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Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

accuweather.com

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Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#81
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article says this isn’t a record high so what do you mean? This may surprise people, but places near the equator are really god damn hot most of the time and when they have a heat wave it’s even hotter.

Climate change isn't only new record high temperatures. It's also, as described in the article, temperatures consistently being higher than is regular for this time of the year.

It's the new normal now.

People already think that the avarage temperature in the last 3 years was always like that

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#82
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is nature going to put a stop to our rape of this planet by directly killing millions (maybe billions) through heat, fire, flooding, famine, drought, etc.? Is that what it will take? Am I wrong to be despondent about our capability as a species to prevent this coming catastrophe any other way?

Population reduction is the most effective tool we actually have. So nature doing it for us is a good thing. Sadly it targets more likely those who emit less and not more.

> Population reduction is the most effective tool we actually have

Are you a visitor from 1900? That's exactly what people were saying 122 years ago. Prophecies of Doom are easy to make but appear to be hardly take in account a key factor: technological progress.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#83
post #78
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- paint that has high emissivity in the IR window and high reflectivity in the rest of the spectrum. - thermochromic windows

> - paint that has high emissivity in the IR window and high reflectivity in the rest of the spectrum. paint is not free and needs replacement every few years. hardly a solution.

The surface finish of walls may also make a difference. Rough vs smooth and something like that doesn't fade as quick as paint itself.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#84

A grim thought, but in 50 years time when a lot of the planet is uninhabitably hot, does that reduce emissions, by virtue of, you know, there not being people to stoke the fires?

Reducing emissions may not have the effect you might think.

First, once the CO2 is in the atmosphere, it stays there for a very long time (centuries to millennia). So stopping emissions would not stop the heat.

Second, emissions also contain sulfer dioxide, which has a cooling effect through the formation of sulfate aerosols. These do not stay in the atmosphere for very long (only weeks). So in a scenario where these emissions stop, the immediate result would be a loss of that cooling effect and thus even more heat.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#85
post #50

And here in the western world, people still don't like using public transport and their bikes (when they can). It's difficult to be optimistic, but it seems there is nothing that will truly limit fossil fuel consumption. Maybe some oil producing countries could get in some sort of alliance, and artificially limit the amount of oil they extract, in return for subsidies? Those countries could also put a tariff on oil.…

> people still don't like using public transport

Because most public transport sucks, is unreliable, only works at certain hours, is dirty, unsafe, and covers only a small ridiculous amount of space limited to key cities. No wonder.

The pandemic will only make public transport less desirable as well.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#86
post #65

Instead of relying solely on air conditioning, which often adds to greenhouse gas emissions if run on fossil power, there are a number of passive solar design strategies that work without additional energy: - Solar chimneys draw cool air in when it’s sunny via pressure differential - Building orientation along with natural shading from deciduous trees prevent excessive solar insolation heating the building - Building…

Also I think this needs to be deployed an large scale. It uses passive radiative cooling http://skycoolsystems.com/

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#87

I read Chapter 1 of "Ministry of the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson on a recommendation here - frightening that this will happen one day.

Hah was about to comment this very thing. Probably won't be as destructive as the one in the book yet this time, but give it a few years and it's geoengineering time.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#88

If there is anybody who sees Indian domestic news and/or articles, could you tell us whether there is any political impetus there to start spraying climate-modifying aerosols at high altitudes regardless of effectiveness and/or international opinion, or if it's completely outside of the Indian overton window?

The climate effect would extend far beyond India's borders, isn't it a given that more developed countries wouldn't "let" India do it? Of course, I don't expect they will apply the same objections to themselves when it becomes domestically advantageous to geoengineer the climate.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it and I thought it was pretty dumb. Much much too optimistic for my understanding of the situation. My main gripe with it was that it leaves the reader thinking that climate change can be combatted with sensibility and reason. The idea that our global elites will come to their senses if we shove a few incidents in front of their faces goes against the fundamental narcissistic arc western civilization is curre…

China is left out because the government behavior there for the past few decades has been to deprioritize climate change entirely. Until they take some kind of initiative in leading the world in reducing CO2, European countries are likely where this innovation will be. Right now both the US and China are the problem, this has nothing to do with “white”.

Europeans are not the good guys in this. Yes we care about the environment but only IN OUR OWN BACKYARD. All the evil and polluting industries have been given a bag of cash to move.

Re: Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave

#90
post #76
post #65

Instead of relying solely on air conditioning, which often adds to greenhouse gas emissions if run on fossil power, there are a number of passive solar design strategies that work without additional energy: - Solar chimneys draw cool air in when it’s sunny via pressure differential - Building orientation along with natural shading from deciduous trees prevent excessive solar insolation heating the building - Building…

- paint that has high emissivity in the IR window and high reflectivity in the rest of the spectrum. - thermochromic windows

> - paint that has high emissivity in the IR window and high reflectivity in the rest of the spectrum.

Does such thing exist?

And, doesn't high emissivity in the IR mean high IR absorption as well ?

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