Yes it’s Spain and it’s always hot which is why we bought it but this year was something else. The mix of both very high temps (higher than usual for July) and much higher humidity just made it very uncomfortable. We don’t usually need the AC on in July but we had to run it every night this time to be able to sleep.
Even the pool wasn’t refreshing as it was a constant 33C whereas it is usually around 28-30.
On the Wednesday night just gone we also had a heat burst. My first experience with such a thing and wow that was something else. It was like opening an oven door. The blast of scorching hot air in my face was almost suffocating.
Of course there have always been outlier days that have been too damn hot over the past two decades but this time it was the whole two weeks. Not just the odd day. I dread to think that it will be like in August which is when the temps usually hit their highest.
I’m a simple software guy I don’t pretend to know much about the climate but I listen and when thousands of scientists present data that shows average temps going up it makes me worry. If things continue like this some areas just won’t be reasonable to live or visit. They’re just not comfortable. You have to stay indoors as the sun roasts you in minutes and the humidity just makes you feel like crap constantly.
Even our neighbours who live there are talking of moving as it isn’t a nice place to live anymore. You feel trapped indoors with AC and do all you can to avoid going outside.
If these kinds of temperatures do continue to rise as predicted there is going to be a huge relocation of people to more liveable locations which is going to be a whole other problem.
I live in [redacted] where we have hot temperatures in the summer but we have pretty good humidity and it rarely feels “too hot”. I have AC but almost never need to use it unless it climbs to around 40C for a few consecutive days so I am used to pretty hot but I just did not enjoy Spain these past two weeks and was so glad to arrive home last night to 29C.
We have always avoided August as it's never been a nice time to visit due to the heat as well as being much busier due to the school holidays.
As for it's value I don't know if I am honest. It hasn't been something we've looked into in a very long time so I really have no idea.
I have far more shame about how much food I waste or worse how much I used to consume if I am honest. When I look at the environmental impact of the food I eat it dwarfs everything else.
Even if I were to fly every time that would have been 42 two-hour flights over two decades. I wouldn't have shame over that number of flights considering I've worked with people that fly more than that in a couple of months just for meetings.
I think the environmental impact of that one flight pales in comparison to the plastic packaging our family consumes on a yearly basis... and we are conscientious of our usage.
Here, repaired it for you.
Remember the sinking island scene in Erik the Viking?
Although personal responsibility is never a bad thing, we need to focus on the big companies that have been deliberately hiding climate science for decades - they're the ones doing the lion's share of the polluting and suppressing alternatives.
There is an alternative however, and countries like China are pursuing it. Want to look at what life would be like with less petroleum usage per capita? Look to Asia. I'm not some tankie, but I also don't have blinders on.
"The factory of ignorance": Arte tells about these industrialists who manipulate science
https://www.tellerreport.com/life/2021-02-23-%0A---%22the-fa...
Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-ind...
Why Right-Wingers Are So Afraid of Men Eating Vegetables
https://newrepublic.com/article/171781/meat-culture-war-cric...
The meat industry is borrowing tactics from Big Oil to obfuscate the truth about climate change
https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrow...
Why the media too often ignores the connection between climate change and meat
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23778399/media-ignores-cl...
How Big Oil is manipulating the way you think about climate change
https://www.salon.com/2023/05/13/how-big-oil-is-manipulating...
Disinformation and lies are spreading faster than Australia's bushfires
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/12/disin...
Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/rightwing-wa...
Senate Hearing Exposes 'Insidious' Dark Money Network Fueling Climate Crisis
https://www.commondreams.org/news/senate-dark-money-climate
Report: 1,500 Big Oil Lobbyists “Double Agents” for Supposed Climate Champions
https://truthout.org/articles/report-1500-big-oil-lobbyists-...
Chemical industry used big tobacco’s tactics to conceal evidence of PFAS risks
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/pfas-3m-...
Analysis: Most research on PFAS harms is unpublicized
We need to force manufacturers to make things fixable. And mandate certain level of support for spare parts and batteries.
Same with all types of connectors. I wish the US passed the passed the law requiring common charging port, common audio port(audio jack was perfect), etc. Audio jack removal by Apple and subsequently Google is an atrocity.
- Build nuclear power plants everywhere. Yes even in countries like Iran and North Korea
- Don't subsidize fossil fuel use by any mechanism. Yes dropping the Russian fuel cap.
