The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)
advances.sciencemag.org
advances.sciencemag.org
It turns out, in those temperatures, even young and healthy people can't survive. Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die.
It's looking increasingly likely that such heatwaves are possible in the future, and possibly quite deadly. This could result in the mass deaths of many people, especially in poor tropical countries that don't have a stable infrastructure to cool most people during such a heatwave. I hope a mass death event from a "web bulb" 35C heatwave never happens, but I'm losing hope, especially with the increasing global temperatures, and the very lackluster progress being made on carbon output.
Someone could make a “Einstein dehumidifier” using 19th century technology and roll it out across the world. If embedded in buildings it could cool them constantly with no electricity required.
Most modern ACs in fact dehumidify and cool in one step with a compressor and then use the collected water to help carry heat away from the compressor by letting the water evaporate into the exhaust to save power (it's why you rarely have to empty water from modern dehumidifying ACs).
Anyway, the best way to learn more about this is to search for resources describing the "psychrometrics of evaporative cooling". Psychrometrics is the study of the thermodynamics of air and water vapor mixtures. Learning about the psychrometric chart, in particular, is helpful since it is a very clear, expressive tool that will illustrates how adiabitic (no change in thermal energy transfer) cooling can occur by adding humidity to dry air.
I think this entry from engineering toolbox provides a good start: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/evaporative-cooling-d_698...
Ultimately all that really works in our modern world at scale in such a heat wave is powered air conditioning, so ensuring that electrical power is not interrupted during such an event is of paramount importance if we are to avoid this new sort of natural disaster.
Instead you build and live in highrise/towers - that gives cheap ventilation which is a half the solution.
And I liked the siesta and the following it very active life till deep night in Spain - another natural adaptation to hot climate. It makes for much calmer and steady life rhythm and feeling.
I mean, I'm sure this is valid in some places but having lived in high rises relatively far north in Canada let me tell you it is very possible (and in my experience very common) to build high rises that retain heat so well they basically bake the occupants in high heat/humidity.
I doubt most of North America's high rise apartment buildings above some latitude are particularly well equipped for this, so there's almost certainly a shift required in how you build them.
Human societies have been historically very bad at handling large scale migrations, but it's about to become necessary.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/08/pacific-nort...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/08/heat-dom...
Migration is not going to cut it. Climate change is making weather more chaotic and unpredictable. Escape is impossible. The only place you can go where the planetary weather system’s disintegration does not pose a danger is space, where the absence of that same disintegrating weather system makes survival even harder.
Reversal is the only option.
Reversal is not really an option either; the best scientific evidence I've seen is that we've already past several tipping points that will accelerate warming regardless of what we do, and even if we haven't, we've had about zero decrease in worldwide CO2 emissions and a terrible track record in getting humanity to work together for common good.
Not saying you’re wrong, though..
I only know from owning a swamp cooler.
A lot of ways we measure and describe the human experience of humidity and temperature are not standardized from location to location, so the non-local methods and terminology can be arcane for anyone who isn't a meteorologist.
The two are the same only if relative humidity is 100 %: 100 % relative humidity means that if the air cools at all, it will condensate; so the air temperature is the dew point. 100 % relative humidity also means that water cannot evaporate, as the air is already saturated with water, so the wet bulb temperature is also the same as the air temperature.
Especially in terms of climate change. I try to live as green as I can and I vote for a climate focused party, other than that there's not much I can do as an individual. Reading about how bad things may become doesn't help me one bit.
Ask a layman and most of them will tel you a fridge just “creates cold” or something and don’t understand why leaving the fridge door open is not a way to cool your room.
Having people understand these concepts is critical so they can better reason about climate change, climate policies, make better and greener decisions etc.
There are certain types of roofs being installed called cool roofs that reflect heat and don’t absorb it that keeps the inside of building a little cooler.
as long as power is running, it's actually fine in this country, but that's because we've designed our living space around the heat. it is entirely possible to never be exposed to the sun in a normal day in the life of a working resident here if you stay in the right neighbourhood, and this includes the daily commute, hobbies, physical activity, going out for drinks etc.
more and more of the country is being built underground and more and more of our air is becoming conditioned. this is the arcology of the future and it is somewhat pleasant.
edit: actually i think our infrastructure was built around protecting us from the harsh and unpredictable tropical thunderstorms and the protection from heat turned out to be a nice bonus.
And before anyone brings up skin cancer, there is no reliable evidence that brief daily sun exposure increases all cause mortality.
Inferior how?
It's like fast acting insulin versus insulin produced by a functioning pancreas - it's going to keep someone alive but it's not ideal for the body long term.
I've never heard of such a claim, and that seems unintuitive. Why would that be? Do you have a source you could direct me to to learn more about this?
I am not claiming this and don't have a reliable source to point to.
Some more reading specifically on vitimin D:
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-health%20Professi...
...sometimes I secretly wonder if sunscreen (over-)use in America would one day be found to be the cause of rise in depression and other things like that over the last few decades, kinda like lead pipes of old. I don't think it's likely but it would be kinda funny.
Unfortunately a large percentage of folks in HDB flats don't have AC, so I do fear for many citizens in Singapore. With global warming trends it should simply be a free or heavily subsidized utility here.
It's just an anecdote, of course, but there are notable examples of people i think should be from genetic backgrounds that could handle the heat that can't, and vice versa.
One of the locals finally told me I couldnt just walk out of airconditioned low humidity offices into the street and roam around, without giving my body 10-15 minutes to recalibrate. So before setting out from air conditioned buildings, I would stand outside in the shade for a bit and then head out. And that made a big difference. I started sweating less and didnt feel humidity as much.
If you work outside all day you adapt very quickly to it. During the adjustment period you are chugging water all the time but you eventually adjust. It's a circulation adaptation that's been observed with special forces recruits.
Sort of yes, sort of no. In some industries, those who do hard labour in heat have a terrible death rate from kidney disease. There is a lot in the news about this in relation to sugarcane workers. Eg: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/14/kidney-disease...
I'm not saying it resulted in quality sleep (as a Canadian - I set the thermostat to 13 degrees in the winter when sleeping, and my ideal temperature in the summer is about 18 degrees) - but you get used to the outdoor climate reasonably quickly (in my case, about 4-6 months).
