Why North America's killer heat scares me • Hacker News Board

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#21

Post by briefcomment » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #18

liotier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You feel powerless to do anything about climate change ? You feel your individual actions such as recycling are meaningless in the face of the incoming tsunami ? That is because they are. If you want meaningful, get into political action ! "For consumers in the industrialized world to signal virtue with their individual actions is irrelevant at best. Countries like Sweden that have had success in decarbonizing, didn’…

It was extremely difficult getting my knowledgeable and smart sister to vaccinate for COVID19, an eminent disease that we both agreed was killing hundreds-of-thousands of Americans. Fortunately, I pushed her hard enough with a little bit of help from the Demon Slayer: Mugen Train movie (we will go to theaters if you vaccinate). Honestly: I don't know how I would have done it without that movie, lol. Now my sister's s…

You talk as if you're 100% certain about these things, which is obviously not possible.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#22

Post by savant_penguin » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #5

savant_penguin wrote: post #2

"What if the 'safe' carbon budget is zero. We can't sugar-coat the potential realities of this." Compared to what? Living without electricity? Paying 10x for energy? The lack of a real comparison with the real life consequences of a zero carbon budget seems a bit too convenient

> seems a bit too convenient What does this mean?

It means that when you don't compare it with anything, most people will intuitively compare it with perfection, as if by quickly zeroing out carbon emissions there would be no negative consequences.

It seems as "if we just did X everything would be better", when actually there are mostly trade-offs

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#23

Post by Wowfunhappy » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

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 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”. The body of the piece was very short, but can be summed up as “because in terms of relative importance, it is the only story that matters. But we won’t do it.”

But we should. But we need to.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#24

Post by mtrn » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

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, ...) [1]. I self host some services on my arm board that consumes 0.79W when idle.

I do not feel, that it makes a large dent, but I feel that I'm way ahead what the average person does in order to reduce their environmental footprint.

Also, I do not feel I'm cutting myself short and I still depend on many of the niceties of modern civilization - but, I'd also be happier, if my footprint would be even lower.

[1] https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sle...

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#25

Post by briefcomment » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

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?

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#26

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

briefcomment wrote: post #21

dragontamer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was extremely difficult getting my knowledgeable and smart sister to vaccinate for COVID19, an eminent disease that we both agreed was killing hundreds-of-thousands of Americans. Fortunately, I pushed her hard enough with a little bit of help from the Demon Slayer: Mugen Train movie (we will go to theaters if you vaccinate). Honestly: I don't know how I would have done it without that movie, lol. Now my sister's s…

You talk as if you're 100% certain about these things, which is obviously not possible.

I'm 100% certain in the vaccine's effectiveness on the average American.

Sure: Immunocompromised individuals may not be saved even with the vaccine (not enough B-cells or T-cells to fight off the disease even with the vaccine training them up). But its pretty much 100% proven at this point that the vaccines are 99.999%+ safe (all deaths due to vaccine are measured in the 10-in-a-million or smaller magnitude), while being 95% effective at preventing symptoms against the disease in question. Because the vaccine has been deployed to over 100-million Americans, I have evidence on how it works!!

There's no doubt anymore in my mind. There wasn't any doubt in my mind in December 2020, and we've only got 7 more months of evidence: the virus is surging in unvaccinated areas (ex: India), while receding in vaccinated areas. Something like 100% of LA's COVID19 deaths were from unvaccinated indivuals, despite only having ~50% vaccination rates (so 50% / 50% split of vaccinated vs unvaccinated in that population, but 100% deaths coming from only the unvaccinated pool?)

What more evidence do you want?

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#27

Post by JohnWhigham » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #16

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. Tangential, but recycling is much less effective the reduced consumption. I think the problem with policy makers not moving on this front is a reflection of people not doing so. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to make people even believe in something that would require them to sacrifice their lifestyle, let alone actually commit to doing…

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.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#28

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

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, ...)…

[deleted]

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#29

Post by fennecfoxen » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #23

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 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”…

Of course, if one does want to cover it like it's the only story that matters, one should really seriously take a look at how to best present that — because there are real possibilities that a naive approach might very well fail you, and get the coverage ignored.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#30

Post by nradov » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #18

liotier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You feel powerless to do anything about climate change ? You feel your individual actions such as recycling are meaningless in the face of the incoming tsunami ? That is because they are. If you want meaningful, get into political action ! "For consumers in the industrialized world to signal virtue with their individual actions is irrelevant at best. Countries like Sweden that have had success in decarbonizing, didn’…

It was extremely difficult getting my knowledgeable and smart sister to vaccinate for COVID19, an eminent disease that we both agreed was killing hundreds-of-thousands of Americans. Fortunately, I pushed her hard enough with a little bit of help from the Demon Slayer: Mugen Train movie (we will go to theaters if you vaccinate). Honestly: I don't know how I would have done it without that movie, lol. Now my sister's s…

Even in a worst case scenario with no vaccination, COVID-19 would kill less than 1% of the world population. So it's a serious public health problem but not an existential risk to human civilization. I certainly encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can so as to get us to herd immunity faster, but as a practical matter the disease isn't much of an eminent danger to most people who are otherwise in good health.

The potential long term effects of anthropogenic global climate change are more severe. We may see large regions of the world become essentially uninhabitable. That's a far more serious concern than any infectious disease.