‘I’ve never seen heat this bad. It’s not normal’: Italy struggles as temperature tops 40C 118f
Anticyclone Caronte could send thermometer to 48C/118F as Mediterranean heatwave intensifies
This is fine, we just need to switch from plastic bugs and make caps attached to bottles and everything will be alright! Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It's not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it's fun. They're doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. "Just make corporations pay" to fix things, whether that's a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean "increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities".
That doesn't necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we've all created, and we're all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn't actually get us any closer to solving things.
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly. If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been "it's your fault and you need to change your habits". It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies removed and moan about how they can't ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can't be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people's lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the "blame the public" narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they'll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
this is a problem that we've all created
You mean this is a problem that the boomers and gen x created. THEY are the generations that controlled the corporations whose only concern was profit. THEY are the generations that pushed consumerism with no regard to the natural world. THEY are the generations that elected the politicians that allowed this all to happen. So here come the millennials and zoomers to clean up their mess, just like everything else they fucked up for the rest of us.
Have you seen how much CEOs get paid?
Corporations can switch to greener alternatives AND pay workers a living wage AND make a profit, without having the consumers pay the price.
All it takes is the willingness of politicians to force them to. Corporations raise prices because they're allowed to, and they'll take any excuse they can get to get more money out of people.
Gas prices have skyrocketed. First it was covid's fault. Then it was the war in Ukraine. All the while gas corporations have been seeing record-breaking profits. It's all just greed.
Yes! If we're expecting corporations to grow a conscience and "Do the right thingTM" then we're doomed.
Though I do think the corporations are somewhat responsible for the narrative that everyone is powerless except for them. People pushing the "but the corporations!" while being unwilling to make any changes themselves are actually just carrying water for them. Promoting malaise and doomerism is just letting them have their way.
At any rate trying to appeal to the corporations to do the right thing is a complete waste of time. We need to make more effort ourselves. Which means making an effort to reduce our own carbon emissions as individuals. While also participating in the political process to create regulations that force the corporations to do the right thing. Because they sure as hell won't do it on their own no matter how much people whine about it on the internet.
They're doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
And there are portions of people in our society that will pay for those minimal prices either because they can't afford anything else, or strictly because it's convenient for them to spend that little so that they have more money left over to do more stuff in their life elsewhere.
But there are also people that are willing to sacrifice and make changes to their lifestyles and spending practices to accommodate the impacts of their actions.
The same is true with corporations. Some large corpos in the world are actively trying to move towards sustainable, circular economies. I'm doing a lot of research right now into the textile industry, and two of the biggest corporations in that space that I've seen are doing decent work on the two fronts I previously mentioned are Lenzing (TENCEL™) and Aquafil (ECONYL®).
Lenzing uses wood of various species from places in Europe, all managed well and FSC/PEFC controlled, to draw out fibers and filaments that are just as fine and useful as polyester fibers/filaments, yet with the added bonus of biodegradability. They also recycle cotton clothing from collection centers in Spain and some larger textile service companies in southern Europe and mix that in with their wood-based feedstock to produce the same rayon fibers.
Aquafil runs on a similar model to Lenzing, except they base theirs on nylon instead of rayon. Aquafil collects ghost nets from around Europe and South America, along with other corporations' scrap nylon (pre-consumer waste) and post-consumer waste from a number of brands (e.g. sunglasses, jackets, etc.) to regenerate nylon back into the same quality as you would find in virgin materials. Now, I don't think that plastic is sufficient anymore thanks to the non-degradable waste associated with it, but it's better than nothing.
Are there flaws with those 2 companies: of course. Their chemical processes might not be 100% closed loop and their claims might be overexaggerated in ways, but it's better than nothing.
Anyways, what this examples shows is that there are corporations and even people on the ground that are willing to make more sustainable choices because they legitimately see the benefit of doing so compared to convention. Someone else might describe this as a form of an adoption life cycle, where you have those more willing to change and those less willing to change as practices and habits shift over time.
Could government help with that? I believe so. I think that's just one lever of change though. If you've been following solar PV growth over the last decade and a half, then you know about the "contagion" phenomenon: some early adopters pick up solar, only for considerers and even late adopters to do the same as word of mouth and other social drivers influence decision making at a people level.
Could the same happen with other sustainable choices in the economy? I fall more into the early adopter camp, so I would say yes. I think corporations spend a lot of time and marketing convincing their customers that said corporations are the best and only options and that no other alternative exists out there: when there absolutely is or might be. Perhaps all it takes is demonstrating to people, doing, not talking, walking the walk, to change their minds. I think the same tactics could be used, in addition to government intervention.
Bottom-up + top-down is the strategy I've heard described by many proponents of sustainability, most notably Al Gore, and I'm all for it too. Luckily humans, at least in some countries around the world, live in free societies and can divide and conquer to work on both of these fronts to affect change.
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper.
I didn't get past you contradicting yourself in the first three sentences. Sorry.
Also if you only eat meat in the weekends then the rich peoples private jets will suddenly have no environmental impact
Is there a bracelet I can wear to show my solidarity with the people dying of heat stroke, or perhaps an instagram filter.
These two things have no relation. One is about climate change, the other one about (micro)plastics in the environment and our food chain.
Apparently there are still loads of people who don't understand this simple fact and think everything that is done to make the world a better place is for climate change.
