Are Parts of India Becoming Too Hot For Humans? (foxcarolina.com) 268
"Intense heat waves have killed more than 100 people in India this summer and are predicted to worsen in coming years, creating a possible humanitarian crisis as large parts of the country potentially become too hot to be inhabitable," writes CNN.
An anonymous reader quotes their report: Heat waves in India usually take place between March and July and abate once the monsoon rains arrive. But in recent years these hot spells have become more intense, more frequent and longer...
India is among the countries expected to be worst affected by the impacts of climate crisis, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say that even if the world succeeds in cutting carbon emissions, limiting the predicted rise in average global temperatures, parts of India will become so hot they will test the limits of human survivability...
In June, Delhi hit temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit), the highest ever recorded in that month. West of the capital, Churu in Rajasthan nearly broke the country's heat record with a high of 50.6 Celsius (123 Fahrenheit)... And forecasters believe it's only going to get worse. "In a nutshell, future heatwaves are likely to engulf in the whole of India," said AK Sahai and Sushmita Joseph, of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, in Pune in an email.
An anonymous reader quotes their report: Heat waves in India usually take place between March and July and abate once the monsoon rains arrive. But in recent years these hot spells have become more intense, more frequent and longer...
India is among the countries expected to be worst affected by the impacts of climate crisis, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say that even if the world succeeds in cutting carbon emissions, limiting the predicted rise in average global temperatures, parts of India will become so hot they will test the limits of human survivability...
In June, Delhi hit temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit), the highest ever recorded in that month. West of the capital, Churu in Rajasthan nearly broke the country's heat record with a high of 50.6 Celsius (123 Fahrenheit)... And forecasters believe it's only going to get worse. "In a nutshell, future heatwaves are likely to engulf in the whole of India," said AK Sahai and Sushmita Joseph, of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, in Pune in an email.
India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:2, Interesting)
India deserves to be boiled to temperatures that can't sustain human life because they pollute like crazy, and don't believe in climate change.
I just feel bad for all the nations which are actually fighting to save our climate, but are still being burned by America and India...
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India deserves to be boiled to temperatures that can't sustain human life because they pollute like crazy, and don't believe in climate change.
I just feel bad for all the nations which are actually fighting to save our climate, but are still being burned by America and India...
I'm going to go ahead and call most of India a shit hole, which would be ironically true. India still hasn't figured out indoor plumbing and probably won't in our lifetime.
More to your point, WHO claims 14 of the 15 most polluting cities are in India.
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I just feel bad for all the nations which are actually fighting to save our climate, but are still being burned by China and India...
Here let me correct that for you. Probably in the future you should do some research to make sure that your facts are correct. We have enough fake news and shit going around that confuse people. We should strive to keep our facts straight and not add to the problem.
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's look at some facts. China and the USA are the two largest producers of CO2. In 2015 they produced 9040.74 and 4997.50 MT (million metric tons) respectively. India came third at 2066.01.
In terms of per capita production of CO2, the United States easily captures 1st place with 15.51 metric tons per person. Second and third are Russia (10.19) and China (6.59). India is way down the list after many other countries, at 1.58.
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-... [ucsusa.org]
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Informative)
Whoops, sorry I'm wrong. Saudi Arabia actually produces the most CO2 per capita at 16.85 metric tons per person per year. Next is Australia at 15.83, then USA at 15.51, and Canada at 15.32.
Reading the table on the web page I cited is a little awkward.
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Whoops, sorry I'm wrong.
Then you have my apologies for being a self righteous pompous ass in my reply. :)
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Thanks. I was wrong about the per capita numbers, but the per country numbers are correct. China and the USA are by far the highest producers of CO2, with India and the rest of the world trailing.
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Not fair to lump together 50 states in a federation but measure every EU member apart.
Also not fair to compare per capita of just a few countries.
You know this.
Re: India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:3, Informative)
why not? china's gross tonage gets compared to the us (although it has 4x the population) so what's the big deal with eu vs usa comparison. In any case whether gross or per capita it ain't lookin good for the us in that comparison. Could it be that that's why u think one shouldn't compare the two...
2014 metric tons per capita
US: 16.503
China: 7.544
EU: 6.379
India: 1.728
2014 co2 emissions / capita in gigatons
China: 10.291
USA: 5.254
EU: 3.241
India: 2.238
source: world bank
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.A
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I know my reply will be buried forever, but maybe someone would read it.
