12 ms·

Europe's fires are just the start

191 points by andsoitis 3mo ago

toasty228 3mo ago
As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse
- csto12 3mo ago
  > “the people in charge” The everyday person votes for those in charge, and the everyday person couldn’t care less.
  - ZeroGravitas 3mo ago
    Everyday people are generally more pro-renewables and climate action. The politicians can be targeted with bribes by anyone affected by the transition. A classic collective action problem as described by Mancur Olson.
- cbmuser 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway894345 3mo ago
    Who is opposing nuclear power? Or are you trying to imply that advocating for renewables is “opposing nuclear power”?
    - GlacierFox 3mo ago
      [flagged]
    - cbg0 3mo ago
      Plenty of people oppose it, about 36% of Germany for one example https://www.dw.com/en/german-poll-majority-for-return-to-nuclear-energy/a-72139350 https://www.dw.com/en/german-poll-majority-for-return-to-nuc...
      - throwaway894345 3mo ago
        I can't tell from that article whether they're opposed to nuclear energy or whether they don't think nuclear is the best use of the money (e.g., compared with renewables).
    - toasty228 3mo ago
      The french "far" left party getting 30%+ of votes does
      - throwaway894345 3mo ago
        Are they getting 30% of votes because they oppose nuclear power? Is that the single issue for that party's supporters?
    - sobkas 3mo ago
      Water: https://www.dw.com/en/danube-water-levels-hungary-romania-cut-nuclear-output/a-78171891 https://www.dw.com/en/danube-water-levels-hungary-romania-cu...
  - palata 3mo ago
    I'm not into blaming people like this. What we all need to understand is that after oil, we just won't have enough energy to maintain our current way of life. Not just energy by the way: our way of life relies on petrochemical products (from fertilisers to electronics). Solar panels need electronics, we don't know if we can build/maintain them at scale without computers that need petrochemical products. So we need as much as we can of everything. Both renewables and nuclear.
- andsoitis 3mo ago
  > As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, The "people in charge" as well as the "climate experts" are generally aligned on the climate crisis, but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings. Put differently, you can predict and act, according to the trend, but the sudden and unpredictable timing of these swings is a separate, and more difficult issue to navigate. For instance, can anyone predict specifically what will happen "next" and "where" and prepare to mitigate the impact?
  - palata 3mo ago
    This is completely wrong. The climate experts are not surprised by this at all. We've known about it for decades. We just didn't give a shit because it was not impacting us directly. Now it's starting to impact us directly, but we still don't really give a shit. In a few weeks it will be business as usual. It will get worse every year, and we will be more and more willing to do something as it gets worse. But we will have fewer and fewer resources to do it, and less stuff to save (once a forest disappears, you as a human won't see it come back in your lifetime).
    - andsoitis 3mo ago
      [flagged]
  - toasty228 3mo ago
    > but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings It's been predicted for decades, in multiple reports, over and over and over and over again... No excuses > can anyone predict specifically what will happen "next" and "where" and prepare to mitigate the impact? Something bad, duh? And reduce emissions, duh? The things people have been predicting and advocating for during the past like 50 years at that point. Are we still debating these details lol?
    - andsoitis 3mo ago
      [dead]
- palata 3mo ago
  Agreed that the people in charge do nothing and don't understand the problem. However, the people in charge (e.g. in France) are elected by the people, and therefore represent it. Do you think that the far-right will care more about the climate crisis? The French people is likely to elect them next year. It's too easy to vote for people who don't give a shit about the climate crisis, and then blame them. > either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now The faster and the harder we react, the more we save. Fires are a good example: because many trees are burning now (therefore they are already dead) and many trees will burn (because the fire won't magically stop), it's worth fighting to preserve as much as we can. Saying "we won't get those dead trees back, so we may as well let the rest of the forest burn" is counter-productive. We need to act now. And not by electing morons and then blaming them for being morons.
  - andsoitis 3mo ago
    > We need to act now. What does this look like, precisely, in practice?
    - toasty228 3mo ago
      Find the closest maths teacher with a polish last name and ask them
    - adrianN 3mo ago
      The people here maintain a list of things: https://drawdown.org/explorer https://drawdown.org/explorer Chiefly we need to replace fossil fuels with electricity from carbon free sources and electrify transportation, heating, and industry.
      - andsoitis 3mo ago
        > Chiefly we need to replace fossil fuels with electricity from carbon free sources and electrify transportation, heating, and industry. That's happening. For instance, China now generates less than half its energy from coal for the first time, as reported earlier today: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less-than-half-its-electricity-coal-first-time-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less...
- nancyminusone 3mo ago
  In some ways I wonder if these timescales are "beyond comprehension" for most people. You can tell people the temperature will go up in 20 years, but you can't make them feel what it will be like. In the same way you can tell a 10 year old what it's like to be age 35 but they don't get it, and I've heard what it's like to be age 80 but I don't really know and won't for some time.
  - ifwinterco 3mo ago
    Arguably it's rational (though selfish) to think like this. Life is short, there's no point freezing and living off leaves for the next few decades when you'll be old in the blink of an eye anyway
    - palata 3mo ago
      > Arguably it's rational (though selfish) to think like this. Is it? We are not talking about screwing the climate for the people who will come in 200 years, right? In the last decades we have been saying "if we don't change the trend, your children will most likely die because of the climate change". Is it rational to be 30 and not care about the fact that we will be screwed long before we reach the age of retirement?
    - dfxm12 3mo ago
      Setting aside the fact that I want to leave things in a good place for my kids, neighbors' kids, nieces, nephews and all their friends... Setting aside the fact that even if I was so selfish to care about my personal legacy, I'd want the world around long enough to learn about it... there's no point freezing and living off leaves for the next few decades I don't think the ask here is so unreasonable. It's disingenuous to frame it this way.
  - cbg0 3mo ago
    I think we've gotten to the point where the question can be asked looking back, not forward: think back to your childhood and how much things have changed since then? If you've lived long enough you can notice these things. I used to have snow for weeks each winter in my city and now if I get 2-3 days of snow a year it's unusual. Extreme weather events where it rains in one day as much as in one month have become a recurring event to the point we're re-planning sewage systems around these things.
- pengaru 3mo ago
  Politicians are selling to their audiences, there's no more truth in their words than any other sales/marketing scheme. Of course we're fucked.
- tuco86 3mo ago
  I always find it interesting when politicians mention temperature target goals.. what are you still talking about, it's done. We now need to worry about the hundreds of millions of people that are neither asylum migrants or economic migrant but survival migrants. The real discussion will become how we keep those out very soon. And since there are no good solutions from the "good" people who ignored everything and got us into this mess it will be the bad people giving us the only remaining "solution": violence.
  - palata 3mo ago
