[HN Gopher] Our infrastructure is being built based on past clim...
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Our infrastructure is being built based on past climate data
Author : gumby
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-01-24 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > "Our drain pipes, reservoirs, power lines, roads, sewage
| systems, and more are all designed based on past climate data."
|
| Not only past climate data, but traditional work arrangements.
| WFH shifts demands on infrastructure as well. Power, sewage, and
| so on. Mind you, WFH will eventually fade a bit. Non the less, it
| does change the lens of how past data / need should be
| interpreted.
| huhnmonster wrote:
| While I agree with the gist of this, the ones to finally call the
| shots on such projects are always in a bad spot.
|
| They underprovision and an anomaly happens. Now they are the ones
| who did everything wrong and should be blamed. The overprovision
| and nothing ever comes close to the theoretical limit of the
| structure. Now they have wasted huge amounts of money and again,
| should obviously be blamed. The easiest way out: Plan exactly to
| what is considered standard. No one will blame you in either
| case, even if you know that it is insufficient or stupid.
|
| This is something that will probably hold true in many different
| industries, the consequences for dams are just a little worse..
| the-dude wrote:
| I am sorry to bring it up, but this is about the same as the
| way I view the response to COVID by our (Western) leaders.
| gumby wrote:
| > Now they are the ones who did everything wrong and should be
| blamed.
|
| Is it possible to develop a blame-free (or at least blame-
| avoiding) culture that also can still look for root cause
| problems? I'd like to think so but have never seen such a thing
| at scale.
| vkou wrote:
| Yes, it's possible, as long as you are willing to give up
| democracy. I'm not sure you want to make that trade-off.
| nine_k wrote:
| I think this is similar to what happened in Fukushima, where
| the original architects of the Daiichi plant suggested building
| a much higher protective wall against tsunamis, but were forced
| to build a lower wall because such a catastrophic tsunami was
| deemed too improbable. (Then it came, of course.)
| huhnmonster wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. The thing is, where do you draw the line of
| what is statistically so unlikely that you can deem it
| improbable?
|
| If we run multiple different climate models through some sort
| of Monte Carlo simulation, I suppose each model would output
| a different probability of such an event occuring. In the
| case where all models predict a very low probability, it may
| be easy to say that it is unlikely. But what if two predict a
| very low and one predicts a low probability? Is this now
| applicable and should we build to be able to sustain such an
| event?
|
| These are hard questions and I currently do not see any way
| to get better data for the future as the different models
| still do not agree in many points
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| There are branches of probability theory that deal with
| these questions rigorously.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_deviations_theory
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_value_theory
| gumby wrote:
| > Yeah, exactly. The thing is, where do you draw the line
| of what is statistically so unlikely that you can deem it
| improbable?
|
| Important question, because otherwise your costs are absurd
| and something important (like a power source) never gets
| built.
|
| Some fields, like road construction, have a cost model
| built in and at some point are willing to either pull the
| plug or decide that a few unlikely (originally
| autocorrected to "unlucky!") fatalities are acceptable.
| MayeulC wrote:
| In that case it could be interesting to plan for future
| reinforcements, and continue to run the simulations as time
| passes and the situation evolves.
|
| I don't know if it's due to models and computing
| environments not being stable enough, but I haven't heard
| of such a thing, while it is the obvious thing to do: even
| without reinforcing a dam, you could tell when it becomes
| dangerous to operate it.
| woeirua wrote:
| At this point, we should be throwing our money at geoengineering
| and technology in order to try and deus ex machina our way out of
| the pending climate crisis. We've wasted so much time that now
| there really is almost no other option. No one is going to lead
| on this issue, so it's our only hope left.
|
| That said, I am optimistic that once the economic incentives
| align scientists/engineers will be able to save us from the worst
| effects of climate change, and down the road even reverse the
| effects.
| kbutler wrote:
| "planners used historical climate data ...the water no longer
| flowed there."