If we are to be looking at this from an objective perspective, we should be measuring per-country CO2 emissions reported to said country geographical surface. While indeed more people would generate more CO2 emissions, what matters for global warming is how much CO2 is pumped out divided to the surface of the world.
A cluster of 5 people located on a large island, each of them having a huge carbon footprint, would yield an insignificant
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That makes no sense. Emissions per geographic area is meaningless - it is the overall total amount of CO2 which is important for the Earth's climate. What would emissions per square km even tell you other than perhaps how densely populated the area is...
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Per capita CO2 numbers mean nothing. Most of China is not industrialized, so it's not really surprising that their per capita output is lower. It's more interesting to look at CO2 per unit of GDP, which reflects how carbon efficient a country's industries are.
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Insightful)
GDP is not interesting. Financial actions e.g. contribute to the GDP but don't really produce CO2. ... obviously nonsense.
GDP is not really comparable from country to country because of currency differences. If I a Thai dish in Germany it costs perhaps EUR7.00 about $8.00 and in Thailand the exact same dish costs me $1.10 or something (50TBH). So for the same thing the GDP in Germany is 8 times higher
A typical citizen, living in a to big house, driving a to big car, to lazy to cool only the room s/he is in, to lazy to switch the AC off when s/he is at work, or to lazy to have a timer starting the AC an hour before he is home, has nothing to do with the GDP, except as consumer of energy and buying the car ... but he could by a high consuming but cheap car, too.
There is another metric, but I forgot how it is exactly named in english: CO2 per amount of produced goods.
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The whole per-capita figure is a pile of shit mostly because by uncontrollably popping out children it improves your numbers.
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Interesting)
It also gets worse for Canada. We under report our numbers. Everyone does a little but we do a lot. Everyone under reports their oil and gas a bit but our tar sands are far dirtier and fly over air measurement reveal we are under reporting by a fair margin. Second, Canada argued countries could optionally subtract carbon natural carbon sinks if they wanted. Unfortunately we have so mismanaged our mono culture replanting of forests that our forests are net green house gas emitters.
So stop blaming India or China when Australians, Canadians and Americans are far far worse.
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Why should we blame the Australians, the Canadians and the Americans when we can blame the dark skinned Indians and the yellow skinned Chinese?
In actuality, everyone engaging in large-scale trade (almost none of which is sustainable as operated today) is part of the problem. America and China have large manufacturing sectors. (The US never stopped producing stuff, it used automation to sharply reduce the number of manufacturing jobs.) The stuff that we produce has an energy cost, and thus produces emissions from that and other sources, like materials production. But then much of that stuff gets shipped off to other countries. Who do you blame for
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Well, it is not easy to find perfect numbers.
I remember that "recently" Kuwait was on top of per capita emissions.
However countries like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia that have a relatively low population, but many guest workers. Do they count them as "capita" or not?
Re: India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:2)
Makes more sense as top 3 are industrialised ,western , and warm climates. I'm sure the A/C bills in Saudi are quite high.
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Absolute numbers are silly. All you have to do is dig down to whatever arbitrarily small jurisdiction you want to get a nice small number.
My apartment emits less carbon than either the US OR China!
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Absolute numbers are silly. All you have to do is dig down to whatever arbitrarily small jurisdiction you want to get a nice small number.
Per capita numbers are ridiculous. You're grouping some poor schmoe who can't afford a car and takes the bus everywhere in with people who own 20 yachts, all of which consume gallons per mile.
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Those same people are grouped whether you look at per capita or per country values. The former is produced by dividing the latter by the number of people in the country, not by grouping things differently.
Yes, studying per capita usage, grouping by things other than what country you come from, such as wealth, is also interesting.
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Let's look at some facts. China and India are the two largest producers of CO2.
If we are going to look at facts then we should stick to facts. I went ahead and corrected you to make sure we have the facts straight.
As it has been explained , per capita, doesn't matter. What matters is over all pollution. So we are not going to entertain any more of this per capita nonsense and stick to what actually matters.
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:4, Informative)
I have already replied to jwhyche elsewhere. This is a note to the moderator. China and the USA are the first and second largest producers of CO2. That has been true for some time, not just in the 2015 dataset I cited. Some quick googling easily reveals this.
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't bother the moderators. They don't care. If your option dosn't meet their option, then you are not important.
