There's an outdated statement: 50% of the fossil fuel civilization has burned, we burned after 1992. Outdated, so that percentage is probably a lot higher now.
I just came back from Hungary and Slovakia and it really caught my attention that the grass everywhere was just yellow. I wasn't sure if it's normal by this time of the year, but truely, both countries look like Greece now.
Same in Northwest France: I've never seen the grass so yellow, and now the ground is even becoming bare brown. Some tree species are yellowing/browning. With the prolonged lack of rain and extreme heat for the region, it's a summer like I've never seen before. And it's probably one of the coolest of the rest of my life.
Same in Ireland. I think the country grass is fields or near woodlands or rivers is still holding on to its green but urban grass in parks is scorched. I've never seen this before.
Ireland is fundamentally a wet country and always has been.
Southern Slovakia and a large part of Hungary are fucked if it keeps getting warmer, and given their governments there is 0% chance they will even try to adapt their agriculture
Climate change affects geographies unequally. Seems like Europe and the tropics have been the first to suffer, year after year, and with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years, can't help but wonder what is on European minds.
The main thing I have in mind is that human civilization is completely fucked. What is needed to ensure things aren’t too horrible in the next century is so drastic and requires such a global coordinated effort that will never happen. There is no technology or super authority that will magically save us from a climate catastrophe this century.
Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity, and developed countries are ready to sacrifice pretty much everything to the AI compute gods we are truly fucked
>the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity
I'm pretty convinced that lots of people would be willing to make sacrifices. But not while Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to feed his Angus beef Macadamia nuts on Hawaii and all the invitees fly in separate private jets to COP26 instead of making it an online event.
The message of "sacrifice for thee, but not for me!" should not be underestimated here.
You can only control your own actions. Reducing your meat consumption by like 80% is very low effort. It’s honestly ridiculous that still has to be argued about
The ridiculous is that we talk about this individual change nonsense when we should be talking about actual regulations and restrictions of industries.
Yes, hit the biggest poluters who incidentally put so much money into anti-climate agenda. Stop distracting with tiny individual crap.
I mean, it's a collective action problem. Individual consumption of normal people is a huge contributor to global energy demands / pollution / etc. You don't have to change your behavior but if no one does in the coming decades then we're pretty fucked.
Not to let the 1% off the hook. Por que no los dos
You cannot solve societal problems with individual actions.
It's about time to cut the crap that each person can make a difference while governments keep subsidizing all sorts of activities that damage the environment.
I will vote for forbidding beef, but will keep eating it until it is forbidden.
I somewhat agree, and I have not stopped eating beef entirely. I think that forbidding is overkill but agree that lots of related subsidies should be eliminated (honestly, if meat were just priced w/o current subsidies, we'd be in far better shape).
But you have to have some public consensus or the government will never implement such changes due to their unpopularity. This is why I think promoting some reduction in individual meat consumption is still valuable - it is good for average people to reflect on their consumption or they will vote out anyone who attempts to change it.
I don't think that the focus should be on individual blame (even just for the reason that this is politically nonviable). But you at least need to amass some collective awareness.
I love beef. I absolutely adore cheese, and I would be unfathomably sad to never again taste a nice piece of Gorgonzola.
But I know that the meat and dairy industry are hellish for the environment. You don't need to win me in that argument, I accepted that already.
But that's the catch - either we are all in this together, or we will burn in this oven-earth of our making. There's no between. I am not becoming vegan just to die scorched anyway because meat and dairy were still subsidized and consumed.
Governments are surprisingly good to set proper incentives when they want. It could make beef and dairy economically ruinous with taxes instead of forbidding. Consumption would lower dramatically the moment a striploin beef is costing 30 bucks.
If society needs several environmental catastrophes to wake up, then I can only hope I see the other side of it.
Changing peoples culture is about as simple as changing peoples religion. Getting people who eat meat to switch to vegetarianism is like trying to get vegetarians to reduce their land usage by switching to some amount of shell fish or sea weed, the later which is vegetarian but not necessary the kind of plants that people are used to.
It should be much easier to convince people that emission free energy production is a necessity, and yet there is for all practical purpose no such political movement or any political party that actually support the simple fact that producing electricity and heat through burning carbon based fuel is completely unnecessary and should have been relegated as a something past civilizations did. We don't need to convince the world population to change their culture in order to not construct new thermal power plants, only political will and money.
We don't need AI to figure it out. It's been researched to death already. Go vegetarian, abolish fossil fuels, buy less.
