Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists

But regardless, sorry to hear you might have to decide to let go of the villa because of the intense heat and humidity. It sure sounds like an amazing place.

The really crazy part is that petroleum supply is not a sustainable resource, so we're extravagantly flaring it off when in reality using it for things like fertilizers or steel production while using nuclear/solar + batteries + HVDC for all other purposes would allow us to maintain or improve standard of living for far longer.

> Companies don't make stuff for fun, they do it because there's consumer demand for it.

Companies have so much power that they can fabricate (or suppress) their own demand by manipulating the political sphere. The situation exists because it's more easily profitable, the alternative takes time/effort, and our market/government incentives only focus on short-term thinking. The same companies that profit prevent changes to such incentives.

This is the best anti-green argumentation I have ever seen. This is what a drop of water thinks about, which never considers itself a part of tsunami.

Many European countries already have something like that: excise taxes on gasoline. Gasoline in Europe is almost twice the price of gas in the US, even in countries where people earn half of what Americans do. It's not particularly new either - they've been around for decades now.

This teaches us a valuable lesson though - money from carbon taxes must not go into the government budget. It should instead be distributed to something automatically (eg equal payments to everyone or the poorest). If it becomes part of the budget then governments might try to maximize revenue rather than deal with the problem.

> solar radiation management

Hahahaha. I can see it now: "Exxon Stratospheric Sulfur Shield - using dirty fuels in long-haul flights to create a particulate-based solar shield [0]. Partnering with governments around the globe [1] to protect the earth and boost tourism. Because we care."

[0] https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/stratospheric-aer...

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill...

That's not a solution.

This is our natural tendency, to seek the quick rewards but we are intelligent beings, capable of planning.

The same arguments can be made for future of your own children, retirement plans, planting trees, long term investments, etc. Yet these are not as controversial and we accept them, more or less, as generally good practices.

This natural instinct on its own is not enough to make people forget the coming danger. You need constant advertisement, news cycles, opinion pieces, disinformation campaigns, etc. to make it stick.

Inflation has done that already.

Probably most, but here (south eu) a lot of forest is being and was cut down for planting shitty fruit trees and other crops (not for animals; for humans & cosmetics) that are no substitute for what was removed.

Fine point. I was trying to leave mining out of it.

Anyway, an argument towards stopping future use and abuse of a broken system is not equivalent to an argument to destroy existing structures. The former is corrective; the latter is revolutionary. Revolutions are stupid and useless because they always result in a new iteration of the existing problem.

Lots of people, also on HN, now follow climate friendly diets. In reality it is the meat eaters, not vegans, who are very loud and vocal about their diet.

But I agree we need much stronger regulation.

Yes true, but we have to keep trying to convince people in our circles. Otherwise we're effed.

I would have hoped that especially this HN crowd would change their mind because it's quite clear and logical that not consuming meat and dairy will mean requiring fewer resources and producing less pollution.

> some smart people roam, touching their meat (like, eating LESS of it, not quitting altogether) will make them into incoherent angry (I guess) men

Not so smart then.

> The only way will be if governments decide to step in

That's why more people vegan == more pressure for governments not to ignore the issue.

That's "CO2e" (CO2 equivalent, measured in global warming potential), not CO2. The time scale isn't specified, despite making a big difference in some cases, so I'll assume it's calculated over 20 years, which seems to be the most common. It's important to distinguish CO2 from CO2e, because a large part of CO2e emissions from animal farming are methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane emissions could be reduced in multiple ways, e.g. we could switch to farming kangaroos, which don't produce methane, or supplement cow feed with seaweed, which was found to dramatically reduce methane production:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

It's not just about CO2 - it's also that the large scale meat & dairy industry requires way more resources, destroys natural habitats and creates a ton of pollution.

From the article you've linked:

"In a hypothetical scenario in which everyone in the world went vegan by 2050, the regrowth of trees and wilderness could sequester around 547 billion tonnes of additional CO2. Each year we emit around 36 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuels, so that’s equal to around 15 years of emissions at our current levels. They also estimate an additional 225 billion tonnes of CO2 could be stored in soils ..."

That's much more impactful than reducing emissions alone. It would store a load of carbon while preserving biodiversity (paramount for healthy ecosystems).

I clicked it - It works.

There is also a link to the PDF - try this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w.pdf.

RE: The single most important thing an individual can do is inducing systemic change in one way or another.

And that was my point. Vote with your wallet and inform others in your circle that reducing / avoiding will have positive impact. This will trigger systemic change.

Is it the only thing we can do, no it's not, but it's something you and I can do right now.

Do you think that only animal flesh derived foods are tasty?

It's about cutting out food that create the biggest damage to our biosphere, which is the large scale meat & dairy industry.

RE: Why not go all the way, select handful of optimal foods and only allow those to be sold or grown. [...] ban everything not mandatory like spices and herbs.

This is not about banning meat & dairy. And you can't seriously compare meat & dairy to herbs & spices.

Why have speed limits on the road?

We have accepted that human life is worthless, because cars are allowed to drive fast enough to cause fatal crashes, may as well remove all limits alltogether.

---

Absolutist arguments are absolutely absurd.