    > what are you still talking about, it's done It's not. The climate will warm as much as we emit CO2. Sure, the CO2 that we have already emitted won't leave. We've passed 1.5C, that won't come back in our lifetime. But the more we emit, the worse it will get. To keep what we have now, we have to stop emitting entirely, right now. > We now need to worry about the hundreds of millions of people We need to worry about the problems that are coming from the CO2 we have already emitted, that's true. But we also need to worry a lot about the fact that we are making it worse every single day. We are not reducing our CO2 emissions, we are increasing them right now. Are you worried about hundreds of millions of refugees? The way it's going, we'll reach 4C. It means that billions of people will have to move. I don't think we can still use the concept of "refugee" when its entire countries that need to move because their part of the world has become so hot that humans cannot survive outside without life support (that's what will happen to billions of people with 4C). At this point, it's entire countries moving with their military, it's just global war.
    - tuco86 3mo ago
      hundreds of millions of people coming to europe (i didn't mention) is still lowballing on purpose. sure it's billions, but not all will go to one place was my thinking here. you are talking reason, you are in the wrong timeline buddy. i'm talking about what we will chose as a society, i feel we can't help ourselves. You can convince a person (me certainly) that we should stop immediately (or very very short time frame). But most people have experienced their entire lifetime of propaganda and fallacious arguments that words and reason have lost all meaning. We are still getting cooked so slowly that people will only see unrelated incidents for a long time. World War(s) 3 is what the survivors will call it.
- throw0101d 3mo ago
  > As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The oil companies in the 1970s for one: * https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063
- dismalaf 3mo ago
  It's a prisoners dilemma. No country can risk de-growth or not develop because some countries either DGAF or actively want climate change to happen (Russia) and will gladly take advantage of anyone who lets their guard down. The only way climate change stops is with a technological solution.
postoplust 3mo ago
http://archive.today/o61rE http://archive.today/o61rE
- vachina 3mo ago
  Using nextDNS, this page redirects me to a Russian ISP (TTK) block page for some reason and I’m nowhere near Russia (!)
- krowek 3mo ago
  Never seen the point of sharing a paywall article in HN... This helps.
palata 3mo ago
There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now, because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get worse, and worse, and worse. And save what we can. Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? Wait until your biggest worry is food.
- ben30 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  https://www.jameslovelock.org/the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-morbid-fever-that-may-last-as-long-as-100000-years/ https://www.jameslovelock.org/the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-... https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceo... https://rogerhallam.com/the-insurance-industry-predicts-mass-death-what-do-we-do-about-it/ https://rogerhallam.com/the-insurance-industry-predicts-mass... https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.pdf https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p...
- chipost 3mo ago
  [dead]
- cbmuser 3mo ago
  As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.
  - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
    While I would agree that it is regrettable Germany sunset their nuclear early when they should've extended the runtime for another 5-10 years to avoid excess carbon emissions since shutdown, but clean energy has already surpassed coal in Germany and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. [My note: The US states of Illinois and California got this right, subsidizing their existing merchant nuclear generator fleets until more renewables can replace them] Largest battery storage in Germany set for partial commissioning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 - July 2026 Analysis: Wind and solar power overtake fossil fuels in Germany for first time ever - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-overtake-fossil-fuels-in-germany-for-first-time-ever https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-ov... - July 28th, 2026 > Germany has various targets in place that require a rapid expansion of wind and solar power, including cutting economy-wide emissions to net-zero by 2045. The nation is also aiming to increase renewables’ share of electricity consumption to 80% by 2030 to achieve a “largely climate neutral” power system by 2035. It's time to get over the nuclear issue, it's history. It takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid, and tens of billions of dollars or euros. Germany deploys ~2GW/month of solar. Total global nuclear generation capacity is ~380GW as of this comment. At current global solar PV deployment rates, even assuming capacity factor delta between solar and nuclear, you could replace total global nuclear generation with ~18 months of solar PV deployment. Batteries and solar will continue to rapidly decline in cost, nuclear will not. (total annual solar PV deployment is approaching, but not quite yet, at 1TW/year, and continues to increase year over year) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
fasteddie31003 3mo ago
What ever happened to biomass energy? I'd rather burn wood in a controlled way that produces the best possible exhaust than have it burn uncontrolled. Encouraging biomass energy would create a market and economic incentives to manage forests.
- WarmWash 3mo ago
  Have you ever been in a "farmed" forest? It's basically devoid of life besides trees. It's weird as hell.
hn4jkltkab 3mo ago
[dead]
world2vec 3mo ago
"Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough." Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere. I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again... It's only going to get worse.
- Carrok 3mo ago
  > All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere. Good luck doing any work in the winter in places like, oh say, the Rocky Mountains.
  - bluGill 3mo ago
    Every forest has different needs. OP is in Portugal, I don't know much about forest there, but the plan seems reasonable for there. The Rocky Mountains need a different plan, but it isn't much different.
    - Carrok 3mo ago
      Portugal is 35k square miles. The Rockies are 300k square miles, much of it, notably, is mountainous. I do not think “cleaning” it is going to work, so I’m curious what this “not much different” plan looks like.
      - bluGill 3mo ago
        See a forester. I would not assume the entire Rockies need the same plan. In general I would say start fires near towns, and let fires that start elsewhere burn.
ifwinterco 3mo ago
I was getting a bit worried so it's good to see an economist headline saying this will happen - now I can relax
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  I get your sarcasm but it's good that a paper very strongly focused on economic activity is on board with the need to tackle climate change. A couple decades ago all the capitalist neoliberal institutions were still trying too pooh-pooh it all under the rug. That is truly over, with the current US administration as the only significant exception.
1970-01-01 3mo ago
Consequences of inaction, as predicted, will continue until you can't live there anymore.
gttalbot 3mo ago
See also: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5977751-trump-federal-judiciary-manual-review/ https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5977751-trump-f... There's a point where "head in stand" becomes deliberately malicious.
dwoldrich 3mo ago
Sounds like a threat
sajithdilshan 3mo ago
People are truly having a climate change discussion fatigue. They hear all the time from politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. that they should stop eating meat, should not drive non-electric vehicles, should not use AC, reduce consumption, and all other bullshit while the people preaching those have started wars that emit billions of tons of carbon, travel on their private planes to climate change summits, taking their private plane to ski in Aspen and throw lavish parties to celebrate birthdays, etc. It's basically normal people should sacrifice their standards of livings and pay taxes to reduce carbon emission while the same rules doesn't apply for the other class of the society. Most people are living pay check to pay check and out of all the worries in their minds, climate change is the last thing they can afford to worry about.
- teh64 3mo ago
  Well climate change is happening whether wealthy people are hypocrites or not. Also there a lot of people in very poor countries (india, south east asia, africa) that are already feeling the effects and need to worry about it a lot. I would actually say rich people can afford the most to not worry about climate change, because they can stave off the effects better than poor people (moving to colder climates, building cooling systems, or fleeing to mars [1]) [1] https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars
  - sajithdilshan 3mo ago