The problem is that way too few are willing to change their habits, and legislators have near-zero incentive to enact unpopular rules to help mitigate the problems. AI isn't going to change any of that.
well, we managed to construct a narrative where everyone could only marginally change its habits. heat pumps, electric cars, solar panels, carbon taxes. things would have remained unchanged at the high level.
but that was still way too much to ask. I'm afraid that if you insist on reducing the solution space to just 'it magically goes away and no one has to think about it', even the mighty AI might struggle. why don't fire up Claude and ask it?
Lol. Firstly, how we live now is far different to how we lived 100 years ago (people ate far less red meat than we do today for example). Secondly, how the bulk of humanity lives is inevitably going to change drastically. The choice we have is to do it voluntarily and perhaps control how it changes, or wait until core crops start failing in a big way and livestock die off due to prolonged drought and heatwaves.
Yeah, conflict is guaranteed. China will probably invade Russia and secure Lake Baikal and vast areas of Siberia. Europe might start shooting at "smugglers" earnestly (sorry to the "collateral damage").
I guess Eric or Barron will follow Project 2025 Edition 10's guideline and invade Greenland to secure their water for USA. And Canada's favorable climate?
I tell anyone I meet to seriously consider what immigration will be like when anthropogenic global warming will get stronger. I'm neither pro/against immigration but I know many people are scared by immigration (as is demonstrated in many EC countries by the progression of far right parties).
I also tell them to remember that food prices and insurances prices will inevitably go up.
And I won't much more that that because everything else fails (even the death of 1000 persons in my country during this years heat waves just make people say "bah, that's life")
Are you somehow under the illusion that countries that "send" immigrants now will be accepting of return immigrants in the future? Whether they be the same people that left or other people coming in?
This is 100% a one way street for most governments.
>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
>> What's that going to look like?
There is a very graphic way to understand the problem.
Some cities in Canada are Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg or Regina.
London and Berlin are closer to the North Pole that any of these
-----------------------
Minimum temperature registered in London -17 Celsius. In Quebec and Montreal: -36 and -37.8 Celsius.
Berlin is a little closer than London to the North Pole but also more continental, so more like Regina in that sense.
Berlin lowest temperature registered is -15 Celsius, and in Regina: -40 Celsius
... And Edinburgh is closer to the North pole than any of these, and a little Northern than Manitoba, where reaching -40 Celsius a few nights is expected each year, and more than 30 Celsius in the summer is normal.
Next year, el nino may hit and the extremes will set new records again. I wonder if einstein was right and human stupidity is infinite. On the other side, we can achieve alot as a society when the narratives are positive.
I don’t think el Niño affects Europe so directly. As a second order effect, sure, but here the heatwaves and el Niño are simultaneous. And this year is going to break records significantly. Again. No need to wait for next year, which could be the tail end of the current Niño, a regression to the mean, or the beginning of the next Niña.
In any case, Europe is warming up faster than the global average, Niño or not.
The current El Niño hasn’t “hit” in Europe yet. Its effects in Europe will most likely be felt in the first quarter of 2027. I’d assumed that’s what the parent was referring to.
El Niño does not really hit Europe in any way. It influences several things, like the jet streams, but the effects on Europe are very indirect and much milder than in the Pacific. They are also delayed by a couple of months.
UK here. It really feels like this year has been a massive wake-up call, a follow-up to the one of 2022 (and 2018, 2019, 2021...)
Some fire services have had their busiest months on record this year. In an extraordinary (and controversial) move, they convinced the government to use the phone Emergency Alert system to alert the entire country about the risk of fires.
Prior to summer, in the North of England, it was extremely windy and gloomy from September to May. Very very few blue skies. The other day, we went from a 2-day mini heat wave (35c & 28c) to gloomy cloud in 2 days - it's just so bizarre.
We've just had our 5th or 6th heatwave of the summer
A train derailed yesterday due to a buckled rail. Another derailed, cause of which is suspected to be heat/drought related. Luckily no fatalities.
We've had more wildfires than 2022 and drought is more widespread. I often can't have my window open at night when it's 29c inside because of the fires 10-20 miles away. I have no A/C
I'm wondering if our future is gales and grey for 9 months then heatwaves and drought? I know the North of England is historically gloomy, but it 'feels' different of late.
It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have. We haven't built a reservoir since 1990 despite massive population increase. Our rail network is not prepared for heat waves or long periods of drought or long periods of rain or long periods of ice/snow. London buses mostly have no A/C, ditto rest of the country. Many people don't have money for A/C at home - not even sure our electricity network could handle it. And about 100 other issues...
>It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have.
Oh, you have the money.
You just don't want to spend it, for that would shift the balance of political power in the country towards labor and away from capital, and away from the old and towards the young, for the wages of labor and the young would have to rise.
