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Why North America's killer heat scares me

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#101

Post by marssaxman »

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #17
throwaway284534 wrote: post #6

Respectfully, I’m getting fatigued from hearing about climate changes. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel powerless to do anything major about it. For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Being defeatist isn’t exactly productive, but hearing that calamities are happening on a daily basis doesn’t help much either. I really do think the only way this’ll get better is after som…

> For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Just remember: those same factories are operated by companies that have spent millions over decades to convince people that individual solutions exist to a systemic problem. If you feel powerless, try looking for systemic opportunities to drive change.

> If you feel powerless, try looking for systemic opportunities to drive change.

After you spend several years on that, you will find an even deeper, more fundamental sense of powerlessness!

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#102

Post by tdfx »

briefcomment wrote: post #25
hpoe wrote: post #3

So one question I've had for a while is if we are currently facing such a catastrophe with increased global heat why don't we go ahead and start conducting massive explosions to kick dust up into the air. When Krakatoa went off it caused global cooling throughout the entire world because of the amount of matter it introduced into the air so why don't we do the same right now at least as a stopgap measure if things ar…

You don't think that drastically increasing the amount of particulate matter in the air that we breath could be a bad idea?

Move fast and break things!

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#103

Post by CubsFan1060 »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #49
throwaway284534 wrote: post #6

Respectfully, I’m getting fatigued from hearing about climate changes. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel powerless to do anything major about it. For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Being defeatist isn’t exactly productive, but hearing that calamities are happening on a daily basis doesn’t help much either. I really do think the only way this’ll get better is after som…

In the last 10 years, I have installed solar on 3 houses. I feel like that did more to help this problem than everything else I've ever done. Furthermore: insisting my job remain remote has also been a great help. No more commute. It's still not enough.

It's interesting that your two actions you talk about also have significant benefits for yourself.

I think real change is going to require a lot of sacrifice, and won't be a win-win for everyone.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#104

Post by JohnWhigham »

gruez wrote: post #37
JohnWhigham wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most consumer-facing plastics need to go. They're one of the major catalysts, if not the catalyst for our hyperconsumerist habits. Go back to glass bottles for things. Give subsidies to companies that use glass for inventory loss and such. Bring back the milkman who refills your empty jugs.

>Go back to glass bottles for things. Give subsidies to companies that use glass for inventory loss and such. Bring back the milkman who refills your empty jugs. Shouldn't we tax the externalities of plastic and let the market decide whether it's worth it? In your example of using glass bottles: sure it gets rid of plastic, but what about the costs of glass? eg. increased weight or energy/water needed to clean them.…

Shouldn't we tax the externalities of plastic and let the market decide whether it's worth it?

If that were enacted tomorrow, every business would just eat the cost and raise prices.

but what about the costs of glass? eg. increased weight or energy/water needed to clean them.

That's what federal subsidies are for. Make it worth it to use glass, or some other material other than plastic. Subsidies are how we got cheap dairy and meat, why can't it be used for other things?

how is driving a truck door to door delivering exclusively milk more efficient than picking it up on your way to the grocery store?

I was just spitballing, more rhetorical than anything. Milkmen used to be everywhere delivering milk in glass bottles before the plastics lobby and dairy subsidies drove them to extinction.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#105

Post by saalweachter »

dragontamer wrote: post #42
tdfx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they want to believe that the virus will go away on its own Pandemics have never "ended". Their effects just slide to a level that people stop talking about it.

Smallpox. With a high enough vaccination rate, even a disease with R0 of 20 can go away (COVID19 has an R0 of 3 to 6, maybe 9 if we include Delta variant). We've literally eradicated a more difficult and deadly disease before. I'm not saying we need to eradicate COVID19, but its absolutely within our power.

The word "pandemic" ~didn't exist prior to vaccines; arguably, it's too early to say whether every pandemic or no pandemic has ended.

We didn't used to have pandemics. We had plagues and poxes. We only had pandemics once we started having the option to not have everyone die of communicable diseases regularly.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#106

Post by jefftk »

dragontamer wrote: post #50
nradov wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just completely wrong. Please stop spreading misinformation about a serious subject. You can find the CDC's best estimates of fatality rates here. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... Doctors have mostly stopped using ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients. Those often do more harm than good.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7316113/ > COVID-19 is a highly contagious infection with no proven treatment. Approximately 2.5% of patients need mechanical ventilation while their body fights the infection So I'm a bit off with my estimate. But I still stand by my logic.

That is 2.5% of patients, not 2.5% of the population if it spreads everywhere.

