Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why North America's killer heat scares me

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 193 posts

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#41

Post by nradov »

dragontamer wrote: post #31
nradov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

[flagged]

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.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#42

Post by dragontamer »

tdfx wrote: post #39
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…

> 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.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#43

Post by user-the-name »

savant_penguin wrote: post #22
user-the-name wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

That statement isn't a comparison. And not part of it even remotely implies that "quickly zeroing out carbon emissions there would be no negative consequences".

What that statement is doing is communicating a real sense of dread that maybe we have to do it even though it would be incredibly difficult and costly.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#46

Post by Fauntleroy »

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…

You're not alone in that thought, but the first step is dismantling the party system. In the United States that would either require extreme campaign finance reform and the elimination of First-Past-The-Post voting systems. Or a violent revolution. Either way it's not looking likely...

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#47

Post by taylorlapeyre »

I recommend the book “Unsettled” by Steven Koonan for a more empirical look at how these computer models work, and the deficiencies of trying to predict catastrophe with them. For instance, every climate model is wildly off when it tries to predict the climate changes starting in 1950.

This article reads like a typical scare piece. The truth is, there’s just so many feedback loops in climate that we just don’t know what’s “responsible” for any particular event. It may not even be a reasonable question to ask.

There are things we know: greenhouse gases are rising because of human activity, and their presence will cause an increase in global average temperature at equilibrium. Beyond that, there is so much we can’t predict.

For instance, higher temps will cause more water vapor in the air, and therefore more cloud cover. That increases the earth’s albedo by some percentage, which is a powerful effect. Enough to hold off further warming for a while? We don’t know. No climate models agree.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#48

Post by Supermancho »

dragontamer wrote: post #26
briefcomment wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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

The effectiveness is in giving them COVID and helping them fight against the intentional infection, via mRNA antibody response. COVID will eventually become yet-another-endemic-disease, that everyone is vaccinated against. There are some people who are marginally genetically susceptible, who will survive with the vaccine. There are some people who are genetically susceptible and with or without the vaccine, will die once infected.

The question is, why get vaccinated and take the chance if, due to vaccinations your chances are low to get infected (albeit almost guaranteed over 10 years imo)? That's ok with me. The fact that the unvaccinated individuals are the majority of people dying is unsurprising (as expected, there are some vaccinated deaths as well).

This is the uncomfortable truth, which doesn't change what can be done or will happen. The big difference vaccines have made, is an overall reduction in total deaths (as intended) and speeding up the process of total viral exposure (as intended).

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#49

Post by Pokepokalypse »

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.

Re: Why North America's killer heat scares me

#50

Post by dragontamer »

nradov wrote: post #41
dragontamer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

Post reply on HN