Spain breaks record temperature of 38.8C (101.84F) in April | Hacker News Reader

Spain breaks record temperature of 38.8C (101.84F) in April

bbc.co.uk

5C above the previous record in some places.

But I still have friends who don't believe it, or don't believe it's got anything to do with humans.

It's an interesting study in epistemology. How do you as a layman know what sources to believe? All sources are full of words you won't have heard of, like when you go to a French restaurant. You can't appeal to authority, because that's not evidence. If you start arguing with people who say the evidence is doctored you're both playing detective, not scientist, and the conversation descends into incentive studies (big oil vs big academia).

Talking to deniers who believe in the null hypothesis of natural variation takes you down a statistical rabbit hole. I can't actually summarise a statistics class in a few sentences, regardless of what they think about AGW. Either side will just hand wave and tell me the stats say what they want.

An instance of heat/cold record does not prove anything.

Climate warming/cooling happens without human intervention.

Up to that point it is reasonable to be skeptical.

So you need to show data correlating with human activity. Still some people will be unconvinced for whatever reason but that is always the case for anything.

Frankly, this is not really helped by the approach of governments/local authorities/politicians who either stroke the conspiracy theory aspects or behave like they are indeed part of a conspiracy by pushing drastic and ill-thought policies, all for political gains, of course.

An instance? We now have decades worth of these "instances" along with the fact most of the successive years in the twenty-teens were "the hottest year on record." Yet I still hear people claiming "See? None of their predictions came true! Can't trust the experts."

What really gets me is the fact billions of people are perfectly willing to believe in gods that they can't see and for which there's never been a shred of evidence, and yet many people, often the same people, don't believe in something they can actually see with their own two eyes! Can anybody with a background in psychology explain this phenomenon?

>An instance of heat/cold record does not prove anything

Nobody made such a claim. Who are you arguing with?

> 5C above the previous record in some places.

"An instance of heat/cold record"

> But I still have friends who don't believe it, or don't believe it's got anything to do with humans.

"does not prove anything"

The least generous interpretation of that is that this one event ought to convince all my friends of AGW.

Now somehow the climate change topic is an ongoing conversation with a heck of a lot of things said about it. You can't summarize it all in a comment, and in any case this is an introductory statement meant to take the reader to the main issue, which is how evidence is supposed to work.

I would suggest a more generous interpretation is "evidence such as this has been piling up for quite some time and yet does not change minds".

The keyword in your quote is "still". Because the writer's friends still don't believe it, it implies that this instance of heat is not a singular event, but the continuation of a trend. A trend that the writer's friends still do not believe merits concern.

The Fahrenheit temperature is not only not mentioned in the title it isn’t mentioned in the body.

I was worried that the BBBC might be using antiquated units.

Yes this seems to be the case of both unnecessary editorialization and wrongly so haha

For a second I thought it was the BBC edition for Americans who live in Spain.

More generally:

‘Statistically impossible’ heat extremes are here

- https://theconversation.com/statistically-impossible-heat-ex...

phys.org reprint: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-statistically-impossible-extre...

peer review paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37554-1

HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35761103

Is it me or is sun in Spain extra intense?

I was in Seville a few years ago and even though it was only low 90s, I thought my hair was on fire, and felt my skin burn.

Depends to what you compare it. They do get a lot of very sunny days with low humidity (i.e. no clouds). So, a high UV index is pretty common there. Which is a measure of how much uv light makes it through the atmosphere. If you have little or no wind, things might heat up well above the air temperature.

Similar, I also went to Seville and nearby cities. It was March and close to 30c. Despite precautions I got heat exhaustion, and the hotel desk thought I was crazy for asking for air-conditioning to be turned on in my room.

I feel the same burning in summer weather usually but it was extra intense in Spain.

Any idea what causes the burning and how to reduce it? I did apply sunscreen but that did nothing to alleviate burning

humidity is one of the bigger factors when it comes to heat because sweat doesn't evaporate. It's why heat feels much less bad in desert regions, so likely depends where you came from. Spain's quite a bit more humid than Northern Europe. Worst in my experience though is India. Heat there feels like you're trapped in a washing machine.

AFAIK a large chunk of mainland Spain is undergoing desertification, and it's especially bad in the southern areas.

Traveling to Thailand in two days.

There's currently a record heat as well. [1]

[1]: https://themunicheye.com/thailand-suffers-from-extreme-heat-...

Stay safe. The whether there is oppressive especially with the usual high humidity.

Thank you! We will do our best.

I live in a relatively cold area, and it's already near unbearable. It will usually get this hot in August or so.

For context:

> For days a blistering heatwave has hit the country with temperatures 10-15C [18-27F] warmer than expected for April.

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