10 ms·

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 th

by 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
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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...
  - realusername 3mo ago
    > they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. X to doubt, I'll believe it when I see it, for now they are like a galaxy away from that goal. And also that'll be even harder to reach if they want to improve their atrociously low electricity heating rate.
    - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
      You're free to doubt, healthy skepticism is a good thing imho, there is no will to spend what nuclear would cost and renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper. We're locked on a hockey stick trajectory of their uptake purely through the economics. Spain is phasing out the last of their nuclear for more renewables, for example. Fossil gas will fill the gap until solar, wind, batteries, and transmission push the last of fossil generation out of the mix, and every year less and less gas will be used until remaining fossil gas generators sit idle. Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-nuclear-shutdown-set-to-test-renewables-success-story https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 18.79% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)
  - dncornholio 3mo ago
    You realize that "green energy" in EU is dependent on gas and/or coal? When there's no wind or sun, we will gladly burn gas or coal, and call it green energy. Nuclear doesn't have this requirement. It's truly zero carbon. Unless you can show me plans to fill this gap with batteries on a national scale, renewables < nuclear
- OKRainbowKid 3mo ago
  This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclear energy and Germany's decision to fade it out is now driven more by emotion/ignorance than reason.
  - ch4s3 3mo ago
    It depends on how much you value land use and care about the knock on effects of the associated mining. I’d rather figure out how to build out nuclear cheaply like South Korea and China and use more land for wild space. The per hectare land use of nuclear is minuscule.
  - jrflo 3mo ago
    There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
    - grey-area 3mo ago
      That’s why they mentioned batteries.
    - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
      But nuclear also can't deal with peaks.
      - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
        Renewables and batteries are great for peaks though. And not very good for base load Nuclear is great for base load, not great for peaks Our current situation is we are building tons of renewables and storage but still burning tons of fossil fuels because they cannot replace the base load very effectively. Nuclear replaces the carbon part of the equation
- alephnerd 3mo ago
  > As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power Frankly, it doesn't matter what Germany or other European nations do - their carbon footprint has dramatically decreased. The issue is everyone else [0]. China (12 GT), the US (5 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent over half of all global carbon emissions. The EU and UK's combined carbon emissions are half of Asia (excluding China and India) emissions. Countries like India and Vietnam are expected to see GDP growth in the 6-8% range for the next decade, and both are doubling down on coal [1][2] and other carbon heavy fuels, so emissions are only going to grow further. Any marginal decrease in carbon emissions at this point is too little too late given that much of Asia and South America is expected to see carbon emission grow in the 3-8% range. [0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1980..latest&country=USA~CHN~Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~IND~European+Union+%2828%29~RUS~OWID_AFR~North+America+%28excl.+USA%29~OWID_SAM~OWID_OCE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mulls-extending-coal-power-expansion-for-another-12-years https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-coal-power-plants-iran-war-complicates-lng-plans-2026-07-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-c...
  - calvinmorrison 3mo ago
    Lets just name names. China. India.
    - toasty228 3mo ago
      And every country which moved their factories there
  - toasty228 3mo ago
    It should be illegal in 2026 to have such a naive view. co2 per country or capita doesn't mean shit when the world uses China as a factory: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-...
- kleiba2 3mo ago
  I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt): | China | 5,565 | | United States | 1,737 | | India | 1,395 | | Russia | 536 | | Japan | 492 | In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt. All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad. [0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...
  - throwayay4929 3mo ago
    Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no? Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault.
    - chmod775 3mo ago
      > let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe What... you know you could've looked this up pretty easily before posting? https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/image_dropdown/public/2026-06/CAMS-air-quality-report-PM2.5_2.png.jpg https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/...
      - throwayay4929 3mo ago
