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Freak flooding in Guadalajara after a massive hail storm. Pictures on BBC:
Six suburbs in the Mexican city of Guadalajara were carpeted in a thick layer of ice after a heavy hailstorm. The ice was up to 1.5m (5ft) thick in places, half-burying vehicles.
[...] Hailstorms form when warm, moist air from the surface rises upwards forming showers and storms. Temperatures higher up, even in summer, can get well below 0C and so ice crystals form along with something called "supercooled water" which then grows into pellets of ice.
In severe thunderstorms, air can rise rapidly and is able to hold up these hailstones and allow them to expand in size. Eventually they get too heavy and fall to the ground.
In warmer parts of the year, such as in Guadalajara which has maximum temperatures of around 31-32C [(87-90 °F)] in June, more moisture is available, contributing to the formation of hailstorms.
Temperatures this month have been higher than normal with Torreon, to the north of Guadalajara, reaching highs of 37C [(99 °F)].
Hm, I wonder if somebody is going to mention anthropogenic warming with this?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 02 2019, @11:22AM (4 children)
I'm willing to agree that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is occurring. I'm not willing to make it worse by embracing poorly thought-out fantasies to solve it. Ultimately, overpopulation is the real generator of AGW and that in turn is caused by poverty. Driving large portions of the world deeper into poverty in a feeble attempt to fix AGW will make AGW worse.
And you know what? There's evidence to support my position. For example, there's plenty of high profile programs and projects that purport with varying degree of sincerity to solve global warming or other environmental problems, but turn out to be shitshows with brazen displays of incompetence, such as Germany's Energywende, banning of DDT (and other pesticides on dubious grounds), corn ethanol subsidies in the US, recycling plastic and paper, the carbon emissions credit markets in Europe, and the sacrificing of local or regional economies to show one cares about the environment. How does doubling the price of electricity, hamstringing global efforts to reduce mosquito borne disease, increasing the cost of global food supplies, poorly designed markets that thrash between cheap and expensive emission credits unpredictably, or token reductions in emissions at great cost, help us deal with AGW?
There is a stench of incompetence, waste, and profound economic (and often scientific) illiteracy that surrounds the advocates for climate change mitigation. I'm tired of hearing about the supposed growing body of evidence, when the evidence isn't in your favor.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:40PM (3 children)
It's more complicated than that: CO2 emissions = emissions per capita * population. And that means that population is not created equal when it comes to preventing climate change. For instance, 100 people living the average lifestyle in Madagascar is less of a problem than 1 person living the average lifestyle in Canada.
If you want to reduce population growth, the most consistent way to do that has generally been 3 efforts:
1. Educating girls and women, and in particular requiring children to attend school rather than let their parents make them work.
2. Making birth control widely available.
3. Draconian government policies like China's 1-child rule.
All the players in this game are not equally guilty. At this point, the good guys are, assuming the reporting is accurate:
1. The EU, which managed to cut its emissions by 1/5, while still maintaining a strong economy.
2. Russia, which cut its emissions by 1/4.
3. North Korea, which cut its emissions by 3/4. Probably this one wasn't by choice.
4. Ukraine, Georgia, and quite a few other former Soviet-controlled areas.
5. The UK, which cut its emissions by 1/3.
The really bad guys are:
1. China, which is aggressively burning coal, even as its population has levelled out, and has more than quadrupled its emissions.
2. India, which is also growing population rapidly and aggressively burning coal, and has more than quadrupled its emissions.
The US was the worst offender 2 decades ago, but has managed to at least more-or-less flatten its own emissions, albeit mostly by outsourcing all its industry. That said, a drop could still help, and the EU has demonstrated that to do so doesn't necessarily lead to complete economic ruin.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 02 2019, @10:57PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 03 2019, @12:41AM (1 child)
Why not? Birth rates have declined significantly in low-income countries [worldbank.org] in the last few decades, without a dramatic increase in CO2 emissions. Per that link, low-income nations have had their birth rates drop by nearly 1/3 over the last few decades, and there's no particular reason to think that they couldn't keep going.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:00AM
Low-income now is not the same as low-income fifty years ago. Everyone has been getting better wealth-wise. I believe that better explains the decline in human fertility worldwide. My view is that in 100 years what they speak of as low-income will correspond relatively to the low end developed world today, like say Spain - that is the world's economies will have narrowed to the point that there isn't much difference between the low end and high end economies. It's much easier to catch up to the developed world than it is to pass them.
That's a big part of the dynamic missed by much of the environmentalism movement. Wealth loss in the short term can result in a significant long term hit to environmentalist goals. And many of these plans create a substantial, permanent hit to wealth growth, meaning they're really destructive as both economic and environmental policies.