More microbursts are coming | Hacker News Reader

More microbursts are coming

bloomberg.com

149 pointsshawndumas144 comments

Reminds me of this essay I read yesterday, which painted a pretty startling picture of how insane things could get:

http://www.flassbeck-economics.com/how-climate-change-is-rap...

Here's a snippet showing how rapidly predictions are escalating:

* Late 2007: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announces that the planet will see a one degree Celsius temperature increase due to climate change by 2100.

* Late 2008: The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research predicts a 2C increase by 2100.

* Mid-2009: The U.N. Environment Programme predicts a 3.5C increase by 2100. Such an increase would remove habitat for human beings on this planet, as nearly all the plankton in the oceans would be destroyed, and associated temperature swings would kill off many land plants. Humans have never lived on a planet at 3.5C above baseline.

* October 2009: The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research releases an updated prediction, suggesting a 4C temperature increase by 2060.

* November 2009: The Global Carbon Project, which monitors the global carbon cycle, and the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a climate science report, predict 6C and 7C temperature increases, respectively, by 2100.

* December 2010: The U.N. Environment Programme predicts up to a 5C increase by 2050.

* 2012: The conservative International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook report for that year states that we are on track to reach a 2C increase by 2017.

* November 2013: The International Energy Agency predicts a 3.5C increase by 2035.

humanity in general is in deep shit

and yet, we waste (and make no mistake, it is a complete waste) our best minds and the bulk of our resources on making people click ads or other similar excursions in nihilism

what is needed is a multinational manhattan project for climate change... instead, we move the deck chairs around on the titanic. it's clear we can expect no leadership from governments or corporations on this issue.

The problem is that it's very hard to get people to give a shit about macro problems like climate change. People generally own care about a narrow set of issues between the age of 20 and the 55/60 years most of us survive after that.

Another problem is that democracies are poorly setup for solving this problem. Democracy responds mostly to the needs of now without concern for the future (different politicians problem, different generation etc, kick the football down the field because someone else can deal with it once I've got mine.)

So yea, we're fucked. This along with the coming robot/AI revolution we are likely to see in the middle or later part of the century creates a pretty bleak future for human beings.

I'm a computer scientist and software engineer with experience at some of the largest companies whose businesses are about making people click on ads. I now work as an independent contractor and part time on my own startups. Give me a living wage and tell me how I can help and I'm in. (srs)

I think there are a lot of people who might feel the same way.

step one is gaining political power, so find a campaign team and run on the platform of fixing climate change

step one will take a good while

then, step two: carbon tax at a rapacious rate. this will likely cause economic meltdown, which is unavoidable if we want to survive.

step three is developing active methods of scrubbing our atmosphere of the shit we've polluted it with

inventing that will take a while also

anyways, let's get going.

I feel the same way.

As history has shown, when presented with an existential threat to the group, humans are often willing to drop their immediate plans and sign up to fight. Perhaps we're wired that way.

Bring on UBI. And bring on a global 'war economy' to transition us to a zero carbon energy infrastructure.

>And bring on a global 'war economy' to transition us to a zero carbon energy infrastructure.

yes, this is what is needed. unfortunately, the imaginations of our "leaders" are far too small-- too small to see beyond the horizon of their next election.

if we want to continue existing, they've gotta go.

> if we want to continue existing, they've gotta go.

what do you mean by that?

we can't afford bureaucrats prevaricating and ultimately doing nothing on the issue of climate change; they have to be removed from power such that we can effect a future where we survive.

Overthrowing democratically elected governments is not a carbon neutral process.

While I understand where that notion comes from, I don't see an answer.

Generally the people who are in favour of "removing people from power" aren't the ones who like to take part in the arduous and complex task of rebuilding governance, which is the real issue.

The overthrowing is easy. The making-it-better-afterwards is so hard, you should skip the overthrowing step and work at that problem right away.

Sadly there are no fire-and-forget answers for issues like this.

Basic Income Guarantee?

That's a great point for basic income, but I don't think it wouldn't be the main factor, behind a variation on apathy like we currently have.

Let's re-think whether those people are really our best minds.

Manhattan Project, and similar massive infrastructure/engineering/scientific developments, are possible because there is a single government that can drive them.