Not everyone who is exposed to coronavirus gets sick enough to be counted as a patient in those statistics

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#107

Post by pastage »

mtrn wrote: post #24
throwaway284534 wrote: post #6

Respectfully, I’m getting fatigued from hearing about climate changes. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel powerless to do anything major about it. For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Being defeatist isn’t exactly productive, but hearing that calamities are happening on a daily basis doesn’t help much either. I really do think the only way this’ll get better is after som…

I do not own a car, I do not fly, I buy clothes used or new just once a year. My newest smartphone I bought five years ago (and I just bought a new battery for $10, so I can use it for five more years). My utility company stats says my energy consumption is overall very low. I eat meat once a month. I try to own as few things as possible. I try to write and deploy code in energy efficient languages (Go, Rust, C, ...)…

You can have frugal lifestyle in regards to the climate, but still be fullfilling. In some way it becomes part of you life to create less waste and find better ways to handle the climate. It's fun!

But you can only succeed if you also treat it like a religion were everyone else are heathens. Because if you do not convert all of society to your believes that is always going to be your biggest climte debt. My own carbon foot print is minimal compared to what I use as a part of my society. That is no fun. That's not what I want to spend my time doing..

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#108

Post by dragontamer »

jefftk wrote: post #106
dragontamer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7316113/ > COVID-19 is a highly contagious infection with no proven treatment. Approximately 2.5% of patients need mechanical ventilation while their body fights the infection So I'm a bit off with my estimate. But I still stand by my logic.

That is 2.5% of patients, not 2.5% of the population if it spreads everywhere. Not everyone who is exposed to coronavirus gets sick enough to be counted as a patient in those statistics

That's _just_ the ventilator. The people who would die because they are suffocating on their own mucus in their lungs.

There's other ways to die from COVID19, such as heart attacks due to the disease, liver damage, etc. etc.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#109

Post by maxsilver »

RandomLensman wrote: post #71
throwaway284534 wrote: post #6

Respectfully, I’m getting fatigued from hearing about climate changes. Not because I don’t care, but because I feel powerless to do anything major about it. For all the recycling I’ve done, a single factory can undo in just a day. Being defeatist isn’t exactly productive, but hearing that calamities are happening on a daily basis doesn’t help much either. I really do think the only way this’ll get better is after som…

What scares me is that most marquee policies seem to focus pretty much exclusively on avoiding and limiting climate change but not on helping people to cope. We might need programs for people to get cooling and not just better insulation, for example. In some places there is tendency to still mandate homes to be heat traps to save energy, which could also lead to really bad outcomes in very hot conditions.

> In some places there is tendency to still mandate homes to be heat traps to save energy, which could also lead to really bad outcomes in very hot conditions.

Agree, but I mean, that's probably good too though. If you don't insulate homes well, they waste more energy (and emit more CO2) on all the days they aren't under an insane heat wave. And if you are Air Conditioning a house, that same insulation helps keep the place cool.

Even places that "never get cold" and therefore "don't need it", should still be reasonably well insulated both ways anyway. See the Texas Cold Snap earlier this year, and all the damage that caused (even though that weather would cause zero issues in Michigan). See the recent extreme heat wave in Seattle + Portland tearing apart roads and such (even though that weather would cause zero issues in Arizona).

Homes probably need both to be well built. They need to be able to heat trap and to quickly/efficiently cool + ventilate.

And in general, the concept of "building to match local climate" is probably going to have to be a relic of the past. There is starting to be no such thing as predictable local climates anymore. If you want something to last, it's going to have to be built as if it could get anyone's weather at a moments notice.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#110

Post by wk_end »

prox wrote: post #38
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with and share your exhaustion, but I force myself to pay attention to these stories. They remind me why Climate Change is always my #1 priority when voting in elections, and when thinking about the world writ large. There was an editorial in The Atlantic a couple of years ago—which I now can’t seem to find—titled something like “We should be covering climate change like it’s the only story that matters”…

Making money comes first in this world, and only then comes the realization if our kids or grandkids still have a habitable world. Guess up until now it’s an abstraction people couldn’t imagine. Despite years of warning. Recently been thinking we should reform old style political parties. Instead we get to directly vote for ideological topics which we can vote on, and politicians/parties who adhere to them. So instea…

> Making money comes first in this world

In the past year virtually every major economy in the world shut down to try to ward off a virus that, even unchecked, couldn't kill a fraction of the people or ruin the world the way climate change might. Google tells me that it'd cost anywhere from $300 billion to $50 trillion to end climate change, however that'd work [0]; the amount we've collectively spent on COVID, somewhere around $10 trillion more than half a year ago [1], would at the very least take a big dent out of that.

Clearly, there's a point where we can put money aside for other things. It's not just greed; it's short-sightedness and stupidity too.

[0] https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/cost-to-end-climate-chang...

[1] https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/world/story/global-cost-...

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