Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave • Hacker News Board

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#61

Post by squidfood » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #13

I wish I knew more about meteorology. It must be incredible (and maybe a little harrowing) to be in that profession these days. Does anyone have any idea how this heat wave will conclude? Does all that energy just fade out into a nice polite rainstorm, or should we expect something more dramatic to cap it off considering the unprecedented circumstances?

On the Pacific NW coast where this is happening, cool marine air will push in and eventually overwhelm the system holding in the heat. The change can be quite abrupt, as the two systems wrestle for dominance, I've felt it (in Seattle) is as a sudden breeze followed by what feels like turning the AC on - literally a 5-10deg temp drop in minutes and can drop 30deg in a couple hours. It doesn't generally end with full-on rain but with cool coastal clouds rolling in.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#62

Post by nradov » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

Arrath wrote: post #31

kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

Most desalination methods are unfortunately quite energy intensive, and produce a concentrated brine that has environmental/disposal concerns such that it can't just be pumped back into the ocean, really. It presents a difficult problem for entrepreneurs to tackle. Definitely the potential to change people's lives for the better, though.

Most desalination plants do just pump the brine back into the ocean. That isn't ideal from a marine conservation standpoint but if the outflow pipe runs out deep enough then it's not too bad.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#63

Post by nxc18 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

fragbait65 wrote: post #39

Honestly, why bother? The earth isn't dying, the earth will be fine, it will recover over time, humanity on the other hand needs to be reduced. If it isn't climate change, an epidemic or something else, then it will be war over resources some time in the future. On the other hand, climate change will probably lead to war anyway, since resources like water and places to live will decrease from that, so war is probably…

The Chinese have not been successful in getting people to have more children. Recent news is that they may be covering up for the early stages of population decline. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-report-first-popul...

Beyond that, the consensus is that population will naturally plateau in the near future, no need for killing people you don’t like.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-popu...

This is high school level knowledge. Where does this meme that human population is growing out of control come from? I keep seeing it repeated here and it is puzzling.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#64

Post by FridayoLeary » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

I just know that Israel are pioneers in this field. Water scarcity has always been a problem in Israel. (the chief solution to this has been, unfortunately, to starve the Salt Sea of water.)

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#65

Post by tshaddox » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #18

kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

I'm not celebrating people dying of thirst, but I also think that's the only thing that will get the world properly focused on the issue. We need to make big structural changes to the global economy to fight climate change, and those changes are going to have an outsized negative impact on today's wealthiest and most powerful people. They aren't going to let change happen without a fight. People dying is what it's go…

> but I also think that's the only thing that will get the world properly focused on the issue.

Or, that will just get the rest of the nations of the world to focus on preventing climate refugees from entering their nation, and perhaps use their militaries to secure remaining resources.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#66

Post by anamexis » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #50

Taek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not celebrating people dying of thirst, but I also think that's the only thing that will get the world properly focused on the issue. We need to make big structural changes to the global economy to fight climate change, and those changes are going to have an outsized negative impact on today's wealthiest and most powerful people. They aren't going to let change happen without a fight. People dying is what it's go…

For the same reasons we make fun of climate-change deniers who say "look at this record cold winter; there's no global warming" means we can't use a historic heat wave to say "look globaal warming". weather != climate

> For the same reasons we make fun of climate-change deniers who say "look at this record cold winter; there's no global warming" means we can't use a historic heat wave to say "look globaal warming".

We make fun of the climate change deniers in this scenario because the cold winter often is evidence of climate change. Record heat waves can also be evidence of climate change.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#67

Post by paxys » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #4

Maybe it’s time to signal political leaders that climate collapse is an urgent issue.

It's easy to blame political leaders, but they are (mostly) elected by the general population. Here in the US ~50% of the people vote for climate change deniers, so they are the ones you need to convince.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#68

Post by s5300 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #13

I wish I knew more about meteorology. It must be incredible (and maybe a little harrowing) to be in that profession these days. Does anyone have any idea how this heat wave will conclude? Does all that energy just fade out into a nice polite rainstorm, or should we expect something more dramatic to cap it off considering the unprecedented circumstances?

Check out Frankie MacDonald, he's an autistic savant meteorologist. Not saying that in any disrespectful way, I know some people get a bit butthurt when using those words.

I don't know if he's commented on it yet, but if he has, >99% chance he's correct.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#69

Post by kzrdude » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

semitones wrote: post #2

We're all gonna die.

Some will die, some will always survive this. That doesn't really change - so that's barely what this is about.

We need to make an effort to stop climate change. If we can stop climate change in a good way it can give us a better quality of life. Less conflict, less resource scarcity, investing in a prosperous future.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#70

Post by mappu » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

jimmytucson wrote: post #26

I feel like extreme weather is right up there with super moons and other astronomical events when it comes to generating headlines, so I did a time constrained Google search for "heat dome" and here's what turned up: 2020-07-10 - "How a ‘Heat Dome’ Forms—and Why This One Is So Perilous (A massive, intense heat wave is settling over the continental US. The ravages of the Covid pandemic are going to make it all the mor…

If the same headline comes up every year then it's easy to construe it as headline-generating pandering.

But the facts are, that the earth is warming more and more every year, and if you are under 40 then you have never experienced a year of below-average temperatures. The headlines are repeated because we break new records every year.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/if-you...