Comment by gib444 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gib444 | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

> Oh, you have the money.

Oh OK. What can be cut in our current spending?

Just print more money and devalue the currency, which is how you currently budget anyway.

That was the means by which relief funding was appropriated from the public in 2020, and it was a huge success. Most people don't even know that happened (or the scale at which it occurred) beyond some vague notion of "deficit".

You'll pay for it with inflation and lower purchasing power relative to other nations for a time, but your body politic have demonstrated that is the only type of tax increase they'll ever consent to. But if you don't do it, you won't even have an economy with which to pay the bills.

Ah ok, when you wrote we had the money I thought that you meant what you wrote, ie we had the money, from existing income.

Last time I checked our expenditure is at least in part covered by income and not solely printing money.

Full HVAC was added to the New London Bus Vehicle Specification a few years ago, so at least TfL were paying attention to the implications of climate change.

Pretty much all BEV buses have it (even the ones from before it became mandatory, since they plenty of power to spare anyway), which already covers more than 40% of the fleet, and the remaining hybrid buses are in the process of being phased out over the next few years. Sadly, the 'Boris bus' New Routemasters with their famously-inadequate forced air cooling are likely to be the last to go because they can't be sold on for less-intensive use elsewhere.

No-one else should really be being surprised by the changes to our weather patterns, since they're all roughly in line with the modelled effects of the changing climate. Air to air heat pumps (which work as AC) are now included in the various grant schemes, £30bn is being spent to upgrade the national grid by 2029, and the shift to zero carbon energy sources is well under way.

The water situation is more problematic, but in the short term the current El Nino increases the likelihood of having a wet winter so at least the reservoirs ought to have a chance to fully refill this year.

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

> Admittedly not including China though

You have not been paying attention. China, and every socialist country for that matter, is part of every authoritarian network, serving their own purposes.

Yeah they obviously have their own network. But calling it authoritarian would be an understatement, being dictatorships.

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