Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave • Hacker News Board

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#161

Post by marshray » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #133

wait_a_minute wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMO, per captia measures only matters for countries that allow unrestricted internal movement.

China strictly controls how many people are allowed to migrate from the countryside to work in the cities, so it is, in some respects, multiple distinct economies with a centrally controlled standard of living.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#162

Post by splittingTimes » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:46 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

"All the CO2 that is produced by burning one liter of oil can be sequestered by less than one liter of olivine." [1].

Given that formulation I assume that the amount of olivine needed is the same order of magnitude as the 1 liter of oil to produce the CO2.

The world is consuming 97 Mio barrels of oil per day [2]. I doubt we can mine that amount of olivine on a daily basis. Is it even available in that quantity?

How is olivine considered an adequate option to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere?

===

[1] that Wikipedia article above.

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/oil/

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#163

Post by bin_bash » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #146

AngryData wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wouldn't solar be much better for powering desalination than nuclear power? It is way cheaper per energy produced than nuclear, especially in those countries, which need desalination most. Also, it doesn't take a decade to set up. Not even mentioning proliferation issues.

Solar doesn’t provide nearly as much energy and for desalination you need a surprising amount.

Nuclear is a great use-case since the problem with nuclear is it needs a constant water source. If you’re desalinating you’ve got that problem covered.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#164

Post by angst_ridden » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #82

There have been some previous discussions on HN about this weather event in the Pacific Northwest, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27670739 One thing I want to mention is that it is not known if this heat wave is caused by climate change or not. A UW professor named Cliff Mass, who specializes in climate science and has written books about the weather of the Pacific Northwest, has specifically said (…

The thing is, this is a chaotic effect of the jet stream going into tighter oscillations. Think of a river in a flat area meandering more and more until oxbows form. It's an analogous phenomenon with the jet stream and pressure. The jet stream tends to follow warmer air, which means increased temperatures overall give a "flatter" plain to meander on, to return to the analogy. Obviously, like anything, it's far more complex than the analogy permits.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#165

Post by rmah » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #19

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.

These folks are serious and they just raised 30 million to provide vast quantities of cheap, desalinated water: https://www.terraformation.com/ Seems crazy now, but vast forests covering most of Algeria may be entirely possible in your lifetime.

Vast quantities? LOL, their plant in hawaii does only 128 tons a day. Americans use 3 tons a day. Each. Even relatively thrifty nations use over a 1 ton a day per person.

Hardly "vast quantities". And it's not cheap, they're currently using "reclaimed" solar panels to provide power. At scale, this not possible and not cheap.

More to the point, their main goal is to plant and grow trees, not provide fresh water.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#166

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/

Cliff Mass's blog has been providing good context about the meteorology of the heat dome.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#167

Post by freeflight » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

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.

It's already happening but barely anybody notices because it's so politicized.

Syria for example has been in over a decade of civil war, refugees spilling over deep into Europe affecting local politics, as the ME region was already saturated with displaced people trough Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet most peoples take on Syria is a regurgitated: "The Syrian people rose up against an evil dictator regime! Arab Summer!".

When in reality the people in Syria went trough a 10 years period of drought [0] prior to "shit hitting the fan". A combination of the climate getting hotter while water is getting more scarce in the region, as Turkey controls the majority of freshwater inflow into Syria and large parts of Iraq [1]. An inflow that's steadily getting smaller, as Turkey is expanding its own agricultural infrastructure projects, with plenty of dams, in Southeastern Anatolia.

In 2008 Syria sought more drought support from the UN, and particularly the US. The cable can be found on Wikileaks [2] and the warnings by the Syrian UN representative and minister of agriculture read pretty much prophetic in hindsight.

[0] https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Fu...

[1] https://climate-diplomacy.org/case-studies/turkey-syria-and-...

[2] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08DAMASCUS847_a.html

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#168

Post by thewarrior » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #158

thewarrior wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon emissions

If the choice is reducing emissions or saving lives from dehydration, I wonder which is the appropriate course of action.

Which could completely destroy modern civilization over time. Once certain tipping points are crossed most of the earth could become uninhabitable for large parts of the year.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#169

Post by azernik » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:48 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…

There's also a capital investment problem - good equipment is expensive to set up, even leaving aside the operating costs problem.

Achievable, yes, but only for the rich for now. eg Gulf Arab states and Israel are early adopters, the latter with some EU subsidies to defuse water rights as an point of conflict in the Jordan watershed.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#170

Post by fragbait65 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #149

runesoerensen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Population reduction advocates never seem to argue that themselves committing suicide would be the moral choice, which reveals they are valuing the preservation of their own current lifestyle over the lives of the "others". In practice, it seems like the majority of people who call for population reduction are white/western supremacists who lack empathy for humans born with less privilege. Birth control should be fre…

You are probably correct.

I didn't really mean to suggest population control, even though I wrote just that. The problem as I see it is that everybody tries to approach the problem as if it will be solvable by technology.

The only way I see that we can solve a climate crisis or the survival of humanity long term is to actually work together. Which I'm pretty certain will never happen, since there will always be greedy and selfish people.