians to reduce their land usage by switching to some amount of shell fish or sea weed, the later which is vegetarian but not necessary the kind of plants that people are used to.
It should be much easier to convince people that emission free energy production is a necessity, and yet there is for all practical purpose no such political movement or any political party that actually support the simple fact that producing electricity and heat through burning carbon based fuel is completely unnecessary and should have been relegated as a something past civilizations did. We don't need to convince the world population to change their culture in order to not construct new thermal power plants, only political will and money.
Yeah, conflict is guaranteed. China will probably invade Russia and secure Lake Baikal and vast areas of Siberia. Europe might start shooting at "smugglers" earnestly (sorry to the "collateral damage").
I guess Eric or Barron will follow Project 2025 Edition 10's guideline and invade Greenland to secure their water for USA. And Canada's favorable climate?
We don't need AI to figure it out. It's been researched to death already. Go vegetarian, abolish fossil fuels, buy less.
The problem is that way too few are willing to change their habits, and legislators have near-zero incentive to enact unpopular rules to help mitigate the problems. AI isn't going to change any of that.
well, we managed to construct a narrative where everyone could only marginally change its habits. heat pumps, electric cars, solar panels, carbon taxes. things would have remained unchanged at the high level.
but that was still way too much to ask. I'm afraid that if you insist on reducing the solution space to just 'it magically goes away and no one has to think about it', even the mighty AI might struggle. why don't fire up Claude and ask it?
Lol. Firstly, how we live now is far different to how we lived 100 years ago (people ate far less red meat than we do today for example). Secondly, how the bulk of humanity lives is inevitably going to change drastically. The choice we have is to do it voluntarily and perhaps control how it changes, or wait until core crops start failing in a big way and livestock die off due to prolonged drought and heatwaves.
UK here. It really feels like this year has been a massive wake-up call, a follow-up to the one of 2022 (and 2018, 2019, 2021...)
Some fire services have had their busiest months on record this year. In an extraordinary (and controversial) move, they convinced the government to use the phone Emergency Alert system to alert the entire country about the risk of fires.
Prior to summer, in the North of England, it was extremely windy and gloomy from September to May. Very very few blue skies. The other day, we went from a 2-day mini heat wave (35c & 28c) to gloomy cloud in 2 days - it's just so bizarre.
We've just had our 5th or 6th heatwave of the summer
A train derailed yesterday due to a buckled rail. Another derailed, cause of which is suspected to be heat/drought related. Luckily no fatalities.
We've had more wildfires than 2022 and drought is more widespread. I often can't have my window open at night when it's 29c inside because of the fires 10-20 miles away. I have no A/C
I'm wondering if our future is gales and grey for 9 months then heatwaves and drought? I know the North of England is historically gloomy, but it 'feels' different of late.
It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have. We haven't built a reservoir since 1990 despite massive population increase. Our rail network is not prepared for heat waves or long periods of drought or long periods of rain or long periods of ice/snow. London buses mostly have no A/C, ditto rest of the country. Many people don't have money for A/C at home - not even sure our electricity network could handle it. And about 100 other issues...
>It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have.
Oh, you have the money.
You just don't want to spend it, for that would shift the balance of political power in the country towards labor and away from capital, and away from the old and towards the young, for the wages of labor and the young would have to rise.
That's anathema to an upper class and a body politic whose primary objective is controlling the cost of labor, and even the political party that's named after labor has no plan to change that.
This is going to continue until the current body politic is more afraid of dying from heatstroke than they are of anyone else being in charge.
Just print more money and devalue the currency, which is how you currently budget anyway.
That was the means by which relief funding was appropriated from the public in 2020, and it was a huge success. Most people don't even know that happened (or the scale at which it occurred) beyond some vague notion of "deficit".
You'll pay for it with inflation and lower purchasing power relative to other nations for a time, but your body politic have demonstrated that is the only type of tax increase they'll ever consent to. But if you don't do it, you won't even have an economy with which to pay the bills.
Full HVAC was added to the New London Bus Vehicle Specification a few years ago, so at least TfL were paying attention to the implications of climate change.