    > Well climate change is happening whether wealthy people are hypocrites or not. Also there a lot of people in very poor countries (india, south east asia, africa) that are already feeling the effects and need to worry about it a lot. no shit sherlock, poor people in those countries have been suffering from starvation, diseases and lack of basic necessities even before the climate change was a thing. For them, it's just another misery on top of their already miserable lives. Nobody gave a shit about those people in poor countries 20-30 years ago, all of a sudden everyone is worries about climate change because Europe is burning. Had it been a monsoon flooding or a drought in South Asia, nobody in the Economist would even bat an eye, let alone publish an article.
  - 3mo ago
javea71 3mo ago
Arson is the main culprit not climate change
- cbg0 3mo ago
  [citation needed]
- backscratches 3mo ago
  Climate change made the forests drier so the effects of arson are worse.
jmclnx 3mo ago
So Economist is now stating Climate Change is an issue. Where was that magazine in the 80s and 90s. Oh, the were writing how fossil fuels are still a good investment and are still the future. And I expect they stated Trump was the better choice in 2020 and 2024. So in 2026, this magazine (and others) are reporting how +2C will be far worse than +1.5C. How about reporting stopping at +2C is a pipe dream. We are heading straight to +3C and probably +4C. Time to start reporting on how we need to stop using fossil fuels now, not later. But even doing that really will not stop us from reaching +2.5C due to inaction by world Gov. over the last 50 years.
- mikhailfranco 3mo ago
  Their infamous editorial Drowning in oil (4 March 1999) bottom-ticked the oil price.
WarmWash 3mo ago
Don't worry we will end up spraying the atmosphere to buy more time, and the Earth will cool, and people will believe that the problem is solved and we can just go back to burning fossil fuels. So the fighting will continue while we keep duct taping and band aiding the problem.
nancyminusone 3mo ago
>by the end of the century Maybe I've missed it because I don't follow news on this much (apart from "it will get warmer/worse"), but what happens after that? Seems like I've been hearing "by 2100" for the last 20 years, but now that's only 74 years away. Some people alive today will live to see it. Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster?
- palata 3mo ago
  > Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? It will get warmer for every kg of CO2 we emit. If we emitted less every day, it would still warm, but slower. Right now we are emitting more every day, so it will warm faster and faster. > Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster? It's always worth discussing. It is not linear: every extra degree makes it a lot worse than the previous one. We're finding it worrying now with 1.5C? We should do everything we can to stay as close as possible to it. Probably we cannot avoid 2C, and if we keep going with the current emissions, that's 4C. 4C means that billions of people have to leave their country. I think it pretty much means that more than half of us die in a global war? There is hope: we don't have to reach 4C. But we have to change our way of life for that. Which should be worth it, right? I'm ready to change my way of life to... survive.
nullderef 3mo ago
Our software and AI capabilities have improved astronomically… but nature is still nature. Working with the physical world is still so hard. Humbling, in a way.
Hasz 3mo ago
bah, all is not lost. Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt. Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it). It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
- wongarsu 3mo ago
  I'm not sure there are all that many winners. There are those that lose big time with some places potentially becoming uninhabitable, and those that merely have to spend a fortune on new flood prevention infrastructure, deal with massive changes to how they do agriculture and forestry in a new climate, and in the future deal with streams of climate refugees from countries on the list of even bigger losers. Russia and Canada might end up winning from this, but for everyone else it seems like a big negative, with some silver linings
  - Hasz 3mo ago
    Climate change will almost surely increase growing seasons and agricultural productivity in higher latitudes (for some crops). It will be extremely crop and cultivar dependent, I expect lots of R&D to go into crops that can deal with wider vairety, and generally hotter, conditions. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4974 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4974
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
- kingleopold 3mo ago
  that carbon capture tech is called tree/forest btw. if we plant trillions of trees, we win, not sure how many millions of people and years it would take. probably less than half a war
- AlecSchueler 3mo ago
  Where "winning" means surviving in relative comfort until global society disintegrates into a constant state of famine and war and you run out of local resources. > Give me... Who's going to give you any of this in time?
0x_rs 3mo ago
Europe (and the world at large, really) can either wait for its demise, through increasingly oppressive climate hostile to human occupation and de-industrialization while the rest of the world continues on the current trajectory, or start getting its shit together and immediately commence climate engineering on a continental scale. Start with stratospheric aerosol injection, and mandate it not unlike "sustainable" aviation fuels on aircraft flying at the minimum altitude required to have any effect, as it should be possible [0], expedite research into other climate engineering efforts including space-based ones, promptly address the complete and utter reliance on fossil fuels and those profiting from it.. if climate change isn't something worth approaching as a war would be, then there's no point discussing it at all. Researchers and journals have been warning of crossing the point of no return and temperature targets for years now, you either submit to it and keep chasing emission reduction targets, or take action. The idea of simply "adapting to it getting worse" is suicidal, hard to sell to the public and depends on bureaucrats not getting kicked out. 0. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024EF005567 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
- toasty228 3mo ago
  We can't trust them for asbestos and leaded gas but we'll trust them with "stratospheric aerosol injection"... God know what unknown complex system will fuck up and end up making things 10x worse. We'll do literally everything besides consuming and producing less
  - 0x_rs 3mo ago
    Neither of those two have anything to do with the suggested technique(s). Humans are already engaging in climate engineering through existing at any meaningful rhythm necessary to sustain 8 billion people on the planet, it's merely by side-effect, aimless, and lacking any coordination and agency. You are not getting billions of people to "consume" and "produce" less. What you're engaging in right now is no different from what oil companies did decades ago in a coordinated effort, shifting blame onto the consumers, and ultimately the swindling of the century when it comes to environmentalism, see [0] for a quick example. You're free to succumb through inaction, the rest of us would rather not, and never depend on failing, moving emission targets dependent on the whims of politicians and the masses electing them, proven to be incapable of entertaining any abstract long-term planning, let alone sticking to it. It's unfathomable some would prefer entertaining the idea of humanity fundamentally altering its nature rather than actively making up for the effects they are influencing while addressing them, through technology available today, but you must've already given up to believe this is "the new normal" like you said. 0. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
liendolucas 3mo ago
I'm a firm believer that sooner or later we will be extinct by extreme heat and suffocation. Two weeks ago here in Umbria, Italy the heat was extreme. It was 40°C without a breeze of air, it literally felt like braathing hot air. One morning while I was walking I couldn't believe the amount of dry leaves on the street, by pictures people would have guessed that it was autumn. I have a really good tolerance to high temperatures but this time I got home very dizzy. Hope is not too late to revert the current situation, but realistically year after year temperatures have been raising steadly.
- downrightmike 3mo ago
  This has happened to the earth before, the earth will change, Northern Atlantic will freeze over, stopping the currents of the ocean, and raise water levels at least several meters, enough to flood most cities on the East Coast.
  - toasty228 3mo ago
    It never happened this fast, by a fat margin
