New Satellite Photos Show Climate Change Is Sweeping Europe

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-09/new-satellite-photos-show-europe-s-changing-climate

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

106 68 7 years ago

kylia• 7 years ago

Not sure how to feel other than sick about this. I wonder what more it will take to have something actually be done about this, haha.

black-tea2• 7 years ago

I wonder too. I'm completely convinced it will take top-down control by governments or nothing will change. There is absolutely no reason to believe the "will of the people" will do the right thing now for the first time in history.

renholder• 7 years ago

I wonder what more it will take to have something actually be done about this, haha.

It's the CFC/Ozone Hole problem[0], all over again; only at a much larger and far more damaging scale. Humans, despite all of their best qualities, are still going to human.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon#Environment...

neuronic• 7 years ago

It seems like an issue would be the requirement of massive cuts into freedom - possibly preventing people from pursuing their livelihoods. At the very least, these livelihoods have to be significantly shifted. Convincing people to support or even drive these uncomfortable changes in their lives is more than hard.

Look at car manufacturing. I doubt we will be able to 1:1 replace jobs related to combustion-engine based cars. There are so many parts and corresponding suppliers involved. It all vanishes with electric cars due to their comparative simplicity. From resources mining to car mechanic - many people are directly affected.

Of course new jobs will arise with electric cars, new mobility and computerized driving. But those are not for the drive train engineers, manufacturers and related workforce. Those will be for new, highly trained individuals or appear in a different sector, such as service - and that is if these new jobs aren't automated anyways.

Replacing plastic straws is facing severe opposition because the alternatives are not well liked. For quite a lot of people it is more important to have a non-soggy straw than to let one less bird die.

Many of us are also ready to reduce flying, especially ridiculously cheap flights that make your carbon footprint explode. Others, less fortunate than us, depend on such flights for their only vacation this year.

Are we going to take that away from them in the name of climate by imposing a carbon tax? Should a flight from Northern Europe to Tenerife really cost 90€ while blowing enormous amounts of CO2 into the damaged atmosphere?

We are getting into authoritarianism here at some point...

throwaway57522• 7 years ago

Your freedom to move your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Climate change is hurting many worldwide, and it will get worse base on all available evidence. You are massively cutting the most basic of freedoms (food, water, and livelihood) by not fixing it.

You aren't allowed to drive drunk because it hurts others, and that's not authoritarianism. It's simply not allowing someone to harm others, just as climate change is doing to many.

vages3• 7 years ago

I don't think any of the restrictions you mention should be called authoritarian. Nations and the world have made many things illegal in the name of the common good before, e.g. child labor, slavery and leaded gasoline: Taking away someone's "freedom" to poison society and nature with leaded gasoline is really _giving_ the freedom to live a healthy life back to everyone else.

All of the problems you have mentioned are solvable. And I think people's attitude towards environmental restrictions will change much more rapidly than you'd expect: https://www.positive.news/society/must-change-always-be-slow...

morsch• 7 years ago

I agree that it appears unfair that only rich people would end up getting to fly, and that's because it is unfair: we're not used to income/wealth inequality having this particular effect of drastically restricting mobility anymore (though it's only been 50 years[1]).

On the other hand we are very accustomed[2] to inequality having drastic effects in virtually all other respects, including such fundamental ones as how long you live and if you get to have your own room. For both of these, some countries have specialized solutions to absorb some of the shock (e.g. Medicaid, socialized health care, public housing, rent control). I guess it's not inconceivable to have something similar for transportation, no doubt with the same limited effect on inequality as with health care and housing.

But inevitably, global warming is going to affect the lower income groups first and foremost. If we wait, the effects of global warming will just be worse, particularly for them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_set [2] bizarrely so, in my opinion

makerofspoons2• 7 years ago

We didn't care that we were not able to create 1:1 replacement jobs when we stopped making buggies and started making cars. I doubt the system will care this time either. I agree with you that convincing people to support these changes would be hard, but fortunately the economy will shift regardless of what the losers want. Electric vehicles are simply better, as are renewable energy sources and other growing technologies. What I'm more worried about is people voting for authoritarians that will artificially prop up dinosaur technology like coal power stations.

brandon2724• 7 years ago

One thing I am finding really nuts is that, in spite of what we now know about climate change, North American drivers are currently thirsting for larger and larger, less fuel efficient, very expensive trucks and sport utility vehicles. Auto manufacturers are currently tripping over themselves to design and produce larger vehicles to satisfy that demand.

