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The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

climate.gov

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Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#161

Post by transcriptase »

ketzo wrote: post #155
mmaunder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably is. NOAA and other gov sources help us predict things like clear air turbulence related to the jet stream. One probably doesn’t want to politicize those kinds of predictions too much or risk scraping passengers and their dinners from ceilings.

There were a bunch of headlines last week about DOGE firing half of NOAA then rehiring them. I don’t think you should consider anywhere sacrosanct.

To be fair there have been a bunch of headlines about a great many things, like office closures without mentioning the minor detail that the offices haven’t been used in years, the workforce is remote, and there is no impact on service delivery or staffing. Doesn’t stop journalists from dancing around the implication if it makes the orange man and mars man look bad though.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#162

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

djtango wrote: post #133
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0F .. 100F is about the range of temperatures a human living on earth could reasonably expect to experience without deliberate adventuring. It's not a precise range - plenty of people live in Doha (way above 100F) and in Alberta (way below 0F) - but it's a pretty reasonable approximation.

I'm not convinced the people of Doha or Alberta would consider their day to day lives adventures

My comment ends with a note that "it's a reasonable approximation".

The percentage of global population where the 0F..100F range is not a reasonable approximation of the temperature range they will experience is small. It's not perfect - no such range could, when humans live almost everywhere on the planet. But it's not bad ...

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#163

Post by erikpukinskis »

mempko wrote: post #56
downrightmike wrote: post #26

Ultimately the Earth will warm up, the ice caps melt, the coasts lose as the seas rise 10m

And potentially organized human life collapses

Is that possible? Can you describe the chain of events that would lead to that?

Seems vanishingly unlikely to me, on the face of it, but I admit I am not read up on all the possible doomsday scenarios.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#164

Post by Krssst »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #98
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why acknowledgment of climate change would lead to nuclear over solar/wind.

There are no "unsolved problems" for nuclear (because the safe storage of fissile waste for 10k years isn't a problem we need to solve, apparently). By contrast, getting solar+wind fully up and running requires totally solving the storage problem. Plus the libs love it. Hence ... nuclear.

Climate change is a decades-order problem. Worst case is end of human civilization.

Waste storage is a problem for once climate change is solved. Worst case is local degradation of environment.

A grid powered almost-fully by nuclear and water is proven feasible by France. A grid almost-fully powered by renewables for a full year in an industrialized country is yet to be seen. Renewables do work well when combined to fossil fuels, but we need to get off them.

The Republicans programs for electricity is completely insane and renewables is a much better alternative than drilling more fossil fuels. Nuclear is more realistic but the political will is not there unfortunately.

> Plus the libs love it. Hence ... nuclear.

One can be supportive of Democrats and liberals while not agreeing with one policy point.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#165

Post by rob74 »

renewiltord wrote: post #69
kulahan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly figured it’d be one of the first. That being said, France, UK, and USA are all moving towards more nuclear power. It might be at the point where it’s no longer possible to pretend we care about solar/wind, and can no longer realistically ignore climate change. I’ve been saying for years that we’d know when governments were finally getting scared of climate change because we’d see real, very fast moves to i…

One of the best things to come out of destroying environmentalism is that we can finally get working on renewable energy instead of being blocked by suicidal environmentalists who find wind farms too ugly.

I think you're confusing environmentalists with NIMBYs who use (among others) environmental arguments to argue against projects they don't like.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#166

Post by Krssst »

tnecio wrote: post #136
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never solved it for the other material that we dug up and burned (coal). Oh yes. Having fucked up this badly with long chain hydrocarbon combustion, lets do it all over again with fission, because ... well, we did it once already, right?

The orders of magnitude are different here. Replacing something that becomes a huge problem within two hundred years with something that (potentially) becomes a problem in a few thousand years -- really is better than spending valuable time on developing an "ideal" solution

Nuclear waste is a local problem. They're solid not gaseous. GHGs are a worldwide problem.

Years don't matter if climate change puts an end to human civilization.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#167

Post by bee_rider »

djtango wrote: post #131
typewithrhythm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans cannot reliably determine the difference in one degree c, even though it's bigger... Fahrenheit is too fine grained, and has no interesting points relative to the things I interact with. I freeze an boil water often, however

I grew up during the F to C transition in the UK and F is not intuitive. 0 = ice 100 = steam That is pretty intuitive if you ask me. And for gravy comfortable room temp is about 25

Fahrenheit is sort of intuitive if you think of it as somehow, impossibly, a percentage scale. 0C/32F is still decently comfortable anyway. 0F is, like, not at all comfortable. 100C is dead. 100F is the most unbearably hot temperature that isn’t immediately deadly.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#168

Post by ericfr11 »

daveguy wrote: post #160
mmaunder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably is. NOAA and other gov sources help us predict things like clear air turbulence related to the jet stream. One probably doesn’t want to politicize those kinds of predictions too much or risk scraping passengers and their dinners from ceilings.

I would have said the same about the postal system, but DeJoy has been fn around with it for years. If you doge it, you can sell a private version.

US science will go down big time. Big Corp (oil, pharma,.. ) will get richer

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#169

Post by ericfr11 »

labster wrote: post #14
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the beauty of the current chaos-driven model. No explicit marching orders required. Just let it be known that inconvenient facts/actions can be punished at any time. Self-censorship takes care of the rest.

But how do you own the libs if they just start doing what you want? How does that make any sense? No retribution, no payoffs, nothing? Nope, the firings will continue until America is made great again.

Despotism does not lead to greatness. Instead we will have big Corps (oil, pharma...) owning, benefiting, and hiding public knowledge. Even China does better these days

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#170

Post by defrost »

Krssst wrote: post #164
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no "unsolved problems" for nuclear (because the safe storage of fissile waste for 10k years isn't a problem we need to solve, apparently). By contrast, getting solar+wind fully up and running requires totally solving the storage problem. Plus the libs love it. Hence ... nuclear.

Climate change is a decades-order problem. Worst case is end of human civilization. Waste storage is a problem for once climate change is solved. Worst case is local degradation of environment. A grid powered almost-fully by nuclear and water is proven feasible by France. A grid almost-fully powered by renewables for a full year in an industrialized country is yet to be seen. Renewables do work well when combined to…

* Renewable energy sources collectively produced 81% of Denmark's electricity generation in 2022, and are expected to provide 100% of national electric power production from 2030.

* Renewable energy sources collectively produced 75% of South Australia's electricity generation in 2023, and are expected to provide 100% of state electric power production from 2027.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Denmark

- https://reneweconomy.com.au/from-zero-to-100-pct-renewables-...

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