The West's Punishing Summer Heat Dries Out Thunderstorms and Fuels Raging Wildfires. (nytimes.com) 85
Another scorching summer heat wave was set to peak across portions of the western United States early this week, with air so dry that rain from thunderstorms evaporated before reaching the ground and smoke from wildfires delayed hundreds of flights at one of the region's largest airports. From a report: Temperatures reached the upper 90s and lower 100s in parts of the Northern Rockies on Monday, and forecasters warned of "dry thunderstorms," which bring lightning that can spark fires, but no rain to quench them. It was the fourth major heat wave to afflict parts of the West since early June, bringing dangerously hot temperatures and helping fuel the deepening drought and exploding wildfires across the region. An excessive heat warning was also in effect for parts of Montana and Wyoming through Thursday, the National Weather Service said.
Glasgow, a town in northern Montana, hit 110 degrees on Monday, the Weather Service said. By 2:45 p.m. local time, Billings, toward the southern portion of the state, was officially hotter than Death Valley, Calif., at 110.4 degrees. Weather officials in Billings took advantage of the toasty temperatures and baked a batch of cookies on the dashboard of a car. "It may have taken 5 hours but we have fully baked cookies," they shared on Twitter. Lander, in central Wyoming, reached a record 100 degrees on Monday, according to the Weather Service. In 130 years, it was only the 21st day in Lander to reach triple digits. Parts of Idaho, including Boise and Twin Falls, saw much needed rain showers.
Glasgow, a town in northern Montana, hit 110 degrees on Monday, the Weather Service said. By 2:45 p.m. local time, Billings, toward the southern portion of the state, was officially hotter than Death Valley, Calif., at 110.4 degrees. Weather officials in Billings took advantage of the toasty temperatures and baked a batch of cookies on the dashboard of a car. "It may have taken 5 hours but we have fully baked cookies," they shared on Twitter. Lander, in central Wyoming, reached a record 100 degrees on Monday, according to the Weather Service. In 130 years, it was only the 21st day in Lander to reach triple digits. Parts of Idaho, including Boise and Twin Falls, saw much needed rain showers.
Metric FTW (Score:5, Informative)
Dear ./ editors.
Please, for the love of God, give values in Imperial and metric systems. Over 95% of people in the world use the metric system exclusively. 110F doesn't ring a bell for me at all. If anything it tells me something has long evaporated.
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Think of it as a game where you test your subtraction skills (-32) your division skill (/9) and your multiplication skill (*5). Decide if you want to play.
110F = 43C
Also relevant might be that 95% of the world doesn't know where Billings is in Montana, nor Montana in the US.
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Billings isn't in Minnesota.
In imperial units it is.
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104F is the temperature most motors are rated for - why the odd number? Oh, it's actually a nice round 40C. 32F is, of course, 0C. -40 is the same whether -40F or -40C. The summer design around here is 95F, which is a 35C. Standard temperature often used for design of water systems is 60F, or is it 59F (outside of the US), which is 15C.
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I completely agree. I don't mind looking up the odd conversion when reading US based items, but a paragraph full of meaningless numbers is beyond annoying. The whole point of being an editor is to make sure items are presented properly and make sense (well in normal circumstances - perhaps they should just change the name on slashdot to prevent confusion, something like 'non-editing story fulfilment technicians')
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Why would they do that when there already is a browser add-on? [microsoft.com]
A Different Angle (Score:2)
110F doesn't ring a bell for me at all.
Me neither but it does at least it tells me which unit system is being used. The summary does not even do that it just says "110 degrees" which can only mean the author is being obtuse.
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Do you really think that the author meant 110C?
Re: A Different Angle (Score:2)
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Look, there is an underlying reality here. The USA has actually been trying to switch to metric for something liker fifty years, in the most incompetent, ignorant and stupid ways you could possibly imagine.
At this time, yes, the USA is trying to change to metric, as it has been doing FOR OVER FIFTY FUCKING YEARS, just doing a stunningly incompetent job at it.
So fucking bad, that most Americans are completely unaware that the USA has been swapping over to the metric system and failing miserably at it. Seein
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I laugh at you stupid Americans and your inability to manage your swap to metric, I mean it is by far the most incompetent effort anyone could possibly imagine. Stick to your feets and toes so the rest of the world can continue to laugh at you ;D.
I'm sorry, what moon has your country been to?
Kelvin (Score:5, Funny)
Do you really think that the author meant 110C?
