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Earth Science

Warm January Weather Breaks Records Across Europe (theguardian.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Weather records have been falling across Europe at a disconcerting rate in the last few days, say meteorologists. From a report: The warmest January day ever was recorded in at least eight European countries including Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, according to data collated by Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who tracks extreme temperatures. In Korbielow, Poland, the mercury hit 19C (66F) -- a temperature the Silesian village is more used to in May, and 18C above the 1C annual average for January. In Javornik in the Czech Republic it was 19.6C, compared with an average of 3C for this time of year.

Temperatures in Vysokaje, Belarus, would normally hover around zero at this time of year. On Sunday they reached 16.4C, beating the country's previous record January high by 4.5C. Elsewhere on the continent, local records were broken at thousands of individual measuring stations, with nearly 950 toppled in Germany alone from 31 December to 2 January, Herrera said. Northern Spain and the south of France basked in beach weather, with 24.9C in Bilbao, its hottest ever January day, and records broken at stations in Cantabria, Asturias and the Basque region. Only Norway, Britain, Ireland, Italy and the south-east Mediterranean posted no records.
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Warm January Weather Breaks Records Across Europe More

Warm January Weather Breaks Records Across Europe

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  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toutankh ( 1544253 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @06:13AM (#63175760)

    Anything that derails Putin's plans to weaponise energy and resources is good. I'll take global warming in 2023 if that makes Russia fail at bullying Europe.

  • At a certain point, weather is suggestive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @08:20AM (#63175884) Homepage

    Weather is not climate, but at a certain point, enough extreme weather events should be a serious wakeup call that climate change is likely happening now already. At this point, we can't avoid at least some climate change with some damage, but we can still mitigate it. So what can you as an individual do to help?

    There are three main ways you can help, personal, political and charitable.

    In terms of personal things, you can drive less, eat less meat, insulate your house more, and turn down the temperature in the winter and use less air conditioning during hot periods. If you do need to buy a new car, buy a hybrid or even better an electric car. No car is even better, but for a lot of people that just isn't an option. All of these not only help reduce CO2 and methane production, they save you money.

    In terms of politics, you can vote for parties and candidates who help with climate issues, both in terms of policies which make less CO2 and also in terms of policies which will mitigate damage from climate change. Right now, in the US that means voting for Democrats. The Democrats haven't been perfect on these issues. Some have been anti-nuclear which is obviously bad, and some have been very in favor of the sort of damaging restrictive housing policies which force people to spread out and live in suburbs. But overall, they are much better than the other options for this. Individual candidates may vary, but the Republicans have largely kicked out all the people like Christie Todd Whitman and Arnold Schwarzenegger who cared about climate change. Outside the US, things can be a bit more complicated, a lot of the Green parties in Europe have taken strong anti-nuclear stances which is directly bad for helping deal with climate change, so voting for them is at best counterproductive. It will depend a lot on where you live.

    The third category is charitable giving. Here are three good examples. Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ [everybodysolar.org] [everybodysolar.org] get solar panels for non-profits like homeless shelters and science museums. The Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ [self.org] gets solar panels for developing countries in locations they don't have electric power. This helps provide resources for severely impoverished people. It also helps make sure that as those countries transition into modernization they don't need to go through the same high fossil fuel use that the rest of the world did. For wind power, the New England Wind Fund https://www.greenenergyconsumers.org/newenglandwindfund [greenenergyconsumers.org] is a good option. New England has a lot of wind, but currently has little wind power, so this is an efficient use and more wind power isn't going to stress the grid. I'd like to be able to recommend a nuclear charity, but there doesn't really seem to be any good option there. But more wind and solar is still a good thing. Every little bit helps.

    • Re:At a certain point, weather is suggestive (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @08:54AM (#63175942) Homepage Journal

      In terms of personal things, you can drive less, eat less meat, insulate your house more, and turn down the temperature in the winter and use less air conditioning during hot periods.

      I'm not saying don't do those things, but it's a fart in a windstorm compared to industrial emissions (even when alternatives exist) and to ever-accelerating "natural" (in fact AGW-exacerbated) methane emissions.

      In terms of personal things, go forth and guerilla garden bamboo in any empty spaces that will support it. Its CO2-fixing potential makes trees look pathetic. Yeah, it's an invasive bitch, but that's why it can help. Trees aren't invasive enough. Just don't put it where it's going to cause problems soon. And oh yeah, don't have any goddamn kids, especially in most highly developed nations where their CO2 impact is massive.

      • Growing bamboo is pointless unless you also have a plan to sequester it. That's a bit hard to do on a personal scale.

        • Re:At a certain point, weather is suggestive (Score:5, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @10:01AM (#63176072) Homepage Journal

          Growing bamboo is pointless unless you also have a plan to sequester it.

          Not at all true. For some reason people like to pretend that when the part of a plant you can see falls over and dies that all of its carbon is released back into the atmosphere, but that is a nonsense idea that ignores biology and physics. It would be better if you had a plan for actually making use of the bamboo, making room for successions.

          • Growing bamboo is pointless unless you also have a plan to sequester it.