This is mostly a meditation on the fact that I used to be able to sleep in temperatures of 26-27 in Singapore. The human body (at least this one) can definitely acclimate to local environments given some time and exposure.
Of course - no acclimating whatsoever will help you if the wetbulb temperature gets up to 35. You are just dead unless you can find some active cooling at that point fairly quickly.
Unfortunately it looks like someone who didn't get it downvoted you. Welcome to HN!
We've literally be talking to Norwegian family about their nice 22 degree day at the beach while I was loading the fire place, they asked me the temperature, checked and was 22 also, though would have dropped later at night.
I find over 35 gets tough to do ongoing outdoor work. An hour or 2 then you need an hour or 2 to cool down. Hitting, 40c this is getting too hot.
The Changi airport weather station does not have any recordings of a 35C wet bulb temperature. And this paper suggests that it is a very uncommon occurrence as yet. What source are you using?
See: https://www.instrumentchoice.com.au/news/wet-bulb-temperatur...
Once you acclimate to it though - it's fine - I used to do a 5 mile run every day from Anson Road/GardensByTheBay/MBS - wasn't an issue.
I worked in Dubai for about 6 months, and there were days there that I honestly thought I might die if I didn't get somewhere cool. And it wasn't the days that were 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 Celsius) (though those were intense) - but the 100-105 degrees at super high humidity that would knock you on your back. Your entire body would be instantly bathed in sweat and it wouldn't help.
I was fine without Air Conditioning in Singapore - would sometimes turn mine off and just open the windows, but I can imagine anyone doing that in Dubai during the hot season.
Singapore is almost exactly on the equator. UV readings get up to 11 each day (extreme), whereas the most I ever saw in say SF was 5.
Your experience is one experience, mine is that it's a sauna every day of the year. I've experienced extremely hot days in terms of subjective experience of WBT as explained in article. My gf, a local here, also decries the heat. I personally cannot go running before 5:30pm. I got a major sunburn on my back at 5:30pm the time I tried running shirtless at east coast park. Granted, I am pale.
I once visited Kuwait in August, and it was 52 degrees in the shade with near-100% humidity. I genuinely do not understand how some people survive there today without aircon, much less how they will do so if temps go up a few more degrees.
Really? London is 6 today, was 7 last week and 8 earlier this year.
I do also concur with the GP that Singapore is relatively mild as far as equatorial/tropical climates go. India, the Middle East, the Philippines and even Australia are sometimes much more oppressive.
The hottest day ever recorded in Singapore was 37c, whereas London is 38c and SF is apparently 41c. Of course, Singapore is more humid (and thus higher WBT) - but it's also much more consistent. In theory that would make it easier to acclimate..... but then Singaporeans seem to run their AC set to freezing.
https://images.app.goo.gl/P4YtYRLvT5XVcn168
Look at this map of max temperatures and note that the equator runs through a band of relatively low max temperatures: Indonesia, northern South America, and the more southern part of Africa show bands of conspicuous coolness. The hottest max temperatures are in places like southern North America, India, Northern Africa, and Australia; locations that are in fact very far away from the equator.
The max temperatures of a place is caused by many things, such as proximity to water and local wind currents, but one driving reason is relatively simple: because of the tilt of the earth, every day on the equator is 12 hours. North or south of the equator, on the summer solstice, you can get 15 hour days, depending on latitude. The summer is a period of continuously intense solar heating. Again, there are other factors, but the sun is the driving force.
Living in both San Diego and now Denver, they hit 11 quite regularly.
In the time I spent in Dubai (about six months) in comparison, I had to seek shelter from the heat/sun a half-dozen times, and came close to heat-stroking a bunch of times. That was after 4+ years in Singapore.
I drank a lot of water in Singapore - but never, in a million years would I have gone on a trek like MacRitchie reservoir in Dubai - and in Singapore I took my 65 year old mother through the entire loop.
Just completely different environments - Singapore is not the type of environment being discussed in the original article.
On a "we're talking about human beings here" basis what do you do about all the people who feel that the selection and admission process was corrupt and that they've been robbed of their chance at safety? Do you expect them to meekly acquiesce?
What happens when people from India, the middle east, ... are forced to relocate? I expect some kind of conflict/war of expansion and probably famine since a lot of the land will be abandoned and hence become unproductive.
And let's be real, no wall (or frontex and the like) will ever keep out billions of people. If the world doesn't get its shit together and respond globally and collaboratively now, this will get ugly beyond imagination and no one, no matter the edgy coldness of their x-first attitude, will come out of this recognizable. People won't just die politely, much less when informed about who's to blame for all this hell.
I think there may be even possible consequences beyond everyone's worst nightmares when we see massive ecosystem collapses. What is it gonna be like, if you have unimaginable fields of mold and bacterial overgrowth? The winds bring Sahara's heavy mineral dust to Europe now, I am sure spores and toxic particles fly much better tomorrow...
Study: Cold kills 20 times more people than heat https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/05/20/cold-weath...
"What we see is that in the early-to-mid 20th century, the annual death toll from disasters was high, often reaching over one million per year. In recent decades we have seen a substantial decline in deaths. In most years fewer than 20,000 die (and in the most recent decade, this has often been less than 10,000). Even in peak years with high-impact events, the death toll has not exceeded 500,000 since the mid-1960s.
This decline is even more impressive when we consider the rate of population growth over this period. When we correct for population – showing this data in terms of death rates (measured per 100,000 people) – we see an even greater decline over the past century. This chart can be viewed here."
The reductions you discuss are attributable to the first of those two effects. Climate change drives the second. If we mitigate climate change then we can spare ourselves the increases attributable to the second effect.
You may reply that the first effect can always outpace the second, but I hope with some thought you can recognise that there is no evidence to support that claim, and it is essentially just an article of faith.
Of note: that’s literal, even doing nothing and sitting in front of a fan you can’t cool down.
And do one of the issues 35 WBT “hides” is that any activity lowers the heat stress threshold. Sugarcane workers are already dying due to heat stress today, and have been for a while. There’s been an “epidemic” of “kidney disease” in central american sugarcane fields for a decade now, with young men showing rates of kidney diseases 15x the norm.
"Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32°C (90°F), equivalent to a heat index of 55°C (130°F). The theoretical limit to human survival for more than a few hours in the shade, even with unlimited water, is 35°C (95°F) – theoretically equivalent to a heat index of 70°C (160°F), though the heat index does not go that high."
So the practical limit is indeed much lower than 35°C; that's the limit at which you're basically going to fall over and die.
I'm not sure that phrase means what you think it means... Yes, there were ~600 tragic deaths in BC from the heat dome, but en masse means 'as a whole' or 'as a group', and a .012% death rate does not really qualify there.
I mean ground and buildings have thermal inertia, if the heatwave is relatively short you can survive in basements or underground parking. Also water in the pipes will still be colder than the air most likely.
In a recent Seattle heatwave, when it was 107 outside my much poorer insulated semi-basement with direct sun shining into its large-ish windows, stayed under 85 without AC.
Couldn't people just build better / underground housing using relatively primitive technology?
http://www.rynekinstalacyjny.pl/images/photos/24/3877/__b_An...
The rate of temperature increase depends on physical properties of the basement walls: using the first equation here[0] as an approximation, set x to 0, set q"_o to 100W*(# people)/(basement surface area). α is the thermal diffusivity of the wall material [1].
[0] https://slideplayer.com/slide/1676039/7/images/9/Semi-Infini... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_diffusivity
That's an exaggeration. Extreme heat (including heat waves that exceed this threshold) happen semi-regularly, and the death rate when they occur is nowhere near 100%. More like 0.1% or less.
Electrically-powered air conditioning is not the only way to cool a human body.
Simply escaping to an underground or substantially enclosed area is sufficient for periods of up to a few days, or even weeks depending on the thickness of the walls. Car parks, cellars, caves, etc... all retain a relatively constant temperature irrespective of temporary swings of the air temperature outside.
Similarly, immersing oneself in a body of water below about 36 C is also sufficient, and that's typically available even if the local air temperature and humidity exceeds safe levels. E.g.: Rivers "carry" the cold down from mountains, and are safe havens during temperature extremes. Even the local pool is sufficient, because water has such a massive thermal capacity that it won't heat up anywhere near as fast as the air around it.
At times like this you see people filling up their bathtubs and just hanging out in there until things blow over.
More worrying is what happens to wildlife. Some animals simply can't escape like humans and most animals can. For example in Australia a recent heatwave killed something like half of all flying foxes!
And there are psychological issues that people just don't know what to do till it's too late. I was living an apartment with only 1 southern window, the heat was hard to vent. Once during a heatwave I found myself in a weird lethargy then I started going sick and then I found out the thermometer shows 40°C inside. I went outside immediately. Were not a healthy young man, that could have ended up badly. Since that I never underestimate the heat.
That does not mean 100% fatality rate is possible but it definitely might be more than 0.1%.
People don't have trashcans, storage bins, etc?
"And seems you probably never bathed in 35°C water, it's definitely not refreshing."
Where is this 35C water coming from?
Also, if it's a humid heat, there are likely to be natural or artificial bodies of water around. Hopefully the people have been taking care of them and they aren't a cesspool.
Sure, some people may die, but it should be very low.
Edit: why downvote? All the excuses the previous person gave seem petty to me, so I'm wondering how that person came to their conclusion. Especially for where that hot water is coming from.
I’m inclined to say that this is not very survivable, regardless of your precautions, if your air conditioning has died.
A wet bulb of 35C means that there is a thermometer covered with a wet cloth reading that temperature. That could be 35C with 100% humidity, or it could be a higher temperature with a lower humidity.
Can you explain how your air conditioner keeps you cool? Do you think this machine is the only thing that can perform a similar function? It's all about removing excess heat from your body. An air conditioner does this by cooling air and removing humidity. This can be from the cool air on your skin and the ability for your sweat to evaporate. When your sweat can't evaporate you need another way to transfer heat. Water is very efficient for this due to its specific heat (anything at a cooler temperature with sufficient thermal mass can work). Some people can even become hypothermic in 27C water if left in it long enough.
Edit: I guess people just downvote things they don't like or find to be inconvenient.
How is that fully accurate? It seems to me that "not very survivable" is not accurate and is an over exaggeration. I don't expect a 50% death rate, even 10% would be extremely generous. It would be like me saying linux desktops are very common.
I would not leave my house. My house has insulation and thermal mass, which would delay the tempature from reaching that level until later. I could use water to cool myself, whether in the bath tub or a trashcan. I could use a fan if there's power (depends on the temperature and humidity to reach that wet bulb). I could use frozen objects (even without power, the freezer will stay cold for at least a day). I also have a generator to power these things if there's a short to medium term outage.
Their statement was not about changing one's circumstance. It was that even with precautions, it's not very survivable. This is neither accurate nor precise. It is very survivable with precautions.
I was specifically questioning things like where is the hot water coming from, people without tubs can't figure out how to save water, etc. Those claims sound overly pessimistic and simplistic to me.
If this starts to happen semi-regularly, you can bet my garden will turn into a little hobbit hill/cellar.
That said, I agree that if it happens suddenly to that extend, we would likely be looking at more than 0.1%.
This is something that has puzzled me every time I park in the underground garage under City Hall in Palo Alto. It is always so hot down there compared to the outside air.
I was about to ask if anyone knows why that is, and then realized I could search for the answer:
https://www.google.com/search?q=why+do+underground+garages+g...
Lots of interesting opinions there, including a previous HN thread.
One discussion I liked showed up when I'm signed into Google but was missing from an incognito search:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2013/07/05/stupid-geophysi...
There's also all the body heat, and the resistive braking of the trains which is being phased out.
People can jump into fountains, or other bodies of water, hide at home, airconned buildings.
In the end, people can try to brave it, and wait for the relatively cool evening.
I don't know what exactly environment reaching 35C/95F web bulb means, but considering 1) it indicates temperature of a thermometer cooled by evaporation, and 2) body temperature of a human is ~40C/100F, I think it means evaporative cooling aka sweating is becoming useless. It won't be a huge stretch to consider that unsurvivable.