No, I'm from Alberta and live quite a bit north of Montana so I was thinking Kelvin.
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It's an excerpt from the article which they post verbatim. Go complain to the website that posted the article if you want something to happen.
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Then you can wait for info on sites that want to report in metric?
US site, can report in US terms. Don't like it, read another site. There are plenty that report primarily in metric. I don't hear a lot of people bitching "just say it in feet and Fahrenheit, man!"?
If you want us all to dispense with imperial measures in the interest of clearer communication and reduction of errors, maybe we should also move to get rid of all those silly little local languages like German, French, and Japanese ?
I mean, to
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Please, for the love of God, give values in Imperial and metric systems.
You are reading this on an internet attached device, getting a conversion from any unit of measurement to any other unit of measurement is a few clicks, taps, and/or spoken words away. There is no need to post both.
Over 95% of people in the world use the metric system exclusively.
Over 95% of Slashdot readers use Fahrenheit temperatures daily. I puled that statistic out of my ass but prove me wrong.
110F doesn't ring a bell for me at all. If anything it tells me something has long evaporated.
No, it doesn't. The "F" denotes Fahrenheit and so it tells you "really hot day", or that you can translate that into "really hot day" with a few seconds of manipulating your
Eh, no big deal (Score:2, Informative)
It's not like there are useful people out there to worry about. It's mainly those so-called conservatives who don't belive in science such as climate change, and since we all know if you don't believe in science, it can't hurt you. Like covid.
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When slashdot starts posting "Darwin" comment chains, and "death to climate deniers" then I'll believe they're equal.
Re: Eh, no big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, I've seen those people too. The ones who blame volcanoes or sunspots or whatever BS they read online. But that only means humans need to take MORE action to avert catastrophic climate change. Which was already costing the US alone hundreds of billions of dollars each year before 2021 rolled around.
Appeal to their survival instinct. (Score:1)
Going ask a serious question. How many deniers really doubt there is at least some anthropomorphic component to climate change?
That is so close to zero that it rounds to zero.
My guess is for the vast vast majority of them is a bit of performance. They simply are not willing to admit they are primarily looking out for "me and mine"
This concern for "me and mine" is a very basic survival instinct, it will not be completely overcome. It does not have to either. We can get energy that is cheaper than coal or natural gas, and get low CO2 emissions, clean air, clean water, and do this with technologies that are over 50 years old. This means using onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission. It is vital to use some measure of all four of those in any national energy policy or they
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People should be required to post a comment on why a down mod was made. What did I write to deserve a down mod?
Is it not kosher on Slashdot to imply we solved global warming? Is it verboten to suggest we need to appeal to base instincts rather than lofty ideals to get agreement? Am I being punished for going against the crowd on solar power, pointing out that one must choose between solar being cheap or solar being on the roof?
There are few people, approaching zero, that will claim that human activity ha
It's not "climate change" that is the problem. (Score:1)
If the "follow the science" group actually followed the science then they'd embrace nuclear fission power as part of the solution to fighting global warming. Nuclear power is as safe or safer than solar, wind, or whatever else it is these people think we should use instead. Nuclear power is as close to zero CO2 emissions as so called "zero carbon" solar, wind, etc. This is well documented.
Here's one place to "follow the science": https://ourworldindata.org/saf... [ourworldindata.org]
I refuse to use "climate change" to descr
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What got me the down mod?
I get the feeling someone read the subject line and thought I was denying that global warming exists and moderated down over that. Global warming is real, it is caused by human activity, and it can be very bad for human civilization. The problem is global warming, not "climate change". Climate change is a meaningless term because it does not accurately describe the problem. An accurate description is catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. But even that is not completely acc
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Maybe the fact that nuclear power is unjustifiable dumbfuckery. Far too costly, far too dangerous, far too costly, far too unreliable, far too costly, takes far too long to construct, is far too costly, creates a toxic waste problem that will last many millions of years, and is far too costly.
Did I forget to mention that nuclear power costs way too much to ever be justified? And dangerous - all it took was one big disaster to utterly annihilate the case for nuclear power - and you'v
How does a dry thunderstorm work physically? (Score:4, Interesting)
I had always thought the power source was hot humid air releasing heat as it rose and condensed, and that the charge separation was believed to have something to do with ice crystals crashing into each other.
Does the water just re-evaporate before it his the ground again?
Re:How does a dry thunderstorm work physically? (Score:5, Informative)
Does the water just re-evaporate before it his the ground again?