- Make reducing emissions a priority that means it comes first in consideration. Yes ahead of Uighurs in China, Women in Iran and Afghanistan.
You will not get everything you want.
But if you believe climate change is civilization ending then you need to give up what you don't need.
Just Stop Oil is super obnoxious but if climate change is destroying our planet why is it they still get openly assaulted in the street in a "first world" country? It's because people aren't even willing to be late to the cinema.
Meat
Look in the mirror. Have you been on a plane? Do you use motor transport? Does your home have electricity? The problem is you, not some baby in a country where people consume in a year what an American does in a day.
It's not othering the problem. I think that the people who are already here are already doing enough damage, and that it's enormously selfish and pathologically narcissistic to want to add more humans to the world just to pass along your DNA. Of all the things you listed, I will never consume more than one human's worth of those resources. Whereas for every child you have, you are placing a claim on exponentially increasing resources in perpetuity.
Dumb arguments like this do more harm to the climate change cause than anything else. It comes across as an unreasonable and uneducated point of view that no one listens to.
When they said these are important matters in TV, did you really believe them? These, among many other issues, are not even in the queue my friend.
I'm thinking we're still really far away. Migration from areas that become uninhabitable is still weak. And it doesn't look like any state that has substantial military/commercial/political power is interested in starting a fuss about it. Germany's Green party, probably the strongest climate centric party in the world, somehow thinks that potential nuclear reactor problems are just as bad as global warming.
You mean, like, switching to a vegan diet, using public transport and stop flying? Those seem radical enough for most people in the Northern Hemisphere.
> Such as detonating thermonuclear weapons to throw enough dust above the troposphere to cool the planet down?
Weird world, one in which people can consider drastically changing the composition of the atmosphere, affecting all forms of life over the planet at the same time, instead of purchasing less from Amazon and doing some changes in their diet and holiday plans.
It’s systemic solutions that are needed. Some of those may include disincentivizing consumption. But it’s also not simple given that in many places there’s serious pushback against that. And also the economic cost. Everything is interwoven.
I wish people stopped pretending that this is just a matter of going vegan.
My point is about the fact that we already know and have most of the solutions: less consumption, less emissions, less destruction of our environment. Yet, most people with decision power (be it as individuals, as heads of governments or companies) refuse to accept and follow them. Instead, many prefer to propose global-scale, geo-modifications whose results are unknown and potentially more dangerous.
It’s something we can do today, just need to decide whether having a burger is more important or not.
One of these things is not like the other.
Vegan diets — and I support them in principle — do little or nothing to reduce carbon emissions.
Vegan diets just don't deliver enough calories and essential nutrients without (industrial) supplementation, and veganism depends on broadscale monoculture crops with massive fossil-fuel inputs to grow, harvest and distribute, and exist in places largely that used to be healthy ecosystems supporting animal life.
Nice idea, and I'm cool with the overall philosophy and principles of veganism, but yoking it to climate activism, conflating it with strategies to "save the planet" is misguided.
We need to stop fossil fuels asap, stop animal ag (deforestation, pollution, biodiversity loss, etc.), reform agriculture (soils, biodiversity, poisons) and start reforesting/afforesting.
There are tons of studies that show it's the best way to stop the climate crisis.
How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449
Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/
Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm
The way we eat could lead to habitat loss for 17,000 species by 2050
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-bi...
Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares. The expansion of land for agriculture is the leading driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century
https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm
Without Changing Diets, Agriculture Alone Could Produce Enough Emissions to Surpass 1.5°C of Global Warming
https://www.wri.org/insights/without-changing-diets-agricult...
Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Livestock and climate change: what if the key actors in climate change are... cows, pigs, and chickens?
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Livestock-and-climate-...
The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4
Study finds forest protection successfully leads to reduced emissions at global scale
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-forest-successfully-emissions-...
That'll take a monumental effort, for a fairly minor impact. "eat less beef" sure.
People leaving the aircon on 24/7. Horribly uninsulated homes, buying and returning hundreds of items.
But ultimately, it's a shift to renewables+storage/nuclear that has to happen.
Pushing for people to go vegan is essentially counter-productive.