Given that, I have a really hard time reconciling the "we just can't do anything, sorry, it'll hurt our freedoms" attitude with the "I don't care about my CO2 output" attitude that is evident in the consumption behaviours of most people I see. It's as if they consider outputting tonne after tonne of carbon into the atmosphere as a point of pride or immutable entitlement.

lazyjones4• 7 years ago

Should a flight from Northern Europe to Tenerife really cost 90€ while blowing enormous amounts of CO2 into the damaged atmosphere?

It's not authoritarianism to simply increase taxes for kerosine to be more in line with car fuels. But the Gores and Schwarzeneggers like flying around the globe to Davos and other places to spread their message.

baron_harkonnen2• 7 years ago

The problem is that the cost of "actually doing something" and the penalty for doing nothing converge over time. Global CO2 production increases to go up, as does global oil production. These are just the byproducts of the energy needed to pay for our standard of living. The further back in time we go the cheaper and more realistic change would have been. But we live in a world where sustaining our way of life means continuing to use more fossil fuels at a faster rate and produce more co2 at a faster rate.

The issue is and always has been that there is no answer to the problem of "sustainability" that also includes limitless growth, and limitless growth is one of the essential conditions of global capitalism. The very premise of venture capital, the fuel of this forum, is that the proceeds of tomorrow can pay for today.

More renewables, more clean energy and more electric cars are not the answer to a sustainable future. The only reasonable path towards sustainability is less tomorrow then today, but nobody really wants that, and even now nobody would honestly vote for that. So the path we are on is one in which we see if we can grow fast enough to pay for the consequences of that.

jellicle• 7 years ago

Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels, today.

There is no reason at all why humans can't continue to use a lot of energy and also cease pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. All that is required is that the changeover be made.

jlarocco• 7 years ago

As terrible as it sounds, I've kind of stopped caring.

I try to reduce my own impact on the planet (99% bike commuting, don't eat much meat, minimal plastic usage, recycle, etc.) and recommend others do the same, but if humans drive ourselves to extinction in the long term, then that's just how it will play out.

jpm_sd2• 7 years ago

I also have found the combination of personal environmental impact reduction combined with a sort of "Pale Blue Dot" nihilism helpful in my everyday life.

dougmwne2• 7 years ago

Serious answer: It would take a small political shift.

We do not need to reinvent our economic systems, we just need to push back against the political power of a few established special interest groups that want to protect their current profit. Green technologies are already being adopted rapidly. Smart government regulations, taxes, and incentives can speed along these changes. The situation is not hopeless. We're having an increasing impact on the climate, but we're not extinct yet.

Vote. Tell your friends to vote. Cultivate green initiatives in your own community. Contribute to environmental organizations. Buy the low carbon alternative. Steer your career to build the future instead of picking over the carcass of the past. Stop waiting on the world to change.

chris_va• 7 years ago

(disclaimer: I am part of a Climate&Energy research group that does some economic modeling of this sort, though this particular solution is still being researched)

We do not need to reinvent our economic systems, we just need to push back against the political power of a few established special interest groups that want to protect their current profit.

Ironically, with some of the better solutions (e.g. a Carbon Tax), fossil fuel companies may not actually see reduced profit, but that is not well understood by the industry since the reason is slightly subtle.

Since energy demand is relatively inelastic, increasing the price only slightly decreases consumer demand. While that by itself is technically a loss for energy companies, a sensible carbon tax also creates a secondary market to dispose of CO2. The majority of the additional consumer cost of energy is actually paying that secondary market to take the CO2. It turns out that disposing of CO2 is primarily an energy cost, which means the net demand for things like natural gas can actually go up.

