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BBC did a pretty good deep dive a few days ago on what we're in for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xZCh8eDZFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xZCh8eDZFc DW

• bayganyo 23d ago
  I see what you did there. Bravo.
• pfisch 23d ago
  The eu is stupid for not engaging in active climate engineering right now. They are the most at risk and should take decisive action before they end up living in a glacier. All the downvotes are just showing why no action is being taken even though right now we are literally terraforming the planet with no plan, and it is going to stop the transatlantic currents that keep Europe from becoming arctic. But sure, just do nothing until Europe becomes an uninhabitable tundra and it is too late to take action. Great plan.
  • Muromec 23d ago
    Western democracies at this point can't do anything at that even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population. Any 5% at that. We are stuck in local maximum even if it slowly and surely slides into the shitter
    • drawnwren 23d ago
      If you look at the derivatives, there is no change a Western Democracy can make that will matter as this plays out.
      • fragmede 23d ago
        Humanity being saved by China just dumping money into solar because why not, is certainly a take.
        • AlecSchueler 23d ago
          Because "why not?" Do we understand that humanity includes Chinese people? Do we also understand A) the steps they're already taking to reduce emissions and B) how much of their emissions historically and today are in service of Western consumers?
          • RugnirViking 23d ago
            i don't accept arguments in the form of B when its a business (our pollution is just serving our customers demand, its their moral responsibility to reduce consumption), and I also don't accept it in country form. centralisation makes centralised opporunity for change. You have all the power, and also all the responsibility.
            • AlecSchueler 23d ago
              > i don't accept arguments in the form of B Feel free to share why not. At the end of the China is still part of a global system dominated by capitalism and they have to play the markets game in order to survive. They could easily fully do things their own way but that would mean, for example, chance of private intellectual property, which would mean no WTO membership, which would mean massively reduced capacity for trade, which would put them at such a disadvantage they'd inevitably collapse.
              • RugnirViking 23d ago
                I don't think you get to abdicate responsibilty of some avoidable negative externality of something you do just because some entirely separate function of it is the thing your customers want. If I were a plumber who fixed leaks by diverting the water into the customers' neighbors houses, my customers aren't the ones responsible for the damage it causes. I don't think it matters even if the externality isn't avoidable. I think people who sell murder-for-hire services are culpable of murder, even if they are paid by someone else If the argument were about slavery instead - slavery enables cheaper goods, ergo by buying our products, some of which were made using slavery, but we refuse to reveal which ones, but nonetheless by buying them you support slavery and are morally responsible for the slavery not us. Nobody would accept this framing. I agree that China has done very well from manufacturing and trade, and would not have done as well if they had not industrialised at a large scale. But that doesn't change the fact that industrialisation of this kind causes pollution and is damaging the planet and it especially doesn't mean that China has no moral obligation to do as much as it can to reduce emissions. I also don't believe the argument that the pollution is inherent to production, or that there is no way to satisfy demand without pollution. (or that china, specifically, derserves to be the one to profit from satisfying that demand). Production of almost all commodities can be done without massive emissions these days, and even when it couldn't, nobody was forced to ramp up production Someone will inevitably jump in here to point out that china makes a lot of solar or whatever. Sure, they do. They also make a lot of wind power. Their emissions per capita are trending in the wrong direction though. Europe's have been going DOWN since the 1970s, and china's are going UP. China's emissions per capita are roughly equal with the EU at the moment and are going up - pretty soon they will catch up and surpass the US.
    • tpm 23d ago
      This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Yeah the issue is "minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population", but it's not any 5%, it's the powerful 5% who resist the change using any means necessary including producing mass propaganda and steering the votes to the nazi parties which promise to revert to the old ways and stop any progress on the climate front.
      • TeMPOraL 23d ago
        > This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Can't speak about EV marketshare (I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read), but large part of population is buying only used ICE cars, or get new ones on a business lease; only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket. Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations.
        • tpm 23d ago
          > I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read no: https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ > only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket. yes, mostly because new cars are very expensive, and that's exactly the point I was making > Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations. Exactly. But it's hard to quantify how much of that hatred is genuine and how much of it is fanned and amplified by fossil interests and reckless politicians. My guess is that around 80% of it is manufactured.
      • throwaway473825 22d ago
        It's a little bit more complicated than that. In a hypothetical EU without political intervention, Chinese EVs would be available without tariffs, and those would probably sell very well without any mandates.
    • mikojan 23d ago
      Yea, if those 5% are the top-5% - everybody else gets inconvenienced by Neo-Liberal policies all the time.
      • AlecSchueler 23d ago
        The top 5%/over 60s. The overlap is almost total.
        • spwa4 23d ago
          Only in one way. Most rich bastards are over 60, but absolutely no shortage of very poor old people.