This assumes there are no alternatives to evaporative cooling via sweat.
My legitimate comments get downvoted and crap like this does not...
One issue that people who haven't experienced extreme heat might not realize is a lot of people just pass out really quickly. While it takes a while to go past the point of no return and they theoretically could be egressed to somewhere they can cool off and recover, if they're alone, they're not going to.
These events are usually short (for TW >35, majority only last an hour, see Sup fig 2), which is perhaps why we are not seeing many deaths associated with them.
With regards to immersing oneself in water, a bathtub is good so long as groundwater is available; if everyone starts filling their tubs for every heat wave it might start becoming more scarce. I would have thought natural bodies of water like the sea would have been a good choice, but the authors point out that in one region where wet bulb temps >35 were happening they also observed frequent sea surface temps >35 too (sup fig 16).
There are ways to survive and you have provided good ones, but they won’t be available to all who experience these events if they continue to increase in number. And excellent point about wildlife! That’s a whole additional side of it that will probably get lost in the mitigation effort…
"There is a clear connection between heat and drowning. That's when people want to go in or near the water, and the risks of drowning increase," FSL's Executive Director Kristiina Heinonen told Yle in July:
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/drowning_deaths_reach_10-...
Sounds to me like a mostly not seen before thing
> Is there a name
"False analogy" is what comes to my mind, maybe there's something better
I guess it depends on where you are, I live on the Mediterranean, where, if you panic in the water, you're just standing in calm water. I imagine the ocean is much scarier.
> maybe there's something better
I think we do need something better, I see it too often for it to not have an exact name.
Yes, in my case I was imagining a wide river close to a many millions people city, and people from the slums (no AC) go there to cool down, and more and more people arrive all the time to the river, pushing those already there outwards, deeper water, people cannot swim
At rock concerts 10 000 people can create dangerous pressure, I wonder if a deadly heat wave and the chance to cool down at a specific place can do that too
Or maybe people would spread out along the water, but at the same time, it might be hard for an individual person with occluded vision to know what makes sense to do
Sometimes people rush out from a building in panic, everyone gets stuck in the door opening
Still, that factoid is troubling. These are conditions that exceed humans' operating conditions. We're used to that on the cold side. Plenty of people thrive (miserably) in places that get cold.
But, there are actually far fewer good cooling options. Air conditioning is more complicated than heating. You can heat with fire, warm clothes. Even exercise, though this is not sustainable. A sauna is nice, but people don't live in their saunas until temperatures get tolerable.
Also, the heat cutoff is more of a universal. A lot of organisms seem to start failing at temperatures like this.
That would definitely change cultures and economies, but if you can't get out of those places, it might be your only option.
The threshold is wet bulb 35 for 7 hours. That is when fit young humans can't survive. Older people die well before that of course.
And no, it doesn't happen regularly. I wasn't aware it had happened at all, although others here say it has. But it has come close. From https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people... :
> Jacobabad crossed the 35C wet bulb threshold in July 1987, then again in June 2005, June 2010 and July 2012. Each time the boundary may have been breached for only a few hours, but a three-day average maximum temperature has been recorded hovering around 34C in June 2010, June 2001 and July 2012.
These people don't have the escapes you mentioned. They are in a city with no running water and no cars, let alone car parks. There is no river, but there are a couple of small lakes.
Jeez what a hot place... Any idea what geographic features make it so dang hot? It's not too far from water (just looking at a map).
Sibi is in a hollow formed by some mountain ranges to the north. Perhaps hot winds from the south get trapped there. Not sure about Jacobabad though…could never find any reason why it was so hot.
Another time I was in a car with no AC right after a rainstorm, and it was so hot in the backseat that every time the car stopped the heat became unbearable. When the car was moving we had some wind and it helped.
In Canada I’ve always noticed the temperature can be 5-10 degrees cooler under trees in a forest. Not sure if it’ll be so cool with high humidity but certainly trees will block the sun and trap air cooled by the ground, so they are the best defence against global warming.
It means some people simply have no means to escape such heat and will likely die.
In the US, they sometimes open cooling centers during heat waves so homeless people and poor people have a place to go. I never went to such but they did that in Fresno and bus rides were free if you said you were going to a cooling center.
And there may often be only one tap per 100 people in densely populated slums.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/record-de...
The most dangerous / frequent occurrences seem to be measured in the middle east near shallow gulf coasts. Appleton Wisconsin holds the continental US record, apparently?
This is from 2011.
This looks more updated: https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/hi
and says:
> The highest dew points, and therefore the highest heat indices are usually found near warm bodies of water.
> In the world, the warmest water is found in the Persian Gulf where the water temperature typically reaches up to 90°F (32°C) in summer. Therefore dew points will be that high as well.
> The highest dew point ever recorded, 95°F (35°C), was recorded at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on July 8, 2003. With an air temperature of 108°F (42°C) the heat index was 178°F (81°C).
> In the United States, the highest dew point ever recorded, 90°F (32°C), was recorded at the New Orleans Naval Air Station, on July 30, 1987, Melbourne, Florida on July 12, 1987. Heat indices were in the 130's°F (50's°C).
> Appleton, Wisconsin also had a 90°F (32°C) dew point on July 13, 1995 with a heat index of 149°F (65°C)."
So, it happened once, in Saudi Arabia?
A higher frequency of extreme cold in winter in areas that are not accustomed to it, like what recently happened in Texas, may also occur with similar consequences.
I don't think climate change will be a catastrophe movie directed by JJ Abrams. I think it will be a gradual process in which we pay back the "loan" of fossil fuel use with interest.
We put our civilization on a credit card without knowing the interest rate.
We could have really slowed down our running up the balance in the 1970s and 1980s with nuclear power, but we didn't. We could still be doing that plus deploying a lot of renewable and storage tech that was not mature back then, but we're doing far too little of that. We are still adding to the card balance and we still don't know the interest or the repayment terms.
If there are feedback loops in the climate system that we trigger, the loan could be an ARM with unscheduled interest rate increases and balloon payments.
Our children get to inherit most of this bill.