To do something like that on a multinational scale, you'll need One World Government. Otherwise you'll just have a bunch of nations bickering over who is paying for what, and who is gaining what in return, without a final arbiter to break up ties and deadlocks and say "okay, you all had a say, now we're doing it this way".

America can reduce its carbon footprint by 5%, save 300,000 lives/year, and save about $400 Billion dollars a year without spending a nickel.

If the 66% of the American population that's obese or overweight would just stop overeating, all of the above could happen overnight.

Such a great idea. There was also a recent proposal to just breed humans to be smaller: http://www.smatthewliao.com/2012/02/09/human-engineering-and...

You missed the point. The majority of Americans _eat too much_. Why can't they just eat less and save the planet?

Well, why can't they?

(That's not rhetorical.)

[reading before posting, apologies for a rambling reply]

Personally, I see it as a very similar question as "why don't people just stop taking drug X" (to avoid side arguments, substitute X for a drug you see significantly altering people's lives for what you see as negatively).

Weight loss is typically very simple, but that gets confused with easy. really quite minor behavioural differences can result in fairly extreme weight changes over time.

Perhaps it's simply that people are prioritising short term things over long term. Short term the beer I'm drinking is nice, relaxing and great. Long term it's negative since it's at least taking me over my calorie limit for the day.

The risks are vague and hard to intrinsically grasp, the benefits are simple and local.

I think there are also significant effects of what people expect. With so many people overweight, what people expect has changed. I don't have statistics, but I've heard a large number of people complain about their families declaring them "anorexic" while still being quite overweight or even obese. If you're surrounded by people telling you to have more, having an expectation that people should be larger, and many external sources telling you that losing weight is complex (requiring weird and extreme approaches)

Fundamentally, we've not really evolved to deal with an environment of near infinite food available through very little activity (not suggesting work isn't hard for many, but we can sit down all day and easily get several times our required calorie intake). We have evolved in environments where we needed to get as much as we could from our surroundings, and it was hard to come by.

Food is also one of the most common ways of dealing with stress, depression, or all sorts of mental disorders, minor and major. It's readily available and socially acceptable, and most people associate good feelings with many foods that are particularly high in calories. For some people, it's one of the only consistently rewarding things in their day.

Yeah, because eating less is easy. If only overweight people knew that it would have a small impact on global warming, I'm sure they'd suddenly be able to cut back, even though personal health, physical attractiveness, and day to day comfort haven't been enough to get them to eat less. But yeah, a small potential impact on global warming will probably do it.

Because the commercial food business is all-powerful in Washington.

and why don't all (other) addicts just stop being addicts?

Given the chance, humanity naturally overuses... which is a problem, but not a wholly American problem.

How much is too much? Not everybody prioritizes health, enjoyment, etc. in the same way. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that our personal values are shared by all.

If you were simply expressing your opinion, that's perfectly fine. I only wrote this because it appeared to me as through you were attempting to portray what you said as an objective fact -- which it is not.

An easy measure would be: if all people on the planet would consume resources just like the people in a particular country, the number of planets needed to feed and entertain them should still be less than one. By that measure, I think Europe is somewhere between 2 and 3 and the US is beyond 4.

That measure doesn't deal with over population, which is a huge thing, and more likely to run out of control than consumption per person in a country. Although individual consumption is important as well.

For instance New Delhi is far more polluted than any US city, although energy consumption per capita may be 16 times more in the US than India.

In my opinion a measure like energy or resource use per square kilometer of land is a much better measure. Although it has its problems as well, such as land quality varying greatly between different areas, which would change the number of people an area of land could support in a sustainable way.

Sources: Population and energy usage per country http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/population_energy . This uses Population Reference Bureau; 2012 World Population Data Sheet for population information and uses U.S. Energy Information Administration 2012 for energy use information. This is on the bottom of the page linked. For the Pollution index, it is Pollution Index 2016 Mid Year http://www.numbeo.com/pollution/rankings.jsp .

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in the slightest.

I wonder if those estimates attempt to account for supply and demand...