That being said. I would like to know where you are getting your data from. Most of the sources that I'm finding are several years old, 2012-2015. I would like to see some more recent numbers. I'm not saying your wrong, I just want to see for myself.
On another note according to these numbers.
http://www.aei.org/publication... [aei.org]
US lead the world in the decline of CO2 emissions in 2017. An what two countries led the increase? China and India. I think its time the US got some credit for being the leader in a reduction of emissions.
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As it has been explained , per capita, doesn't matter. What matters is over all pollution. So we are not going to entertain any more of this per capita nonsense and stick to what actually matters.
"Waah! I don't pollute any more than 10 Indian people, so it's *totally unfair* that *we* should have to cut back!"
Per capita DO matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretending absolute number only are interesting is a way to push that waste under the carpet, and pretend that the USA does not need to do as much since there are worst polluter. It also reek of whataboutism. And finally it reeks of "i got mine but now that you are growing and have more people to support I'll just point the finger at you and put more responsibility onto you the country with more people and pretend you need to do at least as much as me the waster".
Re: Per capita DO matter (Score:2)
Re:Per capita DO matter (Score:4, Insightful)
For one it shows there is a much higher potential for china to pollute even more, if it comes to the SAME living standard and production standard than the USA. For two it still shows per person a vast amount of energy being used, and one has to question next : is the amount of product and service produced per person , proportionate to the amount of energy (or by proxy CO2) emitted : an indicative of wasted energy on other level of the society.
The former is not news. The latter is misleading. Only a percentage of the pollution produced by a country is produced by its people living their lives. Some other percentage is produced by economic activity, those people at their jobs. And that economic activity is a partnership between the producer and consumer of a product or service. People blame residents of the USA (and rightly so) for a large share of China's pollution, as the US is China's primary trading partner. We have funded their pollution. But the USA is also one of the world's largest manufacturing nations, and one of its largest exporters of goods. What percentage of our pollution is (by the same logic) the responsibility of persons living in other nations, buying our products?
The issue of shared responsibility is a secondary one, however. One real question is, how much pollution does the average American actually produce? According to the EPA, approximately 50% of America's pollution comes from industrial sources. Another question might be how much pollution is produced by the median American. Virtually all the wealth is in a few hands. And one final question I've got is how much pollution is being produced by the median American because they can't afford to avoid it? I'd love to have an EV instead of a diesel, but I can't afford one — especially one with enough range to get around the part of California I live in.
Re: Per capita DO matter (Score:5, Insightful)
so let's revert to a "fuck you"-based discussion and stop pretending
How about this? Fuck being fair. The planet can't handle being fair. So fuck fair. And based on fucking fair, per capital doesn't matter., not one god damn bit. I'm sorry if you think third world countries need to be able to bring their emissions up to old US standards but they can't. I'm not saying they can't bring their standard of living up, but they can't bring it up the way we did. Sorry, if that is unfair but the planet can't afford to be fair. We just have to find a better way.
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Per-capita is the *only* measure that makes any sense to the planet,
The planet is not alive.
Nothing "makes sense" to the planet.
Measuring per capita might "make sense" to you but that doesn't mean it's meaningful.
Measuring per capita is meaningless because one person isn't responsible for as much emissions as the next.
Measuring per capita is totally irrelevant when you're doing the math, because what actually matters is the total amount.
Measuring national totals is somewhat relevant, because nations have emissions laws.
50% of emissions in the US are from industry. The profi
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In terms of per capita production of CO2, the United States easily captures 1st place with 15.51 metric tons per person.
Okay fine. America can stop manufacturing stuff for the entire world which will bring our carbon footprint per capita way below any other industrialized nation.
But how will you stop someone else from manufacturing what the world needs? Someone else absolutely will manufacture what the world wants and they won't have the same laws concerning pollution and how they treat their workers.
Is this really the desired outcome from measuring per-capita? To move the manufacturing to less "friendly" places? Because the
Re:India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Interesting)
China spends more than the US does investing in sustainable energy and lower emissions technologies.
Part of it is because they realize having air quality so poor is a bad thing. Part of is is the realization that relying on energy you don't control (e.g. imported petroleum) is a major economic and political liability. Part of it is that renewable energy is just less expensive than many of the alternatives.
In any case, China sees the writing on the wall and is working to better their situation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
=Smidge=
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I just feel bad for all the nations which are actually fighting to save our climate, but are still being burned by China and India...