I mean, they both show a callous disregard for the fragility of life on this planet, and a keen disinterest in anything but short term convenience and comfort? Oh and profit, can't forget about MONEY
This argument keeps coming up as an excuse to do nothing.
Pure defeatism neglecting even any bit of responsibility.
Yet people who say this will put another child on the planet, buy yet another product from Apple on release, love fast fashion, buy the cheapest goods possible, toss their meal as soon as they're full, vote egoistically, take the cheapest trip to wherever, drive a car, toss cigarette butts on the ground, and so much more.
It's always easier to blame others. Yes, corporations are shit, but remember, they are made up of people like you and I.
WE work there.
WE buy their crap.
WE vote for the same politicians over and over again (or don't vote at all).
WE put another child on this planet to go through this shit.
WE as humans are the problem.
See, that's your point of view. My point of view is that people who are all doom online are the problem.
WE as humans are the problem.
you can count the owners of the entities that produce the most greenhouse gases within 3 digits; it's not "everybody"
I feel the need to remind people that the concept of the ecological footprint was invented by BP to direct the focus of climate fears away from large corporations and onto individuals.
Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
I wish our choices had a 1% impact.... That seems extremely generous.
For example...
Go look at your local Walmart and it's bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that's literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.
We're living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.
I'm not saying it's bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I'm just saying it doesn't make a difference over any meaningful time period until there's a radical change in how our global economy functions.
Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that's just how our society works.
What has that to do with anything? Reducing single use plastics is environmental protection which is not the same as fighting climate change. No one who fights against plastics does so for climate change. Stop spreading such nonsense. Not even your linked article claims something like that.
we have the 80% solution and it's nuclear power, but whatever y'all keep wailing and gnashing teeth and denying the obvious. I'm just gonna keep on living I guess and hope my house survives the shitty weather.
If only somebody warned us 50 or 100 years ago. Oh wait, they did.
More like over 200 years ago. There was a french female scientist that discovered the greenhouse effect before John Tyndall but I forgot her name and I'm at work rn, can't search for it.
Are you thinking of Joseph Fourier? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science
Yeah they were predicting an ice age. And technically we're still in an ice age, so the planet has to get warmer to reach it's natural balance point. But it could also get cooler, because we're in an interglacial period. If we don't want continental glaciation maybe we should be thankful that the planet's warming and not cooling.
That's a myth perpetuated by oil companies to discredit climate science. There was a single paper about it that was widely rejected as a crackpot theory by the larger scientific community. The consensus then was the same as it is now.
Yes, we are in an ice age, seeing as there are frozen poles. But we are changing that, soon there will be no frozen pole caps and with that, the ice age will have ended. We are creating our own hot period.
Btw. it can only be an interglacial period if the glaciers return after. It's a descriptive term, not a prescriptive, and there is no reason why the current warm period should be seen as interglacial.
Because climate doesn't just change without a cause, it needs a driving force. Earlier hot periods were caused by volcanic CO2 and the change happened slowly, over millions of years. Earlier cold periods had a number of different reasons, from nuclear winters after asteroid impact, ultra-high plant growth with not enough O2 consumers or global darkening due to the ash of a supervolcano or even the changing tilt of earths axis.
There is no natural reason for the current warm period to turn into continental glaciation, let alone end so early and so fast, let alone the entire ice age, that has created temperatures that humans are comfortable with, just melting away around us. We have likely ended the ice age entirely, as much heat as we trapped in the atmosphere.
Climate changes more rapidly right now than it ever did before bar the impact of ecocidal asteroids and the consequences are dire. We are heating up the planet and there is no force cooling it. If we want to stay even a little bit comfortable, we should drastically reduce the amount of energy trapped in our atmosphere.
New normal, folks. So begins the era of climate migration.
A reminder that this is why we should never tolerate selfishness. We're now largely screwed because we, as a species, valued our individual comfort over expert research.
We knew what we needed to do - but no, profits. Such a dumb way to die.
Climate and Healthcare migration. I can't afford to retire here in the states. It's coming.
you will probably not be entirled tobhealthcare in Europe either then.
Usually the idea is that you pay as a worker into the healthcare system. If you never paid in here you will probably have to fo dor private insurance and you'll be faced with similiar rates like in the US because the age of entry is crucial for the rates of private health insurance
It's so much worse than the new normal. It's going to keep changing just as fast, or faster. "Normal" isn't going to exist much longer.
Honestly I will never forgive people who STILL continue to deny climate change is happening and refuse to legilslate on it.
At this point Don't Look Up is a documentary. I honestly cannot imagine what it's like to he a climate scientist who actively studies this, only to have some fox news watching crazy uncle parroting cherry-picked data, thinking they somehow know better than global scientific consensus. I imagine some at this point may be going, "fuck it. Let it burn." And honestly, I can't blame them.
“We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.” - Jean-Claude Juncker.
Career politicians will never fix anything. They're only interested in not rocking the boat and keeping themselves in office.
And the steps we would need to take to fix it would surely not be popular among the masses, even as they sit dying of heatstroke and starvation. People want magic pills that fix problems, and no such thing exists for this.
kinda late even if they did now 😔
No, it's not. If we started large scale changes now, we would have to endure years of terrible condition with the slight hope that things will improve afterward. Saying "it's too late" equals to saying we'll have to endure years of terrible condition while expecting even worse afterward. It's still a bad posture, no matter how you spin it.
