8 ms·

Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show

67 points by myshpa 3y ago

geyser-flyway 3y ago
It’s always good to be sure and double-check periodically but it sure is tiring that we’re still kind of in the proof phase and not fully in the do something phase.
- javcasas 3y ago
  You know, there is a significant amount of people that don't want to sacrifice anything of their comfort or profits, that expected to die of old age before this happened. But nature doesn't wait for petty plans to complete.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    100 percent. In the US there are still people who don't believe COVID 19 existed or that it took out over a million people. Or that the US population is <400 million people and that semi trucks filled with dead Americans across the country was ever a problem. Propaganda makes it much much easier for bad faith industrial actors to sabotage an entire country, or I suppose even the world. Pump and dumping civilization has got to be an extraterrestrial meme or something...
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    It's a small part of society that is flying to tropical islands for vacation. Electorally insignificant if democracy actually worked as it was feared. Even in my Western rich country a lot of people have never been in a airplane.
    - glimshe 3y ago
      It's hard to ask workers to stop flying during their discounted vacations when executives are flying to "meet people", monthly reviews or even single meetings.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Absolutely so. What are they supposed to be sacrificing their comfort and profit to achieve? Article says 61,000 people in Europe died in the 2022 heatwaves. Something like 60,000,000 people die annually (I'd guess about 6 million in Europe) [0]. How much comfort and profit were we meant to sacrifice to prevent that rounding error? Air pollution from coal plants that could directly kill people is a better argument for phasing them out than these heat waves. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year
    - myshpa 3y ago
      It's a global problem. Time of Europe will come soon enough.
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      More significantly, about 10x the number that die of heat-related causes die of cold-related causes. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I think, it is rather people not wanting to sacrifice their profits who convince others that their comfort is at stake, that block every meaningful move at at least mitigating climate change...
    - blooalien 3y ago
      This right here is the real truth of the matter. We didn't have to give up a ton of comfort (if we'd taken this seriously enough decades ago when we should have), although now that we've put it off as long as we have, we're all gonna give up a ton of comforts before it's over, and there's no avoiding it now. This is the result of us allowing our "leaders" (and their corporate owners) to run rampant doing as they please for far too long, and it's now likely much too late to avoid the worst possible outcome. I have zero faith that humanity will try to "go out with some dignity".
  - Fricken 3y ago
    If scientists observed people shovelling dirt into a large hole, and predicted that over time the hole would fill should people keep shovelling dirt into it, we wouldn't be seeing the same kinds of mental gymnastics as we do when scientists predict that pumping greenhouse gasses into to the sky causes things to get warmer.
- gmuslera 3y ago
  With COVID you develop symptoms and realize that you and the people you met almost a week after you got the disease and started to spread it to others. With this is the same, but with years and decades, by the time you notice visible enough symptoms it may be too late to stop all that is coming in the delivery train, but you can still have some margin to mitigate some of the damage. It’s not a system with so direct action and immediate reaction, things build up, accumulate, trigger feedback loops, and that in a scale that we won’t be able to stop by delaying action.
wiz21c 3y ago
This merely gets 4 comments son HN whereas a 100th nail in the coffin of privacy by Google gets 300+. I really wonder what kind of people HN'er are sometimes.
- megous 3y ago
  Climate change is also a well beaten horse...
  - timeon 3y ago
    Still, impact is different.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    It would be a more interesting conversation if we were actually doing something about it. As it is we've been rehashing the same talking points for 30 years while global emissions reach new heights. https://youtu.be/ee6-sI9rdtA https://youtu.be/ee6-sI9rdtA
- ThalesX 3y ago
  I gave my, rather contrarian perpective and got downvoted pretty fast. So much for conversation on the topic. I guess HN'ers are not immune from "downvote === I don't agree" and from groupthink.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Down voting is a normal thing on HN, even mentioned in the guidelines...
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    I'd mostly wear it as a badge of honor so long as you were sincere in your message, it mostly means you went against the grain. In other words, you participated and ruffled some feathers...good for you.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    You're setting up a strawman argument between continuing to burn fossil fuels and 'degrowth' and keeping the industrializing world in poverty. People are downvoting you because there's a third option which just gets aggressive with renewables like wind and solar because they're the cheapest. The whole idea that there's this inevitable tradeoff between staying on fossil fuels and having to tighten-our-belts isn't relevant any more.
nologic01 3y ago