Pretty much all BEV buses have it (even the ones from before it became mandatory, since they plenty of power to spare anyway), which already covers more than 40% of the fleet, and the remaining hybrid buses are in the process of being phased out over the next few years. Sadly, the 'Boris bus' New Routemasters with their famously-inadequate forced air cooling are likely to be the last to go because they can't be sold on for less-intensive use elsewhere.
No-one else should really be being surprised by the changes to our weather patterns, since they're all roughly in line with the modelled effects of the changing climate. Air to air heat pumps (which work as AC) are now included in the various grant schemes, £30bn is being spent to upgrade the national grid by 2029, and the shift to zero carbon energy sources is well under way.
The water situation is more problematic, but in the short term the current El Nino increases the likelihood of having a wet winter so at least the reservoirs ought to have a chance to fully refill this year.
Note that, first, there really is not much point to doing anything if you don't reduce by at least 52% in 3 years or less (less than that, or more time, will not make the difference between IPCC >2 and <2 scenarios). Hence without drastic reductions from the Chinese government (not promises, not "look at our beautiful new solar field", ONLY we're stopping these HUNDREDS of coal mines WITHIN 2 years) you've pretty much already lost, since a lot of countries lower on the list will definitely be increasing, and have declared it colonization for the west to demand they stop. Oh, by the way, you also must convince many African countries to stop that whole "electricity for our people" thing, otherwise the needed reduction is also a pipedream.
Note that just stopping CO2 output does not matter if it just gets transplanted somewhere else. In other words: the only way to make a difference is to stop first coal and then oil from being dug up in the first place, and let the CO2 emissions "take care of themselves". Otherwise CO2 emission reductions are local, not global, and so without reducing coal mining and oil pumping reductions do not matter and will not make any difference to global warming.
The only countries in the EU that have any influence at all is Norway, and they would have to just give up between 20% and 40% of their national income (France and the Netherlands are rounding errors, and Russia is not EU), and that's a typical figure.
And just so we're clear: reducing GDP by 20% to 40% will require a multiple of that in average wage reductions (so let's say at least 50%), without rents reducing by a single cent. You know, to give some idea what you're actually asking for from Norwegians.
In other words: this will not happen, there is no way in hell the governments involved will agree to even half of what's needed. And the UK, in fact all western governments other than Norway, US, Canada and Mexico have no influence and cannot realistically make a meaningful contributions to stopping climate change. And even those countries that can contribute will have to give up A LOT and it won't matter unless you get China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to follow suit.
Oh and if you do get this going, it'll cause a lot of pain in most of the world.
You have not been paying attention. China, and every socialist country for that matter, is part of every authoritarian network, serving their own purposes.
I tell anyone I meet to seriously consider what immigration will be like when anthropogenic global warming will get stronger. I'm neither pro/against immigration but I know many people are scared by immigration (as is demonstrated in many EC countries by the progression of far right parties).
I also tell them to remember that food prices and insurances prices will inevitably go up.
And I won't much more that that because everything else fails (even the death of 1000 persons in my country during this years heat waves just make people say "bah, that's life")
Are you somehow under the illusion that countries that "send" immigrants now will be accepting of return immigrants in the future? Whether they be the same people that left or other people coming in?
This is 100% a one way street for most governments.
Next year, el nino may hit and the extremes will set new records again. I wonder if einstein was right and human stupidity is infinite. On the other side, we can achieve alot as a society when the narratives are positive.
I don’t think el Niño affects Europe so directly. As a second order effect, sure, but here the heatwaves and el Niño are simultaneous. And this year is going to break records significantly. Again. No need to wait for next year, which could be the tail end of the current Niño, a regression to the mean, or the beginning of the next Niña.
In any case, Europe is warming up faster than the global average, Niño or not.
The current El Niño hasn’t “hit” in Europe yet. Its effects in Europe will most likely be felt in the first quarter of 2027. I’d assumed that’s what the parent was referring to.
El Niño does not really hit Europe in any way. It influences several things, like the jet streams, but the effects on Europe are very indirect and much milder than in the Pacific. They are also delayed by a couple of months.
>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
>> What's that going to look like?
There is a very graphic way to understand the problem.
Some cities in Canada are Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg or Regina.
London and Berlin are closer to the North Pole that any of these
-----------------------
Minimum temperature registered in London -17 Celsius. In Quebec and Montreal: -36 and -37.8 Celsius.