We fucked around, now we're going to start finding out.
"we"
Yeah, I didn't even get to fuck around before finding out.
Yes, we. While some are of the impression, that climate change is only because of a select few, it's because every single one of us consumers is to blame as well.
We have the option to buy climate friendly stuff, lots of times it's just more expensive or maybe a little bit inconvenient. Also, why does one need the next new iPhone after owning the last one for just over a year? Why do we have to eat Avocados in some cases a few times a day, that are shipped around the world and need heaps of water to grow? Same as Bananas or Strawberries in Winter...the list is very long. Same as plastic free vegetables - "the cucumber has a brown spot? Nope, not getting that, I demand it's spotless!" So companies wrap them in plastic.
If there's demand, companies will fulfill that demand, if there's no demand, companies stop doing that shit, because it doesn't make any money. Every single one of us is responsible in some way or another, even if the percentage is very miniscule.
Most of the "we" who fucked around, are either already dead or dying of old age. They won't find out a thing.
The "we" who believed and trusted them... along those who didn't... yeah, those "we" will find out.
I wouldn't just put this on those generations, Exxon and the oil industry and their government dogs and very wealthy and powerful people and their minions are who deserves the most of the blame, the rest of us were powerless to stop it or brainwashed by the propaganda and disinformation being produced by the oil industry and their many allies, like Kenneth Hamm and the Young Earth Creationist movement, the American GOP, the British Tory's, Putin's Ruzzia, The Gulf states, the auto industry, and so many more.
Do you mind posting something meaningful instead of a tired and boring aphorism?
It's not like posting anything meaningful here will change anything. The fuckheads that put the world in this situation laugh at our faces and of anyone who tries to undo their shit. They have money, what are we going to do? Sue them? They'll buy every lawyer everywhere. Ask for political reforms? Yeah, maybe in 2050 something might pass. Picket outside the companies? Gee, that worked so well with Occupy Wall Street, didn't it?
To what end? You think a user comment on Lemmy is going to change emissions policies? Direct your ire somewhere it might actually make a single bit of difference instead of just perpetuating the infighting that gets nothing done. If you're going to waste your time on the subject, spend your thumb-taps on an email to your congressman instead.
We're way past that.
Don't worry guys, everything is fine. We just need to [redacted] and this will all go back to normal in no time.
The EU needs to wake up and go hard on companies and industries. No mercy, no half-assing, just legislate the absolute shit out of them for once so that maybe our children can survive and live in not so terrible conditions, because not so terrible is the best we can hope for at this point.
The rest of the world too obviously, but the EU seems the most likely to do so.
That's what we are trying to do. But the fossil fuel lobby is still very strong and parties on the right are weaponizing every legal decision to polarise the people. Take the new (still in progress) german heating law for example; It wants to replace the installation of older oil/gas heaters with efficient heating pumps/district heating/hybrid (among other things, but that is the most important thing).
Populist media and right wing parties used this to stir up the people. ("the goverment is outlawing your heater, you need to replace it now or loose your home..." etc.) Simple stuff like that; but it's working - the right is on the rise. And they are, of course, completely against man made climate change.
Most of the air pollution happens in the developing countries. The EU would have to go imperial to force industries in such parts of the world under similar regulations.
Innovation and investment is the way to go.
In a lot of countries the electrical supply is unreliable, going down regularly
Innovate to create full-scale renewable grids (best if they can run decentralised when necessary) and invest in implementing these solutions world-wide
Use incentives, like trade agreements for countries, regions, or companies that implement the green tech to make it worthwhile
So the EU goes hard on those companies and then what? the just transfer to another countrie that doesn't. Result would be the same polution but throught customs and transportation prices in the EU would rise. Maybe the consumption behavior will change through that what could be beneficial but the overall situation with current inflation and such would get much worse. I'm not sure if this is the best way to engage this problem.
You want the EU to go hard because you've given up on the rest of the world?
I mean I get where you're coming from but that's not even remotely resembling a solution.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but as far as U.S.A. is concerned, it’s not a nation anymore it’s a corporation. U.S.A. rewards the worst of the worst and it’s too late for anything to change here.
No, like I said this also applies to everyone else, I just personally don't think it's going to happen..
and people say global warming/climate change is not real
It's not simply a climate change. It's a coined term by the fossil fuel industry. Like BP introduced the individual carbon footprint, this one should also be ignored. It's a climate crisis.
Oh they are switching from "Its not real" to "its all over, we can't do anything, so invest in fossils even more" (the invest part is an exaggeration). I want to believe that most of those messages are from paid actors (oil industry, authoritarian regimes).
Personally I think it’s far too late. I’m not having children and my friends and family who do are scared; here in Australia there’s no where to go to escape the heat. We will all die here
You know, in many parts of the world dying from decapitation is much more probable. Or just, eh, rapid lead poisoning combined with mechanical damage to your internal organs.
First world panic is something else really. Humans can live in orbit and on Mars FFS. Cooling the living spaces is not an unsolvable problem even in Australia.
"... It's not normal"
It wasn't normal.
Nowadays it is.
Hurray for new normals!