There's lots of "modest proposals" out there that would be just as effective as yours. Want to cut 5% of human energy consumption? Round up 1% of Americans and just shoot them. Mission accomplished! And why stop at only 5%? If we identified the 10% most intelligent existing humans and euthanize the rest, all our problems (aside from moral and ethical topics) are solved.

Wow! So telling people not to overeat--to save resources--is the same as rounding up people and shooting them! You YCombinator people sure are nuts!

Yet you'll gladly tell people to drive less, or to change their lightbulbs to LEDs, things that could either greatly inconvenience people or cost money. Eating less is free!

> So telling people not to overeat--to save resources--is the same as rounding up people and shooting them

Yes, they're both equally ridiculous impractical and unrealistic solutions to a problem. That's the point he's making, you seem to be missing it.

It is a red herring.

It reminds me how soda companies shift blame on their customers: "exercise more, don't blame our sugar water". Actually, what and how much you eat/drink is much more important than the exercise, to fight obesity.

Another (BS) example: "shower less to save water" -- compare the agricultural water consumption (giant) vs. the household needs (negligible by comparison).

If a corporation destroys the planet; its products should include the price today (e.g., via a tax): the problem fixes itself.

Nobody ever said exercise more. (That may be bad advice for obese people too, because it will make them hungrier and they may injure their already strained joints). Plus, it won't help the environment. (That's the subject here!)

Just eat less!

In case you are not playing stupid intentionally, my point: blame corporations, not people: tax corporations that contribute to the global warming today (that may have a real effect even if it is almost impossible to implement -- it should be easier with each more frequent natural disaster) instead of suggesting "eat less" to the whole population (that won't have nearly the same effect and it is even more impossible to implement).

He actually has a point. While corporations have their share of responsibility, so do individuals who choose the quick rewards of sugar/sodium/fat.

Not that asking an addict to quit is really helpful...

I propose we eat 300k fat people each year.

Agree! Also raising beef uses a huge amount of water and energy compared to supporting a vegetarian diet. Also, cow and pig farts might have an adverse affect.

When you lose weight, guess where the "lost" weight goes? Most people guess incorrectly that you lose it via urination, defecation, or sweat.

Where it actually goes is into exhaled CO2.

So your proposal is that to fight global warming, fat Americans should massively release CO2 into the atmosphere? :-)

You raise an interesting point! How much carbon could be captured by obese humans? Assuming they don't decompose? It would be some interesting math!

Reminds me that there have been some strange studies looking at the correlation of obesity and climate change. There was at least one presumably quack study that implied the obesity epidemic across all species could be a very weird natural reaction to increased carbon in the atmosphere and that carbon capture could actually be the real subconscious intent and that it may be a causal relationship.

(I don't think that is actually the case, but it's a fun weird theory to think about. Much like the FSM theory that lack of pirates has driven global warming.)

So the International Energy Agency predicts that by 2035 humans may disappear? What about more recent predictions?

The IEA may not sure the view of the author that "such an increase would remove habitat for human beings on this planet".

The current https://www.iea.org/publications/scenariosandprojections/ claims that "business as usual" would yield almost 4C by 2100 and 5.5C long term. Not sure how that squares with claim by author or which scenario they were referring to.

The big question I have with many of the scenarios (I think IPCC ones fall into this camp) is how much worse they will get when methane clathrates release is included. I'm not too familiar with the literature, maybe others know how well clathrate release is understood and what contribution it makes under various scenarios.

Picking and choosing predictions in this manner to make it look like they have all been steadily increasing is misleading.

Some of the initial predictions in the late 80s were for up to 6c by 2100.

The last IPCC report I saw predicted an increase of between 0.3C and 0.7C by 2035 with around 0.4C being the most likely. There is little support for numbers anywhere near as high as 3.5C by 2035.

> Picking and choosing predictions in this manner to make it look like they have all been steadily increasing is misleading.

Those predictions are all sourced in the original article. As you say, though, pointing out a trend in the predictions from a set of scenarios doesn't on its own tell you anything.

> The last IPCC report I read predicted an increase of between 0.3C and 0.7C by 2035 with around 0.4C being the most likely. Nowhere near the the 3.5C by 2035. There is very little consensus for numbers that high.

Was that the fifth assessment report?

