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

Post by ricardobayes » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

drieddust wrote: post #168

mytailorisrich wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew in Southern Europe (around 30C every day in summer, more in full sun) when no-one had aircon at home and no-one had aircon in cars. It's hot, you live with it. I'm sure it's worse on the other side of the Med. It's one of the reasons the traditional 'siesta' exists and towns and villages are virtually dead until 5pm. The issue I have with aircon is that it makes people ignore the local climate and, worse, acti…

Staying indoor in 24C air-conditioned spaces conditions the body so badly that even 28C starts to feel bad. I noticed this in my own behaviour and thought of changing it last month. For a change, I decided to drive without air conditioning. It felt bad for a few minutes, then it gets better and when I come back to a cooler place it feels like heaven. Exposing yourself to the elements is greatly rewarding.

Post by helloworld11 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 3:04 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…

Post by samatman » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #230

samatman wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Problem with that is electricity is expensive in Europe. Of course as you know Europe varies a lot between Portugal and Romania. While the first has a balmy 10C in winter daily low, colder areas can easily have -10C, -15C at night. That's the minimum operating range of a heat pump. That's a 30C difference to work through. That's why they have cheap (Russian) gas, it has the biggest energy density (and nuclear). Groun…

Post by cdiddy2 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

elric wrote: post #58

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.…

"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…

Post by qiskit » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #68

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #53

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”.