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- Hacker News
- We collectively deserve this. The warnings came, but it was framed as "future generations will face these problems", and we collectively kicked the can down the road.
I say "collectively" because many of us don't deserve this and have wanted desperately to address it head on to try and mitigate the damage. But the scope of this problem makes individual contributions effectively meaningless.
It's not clear how bad it has to get before meaningful action takes place. But it will undoubtedly be too little, too late.
I think part of the path to try and address this is to have stories that paint a clear and simple picture of what that would look like and how it would be done. Even then, the issue has been heavily politicized to make it an us versus them problem rather than an "all of us" problem.
by pstuart - Any reason SpaceX cannot just build a giant solar shade at L1? This seems fairly doable on the decade timescale, plus it could do double duty as a weapon.by a34729t
- Consequences of inaction, as predicted, will continue until you can't live there anymore.by 1970-01-01
- bah, all is not lost.
Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt.
Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it).
It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
by Hasz - This year Europe's fires are not the start. Few years ago we had very extended Australia fires, US/Canada fires, and other not so put in the spotlight fires in other countries around the world. At some point they diverged enough from normal to reach a scale that raised enough eyebrows.
And it is not just forest fires. Floods caused by extreme rainfalls, running out of letters in hurricane seasons, once in a century/millenia extreme weather events happening several times in a decade are increasingly noticeable, and they are just symptoms of bigger but harder to directly perceive global trends like that the global yearly average temperature increased a few tens of degrees or that the ocean is winning heat at a rate of 6 Hiroshima bombs per second.
by gmuslera - by postoplust
- "Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough."
Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere.
I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again...
It's only going to get worse.
by world2vec - There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released.
We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now, because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get worse, and worse, and worse. And save what we can. Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? Wait until your biggest worry is food.
by palata