    - downrightmike 3mo ago
      yup. we are probably burning 10k years of fossilized plant matter every year. The biosphere can't handle that.
- teravor 3mo ago
  above ~35 C a breeze makes it worse.
gmuslera 3mo ago
This year Europe's fires are not the start. Few years ago we had very extended Australia fires, US/Canada fires, and other not so put in the spotlight fires in other countries around the world. At some point they diverged enough from normal to reach a scale that raised enough eyebrows. And it is not just forest fires. Floods caused by extreme rainfalls, running out of letters in hurricane seasons, once in a century/millenia extreme weather events happening several times in a decade are increasingly noticeable, and they are just symptoms of bigger but harder to directly perceive global trends like that the global yearly average temperature increased a few tens of degrees or that the ocean is winning heat at a rate of 6 Hiroshima bombs per second.
rimworld 3mo ago
strong El Niño event
drtgh 3mo ago
In my country (EU) when large-scale land-use projects are approved —such as solar panel farms, mining operations, and buildings construction— fires break out and they burn everything in their path, tens of thousands of hectares. This -often- even happens the day after the project's approval (they are not scared). Time ago, laws that prevented construction on protected land after a fire were removed (included more sabotages on prevention that came after that. This along two different governments of supposedly opposite colors). On television such fires were/are sold/brainwashed as climate change, rather than corruption and psychopaths. I would recommend to keep an eye on this things, to investigate possible motivations, independently, fire by fire.
jojocool0501 3mo ago
For those who have heard enough of "As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse", these rabbit holes I recently discovered : new science about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump. You can look up : Antonio Donato Nobre, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva and go from there. The science is NOT settled, and people are still learning how all this works. They may all be crooks for all i know. But as is mentionned in another comment, "(...)stop eating meat, stop driving non-electric vehicles, stop using AC, reduce consumption (...)" won't save us if indeed the massive hits to old-growth forest doom us anyhow. Arguing for arguing’s sake gets old fast when there is nothing left to drink.
delegate 3mo ago
I was expecting to learn something new from this article, instead I got a bunch of numbers and a careful number of deaths from smoke 'by the end of the century' prediction. What end of the century ? The way things are going, these cities (in Europe) are going to be unlivable by the end of this decade. They already are. And the fires.. Numbers, percentages, increases, excess, estimated.. We've constructed this abstract parallel universe in which we comfortably live in front of the screens.. and then wonder why the world around us is burning. Climate change.. Such a comfortable word behind which we can all hide and dispel the responsibility for a life of copious comfort and pleasure. It's the avocado toasts, the leather jackets, the 1-click-checkouts, the weekend flight to Barcelona, the CL=F price, the bonuses, the 'natural resources' there for us to use and exploit in infinite amounts.. The whole fucking system. That's why the world is burning. Yeah, I'm guilty of all of the above too. And I have no solution. Just blowing out the smoke from those fires.
jasonvorhe 3mo ago
I've seen too many videos of people deliberately creating these fires to believe a single "this is because of human made climate change".
- backscratches 3mo ago
  The climate change part is the heat making the forests more dry so the manmade fires get bigger.
lofaszvanitt 3mo ago
These firefighting solutions... aren't they a bit outdated and cumbersome? I mean essentially moving water into a given area by planes, copters and vehicles seems a bit primitive, isn't it?
pstuart 3mo ago
We collectively deserve this. The warnings came, but it was framed as "future generations will face these problems", and we collectively kicked the can down the road. I say "collectively" because many of us don't deserve this and have wanted desperately to address it head on to try and mitigate the damage. But the scope of this problem makes individual contributions effectively meaningless. It's not clear how bad it has to get before meaningful action takes place. But it will undoubtedly be too little, too late. I think part of the path to try and address this is to have stories that paint a clear and simple picture of what that would look like and how it would be done. Even then, the issue has been heavily politicized to make it an us versus them problem rather than an "all of us" problem.
- backscratches 3mo ago
  small correction: only individual contributions are meaningful. If I consume less and you consume less and many other individuals consume less there simply won't be as much demand for fossil fuels. The only way I can understand your premise of helplessness is that it provides a convenient excuse for you not to do anything to help. Do you think companies will keep burning fuel at the exact same rate if a billion individuals dont incentivize them to?
a34729t 3mo ago
Any reason SpaceX cannot just build a giant solar shade at L1? This seems fairly doable on the decade timescale, plus it could do double duty as a weapon.
- margalabargala 3mo ago
  I did the math out on this for fun a couple years ago. It came put surprisingly reasonable. Taking estimates for Starship payload to Mars as the likely payload to L1, carrying to L1 enough thin reflective mylar film to block around 0.5% of light to earth would cost between $80-100 billion. Which is a lot but not nearly as much as I expected and not outside the realm of possibility.
- squibonpig 3mo ago
  I love how you didn't even take a beat before suggesting that it be used as a weapon.
mikhailfranco 3mo ago
Counter argument from Matt Ridley: Why the flames of Britain's wildfires have been fanned by the Green agenda as much as the weather https://www.dailymail.com/debate/article-16017973/Britains-wildfires-Green-agenda-weather-MATT-RIDLEY.html https://www.dailymail.com/debate/article-16017973/Britains-w...
- ZeroGravitas 3mo ago
  Matt Ridley the coal-mine owning climate-change denier? I guess disasters might be his area of expertise since he once crashed a bank and led the official pro-Brexit campaign, but the other stuff seems like a conflict of interest.
- defrost 3mo ago
  Now do Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Gotta get all the both sides of climate change deniers.
- Arodex 3mo ago
  And what is the responsibility of the Greens in the lack of rain that causes Swiss cows to be moved back from their fields? https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secheresse-en-suisse-des-eleveurs-obliges-de-redescendre-les-troupeaux-29316753.html https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secher... And what is the responsibility of the Greens in the acidification of the oceans? Etc, etc, etc.
mbmbn 3mo ago
“French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned the country "is going through an unprecedented fire season", with 116,085 hectares (286,852 acres) burned and 13,566 fire starts recorded since January. The minister revealed in a post on X that nine out of 10 fires "are human-caused and most arise from carelessness: a cigarette butt, a barbecue, work carried out without precaution".” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg34128nvpo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg34128nvpo
JJTikTok 3mo ago
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pvaldes 3mo ago
Natural causes discarded in the wildfire of Vall d'Uixó in Castellon, Spain. The police suspects that this was (also) provoked. With a perimeter of 67 Km, the wildfire started in several points at the same time, has devastated 7500 hectares and displaced or confined 38000 people. This is not even a start, is a: will continue until we address the elephant in the room: Too much of this wildfires are arson by proxy. Crime is always the biggest category in the chart of known causes, and natural causes are always the smaller one (and a very small one indeed, between 5 and 10% or so). So without criminals, lets say 90% of those forests would keep evolving towards a less and less flammable state and the soil would keep sequestrating carbon, that is exactly what we want and need. Or would be logged, sequestrating carbon also. Instead to pour acid raining over Europe, why if we try first to harden the current laws, remove the economical rewards, and fight the disinformation campaigns of farm trolls (always deployed at the same periods), until the incentives to burn are reduced?
- pvaldes 3mo ago
  The new wildfire started in Extremadura two days ago has been provoked also.