    • jjav 23d ago
      > even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population 5%? No. That's a lot of people. At least in the USA, the one and only thing that matters is what benefits the top 0.0002% richest (approximate percentage of billionares in the US). Nobody else matters anymore.
      • shrubby 23d ago
        Yes. Nietzsche once said God is dead and I guess the time has come to say "the systemic change is dead". Our destiny is not decided by a abstract superorganism, but a handful of people given godly rights create the rulebook. And to take us with them in the pursuit of suicide.
      • deleted 23d ago
        [deleted]
      • dgellow 23d ago
        Older people matter, given they vote
        • y04nn 22d ago
          An interesting idea would be a democracy where your voting right is proportional to your expected remaining years to live. This would give more power to younger generations that are the ones that are going to be the most impacted by the decisions.
      • Henchman21 22d ago
        We should attempt to name all ~700k people on that list.
    • tomp 23d ago
      Pretty much everything the EU does, is inconveniencing most of its population, often in the name of "climate change" (while not actually making any impact). Positives: no mobile roaming charges Negatives: - less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier) - cookie law - car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit") - paper straws - attached bottle caps - LED lights - expensive electricity (a lot of this is caused by individual countries, but probably also the EU plays a role, e.g. by not classifying nuclear as "green" / "renewable" and banning Russian gas)
      • ricardobayes 23d ago
        I wouldn't even mind the speed limit beeping if it was paired with correct data. But the rental car I recently used in Germany actively reduced the engine power when it detected going "over the limit", which was frequrently triggered by e.g. motorway exit lane speed limits being incorrectly parsed. Since there is talk in the EU to actively prohibit going over the limit, this issue needs to be urgently fixed.
      • reeredfdfdf 23d ago
        Banning Russian gas is the right thing to do, and good for long-term energy independence & prices.
      • puszczyk 23d ago
        Have you ever visited the EU? Let me help you with the positives: common market, freedom of movement, rule of law, clean and beautiful cities and towns. Also, war is costly—so is preparedness. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, e.g. you have a strong polity neighboring you that insists your are by gods grace their zone of influence. I’m sad about nuclear to, but that’s on a culture in specific countries; not on Brussels. Also, there’s heaps of mistakes in the regulations they churn, but that’s another story.
      • iso1631 23d ago
        Not in the EU but have similar regulations > less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier) How exactly are they less efficient? > cookie law The fault being those trying to steal my data > car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit") I haven't seen that > paper straws I'll give you that one, however in my country its businesses that stopped it just to customer pressure, not a law, indeed it's perfectly legal to serve plastic straws to people, its just people don't ask for them > attached bottle caps These are great > LED lights These are also great > expensive electricity In my country that's due to the price of gas
    • deleted 23d ago
      [deleted]
  • sva_ 23d ago
    The EU is not "most at risk" compared to eg south Asia, the middle east, parts of Africa, etc; and this idea that AMOC collapse will turn Europe into a glacier is a blatant exaggeration that does not root itself in reality.
    • consumer451 23d ago
      As someone in Central EU farm land, who is currently experiencing desertification... We are actually in the worst place, given realtive population density. My well is drying up. The Danube and many other rivers are drying up. Then, when the AMOC stops, and we join Canadian weather with English-level insulation... we are all truly fucked in winter. At scale in the mid-term, only Sri Lanka is going to get as screwed as EU citizens, but the EU will get fucked even sooner. Given population numbers, it appears that the EU is totally screwed when it comes to climate change. Our geopolitical enemies are well aware of this fact. There are still things we can do, like insulation, and using our fierce financial pressures to change the world. We just need to wake tf up.
      • tpm 23d ago
        No we are not in the worst place given relative population density. Look at South & Southeast Asia very carefully - there are countries like Bangladesh with pop. of 177 million in an area of double the Czech Republic (pop. 10 million). They have it much worse than us. > we join Canadian weather with English-level insulation Having lived both in England and here in Slovakia, we are much much better equipped to survive long spells with -10 with occasional dips far below that in lowlands (and obviously our mountainous regions are even better equipped). What we can't deal with yet is the heat and drought like this summer. > using our fierce financial pressures to change the world We are already doing that using for example CBAM. We just have to continue.
        • sph 23d ago
          What’s population density got to do with worsening climate?
  • ColdStream 23d ago
    I suspect that unless there is a consensus or at least a large majority in favor of it, nothing will be done. Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year. Their fault or not, they are going to get blamed for it and actions taken. The EU would become the scapegoat for any kind of weather/climate issues in future. This is the trolley problem done at a global scale.
    • pfisch 23d ago
      >Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year. Who cares? Tell them to go pound sand or stop burning so much coal. Countries are already water seeding. This kind of worry that someone might complain about the eu trying to save itself is so low on the list of things that matter. Let them complain, and the eu can complain about all the other countries geoengineering by burning fossil fuels.
