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Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

severe-weather.eu

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Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#171

Post by lamontcg »

npunt wrote: post #48

I wonder if this heat dome effect contributed to Venus' eventual fate. My #1 fear is we're just going to get into some runaway cascade of warming and turn into something like Venus much faster than we realize.

The Earth has had 2,000+ ppm CO2 concentrations in the past and hasn't turned into Venus.

And more or less we're going to dig up all the dinosaurs and plants that died and turned into oil/carbon and put them back in the atmosphere and return to that if we do nothing. But we have a record of what that looks like and its not Venus.

That's also a very silly things to "fear" since to turn into Venus you gotta do things like melt all of Antarctica, Greenland and the Himalayas first which will take a couple hundred years. There's an awful lot of thermal mass in all that ice.

Disruption to agriculture and food production though doesn't require turning the Earth into Venus.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#172

Post by staplers »

riffic wrote: post #23
Lammy wrote: post #11

Maybe it's time to start talking about ways humanity can geo-engineer our way out of this instead of just sitting here waiting to suffer. The US Air Force has been interested in this topic for decades, but there's no way to know how viable any of that research actually is. Some of the speculative documents I've read propose using carbon black dust as a way to artificially reflect heat, like https://web.archive.org/we…

One of the more compelling geoengineering strategies I've seen discussed has been Olivine weathering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-o...

Something a little more simple and using abundant resources.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#173

Post by s5300 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #96
s5300 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Frankie MacDonald, he's an autistic savant meteorologist. Not saying that in any disrespectful way, I know some people get a bit butthurt when using those words. I don't know if he's commented on it yet, but if he has, >99% chance he's correct.

> Not saying that in any disrespectful way, I know some people get a bit butthurt… Incongruence detected.

How is it incongruent to make it known I wish I could celebrate somebody's unparalleled excellence with a simple colloquial term?

Like, HN is a place that circlejerks nonstop about 10x/100xers, and you want to give me grief for this?

He is an openly & proud autistic human, though with some of the difficulties he has regarding some things many think of as "normalcy" in our modern day life that are inherent to the autism disorder, he operates with what at least appears to be the skill of the 99th percentile of meteorologists. By definition, he's a savant.

To make the presumption that I'm being disrespectful by using the term is asinine. He wouldn't have been the first person to immediately pop into my head regarding the parent comment if I didn't think so highly of him.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#174

Post by geocrasher »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #85
wstrange wrote: post #41

Since that article was posted, Lytton BC broke the previous days record again: 49.6C (121 F) [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-alberta-h...

Wow, that's Death Valley hot.

I haven't had the opportunity to look up the humidity in BC, but certainly it is far greater than what you would see in death valley. Death valley is a very dry area. The Pacific Northwest is wet and the humidity just adds to the misery of the heat. In my area we saw almost 110° at about 35% humidity. I have experienced 120° in 5% humidity and I have to say the 110 felt hotter! Definitely more miserable!

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#175

Post by state_less »

_ph_ wrote: post #146
AngryData wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't technology that holds back water desalination, it is energy availability/cost. Even the most promising desalination tech is only a small efficiency boost over simpler established methods. Yeah efficiency gains certain help over the long term, but the overall energy costs are still enormous and nearly require dedicated power plant for any significant amount of clean water. The best bet in actually desalinatin…

Wouldn't solar be much better for powering desalination than nuclear power? It is way cheaper per energy produced than nuclear, especially in those countries, which need desalination most. Also, it doesn't take a decade to set up. Not even mentioning proliferation issues.

Yes, solar is dirt cheap energy and you wouldn’t need much of a battery (or any?) in this case, since you can store the excess product water in a tank.

I power my water maker with about 1400 watts and can make 35 gallons an hour. The panels, electronics and water maker were ~ $5000. I did the work myself at a slow pace, so not sure what the labor costs would be.

I set my system up in about 2 weeks. The requirements are a bit of time, seawater access and some capital.

https://seawaterpro.com/

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#176

Post by azernik »

julienb_sea wrote: post #158
thewarrior wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon emissions

If the choice is reducing emissions or saving lives from dehydration, I wonder which is the appropriate course of action.

Problem is, carbon emissions make the dehydration worse by heating up the planet. It's counterproductive.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#177

Post by throwawayuw »

throwawaysea wrote: post #82

There have been some previous discussions on HN about this weather event in the Pacific Northwest, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27670739 One thing I want to mention is that it is not known if this heat wave is caused by climate change or not. A UW professor named Cliff Mass, who specializes in climate science and has written books about the weather of the Pacific Northwest, has specifically said (…

Throwaway as well because I've worked with Cliff Mass and am not interested in being at the receiving end of the retaliation that he's known for doling out.

Cliff is kind of a pariah among meteorologists and climate scientists. He _loves_ that fact, and revels in this idea that he's the lone genius who got it right while the rest of the community got it wrong on climate change. But he's not viewed as someone who makes credible statements, particularly as they pertain to questions about climate.

Many of his blog posts are deliberately misleading or contain incorrect information. Others I'd categorize as "You're not wrong... you're just an asshole." He has a decent understanding of some of the meteorological phenomena that are unique to the Puget Sound region, but even there I take every word he writes with a grain of salt. Sure, read his blog to understand how the snow is going to be this weekend at Crystal. But I'd leave it at that.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#178

Post by i_love_music »

blondie9x wrote: post #3

To some seeing records such as these fall is heartbreaking. It’s agonizing and vexing when you wonder what can you do to help slow down climate change? The reality is we aren’t doing nearly enough to slow it down and the Earth is gradually destabilizing. We see insane cold snaps such as those that impacted Texas this winter, and at the opposite end of the spectrum heat waves unlike anything humans have ever experienc…

I don't understand the negative comments towards you. Are people living in denial? I appreciate your comment.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#179

Post by dEnigma »

splittingTimes wrote: post #162
riffic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the more compelling geoengineering strategies I've seen discussed has been Olivine weathering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine

"All the CO2 that is produced by burning one liter of oil can be sequestered by less than one liter of olivine." [1]. Given that formulation I assume that the amount of olivine needed is the same order of magnitude as the 1 liter of oil to produce the CO2. The world is consuming 97 Mio barrels of oil per day [2]. I doubt we can mine that amount of olivine on a daily basis. Is it even available in that quantity? How i…

"The primary component of the Earth's upper mantle, it is a common mineral in Earth's subsurface,[...]". This sentence, also from that same Wikipedia article, seems to suggest that availability wouldn't be the problem. But, whether the whole process is practical/reasonable, is another question entirely.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#180

Post by pmontra »

julienb_sea wrote: post #158
thewarrior wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon emissions

If the choice is reducing emissions or saving lives from dehydration, I wonder which is the appropriate course of action.

Probably something else.

Gas burns and makes CO2 which increases temperature which increases the likelihood of more dehydration events in future. This is the wrong choice. Actually the long term right choice is not to burn gas anymore.

Letting people die is obviously the wrong choice too.

When all choices are wrong we must find another choice that can be right. Somebody wrote solar energy, somebody wrote nuclear energy, somebody argued that both are wrong. I don't suggest a solution but I point out that limiting ourselves to binary choices is the wrong way to think.

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