Climate Catastrophe

Typical. Just as we can see the horizon approaching for the end of the petro-state pernicious distortion of world politics, the solution for storing green energy turns out to be fucking sand.

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But apparently SpaceX is so great!

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isnā€™t burning anything at all bad for the planet? genuine question - or are there certain things that are good?

I remember reading somewhere that natural forest fires were counter-intuitively better for the forest and the environment. Itā€™s mostly due to the fact that it clears off some of the old growth and builds a more resilient ecosystem underneath or something like that.

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As @redalways has posted, natural forest fires are an essential part of the cycle.

Anything mankind burns, however, has a negative effect on the environment.

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@redalways @cynicaloldgit yeah i guess i can se the sense in that. cheers. It just made me think.

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I think itā€™s more the volume of burning thatā€™s the problem, as well as what is being burnt. For example, leaded fuel is much worse for the environment than many other fossil fuels, like wood. While switching the entire world over to wood-burning would be a massive problem, small-scale wood-burning is alright and manageable by the environment.

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Iā€™ve tried this logic with some people that question climate change. They simply donā€™t get it. Quite sad to watch and is borne from that scepticism of anything which smells official.

Small-scale, on the order of a few small households.

The wood would probably have to come from sustainably-farmed trees. I donā€™t know, Iā€™m not an expert.

Yes, full fire suppression is dangerous, because when it fails, it fails catastrophically. A lot of conifers are evolved to survive forest fires (some even need them for seed germination), and will burn only in the case of a fire with an enormous amount of accumulated fuel.

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Not entirely true, but true in spirit.

even 30,000+ years ago our first nations were using backburning to control habitat and sustainable living, around the time of the 19/20 bushfires i watched a short doco on how it was done, and its pretty amazing stuff, controlled burns, whilst giving all of animals a chance to escapeā€¦wsell worth a watch if it can be noodled out

given the amount of introduced bramble and dry weeds we experience here in australia, if we dont back burn we have bushfire issues everywhere

to rewind that to the point where mankind burning is not essential, we have to first of all wipe out the human race(farming, survival etc etc) and then (probably before the previous step to be honest) eradicate all foreign flore and fauna

so while you may suggest thats a better long term outcome (i know you will) for the rest of us, thats not really an option we want to take.

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Traditional Aboriginal burning in modern day land management - Landcare Australia Landcare Australia

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The sharp escalation in summer time high temperatures in the UK is pretty startling - not so much the fact as the pace of it happening. The previous all-time high is just 2 years old, and it is expected to be broken across most of southern and central England. This could be really nasty, similar to what happened in Vancouver in 2021 but at a much larger scale and even higher extremes.

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I guess we arenā€™t far away from a point where it will be possible to calculate how much mankind can burn without dramatically affecting the global climate. But will we then stay within these limits? Unfortunately, the current generation doesnā€™t seem capable of restraining itself without being forced into it.

Yeah itā€™s startling. These are estival Southern Spain temperatures, but people in England arenā€™t accustomed to adapt to this kind of weather. The houses for instance arenā€™t built at all for this kind of heat, and the rhythm of life has to be adapted in order to survive in such conditions (siesta during the afternoon for instance).

I wonder how it will go, hopefully not too nasty. All best wishes to the English residents for the next days!

Itā€™ll be back to normal by Friday ; 22Ā° and rain.

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One can hardly waitā€¦

Lucky buggersā€¦ :joy: We have daily peak temperatures between 32 and 35 since ten days here, and tomorrow, some parts of the country will hit 37Ā° C, with no end in sight yet. Fortunately, until now, temperatures have always gone down to 18Ā°C or so during the night, allowing for some correct sleep.

Very pleasant 30C here on vacation in FL. Rented a nice house on a golf course, just had morning swim, sitting in shade by pool drinking morning coffee. I have Ken Bruce on, listening out for Pop Master - a blast from the past of years ago and my kids think it is weird. Contemplating the gap between coffee and cocktail, as I know it narrows when on holiday, but still, itā€™s only 10.30am! Some adventures booked for the week, but today is a lazy day after travel.

Talked to sister back in the UK, thoughts with everyone there over the heat. Mostly no air conditioning and the life not set up for high temps like that. I fear there will be deaths.

The quantity of extreme events, and record events, happening in close proximity around the globe is getting to be startling. I am not very hopeful for the ability of the global population to pull together to solve the problem, or if not solve, at least tackle it seriously. For many years targets have been set, there has been a feel good at the time, but then usually people disregard, or fudge the numbers, or point to other countries and say what are you gonna do?

It feels like an amalgamation of bad disaster movies of the past few decades, only it is real, and in real time now.