Ben Matthews

  • New here on lemmy, will add more info later …
  • Also on mdon: @benjhm@scicomm.xyz
  • Try my interactive climate / futures model: SWIM
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  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 15th, 2023

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  • Emissions grew in 2023, that’s not the same as ‘are now growing’. There is a good chance global CO2 emissions fall in 2024, mainly due to trends in China. Of course it takes time to gather data, but NS should be more careful with the headline.
    The spinscore link has useful refs - but keeps mixing up CO2 emissions with “CO2 equivalents” including methane, landuse and minor gases. Methane rising is a big issue, but might potentially be turned around faster. Regarding landuse, deforestation was exacerbated last year by El Niño feedbacks - it’s hard to separate the anthropogenic part of these fluxes.
    Rather than simple headlines which encourage fatalistic doom, it’s more useful to explain how some factors progress better than others. They are right to highlight growth in road transport and aviation (even if some growth still covid-rebound), although more effort still needed in all sectors.








  • Have kids age 13,15, they are fun, and independent, but sometimes it’s difficult to be in the parent role. General issues of motivation to do anything off-screen, or indeed anything suggested by parents, even to come outdoors in summer. We still have ideas, skills to share, but conversations became so short, little chance for in depth discussion, or constructive projects. Traveling together can still be good.






  • Ukraine is huge and has loads of track and trains that gauge, so do Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova. There’s even a ukrainian-gauge line running west to Katowice, could make sense to extend it, and make another to Gdansk. Otoh a transversal standard-gauge line connecting Romania to Poland via Chernivtsi and Lviv could also make sense.
    Western europe should welcome the technical expertise of Ukraine and Belarus railways, they move a lot, efficiently.
    Hey, not so long ago, there was even talk of a canal linking the Dnipro to the Wisla, recreating the old ‘viking rus’ trade-route (although have to consider also impact on wetlands… I recall used to sit next to the IPCC rep from Belarus - he was passionate about methane emissions from wetlands - but suffered from politics …)


  • Sure, she’s right, more people in Belarus voted for her than Lukas* and his pals, they shouldn’t suffer for p’s tricks, although it seems to me the majority are rather too passive (with some great exceptions, of course).
    Anyway isn’t there another factor here - are there still long freight trains with chinese containers frequently arriving in Brest? If not, how else are they getting to europe? If so, I’d guess both belarus railways and polish lorry drivers get a lot of money out of that trade, isn’t that a factor of leverage ?
    Belarus is good at trains, I hope not so far in the future we’ll see them run again from Odesa to Riga via Minsk, and with people free to move.



  • This issue is interesting in a generic sense - I have no particular interest in US roads, but the balance issue is difficult as editors are not evenly distributed - for example there are many articles about train stations in europe, but the level of detail is far from balanced wrt their relative importance ). Which leads to my question - did anybody consider a fediverse (decentralised) model of wikipedia whereby the community of interconnections gradually evolves, so inclusion / exclusion is less binary ?