Berlin is a little closer than London to the North Pole but also more continental, so more like Regina in that sense.
Berlin lowest temperature registered is -15 Celsius, and in Regina: -40 Celsius
... And Edinburgh is closer to the North pole than any of these, and a little Northern than Manitoba, where reaching -40 Celsius a few nights is expected each year, and more than 30 Celsius in the summer is normal.
Well in my mind is no one else cares and the EU is holier than pope. We are destroying our economy for promile of world polution and are even shamed for using AC.
It’s the "it’s real, but we cannot do anything about it" rung on the climate denialist ladder. Yes, it is dangerous. It is also mainstream. There are several examples in this thread.
We are focusing on wrong things. Nuclear and off coal/gas should have been priority for last 50 years. And should be priority next 50. But Russian propaganda entrenched in spy infested austria and germany forces cheap gas upon us… and now we have to pay the price.
> Nuclear and off coal/gas should have been priority for last 50 years.
No argument from me. It would not have completely saved us but we’d be in a better position now. The absolute priority should be to avoid burning fossil fuels for energy.
> But Russian propaganda entrenched in spy infested austria and germany forces cheap gas upon us
Indeed. Germany’s energy policy was a huge risk and set Europe back. I am not sure whether Schröder was a useful idiot or a willing pawn, but the fact that there was no reckoning is very disappointing. And all of Merkel’s balancing act came to naught anyway. So much time wasted…
Game theory gives all of us an optimal solution, so we all should care about every bit, no matter the global proportion. Btw. Chians per capital CO2 emission is lower than most of europe.
Yeah but earth is not heating up per capita. And all the developing world emissions are rising. We go to extreme to not even move the needle. Then china takes our factories, because we have expensive energy and stricter safety laws - i am not arguing against it. And europe is left economically decimated.
It’s becoming less, but the formerly widespread traditional view in Europe was that using AC is a frivolous waste of energy that contributes to environmental pollution and global warming.
Its part of disrourse. Every left/communist says that AC will not solve the heat and we should not install it. We know it wont. But not having it makes the heats unbearable.
"We must absolutely not install air conditioning everywhere; that would only make things worse." The words of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical left La France Insoumise party, on Friday, June 19, in response to the far-right Rassemblement National (RN)'s large-scale air conditioning plan, reflect a widely held sentiment in France.
Which part of his statement is a) incorrect b) shaming anyone at all for buying aircon?
Aircon uses a ton of electricity, electricity generation is, at present, hovering around 50% from fossil fuels (in the EU as a whole[1]) which means all other thing being equal you'll be still pumping more CO² into the atmosphere further exacerbating climate change.
So yes, installing aircon everywhere would only make things worse. Those are just verifiable facts.
But you'll note he's not shaming anyone, as per the original claim.
"We must absolutely not install air conditioning everywhere" i dont agree with this, Aircon saves lives. The use of electricity is equivalent, maybe less than using heatpumps or heating houses in winter. Why dont we skip heating?
"As for me, I won't put my kid or my granddaughter or my great-granddaughter somewhere with air conditioning from morning to night!" declared Mélenchon
Yeah let them fry.. that is pure leftist bullcrap. Of course aircon uses energy. But in a grand scheme of things it is nothing. And we need to live with consequences of people like him who would fought nuclear energy.
No they cannot, it’s just a right-wing strawman. And something that perturbs some Americans, for some reason. Another "proof" that Europe is a terrible place inhabited by clueless idiots.
I don’t know if you read beyond the paywall and you don’t present a single argument, so I struggle to see your point. The article has fuck all to do with actually getting shamed for buying AC. Regulations need to change with the climate, that’s a different discussion altogether. The whole point of the article is a nuanced discussion about pros and cons, and why we are where we are.
I am on a bike and cannot properly do the research. But i have read no AC from german, french and brusels leftist think tanks all summer :) almost as it is a sin to have AC when the world is burning and we should suffer.
The article in Le Monde is actually insightful. The tradeoff is a bit more complicated, and "no AC" is not intrinsically a left-leaning position. It’s actually quite interesting to have self-identified right-wing people, who even now moan about woke heat pumps at the same time campaign for AC everywhere.