Speaking of flying, some billionaires have a second jet scouting ahead for air pockets. Remember Macron slyly taking off his watch under the table as he preached austerity? As much as I am frustrated by the apathy and short-sightedness of people, it's hard to blame them when those could so easily go first instead just consolidate and line their pockets where they can, to prepare for a crash they help make unavoidable that way. With private bunkers and going to Mars and freezing themselves and stuff that is so much derpier, less rational, so much more alienated, than some average person thinking they'd like to see the ocean one more time, so fuck it, they'll book a flight.
This quote emphasizes the idea that if individuals embody and practice positive values and actions, it can lead to a significant impact on the world around them. Similarly, if everyone were to act rightly, it would undoubtedly result in a different and improved world.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-greens-lay-out-nuclear-power-po...
That generation of power plants isn't really helping and new ones need a lot of time to build and produce lots of CO2 in the process.
That’s false. In France we have a project to bury them 500m underground in stable geological formations. And even if this site failed to retain the radioactive (which studies says it will not) that would be a minor issue against climate change.
As for security issues since nuclear power exists (~70 years) we can count deadly accidents in some dozens of victims while the pollution due to burning fuels kills several thousands of people every year.
At this point it’s so ridiculous that you have way more chance to die in a plane crash of anything nuclear.
Also contrary to a belief, a plane crashing in a nuclear powerplant, while creating a certain horrible mess would not be really different than crashing it in any petrochemical plant. For comparison that would be way less dramatic than the AZF of Beyrouth explosions.
Mission fucking accomplished. If nuclear simply isn't profitable they'll have to shift to solar+wind+battery eventually.
The solution is to stop mindless consumption. We use the same material to wrap and bake food and drink unhealthy drinks as we do to build airplanes. We use plastic for use cases that take place over seconds and minutes and then throw it away. We drive everywhere because of poor urban design. We use plastic to carry food home from stores and restaurants. We fill our homes with plastic, metal, wood, and electronic junk, very little of it actually needed.
Mindless consumption makes the U.S. waste 1/3 of the food produced every year. 96% of that goes directly into landfills. It is literally throwing energy away, energy that we sapped away from the ground and ecosystems. Only 4% of the waste is composted. Full adoption of composting food waste and reducing it in total could bring emissions down by as much as high single digits or low teens percentages.
We also need greater wealth equality, which brings education and health equality as well.
It's almost silly how simple the real solutions are.
I planted milkweed last year, or rather let the milkweed that the previous owner would put mulch over. Surprise, we have monarch caterpillars this year.
There are real consequences to our actions, and if we reverse them, we get real consequences back.
Simple? Real? Let me give you some numbers. Let's use electricity as a proxy for consumption[1].
Average global per capita electricity consumption is currently about 3000 kWh/a. To put that into context, you can drive your environmentally friendly EV (20kWh/100km) roughly 15 000 km (10 000 miles) and use no more electricity at anything during the year.
US electricity consumption is ~12 000 kWh per year. So if you want to not force third world to poverty forever and keep the global consumption at current levels (I'm not yet discussing decreasing global consumption, just keeping it at current levels). US folks would need to cut their consumption by 75% to allow the poorer to get even.
Sorry, but that is neither simple nor real. If we want to see the poor countries to rise to even mediocre living standards, we will face a huge increase in global consumption. You do not need to like this (I do not), but it is a fact. So please, stop whining about the need to reduce our consumption and start supporting initiatives how we can produce lots more energy and stuff sustainably. Because we need to do that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
> If we want to see the poor countries to rise to even mediocre living standards, we will face a huge increase in global consumption.
Why does reducing overall consumption in developed countries and reducing conspicuous and vacuous consumption everywhere hurt developing countries? There are different levels and definitions of consumption and energy consumption is not the only one and not what I meant or described.
> we can produce ... stuff sustainably
Producing things more sustainably was part of my point.
I guess maybe the final point is clearly defining what we mean by consumption. I view consumption that extends beyond providing a moderate way of living, access to healthcare and education, social services, and transportation to be harmful, and it's that excess that I think should be reduced everywhere. There's no reason why developing countries should not be able to learn what a travesty much of the developed world is and adjust what it means to become more developed.
It's not the same material. There are thousands of types of very different plastics.
>We drive everywhere because of poor urban design
Reversing allegedly poor urban design is the work of decades.
> It's not the same material. There are thousands of types of very different plastics.
Aluminum.
A fully green economy might be possible in the far future but the transition seems like it is going to take a century or more.
