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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

#81

Post by Izikiel43 »

Arrath wrote: post #31
kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

Most desalination methods are unfortunately quite energy intensive, and produce a concentrated brine that has environmental/disposal concerns such that it can't just be pumped back into the ocean, really. It presents a difficult problem for entrepreneurs to tackle. Definitely the potential to change people's lives for the better, though.

Is brine useful for something?

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#82

Post by throwawaysea »

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 (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatur...):

> Is global warming contributing to this heatwave? The answer is certainly yes. Would we have had a record heatwave without global warming. The answer is yes as well.

He also said in the same article:

> Let me end with the golden rule of temperature extremes: the bigger the temperature extreme the SMALLER the contribution of global warming. Think about that.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#83

Post by 6f8986c3 »

Avamander wrote: post #55
6f8986c3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmentalists fought against nuclear power for 70 years. The result? We burned coal. So I’m not interested. You wanted the world to burn. So let it burn.

How much of that has actually been environmentalists and not a result of intentional deceptive tactics and undermining of public education by fossil fuel companies?

Most of it has been environmentalists.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#84

Post by Taek »

danenania wrote: post #53
Taek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an individual, there isn't really anything you can do. Going vegetarian doesn't help. Recycling doesn't help. Using your shower for 5 minutes doesn't help. As a society, we've chosen to manage resources via capitalism. If you use less water, what that means is water is cheaper so some corporation can afford another few acres of almond trees. If consumers cut their waste in half, the slack would be picked up at the…

Wars are not exactly beneficial to the planet. And it would be a nice joke if your righteous war to save the planet from climate change ends up leading us into a nuclear winter. Neither violence or authoritarianism are necessary to solve the problem. We who live in democracies "just" have to elect governments sufficiently not corrupt that they will impose the required environmental restrictions on industry, and use s…

> Wars are not exactly beneficial to the planet. And it would be a nice joke if your righteous war to save the planet from climate change ends up leading us into a nuclear winter.

Fully agree. War is worth avoiding at all costs.

> We who live in democracies "just" have to elect governments sufficiently not corrupt that they will impose the required environmental restrictions on industry, and use strong economic pressure on other nations that don't get their houses in order.

I may be overly cynical but I just don't see this happening. But I would absolutely rejoice if it did work out that way.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#87

Post by runesoerensen »

fragbait65 wrote: post #39

Honestly, why bother? The earth isn't dying, the earth will be fine, it will recover over time, humanity on the other hand needs to be reduced. If it isn't climate change, an epidemic or something else, then it will be war over resources some time in the future. On the other hand, climate change will probably lead to war anyway, since resources like water and places to live will decrease from that, so war is probably…

> humanity on the other hand needs to be reduced

The point of view expressed here somewhat ironically show a severe lack of humanity. If anything it seems more humanity is needed here.

It’s not uncommon to hear people talk about various types of population control/reduction while being seemingly oblivious to just how tragic and psychopathic the point of view is.

If you find yourself agreeing with, say, Thanos, and also think it’d be great to see half the world’s population reduced by half, I think that’s a pretty strong signal that you need to really think about what you’re saying and if something can be done to increase your ability to empathize with people in need.

Another approach, that doesn’t involve letting people die, directly or indirectly, through our (lack of) action, would be to address issues that cause long term high population growth, in addition to for instance developing technologies and making cultural/lifestyle changes to accommodate more people on our planet to the extent that’s needed.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#88

Post by wait_a_minute »

neaanopri wrote: post #30
Taek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not celebrating people dying of thirst, but I also think that's the only thing that will get the world properly focused on the issue. We need to make big structural changes to the global economy to fight climate change, and those changes are going to have an outsized negative impact on today's wealthiest and most powerful people. They aren't going to let change happen without a fight. People dying is what it's go…

People dying in Algeria won't realistically get the US, French, or Chinese governments to significantly cut fossil fuels supplied to their citizens.

USA and France are actually doing well on renewables and nuclear even. Whereas China is still building a shit-ton of new coal plants.

https://ieefa.org/france-boosts-renewable-energy-spending-to...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/climate/coronavirus-coal-...

https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#89

Post by AngryData »

kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

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 desalinating population scale levels of water would be investment into nuclear power. And the desalination could double as a buffer for the nuclear plant so that it could be run at peak power and efficiency nearly full time.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#90

Post by FridayoLeary »

Taek wrote: post #18
kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

I'm not celebrating people dying of thirst, but I also think that's the only thing that will get the world properly focused on the issue. We need to make big structural changes to the global economy to fight climate change, and those changes are going to have an outsized negative impact on today's wealthiest and most powerful people. They aren't going to let change happen without a fight. People dying is what it's go…

>People dying is what it's going to take to muster up enough of a fight to make the actual change.

No it wont. If anything it will just start a war and/or a(nother) refugee crisis. Plus dead people. I think hoping for disasters to catalyst change is a sadly naive worldview.

>we can hit the panic button

What panic button? Where?

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