The municipalities in the relevant places ought to advice people to prepare well in advance (and how)
Like California? They already can’t keep the lights on with rolling blackouts happening every year. If one of those blackouts happens during a severe heatwave, it could be serious. Not to mention the serious economic cost of having a third-world quality grid in what should be one of the union’s most prosperous states.
The prediction of how people react to the changes - from individuals to institutions to governments is spot on.
Highly recommended.
Wet bulb temperature is a combination of humidity and temperature.
Wet bulb temperature of 35C means your body physically cannot get rid of heat and you WILL die, rather quickly, even in shade. There is no escape unless you have ability to control humidity (ie. remove some humidity from the air).
Up until recently we did not have situations on earth where wet bulb temperature would reach 35C. Even in the most hot places the air would be dry enough to bring wet bulb temperature down under 35C meaning, things can cool below human body temperature.
The issue is that a lot of people in hot places simply do not have the means to control their climate in their houses, assuming they have any.
Or are they so much better adapted that it won’t be a problem (I don’t think so)
That’s the climate changed world.
A few cities around the world do reach 35 or higher regularly during summer. And in a some of those people have lived for thousands of years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_average_temp...
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/why-is-everybody-talk...
I spent much of my life living in that temperature range without A/C, working outside during the day in the sun.
It's hot but not going to kill you. In fact, there are massive homeless encampments outside my window right now in extremely humid, hot, Texas weather (it is 95-97 all week and very human). The homeless have endured many summers like this.
It is a massive stretch to say these temperatures are not survivable. They are not healthy in the long run - but neither is sun exposure.
It's an incredible exaggeration to say Chicago (where 600 people died in the heat wave) is not survivable at all when millions actually did survive the heat wave without AC.
If a major city has such a heatwave, it will almost certainly be a mass casualty event, mitigated only by the duration of the wave and how many people have A/C (or how long the blackouts last).
A fan won't work because your sweat will not evaporate: in fact it just heats you up faster (like breathing on your skin in a sauna).
Such temperatures have only been measured a few times on earth, so no, you have not experienced them.
At quick check, humidity in Houston is like 55%, so the wet-bulb temperature is only ~80f. Uncomfortably hot, but not close to the threshold discussed in TFA.
It’s called wet bulb, not “web bulb”.
The difference in perception even if the dry bulb temperature is the same is insane. In Bangalore I can always find shade and it’ll be cool instantly, but in Chennai my whole body is always soaking wet, my clothes are drenched with my own sweat and I still feel like always about to faint.
I used to take long walks during the day when I lived in Bangalore (it has other man made problems like traffic which are still irritating) but here I Chennai I can’t walk or jog outside even if I wanted to. I step outside only to run to the car and turn the AC on.
Why is this? I see that the south is much more mountainous [1], whereas the Indus and Ganges valleys are very flat (hence that term "Indo-Gangetic Plain"). Is it just the combination of being low-altitude, being inland, and having lots of water? Or are there also differences in prevailing wind, or something else?
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/jcdtvi/relief_map_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_duration#/media/File:...
Some sensors near Medford, OR are reading in the upper 400's and even low 500's -- what happens if it hits what would be the 1000's if the scale went that high?
I'm mostly thinking of particulates, but AQI includes other gases like CO, SO2, NO2 so maybe those would be more dangerous than particulates (and certainly harder to filter out)
Ideally, you'd want a VOC filter along with a HEPA filter.
It's a hostile environment - so is a blizzard. That's not saying it's not a problem but humans are able to survive a lot.
It was an awful time. Couldn't be outside because of the air, couldn't have guests over because of the pandemic.
It's very bad. Even in the 400's, it feels like chain smoking. At 900 the air is thick enough to block out most of sun. I have no idea what this has done to my health, but I guarantee it's not good.
The main issue for me so far has been psychological. Summer used to be peak season here, with tons of amazing nature and outdoor activities. Now, it's just a waiting game until the rain starts back up again.
The loss of place is palpable, honestly. My niece and nephew have never gotten to experience a normal summer: https://imgur.com/a/EAVStxe
Edit: This graph cuts off at 2018, but believe me when I say that 2019, 2020, and 2021 have been even worse.
I was at a chain drug store the other day and saw a display for canned oxygen, regular and Peppermint flavor!?! It seemed like another sign of the apocalypse to me, but maybe just a gimmick or stopgap for terrible air quality events.
If you mean as a permanent thing, you'd need houses to start having filters on air intake and no openable windows, with instead all air being circulated by the place that has a filter
Edit: chewing on "wet heat factor". What do you think? Cliches like "but it's a 'dry heat' harhar" are already common. So "wet heat" might click.
Love the people calling for air conditioning. They should make peace corp or something compulsory, the degree of out-of-toucedness on some people about the degree of infra and poverty that exists here is extraordinary.
I only did a quick skim of the paper, but I couldn't actually find which two stations they were talking about. I'm curious as to which two places they were.
Let me explain what the issue is, in simple words:
WET BULB TEMPERATURE IS NOT TEMPERATURE YOU SEE ON A THERMOMETER. (please, don't nitpick, I am aware of wet bulb thermometers)
Wet bulb temperature is combination of temperature and humidity.
The simple layman way to understand it is it says what minimum temperature an object can attain by evaporating water off it, in perfect conditions (forced airflow, full shade, no internal heating, etc.)
When air is dry, even if it is hot you can evaporate sweat and cool down -- the wet bulb temperature is low in dry air.
You can survive on Sahara because while the air can be very hot, it is also dry. You sweat and you cool down.
As the humidity rises, the wet bulb temperature approaches dry bulb temperature and at 100% humidity they are both the same.
When air is 100% humid you cannot cool down by sweating at all -- the sweat will not evaporate in 100% humidity regardless of temperature.
Meaning that an air with 35C and 100% humidity has 35C wet bulb temperature but so can hotter air that has less than 100% humidity. The hotter air the lower humidity is needed for the object to cool down to 35C.
Wet bulb of 35C is a limit of human endurance. Even if you lie down in shade and do nothing and are completely healthy, your body is barely able to remove enough heat to survive. Any higher temperature and you WILL eventually die.
People who need to work (like move around at all) or are sick or are small (kids) will die faster.