That's anathema to an upper class and a body politic whose primary objective is controlling the cost of labor, and even the political party that's named after labor has no plan to change that.
This is going to continue until the current body politic is more afraid of dying from heatstroke than they are of anyone else being in charge.
Note that, first, there really is not much point to doing anything if you don't reduce by at least 52% in 3 years or less (less than that, or more time, will not make the difference between IPCC >2 and <2 scenarios). Hence without drastic reductions from the Chinese government (not promises, not "look at our beautiful new solar field", ONLY we're stopping these HUNDREDS of coal mines WITHIN 2 years) you've pretty much already lost, since a lot of countries lower on the list will definitely be increasing, and have declared it colonization for the west to demand they stop. Oh, by the way, you also must convince many African countries to stop that whole "electricity for our people" thing, otherwise the needed reduction is also a pipedream.
Note that just stopping CO2 output does not matter if it just gets transplanted somewhere else. In other words: the only way to make a difference is to stop first coal and then oil from being dug up in the first place, and let the CO2 emissions "take care of themselves". Otherwise CO2 emission reductions are local, not global, and so without reducing coal mining and oil pumping reductions do not matter and will not make any difference to global warming.
The only countries in the EU that have any influence at all is Norway, and they would have to just give up between 20% and 40% of their national income (France and the Netherlands are rounding errors, and Russia is not EU), and that's a typical figure.
And just so we're clear: reducing GDP by 20% to 40% will require a multiple of that in average wage reductions (so let's say at least 50%), without rents reducing by a single cent. You know, to give some idea what you're actually asking for from Norwegians.
In other words: this will not happen, there is no way in hell the governments involved will agree to even half of what's needed. And the UK, in fact all western governments other than Norway, US, Canada and Mexico have no influence and cannot realistically make a meaningful contributions to stopping climate change. And even those countries that can contribute will have to give up A LOT and it won't matter unless you get China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to follow suit.
Oh and if you do get this going, it'll cause a lot of pain in most of the world.
Well in my mind is no one else cares and the EU is holier than pope. We are destroying our economy for promile of world polution and are even shamed for using AC.
It’s the "it’s real, but we cannot do anything about it" rung on the climate denialist ladder. Yes, it is dangerous. It is also mainstream. There are several examples in this thread.
It’s becoming less, but the formerly widespread traditional view in Europe was that using AC is a frivolous waste of energy that contributes to environmental pollution and global warming.
No they cannot, it’s just a right-wing strawman. And something that perturbs some Americans, for some reason. Another "proof" that Europe is a terrible place inhabited by clueless idiots.
Game theory gives all of us an optimal solution, so we all should care about every bit, no matter the global proportion. Btw. Chians per capital CO2 emission is lower than most of europe.
I think the cows are very stressed here in Switzerland. I make cheese every now and then - ricotta and paneer. It's simple. I buy the milk from a "milch-Automat" - farms around here (Zurich) have machines where you can buy a liter of raw milk from the farm for cheap. So, the milk I'm using is direct from the cows.
I made paneer a week ago. Normally I can cut it up and brown it and make the edges crispy. But for this batch I got far less cheese than normal and it was wet - I had to let the molded paneer dry out longer than normal. Then when I went to brown it the entire batch just melted into a gloopy mess - that just doesn't happen.
It's very disheartening as someone who enjoys recreational fishing that the river closures -- typically legally closed to fishing, but otherwise ethically closed -- are getting earlier and earlier. That is, if the rivers aren't straight up bone dry peak summer.
I'm pretty young, too, so I have this, if not worse than this, to look forward to for the majority of my life.
Not to mention here in BC we're up to three summers in a row where entire towns have burned down ... not a positive sign of things to come.
My only practical contribution to fixing this issue is to upvote this article.. and write a message on HN.
I'm in Spain.
I really hope that after this summer, people of Europe will wake up and make fixing the climate their highest priority - at home, at work, in politics. We have very little time left, maybe a few years.
I can still see news articles everywhere blaming 'climate change' and 'CO2 emissions', pointing the finger at the oil companies and the likes.
But those 'bad' guys are not operating in a void - they supply the products which are in high demand from me and you and our families - our entire lifestyle is built around them. So what needs to change is our life styles, philosophy, economic order .. drastic changes.
Consumerism needs to go, tourism needs to go, advertising needs to go, travel and logistics needs to be reinvented, industrial production needs to drop by orders of magnitude, everything replaced with healthy and efficient alternatives.
How can this be done peacefully is beyond me, it probably can't.
We've had precedent during covid, when the whole world stopped because everyone was scared that they're going to die. It's not so different now.