And where does the consensus 'currently' cluster for 2035? What climate models would be included? Under what emissions scenarios? I'm not too familiar with the state of the current literature.

Here is a graph with various model predictions towards 2100, under a "business as usual" scenario. As you can see, even the most pessimistic models are below 2C by 2050. I have no idea where 3.5C by 2035 came from, no models predict such a shocking rate. (We were only up ~0.7C over the last century.) Also note that none of these models reproduce the last decade's global warming hiatus; given that constraint, temperature predictions for 2100 will be slightly cooler.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predicti...

This discussion just confuses me completely. I'm a scientist (of the mathematical variety) and absolutely of the thought that human-made climate change is the largest current threat to human civilization.

But here we have at least seven different claims that vary wildly, from "catastrophe practically guaranteed" to "this problem can be handled in a straightforward way if we focus".

Given that I'm not a climate scientist, who should I listen to?

Some have criticized the IPCC report as too conservative/optimistic, but it is as close to a consensus document as exists.

Thanks, that's helpful. Is the IPCC criticism gathered in one place somewhere, or would it require reading a lot of different sources?

My understanding is that there's a fairly wide range of assumptions that can underlie a given model, which depend on what we will actually do about this. For example, how do you estimate CO2 output over the course of the next century? Do you assume that it remains at current levels, or keeps growing at the same rate it has been so far, or that whatever treaties were signed that promise to reduce it actually will?

Just listen to whoever says the thing you want to hear.

But keep this in mind: sometimes people say things to advance their own agenda.

The person you responded to asked a serious question. Your answer is in no way helpful or insightful.

I'm not optimistic. As climate becomes less favorable, the rich will focus capital, energy and resources on mitigation. For themselves, I mean. The poor will just starve and die.

Which is no different than how things have worked at any point in the past. And yet civilization advances.

Yes, except thanks to the wild card that is technology, seemingly towards its own destruction.

No, they will move towards the rich (and cooler) countries. They already do. what we are seeing on the coastd of Europe is only the humble beginning. Wait until the Arab countries become uninhabitable, then 500 million prople will have to look for a new place.

These lands aren't already mostly uninhabitable, being deserts? Most people in Egypt live near the river system, and in UAE they live on the coast. These countries are already much hotter than typical western countries, yet many rich live there. I think it would take more than "a little too hot" to make them move out, such as specific business reasons like no more oil.

How will the climate become less favorable for the rich? The areas most affected are disproportionally third world countries. In the west, food prices might rise some, but the rich won't care. Sea levels will rise, but it will be happening slowly (up to 1000 years for Greenland to melt completely), and governments will be mitigating that, so the rich won't be paying much there either. If you live in London, Paris, Rome, even on Manhattan, the 7 meter sea level rise won't mean anything. It won't do anything. Long Island and Jersey will need significantly mitigation though, as will areas of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, like the Googleplex, but we have hundreds of years to build those dikes, and we will easily be able to predict when and where they are needed.

It's not just water level that affects quality of life. If, say, LA and SF become as hot as Dubai, I would imagine a lot of wealthy people who currently live there would start seeking a more comfortable place to live in. South Europe would be similarly affected.

Not disagreeing, but Dubai is not a good example since Dubai is as hot as Dubai, and a lot of extremely wealthy people still live there.

True. But they mostly live indoors, except at night. And it takes a lot of energy for air conditioning! See http://gulfnews.com/business/economy/uae-s-per-capita-energy...

How many of those people are wealthy by virtue of being the citizens there? How many people who are _not_ from UAE choose to live there?

Once aquifers are sucked dry, farming in semi-arid areas will crash. Rich will spend more for water, food, air conditioning, security, etc. Maybe they'll decide to move. But yes, they'll be fine.

Why will global warming cause the aquifers to be sucked dry? On the contrary, don't we expect global warming to cause more precipitation, thus less load on aquifers?

While it's true that there will be more precipitation overall, models predict that the distribution will change. For example, northern US and Canada will be wetter, especially in winter, but central US will be dryer, especially in summer. The Ogallala aquifer is already depleted.

There's something odd about the list of escalating predictions, this one in particular:

"November 2013: The International Energy Agency predicts a 3.5C increase by 2035."