At the moment, my personal favorite solution is to implement a "Carbon Rebate"--basically a revenue neutral tax. You tax CO2 emissions (probably at the source), and create a secondary market to offset emissions to avoid paying the tax. Any revenue from the tax is uniformly redistributed to consumers (perhaps as a tax credit), and you have the "tax" rate ramp up year over year. This establishes price discovery and creates an economic incentive to solve the problem without being significantly disruptive to either the industry or consumers (and somewhat exploits the prisoner dilemma). From a US-centric viewpoint, trade agreements would be required to enforce this tax on goods imported from other countries that are not subjected to an analogous carbon price. Since the import tariffs money would be redistributed to US citizens, it creates an incentive for those countries to adopt a similar policy.

koffiezet• 7 years ago

It would take a small political shift

Not sure about the green parties in other countries, but here in Belgium, they're good for one thing: opposition. It's crazy how much they live in their small echo chamber. The whole 'nuclear is bad' is killing us, their great plans to ban cars from city centers with circulation plans only seem to make traffic, traffic jams and co2 levels worse.

Their whole attitude is to change something and then thinking "people should just" - a phrase I hear a lot from them. Take the bike, live closer to work, use less water/electricity/..., work remotely, all live in cities, buy electric cars, ... Bullying people into doing something will not work, but that seems to be their main strategy.

Also, anti-vaxers, 'alternative medicine', essential oils, 'natural/bio, healthy gluten-free bullshit practitioners and 'mainstream science' skeptics seem to be a good portion of their target audience. Sadly I know more than a few examples of those, and the only thing I expect to happen from that political side is that they, with all the best intentions of the world, will just make it a lot worse.

We need a clear plan, backed by numbers and science to get where we want to go, and I don't see any political wing making a serious point about this. We need this yesterday.

makerofspoons2• 7 years ago

It will probably take until the first day most of the population goes without easy access to food. Once the markets are empty or too expensive due to crop failures and shortages, change will be swift. The question is whether that will be when it is too late.

hombre_fatal• 7 years ago

Just do the same thing you did to handle the overpopulation scare in the 80s.

assblaster2• 7 years ago

"Heatwaves and little rain led to rarely seen forest fires in Sweden in July 2018."

Rarely seen, as in, seen before, presumably before the current level of climate change.

I wish articles like this would give some context, such as rare: once in 10/100/1000/10000/100000 years?

Also, satellite images in the last several years can't be compared with satellite images 100 years ago because man-made satellites didn't exist back then. So this is more of a snapshot with little context.

How does this compare with the medieval warming period as far as impact on agriculture?

Xylakant• 7 years ago

How does this compare with the medieval warming period as far as impact on agriculture?

It’s been so dry in germany that river levels sunk far enough to make so-called hungerstones visible again. These mark historic low levels that are associated with severe droughts and starvation. The fact that we’re not starving is a testament to how much modern agriculture improved our resilience, but there’s a limit to that.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerstein_(Wasserstandsmar...

yters2• 7 years ago

I've not understood how this demonstrates unprecedented climate change, since presumably there is past precedent that laid the hungerstones in the first place. This seems to demonstrate this level of warming happened before in the medieval ages, before human caused global warming was possible. Wouldn't this mean hungerstones count as evidence against human caused global warming?

tucaz7• 7 years ago

It's not like we have been wrong about this a hundred and twenty-three times before.

In 2014, "science" was telling us for sure that the big lakes would go dry in just a few years due to climate change effects [0].

It is 2019 now and the same lakes that were disappearing, less than five years ago, are now reaching record levels [1].

If something is wrong, someone has to do something, right? We can't just sit on our asses and wait. Hey, government! Go do something!