Much of what you suggest is a drop in the ocean and requires people's habits to change in ways people are not happy to listen to - and - again - it's a drop in the ocean. Go vegetarian, it helps the environment - but don't expect anyone to follow, and don't expect it to mean anything.
Massive electrification - production (solar+wind+storage) and usage (EVs, as people won't stop driving no matter what, and heat pump heating and cooling) can be successfully driven with incentives and would have meaningful impact. People love to save money without losing comfort, incentives are ultimately budget neutral on a timescale, and for Europe this also ties into strategic energy sovereignty which is a nice added driver. Vote out and call out politicians not prioritizing this.
Bonus, you get to call them unpatriotic as they reinforce dependence on people who we're no longer on friendly terms with (no matter whether you look west or east)
What you're proposing (ending consumerism, tourism) is nothing short of revolutionary. I don't imagine that the future is going to be bloodless with or without a revolution.
I’m convinced one of the best ways is to make the right choices financially easier, and make the wrong ones (much) more expensive.
Fully subsidise trains and tax the crap out of flying.
Do the same for cars running on fossil fuels
Tax carbon heavy foods like meat.
Repeat until this starts changing consumer behaviour
The biggest issue that keeps accelerating climate change is that people buy too much stuff, travel too much, and more importantly eat in a way that is bound to destroy the climate.
Now go tell people to buy less crap, use more public transport and stop filling their mouths with beef and fish every day, good luck.
And even that would merely slow the progress, not stop or revert climate change.
Sincerely this is a disaster, each generation just keeps doing worse than others, gen z may actually be the firsts to really give 2 damns, or pretend better.
Side by side images of exactly the same places one year apart would have been much better than the images in the article - combining left and right part from 2 years. Maybe it's just me, but the satellite images mostly were hard to read
They are the same place, you’re supposed to compare using the slider. What bothers me more is that the left and right images seem to have a different color temperature.
The headline is a bit sensationalist. Scorched means burned not just dry, later it mentions that some of the images are scorched from wildfires, but that doesn't seem to correlate to the one shown under the headline.
I'm in Europe, the sky here is literally red at night from fires we are failing to extinguish. France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Germany, Croatia, Serbia are all going through this to different degrees right now.
I mean what do you expect, it's BBC. I'll eat my hat the day they actually report the facts as it is without exaggeration. I wouldn't even trust BBC without verifying the sources. Most of the time it's lying at best and propaganda at worst.
We've had the hottest summer ever recorded (since the beginning of 20th century, more than 120 years ago) across Europe.
There is no "downward trend), it's going up, and will be for a while.
I remember in 2010, corporate propagandists were telling us that the effects of climate change won't be felt for a 100 years.
https://xkcd.com/2889/
There's an outdated statement: 50% of the fossil fuel civilization has burned, we burned after 1992. Outdated, so that percentage is probably a lot higher now.
Famine is going to be a really, really bad way to die.
Don't worry.
The last to starve will be the first to suffocate.
The only alway to avoid would be to listen to scientists …and the masses really don’t like doing that apparently. Feelings get hurt.
I just came back from Hungary and Slovakia and it really caught my attention that the grass everywhere was just yellow. I wasn't sure if it's normal by this time of the year, but truely, both countries look like Greece now.
Same in Northwest France: I've never seen the grass so yellow, and now the ground is even becoming bare brown. Some tree species are yellowing/browning. With the prolonged lack of rain and extreme heat for the region, it's a summer like I've never seen before. And it's probably one of the coolest of the rest of my life.
Same in Ireland. I think the country grass is fields or near woodlands or rivers is still holding on to its green but urban grass in parks is scorched. I've never seen this before.
Ireland is fundamentally a wet country and always has been.
Same here in NL. A few drops of rain today, for the first time in a long time.
Southern Slovakia and a large part of Hungary are fucked if it keeps getting warmer, and given their governments there is 0% chance they will even try to adapt their agriculture
Same in Switzerland. Trees have started yellowing a month before autumn.
In Spain I drove past fields of sunflowers that were all wilted. Formerly grass fields are totally yellow and crunch underfoot.
Climate change affects geographies unequally. Seems like Europe and the tropics have been the first to suffer, year after year, and with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years, can't help but wonder what is on European minds.
> can't help but wonder what is on European minds
The main thing I have in mind is that human civilization is completely fucked. What is needed to ensure things aren’t too horrible in the next century is so drastic and requires such a global coordinated effort that will never happen. There is no technology or super authority that will magically save us from a climate catastrophe this century.
Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity, and developed countries are ready to sacrifice pretty much everything to the AI compute gods we are truly fucked
>the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity
I'm pretty convinced that lots of people would be willing to make sacrifices. But not while Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to feed his Angus beef Macadamia nuts on Hawaii and all the invitees fly in separate private jets to COP26 instead of making it an online event.
