Why birds can fly over Mount Everest

https://nautil.us/why-birds-can-fly-over-mount-everest-237864/

by pmcpinto • 4 years ago

63 6 4 years ago

sdumi• 4 years ago

I mistakenly read the title as "can't fly" instead of "can": I read the whole article waiting for the answer of why birds cannot fly over the Everest. Of course that answer didn't came but I learned some interesting things from it. I'd like to see/read more such "So so stories", they're perfect for gainining basic awareness about a topic, bird lungs for example.

kennend3• 4 years ago

Many birds can easily fly over Everest.

There are buzzards which have reached 37,999 ft

Even the much misunderstood Canada goose is pretty impressive :

"The maximum flight ceiling of Canada geese is unknown, but they have been reported at 9 km (29,000 feet)."

These birds never encounters anything that high, but are capable of reaching astonishing heights.

Given temperature and O2 levels fall as altitude increases it is impressive that birds can even survive at those levels.

Bird lungs are impressively efficient.

vfclists• 4 years ago

There are many good alternatives now to burning fossilized hydrocarbons. Windmills. Solar panels. Tidal power. Even some kinds of safe nuclear power like thorium reactors.
But these inventions need to be scaled up quickly. They are sort of like where rockets were in the 1920s. But in 40 years men had ridden rockets to the moon!

How come nearly every article which talks about carbon free alternatives never mentions current nuclear fission? I mean this article had to go into thorium reactors when effective alternatives exist today.

The more I read such articles the more I become convinced that carbon based global warming is a fraud because the doom mongers studiously refuse to acknowledge the most effective, most energy dense carbon free energy alternative, ie nuclear fission.

All the other alternatives entail huge amounts of mineral extraction and processing, carbon powered of course. Is it because the green movement is driven by construction and extractive industries and that nuclear fuel involves the least amount of mining and construction?

In my view it is the sheer compactness of nuclear power stations, the compactness of the mining and processing, and the energy density of nuclear fuel that makes it so unpopular with capitalism. These capitalists cannot keep digging, mining and building ad infinitum, so they prefer the alternatives which do and promote them, all in the name of reduced carbon emissions.

PS. I know the downvoters are going to down vote this into oblivion, but why not keep it up and present strong counterarguments it? Would that be because the arguments against nuclear energy don't add up.

Schroedingersat• 4 years ago

the compactness of the mining and processing, and the energy density of nuclear fuel

Like every other comment claiming renewables cannot decarbonize and must be stopped in favour of nuclear, this is just a lie.

A mine like Inkai or Rossing digs up or leeches ore that is around the energy density of coal and occupies areas that would produce more energy as a solar farm thna the mine ever does.

Then a nuclear plant requires a site with a large quantity of water and complete control by the owner of a region that could also produce roughly as much power as a solar farm (thus preventing it from being sited near where it is used and requiring transmission).

The raw uranium extracted after milling produces about 1kW/kg for 3-6 years and the fuel it is enriched into is about 10kW/kg (but requires many times its weight in handling and storage containers) where the polysilicon going into a solar panel produces an average of about 1/8 kW/kg for 20-40 years.

Both mining/milling and enrichment leave vast quantities of heavy metal laden waste which is just left for the following generations to manage.

Capitalists love nuclear because there are endless opportunities for grifting whilst promising that this time it will be better and different and all the lies they told last time are in the past. It's just the marks can only fall for it so many times.

It only really ever actually happens when states want some plutonium and enrichment/separation facilities built and want to charge the public for it. After there is enough for those purposes (about 200-500t of U235 just recently placed into a reactor at any given time) then the military backing stops.

mo_42• 4 years ago

One can learn a lot about writing well from this. For example, it starts with an interesting and somewhat neutral question and guides the reader to more hotly debated questions.

To me and probably many people on HN, this might just be a nice story. How do people think about this who oppose climate change or evolution?

out-of-ideas• 4 years ago

funny seeing the URL to this article change over the year; sad the "old urls" do not redirect to the new one..

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Why birds can fly over Mount Everest

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