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_thunderstorm [wikipedia.org]
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How does a dry thunderstorm work physically? Does the water just re-evaporate before it his the ground again?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_thunderstorm [wikipedia.org]
I don't understand that. Cloud-to-ground lightning is caused because (1) small ice crystals and soft hail collide, and the ice crystals get positively charged and the soft hail negatively charged, (2) the small ice crystals are lighter and go up while the soft hail is heavier and goes down, (3) lightning is when this electrical charge imbalance gets discharged.
BUT... if we have virga, and the downfalling negatively charged drops never reach the ground and instead evaporate and go back up, then why don't we
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Which electrical imbalance between cloud and ground is being discharged?
The separation of charges in a thundercloud due to updrafts and the transport of charges results in a negatively charged cloud base. This repels negative charges on the ground, causing that to become more positively charged. This process does not require a transportation of charge between the cloud and the ground. Until the lightning discharge occurs, of course. In fact, if there was appreciable charge transportation via precipitation, that would probably tend to "ground the lightning out" before it could o
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The charges aren't targeted. If you transfer a bunch of electrons from one big ball to another, there might be a big spark from one to the other, or they may both discharge to the ground. The electrons don't particularly care which.
Re:How does a dry thunderstorm work physically? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Out in the desert, sometimes you can see the rain pouring out of a thundercloud and disappear before reaching the ground. Also known as 'virga'. I saw it a lot when I lived and traveled a lot in AZ and UT.
Re:How does a dry thunderstorm work physically? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. Out in the desert, sometimes you can see the rain pouring out of a thundercloud and disappear before reaching the ground. Also known as 'virga'.
You can also be bone dry while you watch the rain hit ground 100 yards away.
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It is the transexuals that are to blame! (Score:3, Funny)
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I doubt it, not that god doesn’t have enough to be mad at but rather god probably doesn’t want everyone to focus on the database error that misaligned genders during creation process. Well at least until the bug has been fixed.
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And also, what does it say about God that he's throwing down lightning and it's also hitting good righteous neighbor-hating conservative states? He has a bad aim?
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I know a large amount of people who refuse to believe that any kind of climate change is real, let alone whether or not it is something that can be addressed. They'll argue terminology (climate vs weather), localization (it feels good where I'm at now! I don't have to
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If most people can't even agree that overall rising temperatures is an issue that needs to be corrected in a scientific way, there really isn't much hope for us in the long run.
What are you talking about? The Paris Accord exists and everyone agreed to it. What a nutjob.
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What are you talking about? The Paris Accord exists and everyone agreed to it. What a nutjob.
Joking right ? No large country (looking at China/US) will ever take Climate Change Seriously. The only Countries that really willing to take a hit on their GDP are the ones really in danger now.
I do not ever see the US doing anything real because the pols know they will be voted out. China may have a chance only due to their Gov being able to stifle dissent with harsh measures.
The US should have went all in on nuclear years ago, now it is probably too late.
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More to the point, the climate deniers figure they might as well rake it in now because they expect to die of old age by the time the bill goes to collections.
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Replacing coal and nuclear with wind and solar at a rapid mass scale would be the biggest jobs boom in history. So you think pols would be voted out....for dramatically improving the standard of living for 90% of Americans?? The only losers in a Green New Deal would be shareholders in fossil fuel and war contractor companies.
Nuclear power
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If most people can't even agree that overall rising temperatures is an issue that needs to be corrected in a scientific way, there really isn't much hope for us in the long run.
You do not need people to agree on the problem to act on the solution.
Consider a mother trying to get her son to take his medicine. Does the boy need to agree that he is sick? Does he need to understand how the medicine works? No, the mother only needs to get agreement so the child swallows his pill rather than spit it down the drain. How does the mother get agreement? There are a variety of ways. What should not be done is offer a reward, at least nothing that cannot be delivered. Most of all do not
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There. You don't see that often on Slashdot.
things may be getting much, much worse (Score:4, Interesting)
if you weren't an idiot denier, and were paying attention, your attitude about climate change should have been "scientists are generally conservative, things will probably get worse sooner than they think".
That's exactly what we're seeing.
What's even truly frightening is we are now seeing effects that were not predicted .
This could be that there will be additional, tipping point related, effects that could, and probably will, come into play that are not in the climate models.
how many bad summers will it take before the food supply is severely curtailed ?