The only way to resolve this issue is to dry the air somehow.
Things that don't work:
-- going into shade. You are still going to die, just a little bit slower.
-- having a fan. It can't cool you down, because water will not evaporate to cool anything below wet bulb temperature. You are going to die.
-- going into cellar. The air will get cooler but the humidity will rise. You are going to die, unless you can cool the air DRY BULB temperature below 35C. At which point your cellar will have water condensing on its walls which means you can remove humidity from air. It will be shitty, wet, 100% humid, hot place, to sit half a day in with your family, kids and neighbors that don't have an expansive cellar like you, but at least you will survive. Yay...
The issue is in areas that tend to be very hot and susceptible to this phenomenon, people tend to not have means to dry the air. They either don't have money for equipment or they have open homes (who keeps their home shut in a climate like that) assuming they have home at all.
From economic point of view, the problem is that even under wet bulb temperature of 35C some people will already be dying and others will have to stop whatever they are doing, which is not good for your economy.
I don’t want to nitpick. Everything you wrote is correct as far as I know. I only want to add to it.
I think understanding what a wet bulb thermometer is crucial to understand the term. And it is a very simple thing: you take a totally normal thermometer, you put it in the shade. So far everything is normal, this is how you measure air temperature since forever. You then put a little sock on the end of the thermometer and make it wet. Super simple. On a traditional mercury thermometer the end is a little glass sphere where the mercury is stored. This glass sphere is called the “bulb”. A wet bulb thermometer is just a thermometer where the bulb is wet. Super simple.
Why would you do this? Obviously this “wet bulb” thermometer will measure a lower temperature than the dry one. This is because evaporation of the water takes away energy from the thermometer. The faster the water can evaporate bigger the difference you will see between the dry and the wet thermometers. If the air is saturated with water vapor then the two measurements will be the same. If the air is dry you will have lots of evaporation and the wet bulb will be way colder than the dry one. So if all you have is two thermometers a sock and a bucket of water you can measure the relative humidity in this indirect way by comparing the two temperatures.
An other way to think about a wet bulb thermometer is that it is a very crude modell of a sweating human. You keep the sock wet and that simulates the thermometer sweating. The temperature the termometer reaches is the limit of temperature you can cool yourself down using evaporative cooling.
I would add the wet bulb thermometer needs large evaporation area (so the sock cannot be too wet and definitely you can't put it in the bucket) and/or some airflow around it. Otherwise it will show some temperature between actual dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures.
In practice, nobody seriously uses wet bulb thermometers outside of school experiments because they are such a PITA. It is easier to just measure dry bulb temperature and humidity separately and then look up wbt in a table.
In general measuring temperatures correctly is a tricky business, what with temperature gradients in the objects you try to measure and the thermometer itself. I just recently needed to explain to a bunch of people why there is no such thing as "temperature in the sun" and that you can pick any temperature between WBT and around 5800K and it is going to be a correct temperature "in the sun" depending on properties and shape of the object you are trying to measure..
How is humidity typically measured? I was under the assumption a hygrometer uses both dry and wet bulb measurements.
Not very practical to include in your electronics.
I don't know exact method used but I can assure you, there is no water reservoir in any of my gadgets:)
My experience is that they tend to get out of cal quite often which can lead to bad scenarios, like if using enthalpy setback for air-handling
Psychometer is completely different idea.
Yes, measuring humidity reliably is a difficult problem as basically any other measurement that requires direct exposure of eroding/corroding components and fragile electronics to elements.
"A psychrometer, or a wet and dry-bulb thermometer, consists of two calibrated thermometers, one that is dry and one that is kept moist with distilled water on a sock or wick. At temperatures above the freezing point of water, evaporation of water from the wick lowers the temperature, such that the wet-bulb thermometer will be at a lower temperature than that of the dry-bulb thermometer. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygrometer
The psychrometer just compares the wet and dry bulb temperatures to arrive at a relative-humidity value. I.e., it still operates on the principle of a wet-bulb thermometer.
If we are already counting on a wet bulb temperature of 35C, the humidity is likely already very close to 100%.
Reducing the temperature is likely to be a net good.
TLDR: The air gets cooler but still can't cool you. Your body produces heat that has nowhere to go and you still die. Then the walls of the cellar heat up immediately, because cooling 100% humid air requires sinking a lot of energy.
If you found yourself in conditions of an actual heat wave as described, you would despair at the fact the air can get cooler in your cellar but it doesn't cool you at all.
Which is counterintuitive but unfortunately that's how physics works.
First, humidity does not have to be very close to 100%.
In fact, in most cases it isn't and the reported waves of 35C WBT are almost all between 42 and 44C in absolute temperature. This means the air has to cool down 7-9 degrees before it even reaches dew point.
7-9 degrees is a huge temperature difference when temperature is over 40C.
Unfortunately the problem isn't the air temperature. The problem is your body's ability to remove heat. And if you take air and cool it down the temperature will drop but humidity will rise. The wet bulb temperature is preserved unless you can somehow remove water from air. And with wet bulb temperature being same 35C your body still doesn't have any way to remove heat and you are still going to die.
Only after the air cools down by 7-9 degrees celsius you can start seeing any effects, but don't be too happy.
Because physics has a nasty trick to play on you.
The effects of water condensing on walls of your cellar is going to be your cellar walls heating up immediately.
Yes, water cools stuff efficiently when it evaporates but just as efficiently it heats it up when it condenses.
Conservation of energy is a bitch. Please, learn some physics, it is really fun. And sometimes terrifying.
So your cellar is very likely to have very limited ability to cool down very hot humid air and condense water out of it.
While true about the conservation of energy, the drastic differences in both mass and heat capacity of air/earth mean the cellar walls will probably have no perceptible change in temperature.
Evaporative cooling is not the only kind of cooling that exists.
If this were the case you’d die of heat death standing in the middle of 100% humidity antarctica.
If your cellar is cold enough you’ll be in a much better situation than before. You seem to assume that the moment you open your cellar door, all humidity and temperature will immediately equalize with the outside.
You are saying the same thing as the OP.
There are generally two type of heat in this scenario sensible and latent.