191 points by andsoitis 3mo ago

As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse

csto12 3mo ago
> “the people in charge” The everyday person votes for those in charge, and the everyday person couldn’t care less.
- ZeroGravitas 3mo ago
  Everyday people are generally more pro-renewables and climate action. The politicians can be targeted with bribes by anyone affected by the transition. A classic collective action problem as described by Mancur Olson.
cbmuser 3mo ago
[flagged]
- throwaway894345 3mo ago
  Who is opposing nuclear power? Or are you trying to imply that advocating for renewables is “opposing nuclear power”?
  - GlacierFox 3mo ago
    [flagged]
  - cbg0 3mo ago
    Plenty of people oppose it, about 36% of Germany for one example https://www.dw.com/en/german-poll-majority-for-return-to-nuclear-energy/a-72139350 https://www.dw.com/en/german-poll-majority-for-return-to-nuc...
    - throwaway894345 3mo ago
      I can't tell from that article whether they're opposed to nuclear energy or whether they don't think nuclear is the best use of the money (e.g., compared with renewables).
  - toasty228 3mo ago
    The french "far" left party getting 30%+ of votes does
    - throwaway894345 3mo ago
      Are they getting 30% of votes because they oppose nuclear power? Is that the single issue for that party's supporters?
  - sobkas 3mo ago
    Water: https://www.dw.com/en/danube-water-levels-hungary-romania-cut-nuclear-output/a-78171891 https://www.dw.com/en/danube-water-levels-hungary-romania-cu...
- palata 3mo ago
  I'm not into blaming people like this. What we all need to understand is that after oil, we just won't have enough energy to maintain our current way of life. Not just energy by the way: our way of life relies on petrochemical products (from fertilisers to electronics). Solar panels need electronics, we don't know if we can build/maintain them at scale without computers that need petrochemical products. So we need as much as we can of everything. Both renewables and nuclear.
andsoitis 3mo ago
> As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, The "people in charge" as well as the "climate experts" are generally aligned on the climate crisis, but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings. Put differently, you can predict and act, according to the trend, but the sudden and unpredictable timing of these swings is a separate, and more difficult issue to navigate. For instance, can anyone predict specifically what will happen "next" and "where" and prepare to mitigate the impact?
- palata 3mo ago
  This is completely wrong. The climate experts are not surprised by this at all. We've known about it for decades. We just didn't give a shit because it was not impacting us directly. Now it's starting to impact us directly, but we still don't really give a shit. In a few weeks it will be business as usual. It will get worse every year, and we will be more and more willing to do something as it gets worse. But we will have fewer and fewer resources to do it, and less stuff to save (once a forest disappears, you as a human won't see it come back in your lifetime).
  - andsoitis 3mo ago
    [flagged]
- toasty228 3mo ago
  > but everyone has been surprised by unexpected acceleration and the very sudden swings It's been predicted for decades, in multiple reports, over and over and over and over again... No excuses > can anyone predict specifically what will happen "next" and "where" and prepare to mitigate the impact? Something bad, duh? And reduce emissions, duh? The things people have been predicting and advocating for during the past like 50 years at that point. Are we still debating these details lol?
  - andsoitis 3mo ago
    [dead]
palata 3mo ago
Agreed that the people in charge do nothing and don't understand the problem. However, the people in charge (e.g. in France) are elected by the people, and therefore represent it. Do you think that the far-right will care more about the climate crisis? The French people is likely to elect them next year. It's too easy to vote for people who don't give a shit about the climate crisis, and then blame them. > either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now The faster and the harder we react, the more we save. Fires are a good example: because many trees are burning now (therefore they are already dead) and many trees will burn (because the fire won't magically stop), it's worth fighting to preserve as much as we can. Saying "we won't get those dead trees back, so we may as well let the rest of the forest burn" is counter-productive. We need to act now. And not by electing morons and then blaming them for being morons.
- andsoitis 3mo ago
  > We need to act now. What does this look like, precisely, in practice?
  - toasty228 3mo ago
    Find the closest maths teacher with a polish last name and ask them
  - adrianN 3mo ago
    The people here maintain a list of things: https://drawdown.org/explorer https://drawdown.org/explorer Chiefly we need to replace fossil fuels with electricity from carbon free sources and electrify transportation, heating, and industry.
    - andsoitis 3mo ago
      > Chiefly we need to replace fossil fuels with electricity from carbon free sources and electrify transportation, heating, and industry. That's happening. For instance, China now generates less than half its energy from coal for the first time, as reported earlier today: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less-than-half-its-electricity-coal-first-time-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less...
nancyminusone 3mo ago
In some ways I wonder if these timescales are "beyond comprehension" for most people. You can tell people the temperature will go up in 20 years, but you can't make them feel what it will be like. In the same way you can tell a 10 year old what it's like to be age 35 but they don't get it, and I've heard what it's like to be age 80 but I don't really know and won't for some time.
- ifwinterco 3mo ago
  Arguably it's rational (though selfish) to think like this. Life is short, there's no point freezing and living off leaves for the next few decades when you'll be old in the blink of an eye anyway
  - palata 3mo ago
    > Arguably it's rational (though selfish) to think like this. Is it? We are not talking about screwing the climate for the people who will come in 200 years, right? In the last decades we have been saying "if we don't change the trend, your children will most likely die because of the climate change". Is it rational to be 30 and not care about the fact that we will be screwed long before we reach the age of retirement?
  - dfxm12 3mo ago
    Setting aside the fact that I want to leave things in a good place for my kids, neighbors' kids, nieces, nephews and all their friends... Setting aside the fact that even if I was so selfish to care about my personal legacy, I'd want the world around long enough to learn about it... there's no point freezing and living off leaves for the next few decades I don't think the ask here is so unreasonable. It's disingenuous to frame it this way.
- cbg0 3mo ago
  I think we've gotten to the point where the question can be asked looking back, not forward: think back to your childhood and how much things have changed since then? If you've lived long enough you can notice these things. I used to have snow for weeks each winter in my city and now if I get 2-3 days of snow a year it's unusual. Extreme weather events where it rains in one day as much as in one month have become a recurring event to the point we're re-planning sewage systems around these things.
pengaru 3mo ago
Politicians are selling to their audiences, there's no more truth in their words than any other sales/marketing scheme. Of course we're fucked.
tuco86 3mo ago
I always find it interesting when politicians mention temperature target goals.. what are you still talking about, it's done. We now need to worry about the hundreds of millions of people that are neither asylum migrants or economic migrant but survival migrants. The real discussion will become how we keep those out very soon. And since there are no good solutions from the "good" people who ignored everything and got us into this mess it will be the bad people giving us the only remaining "solution": violence.
- palata 3mo ago
  > what are you still talking about, it's done It's not. The climate will warm as much as we emit CO2. Sure, the CO2 that we have already emitted won't leave. We've passed 1.5C, that won't come back in our lifetime. But the more we emit, the worse it will get. To keep what we have now, we have to stop emitting entirely, right now. > We now need to worry about the hundreds of millions of people We need to worry about the problems that are coming from the CO2 we have already emitted, that's true. But we also need to worry a lot about the fact that we are making it worse every single day. We are not reducing our CO2 emissions, we are increasing them right now. Are you worried about hundreds of millions of refugees? The way it's going, we'll reach 4C. It means that billions of people will have to move. I don't think we can still use the concept of "refugee" when its entire countries that need to move because their part of the world has become so hot that humans cannot survive outside without life support (that's what will happen to billions of people with 4C). At this point, it's entire countries moving with their military, it's just global war.
  - tuco86 3mo ago
    hundreds of millions of people coming to europe (i didn't mention) is still lowballing on purpose. sure it's billions, but not all will go to one place was my thinking here. you are talking reason, you are in the wrong timeline buddy. i'm talking about what we will chose as a society, i feel we can't help ourselves. You can convince a person (me certainly) that we should stop immediately (or very very short time frame). But most people have experienced their entire lifetime of propaganda and fallacious arguments that words and reason have lost all meaning. We are still getting cooked so slowly that people will only see unrelated incidents for a long time. World War(s) 3 is what the survivors will call it.
throw0101d 3mo ago
> As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?" The oil companies in the 1970s for one: * https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063
dismalaf 3mo ago
It's a prisoners dilemma. No country can risk de-growth or not develop because some countries either DGAF or actively want climate change to happen (Russia) and will gladly take advantage of anyone who lets their guard down. The only way climate change stops is with a technological solution.