Lol I’m probably a XIXth century time traveler regarding your scale. Not feeling unhappy, comme join me in the past guys!

Animal ag. is the leading culprit of the mess we're in (together with fossil fuels, ofc). The reason nobody at political level talks about it is because they feel it's a political suicide.

If there was a significant portion of the population with changed habits (and numbers of vegans and vegetarians are rising fast in the last few years, so much that it's affecting sales of meat and dairy already), the abolishing of animal ag subsidies will be much more probable.

Then without subsidies the reduction in consumption is automatic - the price would take care of that. 90% (IIRC) of corporate profits in animal ag comes from subsidies.

Otherwise ... to quote the poet ... "You'll get what you don't want".

Science isn't about belief or religion; it's about objective inquiry and understanding the world based on evidence.

It's okay to question and be critical, but dismissing scientific consensus without proper examination won't lead us anywhere.

Let's put aside the conspiracy theories and embrace the wonders of knowledge and progress that science offers ;)

All significant changes in the past came from people loudly demanding change, be it through mass protests, civil rights movements, revolutionary actions, or the collective voice of individuals seeking justice and progress. These impassioned calls for change have driven societies to challenge existing norms, break down oppressive systems, and pave the way for a more equitable and inclusive future.

People have to change themselves first (to break the walls built by others) to want to change the society.

Hope is not hopium. Hope is necessary for any action to take place.

They don't want it thanks to decades-long misinformation campaign waged with fossil fuel money.

The Finnish Greens are pro-nuclear, perhaps because they are not beholden to the same sources of funding as their German counterparts (and not to just blame the Greens here: look at your former Chancellor Schroeder).

Here's a practical solution: put it in the second parking lot. The nuclear waste that a nuclear plant generates over its lifetime likely won't even fill up that same plant's parking lot. And some of that waste could also be reused at a later time.

Something else to consider is that the stuff with the highest radioactivity is usually the shortest. At this stage having a robust forever-lasting solution for nuclear waste is not a larger priority.

There are places in the world where you can just find uranium rocks lying on the ground.

> It's not a solution if it's still a project

Fine, take the Finnish repository as an example then.

If you are wandering the desert, dying of thirst, and you find a bottle of Coke, you should probably drink it and not worry too much about getting diabetes.

I don't think reducing consumption is at odds with increasing the sustainability of energy, and I wouldn't and didn't suggest otherwise anyway. They both should be done.

> If not I recommend starting education there.

If you have some references to educate, then I'm more than willing to read them.

I should not have reacted in the way I did, and for that I'm sorry.

I've tried to debunk your comment, but it would take a long time, so I rewrote it instead.

"We are not doing it so the nature will destroy the economy and when that happens basically everything falls apart. We then won't have enough food and essentials for everyone but loads of people would be without jobs and others would lose their homes, their livelihood or life even.

A fully green economy could be right around the corner, but instead the transition seems like it is going to take a century or more, which is not enough time not to enter societal and environmental collapse, so it seems more like an extinction level event."

> And I don't know what phone sanitizers are.

We're their descendants. Rejoice, you're in for a treat ... I suggest to you ... The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You'll enjoy it (the book, not the movie!).

I imagine someone in India or China is saying that right now, comparing themselves with Europeans or Americans. BTW I'm with you, imposing drastic changes in lifestyle upon a single country is just not going to work at all.

Crying about supposed unfairness, hows that supposed to do anything.

But it is funny how people who personally make choices that reduce co2 fight against policies that would apply to everyone (well, at least in the same country, given there’s no world government).

It's not clear why we need to do this when the alternative is decarbonizing using cleaner technologies, then going heavy on carbon capture once that technology matures. Carrying capacity isn't fixed, it changes depending on how we produce food and other goods. Energy isn't fixed either, because we have the sun, which can provide all the energy we need short of a future science fiction scenario where we outgrow the solar system. I don't think that's a real concern right now.

And even in a science fiction scenario where we become a type 2 civilization, it's not clear that's a bad thing assuming we can expand to nearby star systems. Robin Hanson's Grabby Alien solution to the Fermi Paradox suggests this is what civilizations will do, and we might as well grab up as much real estate until we come into contact with the other expanding spheres of alien expansion (granted this is very long term).

It would be strange, if this were truly an emergency, for people who believed it to be an emergency of the highest degree...

To whine and screech "that's too dangerous, don't do that" when other people were proposing solutions. These are the same people who are touted as the experts, mind you. This means that when journalists and talking heads and other jackasses say "but the experts don't even think those things will work", they are talking about the same people who claim that there is an emergency in the first place.

They aren't interested in potential solutions. It's just an attempt to wrestle political power away from those who currently have it and implement economy-murdering policy because they're mad poor people eat meat.

It’s not just food security, but also water security. Rainfall patterns are set to change globally, with more frequent and increasingly severe droughts and floods. It doesn’t look good for the world’s biggest economy either

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4028

I was. When I saw a chain of repeated questions I had to add mine.

> Imagine energy grid not working, no tap water, non-existent food supply, money is worthless ... such kind of future.

Unless you're a subsistence peasant, which 99.9% of rural and semi-rural (suruban) people aren't, you're going to have the same exact problems from a lack of all those things.