Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave • Hacker News Board

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#131

Post by jbotz » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

mbostleman wrote: post #107

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…

How do we know this is the result of climate change? It's meant as an honest question. Though it is largely ignored in the mainstream discussion, I've heard for years to be careful about making a distinction between weather and climate. Are you thinking this is not weather, but climate? How does one tell the difference? If there's a record winter of cold temps, would it be evidence that the climate is cooling?

There are actually scientific methods for attributing specific events to global warming or not, probabilistically. I.e. although you can never say with perfect certainty "this heatwave was caused by global warming", you can say: with global warming this heatwave has a probability 0.1 (once in ten years), but without global warming it would have a probability of 0.001 (once in a thousand years).

We seem to be having several "once in a thousand years" heatwaves per decade these days.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#132

Post by misiti3780 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #67

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.

I hate to rain on your parade, but any solution that doesnt lean heavily on nuclear is not a solution.

50% of the population may be climate deniers (need a reference though), but there is a large group of progressives that loved the green new deal also, which did not include nuclear energy, so there is blame on both sides.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#133

Post by rmah » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

wait_a_minute wrote: post #88

neaanopri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dying in Algeria won't realistically get the US, French, or Chinese governments to significantly cut fossil fuels supplied to their citizens.

USA and France are actually doing well on renewables and nuclear even. Whereas China is still building a shit-ton of new coal plants. https://ieefa.org/france-boosts-renewable-energy-spending-to... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/climate/coronavirus-coal-... https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...

China is also the world's leading producer of solar cells (over 70%) and the world's leading user of solar power (about 33% of global solar power).

China is also, by far, the leading producer and user of electric cars with almost half of the production and sales (more electric cars are sold in china than western europe + US combined). Half of all EV's in the world are driving around in China.

Further, chinese people use a fraction of the electricity that north americans do. Canada: 14,600 kWh/yr, USA: 12,150 kWh/yr, China: 5,300 kWh/yr.

In terms of CO2 emissions, it's the same story: USA: 17.6T/yr, Canada: 15.7T/yr, China: 6.4T/yr, on a per capita basis.

It's hard to remember what with the shiny new tier 1 coastal cities, but try not to forget that, on average, china is still quite poor with only 1/4th to 1/5th the per capita income of the richer advanced economy nations like the US, Sweden, UK, Germany, Japan, etc. China is on par with Mexico, Malaysia, Panama, Russia, or Bulgaria.

In short, the story is not so simple.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#134

Post by h4waii » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #108

beders wrote: post #92

The huge waves of human migration caused by climate changes will not only lead to suffering and death of millions, it will also bring us to the new brink of a new world war. Whole regions becoming unlivable will affect us all. We can't wait around until some invention saves us. We need to act now. We can turn this around with WWS alone.

What is WWS in this context?

Wind, Water, Sunlight.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#135

Post by fragbait65 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

runesoerensen wrote: post #87

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…

> humanity on the other hand needs to be reduced The point of view expressed here somewhat ironically show a severe lack of humanity. If anything it seems more humanity is needed here. It’s not uncommon to hear people talk about various types of population control/reduction while being seemingly oblivious to just how tragic and psychopathic the point of view is. If you find yourself agreeing with, say, Thanos, and al…

That's not my point.

My point is that there's no need for population control. The problem will eventually solve itself.

I think humanity is doomed as long as there are egotistical and greedy people and there's nothing you or I can do as individuals.

The problem is lack of resources, so I don't think the problem is solvable with with technology.

And just for reference, I actually am very successful in a field where you do have to empathize with people to be successful. That's actually what makes me bitter, I empathize and all I see is greed and selfishness. It's human nature, and that can't be solved with technology or science.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#136

Post by cryptoz » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #86

andrei_says_ wrote: post #4

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

Nah, it snowed that one time [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/02/26/ji...

Haha. They do something like this every time it snows.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fox-news-buries-al-gore-s...

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#137

Post by tshaddox » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #67

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.

Any citation on the portion of American voters who vote for federal politicians who deny climate change? I suspect it’s nowhere near 50%, even if 50% of elected officials deny climate change. Representation is ludicrously disproportionate in the United States federal government.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#138

Post by Someone » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #89

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.

It isn't technology that holds back water desalination, it is energy availability/cost. Even the most promising desalination tech is only a small efficiency boost over simpler established methods. Yeah efficiency gains certain help over the long term, but the overall energy costs are still enormous and nearly require dedicated power plant for any significant amount of clean water. The best bet in actually desalinatin…

If it’s extremely hot, using solar energy should IMO be the first choice.

I don’t find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination an easy read, but I think it says using PV to get electricity and that electricity to drive reverse osmosis is one of the best solutions.

Certainly, given that solar power is cheaper than nuclear (in the current political climate), nuclear can’t be the better choice for peak loads, which happen when there’s a lot of sunlight.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#139

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

riffic wrote: post #23

Lammy wrote: post #11

Maybe it's time to start talking about ways humanity can geo-engineer our way out of this instead of just sitting here waiting to suffer. The US Air Force has been interested in this topic for decades, but there's no way to know how viable any of that research actually is. Some of the speculative documents I've read propose using carbon black dust as a way to artificially reflect heat, like https://web.archive.org/we…

One of the more compelling geoengineering strategies I've seen discussed has been Olivine weathering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine

In the best case, one ton of oil/coal requires a few tons of olivine to neutralise it right?

So we need to go olivine mining at a greater rate than we have done oil extraction... Will there be millions of olivine rigs, olivine pipelines, olivine wars?

Somehow I don't think it's gonna happen...

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#140

Post by fragbait65 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #58

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…

I think you are half right. The earth isn't dying, it will be fine. We should have a human focus, because it's a global common ground. We should bother because this is all about what kind of life we will have in the future. Some will die, some will always survive. That doesn't really change. But if we can stop climate change in a good way it can give us a better quality of life. Less conflict, less resource scarcity.…

I agree with everything you say.

It's actually not a science/technology problem. The problem is human nature, and that's not solvable with technology. If it was, then everything would be rather simple...