        I did: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://aqicn.org/map/europe/
- xyzsparetimexyz 3mo ago
  While I agree that the ban is stupid, Hungarys nuclear power plant closed today due to lack of water: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclear-plant-could-shut-down-thursday-or-friday-pm-says-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...
  - Paradigma11 3mo ago
    Thats not a property of nuclear power plants but of having been built some 60 years ago when nobody took that into account.
- teh64 3mo ago
  Which major countries other than Germany and Italy have a ban on nuclear power?
  - newaccount670 3mo ago
    [dead]
  - dolmen 3mo ago
    Iran. But the ban comes from outside.
- pornel 3mo ago
  We've ran out of time. Even if political will shifted immediately, getting new nuclear plants on the grid is going to take a decade or more. In the meantime batteries + solar or wind can be built quickly and hooked up pretty much anywhere. Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy!
  - palata 3mo ago
    > Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy! In a world with abundant fossil fuels on which globalisation relies. The question is: what happens when it stops? Can renewables win in a world without abundant oil? We don't know, we haven't tried.
    - pornel 3mo ago
      "we"? Looking at electricitymaps, everyone except maybe Nebraska and Mongolia is making progress. The supply chain already exists, available worldwide as long as you don't bomb your suppliers.
      - palata 2mo ago
        You don't get my point. "Everyone is making progress, in a world largely dominated by fossil fuels". Renewables are making progress with the help of fossil fuels. We don't know how it will be without it, because we haven't tried. We as "the global economy", obviously.
- cedilla 3mo ago
  The last time any company was interested to build a nuclear reactor in Germany was in the 1970s. About thirty years before the eventual (first) ban. We can rant all day about how stupid it was of the conservatives to re-enact the ban on nuclear power without restarting the subsidies for renewables, and lament that they thus ensured that coal power would thus have to replace more of the lost load, but that's all in the past and we can't change that. If you think we need more nuclear power to fight CO2 emissions, you're 50 years late. That ship has sailed before most of us here were born.
- vrganj 3mo ago
  Nuclear Power is useless in a climate change scenario. France and Spain are having to shut down their nuclear plants because they can't cool them during heatwaves: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/france-shuts-down-nuclear-reactor-over-fears-46c-heatwave-could-cause-disaster/ar-AA26lxwj https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/fra...
  - ghostbrainalpha 3mo ago
    How can articles on major news sites have typos this bad up for over a month? "The crisis in France has claimed dozens of lives, with 40 people drowning while attempting to call off from the heat since June 18" Call off should be "cool off". And forgive me if this is a stupid question, but don't nuclear power plants produce enough energy that they could power their own cooling? Why do they have to rely on the free cooling provided by a river?
- illiac786 3mo ago
  This is just trolling. So. Boring. Something can be urgent while no one is doing anything about it. Would not be the first time. That point would be the first of many incoherences in you comment. I don’t debate that there is urgency, that so much more should be done, etc. but your comment really isn’t helping.
- niemandhier 3mo ago
  Germany is not a major country. The 1. Something percent it contributes to the global co2 output just do not matter much. If you purely think about the climate and don’t care for things like fair resource distribution, forget about the Germans. Update: Actually if every country with a per capita higher emissions than Germany would drop to German standards we would reduce co2 emissions by 25%. That sounds like a goal, sind this is even possible without nuclear power, it should be easy for the is and china, who could throw it into the mix.
- GuestFAUniverse 3mo ago
  Germany's CO2 output is at 1.6% worldwide. Totally irrelevant. https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions The same people who dismiss green policies as damaging to the economic are often the ones calling for nuclear power. I like a daily paradox.
adrianN 3mo ago
Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.
- spwa4 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - trescenzi 3mo ago
    The fundamental reason that climate change is an issue is because it happens over timescales which the ecosystem and human society struggle to keep up. No one reasonable believes we can cool from where we're headed, minus some extreme technical approaches, slowing it down is the goal. You don't seem to be denying human caused, or maybe you'd say accelerated, climate change. If we could flip a switch and spread the future warming over a millennium instead of half a century I think everyone would take that deal.
    - spwa4 3mo ago