If you follow the link, it points to a Christian Science Monitor article from 2010 (not 2013), which confirms that the IEA did make such a prediction, but in 2010.

Also, this line: "2012: The conservative International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook report for that year states that we are on track to reach a 2C increase by 2017".

Are we still on track?

Yup, that is odd. IEA appears to be off the rails here. Making the adjective "conservative" a strange choice.

As a farmer/rancher, I'm happy not to live in the "1930s" region of that graph. I've never understood why people in North America complain about rain. The land we have that is vulnerable to flooding is tiny in comparison to that which is vulnerable to desertification.

Just curious, are you a father/rancher and a software dev? How did you come across hn?

Haven't you heard about the dust-up about DRM on tractors? Tech is everywhere, even the unglamorous places

I'm of the opinion that the metropolis is the unglamorous place.

You should see the tech on a modern farm. Self driving farm equipment, drones that scout for deer in the fields and scare them off so they don't get reaped, satellite analysis of fields to analyze the best crop locations and disease/pests. Solar and wind electricity, water filtration and geo cooling/warming.

Honestly a not-poor farm makes most city neighborhoods look like the third world in terms of tech.

That's heavy precipitation chart, not overall precipitation. Heavy precipitation can flatten your crop.

Change in precipitation is not same all in US. Some areas become very dry, some others get more than enough.

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/83000/8362...

The time period isn't indicated on that map, but since I'd like to see the dairy industry leave Arizona and move back to the Midwest where it naturally belongs, I frankly don't see a problem there. The sooner they have to stop irrigating their alfalfa, the better.

No American farmer would need a chart to be thankful not to face 1930s' conditions.

According to the URL, it appears to be 1991-2012 changes in precipitation. I suspect the filename is trustworthy (based solely on it coming from NASA) but it might not be.

Flooding in Houston over the past 40 years has had more to do with development and flood control projects than changes in rainfall.

I really hate when people try to use Houston as an example of the effects of climate change, the behavior of economic clusters, or the effects of zoning. Most of what I've read shows people really have no clue about how those things actually work here.

> roughly one in ten record-breaking events would not have occurred without climate change

So 90% of these record breaking events are normal. Then why all the hyperbole? Oh right, saying "rain bomb" instead of "microburst" gets more clicks.

Because we've moved the climate in one direction or another by 10% already, and we've never polluted so heavily before. That's pretty significant.

That stat is also normalized over the past 30 years. Change is accelerating, so it would be more than 10% over the past 10 years.

This does not equate to a 10% change in climate, whatever that even means.

> Change is accelerating...

What change specifically is accelerating? Your base assumption that things are unquestionably getting worse is unscientific.

I don't... what?

Anyway...

Since the new thing is to yell at any post that doesn't provide a link, here - change is accelerating: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/global-w...

But this isn't news. And it's all scientific.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-study-finds-eart...

Says the same thing as the article I linked.

"Global surface temperatures in 2015 shattered all previous records by a wide margin, the report shows, sitting 0.76C above the 1961-90 average. Temperatures over land, over the ocean and in the top 700 and 2,000 metres of the ocean all set new records."

Here's what that looks like on the ground. Ellicott City, MD had a flash flood last night. The Patapsco River rose 14 feet in an hour and a half. The area has flooded before, but during hurricanes, for which there's more advance warning.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/severe-flash-flood-stri...

Was that considered a microburst?

Unclear. One site says yes.[1] This just happened last night, so accurate analysis may be a few days away.

[1] http://metroforensics.blogspot.com/2016/07/microbursts-cause...

I highly recommend the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond on the matter. It is a highly detailed account of what happened in the past when societies collapsed. Most if the time they consumed more resources than what their environment would provide. Many of them then failed, wars and genocides occured that reduced the population to below sustainable levels, or people sinply starved. Others managed to turn around and started to manage resources properly. There's a talk by the author on Youtube that summarizes the book. https://youtu.be/wpkS1xym0HA

American cities need to learn a thing or two from Tokyo. 10 inches of rain in one day is a common occurrence in Japan during the summer, so they are prepared to handle it.

You've just described a necessary consequence of uncontrolled climate change: having to change the way we live to cope with the effects.

And it's incredibly expensive.