I'm Italian myself. The issue with this heat is that it's humid too, I live in the riviera and we've had constant 35-37°C weather with high humidity for a week now
Yesterday here in Germany it was 36°C with high humidity. This single day was enough.
What RH% were you reaching? In the UK we have been spared the high heat (for now, it will probably come later) but we had 70%+ and it's not nice that high as everything feels damp.
I just spent a week in Sorrento (South West Italy), we could not handle the outdoor weather of 35-38C + 70-80% humidity for more than an hour tops.
Yeah, the humidity is the worsts. Got to change my shirt after every walk outside.
Let's be honest, this will end up with only the ultra-rich surviving in the last few strips of livable surface of the planet - and them elated to have finally "culled the undeserving" as they have been hoping for for millennia.
Look at previous violent revolutions and see who died and who lived. I wouldn't bet on the ultra-rich, there are simple more of the rest but a new elite will rule, just like the old one.
There is one massive difference between former violent revolutions and the current ones - the ultra-rich of last century still had to rely on appeasing the military to do their bidding, but the ultra-rich of today now have access to automated weapons of mass destruction at the reach of their fingertips. If they feel like it, they can nuke the planet as a last-resort measure, while they're sipping their champagne in a self-sustainable complex in the middle of nowhere.
Then the ultra rich will perish because they don't know how to survive cause they don't have the "plebs" to do any of the underling work.
"What do I do when my motor makes this sound?!"
Nah, the rich will be eaten. Since their power completely relies on society. Taliban in the Mountains of Afghanistan will be fine and will be fighting off a alien occupation in 1000 years.
it's a snake eating its tail, there'll always be someone at the bottom of the list who needs to be 'culled'.
Nah, history is your best teacher here. They will try that, get murdered, and be replaced by a crude junta while the rest of us starve
It can end in many ways. Some of them more terrifying that your version, others not.
Not quite. Once global economies collapse, being wealthy won't mean jack shit.
You'll likely have the best chance of survival if you know survival skills such as hunting, foraging, and how to build a shelter.
Sort of like how being rich didn't matter when the Roman empire collapsed?
Oh wait we were left with kings and peasants, and far worse wealth inequality than there was before, and there was almost a thousand years of that before humanity started making progress again. Those were called the Dark Ages.
Anyone trying to say the rich won't survive is completely ignorant of history.
Any billionaire would be smart to build a massive self-sufficient compound (complete with temperature-regulated indoor farms, solar panels/wind turbines, huge stockpiles of supplies, firearms and a loyal crew of mercenaries or some armed drones to defend from intruders), because I really do think that we are gonna have to adopt the prepper mentality within the next few decades.
We mocked people for prepping for nuclear war, zombie apocalypses and raptures, but soon we are going to see the climate well and truly turn against us.
Climate collapse will make it more important to be able to move food around the world. The effect will be to strengthen hierarchies capable of managing global-scale food enterprises. The result will be a hyper-wealthy class that transports food, sustains local farmers via trade, and suppresses them to keep power. Farming will be what everyone does, and it will be essential to keep them doing it as yields will plummet.
You'll likely have the best chance of survival if you know survival skills
Funny you say it like that... I know some self-un-survival skills, so that should also work out fine.
Why is every comment on here: fuck the rich
Because it's true ( •̀ ᵕ •́ )
Because they're causing this shit for decades now, solely because of their greed. If most of them suddenly have a change of heart and decide to put their power to help the world then opinions about them will improve, until then it's pretty justifiable to want to lynch those responsible one by one like the unhinged murderers they are.
I’ve been campaigning about climate change since I learned about it, all told over thirty years, and those bastards have been gutting the planet the whole time. I’m wholly in favour of the any means necessary approach
Wealth is power.
With great power comes great responsibility.
With great wealth comes great responsibility.
Did the wealthiest take responsibility? No, they used their wealth and power to sell off the future of the entire planet for a tiny bit of personal instant gratification.
The world, especially US china EU, has such vertically entangled petro consumption, infrastructure, and maybe worst of all as far as making changes go, growth corporations feeding off it/us, well probably have rapid, vs slower and assimilable, collapse.
Hell today's "homeless problem" will be a trivial joke relative to millions of people fleeing situations literally in-tolerable for countless reasons, probably soon enough -- if this took place over 25 years it would be painful enough. If we get rapid migrations it'll be war.
I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but without help from some advanced alien species, we are already as good as gone. The entire world is controlled by the absolutely worst people, and there’s no indication that anything can be done to save us at this point. Climate disasters, AI, lies and deceit on a global scale, astronomical imbalance of wealth… folks, we’re already fucked.
I mean, the few have traditionally had the same weakness: the many...
My hope is ai (or alien intervention).
If it wakes up, a super intelligence could save us. And I think it's heavily inclined to do so
And if it doesn't wake up (LLMs very likely won't) but keep getting smarter, it'll blow up economic systems while empowering individuals to crazy degrees. A single person could coordinate everyone on Earth taking action to save the world, while dispationately distributing resources.
Or, it could just blow up the markets, giving us the time to try a better system before higher technology is ripped from our fingers
I'm reading Ministry for the Future and it does help imagine a world where we do get more fucked but we do turn things around even if we can't get things how they used to be.
If it takes 100 or 200 years, we'll still have war.
