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.
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 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.
There's an outdated statement: 50% of the fossil fuel civilization has burned, we burned after 1992. Outdated, so that percentage is probably a lot higher now.
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
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?
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")
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> But climate change, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, has been raising average temperatures for decades and making hot spells much more likely and intense.
Global fire emissions are on a downward trend, with the first half of this year at a record low in this century.
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.
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.
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 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.
Same here in NL. A few drops of rain today, for the first time in a long time.
Same in Switzerland. Trees have started yellowing a month before autumn.
I remember in 2010, corporate propagandists were telling us that the effects of climate change won't be felt for a 100 years.
https://xkcd.com/2889/
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.
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.
> 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
Why would I reduce it? Not going to eat less meat so that Zuck can keep sailing on his mega yacht.
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?
AI is more energy efficient and faster than we are. If there is anything thinking needed to solve the problem, it's best to lean on AI.
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.
Proposing that all of humanity drastically change its habits is a theoretical, not practical, solution.
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?
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")
Some who think right now that immigration is bad, may later be amongst the ones that decide to emigrate. Then they will know.
> can't help but wonder what is on European minds
that only a big catastrophe, possibly a global war, will make people think again
other two options:
a) Asteroid strike
b) Arrival of Aliens (in a sense of "evident to everywhone on earth")
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.
>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
What's that going to look like?
Best article I know about this topic is: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/amoc-explainer/index.htm...
Very hot in summer, very cold in winter.
Significantly colder in the winter. Im not sure how much it would change summer temps though, it could just affect the amount of rain.
People might be ice skating on the Thames again.
> but wonder what is on European minds
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...
Did Nigel Farange change his mind?
> with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
Guess it will cancel out the increased temperature?
The AMOC delivers warm air year round, it cools the UK from the hotter southern air during the summer.
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.
This narrative is dangerous. If everyone points to their own limited influence and points fingers at the rest of the world, no one is going to act.
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.
Could you provide a link to people being shamed for using AC?
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.
Gonna plug supercool here, making it rain! If you can help please reach out.
https://supercool-earth.com/
So in Western Europe we're fucked by first having heatwaves (and fires everywhere) and, indeed, every field around me is yellow instead of green...
And then, when the AMOC shall start running amok, we'll be forever in extreme cold.
Where should I flee?
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.
According to the Cambridge dictionary it's a perfectly normal usage of the word, in fact it's pretty much the example for it...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scorched
Claiming the British state broadcaster is using the English language incorrectly is certainly a choice.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scorched
In my part of the midwest scortched is correct. People say their lawn is scorched by the sun during droughts.
Scorched is being used correctly. Fire does not have to be involved, heat does.
The post is the BBC, scorched is the ordinary word used in British english. I agree that in American english it would be more ambiguous.
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.
> But climate change, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, has been raising average temperatures for decades and making hot spells much more likely and intense.
Global fire emissions are on a downward trend, with the first half of this year at a record low in this century.
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/lowest-global-biomass-burni...
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.
"Drill baby drill"
Due to less land clearing in other continents. Did you read the report?