Here let me correct that for you. Probably in the future you should do some research to make sure that your facts are correct.
"Tommy got to go to the movies when he had the Flu, why can't I go?"
"Because, unlike Tommy's parents, we believe in not trying to see how many people we can make sick and possibly evil kill just so you can see the new Transformers movie."
"It's not fair. If Tommy can do it, I should be able to."
Seriously, folks. Live isn't fair, and yes everyone should do their part, and we should work towards that, but you can't wait for everyone else to go first. That way leads to the worst case outcome, such as the art
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I'm going to go ahead and call most of India a shit hole,
India is certainly over-endowed with shitholes. Many millions of people living in squalor that makes an average African village look like paradise.
But "most"? No. They have achieved massive economic gains in recent decades, and obesity is more of a problem than malnutrition now.
India on average is far more secure and comfortable than the "shit-holes" like Haiti that Trump referred to. No comparison.
And the country has even brought its fertility rate under control, though it remains to be seen if they achi
Re: India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, 100 whole people out of 1billion died? I'll go out on a limb and say it's not too hot for humans to live.
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In spite of 57 million killed, the Earth ended WWII with 20 million more than it started it with.
Re: India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are also more slaves in India today (right now) than in he entire history of the US slave trade, and nobody talks about it. In fact, the wealthy slave-owner class sends their kids to liberal arts schools in the US where they play a very weird "brown people" victim card.
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You have documented stats on this or are you just repeating some one's talking points?
Re: India doesn't respect the environment... (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go.
https://blogs.wsj.com/indiarea... [wsj.com]
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"According to a Walk Free Foundation report in 2016, there were 46 million people enslaved worldwide in 2016, there were 18.3 million people in India living in the forms of modern slavery, such as bonded labour, child labour, forced marriage, human trafficking, forced begging, among others."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You really shouldn't convert areal measurements to make a point unless you actually know how to do it.
Hint: the "square" isn't there for decoration.
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At these population densities, how do you expect people NOT to shit in the streets?
Buckets.
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... a stable electrical grid that is available even to rural areas ...
The Camp Fire in California got started by an electrical spark from an electrical transmission tower. PG&E will turn off power to avoid burning down the state (again). No AC during an extended heat wave. For nursing homes without a backup electrical generator, old people could easily die.
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And yet, in the US we still have deaths from heat waves. That sort of thing still happens. Air conditioning and a stable electrical grid may be available in rural areas, but there are many cases there these are not available in poverty stricken areas. Often these deaths occur with the elderly who can't afford the A/C and who don't have a caretaker looking in on them.
So if the US is having these problems then it's no wonder that other countries do as well.
So (Score:3, Interesting)
nearly broke the country's heat record with a high
So not only has it been this hot before - it has actually been hotter. Yeah call me when there's actual news.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
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To say nothing of many small villages where there wasn't (or even currently isn't) really a thriving recordkeeping system for people.
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A) People died the last time too
B) It's not just the peak temperature that is the issue, it's how sustained it is. 50C for a day is bad, 50C for a week kills a lot of people and animals.
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Around twenty years ago I was living in Austin during a big heat wave. It was over 100F every day for a month. During that time, the temp never dropped below 75, nor did the humidity. And the humidity was 99% every night. After a week or so of this, old people started dying in notable numbers. Nobody liked it but the insects.
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Whether or not heat is a leading cause of death is irrelevant. Death by having your face forcefully put in sulphuric acid isn't a leading cause of death either, that doesn't make it a good thing when it does happen or if it starts happening more often.
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Not too hot for humans... (Score:2, Informative)
...but rather too hot for sizeable populations. People already live in the Sahara, the Mojave, and other incredibly hot places. However, you are talking about very sparse populations compared to India, where population is very dense, and the infrastructure and resources don't exist to support even the population that is already there.
Yes, we'll see a depopulation of some areas (and the attendant climate refugee crises,), but there will always be a small number who remain scraping out an existence.
Re:Not too hot for humans... (Score:4, Insightful)
Extreme heat coupled with a water shortage is a recipe for depopulation.
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The hot places you mention are different in one important way. Humidity. The Sahara and Mojave are hot, but dry, so perspiration can still evaporate and cool the body enough that survival is possible (assuming you can stay hydrated). The issue in India is the much higher humidity combined with the heat. In general, a sustained wet-bulb temperature of 35C (95F) would be fatal to most people since the body cannot cool itself.