The message of "sacrifice for thee, but not for me!" should not be underestimated here.
You can only control your own actions. Reducing your meat consumption by like 80% is very low effort. It’s honestly ridiculous that still has to be argued about
The ridiculous is that we talk about this individual change nonsense when we should be talking about actual regulations and restrictions of industries.
Yes, hit the biggest poluters who incidentally put so much money into anti-climate agenda. Stop distracting with tiny individual crap.
> >you can only control your own actions
>tries to control others' dietary habits
Why would I reduce it? Not going to eat less meat so that Zuck can keep sailing on his mega yacht.
I mean, it's a collective action problem. Individual consumption of normal people is a huge contributor to global energy demands / pollution / etc. You don't have to change your behavior but if no one does in the coming decades then we're pretty fucked.
Not to let the 1% off the hook. Por que no los dos
You cannot solve societal problems with individual actions.
It's about time to cut the crap that each person can make a difference while governments keep subsidizing all sorts of activities that damage the environment.
I will vote for forbidding beef, but will keep eating it until it is forbidden.
I somewhat agree, and I have not stopped eating beef entirely. I think that forbidding is overkill but agree that lots of related subsidies should be eliminated (honestly, if meat were just priced w/o current subsidies, we'd be in far better shape).
But you have to have some public consensus or the government will never implement such changes due to their unpopularity. This is why I think promoting some reduction in individual meat consumption is still valuable - it is good for average people to reflect on their consumption or they will vote out anyone who attempts to change it.
I don't think that the focus should be on individual blame (even just for the reason that this is politically nonviable). But you at least need to amass some collective awareness.
I love beef. I absolutely adore cheese, and I would be unfathomably sad to never again taste a nice piece of Gorgonzola.
But I know that the meat and dairy industry are hellish for the environment. You don't need to win me in that argument, I accepted that already.
But that's the catch - either we are all in this together, or we will burn in this oven-earth of our making. There's no between. I am not becoming vegan just to die scorched anyway because meat and dairy were still subsidized and consumed.
Governments are surprisingly good to set proper incentives when they want. It could make beef and dairy economically ruinous with taxes instead of forbidding. Consumption would lower dramatically the moment a striploin beef is costing 30 bucks.
If society needs several environmental catastrophes to wake up, then I can only hope I see the other side of it.
Changing peoples culture is about as simple as changing peoples religion. Getting people who eat meat to switch to vegetarianism is like trying to get vegetarians to reduce their land usage by switching to some amount of shell fish or sea weed, the later which is vegetarian but not necessary the kind of plants that people are used to.
It should be much easier to convince people that emission free energy production is a necessity, and yet there is for all practical purpose no such political movement or any political party that actually support the simple fact that producing electricity and heat through burning carbon based fuel is completely unnecessary and should have been relegated as a something past civilizations did. We don't need to convince the world population to change their culture in order to not construct new thermal power plants, only political will and money.
> Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity,
If it is a necessity, it should be government policy. Make it a regulation.
No change will happen when you switch the focus of necessity from society to individual.
AI is more energy efficient and faster than we are. If there is anything thinking needed to solve the problem, it's best to lean on AI.
We don't need AI to figure it out. It's been researched to death already. Go vegetarian, abolish fossil fuels, buy less.
The problem is that way too few are willing to change their habits, and legislators have near-zero incentive to enact unpopular rules to help mitigate the problems. AI isn't going to change any of that.
Proposing that all of humanity drastically change its habits is a theoretical, not practical, solution.
well, we managed to construct a narrative where everyone could only marginally change its habits. heat pumps, electric cars, solar panels, carbon taxes. things would have remained unchanged at the high level.
but that was still way too much to ask. I'm afraid that if you insist on reducing the solution space to just 'it magically goes away and no one has to think about it', even the mighty AI might struggle. why don't fire up Claude and ask it?
Lol. Firstly, how we live now is far different to how we lived 100 years ago (people ate far less red meat than we do today for example). Secondly, how the bulk of humanity lives is inevitably going to change drastically. The choice we have is to do it voluntarily and perhaps control how it changes, or wait until core crops start failing in a big way and livestock die off due to prolonged drought and heatwaves.
AI datacenters will make it worst. And Musk and Thiel and the rest dont give a shit about planet.
Yeah, conflict is guaranteed. China will probably invade Russia and secure Lake Baikal and vast areas of Siberia. Europe might start shooting at "smugglers" earnestly (sorry to the "collateral damage").