postoplust 3mo ago

http://archive.today/o61rE http://archive.today/o61rE

vachina 3mo ago
Using nextDNS, this page redirects me to a Russian ISP (TTK) block page for some reason and I’m nowhere near Russia (!)
krowek 3mo ago
Never seen the point of sharing a paywall article in HN... This helps.

palata 3mo ago

There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now, because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get worse, and worse, and worse. And save what we can. Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? Wait until your biggest worry is food.

ben30 3mo ago
[flagged]
toomuchtodo 3mo ago
https://www.jameslovelock.org/the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-morbid-fever-that-may-last-as-long-as-100000-years/ https://www.jameslovelock.org/the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-... https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceo... https://rogerhallam.com/the-insurance-industry-predicts-mass-death-what-do-we-do-about-it/ https://rogerhallam.com/the-insurance-industry-predicts-mass... https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.pdf https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p...
chipost 3mo ago
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cbmuser 3mo ago
As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  While I would agree that it is regrettable Germany sunset their nuclear early when they should've extended the runtime for another 5-10 years to avoid excess carbon emissions since shutdown, but clean energy has already surpassed coal in Germany and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. [My note: The US states of Illinois and California got this right, subsidizing their existing merchant nuclear generator fleets until more renewables can replace them] Largest battery storage in Germany set for partial commissioning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 - July 2026 Analysis: Wind and solar power overtake fossil fuels in Germany for first time ever - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-overtake-fossil-fuels-in-germany-for-first-time-ever https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-ov... - July 28th, 2026 > Germany has various targets in place that require a rapid expansion of wind and solar power, including cutting economy-wide emissions to net-zero by 2045. The nation is also aiming to increase renewables’ share of electricity consumption to 80% by 2030 to achieve a “largely climate neutral” power system by 2035. It's time to get over the nuclear issue, it's history. It takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid, and tens of billions of dollars or euros. Germany deploys ~2GW/month of solar. Total global nuclear generation capacity is ~380GW as of this comment. At current global solar PV deployment rates, even assuming capacity factor delta between solar and nuclear, you could replace total global nuclear generation with ~18 months of solar PV deployment. Batteries and solar will continue to rapidly decline in cost, nuclear will not. (total annual solar PV deployment is approaching, but not quite yet, at 1TW/year, and continues to increase year over year) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

fasteddie31003 3mo ago

What ever happened to biomass energy? I'd rather burn wood in a controlled way that produces the best possible exhaust than have it burn uncontrolled. Encouraging biomass energy would create a market and economic incentives to manage forests.

WarmWash 3mo ago
Have you ever been in a "farmed" forest? It's basically devoid of life besides trees. It's weird as hell.

hn4jkltkab 3mo ago

[dead]

world2vec 3mo ago

"Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough." Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere. I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again... It's only going to get worse.

Carrok 3mo ago
> All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere. Good luck doing any work in the winter in places like, oh say, the Rocky Mountains.
- bluGill 3mo ago
  Every forest has different needs. OP is in Portugal, I don't know much about forest there, but the plan seems reasonable for there. The Rocky Mountains need a different plan, but it isn't much different.
  - Carrok 3mo ago
    Portugal is 35k square miles. The Rockies are 300k square miles, much of it, notably, is mountainous. I do not think “cleaning” it is going to work, so I’m curious what this “not much different” plan looks like.
    - bluGill 3mo ago
      See a forester. I would not assume the entire Rockies need the same plan. In general I would say start fires near towns, and let fires that start elsewhere burn.

ifwinterco 3mo ago

I was getting a bit worried so it's good to see an economist headline saying this will happen - now I can relax

wolvoleo 3mo ago
I get your sarcasm but it's good that a paper very strongly focused on economic activity is on board with the need to tackle climate change. A couple decades ago all the capitalist neoliberal institutions were still trying too pooh-pooh it all under the rug. That is truly over, with the current US administration as the only significant exception.

1970-01-01 3mo ago

Consequences of inaction, as predicted, will continue until you can't live there anymore.

gttalbot 3mo ago

See also: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5977751-trump-federal-judiciary-manual-review/ https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5977751-trump-f... There's a point where "head in stand" becomes deliberately malicious.

dwoldrich 3mo ago

Sounds like a threat

sajithdilshan 3mo ago

People are truly having a climate change discussion fatigue. They hear all the time from politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. that they should stop eating meat, should not drive non-electric vehicles, should not use AC, reduce consumption, and all other bullshit while the people preaching those have started wars that emit billions of tons of carbon, travel on their private planes to climate change summits, taking their private plane to ski in Aspen and throw lavish parties to celebrate birthdays, etc. It's basically normal people should sacrifice their standards of livings and pay taxes to reduce carbon emission while the same rules doesn't apply for the other class of the society. Most people are living pay check to pay check and out of all the worries in their minds, climate change is the last thing they can afford to worry about.

