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Global Warming To Hinder Wi-Fi Signals, Claims UK Gov't
radioweather writes with news of a government report from the UK's Dept. for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which warns of global warming's harmful effect on Wi-Fi and other communication protocols. Quoting the Guardian:
"Presenting the report, the secretary of state for the environment, Caroline Spelman, said that higher temperatures can reduce the range of wireless communications, rainstorms can impact the reliability of the signal, and drier summers and wetter winters may cause greater subsidence, damaging masts and underground cables. The threat posed by climate change to internet and telephone access is a rare example of when the developed world would be hit harder than developing countries, which are in general more at risk from increased floods, droughts and rising sea levels. 'If climate change threatens the quality of your signal, or you can't get it because of extreme fluctuations in temperature, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question,' said Spelman, 'and just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.'"
The UK Government and it's insipid reports hinders WiFi.
E
global warming will disrupt the economy, and people won't be able to afford internet or phone service
These guys must have some really good drugs.
They really are getting desperate, aren't they?
BTW, wasn't Britain supposed to get drier winters with no snow because of 'global warming', not wetter ones? When did that change?
Never mind the millions displaced by rising sea levels or changed rainfall patterns effecting their crops, we might lose a few bars of wifi reception!
And so will corporate interests. Too bad we can't get anyone moderate to talk about this. Either we're all already dead, or everything is great. As long as those are the only two choices, nothing worthwhile will be accomplished. *sigh*
...countries that are hotter (Southern Europe), Wetter (Hong Kong), Colder (Sweden), Dryer (Greece) and more legally obtuse (USA) than the UK. I think we'll be fine. FUD off.
Subject says it all. I honestly can't comment further. The fail is strong with these morons.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
Sure, as soon as you get global warming effects in the form of floods or snow or drought in your apartment, your WiFi coverage will suffer tremendously :(
Frankly, when the roof is missing, people tend not to get too upset about bad WiFi reception.
For normal outside activities just use cell 3G/4G signal :)
Hyperom.com
Global warming will disrupt living conditions worldwide, and people won't be around to have an economy that won't be able to afford internet or phone service.
Yes rain and snow attenuates radio waves. But not by a huge amount. The human race would likely go extinct from Heat stroke before anybody noticed any real decline in WiFi connectivity. This article smacks of "the sky is falling" fearmongering. Like this:
"On March 20, 2000, The Independent, a British newspaper, reported that the Dr. David Viner of the UK's Climate Research Unit warning within a few years snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event." Indeed, Viner opined, "Children just aren't going to know what snow is." Similarly, David Parker, at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said that eventually British children could have only "virtual" experience of snow via movies and the Internet.
"The Union of Concerned Scientists opined confidently in 2004 scientists claim winters were becoming warmer and less snowy. In 2008, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bemoaned that children would be robbed of the childhood joys of sledding and skiing in the DC area due to global warming. A year later, the area set a new seasonal snowfall record with 5 to 6 feet of snow and sleds and skis were the only way to get around." http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/apr/13apr2011a3.html
If the models can not predict snowfall, how can they be counted-upon to predict anything else in future weather?
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Wifi was working just great in Tuscaloosa, AL until the tornadoes hit. At that point, they had bigger problems. It's still working fine in NE Georgia where I live, when 100F+ temperatures are the norm in the summer. In fact, whenever our signal degraded, it was because a squirrel had chewed through an outside line, not because it was too hot or humid. I think TFA is missing the elephant in the room here.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
...that houses with television antennas are at greater risk of lightning strikes. This is a rare example of when the developed world would be hit harder than developing countries. If climate change threatens the quality of your television signal, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question.
If this is the best "DOOM!" Climate Change story the legacy media can whip up today maybe we are near the end of the scare.
Then we who are sane can set about purging the defilers from the temples of Science! and setting it to rights.