There is an argument to be had that many of the wars we've seen over the past 25 years, have already been at least in part rooted in access to water. Billions more will get impacted like that over the next century, with tens of millions of migrants a year, every year fleeing from both war and unhabitable conditions, for the next 100+ years.
We've barely seen the beginning of it.
Yet, social medias are filled with people saying that they saw this every day when they were younger and the millenials are just weak and should stop complaining.
Literally my father moment
This is Charles Dickens syndrome (a term I just made up) but basically Dickens grew up 1810's which was uncharacteristicly cold for Britain. Specifically, a lot more snowy than it had been for centuries. When he came to put the season into his stories, it was those seminal years that he wrote about. This then imprinted on our culture and the stories that came after it followed the theme. Anyone who lives in Britain can tell you, while we get some years that have a decent amount of snow, we get just as many that are wet and miserable.
People who believe 'It was that hot when they were young' likely remember one pivotal day or feeling warm but I doubt had any real concept of the actual temperature as a kid. What we're seeing now is more regularity in the extremes. Yes, that day they remember may be imprinted on their minds for being extra hot, but then that becomes 'It was this hot when we were young'.
Also, since the 60s life expectancy has got way longer. We're living decades more than someone of that era, we're extending the lifespans of the critically ill, and access to things like affordable housing have tanked making people live in less than ideal situations or a part of a much larger unhoused population than we've had for many years. All of these add up to extreme weather having an oversized impact.
It really annoys me when folks like that make blanket statements without realising we live in a very different world today. (Of course, there are some positives that advancements in technology and material science can bring to mitigate some of this).
Genuine old person here I call bullshit on whoever said that. I don’t remember it ever being this bad. Ever.
Meanwhile big polluters like Shell and others help pumping emissions and try to keep carbon based economy for short term profit 🙄
While funding messaging like "if you didn't use your air conditioner when it was 118f it would certainly help"
whatever could we have done to stop this!!!
Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry: "we're just trying to find the guy who did this!"
I dunno what I could have done, everything I try to have an impact on is always a pittance compared to the size of the problem, but I know what I can do going forward.
I'm quitting. I'm having zero children. Good luck, have fun the rest of you.
I was working outside this week (Southern US) and it was an absolutely miserable week. After a half an hour I was drenched in sweat, and it was rolling off my hard hat, getting in my eyes, and I was forced to pace myself and work much slower than I would otherwise be able to do because the heat was that intense.
I was able to drink some of my coconut water reserve because it has the things plants crave.
It's definitely the worst summer heat I've felt since ever.
For the longest time, measures against climate change were decried for potentially impacting "the economy". Well now we're going to see the impact to "the economy" with climate change getting worse. I assume it'll be a bigger impact than if we had invested in more sustainability earlier. Slower work pace outside just being a small taste of the impact.
Wait until next summer!
Why was your hard hat sweating? I wear a hard hat at work and I don't think I've ever had sweat rolling off it. That doesn't seem physically possible.
i imagine it was the humidity from the ambient air and not from his head.
Everything is fine, the earth simply won't be habitable for humans. The Earth will spin on without us when we inevitably allow industry to destroy humanity by making earth uninhabitable by human life.
It's what we deserve for being so stupid as to see this happening and doing nothing about it to stop it or slow it down. There's plenty of climate change advocates which are almost always drowned out by the chorus of companies and climate deniers who believe propaganda over science.
No. That's simplistic and wrong. Huge swaths of the planet will remain nicely habitable. But large swaths won't, and disease increase and economic failures will make things very terrible.
But this "all gonna die" stuff is dumb and wrong. Sorry.
Once we have nations fighting for water resources (tied directly to food production) it wouldn't take long before the entire population is at risk
Ontario's great lakes have been threatened with receding volume, pollution, and mass algae blooms that show how fragile even that massive resource is
Ground water across the globe has been mass polluted and drained to nothing in large areas.
We are a lot more vulnerable than it seems
It won't matter if a small area is still habitable. The resolution of 7 billion people trying to fit into a space that fits a fraction of the population will end the species.
It took less than 1% of the population of Europe moving around to nearly break the EU. Watch what happens when it's 10 to 20% of everyone everywhere.
You're totally right. The billionaires who caused all this will survive either way.
You make it sound like humans are the only ones affected by climate change. Sea turtles, elephants, polar bears, pandas, there's a fuck load of animals we're directly killing off. Everything is most certainly not fine, even if you don't give a single shit about innocent human lives.
We will take a large chunk of the planets life with us. I don't think we can destroy it all however, the planet will get to intelligent life eventually.
I don’t think we can destroy it all
Oh, I'm sure we can engineer something to that end.
Well, there's certainly no intelligent life on it now, so.....
Where I stay these temperatures can be quite normal in summer. I'm now just worried that a hot summer's day here will now go from 45 to 55. I've felt 50 before. It's not fun. But besides that, I think of the implications for the agricultural sector. Good luck my European friends. I'll report back in our summer.
It's the lack of sure conditioning in Europe that makes it especially brutal.
Sure, there are hotter climates but they are usually more prepared with AC. Certainly not always, I know.
AC doesnt help construction or farm workers, doesnt help against wildfires and also not against drought.
The economy and society asba whole arent prepared for these temperatures. We would need a cultural shift even in northern Europe, where siestas need to become normal. Too bad if you would need to commute 2h back and forth for your siesta break.