      > You don't seem to be denying human caused, or maybe you'd say accelerated, climate change. If we could flip a switch and spread the future warming over a millennium instead of half a century I think everyone would take that deal. You know, that's yet another major problem. You're wrong. If we did that, meltwater water supply would essentially stop (in somewhere between 8 months and 2 years), everywhere on the planet. Big, highly populated areas of our planet will dry up (Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Ganges valley in India depends significantly on meltwater. That's easily 2 billion people) In the past century, humanity has adapted itself to constant climate change. Any variable that depends on the temperature delta that we depend on will rapidly become problematic if we stop accelerating global warming. Now I live in Europe. I don't expect water problems here (or only temporary). I do however expect problems. I'm not even sure what but there is a fuckton of things that will change back if global warming slows and I highly doubt that will just go down smoothly. I know the theory behind green parties is "let's just stop doing what humanity is doing, and nature will save us". I'm kind of hoping people will realize that that, too, is bullshit. We will need to decide and agree what we want the climate to do, and then make it happen. No matter the choice made, this will have existential consequences for a bunch of places on this planet, and nothing can help that. "Let's stop global warming" is not a solution to ecological problems, and not necessarily a better solution than continuing it. We WILL need to take control of the climate, and that includes dealing with the consequences of whatever decision we make. "stop CO2" is as much a soundbite, and as stupid, as "drill, baby, drill". Thunberg is as problematic as Trump, it's just harder to realize that that is the case. Not that I think there's a chance in hell that global warming will stop or even just slow down whatever we decide to do in the west. Getting China, South Asia, and now more and more India and in the future Africa to agree to not use fossil fuels is not politically feasible. There is no solution there either. So my vote? Aerosols to cool the planet. Which one, and how to spread? TBD. And, yes, that may mean the planet cools again BUT ALSO parts of the planet become uninhabitable. We'll need to agree and deal with that.
jl6 3mo ago
> the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) No, it’s not lost already. We should attempt to preserve what remains, not assume failure is inevitable.
- palata 3mo ago
  Agreed. I was just mentioning it because people don't seem to realise that we are on the verge of losing it (and it may actually be that it is too late). Of course we should fight to preserve as much as we can. Nobody wants to live in a bunker on mars. Almost...
modo_mario 3mo ago
The fires don't accelerate it much. That wood and shrub would either burn or rot down the line and release methane and co2 anyway. Forests don't sequester much at all despite what people seem to believe. Consequentially running a fireplace is a lot more climate neutral than driving a car, taking a flight, utilising the myriads of high carbon footprint goods or having a gas heater or so. On the other hand the bogs that we're losing (and kelp forests) are a lot better at sequestring co2 but they're small. Permafrost will also actually accelerate stuff since....well it __was__ permanently forsty.
- wongarsu 3mo ago
  If we assume that the forests will regrow to their former strength then the fires are indeed not all the consequential. The trees release the stored CO2 when they burn, and new plants will take up an equivalent amount of CO2 again when they grow. The CO2 sequestered in a forest is more or less just the biomass in it (some is in the soil, but not that much) But if climate change leads to permanently losing those forests, that is an effect we will feel. Still less bad than losing permafrost
  - BurningFrog 3mo ago
    If we figured out how to store chopped down trees somewhere where the wood doesn't break down, that would be a really effective way to get CO2 out of the air! Easier said than done, of course. Sinking millions of trees to the bottom of the ocean might be the most practical way.
    - palata 3mo ago
      Those space datacenters that SpaceX is building, can't they make them out of wood?
      - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
        Will they weigh the same as a duck? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU)
kvgr 3mo ago
I mean european forests are mostly monocultures created after we cut down everything natural we had. Maybe fire/warm resistent trees and forests will be planted. Its not like the fires are destroying 20000 years old ecosystems. Most of the forests were basically dead long before.
vrganj 3mo ago
> Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? The thing is, the obsession with the AI race is making this problem so much worse. We're using up so much more energy and burning so much more fossil fuel as a direct result of AI mania. We're so obsessed with becoming king of the ashes we're not even noticing we're burning the whole damn place down. It's tragic, it's irresponsible and many here are at the very least complicit.
A_D_E_P_T 3mo ago
> (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) Not even close. Look at satellite imaging. Not only is the Amazon far from lost, the jungles in Africa/Borneo/PNG all look to be doing surprisingly okay.
- w4yai 3mo ago
  It still got damaged a lot : https://www.maapprogram.org/amazon-tipping-point/ https://www.maapprogram.org/amazon-tipping-point/
- palata 3mo ago