We are in a bind. Sustainability is a social, economic, political and emotional challenge of major proportions - maybe even unprecedented in human history. Understandably, people don't want to give up their existing comforts and habits. Understandably, people that don't have these comforts feel its only fair that they too get access to them. Understandably, people don't want to see wind or solar parks or other intrusive installations in their backyard. Understandably, complex and less that 100% certain science tackling long-term effects and phenomena will be questioned by people with limited trust to institutions of tarnished authority. People just want the magic tree of energy driven consumption to go on as this is the dominant model of a "fulfilling" life. What is brewing is a toxic cocktail of denial, blame shifting, panic, snake oil salesmen, speculators etc. We certainly haven't seen the end of history.
- timeon 3y ago
  > Understandably > Understandably > Understandably > Understandably > People just want the magic tree Most probably do. I don't. You do.
- haizhung 3y ago
  What if having a comfortable life is not the best way to live a life? What about a life with purpose and accomplishment? If you frame it like that, climate change could be even seen as some sort of salvation : Soon, it’ll be the uniting “enemy” that humanity has to face and beat if it wants to continue to exist. We have to cooperate, and we have to become better beings to overcome this tremendous challenge. And if you overcome it, and leave a better world to your children, is that not purposeful?
  - myshpa 3y ago
    What If We Create A Better World For Nothing? https://solar-power-now.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/betterworldfornothing.jpg https://solar-power-now.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bette...
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    But this is in conflict with the dogmatic religion of "progress" and technological accomplishment and is a highly taboo point of view to take. Especially when there are techno capitalists in the room. Soon, someone will beat you over the head wih arguments like "you're a hypocrite for using computer to make a post on HN" and that you should be grateful for your air conditioner (which I don't use) and that if you lived 70 years ago your head would've fallen off by now, etc etc...
ThalesX 3y ago
Eeh. I'm currently experiencing 47 degrees but due to human innovation I'm inside with my air conditioners turned on, and even though it's adding to the problem, it's rather comfortable. > Gareth Redmond-King, at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit in the UK, said: “As we keep burning fossil fuels, we fuel ever worse climate impacts. It won’t stop until we cut emissions to net zero. Politicians who attempt to delay [climate] measures are locking in more of these extremes.” To be honest, this kind of extremism is turning me off from the whole climate movement. Emissions are never going to be cut to net zero. We have billions of people that still need to industrialize. People are not just gonna roll over and turn into cavemen. We have a global trading network that needs to be kept up. Politicians and corporations are not gonna do anything about it, maybe a meaningless tax. I think the only way out of this mess is innovation, not net zero emissions.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  > I think the only way out of this mess is innovation, not net zero emissions Turns out we already have nuclear power, so there is little need for innovation to get to zero emissions. Just need to get over our collective irrational fears and get building.
  - ThalesX 3y ago
    > Just need to get over our collective irrational fears and get building. Even the baby steps we're making towards this are leaps compared to the degrowth crowd solutions.
- simmerup 3y ago
  The hacker news perspective; the people dying of heat exhaustion in India just need to invest in better A/C. I guess we’ll end up A/C’ing the fields of dying crops too?
  - ThalesX 3y ago
    > The hacker news perspective; the people dying of heat exhaustion in India just need to invest in better A/C. This is your interpretation of my perspective. I can do that also; the people dying of heat exhaustion in India should just decouple from the global trade network and go live in caves like in the olden days. > I guess we’ll end up A/C’ing the fields of dying crops too? Maybe? Or engineer heat resistant crops. Or figure out a different way to feed billions of people. If you think the only solution to climate change is net zero emissions on a global level, I'm not jealous of your imagination.
dsaDSADsass 3y ago
The link to the original analysis ("Analysis by the World Weather Attribution group") returns a Page not found. Reading through their other material, it's not clear to me how they are able to make such a definitive statement. Statistics and modelling are not my strong suits though, so hopefully someone can chime in.
- reportgunner 3y ago
  There is a typo in that link, extra space in the word "made" -july-2023-mad e-much-more- https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-heat-in-north-america-europe-and-china-in-july-2023-mad https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-heat-in-nort... e-much-more-likely-by-climate-change/
rich_sasha 3y ago
People who believe it already do. People who don't just won't. At best, like antivaxxers dying on ICU, will ask for the vaccine 30 mins before they expire. It's terrible but I kind of don't want to think about it anymore, and this Guardian article is only preaching to the converted.
- myshpa 3y ago
  To solve the problem we must first acknowledge the problem. It may be already too late, but trying it won't make it worse (maybe not for you, for that I'm sorry :)
traveler01 3y ago
Makes the move by Germany of closing down nuclear plants look even dumber. A country that had literally dozens of nuclear plants is now one of the biggest producer of CO2 emissions. Real geniuses.
nec4b 3y ago
Are lack of global coldwaves also result of climate crises?

