I find that German law idiotic. Of course it costs the landlord something to hire a broker, even if the renter is supposed to pay the fee. It still eats into the overall budget of the renter, that could otherwise have gone to the landlord.
You can find it idiotic, but finding a tenant is quite easy in popular places, so instead of finding a way to increase the overall price (which is also regulated), the landlords often just do it themself. In unpopular places, it is hard to increase the price.
If you point out recent coldness records, you will be lectured about the difference between weather and climate. I think the real issue may be the human delusion that things staying the same is normal (perhaps because of the short life span of humans), and more recently in scientific terms, that averages are normal.
About this article I find it odd that it cites Thatcher, of all people. Surely the information she used in the 80ies is outdated by now, and she presumably never was a climate researcher.
Localized coldness records that are the result of the polar vortex breaking apart over the arctic and sending masses of cold air south. They are accompanied by heat waves and records in the arctic. The 80s information and forecasts were actually pretty decent in terms of the observed warming levels so far. What is a shame is that they were not pessimistic enough regarding the feedback loops we are now aware of.
I guess no matter what happens, it is always due to climate change.
In general I think local records are to be expected, because of variance. Maybe they become more frequent because of changing jet streams or whatever, but you can not go in the other direction and claim every record is because of climate change.
Sadly their phone games imitate the worst things their competitors in both Japan and China are doing in terms of gambling, predatory pricing, etc. The revenue's certainly good.
On the contrary, the last couple of years (including corona) have shown how much misinformation governments and schools are willing to spread. I worry a lot about the best ways to shield my children from that.
> last couple of years (including corona) have shown how much misinformation governments and schools are willing to spread.
I'm genuinely curious--
What specifially are you talking about?
I'm having a really hard time coming up with harmful misinformation that is perpetuated intentionally by the education system (or government) in any western country...
At the beginning of the pandemic in the UK, the government was perpetuating misinformation about masks, recommending that people not wear them, even as East Asian countries had made them mandatory.[1][2][3][4] The same misinformation was also spread by US authorities, hoping this would alleviate the mask shortage for healthcare workers.[5][6] Some even admitted this later.[7]
With Trump (or maybe just the rise of social media in general) cancel culture has become rampant. The general discussion culture has become angrier and unforgiving. People feel they are fighting a war and the enemy has to be shut down at all cost.
With Corona and climate many people feel like literally their lives are at risk. With Corona, censorship of dissenting opinions has become the norm.
I don't want my kids to be taught that boys are bad by nature and have to be taught to be like girls, and girls are only good if they behave like boys.
I don't want my kids to be taught that they are inherently sexist or something-phobic if they are not gay or Trans, or merely approach somebody they are attracted to.
I don't want them to be taught that they are inherently racist and bad because they are white.
I don't want them to be taught that they are doomed because global warming will end the world in a couple of years.
I don't want them to be taught that capitalism exploits people and socialism is the only recourse.
I don't want them to be taught that they should listen to "experts" and believe the scientists. They should be taught critical thinking and doing science.
"They still had hope back then. Reading that hope today hurts." - why? Nothing severe has happened yet. Article probably cherry picks the "best" predictions, too.
By we, you are talking middle to upper income countries not the poor countries in Africa and especially no the islands states in the Pacific. Or maybe you are not one of the relatives of the poor souls were lost in 50C heatwave in Canada last week.
If those do not apply to you, sure we are here. Just add, at the moment.
Those are also still here (with exception of the heat wave victims, which seem out of place in an affluent country. I would suspect failure of politics/health system. But heat waves have always happened).
Regions becoming uninhabitable, sea levels rising, mass extinctions.
As of now it is difficult to find any significant damage that is not actually the result of direct human mismanagement that they try to blame on climate change.
Edit: no, not climate change. Things like diverting water and pumping wells dry, planting the wrong trees and preventing small fires that leads to huge fires, for example.
> Regions becoming uninhabitable, sea levels rising, mass extinctions.
Every single one of those things has already started happening.
Sea level rise is already starting to threaten low lying coastal areas, including places like Miami beach where sea water is more and more frequently seeping up through porous bedrock and flooding roads and other public spaces. It's also exacerbating the effects of king tides and creating far more destructive storm surges.
Parts of India are more frequently hitting the wet bulb temperature where humans can no longer survive, something which will occur with increasing frequency.
And we're smack in the middle of a major mass extinction event.
"Started happening" - nothing severe has happened yet, though. And coastal regions often have other issues than rising sea levels. For example land sinking because too much water has been pumped from the wells. Also human settlements are probably expanding, at times into places that were not fit for building to begin with.
The places with "wet bulb temperature" probably are uninhabited already. Such places have always existed (death valley perhaps an example in the US).
I don't claim climate doesn't change, just the dramatic downsides don't seem to happen somehow.
> Jacobabad crossed the 35C wet bulb threshold in July 1987, then again in June 2005, June 2010 and July 2012. Each time the boundary may have been breached for only a few hours, but a three-day average temperature has been recorded hovering around 34C in June 2010, June 2001 and July 2012. The dry bulb temperature is often over 50C in the summer.
> just the dramatic downsides don't seem to happen somehow.
If you're ignoring when it happens, changing goalposts, interpreting facts to fit your preconceived notions, and dismissing things based on the No True Scotsman fallacy, I could see how you might think that.
Meanwhile, the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching so often now it can't recover, extreme weather has become more common, glaciers are retreating, coastal areas are eroding, and on and on.
But if you want to keep ignoring what's happening right in front of your eyes, there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it except shake our heads, sigh, and continue to have no hope anything will change.
I haven't changed the goal posts, criteria were clearly stated higher up. If Jacobabad gets abandoned, perhaps we can talk. Although in "Collapse" you can read about places that were abandoned after thousands of years in the past, so even such a thing is not proof that we are doomed.
There is an infinite number of alarmist scenarios. We can not react to all of them. The argument that it would be too late if some thing x would really happen is not very useful for decision making.
For example a meteorite could hit earth and wipe out all life. Clearly we should pour all resources into building space ships.
Cities like Venice and countries like the Maldives having to be evacuated because of sea level rise? But it remains to be seen if we can stop that from happening with the agreements currently in place...