I guess Eric or Barron will follow Project 2025 Edition 10's guideline and invade Greenland to secure their water for USA. And Canada's favorable climate?
I tell anyone I meet to seriously consider what immigration will be like when anthropogenic global warming will get stronger. I'm neither pro/against immigration but I know many people are scared by immigration (as is demonstrated in many EC countries by the progression of far right parties).
I also tell them to remember that food prices and insurances prices will inevitably go up.
And I won't much more that that because everything else fails (even the death of 1000 persons in my country during this years heat waves just make people say "bah, that's life")
I think you may have cause and affect reversed. It seems to me that fear of migrants grows proportional to the funding of far right parties.
Some who think right now that immigration is bad, may later be amongst the ones that decide to emigrate. Then they will know.
Are you somehow under the illusion that countries that "send" immigrants now will be accepting of return immigrants in the future? Whether they be the same people that left or other people coming in?
This is 100% a one way street for most governments.
>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
What's that going to look like?
Very hot in summer, very cold in winter.
Best article I know about this topic is: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/amoc-explainer/index.htm...
Significantly colder in the winter. Im not sure how much it would change summer temps though, it could just affect the amount of rain.
People might be ice skating on the Thames again.
>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
>> What's that going to look like?
There is a very graphic way to understand the problem.
Some cities in Canada are Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg or Regina.
London and Berlin are closer to the North Pole that any of these
-----------------------
Minimum temperature registered in London -17 Celsius. In Quebec and Montreal: -36 and -37.8 Celsius.
Berlin is a little closer than London to the North Pole but also more continental, so more like Regina in that sense.
Berlin lowest temperature registered is -15 Celsius, and in Regina: -40 Celsius
... And Edinburgh is closer to the North pole than any of these, and a little Northern than Manitoba, where reaching -40 Celsius a few nights is expected each year, and more than 30 Celsius in the summer is normal.
> can't help but wonder what is on European minds
that only a big catastrophe, possibly a global war, will make people think again
other two options:
a) Asteroid strike
b) Arrival of Aliens (in a sense of "evident to everywhone on earth")
Next year, el nino may hit and the extremes will set new records again. I wonder if einstein was right and human stupidity is infinite. On the other side, we can achieve alot as a society when the narratives are positive.
I don’t think el Niño affects Europe so directly. As a second order effect, sure, but here the heatwaves and el Niño are simultaneous. And this year is going to break records significantly. Again. No need to wait for next year, which could be the tail end of the current Niño, a regression to the mean, or the beginning of the next Niña.
In any case, Europe is warming up faster than the global average, Niño or not.
El nino hit this year and will be back to normal next year:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-13/risk-of-...
But first we get to experience (probably) record rainfall in autumn and winter.
The current El Niño hasn’t “hit” in Europe yet. Its effects in Europe will most likely be felt in the first quarter of 2027. I’d assumed that’s what the parent was referring to.
El Niño does not really hit Europe in any way. It influences several things, like the jet streams, but the effects on Europe are very indirect and much milder than in the Pacific. They are also delayed by a couple of months.
> with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years
Guess it will cancel out the increased temperature?
The AMOC delivers warm air year round, it cools the UK from the hotter southern air during the summer.
> but wonder what is on European minds
UK here. It really feels like this year has been a massive wake-up call, a follow-up to the one of 2022 (and 2018, 2019, 2021...)
Some fire services have had their busiest months on record this year. In an extraordinary (and controversial) move, they convinced the government to use the phone Emergency Alert system to alert the entire country about the risk of fires.
Prior to summer, in the North of England, it was extremely windy and gloomy from September to May. Very very few blue skies. The other day, we went from a 2-day mini heat wave (35c & 28c) to gloomy cloud in 2 days - it's just so bizarre.
We've just had our 5th or 6th heatwave of the summer
A train derailed yesterday due to a buckled rail. Another derailed, cause of which is suspected to be heat/drought related. Luckily no fatalities.
We've had more wildfires than 2022 and drought is more widespread. I often can't have my window open at night when it's 29c inside because of the fires 10-20 miles away. I have no A/C
I'm wondering if our future is gales and grey for 9 months then heatwaves and drought? I know the North of England is historically gloomy, but it 'feels' different of late.
It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have. We haven't built a reservoir since 1990 despite massive population increase. Our rail network is not prepared for heat waves or long periods of drought or long periods of rain or long periods of ice/snow. London buses mostly have no A/C, ditto rest of the country. Many people don't have money for A/C at home - not even sure our electricity network could handle it. And about 100 other issues...
>It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have.
Oh, you have the money.
You just don't want to spend it, for that would shift the balance of political power in the country towards labor and away from capital, and away from the old and towards the young, for the wages of labor and the young would have to rise.