I think climate change is happening far sooner than scientists could have predicted. We focus on increased global average temperatures but I think that we are going to have insanely hot summers sooner. We're fucked.
What makes you think that? The science has been pretty damn good for a long time.
Maybe it's more about already being able to see the results of climate change.
Rivers drying out, ice sheets and glaciers melting, oceans heating up, desertification, water shortages, etc.
And with everything it seems like we're "nearly" at a breaking point. Cities running completely out of water, crops failing because of the heat or forests dying or burning, etc.
At least it feels like we're not that far away from a really bad time than anticipated.
You don't need to guess. It was less than 3 months ago where scientists (on nearly every news/publication outlet that wasn't denying climate change) said we are going to blow by the 1.5C estimate we used as a threshold in our models.
Climate change is already happening exponentially now.
Yeah just 20 years ago, much of the world was a bunch of primitive people living in jungles, and the planet could balance the relatively small number of industrialized nations. Today, way more countries have been industrialized. Countries like Vietnam, Thailand, etc are now concrete cities with massive highways and bridges, motorized vehicles everywhere, and factories manufacturing all kinds of stuff and pumping huge clouds of crap into the air. The EU and US try to pass laws and regulations to lower pollution output, but the factories just move to these other countries that have no or less regulations. We aren't at steadily increasing pollution levels, it's exponentially increasing.
If I recall they said in that report that we've managed to avoid +4C with our efforts so far, which prevents extinction. But, we've also learned that even modest increases are way more severe than we first thought.
It's a hell of a mixed bag :/
I think the problem is when you show them the projections people would say "you're just being alarmist, clearly you have an agenda"
So the messaging has been consistently toned down in the hopes people would listen.
They've been warning about water scarcity for decades, I think most people accept it's going to be a thing. Tell them this is going to happen in their country, this decade? Most won't believe you.
Doesn't matter that it's already at the breaking point, and that we have still growing populations that are already rationing water from sources that aren't just down due to drought. There's aquifers that would take centuries to fill back up to where they were decades ago
Scientists told us "your grandchildren will be screwed", then "think of the world you're leaving your children"... Well this generation, they're not saying "you're screwed", because people aren't ready to hear that
People don’t want to have to worry or deal with reality so they simply choose to believe otherwise.
Why do you think we still have rampant religion infecting the world.
the messaging has been consistently toned down in the hopes people would listen.
My guess is its even more than this: deadlines were extended to not let people fall into inaction. The tipping point always close enough so that its dangerous, but still far away enough so that there is still hope. It is a ploy analogous to the fascist "the enemy is strong enough to be dangerous and weak enough to be thoroughly defeated."
This scene is far more realistic, I think. But as you can tell, it doesn't play very well with either the audience or the media.
No, no - it's just as scientists predicted. In the worst-case "no-mitigation" scenario and with attempts from them to explain that +2 global will likely be +10 in peak temperature increase over land (read US, Europe, Asia). As in, both mean and std will increase, but without ocean's mitigation over land.
Fucked is not the correct word - there is a +50 predicted before the end of decade in Strasbourg, where I am from. There is not a single building built there made to resist that kind of temperatures, nor a single tree or crop that could stand that for a day.
And it's a relatively "safe" area as far as long-term projections go...
Fucked is not the correct word - there is a +50 predicted before the end of decade in Strasbourg, where I am from. There is not a single building built there made to resist that kind of temperatures, nor a single tree or crop that could stand that for a day.
And it’s a relatively “safe” area as far as long-term projections go…
I would love to read the source on this, not because I think it's bullshit but because that is pretty fucking alarming.
It was predicted, just labeled as "worst case scenario".
Everyone with a vested interest decided to look at the "best case scenario" instead, that predicted decades or centuries of slow heating. Well, nope, "worst case" it is.
Simple way to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit in your head:
40 * 2 = 80
80 - 8 = 72
72 + 32 = 104
40 C = 104 F
This is still hot but a far cry from 118F
That was a typo by OP. The temp in Italy is 48C/118F
I guess the op added it to the title, but on the article the conversion is from 48°C to 118F
Thanks for the formula! Never knew how to do this.
yeah, 104 a spring day in bakersfield California. But we have AC and stuff. if they’re not used to those temps they might not be prepared for it
We usually do not have AC here (for example in Germany). Not even in hospitals, schools, elderly care, etc. The solution of our government, after many people already died because of heat, is to make shelter rooms somewhere in the city where you can go when it's getting too hot. That's how "prepared" we are.
Also, the majority of people here do not own a home but instead are dependable on their landlord to do something against the heat. Which is obviously not happening. So instead those people who have the money for it start buying free standing AC units. Which need a pipe to hang out of the window and are highly inefficient.
Here in Canada we just double it and add 30, because it's close enough generally.
I actually appreciate the simple guide on how to convert celsius to freedom units. I guess to convert F to C, we'd do the opposite (subtract 32, add 10%, then halve.)
That's my normal summer to cool summer.
40c is 104f. The article mentions possibly peaking at 48c, which is 118f. In case anyone thought something was a little off
As of the article it had only reached 38c, which is a mere 100.4 f. Everything else is just projection at this point. Weather forecast are always sensationally overhyped, especially around here, and especially when it plays into the political agenda.