And also a luxury of the relative rich west.

Yeah, that's sort of the point. This kind of weather hasn't been happening, so infrastructure hasn't been built to handle it.

For infrastructure that will last 50 years, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to build it to withstand events that happen roughly every 500 years. Of course things like nuclear plants and dams have to be built to withstand the most severe events, but not every culvert on a country road.

And why Atlanta shuts down when there's an 1/4" of snow.

Even in northern states they don't bother having the equipment needed to rapidly respond to a big storm. Detroit gets massively shut down every year or two, and lots of counties in Michigan take a couple of days to really clear most roads from a big storm.

In fairness it was the ice, which is a whole different beast.

The counter argument is that it's cheaper to do things once than twice. Laying a one foot drainage pipe, then digging it up and replacing with three foot pipe, is way more expensive than just laying three foot pipe to start. Too many public works projects seem to be built right at the edge of confidence.

Let's not forget that public works are generally underfunded and have been for years. people want infrastructure projects but I don't think there's a lobby for it.

When I wrote that I was thinking of entire sections of roadway that washed away in northern Wisconsin when it rained 10 inches in 12 hours a few weeks ago.

My guess is that they should still wait until they wash away again before they build them to withstand such events.

http://media.graytvinc.com/images/800*600/iron+co+5.jpg

Doing things once is how you get suburban sprawl that everyone here loves to hate. Drive around some parts of the south and you'll see that the space set aside for infrastructure is only about 50% utilized. There's two and four lane roads with one and two lane widths of grass shoulder between them and the culverts and enough space for a culvert twice as wide before you have to move the sidewalk.

I'm a big fan of leaving room for expansion but everything is a tradeoff to some degree.

Is that really so terrible? A road with some grass along it?

Most northeast cities can handle it, although combined sewer systems mean that heavy rain leads to heavy pollution from raw sewage.

According to this Tokyo is now prepared to handled 50mm/hour rainfall. There are plans to increase this to 75mm/hour level, but that will take around 20 years. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/21/national/tokyo-h...

Handling for example 10 inches (25cm) of rain in half day is quite a challenge on buildup area. Think about a quite small plot of 100m x 100m. From that you get already 1001000.25 = 2500m3 of water and in cities you have square kilometers of paved area where the water needs to be taken somewhere.

In somebody is interested in how they are handling this in Tokyo, here's some information: https://japangasm.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-underground-w... and http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/31/world/asia/japan-flood-tun...

When last year was the hottest year on record, and this year is on track to be the hottest year on record, globally that is a cause for concern.

Pretty sure Las Vegas would crumble if it ever got a macro burst. Many streets flood with seemingly any rainfall here. When they do flood, large rocks and debris wash onto the streets.

Los Cabos in mexico rarely gets rain and they do get floods whenever they get more than a couple inches of rain. at least thats what the locals told me last time I visited

The article questions "when the next one is coming", but it already came, last night in Ellicott City, MD. The whole downtown was wiped out (in an economic sense) by a flash flood caused by six inches of rain falling in three hours.

I experienced what was eventually classified as a microburst and the effects on the ground were largely indistinguishable from a tornado. I'm not sure the article really made this clear, or if there are multiple, potentially different definitions for the term. This is also an area that frequently experiences tornado activity so we have ample experience with those events for comparison. We had winds that were likely in excess of 125mph and there were around 100+ houses damaged, 6-8 were completely destroyed and 30+ sustained severe damage. Flooding was not an issue but we have unique geography that makes that very unlikely.

Heh, the Phoenix picture is impressive but that's every July-September for us - it's monsoon season. We get massive, violent storms that last a very short time, dump a massive amount of water on the city, and then are clear skies before you know what even happened.

If anything, it's been a particularly tame year this year. We've had a few good storms, but we haven't even gotten close to our annual flash floods.

I live in the mountains in Central Arizona. A few summers ago we had a microburst in our neighborhood. For 20 minutes it was like a wall of water coming down. The house down hill from us got 3 feet of mud in the living room, major property damage. It took us about 5 hours to repair our yard but no real damage. Meanwhile, a friend living less that a mile away only had very light rain.

The article makes the argument that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, thus a hotter atmosphere, thus the atmosphere can hold more water.