Think about when you heat up water on the stove. If you were to graph the temperature T against the heat energy added Q, you would see the temperature gradually rise as the amount of heat was added. This is the 'sensible' heat. But at a certain point the water would hit boiling temperature. You're still adding heat but the temperature is no longer increasing so what gives? The energy is now going towards phase changing the water from a liquid to a gas. This is the 'latent' heat.
The OP is just saying there are more paths than just latent heat transfer, which is why they said you won't overheat in Antarctica if it's 100% RH. Your statement here is that evaporative (latent) cooling won't happen at 100% humidity but sensible cooling can still occur. You're both on the same page.
Don't you mean wet bulb temperature? Why would you need a dry bulb temperature below 35C?
> It will be shitty, wet, 100% humid, hot place, to sit half a day in with your family, kids and neighbors that don't have an expansive cellar like you, but at least you will survive
If we do start seeing this kind of temperature around the world, I expect people will start building underground refugees or repurposing existing structures.
But it doesn't matter a lot, because at 100% humidity (required to spontaneously dew humidity out of air) dry bulb temperature equals wet bulb temperature.
Dry bulb changes indpendently of wet bulb temperature but cannot be lower than wet bulb temperature.
Because when air temperature (dry bulb) reaches wet bulb temperature you are at dew point and when you cool down further all that moisture is going to either cause mist or dew or snow or rime.
In fact, lowering DRY BULB temperature under dew point (WET BULB temperature) is the leading way to remove humidity in nature -- the water precipitates in the form of mist high up in the atmosphere, the mist coalesces into droplets and falls down on air as rain. Alternatively, if the temperature is below zero, it causes snow by sublimation (both wet and dry bulb temperatures are equal.
This isn't the best interpretation. Both reducing humidity and reducing dry-bulb temperature can reduce the amount of energy in the air.
Take a look at a psychrometric chart [1]. If you hold the humidity constant and reduce dry bulb temperature, you indeed reduce the enthalpy (what I interpret you mean by 'heat'). Likewise, if you keep the dry-bulb temperature constant and reduce the humidity you also reduce the enthalpy
To your point, this is why fixed dry-bulb economizers aren't recommended in humid climates as a means of conserving air-conditioning energy by bringing in outside air but enthalpy controllers are allowed across all zones.
[1] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/docs/documents/816/psychr...
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/record-de...
The most dangerous / frequent occurrences seem to be measured in the middle east near shallow gulf coasts. Appleton Wisconsin holds the continental US record, apparently?
This is from 2011.
Here: https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/hi
says:
> The highest dew points, and therefore the highest heat indices are usually found near warm bodies of water.
> In the world, the warmest water is found in the Persian Gulf where the water temperature typically reaches up to 90°F (32°C) in summer. Therefore dew points will be that high as well.
> The highest dew point ever recorded, 95°F (35°C), was recorded at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on July 8, 2003. With an air temperature of 108°F (42°C) the heat index was 178°F (81°C).
> In the United States, the highest dew point ever recorded, 90°F (32°C), was recorded at the New Orleans Naval Air Station, on July 30, 1987, Melbourne, Florida on July 12, 1987. Heat indices were in the 130's°F (50's°C).
> Appleton, Wisconsin also had a 90°F (32°C) dew point on July 13, 1995 with a heat index of 149°F (65°C)."
So, it happened once.
Roger Pielke is good about this. He points out that the "business-as-usual" scenario is extremely unlikely:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentu...
I'm not arguing that the original article is uninformative or unimportant.
My guess is humans collaborating on a green future will mitigate emissions ever so slightly. But it will be energy/financial crises that force us to.
So can we look forward to fewer impacts under a more moderate pathway (say 4.5 w/m^2)? Probably not. The IPCC has consistently under-estimated the impacts and ignored feedback loops. Even the latest AR6 report says "Additional ecosystem responses to warming not yet fully included in climate models, such as CO2 and CH4 fluxes from wetlands, permafrost thaw and wildfires, would further increase concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere." We're locked into runaway climate impacts for centuries either way, not much of a consolation prize.
Of course, that would completely suck for the people who have to live there, and we should do our best to prevent it, but some people probably aren't going to have a choice but to try and handle it in whatever way they can.
Coober Pedy everywhere I guess.
It will be somewhat difficult to retrofit buildings to take advantage of e.g. thermal mass inertia, but I'm hopeful that new construction will increasingly favor passive/low-energy cooling methods.
1) In a giant case of prisoners' dilemma, the humanity will coordinate worldwide and rise to the occasion, massively cut emissions, tax carbon, build out renewables, etc.
2) There will be massive technological breakthru-s in carbon capture and/or energy production and/or geo-engineering (and I am not talking about things like nuclear, where the tech is mostly there but the rising-to-the-occasion bit is missing).
3) Somehow, the models and projections would turn out to be overblown, or the more mellow of the serious models that project we lose N% GDP or whatever would turn out to be correct.
4) We're doomed, doomed!
Given the humanity's realistic record with (1) and (3)... either fusion works, or [0]
While it would cost tens of trillions to make a sunshade by launching from Earth, making sunshades and launching them from the moon should be viable thanks to the lack of atmosphere and low gravity. Assuming that a few million tons of mass is enough to set up a space sunshade manufacturing station (and railgun launch rails) it should only cost a few trillion dollars, cheaper than reducing CO2 emissions.
The point is that we can call a date for this at all at this point because things are happening that are going to make that a reality. That's because of technical breakthroughs (i.e. scenario #2) that mostly already happened. And more is on the way. So any conservative date policicans call, might end up moving to an earlier date when that happens.
Whether you consider nuclear/fusion part of this progress is a bit of a political topic. My point is that we'll be fine with or without that happening. The "we're doomed unless we bet everything on technology X" scenario is basically just a variant of #4.
Actually, we're just dealing with the logistical aftermath of the results of these technical breakthroughs not being ubiquitous yet. But technically there's no other reason to keep burning stuff (coal, wood, gas, peat, etc.) other than that we are dependent on burning lots of it with our existing and increasingly more expensive to operate infrastructure. It's cheaper to not do that already but it just takes time to get ourselves there. 30-40 years sounds about right for getting that done.
