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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

#231

Post by gortok »

josephcsible wrote: post #144
throwaway2037 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't raise enough money. Probably better to say: "Tax the multi-millionaires", or even people who earn more than 1M USD per year. What if we change the tax code such that passive income (capital gains, dividends, coupon payments, etc.) is taxed at a higher rate than active (employment) income?

> What if we change the tax code such that passive income (capital gains, dividends, coupon payments, etc.) is taxed at a higher rate than active (employment) income? Doing so by lowering the active income rate wouldn't raise more money, and doing so by raising the passive income rate would kill investment and job creation and send us into a depression.

That already seems to be happening. Business leaders with capital are actively trying to replace workers with AI or offshoring; so what would be the extra damage from codifying that we want folks to put their money here?

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#232

Post by chneu »

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.

Most of those people are silent quitting or refusing to go back to work.

This applies across the board to these firings/rehirings. Why would anyone go back to work for real when you know you're just gonna be fired again?

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#233

Post by chneu »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #175
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.

In the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a number of members of the current administration proposed eliminating NOAA completely. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/25/second-trump-term-0... Based on the way things have been going, that seems to be the goal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_under_the_second_presiden...

It's absolutely the goal. There has been a push from places like weather.com to privatize much of NOAA for years.

Noaa's free information is really good so it makes the playing field a bit too level for private companies. They don't really offer a substantially better product than NOAA so it makes their product less valuable.

A few years ago we had a company reach out to us saying they could give us hyper-localized forecasts for our ultra endurance events. After our first event using them I checked their data against NOAA. Surprise, their data was far less accurate than weather.gov.

Every private weather service is using NOAA's dataset and then tweaking it or adding their own data. All of them.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#234

Post by bluefirebrand »

defrost wrote: post #193
bluefirebrand wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are very likely misleading stats > 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. This doesn't say anything about how much of Denmark's consumption this covers, only their production It turns out they import a bunch of their electricity from neighbors This is a sneaky way to pretend…

These are locations heading for 100% renewable supply in the very near future. The capital of South Australia is some distance from the border, even further from the Victorian capital (Melbourne) and is weakly linked compared to EU countries. In South Australia, the current connection to Victoria allows for just 25 per cent of its maximum demand to imported or exported. “So what that means for South Australia is we h…

> These are locations heading for 100% renewable supply in the very near future.

I don't have a gas powered generator attached to my house. Therefore, if I put a solar panel on my house, then my property would have a 100% renewable supply of electricity

Unfortunately that solar panel wouldn't meet my house's electricity demand, so I would have to import the difference from my local power company. But that doesn't change the fact that on my property the supply is 100% renewable

> Or exported .. SA actually exports a great deal of peak renewable energy, it over produces in the daylight and uses that to charge a battery farm or to feed to the neighbouring state.

Peak generation hours are almost never aligned with peak demand hours. Unless those battery farms are capable of meeting the supply during their peak demand (very unlikely, I don't think there is any country with this sort of battery capacity built), then they must be re-importing electricity from those same neighbors who are still burning fossil fuels (or have other more consistent power supply like nuclear or hydro)

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#235

Post by acdha »

codr7 wrote: post #225
acdha wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it won’t. This myth was started in the 2000s by Nina Pierpont who was looking for reasons to oppose wind farms near her property but it’s been studied repeatedly and there’s no credible evidence of any significant impact. Roads are at least as noisy, and have other forms of pollution, but I’ve never seen the same people call for banning cars. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-04645-x

Right, so people who claim to have this experience are lying, for no good reason. While people who have a lot to gain from hiding problems with wind turbines are telling the truth. Isn't that always how it works?

All of the people advancing those claims also think they have a lot to gain, too. Those claims are hard to evaluate because humans are famously subjective and prone to misattribution, which is why we invented the scientific method. Every high-quality investigation has been unable to find support for them.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#236

Post by dingnuts »

guelo wrote: post #197
transcriptase wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

how do you know that the offices haven't been used in years and there is no impact unless a journalist told you? Is there any reason to trust rando twitter accounts besides the fact that it makes you feel better about "your side".

he probably just believes a source that didn't turn out to be directly funded by the US government, one you would likely dismiss as not a real journalist

I'm all for free media but the legacy outlets currently screaming about cuts are primarily upset because THEY just lost a ton of government funding but that's good because I don't want government run news, even if it comes in a bunch of brand names, and it's funny that all the "reputable" outlets just happen to be the ones with the closest relationships to the CIA and FBI and historically have covered for their worst injustices.

no, I do not shed a tear for what is happening to the old government controlled legacy media.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#237

Post by tdhz77 »

neuroelectron wrote: post #184
tdhz77 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You offer no evidence, but you have convinced yourself so obviously abstracted from the ground that time will prove you were right. It’s a foolish path and I urge you to listen to what is happening. Within the last week government data is no longer accessible to researchers. Long standing government groups and private that study these areas are locked out. Overhyped? No. Like the manager that cuts the budget, gets th…

Palantir seems to be chugging along just fine.

Pentagon is next.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#238

Post by sanderjd »

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.

The "unsolved problem" for nuclear is doing it time- and cost- competitively with solar.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#239

Post by bee_rider »

k_roy wrote: post #209
jltsiren wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100°C is somewhat uncomfortable, and it usually indicates that someone is trying to show off. 80 to 90 is much better. (In a sauna.)

Just curious on what planet you exist where 100C is only “somewhat uncomfortable”

It does kinda depend on humidity, fwiw. In New England, the 90’s are hot, unpleasant sticky weather.

I guess it doesn’t happen often, but I saw some upper-90’s temperature in the Portland, Oregon area. It feels relatively mild actually, compared to New England 90’s, I’m pretty sure because it is so dry. The lighter air just carries the heat away, rather than having it stick to you.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#240

Post by bee_rider »

defrost wrote: post #198
bee_rider wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Our maximum day time tempreture in January 2025 was 113 F ( 45 C ), 12 days or so were over 100 F ( 37.7 C ) http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/202501/html/IDCJDW6136.202... This is in the cooler south west corner of a large state ( 3x size of Texas )

Of course, the experience of heat does depend on humidity as well. But, how was it? It sounds… too hot!
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