      • ColdStream 23d ago
        Alas, that kind of bravado doesn't go far. Also what if that complaint comes back in the form of a Nuke as they see it as an act of war? When things become existential, a lot of things that seems unlikely end up on the table as moral corruption sets in. "Either they go or we do!"
        • pepperoni_pizza 23d ago
          Then they get nuked back and they all die? Like how does that answer means anything?
          • autoexec 22d ago
            "nuke us and get nuked back" means we all die. Push people to the point where they're dying anyway and they might not see taking you out with them as a bad thing. You're a whole lot safer when the people around you can get enough food and water. We already have solutions that don't involve putting entire nations at risk of dying off in large numbers. The problem is that those solutions would eat into the already massive and growing profits of corporations who would sooner put your safety at risk than take even a small hit to their unsustainable growth.
  • zamadatix 23d ago
    I don't think that's the popular reasoning those downvoting have taken to. Can you think of reasons other than they think doing nothing sounds like a great plan people might be downvoting about? If not, I could share a few concerns with the approach that come to my mind (if it helps). It would have been nice if more of those people just commented directly instead of downvoting and moving on.
    • blooalien 23d ago
      > It would have been nice if more of those people just commented directly instead of downvoting and moving on. I'll comment directly; Has anyone considered that this is a literal global problem, and that just maybe it might require some global cooperation? Any one nation "most at risk" from a global problem is only "most at risk" temporarily. This is absolutely 1000% a problem that will affect everyone everywhere on this planet soon enough (already is IMHO), no matter the current situation. The longer we continue these childish "but they aren't doing their part" arguments, the worse it's gonna be in the end for everyone involved. We're letting petulant toddlers in grown adult bodies decide for everyone that death and destruction is the future we want. This is absolutely not a situation we can solve on a place-to-place basis. The one place we have to worry about now is the entire planet FFS! And it's not a magical switch we can just "turn off" once we think our "enemies" are appropriately fucked over. The changes happening to our ecosystems will take literal decades or even centuries to recover from, even if we were to stop adding to the problem right this very instant. Not to mention the whole worry about "tipping points" (many of which we've already blown right past as if it's "no big deal").
  • consumer451 23d ago
    I agree with you. We are actually at huge risk. "Western Civilization" rose out of our stable European climate and that is over now. However, we need a global consensus for geoengineering. That's just how that works... the Jet Stream. Meanwhile one country believes that global warming is a benefit, aka Russia. They currently appear to have control of the West.. so what in the actual f? For a far more dire diatribe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427651
    • estearum 23d ago
      Global consensus would be great, but "reliable mechanism" would be a decent start. In lieu of that, there's nothing to build consensus around.
      • eightysixfour 23d ago
        Atmospheric sulfur seems to be the "default."
        • estearum 23d ago
          Yes which is an extremely dangerous and completely unproven idea.
        • apothegm 23d ago
          Because when we did that accidentally the outcomes were so great?
    • pfisch 23d ago
      >However, we need a global consensus for geoengineering. Why? Does china or the us need a consensus before taking existential risks like making ai? Or detonating a nuke that had a tiny chance of setting the atmosphere on fire? Or attacking random countries with almost no rationale or plan? This kind of thinking is why the EU is screwed. No other major power cares that much because they aren't at the same level of risk as the eu.
  • worik 23d ago
    What could possibly go wrong?
    • boxed 23d ago
      ...with the current approach? We already know. It's bad.
  • akd 23d ago
    They can't do anything, everything is in China's hands and the EU does not have the hard or soft power to make China do or not do anything.
  • fchicken 23d ago
    Spoken as if climate engineering were an established science with no potential pitfalls or downsides...
    • pfisch 22d ago
      We are ALREADY doing it. It is already going poorly because we are doing it without any goals. So we can just continue geoengineering with no aim, or we can act with purpose. There is no third option that is realistic.
  • D_Alex 23d ago
    The EU has made a difficult problem even worse by switching from pipeline gas to LNG. LNG has anywhere from 10% to 100% more greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who you believe about how much methane leaks during LNG production and transport operations. Most credible estimate IMO is +60%.
    • maxhille 23d ago
      Putin turned off the gas, not the EU
      • D_Alex 22d ago
        Really? Do you have a credible source for this?
        • maxhille 22d ago
          The Wikipedia article cites a long list of reputable news outlets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russia%E2%80%93European_Union_gas_dispute#Gas_delivery_disruption,_April_2022_%E2%80%93_present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russia%E2%80...
