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

Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

theeyewall.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 133 posts

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#31

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

irrelative wrote: post #12
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adding energy to the system Best estimates I've found to date: [ EDIT: 0.6-0.8 ] * Petawatts * of extra energy circulating in the atmosphere as a result of anthropogenic changes to radiative forcing. EDIT: For the people downvoting this because "watts are units of power not energy", please read the Wikipedia page on radiative forcing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing For the people downvoting because…

Watts aren’t energy, so no idea what this means.

Radiative forcing is measured in watts per square meter. If you compute the total surface area of the earth [0] in square meters and that by multiply the radiative forcing number, you get watts.

[0] technically some layer of the earth between the ground and whatever you define as the edge of the atmosphere.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#33

Post by SoftTalker »

Podgajski wrote: post #15
Applejinx wrote: post #2

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

It is strange, but it’s not. My friends keep asking me why it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately. I tell them because they have no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now. They’re all based on past climate. so this weather forecaster is just doing the same thing, he’s trying to predict future events on past performance. What they need to do is start looking rig…

> it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately.

Lately? Weather predictions have always been a crap shoot. They are better than they've ever been and still only good for about a 48 hours window.

Try looking at weather forecasts from 30 or 40 years ago. You might as well have been reading tea leaves.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#34

Post by acdha »

Podgajski wrote: post #15
Applejinx wrote: post #2

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

It is strange, but it’s not. My friends keep asking me why it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately. I tell them because they have no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now. They’re all based on past climate. so this weather forecaster is just doing the same thing, he’s trying to predict future events on past performance. What they need to do is start looking rig…

One problem: if you acknowledge climate change on air, you’re risking a lot of flack and even violence from people who are steeped in right-wing science denial:

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461263/iowa-meteorologist...

I agree they need to act but also understand someone not wanting to put themselves or their family at risk.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#35

Post by acdha »

jliptzin wrote: post #26
Podgajski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is strange, but it’s not. My friends keep asking me why it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately. I tell them because they have no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now. They’re all based on past climate. so this weather forecaster is just doing the same thing, he’s trying to predict future events on past performance. What they need to do is start looking rig…

I don’t see how taking advertising dollars from fossil fuel companies affects anything. It’s not like we’ll suddenly stop burning carbon if we stop oil and gas companies from advertising. The demand for oil will still be there. We need to make alternative energy sources cheaper than fossil, then demand will plummet.

We could do a lot by removing the trillions of dollars in subsidies which those companies receive, however. If the price of oil went up, people would scale back usage and alternatives would have an easier time, both outcomes which the fossil fuel industry has spent a considerable amount of money preventing.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#36

Post by Fomite »

uticus wrote: post #11

> So how did every reliable model we use miss this? That’s for graduate students and researchers to answer in the coming years, because I have no formal idea. Would love to see followup on this. Wish there were some way to like bookmark or something and come back in a few years.

I'm one of the researchers on a new disease forecasting project, and I'm bookmarking this because we often use hurricane forecasting as an example of a level of accuracy we aspire to, so this is a really interesting breakdown.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#38

Post by rokkitmensch »

Applejinx wrote: post #2

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

Modelistas continue to struggle with infrequent events. To joke, if they were good at this kind of thing, they'd be in finance (but I'm rolling my eyes at myself even going for this cheap shot).

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#40

Post by soneca »

bell-cot wrote: post #37
soneca wrote: post #7

Cloudflare blocked me from accessing it. edit: wow, that was some unexpected downvotes

How about the Ars reprint of the story? https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/trying-to-make-sense...

It works, thanks!
Post reply on HN