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Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#131

Post by esperent »

rayiner wrote: post #113
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #37

Reminds me of the opening to "Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson. In that book, a wet bulb event (high humidity and high temp) in India pushes infrastructure past the breaking point, the grid goes down, AC systems still running on generators are overloaded and overcrowded and fail, the water temp goes over body temp, and millions die. The positive cultural/societal reaction to the disaster strained my s…

This is a weird premise. India (and Bangladesh) has virtually 100% access to electricity and adequate generation capacity. The concept of temperatures exceeding the wet bulb temperature makes for a scary fiction novel. But I bet even my dad’s village in Bangladesh could afford to put a few cheap Chinese mini splits in the school building and other gathering places. They are extremely efficient in the heat and wouldn’…

> virtually 100% access to electricity and adequate generation capacity

Tell that to all the brown- and black-outs I experienced while traveling there. Renting a room with AC was double the price, at least, abd then there wasn't enough electricity to power it. There frequently wasn't even enough to fully freeze icecubes in the freezer.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#132

Post by gpvos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81
kelnos wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume an imaginary but very real and typical climate change denier.

> an imaginary but very real Idk, quoting straw men isn’t a good-faith way of arguing.

Not a straw man at all; sadly, a very common set of arguments.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#134

Post by Hnrobert42 »

txru wrote: post #96
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stayed in a mongoloid home in Tunisia last year. It was lovely. It was a large, central, below-grade courtyard with dugout, underground rooms branching off it. The rooms were cool all day. By being below grade, the courtyard was in shade most of the day and didn't get too hot. Through clever tunneling, the rising heat generated a draft. I also learned that mongoloid, at least in Tunisia, is not considered a derogat…

I believe you mean troglodyte homes. It's literal Greek for "hole-dweller" but become an insult by association.

Hoho, you are right! In what is left of my addled mind, I substituted one questionable word for another. Thank you!

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#135

Post by gpvos »

elcritch wrote: post #20
probably_wrong wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone's footprint is the same, though. If I cut down my plane flight in half that means I'll take a plane every two years, meaning I'll also see my family half as much. You'd also have to include that, since I travel economy, you'd divide my contribution by ~350. If Taylor Swift cuts her plane travel by half she'd "only" make 51 trips a year [1] on a plane that carries 12 and would still make more money in a y…

I didn't say we're all equally culpable. We're not. Yet en masse we're all guilty to some degree. There's only what 10's of thousands Taylor Swifts in the world. Yet there's billions of everyone else. The majority of greenhouse gasses likely come from the aggregate of everyone.

> I didn't say we're all equally culpable.

That didn't come quite through. You seemed to be taking a rather extreme position, while replying to someone who just pointed out the systemic issues, which of course don't absolve anyone of their own responsibility.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#136

Post by gpvos »

sltkr wrote: post #99
conception wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a popular comic for this take - https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

That comic is popular only because it absolves people of personal responsibility, not because it makes a great point.

In what way does it do that? It in fact strongly urges people to take responsibility and stop being hypocritical.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#137

Post by the_real_cher »

ares623 wrote: post #97
the_real_cher wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be a population decline in these places where living conditions are not amenable to human existence. Yet somehow theres over a billion people.

That's beside the point. Fact is, there are a billion people there now. We can either make them want to stay there, away from our "western comforts" (blegh), or force them to stay there at the cost of the very comforts we wanted to keep for ourselves. "If you let your neighbor's house burn, expect to breathe smoke"

I dont think people should be rewarded for irresponsible behavior.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#138

Post by the_real_cher »

Supermancho wrote: post #71
the_real_cher wrote: post #63

Why is there a billion people in India if these conditions exist? It has less space than USA and almost triple the population. Its never made sense to me why the birthrate was so high in countries with deadly living conditions, meanwhile the population in the United States with excellent conditions is declining.

> Why is there a billion people in India if these conditions exist? Not to be crude, but this should be obvious. Similar to many poor areas anywhere in the world, but what else do you do all day hiding indoors (due to violence, poverty, et al) for entertainment, with very limited income? Physical intimacy is fun. It's also partly because the society is agrarian by population, culture, and education. This is born out…

> Physical intimacy is fun

Lots of things are fun.

Doesnt make them any less irresponsible.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#139

Post by munificent »

defrost wrote: post #76
munificent wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly agree that the powerful elites bear a disproportionate share of the guilt for the harm they have caused. But I also believe that much of what's going on in the world isn't solely their fault and is also in many ways an emergent behavior. We are all like ants in an ant mill. Each of us is doing the things that locally make sense for us (even taking into account our desires to take care of the earth!), but…

> We are all like ants in an ant mill. Each of us is doing the things that locally make sense for us Easily lead by chemtrails, yes - but it is a fact that some individuals have disproportionately more influence over "local zeitgeist" than others. As a brief recap; the atmosphere become a greater and greater insulating blanket as a direct result of human use of fossil fuels was solid science as far back as 1967 [0] a…

> it is a fact that some individuals have disproportionately more influence over "local zeitgeist" than others.

Yes, that was the first sentence of my comment.

> As a brief recap; the atmosphere become a greater and greater insulating blanket as a direct result of human use of fossil fuels was solid science as far back as 1967 [0] and the larger more influential nations of the world accepted that finding and discussed actions in the 1970s [1].

Yes, and I'm well aware of all of that and am firmly on the side of believing in climate change.

And yet, I still go to a grocery store and buy produce that was grown using fertilizer made from petroleum products, shipped across oceans on ships burning fossil fuels, then driven to the store in trucks burning fossil fuels, wrapped in plastic bags.

So even while I am aware of the problems, my own behavior as a tiny cog in the machine furthers the problems of climate change. I can bring reusable bags to the store (I do), drive a fuel-efficient vehicle (I try to), and shop at farmer's markets to reduce transit usage (sometimes), but that only chips away at the problem. My entire lifestyle is predicated on massive use of petroleum products and processes that worsen climate change. I walk on concrete side walks, have electricity in my home, go to a doctor's office that uses plastics pervasively.

I am part of the system that leads to climate change, as are you. Writing and reading this comment is spending electricity that is likely partially fueled by fossil fuels.

Re: Mornings and nights no longer exist at 47C: A day in the hottest place in India

#140

Post by tdb7893 »

cute_boi wrote: post #56
tdb7893 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human land use is incredibly inefficient. As a simple example, in the US the vast majority of corn production is ethanol or animal feed (which is incredibly inneficient on a calorie basis). Then when you take into account low density residential and their endless lawns (turf grass has by far the most acres of any crop in the US) and a million other poor uses of land and there's a lot we can do, even at 8 billion peop…

I think such problem are unsolvable. In America, people can't live without meat and they will always justify it by bringing pasture raised cattle farm :/

So firstly there's been a lot of progress. I know people that grew up vegetarian in the 80s and there are so many more animal and environmentally friendly alternatives and people care more now than ever before.

Secondly, these things will change. If you look at the history of activism often there are people advocating against things hundreds of years before we see large changes (there is activism against forced labor in the Americas in the early 1500s even). So I've found it useful to accept the idea that we'll pass down this fight to the next generation and they'll probably pass it down to the one after that. It could be three decades or it could be three centuries but eventually things will change.

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