Does that at all explain the increasingly frequent droughts? Could it be due to more water in the water cycle being stuck in the atmosphere instead of on earth's surface?

Weather is a dynamic system. Just because you have more water in the air doesn't mean you have more water everywhere.

Bloomberg is trying to invent new, scarier sounding terminology, and honestly it's quite silly. What they're referring to are microbursts.

Googling it I see a bunch of references going back at least a year, so I don't think bloomberg is to blame for this one.

New Yorkers are wimps when it comes to anything weather. There's a small thunderstorm? We call it a "doozie". Some snow in the forecast? We shut down the entire regional transportation system.

I'm originally from Chicago so I find it all very amusing. I don't recall the L ever shutting down, nor do I remember any news articles about thunderstorms unless there were tornados inside the city limits.

No, it's more that regional climate varies and different areas have invested in and prepared for different types of weather events.

For example, I live in an area that traditionally receives moderate rain and snow during the winter. This past winter, though, we had very little snow while in the past week a major freeway has flooded twice due to heavy rains.

Of course, this is one year and doesn't, on its own, make a trend, but if this continues we'll need to alter how we behave, and possibly how out infrastructure is designed, in order to adjust.

And unfortunately when the climate is changing rapidly, it's suddenly very expensive to alter your coping strategies to adjust to the new normal.

I've noticed this trend to be more and more alarmist about what used to be normal weather.

For example, I've lived in the midwest USA most of my life. Every July and August is hot and humid, with many days in the 90-degree (F) range. This used to just be normal summer weather and unremarkable. Now, anything over 85 degrees is a "heat advisory" and over 90 people are advised to stay indoors and avoid activity. They also publish absurd "feels like" temperature e.g. "today's high 91, feels like 117." I'm sorry, in no real world does 91 "feel like" 117.

The data says otherwise for the midwest. We are going through abrupt climate change, there are global effects and it's accelerating.

http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/midwest

We always had heat advisories in Chicago. When it's 87 degrees overnight, people without air conditioning die. Yes, it happens every summer. But it's a reasonable weather warning; reminding people to stay hydrated, and to try to get somewhere cooler.

Yes, even normal weather has always killed human beings. Having infrastructure to both warn people about real natural danger and give steps for dealing with it is one of the good things our species does.

> I'm sorry, in no real world does 91 "feel like" 117.

It does, and there's no voodoo needed to understand why. In a super-humid environment your body's way of dealing with the heat - sweat - just isn't as efficient. On a breezy day in the desert, 117 is... well, it's damn hot, but if you're staying hydrated and take steps to keep from getting sunburned, it's kind of surprising how tolerable it is. In that environment sweat works its magic quickly and effectively.

(I live in the midwest and I'd trade fifteen or twenty degrees for the humidity we get this time of year. My first visit to the Nevada desert was kind of an eye-opener)

My girlfriend poked fun at the weathermen going apeshit over 30mph winds earlier in the week. Then she got stuck at Newark on Monday waiting for the storm to pass. Karma.

To be fair, the picture linked in the article does look a lot like a bomb going off.

http://twitter.com/chopperguyhd/status/755242101835653120/ph...

Woah. That's almost terrifying to see.

I recently saw a sunset that looked a lot like a bomb going off due to refraction over the ocean. That didn't make the sunset dangerous.

Yup, that's the same thing. And say, would you use the word "bomb" to describe it? Oh you did.

I never said it made it dangerous, I said the use of the word "bomb" made sense in light of the photo specifically referenced in the article.

Why do you assume I'm attacking your statement?

If they report microbursts as rain bombs, will they also collectively sit around and wait to see what terrorist group claims responsibility?

They'll say the terrorists are republicans who deny global warming.

They are already saying that.

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis did flood the Nile with tears...

Didn't you hear? "Climate change is weaponizing the atmosphere."

Ok, we rewrote the title to be less baity, in accordance with the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

But please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum. (This is going in the site guidelines soon.)

I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name. It allows for much more honesty and sincerity in discussions, and I think those are two qualities that HN could use more of.

Also I don't enjoy being profiled and I'll continue to play this game of whack-a-mole regardless of a change in the rules.