Climate Change can't possibly be science, it fails one of the most basic tenets in that it isn't falsifiable. Try it if you doubt, ask a True Believer masquarading as a scientist what test could falsify their theory. There isn't one. IT gets warmer, Global Warming. Cooler? Climate Change. Drier? Wetter? More ice? Less ice? More clouds? Less clouds? And so on. All data lead the Warmist to the exact same conclusions and more importantly the exact same policy prescriptions. And of course a real scientist wouldn't dare propose policy on such a complex question in the knowledge of his ignorance of too many other fields.
Democrat delenda est
Not least it's ability to make seemingly educated adults believe absurd things, like this article or that the end of civilisation as we know will occur in their life time. (Who else believed that the end of days was going to occur within the span of their natural life?).
If only there was a way we could harness this awesome power... and use it to fuel our civilisation. Go beyond fossil fuel with global warming power. There is no problem it can't create.
If we're so worried about global warming just counteract it by increasing global dimming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Well, if hot air really can interfere with WiFi, perhaps shutting these guys up would be a first good step.
Sounds like someone bought the "Global Warming" excuse from their local IT department! *tears a page off the excuse calendar*
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So Global Warming is supposed to take place over centuries.
The operational lifetime of WiFi equipment is 10 years at best. (Anyone still using just 802.11b?) We wouldn't develop new standards and better equipment to deal with the environment?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It's very simple, and not at all alarmist.
Signal propagation depends on temperature and humidity. It is possible to design a wireless network around a minimum number of antennas by taking the current climate into account. If you do so, and if the local climate warms, the optimum network may change, and you may have problems.
The paragraph is not trying to scare people into "Saving the Climate to Save WiFi" It's trying to warn the people who employ network engineers to have the calculations rerun, so that when the climate warms, the networks will remain fully functional.
Luckily I live in the US where the science isn't settled on Global Warming.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.
Um, it's not at all difficult to imagine this, especially if you've ever been involved in disaster relief. Until very recently, the communication systems were one of the first things to fail during most disasters of any sort. Wires are fragile things when faced with the actions of Ma Nature or a military force. This is why, back when (D)ARPA started the work that led to the Internet, almost all the diagrams showed a wireless comm system. It doesn't work too well to connect ships or jet fighters via cables. And even for ground installations, cutting the wires is the first thing that any enemy will do. The commercial world has dragged their feet tremendously, blocking the development of a real, universal wireless system at every stage. Our current cell-phone system is crippled by the lockings and licensing that makes it refuse to do most things we'd like it to do. The wi-fi system is mostly locked down by a hokey "security" system that doesn't much interfere with military decoding, but does prevent most civilians from using the system in over 99% of the US.
And we've just barely made a dent in this problem. It's possible to have trucks (or boats) full of generators and wireless comm gear at the scene in a short time. But this usually takes much longer than it should, due to poor planning, plus active interference from the authorities on the scene.
Our comm system is barely functional in small-scale emergencies much larger than an auto accident. In real disasters, such as Katrina, the comm system simply collapses and takes weeks to come back online.
There's also the example that would be funny if it weren't for all the deaths involved: The collapse in New York of the World Trade Center nearly a decade ago also crippled Manhattan's communication system. The idiots who built the system's infrastructure (mostly the phone company) had run most of the cables for the southern half of the island under the WTC. And they hadn't built redundancy, so there was usually only one path between two specific points. The ARPA people back in the 1960s would have been apalled. People in 2001 who'd been working on the Internet were apalled. There was a lot of discussion of this in any number of comm forums. Reports are that the situation is nearly as bad today. The comm companies see no need to waste money on redundancy (and in fact over-subscribe most of their capacity when they can). And the government agencies are controlled by people who don't believe in "government regulation".
It's interesting to contemplate the idea that someone actually thought we had a comm system that works during major emergency or disaster situations. I wonder who wrote that line, and what their experience in emergency work is.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Both of which may change (even drastically) on an hourly basis. Where I live, we have four distinct seasons, with temperatures possibly ranging between several degrees below zero C to a few degrees above 40. Hell, in on day we can have well over 15 degrees of variation. Humidity fluctuates as well.
The point is, any wireless network where performance is based heavily on these wildly changing variables is a fragile, poorly-performing one. And thus, this article is, in easily demonstrable fact, alarmist.
sig: sauer
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