|
| This article implies the water changes were driven by climate
| change, but it appears the changes were from overpumping the
| aquifer that fed the surface water.
|
| "The source of the Beaver River is the vast, underground Ogallala
| Aquifer, which reaches into eight western states. Agricultural
| and population growth in this part of the country meant more
| pressure on the aquifer, dropping its water level and reducing
| the river to little more than a trickle." --
| https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2013/03/28/the-lessons-...
|
| That doesn't mean climate change isn't concern, but this example
| is not caused by climate change, but rather by overuse of a
| limited water resource.
| sathackr wrote:
| I learned this the hard way when engineering microwave links to
| withstand rain rates based on historical data.
|
| Many of my links that the calculators said would have >99.999%
| availability saw a cumulative downtime in 2020 over 1hr due to
| much higher peak rain rates than historically measured.
|
| I now engineer the links to handle double the historically
| measured rain rates.
| kbutler wrote:
| Was that because the data was not actually peak _instantaneous_
| rain rates, but rather rates averaged over a period of time
| (likely hours or longer)?
|
| Seems like microwave links would be most sensitive to
| instantaneous rate along specific paths, but any historical
| data would be measuring accumulated precipitation (averages
| over time) at specific locations.
| huhnmonster wrote:
| How does this manifest in costs? Is it noticeable?
|
| And does rain rate mean the frequency of distinct rain events
| over hours/days or the intensity of a single rainfall?
|
| Just curious, maybe you can shed some light on this
| gumby wrote:
| I posted this not only because of the topic of the article itself
| but because it makes my think about systems planning (e.g. are we
| overprovisioning our back end for demand that may never occur?)
| and business plans.
| thrill wrote:
| Well, there is no future climate _data_.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Actually there is. If you view all data as statistical
| probability, data from the past is simply a 1.0 possibility of
| occurring, and future data is less than 1.0. We can easily see
| this by looking at weather forecasting, as a common example
| which both exemplifies the possibility and serves as an example
| of why it's not perfect.
| graeme wrote:
| The gist of this is that everything gets more expensive. Our
| environment was basically tailored to us. Moving away from that,
| and losing stability to boot adds costs.
|
| It's another short run vs long run tradeoff. Fossil fuels brought
| and bring us immense short term benefits. But increasingly the
| benefits now will lead to larger costs in the future, both in
| adaptation and also in attempting to reverse the costs by taking
| co2 out of the air.
|
| The best solution would be to bring future costs into the present
| and charge for co2 emissions. That way the truly valuable uses
| could still happen and the more optional uses of co2 would be
| discouraged.
|
| This article is talking about building for the next few decades,
| but the non-stationarity problem will only grow if we keep
| emitting.
| syshum wrote:
| In theory I agree with the idea of charging for Co2 emissions,
| the problem always comes down to the execution, which in
| general means some kind of "carbon tax" system
|
| The problem with the carbon tax systems I have seen most of
| them are setup in a way not to actually change climate or
| anything to do with climate change but instead set up to fund
| unrelated agenda's and often end up being counter productive to
| the actual goal of reducing carbon emissions / other
| population.
| EcoMonkey wrote:
| > The best solution would be to bring future costs into the
| present and charge for co2 emissions. That way the truly
| valuable uses could still happen and the more optional uses of
| co2 would be discouraged.
|
| Yep. A price on carbon is actually the most powerful lever we
| have to bring down emissions. Very nice visualization when you
| move the carbon price slider here: https://en-
| roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....
|
| And you can make it both equitable and politically viable if
| you use the money from the carbon fee to provide direct
| payments to households, then combine with a border adjustment
| to maintain trade competitiveness. https://econstatement.org/
|
| Ultimately we just need something in place that corrects this
| obvious market failure with as few side effects as possible,
| and carbon fee and dividend does that.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend
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(page generated 2021-01-24 23:00 UTC)