  The theory is that it can reach a point where it won't be able to survive, and therefore it will die. We are around that limit. It may well be that it has already passed it and therefore it will die. I didn't mean "it is not there anymore", I meant "we won't be able to preserve it, it may already be too late for that".
  - A_D_E_P_T 3mo ago
    Where can I find details on this theory?
    - palata 3mo ago
      https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound...
  - xyzsparetimexyz 3mo ago
    How is the Amazon going to die? Don't plants kinda like co2? Do you think it'll just become a desert somehow or something?
    - wolvoleo 3mo ago
      Deforestation causes more extreme weather like floods and landslides which also remove fertile soil, and trees don't regenerate quickly enough to prevent that from happening. And global warming also increases weather instability at a rate nature can't adapt to. So even the existing forests will have a harder time.
oliwarner 3mo ago
> As long as we emit CO2 And aside the greenhouse effect, we're also using more power than we've ever used before, building 10Msqft boxes that ultimately turn electricity into heat. We could go all-solar and we'd still be warming our environment.
- danw1979 3mo ago
  The amount of heat generated directly by all of the energy use by humans - from fossil, nuclear or renewables - is a tiny, miniscule rounding error compared to the excess heat absorbed by the atmosphere and oceans due to CO2 and the greenhouse effect. The heat output of every single data centre on earth isn’t even worth thinking about on the scale of the global climate system.
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    Absolutely, the heat itself is not the problem. I read that every day the earth receives more heat energy from the sun than was ever stored in all the fossil fuels on the planet. What's more the problem is that we could have spent that energy on much more useful things. Even if these datacenters run on green energy that means that something else isn't. And don't forget that no energy is truly green. Generation requirement, electricity transport and metal extraction for it, maintenance, nuclear fuel extraction and refinement, all these things aren't green. We can make them green as much as possible but increasing demands on energy massively is making the point of reaching carbon neutrality much harder.
jamesdwilson 3mo ago
Isn't it primarily arson? == Europe is currently facing a dual crisis of arson-driven wildfires and coordinated sabotage operations. In the summer of 2026, extreme heatwaves have exacerbated wildfire seasons in France, Spain, and Italy, where authorities have linked many blazes to deliberate human ignition. French Interior Minister Sébastien Lecornu reported 162 arrests for suspected arson since early July, noting that 90% of forest fires in France are human-caused. Investigators in Italy’s Calabria region uncovered disturbing tactics, including the release of cats with flammable-soaked rags tied to their tails to spread fire. Beyond accidental or opportunistic arson, Europe has experienced a wave of state-sponsored sabotage in 2024 and 2025, primarily attributed to Russian intelligence. These attacks involved incendiary devices in packages sent to logistics hubs like DHL in Germany, the UK, and Poland, as well as targeted fires at an IKEA in Vilnius and a warehouse in London. Authorities consider these acts of hybrid warfare aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure and testing delivery channels for larger attacks on the US and Canada. Key developments in European arson include: Wildfire Arson: France arrested 162 suspects since July 6, 2026, while Spain’s deadliest blaze in 40 years killed 13 people in Almería. Calabrian Tactics: Italian officials found evidence of calculated arson using delayed ignition devices and animals to accelerate fire spread in southern Italy. Sabotage Network: Russian agents have been linked to multiple arson attacks across England, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany, with several suspects convicted or charged for acts of terrorism and espionage. Legal Fragmentation: The EU lacks a harmonized definition of arson or a centralized criminal database, forcing reliance on fragmented national investigations despite advanced satellite monitoring systems like Copernicus.
- einszwei 3mo ago
  All human-caused fires aren't arson, most of these are usually negligence (source: worked in operations at fire service). Not discounting the risk of arson but I find it is used a lot to distract from conditions making the forests a tinder box.
  - tremon 3mo ago
    A comment from an earlier thread alleged that Spanish policy says that forests that are destroyed due to fire don't have to be rebuilt, the land can be re-purposed. That's what's driving the arson in Spain. I have no way to evaluate the veracity of this site, but https://inspain.news/spains-wildfire-tragedy-now-has-a-human-face/ https://inspain.news/spains-wildfire-tragedy-now-has-a-human... says: > In some cases, arson is linked to economic gain: land clearance, insurance fraud, or disputes over grazing rights. Others are sparked by resentment towards environmental restrictions.
ruricjfj373 3mo ago
> loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) Worth comparing Lula versus other Brazilian leader’s records on this. It looks like left-wing leaders are more likely to prioritise climate action because it’s a collective problem/resource