          • D_Alex 22d ago
            But it doesn’t support your claim. In summary, Russia, after having their dollar and euro bank accounts frozen, demanded payment in roubles. It stopped supplying the gas to the customers who weren’t paying. After that, the EU announced it will stop buying Russian gas completely, and replaced it with LNG. Thus increasing the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to its gas use by about 60%. :(
            • maxhille 22d ago
              "My" claim: > Putin ("Russia") turned off the gas Your summary: > Russia [...] stopped supplying the gas. [...]
  • piokoch 23d ago
    Sorry, but what? EU literally destroyed its economy by forcing "green energy", so manufacturing was moved to Asia (who cannot care less about climate and uses whatever cheap energy source thy have so this was a rather stupid move), ETS and ETS-2 systems are putting huge taxes on EU citizens for any kind of emission, including building a house or having non-zero emission flat or house. The "little" problem here is that all of this does not matter at all, as EU is emitting insignificant amount of CO2, comparing to Asia or USA.
  • leonidasrup 23d ago
    "The EU’s Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warns that to prevent costs from spiraling further, European governments must start investing massive sums in measures to climate-proof their countries, known as adaptation." https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-climate-adaptation-spending-wopke-hoekstra-wildfires-heat-waves/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-climate-adaptation-spendi...
    • chinathrow 23d ago
      We probabbly must do all three things at once - adapt - stop rising CO2 levels - remove CO2 from the atmosphere
  • dgellow 23d ago
    It’s far from being only an EU or European issue. It’s not like Europe can by itself do something to avoid the collapse of the Atlantic Gulf Stream.
  • watwut 23d ago
    EU did a lot and e was willing to harm own economies. Betreyal was from elsewhere.
  • jurgenburgen 22d ago
    If we can’t even switch away from fossils then where do we get the magical political will to build a massive, untested system that needs constant maintenance indefinitely to keep our environment stable? Our governments don’t seem to even be able to sustain consensus for a single election cycle, active geoengineering projects would require committing to keep doing it for decades, centuries or however long it takes to get back to equilibrium.
    • pfisch 22d ago
      Switching away from fossil fuels is a gigantic ask compared to having some planes release a ton of reflective particles into the atmosphere. It isn't even expensive. 15-30 billion per year would be enough to cause 1 degree Celsius of cooling by having planes put SO2 into the atmosphere. Double that for 2 degrees. That is way less than the EU has given to Ukraine.
      • jurgenburgen 22d ago
        Quadruple for 4 degrees? Or is the cost exponential? What happens when some right-wing nut jobs take power and decide to kill this woke geoengineering because climate change is just a conspiracy? Will we get to experience decades worth of warming in one go? Meanwhile we just start burning even more fossils because climate change is “solved”? I think we’re not that desperate yet. And whatever geoengineering is done we still need to solve the root cause.
• DoctorOetker 23d ago
  That BBC documentary shows or exposes very shallow thinking skills at this timestamp 6m42s: https://youtu.be/_xZCh8eDZFc?si=AHyDPgoDucsCRllS&t=402 https://youtu.be/_xZCh8eDZFc?si=AHyDPgoDucsCRllS&t=402 They claim the panama canal is continuously fed by freshwater for the canal locks (which segment the canal into sections with different water levels, and which enable ships to be raised or lowered to the next water level during travel along the canal). It's 2026, why are humans dumping freshwater into the oceans? This can perfectly be done without wasting freshwater. Archimedes screws can essentially be operated quasistatically at extremely high efficiencies. The energy released when lowering can be stored either in gravitational energy of a mass, or be used to power a second parallel lock operated in counter phase (so while one lock is lowering ships say eastwards, the energy is used to raise ships traveling westwards, and afterwards their roles reverse). To speed up a second gravitational potential energy store (and optional flywheel) can be used to accelerate and decelerate the pumping. Apart from some frictional losses (minimal compared to the potential energies involved) this doesn't cost energy, and is easily covered by a small number of solar panels. Is this misreporting by the BBC, or is it mismanagement by the Panama Canal operators? Keep the freshwater, use it for irrigation etc, make Central America more attractive to South American refugees and the migration burden on Mexico and US lowers. The operation as currently described is so inefficient, even for the 1960's!
  • markdown 23d ago
    Wow, guy on internet solves problem within seconds. And you didn't even have to visit the site. Incredible.
    • DoctorOetker 23d ago
      If you have studied physics, its easy to see water locks can be operated with near zero energy consumption. What site? I was commenting on a youtube video. If you misattribute my comment as replying to something else, thats your superficial attitude not mine...
  • MSM 23d ago
    > Keep the freshwater, use it for irrigation etc. In this scenario, haven't you poured a bunch of ocean water into the lake? I don't see how to can fill the locks with ocean water and not have it pour into the lake.
• Valakas_ 23d ago
  The BBC one hurts my brain to watch. Incoherent mess of a script. The DW one on the other hand is pretty good. Watch the first 5 minutes of each and you'll see the difference. Thanks for sharing.