Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

accuweather.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 310 posts

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

#141

Post by thrwy_918 »

jokoon wrote: 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.…

>it seems there is nothing that will truly limit fossil fuel consumption

Nothing will work while companies and consumers are free to ignore the externalities of their own actions.

Tax carbon.

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

#142

Post by Y-bar »

Ekaros wrote: post #63
pawsforthought wrote: post #42

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

This is the ultimate "do as I say, not as I do", never seen a single person who has argued that there are too many people on this planet follow it up by removing themselves from the tally. It's always other people who are the "too many".

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

#143

Post by __alexs »

K0balt wrote: post #105
Ekaros wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn’t matter. We are now in a feedback loop that will take us to +20c regardless of human emissions. Geoengineering is our only hope.

Cite your sources? This is 10x any estimate I've seen.

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

#144

Post by sriku »

distances wrote: post #121
sirius87 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this being discussed or something any public figure has said as being considered. Various states in India are deprioritizing power supply to industries in favour of consumer household use. So domestic news is playing those "govt reduces power supply to industries by 50%" headlines. [1] Use of ACs and air coolers has skyrocketed the demand for power (38 year high), thereby increasing demand for Coal. Inter…

And is there any sentiment that this is caused by climate change, and coal phase out should be accelerated? I get the immediate need for electricity, but talk about increasing coal stocks sounds weird nonetheless in light of what the goals are now in Western countries.

At least among those who're aware of these things, I do believe that sentiment prevails, though it sucks that nuclear which is likely a good options is opposed.

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

#145

Post by newswasboring »

sschueller wrote: post #92
35mm wrote: 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…

Somehow this has been lost over the years. I can especially see this in Zürich Switzerland where new office buildings being built are awful and there seems little thinking about temperature. Everything is managed by complex air systems to move air from one area to the other. On the other hand you go into a 200+ year old building and you notice it's cool in summer although there is no air conditioning. The building is…

> We rely to much on technology to build these ugly boxes instead of also considering the building shape and position itself.

Just to make a silly pedantic af point, those building structures are also technology

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

#146

Post by Bolkan »

halfdan wrote: post #118
elric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hilarious" is not the word I'd use. "Dispiriting", "Irresponsible", "Fucked up". I don't understand why we aren't pouring massive amounts of money into public transport. Apparently many people in Western Europe seem to enjoy being stuck in traffic for hours every day. For some reason, company cars are still a thing in Belgium, very nearly everyone working in IT gets one. I can't wrap my head around how stupid this i…

Public transport hasn't solved the problem of "the last mile". How do I get to/from the train station/bus stop? Frequently you still need a car to even get there and then you will need parking - which is often limited and costs a lot. Then there's timeliness. Deutsche Bahn is known for frequently their trains are delayed. In summer, even on the Intercity connections (IC, ICE) trains will be filled to the brim and air…

> How do I get to/from the train station/bus stop?

Having good public transportation would mean having a bus stop within 100m of every house.

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

#147

Post by Bolkan »

ekianjo wrote: post #85
jokoon wrote: 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.

FUD

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

#148

Post by samatman »

OccamsRazr wrote: post #132
sschueller wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow this has been lost over the years. I can especially see this in Zürich Switzerland where new office buildings being built are awful and there seems little thinking about temperature. Everything is managed by complex air systems to move air from one area to the other. On the other hand you go into a 200+ year old building and you notice it's cool in summer although there is no air conditioning. The building is…

As someone who was in Europe for one of the heatwaves of recent years, and whose appartment was in one of these older buildings designed this ways with thick walls etc., I can attest that this only works up to a point . This design relies on there being cold air for the building to retain. However, in a heatwave it doesn't even get cold at night. The result is your apartment gradually heating over a period of days /…

What Europe needs is heat pumps and lots of them. More efficient heating, simply run them in reverse during a heat wave for refrigeration.

Most of the Continent is mild enough in winter that an air-loop heat pump will reliably heat throughout the winter, and these aren't more expensive to install than other heating systems, they're less energetically intense to operate, and they provide cooling on demand.

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

#150

Post by weberer »

gkalbert wrote: post #59
nikanj wrote: post #4

India has been happily buying discount fossil fuels from Russia. Foot, meet gun

Countries with secure energy reserves are sitting on the moral high horse right now. Similar to the India criticism above, in Europe it is always Germany that is criticized for importing natural gas from Russia. This week it turned out that Poland and Bulgaria (which Russia has just cut off) relied to the order of 45% and 90% on Russian gas. Poland is now re-importing Russian gas from Germany! Other European countrie…

>in Europe it is always Germany that is criticized for importing natural gas from Russia

Germany is particularly criticized because they shut down their nuclear plants about 10 years ago, which makes them seen as huge hypocrites when talking about reducing fossil fuel use.

Post reply on HN