by palata 3mo ago

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...
- realusername 3mo ago
  > they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. X to doubt, I'll believe it when I see it, for now they are like a galaxy away from that goal. And also that'll be even harder to reach if they want to improve their atrociously low electricity heating rate.
  - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
    You're free to doubt, healthy skepticism is a good thing imho, there is no will to spend what nuclear would cost and renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper. We're locked on a hockey stick trajectory of their uptake purely through the economics. Spain is phasing out the last of their nuclear for more renewables, for example. Fossil gas will fill the gap until solar, wind, batteries, and transmission push the last of fossil generation out of the mix, and every year less and less gas will be used until remaining fossil gas generators sit idle. Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-nuclear-shutdown-set-to-test-renewables-success-story https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 18.79% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)
- dncornholio 3mo ago
  You realize that "green energy" in EU is dependent on gas and/or coal? When there's no wind or sun, we will gladly burn gas or coal, and call it green energy. Nuclear doesn't have this requirement. It's truly zero carbon. Unless you can show me plans to fill this gap with batteries on a national scale, renewables < nuclear
OKRainbowKid 3mo ago
This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclear energy and Germany's decision to fade it out is now driven more by emotion/ignorance than reason.
- ch4s3 3mo ago
  It depends on how much you value land use and care about the knock on effects of the associated mining. I’d rather figure out how to build out nuclear cheaply like South Korea and China and use more land for wild space. The per hectare land use of nuclear is minuscule.
- jrflo 3mo ago
  There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
  - grey-area 3mo ago
    That’s why they mentioned batteries.
  - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
    But nuclear also can't deal with peaks.
    - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
      Renewables and batteries are great for peaks though. And not very good for base load Nuclear is great for base load, not great for peaks Our current situation is we are building tons of renewables and storage but still burning tons of fossil fuels because they cannot replace the base load very effectively. Nuclear replaces the carbon part of the equation
alephnerd 3mo ago
> As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power Frankly, it doesn't matter what Germany or other European nations do - their carbon footprint has dramatically decreased. The issue is everyone else [0]. China (12 GT), the US (5 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent over half of all global carbon emissions. The EU and UK's combined carbon emissions are half of Asia (excluding China and India) emissions. Countries like India and Vietnam are expected to see GDP growth in the 6-8% range for the next decade, and both are doubling down on coal [1][2] and other carbon heavy fuels, so emissions are only going to grow further. Any marginal decrease in carbon emissions at this point is too little too late given that much of Asia and South America is expected to see carbon emission grow in the 3-8% range. [0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1980..latest&country=USA~CHN~Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~IND~European+Union+%2828%29~RUS~OWID_AFR~North+America+%28excl.+USA%29~OWID_SAM~OWID_OCE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mulls-extending-coal-power-expansion-for-another-12-years https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-coal-power-plants-iran-war-complicates-lng-plans-2026-07-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-c...
- calvinmorrison 3mo ago
  Lets just name names. China. India.
  - toasty228 3mo ago
    And every country which moved their factories there
- toasty228 3mo ago
  It should be illegal in 2026 to have such a naive view. co2 per country or capita doesn't mean shit when the world uses China as a factory: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-...
kleiba2 3mo ago
I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt): | China | 5,565 | | United States | 1,737 | | India | 1,395 | | Russia | 536 | | Japan | 492 | In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt. All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad. [0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...
- throwayay4929 3mo ago
  Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no? Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault.