67 points by myshpa 3y ago

It’s always good to be sure and double-check periodically but it sure is tiring that we’re still kind of in the proof phase and not fully in the do something phase.

javcasas 3y ago
You know, there is a significant amount of people that don't want to sacrifice anything of their comfort or profits, that expected to die of old age before this happened. But nature doesn't wait for petty plans to complete.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  100 percent. In the US there are still people who don't believe COVID 19 existed or that it took out over a million people. Or that the US population is <400 million people and that semi trucks filled with dead Americans across the country was ever a problem. Propaganda makes it much much easier for bad faith industrial actors to sabotage an entire country, or I suppose even the world. Pump and dumping civilization has got to be an extraterrestrial meme or something...
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  It's a small part of society that is flying to tropical islands for vacation. Electorally insignificant if democracy actually worked as it was feared. Even in my Western rich country a lot of people have never been in a airplane.
  - glimshe 3y ago
    It's hard to ask workers to stop flying during their discounted vacations when executives are flying to "meet people", monthly reviews or even single meetings.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Absolutely so. What are they supposed to be sacrificing their comfort and profit to achieve? Article says 61,000 people in Europe died in the 2022 heatwaves. Something like 60,000,000 people die annually (I'd guess about 6 million in Europe) [0]. How much comfort and profit were we meant to sacrifice to prevent that rounding error? Air pollution from coal plants that could directly kill people is a better argument for phasing them out than these heat waves. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year
  - myshpa 3y ago
    It's a global problem. Time of Europe will come soon enough.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    More significantly, about 10x the number that die of heat-related causes die of cold-related causes. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
- hef19898 3y ago
  I think, it is rather people not wanting to sacrifice their profits who convince others that their comfort is at stake, that block every meaningful move at at least mitigating climate change...
  - blooalien 3y ago
    This right here is the real truth of the matter. We didn't have to give up a ton of comfort (if we'd taken this seriously enough decades ago when we should have), although now that we've put it off as long as we have, we're all gonna give up a ton of comforts before it's over, and there's no avoiding it now. This is the result of us allowing our "leaders" (and their corporate owners) to run rampant doing as they please for far too long, and it's now likely much too late to avoid the worst possible outcome. I have zero faith that humanity will try to "go out with some dignity".
- Fricken 3y ago
  If scientists observed people shovelling dirt into a large hole, and predicted that over time the hole would fill should people keep shovelling dirt into it, we wouldn't be seeing the same kinds of mental gymnastics as we do when scientists predict that pumping greenhouse gasses into to the sky causes things to get warmer.
gmuslera 3y ago
With COVID you develop symptoms and realize that you and the people you met almost a week after you got the disease and started to spread it to others. With this is the same, but with years and decades, by the time you notice visible enough symptoms it may be too late to stop all that is coming in the delivery train, but you can still have some margin to mitigate some of the damage. It’s not a system with so direct action and immediate reaction, things build up, accumulate, trigger feedback loops, and that in a scale that we won’t be able to stop by delaying action.

wiz21c 3y ago

This merely gets 4 comments son HN whereas a 100th nail in the coffin of privacy by Google gets 300+. I really wonder what kind of people HN'er are sometimes.

megous 3y ago
Climate change is also a well beaten horse...
- timeon 3y ago
  Still, impact is different.
- Fricken 3y ago
  It would be a more interesting conversation if we were actually doing something about it. As it is we've been rehashing the same talking points for 30 years while global emissions reach new heights. https://youtu.be/ee6-sI9rdtA https://youtu.be/ee6-sI9rdtA
ThalesX 3y ago
I gave my, rather contrarian perpective and got downvoted pretty fast. So much for conversation on the topic. I guess HN'ers are not immune from "downvote === I don't agree" and from groupthink.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Down voting is a normal thing on HN, even mentioned in the guidelines...
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I'd mostly wear it as a badge of honor so long as you were sincere in your message, it mostly means you went against the grain. In other words, you participated and ruffled some feathers...good for you.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  You're setting up a strawman argument between continuing to burn fossil fuels and 'degrowth' and keeping the industrializing world in poverty. People are downvoting you because there's a third option which just gets aggressive with renewables like wind and solar because they're the cheapest. The whole idea that there's this inevitable tradeoff between staying on fossil fuels and having to tighten-our-belts isn't relevant any more.