[0] https://thinkprogress.org/the-great-lakes-go-dry-how-one-fif... [1] - https://www.weather.gov/mkx/highlakemichiganwaterlevel

olivermarks• 7 years ago

[answer to a flagged comment] Not really, I think the unfortunately monickered mr assblaster makes a valid point free of bias. We are in an era of unprecedented imagery and data access for the first time. We don't know if the last few years when this technology evolution happened overlaps with outlier weather events. There may well be effects from tripling the atmospheric carbon too.

throwaway57522• 7 years ago

That ignores the entire body of climate researches over many decades and probably millenia of person-years of research, ice cores, glacial/polar ice cap melt, etc. It seems like a valid point, but it really isn't.

edit: it really isn't. We know the current warming is without precedent in rate, and has an upper limit around the PETM (about 50 Ma). It's like someone who had never seen a car before presuming it was powered by ghosts. It maybe reasonable within their frame of reference, but it is their frame of reference that is flawed in an objective context.

dharma1• 7 years ago

Anyone know where the highest res image data sets are available? I tried looking on https://www.copernicus.eu/en but it's a bit of a maze

zeptomu• 7 years ago

Although it is not stated in the article, I suppose it is Sentinel2 (with highest resolution 10m for bands Red, Green, Blue and Near Infrared).

The data is available for free and accessible via Copernicus or at major cloud providers.

minikites2• 7 years ago

Bitcoin has earned a lot of the blame here:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mi...

one transaction now uses as much energy as your house in a week

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/17/bitcoin-e...

In November, the power consumed by the entire bitcoin network was estimated to be higher than that of the Republic of Ireland. Since then, its demands have only grown. It’s now on pace to use just over 42TWh of electricity in a year, placing it ahead of New Zealand and Hungary and just behind Peru.

itissid• 7 years ago

There was a european heat wave in 2003 that killed thousands a day and 70,000 total[1]. If 70K people in the US died from a single large climate change induced event change, people might start to talk.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

MR4D2• 7 years ago

The heat wave lasted 25 days (using the above poster's dates). That's a run rate of almost exactly 1 million additional deaths per year.

Given the European population of 741 million, and an 80 year average life span, then they were able to attribute an additional 0.001686909582% of deaths to climate change.

That's roughly two out of one thousand signal to noise ratio. [0] According to one study medical examiners disagreed on cause of death in 12% (TWELVE PERCENT!!!) of cases. [1 & 2]

Either my math is bad (definitely possible), or I'm calling bullshit on the numbers.

[0] - my calculation was as follows: 70,000 deaths / 25 days * 365 days per year / 741,000,000 people in Europe / 80 year life expectancy * 100.00%

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29091542

[2] https://www.thename.org/assets/2018Handouts/2.3%20-%20McGive...

MR4D2• 7 years ago

If you downvoted me, then show your math. At least I put mine out there.

black-tea2• 7 years ago

Do you think the US is more likely to care than Europe does?

lazyjones4• 7 years ago

On terrascope.be, there is no such large difference between July 2017 and 2018 satellite images (Belgium, somewhere in the North because images wouldn't load for some areas):

https://viewer.terrascope.be/terrascope/?language=en&date=18...

This may well be before/after harvest or early vs. late July images on bloomberg.com - it's such things that have made me very skeptical about the climate change debate. And of course, some people are quickly downvoting facts they don't like.

mturmon2• 7 years ago

There is a notable difference between the images you link. Apparently [1] the drought/heat wave in Belgium started on July 13 2018 (and ended on 7 August), so the image-pair you link was near the beginning of the event. The data on the nifty pair-viewer you link to is sporadic, so it's tedious to find other matches.

But another story centered on the same theme already found matches:

https://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-images-shows-whole...

It shows a bunch of 2017/2018 image-pairs from places like Sweden, Denmark, and Germany with features from the drought.

Surely we are not arguing that there was no drought during that year, or that it's somehow not visible from remote sensing data?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_European_heat_wave

lazyjones4• 7 years ago

Surely we are not arguing that there was no drought during that year, or that it's somehow not visible from remote sensing data?

We're arguing that there is a difference between thorough scientific methods and carefully picking out selected data points to show a dramatic situation that isn't.

cannedslime• 7 years ago

Summer of 2017 was dull and rainy, 2018 was scorching heat. So what? This isn't a direct indication of climate change, we have had varied seasons since forever. You didn't take the cool summer of 2017 as an example of debunked climate change either... silly article.

New Satellite Photos Show Climate Change Is Sweeping Europe

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