Personally I am a bit ambivalent. It’s not needed in most cases most of the time, but it could help transitioning en masse to reversible heat pumps, which would be a step in the right direction. What I worry is that it would be hailed as a silver bullet and detract from improving thermal insulation and mitigating techniques that would not require constant energy supply.
We need to see where we will be, not where we are. The electric grid is not going to get more stable in the next years and will get more and more strained as more and more of our economy has to use electricity. Reducing energy use where appropriate should be a higher priority than an AC band-aid.
But my observation of the media landscape is that right-wing politicians hop on everything that can be shown as boneheaded leftists who refuse progress. Of course, the usual useful idiots like Mélenchon are happy to oblige, but the mainstream left-leaning parties are not particularly anti-AC.
Yeah the heat pump is very easy: russia doesn’t want us using heat pumps, because it means using less gas. Same with nuclear. If you start looking at all issues as: what would benefit russia, its easy to spot left and right talking points.
I am in general right in economic and left in personal freedom. And currently i have no representation. Because both extremes are infested with ex KGB/FSB agents causing social unrest in europe. Same with waves of refugees.
It's very disheartening as someone who enjoys recreational fishing that the river closures -- typically legally closed to fishing, but otherwise ethically closed -- are getting earlier and earlier. That is, if the rivers aren't straight up bone dry peak summer.
I'm pretty young, too, so I have this, if not worse than this, to look forward to for the majority of my life.
Not to mention here in BC we're up to three summers in a row where entire towns have burned down ... not a positive sign of things to come.
Side by side images of exactly the same places one year apart would have been much better than the images in the article - combining left and right part from 2 years. Maybe it's just me, but the satellite images mostly were hard to read
They are the same place, you’re supposed to compare using the slider. What bothers me more is that the left and right images seem to have a different color temperature.
no offense with their narrative, but the picture - Shipwreck has become visible due to Danube’s low water levels - actually shows MORE GREEN than year ago if you don't focus on the river, look at alla reas around, everything is greener, such a fail BBC
btw. I don't deny many areas are dryer and more yellow than last year, but when looking at satellite pictures you should also take into consideration WHEN was the harvest, logically if harvest is earlier due to hotter weather the whole country will look very different from space and it doesn't say much about whether country is dry (though this is of course unrelated to some French palace photo which obviously ain't farm field)
The headline is a bit sensationalist. Scorched means burned not just dry, later it mentions that some of the images are scorched from wildfires, but that doesn't seem to correlate to the one shown under the headline.
I'm in Europe, the sky here is literally red at night from fires we are failing to extinguish. France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Germany, Croatia, Serbia are all going through this to different degrees right now.
Not here, also in Europe, and also not in most of the satellite images they are talking about. They are mostly talking about heat damage, low rivers, and dry patches of land.
Yeah someone else posted the same link. I replied with my tail between my legs admitting I didn't know scorched had two definitions (only one being destroyed by fire) and I was downvoted to -3 so deleted it.
To be honest, yours was a fair assumption that fire should be involved for "scorched" to apply. It's probably one of the more common usages of the word
I don't agree with the people downvoting you for admitting you were wrong, that's ridiculous
I mean what do you expect, it's BBC. I'll eat my hat the day they actually report the facts as it is without exaggeration. I wouldn't even trust BBC without verifying the sources. Most of the time it's lying at best and propaganda at worst.
We've had the hottest summer ever recorded (since the beginning of 20th century, more than 120 years ago) across Europe.
There is no "downward trend), it's going up, and will be for a while.
I'm in Spain.
I really hope that after this summer, people of Europe will wake up and make fixing the climate their highest priority - at home, at work, in politics. We have very little time left, maybe a few years.
I can still see news articles everywhere blaming 'climate change' and 'CO2 emissions', pointing the finger at the oil companies and the likes. But those 'bad' guys are not operating in a void - they supply the products which are in high demand from me and you and our families - our entire lifestyle is built around them. So what needs to change is our life styles, philosophy, economic order .. drastic changes.
Consumerism needs to go, tourism needs to go, advertising needs to go, travel and logistics needs to be reinvented, industrial production needs to drop by orders of magnitude, everything replaced with healthy and efficient alternatives.
How can this be done peacefully is beyond me, it probably can't. We've had precedent during covid, when the whole world stopped because everyone was scared that they're going to die. It's not so different now.