Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by ianai » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

pseudostem wrote: post #122

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…

I deployed my own design (not calculated, eyeballed) of a buoyancy based passive cooling at my parents home near Mumbai, India. It did make a measured difference of approximately (temperature meters aren't very accurate) 2 degrees Celsius. I have been reading a lot in my spare time and your blog looks like a nice read. My point is, is 2 to 3 degrees Celsius enough? From what I read is that I need to really move very…

At some point the thing to do is give people shovels and tell them the roof of their new dwelling has to be at least 2 meters/6 feet below the surface. Or use modern tech.

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

#212

Post by kibwen » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

Y-bar wrote: post #142

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.

> 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".

And natural selection is a harsh mistress. If a certain cohort decides not to reproduce, then the next generation will be populated by those who did decide to reproduce, and humanity on average will have more reproductive fervor than ever. By all means, have fewer children if you want, but that does not solve the long-term problem. If you want people in general to have fewer children, then focus on educating and enriching the world's poorest, for whom having many children is a matter of survival.

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

#213

Post by 7sidedmarble » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

allisdust wrote: post #200

LightG wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone who hasn't read it, can you say why? That's the second time I've seen it referenced here. Cheers.

Mostly because it starts with a Indian heat wave that kills 20 million people in a couple of days. Beyond that its a load of gibberish glorifying eco terrorism and full blown woke politics. Basically its written to be the extreme left's wet dream of breakdown in global order and bringing to heel the 'global elite'. It is difficult to move past the heavy pro communist overtones and the whole narrative lurches into man…

>I wouldn't be surprised if this is their first novel and reads like a middle school essay of some kind.

It's Kim Stanley Robinson...

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

#214

Post by bitL » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #188

K0balt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if all humans on the planet went to zero emissions tomorrow it is too late. We are now inside a feedback loop that will push temperature rise to +20c and sea levels up 200m or more within 200 years. Photosynthesis drops off to zero long before then. Geoengineering is the only way we don’t go extinct along with most animals.

Well you're in luck because it's likely we'll have a nuclear war soon, and that will put plenty of aerosols in the atomosphere, and cool things down.

That is just a temporary band-aid, lasting like 8 years tops. Are we going to nuke each other regularly? Do we have enough nukes for a permanent climate change? How can we make sure we have a sufficient supply of nukes for that?

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

#215

Post by rpozarickij » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #185

mensetmanusman wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also known as the wet bulb temperature, and it is a function of the humidity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature If I were in a position of decision making in India, I would invest in large deployments of passive radiative cooling films: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/energy-conservation-us/applicati... These reflect nearly all the sunlight energy and cool their surroundings night and day by co…

A wet bulb related crisis in India is used as a plot point in Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel Ministry for the Future. The way he describes the wet bulb event is quite scary. (edit: corrected author and title, I confused this with Neal Stephenson's latest Termination Shock). Imagine something like that happening in a slum. It's the combination of humidity, temperature and poverty that is deadly. Think mass casual…

> The human body loses the ability to cool it self with 100% humidity

I wonder whether there are practical/efficient ways of decreasing humidity in situations like this in closed spaces?

So that you could use a regular fan again to cool yourself by means of evaporation of water off of your skin.

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

#216

Post by giraffe_lady » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #202

jillesvangurp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wet bulb related crisis in India is used as a plot point in Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel Ministry for the Future. The way he describes the wet bulb event is quite scary. (edit: corrected author and title, I confused this with Neal Stephenson's latest Termination Shock). Imagine something like that happening in a slum. It's the combination of humidity, temperature and poverty that is deadly. Think mass casual…

I thought the setup for that book was interesting, but it's probably his worst book IMHO (though I haven't read all of them). Normally I'm careful about attributing the actions of characters to novelists, but Robinson seems to be increasingly advocating terrorism in his books and it's getting really off-putting.

There's an internally consistent moral argument that terrorism is warranted in this situation eg Malm's "How to Blow Up a Pipeline."

The basic argument is that peaceful protest is effective when it is an alternative to a more militant and disruptive extremist movement with the same goals. You negotiate with the peaceful side so the violent side doesn't tear your shit down.

When there is no extremist movement, you really have no powerful incentive to acquiesce to the demands of the peaceful movement. At this point mass peaceful climate protest is decades old but we've seen virtually no meaningful changes addressed.

We're tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths into the climate crisis and it's only just barely getting started and those with the most agency to change it very obviously have no intent to. Why is ecoterrorism considered a morally abhorrent line that cannot ever be crossed, but their choice is not?

The normative answer is "that is bad too they should stop" but by what means can we make them? Our options seem very limited.

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

#217

Post by Adraghast » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #53

sitic wrote: post #14

Reminds me that I should finish reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future

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…

> He's American, so he probably thinks China is inherently a bad place where stupid things happen.

Without speaking to the book’s Eurocentrism, I can confirm this is not true. KSR has said in interviews he believes China is the world’s best hope at mitigating climate change because the United States is too politically decayed to accomplish anything at that scale.

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

#218

Post by ornornor » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #26

> there are street vendors in major cities selling special fruit that supposedly helps protect people from the potentially damaging effects of above-normal temperatures. [...] "Instead of the regular synthetic fruits, you know, the ready-made fruit juice which is harm[ful] to the health, these are good for your health as well and these are the only way that you can manage the heat." What's this mysterious special fru…

I also wonder what a “regular synthetic fruit” is?

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

#219

Post by rpozarickij » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

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…

I'm curious whether the people who designed those old buildings back in the day really thought about cooling or it was just a welcome (as long as heatwaves don't last too long, as mentioned in other comments) side effect of making those buildings with long lasting materials (lots of large bricks and rocks) of those days.

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

#220

Post by kevin_morrill » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #216

ch4s3 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the setup for that book was interesting, but it's probably his worst book IMHO (though I haven't read all of them). Normally I'm careful about attributing the actions of characters to novelists, but Robinson seems to be increasingly advocating terrorism in his books and it's getting really off-putting.

There's an internally consistent moral argument that terrorism is warranted in this situation eg Malm's "How to Blow Up a Pipeline." The basic argument is that peaceful protest is effective when it is an alternative to a more militant and disruptive extremist movement with the same goals. You negotiate with the peaceful side so the violent side doesn't tear your shit down. When there is no extremist movement, you rea…

I get what you’re saying but is the track record of terrorism any better at causing constructive change? Really we need to engage a lot of people’s minds, and that just turns out to be really hard in our current culture no matter what angle you come at it from.