That's anathema to an upper class and a body politic whose primary objective is controlling the cost of labor, and even the political party that's named after labor has no plan to change that.
This is going to continue until the current body politic is more afraid of dying from heatstroke than they are of anyone else being in charge.
Did Nigel Farange change his mind?
Why would it matter at all? Top CO2 emitters:
Country Share Cumulative Cumulative (Gt)
China 33% 33% 11.4-13.1
United States 11.7% 44.7% 16.0-18.1
India 8% 52.7% 19.1-21.2
Russia 5.1% 57.8% 21.1-23.2
Japan 2.5% 60.3% 22.1-24.2
UK 0.8% 0.3-0.4 (no cumulative figure)
Note that, first, there really is not much point to doing anything if you don't reduce by at least 52% in 3 years or less (less than that, or more time, will not make the difference between IPCC >2 and <2 scenarios). Hence without drastic reductions from the Chinese government (not promises, not "look at our beautiful new solar field", ONLY we're stopping these HUNDREDS of coal mines WITHIN 2 years) you've pretty much already lost, since a lot of countries lower on the list will definitely be increasing, and have declared it colonization for the west to demand they stop. Oh, by the way, you also must convince many African countries to stop that whole "electricity for our people" thing, otherwise the needed reduction is also a pipedream.
Note that just stopping CO2 output does not matter if it just gets transplanted somewhere else. In other words: the only way to make a difference is to stop first coal and then oil from being dug up in the first place, and let the CO2 emissions "take care of themselves". Otherwise CO2 emission reductions are local, not global, and so without reducing coal mining and oil pumping reductions do not matter and will not make any difference to global warming.
The only countries in the EU that have any influence at all is Norway, and they would have to just give up between 20% and 40% of their national income (France and the Netherlands are rounding errors, and Russia is not EU), and that's a typical figure.
And just so we're clear: reducing GDP by 20% to 40% will require a multiple of that in average wage reductions (so let's say at least 50%), without rents reducing by a single cent. You know, to give some idea what you're actually asking for from Norwegians.
In other words: this will not happen, there is no way in hell the governments involved will agree to even half of what's needed. And the UK, in fact all western governments other than Norway, US, Canada and Mexico have no influence and cannot realistically make a meaningful contributions to stopping climate change. And even those countries that can contribute will have to give up A LOT and it won't matter unless you get China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to follow suit.
Oh and if you do get this going, it'll cause a lot of pain in most of the world.
It is still an interesting question since Farange is a part of the global right wing authoritarian network.
Admittedly not including China though
Well in my mind is no one else cares and the EU is holier than pope. We are destroying our economy for promile of world polution and are even shamed for using AC.
This narrative is dangerous. If everyone points to their own limited influence and points fingers at the rest of the world, no one is going to act.
It’s the "it’s real, but we cannot do anything about it" rung on the climate denialist ladder. Yes, it is dangerous. It is also mainstream. There are several examples in this thread.
Could you provide a link to people being shamed for using AC?
It’s becoming less, but the formerly widespread traditional view in Europe was that using AC is a frivolous waste of energy that contributes to environmental pollution and global warming.
Traditionally we didn't have 40c summers that required AC.
Indeed, but there is a significant latency between the climate changing and minds changing.
No they cannot, it’s just a right-wing strawman. And something that perturbs some Americans, for some reason. Another "proof" that Europe is a terrible place inhabited by clueless idiots.
Game theory gives all of us an optimal solution, so we all should care about every bit, no matter the global proportion. Btw. Chians per capital CO2 emission is lower than most of europe.
I think the cows are very stressed here in Switzerland. I make cheese every now and then - ricotta and paneer. It's simple. I buy the milk from a "milch-Automat" - farms around here (Zurich) have machines where you can buy a liter of raw milk from the farm for cheap. So, the milk I'm using is direct from the cows.
I made paneer a week ago. Normally I can cut it up and brown it and make the edges crispy. But for this batch I got far less cheese than normal and it was wet - I had to let the molded paneer dry out longer than normal. Then when I went to brown it the entire batch just melted into a gloopy mess - that just doesn't happen.
Reminded me of the omen.
It's very disheartening as someone who enjoys recreational fishing that the river closures -- typically legally closed to fishing, but otherwise ethically closed -- are getting earlier and earlier. That is, if the rivers aren't straight up bone dry peak summer.
I'm pretty young, too, so I have this, if not worse than this, to look forward to for the majority of my life.
Not to mention here in BC we're up to three summers in a row where entire towns have burned down ... not a positive sign of things to come.
My only practical contribution to fixing this issue is to upvote this article.. and write a message on HN.
