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Europe’s Trains, Nuclear Plants and Factories Can’t Take the Heat Either (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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The devastating heat wave has exposed weaknesses in the continent’s infrastructure, much of it built for a cooler climate that no longer exists.

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[–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

1950-2020 "overnight"? And to your first point, there is nothing wrong with the rail infrastructure left over from before the 1950s in this heat. The trains aren't suddenly having trouble because the spacing between rails is set to an old standard.

You and I are being left to die and our support structures were designed cheaply with no regard for our survival because the owners don't care about us.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Railway infrastructure is commonly built for a 100 year lifespan. Even if it is updated, many norms are grandfathered in. Changing that requires enourmous effort.

    That aside, your 1950 date is rather populistic. It was absolutely not scientific consensus back then that climate would change like that. It was only in the 1970s that this changed. That was 50 years ago and yes, that is not an enourmous long timespan for reworking our entire infrastructure. The Netherlands for example needed that time to undo the car centric dogma back to a multimodal one. The harmonisation process for rail control systems in Europe is easily 2-3 decades in the making and will easily need another 1-2 decades to even cover most of the primary network.

    The article is behind a paywall so I can't comment ton specifics but to think all the norms and all the infrastructure could be easily changed, is taking a few short cuts. Granted, a lot of things can be changed at much faster pace but then also at much higher cost and also much higher waste.

    I am not saying one should not be serious about those changes, but nothing is gained from polemics.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    In what way is citing the univac prediction "populistic"?

    Also, my comments are not needlessly aggressive. My aggression towards those in power who have intentionally allowed us to get to this point, is warranted. If you are going to pretend that it wasn't intentional on their part, you deserve that ire too. This pretense, that this is simply how slow things move, is poisonous, as it allows those who have harmed us all to continue to do so. Bygones can't be bygones while the wolves still run the chicken coop.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Nothing about the prediction is populistic. Claiming that one simulation was already given imperative results is populistic. Like I said, it took considerably longer than just until the 1950 until this climate scenario was scientific consensus.

    Things do move slowly, not always but if we are talking about radical change of our infrastructure and also uprooting the way the economy works, those things are measured in decades, not years. We can deny that and just detach ourself from reality or work within reality.

    To point out anything more detailed, I would need to know what the article actually writes about. I am not saying that there were no failings.

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