  - chmod775 3mo ago
    > let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe What... you know you could've looked this up pretty easily before posting? https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/image_dropdown/public/2026-06/CAMS-air-quality-report-PM2.5_2.png.jpg https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/...
    - throwayay4929 3mo ago
      I did: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://aqicn.org/map/europe/
xyzsparetimexyz 3mo ago
While I agree that the ban is stupid, Hungarys nuclear power plant closed today due to lack of water: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclear-plant-could-shut-down-thursday-or-friday-pm-says-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...
- Paradigma11 3mo ago
  Thats not a property of nuclear power plants but of having been built some 60 years ago when nobody took that into account.
teh64 3mo ago
Which major countries other than Germany and Italy have a ban on nuclear power?
- newaccount670 3mo ago
  [dead]
- dolmen 3mo ago
  Iran. But the ban comes from outside.
pornel 3mo ago
We've ran out of time. Even if political will shifted immediately, getting new nuclear plants on the grid is going to take a decade or more. In the meantime batteries + solar or wind can be built quickly and hooked up pretty much anywhere. Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy!
- palata 3mo ago
  > Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy! In a world with abundant fossil fuels on which globalisation relies. The question is: what happens when it stops? Can renewables win in a world without abundant oil? We don't know, we haven't tried.
  - pornel 3mo ago
    "we"? Looking at electricitymaps, everyone except maybe Nebraska and Mongolia is making progress. The supply chain already exists, available worldwide as long as you don't bomb your suppliers.
    - palata 2mo ago
      You don't get my point. "Everyone is making progress, in a world largely dominated by fossil fuels". Renewables are making progress with the help of fossil fuels. We don't know how it will be without it, because we haven't tried. We as "the global economy", obviously.
cedilla 3mo ago
The last time any company was interested to build a nuclear reactor in Germany was in the 1970s. About thirty years before the eventual (first) ban. We can rant all day about how stupid it was of the conservatives to re-enact the ban on nuclear power without restarting the subsidies for renewables, and lament that they thus ensured that coal power would thus have to replace more of the lost load, but that's all in the past and we can't change that. If you think we need more nuclear power to fight CO2 emissions, you're 50 years late. That ship has sailed before most of us here were born.
vrganj 3mo ago
Nuclear Power is useless in a climate change scenario. France and Spain are having to shut down their nuclear plants because they can't cool them during heatwaves: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/france-shuts-down-nuclear-reactor-over-fears-46c-heatwave-could-cause-disaster/ar-AA26lxwj https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/fra...
- ghostbrainalpha 3mo ago
  How can articles on major news sites have typos this bad up for over a month? "The crisis in France has claimed dozens of lives, with 40 people drowning while attempting to call off from the heat since June 18" Call off should be "cool off". And forgive me if this is a stupid question, but don't nuclear power plants produce enough energy that they could power their own cooling? Why do they have to rely on the free cooling provided by a river?
illiac786 3mo ago
This is just trolling. So. Boring. Something can be urgent while no one is doing anything about it. Would not be the first time. That point would be the first of many incoherences in you comment. I don’t debate that there is urgency, that so much more should be done, etc. but your comment really isn’t helping.
niemandhier 3mo ago
Germany is not a major country. The 1. Something percent it contributes to the global co2 output just do not matter much. If you purely think about the climate and don’t care for things like fair resource distribution, forget about the Germans. Update: Actually if every country with a per capita higher emissions than Germany would drop to German standards we would reduce co2 emissions by 25%. That sounds like a goal, sind this is even possible without nuclear power, it should be easy for the is and china, who could throw it into the mix.
GuestFAUniverse 3mo ago
Germany's CO2 output is at 1.6% worldwide. Totally irrelevant. https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions The same people who dismiss green policies as damaging to the economic are often the ones calling for nuclear power. I like a daily paradox.