7 billion people leaves very, very little margin of error. It won't be the end of the world, but it will be the end of a lot of people, and i think it could happen quite fast.
i'm starting to calculate how many calories i can store in my basement. also, best not to rely on a freezer for food storage. it feels weird to be this paranoid, but a level headed view of the current evidence is starting to make me freak out. i thought we had time (a couple of decades) to do something about this, i'm pretty sure i was wrong.
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Pretty much. Avoiding giga-death would have meant acting when the Science was solid. That was around 1985. What we are seeing now is a tiny, hamless foreshadowing of what is to come. Nobody that actually followed theScientific predictions is in the least surprised by what is happening already. And it will get much, much, much worse.
Also, if we reach 4...5C, it may well be the end of the world for humans. Currently we are on track for 3C or worse.
Re:things may be getting much, much worse (Score:5, Interesting)
how many bad summers will it take before the food supply is severely curtailed ?
7 billion people leaves very, very little margin of error. It won't be the end of the world, but it will be the end of a lot of people, and i think it could happen quite fast.
i'm starting to calculate how many calories i can store in my basement. also, best not to rely on a freezer for food storage. it feels weird to be this paranoid, but a level headed view of the current evidence is starting to make me freak out. i thought we had time (a couple of decades) to do something about this, i'm pretty sure i was wrong.
Just a couple things. For one, at least referencing severe drought and wildfires in the American west... those were very much predicted. We've known for a while now that the western US was made a state and had its population boom during a historic wet period. Nothing we're seeing happen now is radically out of the norm looking on long time scales, this was almost certainly going to happen at some point. Even just in human memory we know of Native American civilizations that experienced this exact phenomena, and were forced to abandon the region wholesale because of it. I'm not saying climate change didn't make this statistically more likely to happen, but anyone telling you this wouldn't be happening without climate change isn't being truthful.
For two, you don't have to worry about food in our lifetimes. There is a huge, insane over-abundance of food from modern agriculture. The scale of the production is almost baffling. Right now, in the US, we use food to make plastic, fuel, and pay land owners to let their land lay fallow rather than put it in production as a form of price protection. The true carrying capacity of the planet if we reached for it is almost certainly in the hundreds of billions (assuming you like tofu). There may be productive regions that are lost to climate change, or even some unproductive regions that become productive, but on the whole we have a whole lot of buffer.
I'm not trying to shit on your concerns about climate change or food security. Climate change is definitely real, and supply line shifts due to it could make getting food from where it's produced to people that need it more difficult. But don't give yourself a panic attack, neither the reality on the ground nor the science supports that. If anything the incredible advancement of electric vehicles and encouraging progress on flow batteries should calm the nerves a little... I truly didn't think I'd live to see a day without fossil fuels, and now I actually suspect I will, outside of maybe a few edge cases.
Ethanol subsidies are bad, solar power is worse. (Score:2)
... and pay land owners to let their land lay fallow rather than put it in production as a form of price protection.
I'll find people that get quite upset about the idea of paying farmers to not grow food. Growing up on a dairy farm in the US Midwest I know of many farmers being paid to not farm land. One reason for this was to encourage farmers to put in grasses on areas prone to erosion, as opposed to row crops that would allow rains to erode the fields. This is the government taking land from the farmers and in the Constitution the government cannot take property or compel one to work without compensation. If the
Re: things may be getting much, much worse (Score:2)
how many bad summers will it take before the food supply is severely curtailed?
I have worked in food supply chain. Good news is US overproduces food massively, mostly for export, including China. A lot of land that could output more is used for meat for China. In a disaster scenario, these will be reallocated to more grains for US consumption. The risks of famine are higher in Asia, and innovation is occurring there:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
It's also occurring here, through increased emphasis on ind
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7 billion people leaves very, very little margin of error. It won't be the end of the world, but it will be the end of a lot of people, and i think it could happen quite fast.
This is primarily why I just don't worry about it. Nature has excellent self--correcting mechanisms.
Meanwhile the solar power lobby should be delighted with all the sun and I'm enjoying a gorgeous hot summer. It's a win all round.
forest management (Score:2)
Sounds like we need some good forest management so when accidental fires do start they stay contained.