India is rapidly approaching conditions where sustained wet-bulb temperatures at this
So snakes kill 460 times times as many (Score:2, Troll)
And you will find many more natural hazards that kill way more than 100 per year in India.
Re:So snakes kill 460 times times as many (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, there is little chance of snakes in India killing half the population.
Re:So snakes kill 460 times times as many (Score:4, Interesting)
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And yet, there is little chance of snakes in India killing half the population
And there is little chance of global warming killing half the population of India. Hype stories like this one hurt the cause.
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I'm just waiting for someone to tell me this is a good thing because we need to cull the population. Of humans, not snakes.
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Your inclusion of the word "we" in relationship with the verb "cull" is rather specious.
How about some trees? (Score:2)
Maybe with a focus on better urban forestry [thehindubusinessline.com], things could cool down, trees could help with CO2 and pollution, and, you know, provide shade so you can at least take a breather from the heat every so often.
Re:How about some trees? (Score:4, Interesting)
Over about 100F, plants shut down for their own protection. They close their stomata, in order to reduce water loss from respiration at these temperatures. Unfortunately, photosynthesis cannot occur without respiration. Trees only produce shade when temps are this high.
At least it's the capital (Score:2)
Hopefully since the legislators are the ones to put up with the heat, they'll be reminded every time they step outside that any solution starts at their level.
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Washington, D.C. used to be a hardship post for diplomats before the invention of air conditioning. We can make it that way again; ban air conditioning in Washington D.C and in the surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia.
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ban air conditioning in Washington D.C and in the surrounding counties
Can we get a change.org petition? Ban air conditioning any time the budget is not balanced in Washington!
They need nuclear energy. (Score:3)
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Using solar thermal, means you get just desalinated water, is only done in the daytime, and then you still have to add a LOT of energy to pump it.
Using solar PV is FREAKING expensive compared to nukes. and is only available in the daytime.
India needs ENERGY and water. Nukes by the ocean are the best source for them.
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Nuclear energy is on-demand.
What? That is horse shit. Nuclear energy is the form of power that takes longest to turn up or down. Maybe you meant to say continuous, which is the opposite on on-demand?
Using solar thermal, means you get just desalinated water, is only done in the daytime, and then you still have to add a LOT of energy to pump it.
You can pump water with heat pipes using (DUN DUN DUN) solar thermal.
Using solar PV is FREAKING expensive compared to nukes. and is only available in the daytime.
Probably the best thing for them to build is water-cooled solar PV. They need more power anyway, and they mostly need it during the day.
Everything you said was wrong, and/or dumb.
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A $25bil nuclear plant isn't about being able to make back $30bil by selling electricity, it's about driving a $100bil/year industry.
Nuclear has been shown to make sense in exactly two places: on aircraft carriers, and in space. Even in space, it only really makes sense for stuff significantly further away from the Sun than is the Earth. If you're proposing nuclear as a power source in any other situation, you're almost certainly wrong.
You don't seem to have any appreciation of the fact that the easiest way to distill water is to heat it, and that a nuclear reactor is an incredibly complex way to heat water. If there's a heat wave, they'
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Conservatively, we're spending about $600bil/year in unaccounted for externalized costs of fossil fuel to $1.5tril+, depending on how much you read into opportunity costs. I'm sure nuclear power would be cheaper
Probably, but solar+wind+grid improvements wouldn't cost any more than nuclear, and would have numerous substantial benefits over it.
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There's 35 grams of salt in a liter of water, so if a person uses 100 liters/day of fresh water, they end up producing 3.5 kilograms of salt, which lasts a year.
Large scale desalination will produce more salt than we have use for.
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The discussion was about desalination plants creating problematic amounts of salt (or brine).
Re: They need nuclear energy. (Score:2)
let's be clear on some FACTS (Score:2, Troll)
This was not the hottest day in Delhi, that would be over 20 years ago in MAY in 1998, assuming there were no hotter days before records were kept, which in the case of this city hilariously enough don't even go back to 1910.
This year was not the most deaths from heat in India.
Yet we have headline of "will it be too hot for humans to live".... based on what exactly? non-record breaking temperatures and deaths?
Hot (Score:2)
Wet bulb temperature is what counts (Score:5, Informative)
I've run on a dry day in death valley. It's not that bad. You sweat and your core temperature stays at 36C. But if it is 100% humidity you can't sweat. The water doesn't evaporate and you can't cool down. 40C and 95% relative humidity will kill even the healthiest person given enough time.