adrianN 3mo ago

Even if we stopped emissions today, Earth will keep warming up for a couple of decades. We’re not at equilibrium temperature for the current CO2 levels.

spwa4 3mo ago
[flagged]
- trescenzi 3mo ago
  The fundamental reason that climate change is an issue is because it happens over timescales which the ecosystem and human society struggle to keep up. No one reasonable believes we can cool from where we're headed, minus some extreme technical approaches, slowing it down is the goal. You don't seem to be denying human caused, or maybe you'd say accelerated, climate change. If we could flip a switch and spread the future warming over a millennium instead of half a century I think everyone would take that deal.
  - spwa4 3mo ago
    > You don't seem to be denying human caused, or maybe you'd say accelerated, climate change. If we could flip a switch and spread the future warming over a millennium instead of half a century I think everyone would take that deal. You know, that's yet another major problem. You're wrong. If we did that, meltwater water supply would essentially stop (in somewhere between 8 months and 2 years), everywhere on the planet. Big, highly populated areas of our planet will dry up (Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Ganges valley in India depends significantly on meltwater. That's easily 2 billion people) In the past century, humanity has adapted itself to constant climate change. Any variable that depends on the temperature delta that we depend on will rapidly become problematic if we stop accelerating global warming. Now I live in Europe. I don't expect water problems here (or only temporary). I do however expect problems. I'm not even sure what but there is a fuckton of things that will change back if global warming slows and I highly doubt that will just go down smoothly. I know the theory behind green parties is "let's just stop doing what humanity is doing, and nature will save us". I'm kind of hoping people will realize that that, too, is bullshit. We will need to decide and agree what we want the climate to do, and then make it happen. No matter the choice made, this will have existential consequences for a bunch of places on this planet, and nothing can help that. "Let's stop global warming" is not a solution to ecological problems, and not necessarily a better solution than continuing it. We WILL need to take control of the climate, and that includes dealing with the consequences of whatever decision we make. "stop CO2" is as much a soundbite, and as stupid, as "drill, baby, drill". Thunberg is as problematic as Trump, it's just harder to realize that that is the case. Not that I think there's a chance in hell that global warming will stop or even just slow down whatever we decide to do in the west. Getting China, South Asia, and now more and more India and in the future Africa to agree to not use fossil fuels is not politically feasible. There is no solution there either. So my vote? Aerosols to cool the planet. Which one, and how to spread? TBD. And, yes, that may mean the planet cools again BUT ALSO parts of the planet become uninhabitable. We'll need to agree and deal with that.

jl6 3mo ago

> the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) No, it’s not lost already. We should attempt to preserve what remains, not assume failure is inevitable.

palata 3mo ago
Agreed. I was just mentioning it because people don't seem to realise that we are on the verge of losing it (and it may actually be that it is too late). Of course we should fight to preserve as much as we can. Nobody wants to live in a bunker on mars. Almost...

modo_mario 3mo ago

The fires don't accelerate it much. That wood and shrub would either burn or rot down the line and release methane and co2 anyway. Forests don't sequester much at all despite what people seem to believe. Consequentially running a fireplace is a lot more climate neutral than driving a car, taking a flight, utilising the myriads of high carbon footprint goods or having a gas heater or so. On the other hand the bogs that we're losing (and kelp forests) are a lot better at sequestring co2 but they're small. Permafrost will also actually accelerate stuff since....well it __was__ permanently forsty.

wongarsu 3mo ago
If we assume that the forests will regrow to their former strength then the fires are indeed not all the consequential. The trees release the stored CO2 when they burn, and new plants will take up an equivalent amount of CO2 again when they grow. The CO2 sequestered in a forest is more or less just the biomass in it (some is in the soil, but not that much) But if climate change leads to permanently losing those forests, that is an effect we will feel. Still less bad than losing permafrost
- BurningFrog 3mo ago
  If we figured out how to store chopped down trees somewhere where the wood doesn't break down, that would be a really effective way to get CO2 out of the air! Easier said than done, of course. Sinking millions of trees to the bottom of the ocean might be the most practical way.
  - palata 3mo ago
    Those space datacenters that SpaceX is building, can't they make them out of wood?
    - throw-the-towel 3mo ago
      Will they weigh the same as a duck? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU)

kvgr 3mo ago

I mean european forests are mostly monocultures created after we cut down everything natural we had. Maybe fire/warm resistent trees and forests will be planted. Its not like the fires are destroying 20000 years old ecosystems. Most of the forests were basically dead long before.

vrganj 3mo ago

> Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? The thing is, the obsession with the AI race is making this problem so much worse. We're using up so much more energy and burning so much more fossil fuel as a direct result of AI mania. We're so obsessed with becoming king of the ashes we're not even noticing we're burning the whole damn place down. It's tragic, it's irresponsible and many here are at the very least complicit.

A_D_E_P_T 3mo ago

> (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) Not even close. Look at satellite imaging. Not only is the Amazon far from lost, the jungles in Africa/Borneo/PNG all look to be doing surprisingly okay.