Glyphosate: Killing Tree Types That Stop Wildfires (Score:3)
One of the big unknown issues is that places like British Columbia unbelievably mandate forestry workers to go into timber stands and kill off deciduous trees with Roundup [www.cbc.ca], like Aspen and Birch because they reduce the growth density of the conifers the lumber companies want to harvest. The deciduous trees will actually slow up forest fires by reducing the density of conifers, as well as reduce the intensity of fires because they themselves will burn much slower (being hardwood) than spruce and pine conifers
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I kind of gritted my teeth when people made fun of what he said instead of looking past it at whether it made any sense at all
It's worse than that. People actively promoted wrong ideas and suppressed good ones in a whole range of different areas purely because they couldn't stand the idea of being aligned to something he said.
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If certain Republicans have their way we'll blow all the funds on looking for the secret Jewish space laser instead. Fiscal responsibility at it's finest.
More, please (Score:2)
I am living this right now. (Score:2)
Got evacuated when a fire (started by someone welding irrigation pipe) blew up just south of my house. My house was saved but it was a close-run thing. I've paid $12k per year for homeowner's insurance for over twenty years here, and they will be happy to pay for both the private firefighting crews and cleaning up the mess.
So I don't care whether people think it is caused by climate change or not. Right now I am more focused on adapting and figuring out how to live with the new reality on the ground.
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More will be living underground [cntraveler.com] and there will be more recycling and conservation in addition to obtaining new sources of water. Sort of like Metro Exodus without the radiation.
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Ya, that's the thing. Who really cares if it's climate change or not, and especially it's utterly unimportant about whether it's man-made or not. There's a problem, it's gonna get worse, so how do we solve it rather than ignore it?
We got this. (Re:I am living this right now.) (Score:2)
Ya, that's the thing. Who really cares if it's climate change or not, and especially it's utterly unimportant about whether it's man-made or not. There's a problem, it's gonna get worse, so how do we solve it rather than ignore it?
You solve it by finding energy sources that are lower in CO2 emissions, lower in cost, lower in demands for materials we need to mine, safer, more abundant and more reliable than coal or natural gas. We have those in onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission. These are better than solar power on all those metrics as well.
I'll have people tell me that we don't have to pave over cropland to get solar power. That's true, we don't have to. But to get solar power cheaper than coal means cropland g
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What the fuck $12k/year for 20 years. Most people buy a fucking house for that.
Are we starting to see the worst of predictions? (Score:1)
There's always been a fringe of climate scientists on the edge, who believe, pretty much, that we are very much in the midst of a catastrophic climate breakdown.
Predictions that we have, at best, 5 to 10 years, to prevent a serious breakdown in the production of grain globally, for instance.
Or, rather, not prevent ... but that it is already "baked in" ... there's sweet FA we can do about it now. It is going to happen.
That climate tipping points are already in action and will accelerate at an alarming rate.
G
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Won't someone save the airlines! (Score:2, Funny)
wildfires delayed hundreds of flights at one of the region's largest airports
Oh No! While bringing in fresh water for drinking and water to douse the fires, be sure to bring some peanuts for the passengers during their flight delays.
Riddle me this (Score:2)
So, uh, why are thunderstorms so rare here in San Diego?
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Stay tuned. (Score:2)
Good thing we are buidling nuclear power plants (Score:1)
Now that the Democrats agree with the Republicans on the need for more nuclear power plants we will see larger gains on lowering CO2 emissions. We saw CO2 emissions drop after fracking made natural gas more accessible, making it cheaper than coal. That can only take us so far since as soon as we start replacing old nuclear power plants with natural gas CO2 emissions will only rise again. Democrats apparently realized this last year, in spite of being told this for decades. The prospect of losing ground
Nuclear is batshit insane (Score:2)
If you think climate change needs to addressed now, you don't have time to fart around for decades building hundreds of nuclear plants. You can build wind and solar in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost, without creating a permanent toxic waste problem or 100 square mile evacuation zones.
It's as delusional as proposing we deal with the homeless problem by building a 6,000 square foot mansion from asbestos and lead paint, or a college student on a limited budget buying a $2.5 million Bugatti w
We will see more nuclear power in the USA. (Score:2)
If you think climate change needs to addressed now, you don't have time to fart around for decades building hundreds of nuclear plants.
Well, we saw Democrats in the USA maintain a near complete ban on new nuclear power for over 40 years. Last August the Democrats put in their party platform support for existing and new nuclear power.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... [forbes.com]
https://democrats.org/where-we... [democrats.org]
Recognizing the urgent need to decarbonize the power sector, our technology-neutral approach is inclusive of all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage.
You may believe this to be insanity but this has support of both major political parties. During the Trump administration we saw new prototype reactors get approval for construction, and the Biden administration has shown these projects will c