nologic01 3y ago

We are in a bind. Sustainability is a social, economic, political and emotional challenge of major proportions - maybe even unprecedented in human history. Understandably, people don't want to give up their existing comforts and habits. Understandably, people that don't have these comforts feel its only fair that they too get access to them. Understandably, people don't want to see wind or solar parks or other intrusive installations in their backyard. Understandably, complex and less that 100% certain science tackling long-term effects and phenomena will be questioned by people with limited trust to institutions of tarnished authority. People just want the magic tree of energy driven consumption to go on as this is the dominant model of a "fulfilling" life. What is brewing is a toxic cocktail of denial, blame shifting, panic, snake oil salesmen, speculators etc. We certainly haven't seen the end of history.

timeon 3y ago
> Understandably > Understandably > Understandably > Understandably > People just want the magic tree Most probably do. I don't. You do.
haizhung 3y ago
What if having a comfortable life is not the best way to live a life? What about a life with purpose and accomplishment? If you frame it like that, climate change could be even seen as some sort of salvation : Soon, it’ll be the uniting “enemy” that humanity has to face and beat if it wants to continue to exist. We have to cooperate, and we have to become better beings to overcome this tremendous challenge. And if you overcome it, and leave a better world to your children, is that not purposeful?
- myshpa 3y ago
  What If We Create A Better World For Nothing? https://solar-power-now.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/betterworldfornothing.jpg https://solar-power-now.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bette...
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  But this is in conflict with the dogmatic religion of "progress" and technological accomplishment and is a highly taboo point of view to take. Especially when there are techno capitalists in the room. Soon, someone will beat you over the head wih arguments like "you're a hypocrite for using computer to make a post on HN" and that you should be grateful for your air conditioner (which I don't use) and that if you lived 70 years ago your head would've fallen off by now, etc etc...

ThalesX 3y ago

Eeh. I'm currently experiencing 47 degrees but due to human innovation I'm inside with my air conditioners turned on, and even though it's adding to the problem, it's rather comfortable. > Gareth Redmond-King, at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit in the UK, said: “As we keep burning fossil fuels, we fuel ever worse climate impacts. It won’t stop until we cut emissions to net zero. Politicians who attempt to delay [climate] measures are locking in more of these extremes.” To be honest, this kind of extremism is turning me off from the whole climate movement. Emissions are never going to be cut to net zero. We have billions of people that still need to industrialize. People are not just gonna roll over and turn into cavemen. We have a global trading network that needs to be kept up. Politicians and corporations are not gonna do anything about it, maybe a meaningless tax. I think the only way out of this mess is innovation, not net zero emissions.

mpweiher 3y ago
> I think the only way out of this mess is innovation, not net zero emissions Turns out we already have nuclear power, so there is little need for innovation to get to zero emissions. Just need to get over our collective irrational fears and get building.
- ThalesX 3y ago
  > Just need to get over our collective irrational fears and get building. Even the baby steps we're making towards this are leaps compared to the degrowth crowd solutions.
simmerup 3y ago
The hacker news perspective; the people dying of heat exhaustion in India just need to invest in better A/C. I guess we’ll end up A/C’ing the fields of dying crops too?
- ThalesX 3y ago
  > The hacker news perspective; the people dying of heat exhaustion in India just need to invest in better A/C. This is your interpretation of my perspective. I can do that also; the people dying of heat exhaustion in India should just decouple from the global trade network and go live in caves like in the olden days. > I guess we’ll end up A/C’ing the fields of dying crops too? Maybe? Or engineer heat resistant crops. Or figure out a different way to feed billions of people. If you think the only solution to climate change is net zero emissions on a global level, I'm not jealous of your imagination.

dsaDSADsass 3y ago

The link to the original analysis ("Analysis by the World Weather Attribution group") returns a Page not found. Reading through their other material, it's not clear to me how they are able to make such a definitive statement. Statistics and modelling are not my strong suits though, so hopefully someone can chime in.

reportgunner 3y ago
There is a typo in that link, extra space in the word "made" -july-2023-mad e-much-more- https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-heat-in-north-america-europe-and-china-in-july-2023-mad https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-heat-in-nort... e-much-more-likely-by-climate-change/

rich_sasha 3y ago

People who believe it already do. People who don't just won't. At best, like antivaxxers dying on ICU, will ask for the vaccine 30 mins before they expire. It's terrible but I kind of don't want to think about it anymore, and this Guardian article is only preaching to the converted.

myshpa 3y ago
To solve the problem we must first acknowledge the problem. It may be already too late, but trying it won't make it worse (maybe not for you, for that I'm sorry :)

traveler01 3y ago

Makes the move by Germany of closing down nuclear plants look even dumber. A country that had literally dozens of nuclear plants is now one of the biggest producer of CO2 emissions. Real geniuses.

nec4b 3y ago

Are lack of global coldwaves also result of climate crises?