It would not be the first time heat in southern Italy got this bad. I think that's a reason why people trust the prediction. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/11/sicily-logs-488c-temperature-possibly-highest-ever-recorded-for-europe
Dude, what the fuck?
In North Carolina, we had a "winter that wasn't" and now we have a summer of "surface of the sun" heat. Triple digit heat index every day last week. Good luck getting the locals to admit that climate change is real though. At this point I think some of them are actually starting to see the truth, but it just pisses them off and they dig in to denial even harder, because if there's one thing they can't do it's admit they were wrong.
When I mentioned the hot weather forecast to my super libertarian crazy father in law, he was went off on a tangent on how the government is controlling the weather and causing all of this on purpose 🤦
I had to stop going to my favorite Saturday morning breakfast restaurant for pretty much the same reason. They were ranting about how all the wildfires up here were lit by the government in order to put out enough smoke to block out the sun so our crops would fail. Then everyone would rely on the government for food and they could purge the people they didn't want around.
‘It’s not normal’
It is now.
No it's not... next year will be worse, and the next, and the one after that, and so on. 🏖️🍳😎🔥
Who could have predicted this!?!?? Why weren't we warned?
Does Italy have air conditioned cooling centers like California does?
Climate control technology never reached Europe. Every building is a sweltering hellhole, unless youre in the first floor of a concrete building.
I buckled and bought a stand-AC a few years ago when I literally couldn’t sleep for days during an insanely hot summer here in Germany. I really try not to use it much but on those days when it’s unbearable it’s literally a lifesaver.
AC never was popular because it used to be that you never needed it here. You’d have maybe one or two days above 30 a year where I live and that wouldn’t be enough to heat up the concrete walls, so your living space still stayed cool. And at night the temperature would drop and you could simply air out your flat. Now it’s different though and it’s seriously a shame that people still doubt climate change is happening.
California offers the public to visit certain public buildings and community centers to cool off for free during heatwaves. It saves lives. It would be great if the Italian government could offer something similar. I know they have some very old buildings, but they have some that could facilitate this. Or they should build more pantheons like in Rome if they reject air conditioners.
“And I know I’ve finally accepted that air conditioning is a privilege, not a right.”
-Ted Lasso
How much dat rent be, though? 😬
I don't know what people are smoking, maybe it's too much heat, but air conditioning is very common and normal here in Italy too.
I don't know what a cooling center is, but there is AC everywhere, and when there isn't it's a choice of the owner to avoid installing it.
Also it's not the first time we reach similar temperatures sadly. We get around 40°C basically every year. The south of Italy is clearly on a very high and uncommon peak, tho.
The situation is different in other countries like Germany, northern France or England. Until a few years ago they never needed AC at all so most homes don't have it and it's not even that easy and immediate to have it installed
A cooling center is a building with AC open to the public, so people without AC can cool off.
https://www.qualenergia.it/articoli/meta-famiglie-italiane-ha-condizionatore-ecco-come-usa/
Data supporting this. About 50% of italian private households have AC, with obvious differences between regions and local climates.
I don't know where people in this thread are retrieving data to support their statements but they definitely sound absurd. Source: am Italian
Central aircon is pretty standard for most large buildings but individual aircon systems for private housing is rare, mainly because it is only very hot for a short period of time.
It is becoming more common in northern Europe, which sounds counterintuitive, because heating during winter is a far bigger issue here than cooling during summer.
However, many private houses get 'heat pumps', which gives you more heating pr kW than pure old-fashion electric heating would have given. Basically it is a backwards airconditioner.
These heat pumps can also be run backwards, and then they function as aircondition.
No, air conditioning is rare in Europe. Pretty much only hotels have it, and by far not all hotels. About 5% of private residences have A/C, even in southern regions of France, Spain and Italy.
Source: Wikipedia, and my kid that went to Italy and Greece and Germany for the previous few summers worth of heat waves.
Edit: Formal, government supplied cooling centers are a CA thing. Informal ones like shopping centers are more widespread in the U.S., but don't really exist in Europe.
It doesn't even matter all that much. A couple years ago in the PNW when it hit 43°c/115°f, I had my central air absolutely kicking out the jams and it was still 90°f in my house. I got really annoyed before coming to the realization that it was 25° cooler inside which is honestly a pretty decent effort on behalf of my AC. There's no reason it should be this hot anywhere, but especially Cascadia. Of course my AC couldn't handle it because it wasn't designed to. Even a decade ago you'd think someone was nuts if they installed an AC capable of dealing with this anywhere except say Arizona or Florida
5% lol you're way off. If you're that far off for Spain, I have to wonder if your arse was also the source for the figures for the other countries.
Greece
You'd have to search A LOT to find a hotel without AC in Greece, except maybe in very mountainous areas. It is probably in 90%+ of the homes on cities and it becomes more and more widespread even in villages and towns where you would never need it a few years ago. The; have been popular for more than 30 years in Greece
I'm Italian, lived both in big cities and in small villages, both in the north and the south of the country: basically every office has AC, never saw an hotel with no AC and I'd say at least 50% of private residences have it.
