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US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

theguardian.com

131–140 of 160 posts

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tells you a lot of how they stand by their values

No, it doesn't. It happens because HN shadowbans people who have the wrong opinions. dang and whoever else would say that's not true, but it's tough to debate, because the evidence is conveniently hidden by being unjustly flagged. It's tough to point to a comment and argue that every statement in it is indisputably true, relevant, and polite, when it's been hidden from everyone by some anonymous user without explanat…

I don't see banning on opinions happening on HN, but I understand that seeing the same rehashed fallacious statements over and over gets old quick. Case in point: the "this is not happening because something similar happened before", with no quantification or data or independent research or citation... is just noxious bullshit that deserves, like I wrote, to get you a red username, not green. What's your favorite color?

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#132
post #51

Reminder: what is happening now is the result of past emissions and will keep happening year after year no matter what. After humanity finally stops emitting greenhouse gases, it will not get better, it will just stop getting worse. The earlier we act the less bad the consequences.

Sadly this kind of message will just result in apathy [in the US]. We've seen from the pandemic that just telling people they're going to die unless they take the most basic health precautions isn't enough to create action. We need a massive campaign of manipulation tactics by trusted peers or they're not going to act to save themselves.

Without being that categoric, I agree there's a psychological side of things that needs to be studied.

I heard there is a brain mechanism that allows us to "ignore the inevitable". This makes doom-saying predictions a hard sell.

The first step to manipulating people is not to say it's manipulation. Call it "marketing" and "lobbying". Everyone does it, climate activists have to do it too :)

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#133
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking at how we handled the pandemic, I don't think we'll manage. Amidst the chaos, humanity has been able develop a wide range of therapeutics and public healthcare prevention protocols, research and deploy vaccines at global scale in under a year, all while avoiding total economic collapse. What outcome would've given you hope in humans' ability to solve complex and chaotic crises?

It showed us that most people are unwilling to accept even the slightest inconvenience to save lives and help an unpleasant situation pass faster. Yes, the scientific community has done the impossible, but us laymen have failed to do even the possible, even when it was easy. We can solve problems, no doubts, but perhaps we aren't so good at collective, sustained efforts. Climate change will not come to pass like the…

>It showed us that most people are unwilling to accept even the slightest inconvenience

By slightest inconvenience you mean complete social isolation for an entire year, right?

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#134
Considering the source, remind me in one month. I'd like to see if the predicted 110° temperatures actually happened, or if it was just media amplifying the worst possible case for the doom clicks.

To go about this scientifically, we need to be comparing our predictions to reality, especially when the predictions are coming from a source incentivized to generate clicks rather than to provide an accurate view of reality.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#135

This article seems to need a reality check. If you look at current weather forecasts for the places mentioned (e.g. the capitals of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma), the highest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 100 F / 38 C, far from the mentioned 110 F / 43 C.

Here in central Kansas it's predicted to hit 100 as well. That's hardly an abnormally high temperature, at least in my (admittedly short) life so far. It might be more than 10 years ago, but not noticeably more.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#136
It looks like Southern Ontario is going to be spared, despite our proximity to affected areas.

Can anyone venture as to why it (and the Northeast US) is not going to be affected?

I assume it’s some geographic or climactic quirk since I don’t expect heat domes to respect national boundaries.

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#137

This article seems to need a reality check. If you look at current weather forecasts for the places mentioned (e.g. the capitals of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma), the highest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 100 F / 38 C, far from the mentioned 110 F / 43 C.

More like "based on old data"; the first reference, where the image in the article came from, has already been updated with cooler temperatures.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/

(Yeah, slightly different date ranges, but still a lot of overlap and it's excluded the beginning of this week in either case - which, over here in Chicago, is supposed to be the hottest part of the coming week)

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#138

It looks like Southern Ontario is going to be spared, despite our proximity to affected areas. Can anyone venture as to why it (and the Northeast US) is not going to be affected? I assume it’s some geographic or climactic quirk since I don’t expect heat domes to respect national boundaries.

Probably the jet stream. Here's a wind speed map for jet stream altitudes [1]. The jet stream plays a big part in positioning heat domes [2].

[1] https://www.windy.com/?300h,15.708,-125.244,3

[2] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#139
post #90
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether that is true depends on your sense of scale. After we move to zero emissions, it will take only a couple of decades before CO2 will start to drop again, as the biosphere starts absorbing the greenhouse gases. There's some latency in temperature, much more in sealevel rise, but generally it isn't as bad as frequently depicted. I only learned this recently, I used to think we are unavoidably messed up for centu…

The EU ‘proposes to raise the EU's ambition on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to at least 55% below 1990 levels by 2030’. At the moment that part of the world is the most ambitious part. > after we move to zero emissions I wonder if that will happen on a planet scale even in your sons lifetime

2030 seems to be a magical date that is oft quoted. Is it when something will finally happen, or will it just be the date by which the current crop of CEOs and politicians retire (to their secretly built climate-controlled bunkers?

Re: US set for punishing temperatures as ‘heat dome’ to settle over country

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pandemic showed us making and using a silver bullet in record time - when a silver bullet is possible. But the pandemic also showed us a large % of the American population are reluctant to make even minor, temporary sacrifices to protect their country. And that a decent fraction of American political leadership are happy to close their eyes to factual reality.

Protecting your country is a considerably more complex and nuanced goal than “save as many lives as possible no matter what” especially since secondary effects of lockdown also cause deaths. Long term economic effects for example, and the ability to remain globally competitive economically and in other ways.

The people who opposed lockdowns but were first in line for the vaccine, sure. Maybe they're just in a hurry to get the economy up and running again.

But there are people declining a free a pinprick jab that's been given to billions of other people already, when there's clear evidence it's good for both the nation's interest and their own? The country's not asking us to charge Nazi machine gun nests on the beaches of Normandy here.

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