It isn't a question of karma, but of community, which you omitted to consider.

The suggestion has come up over the years that HN should just have comments without usernames. The answer is that that would be a fundamentally different site, so we're not going to do it. If that's what you prefer, you're welcome to start such a site, but please don't gnaw at the foundations of this one.

This has been on my mind because I think it's time for HN to go through a fresh round of defining what it is and what it isn't, and the above is one thing it isn't.

What do you suggest for people who need to post stories where the lack of anonymity could have serious ramifications for their lives? This is a serious question. Are those people (or those contributions) simply not intended to be a part of this community?

I didn't get from dang that HN is going to require Facebook auth or anything else to make it more difficult to create pseudonymous accounts. Dang simply discourages creating unnecessary new pseudonyms because the community benefits with consistent pseudonyms. If you need a new pseudonym to protect your identity, that's a necessary pseudonym: have at it.

Some people create pseudonyms as a platform for trolling or propagandizing without risking their main account, other people simply morally object to having a consistent online identity on principle, or want to say something controversial or confidential to protect their main account or identity. In every case, the pseudonym is an attempt to protect one's identity, and the person making it considers it necessary.

The first two cases are at odds with the interests of the community and ought to be discouraged.

They are usually discouraged, downvoted and flagged as they should be. But that happens with established accounts as well, so the anonymity itself doesn't seem to be the problem in those cases. Unless your account links to your real world identity in some way, there isn't much value in having an established account at all.

The corpus of postings by any consistenly used pseudonymous account can probably be fingerprinted and linked to a real-world identity if someone cared enough.

E.e. google probably could do it as they have every comment on this site and also have all of your email.

Maybe they (HN) could allow one BugMeNot-style account that is known not to belong to anyone, has aggressive anti-spam filtering, maybe requires a captcha to post, and only posts dead comments? Then when people who really don't want to join the community have something useful to contribute we can vouch for the individual comments. I guess this would be a tiny bit like the old sites with the Anonymous Coward "username".

That's no problem. Sometimes people have legit reasons for making a throwaway account. For example, they might want to post about experiences that could get them in trouble if they used their real name or even their main pseudonym. All that is fine, and long established on HN.

But it's an abuse to make a new account for every few comments, and it's an abuse to rack up a stockpile of burner accounts.

Thanks for the clarification!

There are justifications for anonymity and 2chan and 4chan originally stated that was their goal, that you should be judged by the contents and not by who you are. But as 4chan has shown when most people are anonymous, they default to trolling and junk posting. Theres no real reason to ever think out your arguments or locate facts because there are zero consequences for you if you're wrong and even if you thoroughly dismantle someone else's argument they can simply start posting somewhere else with the same nonsense because people can't just go back and look at their history and copy and paste the replies to their junk arguments.

When someone has a reputation of any kind to protect they tend to try to reply somewhat intelligently. This site makes it pretty easy to create accounts for when you need to be anonymous, but in the vast majority of cases you don't need to be. This community self-moderates pretty well so even someone with a high reputation can be replied to with a well thought out counter argument and not be downvoted simply for disagreeing

> I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name.

The points displayed next to your name are on a per-comment level though. Changing accounts doesn't affect anything about that. I've literally never clicked through to see anyone's total karma count until I just tried it for you. I think you're overestimating how much people care about any of this, and thus over-compensating in your response to it by constantly creating new accounts.

> I prefer to be judged on the content of my comments rather than the number of internet points displayed by my name.

It is not up to you how other people judge you, no matter your preference, and attempting to make them is abusive behavior.

> It allows for much more honesty and sincerity in discussions, and I think those are two qualities that HN could use more of.

It doesn't actually, absent names, people become vile. Anonymous comments aren't more honest and sincere, they're more petty and flippant.

A "showkarma" boolean in the user profile would be nice.

Bloomberg isn't inventing the term rainbomb. It is evocative, yes. I feel that sort of colorful language is appropriate for describing an extreme weather event that dumps 8+ inches of rain in less than a day. Rainbomb or microburst, they are apparently quite effective at destroying vital infrastructure. Either way, you can't in good faith condemn the exploitation of color language to describe a destructive and lethal event by pointing out that that destructive and lethal event has a benign name.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com