Iran near the Persian gulf will likely be the first place unlivable for humans soon as it will likely experience wet bulb temperatures that will kill a fair portion of healthy people without access to air conditioning. Unfortunately the second place likely won't be a sparely populated area but a part of China with 400 million people in it. I'm not sure how that many people can be relocated.
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a part of China with 400 million people in it
Which part of China do you have in mind?
I lived in Taiwan for a while, and it had an extremely humid and hot summer. I was told it's more humid than most (all?) of China.
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The water doesn't evaporate and you can't cool down. 40C and 95% relative humidity will kill even the healthiest person given enough time. /me snaps his whip
Run faster, lazy bastard!
How do other animals survive this? (Score:2)
Too many people (Score:3)
Let me correct that: India is among the countries expected to be worst affected by the impacts of massive population growth.
Even without climate change, the population has grown to the point in places that there arenâ(TM)t enough natural resources like ground water.
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Phoenix is one thing, but LA is another. Nearly 100% of the water they need falls on the city as rain every year, but over 95% of it (WAY over, as I recall) runs directly into the ocean because LA has been all but entirely paved over, and they haven't built any catchments. They could still have a city if you cut off the water. Phoenix, however, might have to scale back to being a town.
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Water with ever growing population is going to be bigger than climate change I think in the short term.
The two concerns are inseparably linked. Where the water falls and how much are both going to change continually, and chaotically. Even in just looking at rentals we're being careful to make sure we don't end up on any flood plains. Thousand-year flood? HA!
Not at all! (Score:2)
When I order, the Indian waiter always asks:
"Hot?"
I always reply: 'Not too hot.'
Wrong question (Score:2)
Humans have coped with heat successfully for thousands of years.
Drought is another matter entirely.
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Humans have coped with heat successfully for thousands of years
Yeah, by moving somewhere else.
Subtle (Score:2)
That sounds like a very nice way of saying that millions of people might die.
The current German heatwave ... (Score:2)
... already has me running in idle mode with the heat having a severe impact on my physical and mental performance and on my mood. While the sun lifts it up, the heat is unbearable during the day which I spent most of lying around dozing.
We're having 30Â to 35Â Celsius. If that would go up to 48Â, I'd crawl into a hole with an ice-bath and an oxygen supply and hope to survive. That climate change would make parts of India uninhabitable is no news. That it would happen this fast is. However, a
Too hot... Too polluted... (Score:2)
Both India and China are dire. Massive smog, massive groundwater pollution, massive soil degradation. And it's getting worse. South East Asia, South America and Africa aren't much better.
I live in a small country (Score:2)
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Only if you dump your straw into the river.
Re:Urban Heat Island effect (Score:5, Informative)
Now the heat island effect certainly could be part of this. Unfortunately those urban heat islands are where we need most people to be living if they are to avoid squatting in some farmer's field. So if the cities get too hot everything around the cities is going to get too crowded.
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Well since we are in solar minimum right now
Came here to say this... and to fix your link to spaceweather.com [spaceweather.com]. I would guess the next solar maximum is expected by 2024, and then we're all fucked. OP is an ignorant ass and will probably say "yeah, but it's a dry solar maximum."
I think in 100 years the ice caps and all the glaciers will be permanently melted, sea level will rise, but it will also be less saline. The Thermocline will stop, ocean currents will break, Europe will freeze over, Siberia and Canada will freeze solid under 100 feet of snow, gl
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Actually, temperatures are barely going up
I see no signs that the trend is changing. Note that the graph has been corrected for urban heat island effect.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... [nasa.gov]
(Your link only talks about temperatures in the US. )
Re:Urban Heat Island effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an ex-climate denier who used to be all about the "heat islands" until he was given the money to actually do a little research (by the Koch foundation of all places), who, because of said research, is just that... an ex-denier. So.....
How much of this is due to the Urban Heat Island effect?
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Sun goes into the next extended solar minimum.
The sun is in an "extended" as in "unusually long" solar minimum since 15 or more years.
The insolation difference is in 0.5% range between a maximum and minimum, so nearly not relevant at all. However there is an effect due to UV light in the higher atmosphere which has most of the time a _cooling_effect_ during the time of _the maximum_!
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India has nearly 250M households, 5% of which have AC. GLWT!
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