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Climate Change & Natural Disasters Thread


That article doesn't seem to support that Abbot told grid operators to keep charging the maximum. They directly claim he said to do whatever they had to maintain power where it was reestablished after blackouts. There are some blanks that need to be filled in.
 
That article doesn't seem to support that Abbot told grid operators to keep charging the maximum. They directly claim he said to do whatever they had to maintain power where it was reestablished after blackouts. There are some blanks that need to be filled in.

I wonder how many lowered their energy utilization while they were afraid of freezing since the price was high?
 
Seems like when you tell a for-profit company who has captured a market to “do anything” they’re going to raise rates and increase their profits.
 
Texas has a seriously fucked-up state government, but they'll no doubt all be reelected this November.
 
While I don’t discount the global warming implications I do wonder about the reliability of maps like that. They pop up once a year or so in like Iraq or India or wherever and show temps way above the record temp on Earth, which is 130. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a30270365/hottest-place-on-earth/

And sure the new record could be broken here but that’s quite a bit above 130.

I don’t know about the Iraq maps you’re referencing, but the india map above is ground surface temperature which can easily be much higher than air temps, but is highly correlated. The link you provided to the Death Valley record temp was measuring air temps.

There are plenty of stories out there about the current record breaking heat wave in India if you are skeptical. Here is one: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/02/asia/india-pakistan-heatwave-climate-intl-hnk/index.html
 
I don’t know about the Iraq maps you’re referencing, but the india map above is ground surface temperature which can easily be much higher than air temps, but is highly correlated. The link you provided to the Death Valley record temp was measuring air temps.

There are plenty of stories out there about the current record breaking heat wave in India if you are skeptical. Here is one: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/02/asia/india-pakistan-heatwave-climate-intl-hnk/index.html

Fair enough in terms of ground vs air temps. Seems like in general news we use air temps, but are ground temps are more accurate measurement, or one more favored in the scientific community?

I went back and found some articles about an Iraq heat wave topping 125F but I swear when it was happening there were predictor maps on Twitter with much higher temps. But maybe those too were ground temps.
 
Fair enough in terms of ground vs air temps. Seems like in general news we use air temps, but are ground temps are more accurate measurement, or one more favored in the scientific community?

I went back and found some articles about an Iraq heat wave topping 125F but I swear when it was happening there were predictor maps on Twitter with much higher temps. But maybe those too were ground temps.

I am not that kind of scientist, but I think these maps are made with satellite infrared reflectance monitoring data which are useful and "more accurate" because you can measure it everywhere. Ground level air temps would, I think, need to be measured with a series of surface level thermometers and maps would then have to interpolate the temps in between measurement points. So, the satellite ground surface temps give you a continuous map without interpolation or extrapolation. However they are influenced by the actual ground cover, so, roads are obviously hotter ground than forested areas. Cities will have inflated temperature metrics because of road density, but that does effect what people experience. I'll also add that ground temps are an indicator heatwave severity, because the ground gives off that heat at night, keeping air temperatures high even after the sun sets. So, there is no relief from the heat which is one of the things that cause heat wave mortality; people have no chance to recover and rehydrate over night or in the shade.
 
Sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that we are completely fucked no matter what we as individuals do.

 
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