teh64 3mo ago
Well climate change is happening whether wealthy people are hypocrites or not. Also there a lot of people in very poor countries (india, south east asia, africa) that are already feeling the effects and need to worry about it a lot. I would actually say rich people can afford the most to not worry about climate change, because they can stave off the effects better than poor people (moving to colder climates, building cooling systems, or fleeing to mars [1]) [1] https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars
- sajithdilshan 3mo ago
  > Well climate change is happening whether wealthy people are hypocrites or not. Also there a lot of people in very poor countries (india, south east asia, africa) that are already feeling the effects and need to worry about it a lot. no shit sherlock, poor people in those countries have been suffering from starvation, diseases and lack of basic necessities even before the climate change was a thing. For them, it's just another misery on top of their already miserable lives. Nobody gave a shit about those people in poor countries 20-30 years ago, all of a sudden everyone is worries about climate change because Europe is burning. Had it been a monsoon flooding or a drought in South Asia, nobody in the Economist would even bat an eye, let alone publish an article.
- 3mo ago

javea71 3mo ago

Arson is the main culprit not climate change

cbg0 3mo ago
[citation needed]
backscratches 3mo ago
Climate change made the forests drier so the effects of arson are worse.

jmclnx 3mo ago

So Economist is now stating Climate Change is an issue. Where was that magazine in the 80s and 90s. Oh, the were writing how fossil fuels are still a good investment and are still the future. And I expect they stated Trump was the better choice in 2020 and 2024. So in 2026, this magazine (and others) are reporting how +2C will be far worse than +1.5C. How about reporting stopping at +2C is a pipe dream. We are heading straight to +3C and probably +4C. Time to start reporting on how we need to stop using fossil fuels now, not later. But even doing that really will not stop us from reaching +2.5C due to inaction by world Gov. over the last 50 years.

mikhailfranco 3mo ago
Their infamous editorial Drowning in oil (4 March 1999) bottom-ticked the oil price.

WarmWash 3mo ago

Don't worry we will end up spraying the atmosphere to buy more time, and the Earth will cool, and people will believe that the problem is solved and we can just go back to burning fossil fuels. So the fighting will continue while we keep duct taping and band aiding the problem.

nancyminusone 3mo ago

>by the end of the century Maybe I've missed it because I don't follow news on this much (apart from "it will get warmer/worse"), but what happens after that? Seems like I've been hearing "by 2100" for the last 20 years, but now that's only 74 years away. Some people alive today will live to see it. Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster?

palata 3mo ago
> Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? It will get warmer for every kg of CO2 we emit. If we emitted less every day, it would still warm, but slower. Right now we are emitting more every day, so it will warm faster and faster. > Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster? It's always worth discussing. It is not linear: every extra degree makes it a lot worse than the previous one. We're finding it worrying now with 1.5C? We should do everything we can to stay as close as possible to it. Probably we cannot avoid 2C, and if we keep going with the current emissions, that's 4C. 4C means that billions of people have to leave their country. I think it pretty much means that more than half of us die in a global war? There is hope: we don't have to reach 4C. But we have to change our way of life for that. Which should be worth it, right? I'm ready to change my way of life to... survive.

nullderef 3mo ago

Our software and AI capabilities have improved astronomically… but nature is still nature. Working with the physical world is still so hard. Humbling, in a way.

Hasz 3mo ago

bah, all is not lost. Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt. Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it). It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.

wongarsu 3mo ago
I'm not sure there are all that many winners. There are those that lose big time with some places potentially becoming uninhabitable, and those that merely have to spend a fortune on new flood prevention infrastructure, deal with massive changes to how they do agriculture and forestry in a new climate, and in the future deal with streams of climate refugees from countries on the list of even bigger losers. Russia and Canada might end up winning from this, but for everyone else it seems like a big negative, with some silver linings
- Hasz 3mo ago
  Climate change will almost surely increase growing seasons and agricultural productivity in higher latitudes (for some crops). It will be extremely crop and cultivar dependent, I expect lots of R&D to go into crops that can deal with wider vairety, and generally hotter, conditions. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4974 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4974
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
kingleopold 3mo ago
that carbon capture tech is called tree/forest btw. if we plant trillions of trees, we win, not sure how many millions of people and years it would take. probably less than half a war
AlecSchueler 3mo ago
Where "winning" means surviving in relative comfort until global society disintegrates into a constant state of famine and war and you run out of local resources. > Give me... Who's going to give you any of this in time?

0x_rs 3mo ago

Europe (and the world at large, really) can either wait for its demise, through increasingly oppressive climate hostile to human occupation and de-industrialization while the rest of the world continues on the current trajectory, or start getting its shit together and immediately commence climate engineering on a continental scale. Start with stratospheric aerosol injection, and mandate it not unlike "sustainable" aviation fuels on aircraft flying at the minimum altitude required to have any effect, as it should be possible [0], expedite research into other climate engineering efforts including space-based ones, promptly address the complete and utter reliance on fossil fuels and those profiting from it.. if climate change isn't something worth approaching as a war would be, then there's no point discussing it at all. Researchers and journals have been warning of crossing the point of no return and temperature targets for years now, you either submit to it and keep chasing emission reduction targets, or take action. The idea of simply "adapting to it getting worse" is suicidal, hard to sell to the public and depends on bureaucrats not getting kicked out. 0. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024EF005567 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

toasty228 3mo ago
We can't trust them for asbestos and leaded gas but we'll trust them with "stratospheric aerosol injection"... God know what unknown complex system will fuck up and end up making things 10x worse. We'll do literally everything besides consuming and producing less
- 0x_rs 3mo ago
  Neither of those two have anything to do with the suggested technique(s). Humans are already engaging in climate engineering through existing at any meaningful rhythm necessary to sustain 8 billion people on the planet, it's merely by side-effect, aimless, and lacking any coordination and agency. You are not getting billions of people to "consume" and "produce" less. What you're engaging in right now is no different from what oil companies did decades ago in a coordinated effort, shifting blame onto the consumers, and ultimately the swindling of the century when it comes to environmentalism, see [0] for a quick example. You're free to succumb through inaction, the rest of us would rather not, and never depend on failing, moving emission targets dependent on the whims of politicians and the masses electing them, proven to be incapable of entertaining any abstract long-term planning, let alone sticking to it. It's unfathomable some would prefer entertaining the idea of humanity fundamentally altering its nature rather than actively making up for the effects they are influencing while addressing them, through technology available today, but you must've already given up to believe this is "the new normal" like you said. 0. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

liendolucas 3mo ago

I'm a firm believer that sooner or later we will be extinct by extreme heat and suffocation. Two weeks ago here in Umbria, Italy the heat was extreme. It was 40°C without a breeze of air, it literally felt like braathing hot air. One morning while I was walking I couldn't believe the amount of dry leaves on the street, by pictures people would have guessed that it was autumn. I have a really good tolerance to high temperatures but this time I got home very dizzy. Hope is not too late to revert the current situation, but realistically year after year temperatures have been raising steadly.

downrightmike 3mo ago
This has happened to the earth before, the earth will change, Northern Atlantic will freeze over, stopping the currents of the ocean, and raise water levels at least several meters, enough to flood most cities on the East Coast.
- toasty228 3mo ago
  It never happened this fast, by a fat margin
  - downrightmike 3mo ago
    yup. we are probably burning 10k years of fossilized plant matter every year. The biosphere can't handle that.
teravor 3mo ago
above ~35 C a breeze makes it worse.