AC in private residences has become much more common in the last years due to the climate crisis but 5% would've been way off even 20 years ago. Your data is definitely incorrect
Edit: https://www.qualenergia.it/articoli/meta-famiglie-italiane-ha-condizionatore-ecco-come-usa/ some data. About 50% of private italian households have AC, with obvious differences between regions and local climates.
I honestly get dizzy by just looking at those numbers...😵💫
We had 40C here in London this time last year. It was not pleasant. It didn't even rain.
We've been 37 or 38 in my area of Tokyo off and on the past couple of weeks. It will only get warmer. The bad part is that it's still rainy season so we also get stupid humidity to go with it. It's 27 in my office, but we have at least one of our aircon units running nearly 24/7 on the "dry" setting to attempt to pull some of the heat and humidity out.
Sadly this is the new normal...
Holy fuck
What suprises me the most when watching news on this. You will see people in Rome getting interviewed in the middle of a plaza in the burning sun. And there are many walking outside. I would crawl into a cool cellar and only come out at night.
The people walking around are called Australians.
They live in apartments without AC and also have to go to work.
40-45C happens in our summers on a semi regular basis (thank f*** last summer we only had a handful of days like that). Inner Oz can reach close to 50C in some areas.....
40-45C happens every summer in Sevilla. When I went to roma over a decade ago there were some 40ºC days.
When I wento to roma over a decade ago there were some 40°C days.
Not 48°C though, which is definitely not normal
Hows the humidity when it gets that hot?
I've done low humidity 45° days/38° nights and it was pretty toasty, but 35° with high humidity kicks my arse. The last couple of weeks here in Catalunya we've had 30-35° with high humidity and I'm just exhausted.
In Italy too, but 48°C is exceptional
Like when whole countries begin to go green and EVs are being more realistic and tangible, and to top off no seemingly push back from big oil, you know shit needs to change
From my understanding, we see less pushback from big oil because now big oil is properly invested into the alternative energy sector. For example Koch industries has been investing in alternatives since at least the 90s.
They will simply profit off of the solution(s)/alternatives to the problems they created.
It's normal now.
Aircon plus solar panels for the win? Other than the initial manufacturing cost, it's a fairly good solution.
For those with a limited budget in a dry heat area, a large portable Swamp box and a single panel may be enough. Needs access to water though...
Aircon plus solar panels for the win? Other than the initial manufacturing cost, it's a fairly good solution.
Can't tell if you're thinking this is anything more than an emergency stopgap for people that can't bear living in their home, but.... All A/C does is spend energy to move the heat back outside, and also produce some more heat on the side. So it isn't a sustainable solution or fix, even if your energy generation is somehow perfect.
And swamp boxes are basically just a fan with extra steps that puts a miniscule amount of heat into the water. They feel a tiny bit better, but they're not really fixing anything either. That warm water still needs to go somewhere etc.
I disagree on the efficacy of evaporative coolers. When I lived in Bourke, they were excellent. Typically roof mounted models such as these. Very low power usage for whole house cooling, but the massive caveat is they don't work well in humid places.
A simple portable one like the Convair Classic will only really help whoever's near it, but at under 80 watts of power it'll run off even the cheapest inverter and car battery in an emergency.
Solar panels make the cost of using a split system practically nothing during daylight hours, with little net additional heat created in the process.
500 years later, Europe finds out their Industrial Revolution has consequences, for everyone. Yay!
200 years later. 500 years ago Europeans were discovering islands and continents.
"Discovering"... this land is your land, this land is my land 🎵
I already knew that we're fucked. But scientist said more around 2050 or something. The way things are progressing right now the next 10 to 20 years are going to be dicey.
"Things are about to get dicey!"
I really don't like seeing these temperatures and I also don't like that governments have not educated the public effectively on what to do to limit climate change. It's a tragedy to see people making irrational and ineffective descisions out of fear.
It’s not about education at this point, it’s about regulation. Without mandates and penalties there is zero incentive to change for the large corporate polluters.
While I agree that there is a lack of education around it, the real solution is regulating emissions from industry and providing businesses monetary incentive to improve
"No one could have prevented this."
We are so fucked....
And yet we're still forces to work
Well it's normal NOW...
It's normal in a silly mustache disguise!
LeopardsAteMyFace moment for the human race lol
Climate change is real but it's not as drastic as this. A lot of people refer to this phenomena as "El Nino" and "La Nina" and they describe a changing pattern in ocean surface temperature and winds that drastically shift the average temperature.
Climate change is just increasing the average temperature of the range over time. But to say that this "118F temperature is entirely because of climate change" is kinda disingenuous. The warming effect of climate change has been observed to be about ~1F per 30 years or so. So if we went back 60 years, this "118F" summer in Italy would be about "116F" and would be almost equally absurd.
You seem to misunderstand how climate change is impacting weather systems overall how that's leading to more localized extremes (both hot and cold).
Needs more car races
Oh well, summer in the Northern Europe is cold as it has always been. Not denying global warming, just wish for warmer weather.
Europe moment
When talking with a past university professor, he told us a big part of the global warming problem was actually a natural cycle the earth goes through every certain period of time.
There is a natural cycle, yes. But if you look at the graphs, we’ve given that natural cycle a rocket boost to Let’s get fucked town and it’s happening a whole lot quicker than it should.
A rocket boost? C'mon bro. Al Gore said parts of Florida would be underwater yet he and other companies were buying beach real estate in the early 2000s