You'll go first, the scientists will go in a second ship.
The numbers say that even if the whole operation was powered by coal, it'd sequester 20 times as much CO2 as it generated. Use natural gas or other electricity generation for some of it, and the ratio improves dramatically.
Costs less than a $trillion a year which is one percent of global GDP.
Edit: it's the easy, safe, cheap thing to do; and we won't do it.
Given the push politically for solutions that are going to impact negatively the lives of millions of people "for their own good", I think some are already pushing for "radical solutions".
Luckily, there's pushback this time.
Parts of these are being tried by the Greens in Germany (part of govt), but everyone is getting totally histerical, with all sorts of influence groups coming out of their holes and trying to shut down all the efforts.
The alternative is facing the uncomfortable truth that climate change is the aggregate of small decisions made every day by every human, and there is no single action that will address it.
Growing trees?
I'm full, 8 o'clock in Paris.
"uncharted" is the keyword here, do you understand what it really means?
This leads me to believe that they're lying about how important it is to them. Supposedly, it is a world-ending scenario... at least when it comes to wrecking economies. But the moment real fixes are discussed it's "oh no, we can't do that". Considering how much they've had hardons for economic meddling for a century and a half at this point, why should I believe that it's anything other than a ploy to do what they've always wanted?
Yeah, Nuh.
"detonating thermonuclear weapons to throw enough dust above the troposphere to cool the planet down" isn't a real solution, and we've done this before .. leaving aside the two atomic detonations at the end of WWII and looking just at the 2,000 test detonations since (many larger, much larger, than the H & N explosions) the absolute worst case examples were ground level blasts that lifted material into the sky. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo
Better fixes include inflating bubbles between the earth and sun to reduce incoming light .. at least that one is reversable and fine tuneable.
Or, you know, maybe consuming less and winding down a bit on the baby making?
And of course when it comes to making babies almost everyone thinks, that their child or they themselves are special and it is OK to have more than one child for them. Especially comfortable when they already have two or more children, or for some ego reason want more children than proposed. Oh and never dare to mention China and one child policy either in this context, or the consequences for the world, if that policy had not existed.
Don't need thermonukes. Seed the oceans with iron.
If the only proper argument for doing it is that "the left" is against it and "the right" is for it, that seems comparatively weak.
Same people (the rich) have been in power for a long time in much of the world. Its like they need anyones permission to do anything.
Loss of glaciers in Himalaya ... 500 mil people on the move
Tropic & wet bulb or 50+C temperatures ... 2 mld. people on the move
Deforestations & droughts ... mass migrations, almost everybody affected
Large scale crop failures (temperatures, droughts, polinators ...) ... famines, wars
Biodiversity loses (it's critical) ... famines, huge loses for future ppl
Thermohaline circulation slow/shutdown ... cooling of northern countries, agricultural loses, extreme events
Loss of ice cover (Arctic, Greenland, Antarctic) ... rising oceans for several meters, major cities underwater
Cascading tipping points ... who knows
I'm starting to believe the sooner the system collapses, the better for the future of humanity.
Agricultural risks consolidating ag into even more megacorps.
Insurance costs making a lot of currently habitable places uninsurable, and after a few natural catastrophes nobody willing to settle in them.
Wet-bulb temperatures making the deaths of a few hundred thousands of people a frequent occurrence in many parts of the world.
Marine die-offs making the source of cheap high-quality protein in many places no longer accessible and lowering nutrition in several human populations.
Can we instead of make some changes on local level that effectively work with the climate change or minimise the impact? Might mean need to abandon some locations, but there has always been population movements.
We are not turning back the systems that will heat the world.
If we approach it as a local challenge, there is a chance we can invent new ways to deal with it.
Maybe instead of this being the end, it could be a beginning of new science and development that counters the negative impacts of change.
Maybe, just maybe, we can get some good out of it.
How many would be able to live like this, how many would die until we would get to this point, and do we really want this?
The problem is the overconsumption and overpollution. That's the only problem.
Nothing good would come from your proposed solution, imho.
We can always get our towns ready to receive the millions of climate refugees we'll be creating.
Towns and cities are actually far more resource efficient than rural and suburban sprawl.
The only inefficient thing in them is highrises. But five-story buildings are incredibly infrastructure-efficient. Walking through a midrise neighborhood puts you past more people per minute, than driving 120 mph through a suburb.