            Not at all true. For some reason people like to pretend that when the part of a plant you can see falls over and dies that all of its carbon is released back into the atmosphere, but that is a nonsense idea that ignores biology and physics. It would be better if you had a plan for actually making use of the bamboo, making room for successions.

            What is the physics that says that plants don't give back their carbon? Where does it go?

            • What is the physics that says that plants don't give back their carbon? Where does it go?

              The carbon that doesn't get released into the atmosphere goes into the soil. Anaerobic decomposition does result in a lot of carbon release, but aerobic decomposition does not. Remember that a significant percentage of the mass is also subsoil, so even in a fire not all of the carbon is being released (and biochar is highly stable, so the percentage that doesn't actually burn has a chance to be sequestered.) Soil is 2-90% organic mass (usually under 10% though) and that's mostly carbon [wa.gov.au].

      • Any individual category is a small chunk of total emissions. And of course you personally quitting driving won't change anything either.

        But overall road transportation, of which passenger travel is the majority, is as good place to start as any.

        https://ourworldindata.org/emi... [ourworldindata.org]

        • overall road transportation, of which passenger travel is the majority, is as good place to start as any.

          Yes, but we're dicking around with EVs instead of going all-in on trains, which would do a dramatically better job of reducing emissions and increasing efficiency.

          • Don't look at me, I'm all for trains! Or at least making everyone else take the train :)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            I've used only the train and not my car at all for about a month. It's how I get to work and the car has been out of action. When I can afford an EV, it's what I will get. We can do trains and EVs concurrently - they aren't mutually exclusive. However, unless neighbourhoods have access for train lines or are built with them in mind, then putting in more trains is difficult, and it's certainly expensive, and risky unless you know people are going to use them. With EVs, self-druving and the ubiquity of smart
      • I agree that bamboo is a good idea. Regarding children, the standard estimates for CO2 for children assume that one has a children who has typical parents. If one is raising a child and is someone who cares about climate change and is taking steps like those noted above, the CO2 impact of the child is greatly reduced. And many of the estimates for children look at lifetime estimates, while ignoring that we are taking steps to decarbonize so the CO2 production for the vast majority of their life will be low.

      • I'm not saying don't do those things, but it's a fart in a windstorm compared to industrial emissions

        It is nothing of the sort. Firstly industrial emissions make up less than 1/4 of total emissions.
        Secondly personal direct emissions make up well over 10%.
        Thirdly a lot of the other direct emissions are personal emissions in disguise: E.g. Electric power is split out by itself in most graphs, half of that chunk is residential electric demand. Transportation cost is split out by itself and 1/4 of that personal mobility (you and I driving).
        And finally most of the remainder of the emissions are indirectly perso

    • Re:At a certain point, weather is suggestive (Score:4)

      by GlennC ( 96879 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @10:02AM (#63176074)

      In terms of politics, you can vote for parties and candidates who help with climate issues...

      The Party doesn't allow those kind of people on the ballot, and the average American doesn't vote for anyone other than their designated "Team Red" or "Team Blue" cheerleader.

    • nuclear power is a joke. its vastly more expensive than solar+wind+tidal+batteries
      • Nuclear is expensive in the US to a large extent because we build very few reactors so there's no economies of scale. Worse, the US has extremely restrictive rules about radiation. In particular the ALARA rule requires essentially that any increase in efficiency has to be used reducing radiation leakage rate. This ensures that no matter what, nuclear will never be that cheap in the US under current rules. But this is is a problem with the rules. Meanwhile, even if new plants are expensive, the move to close

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      Right now, in the US that means voting for Democrats (me: for climate change). The Democrats haven't been perfect on these issues.

      You are 100% correct, but in the US there is only one way to get people off of fossil fuels, higher prices. Nuclear would have been a good bridge, but NIMBY will stop any new construction. Again France has shown the world how to plan for energy needs.

      But, the Dems had a perfect chance to get the conversation going without doing anything. Instead of letting gas prices rise in the US, they released the reserves to get the prices down. So, if your job is imperiled, you do whatever you can to keep it, even

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        The USA has had additional subsidies for nuclear, and a, regulatir very keen to permit sites. The issue, and this has been true since 1980, is finance. For a large, non-governmental investor there are typically other vehicles that offer a better risk-reward factor. This is pretty common across most large capital projects - look at how badly Eurotunnel went, for example. A large Non-governmental investor doesn't suffer a penalty if the nation has insufficient power, and so that pricing signal doesn't get pre

  • Protestants, the Spanish Armada and 1688 (Score:3)

    by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @08:33AM (#63175900)

    English Protestants point to the weather's role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and it role in getting William of Orange across to England in 1688 to remove Catholic James II as evidence of God's view of the political Catholicism of the day. At what point can we draw similar conclusions about God and that nice Mr Putin?

  • > Weather records have been falling across Europe at a disconcerting rate in the last few days, say meteorologists

    Those meteorologists were living under the rock for last ten years. We would be luck to have snow in January in Lithuania.

  • some incredibly massive shit hit the fan over at Twitter, and there are exactly zero articles here about it.

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