I'm in Spain.
I really hope that after this summer, people of Europe will wake up and make fixing the climate their highest priority - at home, at work, in politics. We have very little time left, maybe a few years.
I can still see news articles everywhere blaming 'climate change' and 'CO2 emissions', pointing the finger at the oil companies and the likes. But those 'bad' guys are not operating in a void - they supply the products which are in high demand from me and you and our families - our entire lifestyle is built around them. So what needs to change is our life styles, philosophy, economic order .. drastic changes.
Consumerism needs to go, tourism needs to go, advertising needs to go, travel and logistics needs to be reinvented, industrial production needs to drop by orders of magnitude, everything replaced with healthy and efficient alternatives.
How can this be done peacefully is beyond me, it probably can't. We've had precedent during covid, when the whole world stopped because everyone was scared that they're going to die. It's not so different now.
Much of what you suggest is a drop in the ocean and requires people's habits to change in ways people are not happy to listen to - and - again - it's a drop in the ocean. Go vegetarian, it helps the environment - but don't expect anyone to follow, and don't expect it to mean anything.
Massive electrification - production (solar+wind+storage) and usage (EVs, as people won't stop driving no matter what, and heat pump heating and cooling) can be successfully driven with incentives and would have meaningful impact. People love to save money without losing comfort, incentives are ultimately budget neutral on a timescale, and for Europe this also ties into strategic energy sovereignty which is a nice added driver. Vote out and call out politicians not prioritizing this.
Bonus, you get to call them unpatriotic as they reinforce dependence on people who we're no longer on friendly terms with (no matter whether you look west or east)
> How can this be done peacefully is beyond me
What you're proposing (ending consumerism, tourism) is nothing short of revolutionary. I don't imagine that the future is going to be bloodless with or without a revolution.
I’m convinced one of the best ways is to make the right choices financially easier, and make the wrong ones (much) more expensive. Fully subsidise trains and tax the crap out of flying. Do the same for cars running on fossil fuels Tax carbon heavy foods like meat. Repeat until this starts changing consumer behaviour
Seriously, how do you fix it?
The biggest issue that keeps accelerating climate change is that people buy too much stuff, travel too much, and more importantly eat in a way that is bound to destroy the climate.
Now go tell people to buy less crap, use more public transport and stop filling their mouths with beef and fish every day, good luck.
And even that would merely slow the progress, not stop or revert climate change.
Sincerely this is a disaster, each generation just keeps doing worse than others, gen z may actually be the firsts to really give 2 damns, or pretend better.
> Seriously, how do you fix it?
Temporary SO₂ injection to treat the symptoms while we continue to make progress on transitioning to green energy.
Side by side images of exactly the same places one year apart would have been much better than the images in the article - combining left and right part from 2 years. Maybe it's just me, but the satellite images mostly were hard to read
They are the same place, you’re supposed to compare using the slider. What bothers me more is that the left and right images seem to have a different color temperature.
There's a slider in the middle you can use to see before/after
Oh! Then it makes sense! Missed that
good thing is not climate change, that would be really bad...
So in Western Europe we're fucked by first having heatwaves (and fires everywhere) and, indeed, every field around me is yellow instead of green...
And then, when the AMOC shall start running amok, we'll be forever in extreme cold.
Where should I flee?
What, like an economic migrant?
The headline is a bit sensationalist. Scorched means burned not just dry, later it mentions that some of the images are scorched from wildfires, but that doesn't seem to correlate to the one shown under the headline.
According to the Cambridge dictionary it's a perfectly normal usage of the word, in fact it's pretty much the example for it...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scorched
Scorched is being used correctly. Fire does not have to be involved, heat does.
In my part of the midwest scortched is correct. People say their lawn is scorched by the sun during droughts.
I'm in Europe, the sky here is literally red at night from fires we are failing to extinguish. France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Germany, Croatia, Serbia are all going through this to different degrees right now.
Claiming the British state broadcaster is using the English language incorrectly is certainly a choice.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scorched
The post is the BBC, scorched is the ordinary word used in British english. I agree that in American english it would be more ambiguous.
I mean what do you expect, it's BBC. I'll eat my hat the day they actually report the facts as it is without exaggeration. I wouldn't even trust BBC without verifying the sources. Most of the time it's lying at best and propaganda at worst.
Global fire emissions are on a downward trend, with the first half of this year at a record low in this century.
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/lowest-global-biomass-burni...
We've had the hottest summer ever recorded (since the beginning of 20th century, more than 120 years ago) across Europe. There is no "downward trend), it's going up, and will be for a while.
"Drill baby drill"
Due to less land clearing in other continents. Did you read the report?