gmuslera 3mo ago

This year Europe's fires are not the start. Few years ago we had very extended Australia fires, US/Canada fires, and other not so put in the spotlight fires in other countries around the world. At some point they diverged enough from normal to reach a scale that raised enough eyebrows. And it is not just forest fires. Floods caused by extreme rainfalls, running out of letters in hurricane seasons, once in a century/millenia extreme weather events happening several times in a decade are increasingly noticeable, and they are just symptoms of bigger but harder to directly perceive global trends like that the global yearly average temperature increased a few tens of degrees or that the ocean is winning heat at a rate of 6 Hiroshima bombs per second.

rimworld 3mo ago

strong El Niño event

drtgh 3mo ago

In my country (EU) when large-scale land-use projects are approved —such as solar panel farms, mining operations, and buildings construction— fires break out and they burn everything in their path, tens of thousands of hectares. This -often- even happens the day after the project's approval (they are not scared). Time ago, laws that prevented construction on protected land after a fire were removed (included more sabotages on prevention that came after that. This along two different governments of supposedly opposite colors). On television such fires were/are sold/brainwashed as climate change, rather than corruption and psychopaths. I would recommend to keep an eye on this things, to investigate possible motivations, independently, fire by fire.

jojocool0501 3mo ago

For those who have heard enough of "As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse", these rabbit holes I recently discovered : new science about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump. You can look up : Antonio Donato Nobre, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva and go from there. The science is NOT settled, and people are still learning how all this works. They may all be crooks for all i know. But as is mentionned in another comment, "(...)stop eating meat, stop driving non-electric vehicles, stop using AC, reduce consumption (...)" won't save us if indeed the massive hits to old-growth forest doom us anyhow. Arguing for arguing’s sake gets old fast when there is nothing left to drink.

delegate 3mo ago

I was expecting to learn something new from this article, instead I got a bunch of numbers and a careful number of deaths from smoke 'by the end of the century' prediction. What end of the century ? The way things are going, these cities (in Europe) are going to be unlivable by the end of this decade. They already are. And the fires.. Numbers, percentages, increases, excess, estimated.. We've constructed this abstract parallel universe in which we comfortably live in front of the screens.. and then wonder why the world around us is burning. Climate change.. Such a comfortable word behind which we can all hide and dispel the responsibility for a life of copious comfort and pleasure. It's the avocado toasts, the leather jackets, the 1-click-checkouts, the weekend flight to Barcelona, the CL=F price, the bonuses, the 'natural resources' there for us to use and exploit in infinite amounts.. The whole fucking system. That's why the world is burning. Yeah, I'm guilty of all of the above too. And I have no solution. Just blowing out the smoke from those fires.

jasonvorhe 3mo ago

I've seen too many videos of people deliberately creating these fires to believe a single "this is because of human made climate change".

backscratches 3mo ago
The climate change part is the heat making the forests more dry so the manmade fires get bigger.

lofaszvanitt 3mo ago

These firefighting solutions... aren't they a bit outdated and cumbersome? I mean essentially moving water into a given area by planes, copters and vehicles seems a bit primitive, isn't it?

pstuart 3mo ago

We collectively deserve this. The warnings came, but it was framed as "future generations will face these problems", and we collectively kicked the can down the road. I say "collectively" because many of us don't deserve this and have wanted desperately to address it head on to try and mitigate the damage. But the scope of this problem makes individual contributions effectively meaningless. It's not clear how bad it has to get before meaningful action takes place. But it will undoubtedly be too little, too late. I think part of the path to try and address this is to have stories that paint a clear and simple picture of what that would look like and how it would be done. Even then, the issue has been heavily politicized to make it an us versus them problem rather than an "all of us" problem.

backscratches 3mo ago
small correction: only individual contributions are meaningful. If I consume less and you consume less and many other individuals consume less there simply won't be as much demand for fossil fuels. The only way I can understand your premise of helplessness is that it provides a convenient excuse for you not to do anything to help. Do you think companies will keep burning fuel at the exact same rate if a billion individuals dont incentivize them to?

a34729t 3mo ago

Any reason SpaceX cannot just build a giant solar shade at L1? This seems fairly doable on the decade timescale, plus it could do double duty as a weapon.

margalabargala 3mo ago
I did the math out on this for fun a couple years ago. It came put surprisingly reasonable. Taking estimates for Starship payload to Mars as the likely payload to L1, carrying to L1 enough thin reflective mylar film to block around 0.5% of light to earth would cost between $80-100 billion. Which is a lot but not nearly as much as I expected and not outside the realm of possibility.
squibonpig 3mo ago
I love how you didn't even take a beat before suggesting that it be used as a weapon.

mikhailfranco 3mo ago

Counter argument from Matt Ridley: Why the flames of Britain's wildfires have been fanned by the Green agenda as much as the weather https://www.dailymail.com/debate/article-16017973/Britains-wildfires-Green-agenda-weather-MATT-RIDLEY.html https://www.dailymail.com/debate/article-16017973/Britains-w...

ZeroGravitas 3mo ago
Matt Ridley the coal-mine owning climate-change denier? I guess disasters might be his area of expertise since he once crashed a bank and led the official pro-Brexit campaign, but the other stuff seems like a conflict of interest.
defrost 3mo ago
Now do Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Gotta get all the both sides of climate change deniers.
Arodex 3mo ago
And what is the responsibility of the Greens in the lack of rain that causes Swiss cows to be moved back from their fields? https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secheresse-en-suisse-des-eleveurs-obliges-de-redescendre-les-troupeaux-29316753.html https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secher... And what is the responsibility of the Greens in the acidification of the oceans? Etc, etc, etc.

mbmbn 3mo ago

“French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned the country "is going through an unprecedented fire season", with 116,085 hectares (286,852 acres) burned and 13,566 fire starts recorded since January. The minister revealed in a post on X that nine out of 10 fires "are human-caused and most arise from carelessness: a cigarette butt, a barbecue, work carried out without precaution".” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg34128nvpo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg34128nvpo

JJTikTok 3mo ago

[dead]

pvaldes 3mo ago

Natural causes discarded in the wildfire of Vall d'Uixó in Castellon, Spain. The police suspects that this was (also) provoked. With a perimeter of 67 Km, the wildfire started in several points at the same time, has devastated 7500 hectares and displaced or confined 38000 people. This is not even a start, is a: will continue until we address the elephant in the room: Too much of this wildfires are arson by proxy. Crime is always the biggest category in the chart of known causes, and natural causes are always the smaller one (and a very small one indeed, between 5 and 10% or so). So without criminals, lets say 90% of those forests would keep evolving towards a less and less flammable state and the soil would keep sequestrating carbon, that is exactly what we want and need. Or would be logged, sequestrating carbon also. Instead to pour acid raining over Europe, why if we try first to harden the current laws, remove the economical rewards, and fight the disinformation campaigns of farm trolls (always deployed at the same periods), until the incentives to burn are reduced?

pvaldes 3mo ago
The new wildfire started in Extremadura two days ago has been provoked also.