w4yai 3mo ago
It still got damaged a lot : https://www.maapprogram.org/amazon-tipping-point/ https://www.maapprogram.org/amazon-tipping-point/
palata 3mo ago
The theory is that it can reach a point where it won't be able to survive, and therefore it will die. We are around that limit. It may well be that it has already passed it and therefore it will die. I didn't mean "it is not there anymore", I meant "we won't be able to preserve it, it may already be too late for that".
- A_D_E_P_T 3mo ago
  Where can I find details on this theory?
  - palata 3mo ago
    https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound...
- xyzsparetimexyz 3mo ago
  How is the Amazon going to die? Don't plants kinda like co2? Do you think it'll just become a desert somehow or something?
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    Deforestation causes more extreme weather like floods and landslides which also remove fertile soil, and trees don't regenerate quickly enough to prevent that from happening. And global warming also increases weather instability at a rate nature can't adapt to. So even the existing forests will have a harder time.

oliwarner 3mo ago

> As long as we emit CO2 And aside the greenhouse effect, we're also using more power than we've ever used before, building 10Msqft boxes that ultimately turn electricity into heat. We could go all-solar and we'd still be warming our environment.

danw1979 3mo ago
The amount of heat generated directly by all of the energy use by humans - from fossil, nuclear or renewables - is a tiny, miniscule rounding error compared to the excess heat absorbed by the atmosphere and oceans due to CO2 and the greenhouse effect. The heat output of every single data centre on earth isn’t even worth thinking about on the scale of the global climate system.
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  Absolutely, the heat itself is not the problem. I read that every day the earth receives more heat energy from the sun than was ever stored in all the fossil fuels on the planet. What's more the problem is that we could have spent that energy on much more useful things. Even if these datacenters run on green energy that means that something else isn't. And don't forget that no energy is truly green. Generation requirement, electricity transport and metal extraction for it, maintenance, nuclear fuel extraction and refinement, all these things aren't green. We can make them green as much as possible but increasing demands on energy massively is making the point of reaching carbon neutrality much harder.

jamesdwilson 3mo ago

Isn't it primarily arson? == Europe is currently facing a dual crisis of arson-driven wildfires and coordinated sabotage operations. In the summer of 2026, extreme heatwaves have exacerbated wildfire seasons in France, Spain, and Italy, where authorities have linked many blazes to deliberate human ignition. French Interior Minister Sébastien Lecornu reported 162 arrests for suspected arson since early July, noting that 90% of forest fires in France are human-caused. Investigators in Italy’s Calabria region uncovered disturbing tactics, including the release of cats with flammable-soaked rags tied to their tails to spread fire. Beyond accidental or opportunistic arson, Europe has experienced a wave of state-sponsored sabotage in 2024 and 2025, primarily attributed to Russian intelligence. These attacks involved incendiary devices in packages sent to logistics hubs like DHL in Germany, the UK, and Poland, as well as targeted fires at an IKEA in Vilnius and a warehouse in London. Authorities consider these acts of hybrid warfare aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure and testing delivery channels for larger attacks on the US and Canada. Key developments in European arson include: Wildfire Arson: France arrested 162 suspects since July 6, 2026, while Spain’s deadliest blaze in 40 years killed 13 people in Almería. Calabrian Tactics: Italian officials found evidence of calculated arson using delayed ignition devices and animals to accelerate fire spread in southern Italy. Sabotage Network: Russian agents have been linked to multiple arson attacks across England, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany, with several suspects convicted or charged for acts of terrorism and espionage. Legal Fragmentation: The EU lacks a harmonized definition of arson or a centralized criminal database, forcing reliance on fragmented national investigations despite advanced satellite monitoring systems like Copernicus.

einszwei 3mo ago
All human-caused fires aren't arson, most of these are usually negligence (source: worked in operations at fire service). Not discounting the risk of arson but I find it is used a lot to distract from conditions making the forests a tinder box.
- tremon 3mo ago
  A comment from an earlier thread alleged that Spanish policy says that forests that are destroyed due to fire don't have to be rebuilt, the land can be re-purposed. That's what's driving the arson in Spain. I have no way to evaluate the veracity of this site, but https://inspain.news/spains-wildfire-tragedy-now-has-a-human-face/ https://inspain.news/spains-wildfire-tragedy-now-has-a-human... says: > In some cases, arson is linked to economic gain: land clearance, insurance fraud, or disputes over grazing rights. Others are sparked by resentment towards environmental restrictions.

ruricjfj373 3mo ago

> loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) Worth comparing Lula versus other Brazilian leader’s records on this. It looks like left-wing leaders are more likely to prioritise climate action because it’s a collective problem/resource