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Comment by Hansenq | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that this article doesn't talk about a real, scientific, threat about 5G: that it occupies the same frequency spectrum as water vapor, affecting how accurate satellites that track clouds and water in the atmosphere can be.

Given that these satellites have contributed significantly to how much more accurate weather forecasts have gotten in the past 10 years, being unable to predict storms could arguably have a significant human health impact (ie. not being able to announce evacuations, sending aid to the right regions, etc)

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01305-4

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-5g-wireles...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/5g-networks-will...

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Maybe the 5G networks can themselves be tasked with reporting ultra-local meteorological data, basically upcycling their signal strength info. The problem, then, becoming the solution.

These satellites employ what are known as passive radiometers: devices that detect how much radiation is present in a specific frequency band. This radiation comes from water molecules in the atmosphere.

The problem is that 5G might emit in the same frequency range as well. This means your detector now measures the base load of the H20 spectrum in addition to the added 5G spectrum, with no possible method of separating the two.

Your proposal will therefore not work. Any measurement will conflate the two and lead to too much noise to discern the (H2O) signal.

“Surprised?”

I’m sincerely curious. Based on all of your experiences with how tech journalism covers tech, why are you surprised that this article doesn’t address an issue unrelated to health?

I am not trolling or attacking personally- I am sincere: I’m super interested in understanding how divorced from other people’s perspective I am. I think this journalist was tasked with writing a story about how the health fears for 5g have not planned out in any reproducible study. It is obvious to me that there are powerful economic forces on both sides of this issue, and it is poisoning reporting. It seems outrageously obvious that talking about weather is not going to be addressed in this article

Feigning surprise is a rhetorical device, and a useful one. I'm surprised that more people didn't know about this.

When @dang has a history of claiming legitimate questions are a personal attack, it bears some context.

When people make these claims, they never supply links. What's an example of "claiming legitimate questions are a personal attack"?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289975

"You are out of touch", "Labeling people that you don’t understand", "get out of your bubble", "You are deluding yourself", and "tossing a mr. yuck sticker on people you don’t understand" are all examples of personal swipes.

There is a huge difference between calling someone an asshole and calling out shitty behavior.

If you can’t call bad behavior bad, then what is the value of your ethics? There is right and wrong- but you can call it out without demeaning people.

I don’t have any shame for this and I think you are wrong.

fix the behavior HN tries to correct, address it forthrightly, watch the response.

GP's point - or at least a point that can be drawn from their comment - is that weather is actually more related to health than what the article is about, because weather forecasts have a measurable health and safety impact, whereas body absorption of low amounts of non-ionizing radiation doesn't.

> "I’m sincerely curious."

Feigning curiosity in response to somebody feigning surprise is... interesting (...or maybe I am feigning interest to convey my incredulity that you were sincerely curious. :-)

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