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Comment by buckie | Hacker News Reader

One of my current concerns is that the demonization of climate scientists over the last 30 years has resulted in models that underestimate the timelines of how bad things get. Not an intentional conspiracy or anything, just a systemic natural response to the pressure of not wanting to be raked across the coals in the media as the "crazy".

As an example, the heat wave in the northwest of the USA and Canada this year was something I remember reading about as a problem to expect ~2050. Ditto for Siberia this year. Ditto for the snow in Sao Paolo.

I hope my concerns are misguided. I general though, short of a deus ex machina, I have no hope for the world doing anything about the climate emergency, even after it's obviously too late and even after the worlds seen a major city burned/wet bulbed/typhooned off the map.

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> Not an intentional conspiracy or anything, just a systemic natural response to the pressure of not wanting to be raked across the coals in the media as the "crazy".

Well, I'm pretty sure the monies spent by certain global corporations also do their part explaining why climate change and global warming has not been taken serious for the last fifty years - when it was first recognized. By scientists of the aforementioned global corporations.

It is well documented how 'big oil' (for the lack of a better name) has lobbied hard and heavy to kill any effort that took climate change serious.

> I general though, short of a deus ex machina, I have no hope for the world doing anything about the climate emergency, even after it's obviously too late and even after the worlds seen a major city burned/wet bulbed/typhooned off the map.

Oh boy, I agree. It pains me so hard and so much but I absolutely agree. Our monkey brains and monkey societies are just not able to deal with the kind of dangers that we've been able to put ourselves in.

There was no snow in São Paulo AFAIK; and snow in the south of Brazil, which did happen, happens more or less yearly.

(just a minor correction, not arguing against your general point)

I can't cite that example, I just have a friend whose parents are there tell me a story about how they were saying how pretty the snow flurries were and how he had to inform them about how ominous it was for there to be snow there. It's possible that they were referring to the frost that Sao Paolo got (which is still pretty crazy), and the videos of snow from further south.

TIL the term "wet-bulb temperature": https://www.iflscience.com/environment/why-is-everybody-talk...

tl;dr: It's essentially just a humidity-adjusted temperature, like wind chill factor for hot weather. The important figure to know is that a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C / 95°F (equivalent to that temperature at 100% humidity, or higher temperatures with lower humidities) will kill everyone.

This makes me wonder if it is (or will become) economical for cities to use renewable energy to dehumidify the outdoors, and if so whether the yield of water would actually be useful.

> This makes me wonder if it is (or will become) economical for cities to use renewable energy to dehumidify the outdoors, and if so whether the yield of water would actually be useful.

Well people will likely first start cooling and lowering the humidity indoors with their ACs. The condensate might be used to feed the household hydroponic systems.

For places where people have AC, which isn't everywhere, and which will make the situation even worse (as of now, and in the foreseeable future, ACs will use not fully carbon free electricity in most places, and will contribute to the warming everyone is trying to avoid directly with hot air and indirectly with CO2).

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