Fixing our infrastructure is much less dependent on new technical breakthroughs (e.g. fusion or nuclear) than it is on simply doing more of the (already profitable) things that are being done anyway. Whether it is building gigafactories for batteries, building off shore wind farms, or deploying solar; it all seems to have decent ROI and popular with investors. Unlocking more capital for this is actually becoming easy and uncontroversial. If you separate the moralism and rhetoric from the economics, even the most conservative climate change deniers would not mind some cheap solar on their roof, lower electricity bills, or a ridiculous electrical ford truck with low cost and operational expenses. Paying less for more is a great way to drive progress and incentivize the masses. That's not to say that further breakthroughs aren't needed. They are, and they will happen as well. And IMHO speed up the agenda here.
I'm not a fan of either, but what's the alternative? Bake to death while the powerful decision makers delay changing anything?
It’s the equivalent of getting a second job because you can’t stop spending money: it’ll offset when you go broke but won’t prevent it. The only way to fix this is to tax the shit out of anything that pollutes with CO2 or other greenhouse gasses (which will naturally be passed on as a cost to consumers). There is jo other way out.
So in a world where everyone is trying to get to a high quality of life and only about 1B out of 8B have it, and in a world where for 7B to get to that quality of life we need to increase their energy consumption by a factor of 5-10, we are in a constant increase of total human energy consumption. Combined with population growth, we are nowhere near peak human CO2 output. In other words if you can make a device that can remove 20x of the CO2 we are currently putting out, then yes we could use that tech, assuming we don’t come up with some more quality of life ideas that push the energy budget further up the scale of course. But anything less than that won’t be enough as there is an accelerating growth in CO2 emissions with more or less no end in sight.
The wet-bulb temperature is defined as the temperature of a parcel of air cooled to saturation (100% relative humidity) by the evaporation of water into it, with the latent heat supplied by the parcel.
https://www.sciencealert.com/middle-east-may-be-uninhabitabl...
Fun fact:
With rising sea levels a lot of people there will be a lot nearer to a big enough body of water to cool their heat.
Or not, since the humidity at coastal areas is higher:
https://meteologix.com/ae/observations/wet-bulb-temperature....
But don't worry, ironically the people who so generously provided the raw materials needed to raise global temperatures and sea levels are equally working on solutions to keep their asses out of the heat and their feet from getting wet.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/environment/climate-chan...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02697459.2020.18...
From the abstract of the last paper, which isn't fully available online, sadly: "...this paper ventures regional planning responses to adapt to these threats through decentralising populations to inland areas."
Dispersion to the inland areas?
Sure, but the inland areas of which countries?
...
But if they are lucky, they will maybe provide the material for cool and vast underground arcologies that could even reduce carbon dioxide emission from the building industry:
https://www.bft-international.com/en/artikel/bft_Environment...
I too didn’t understand what Wet Bulb temperatures meant until I used this calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/wet-bulb
95F TB (Temperature Wet Bulb) is when the humidity is 100% and it is 95F out. The lower the humidity, the lower the TB value. At 40% humidity and 120F temperature, you get 96F TB. Imagine 120F at 40% humidity. Insane, right?
That’s what kind of temperatures this paper is talking about: dangerously hot and humid.
That being said I would be ok with posts talking about fixing climate change especially if it preserves human rights and dignity.
I wonder why.
Good: carbon tax or cap and trade (ideally revenue neutral). Electric car subsidies.
Bad: climate lockdowns. Restricting travel. Travel credits. Social credit score tied to climate behavior. (This stuff keeps me up at night)
So bottom line:
Following this https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... and this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights and you’re fine in my book.
But that’s not an assumption I make these days.
Fusion research, especially, is so pie-in-the-sky right now that I doubt any profit-motivated company would even touch it with a 10 foot pole.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.h...
Seems an easily solvable problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel
You are welcome. Sleep well tonight
> The wet-bulb temperature is defined as the temperature of a parcel of air cooled to saturation (100% relative humidity) by the evaporation of water into it ... The theoretical limit to human survival for more than a few hours in the shade, even with unlimited water, is 35 °C (95 °F) – theoretically equivalent to a heat index of 70 °C (160 °F)
The annual maximum wet bulb temperature in Arizona the last few years has been about 24°C. You were nowhere near the limit.
The calculator wouldn't go above 50° C, so I don't know what the temperature would be at 0% humidity.
The atmospheric temperature discussed as dangerous has been common in many parts of the earth for many years and is not nearly new. The real threat discussed is from heavy consideration of
"business-as-usual RCP8.5 emissions scenario"
and that is based on climate models evaluating the future, 2050+, effects of human sources of CO2 on temperature and climate.
We have a long history of such models. Apparently they are usually based on the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
The main question about CO2 is how much warming will be caused by a given quantity of CO2 from human activities.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but maybe surprisingly so far from either observations or models, we have no credible evidence that human sources of CO2 have caused, are causing, or will cause significant warming.
Okay, let's look at the observational data:
There was a movie, An Inconvenient Truth. With data from Antarctic ice cores, the movie showed, for the atmosphere, a graph of temperature and CO2 concentrations going back about 800,000 years.
As I watched the movie, it appeared that the claim was that the graph showed temperature and CO2 concentrations going up and down together. Then the movie concluded that the higher concentrations of CO2 caused the higher temperatures. Then there was a claim that currently more CO2 from human activities would rapidly cause significantly higher temperatures.
But, we could look at that graph more closely, and doing that we will see three situations:
(1) When temperature started to increase, CO2 (concentration, here and below) was low, not high. So, something caused the warming, but it was not high CO2.
(2) About 800 years later, CO2 had increased. Presumably the cause was more biological activity from the higher temperatures.
(3) Some thousands of years later, while CO2 was high, the temperatures fell again. There was a cause, but it was not low CO2. Indeed, the high CO2 did not keep temperatures from falling.
Net, from that 800,000 years of data, there is no evidence that high CO2 caused high temperatures. It would be more accurate (though of course still wrong) to say that the data supported that CO2 caused LOWER temperatures.
For some more recent data, there was some significant warming during the time of the Roman Empire and during the Medieval Warm Period, and there is no evidence that the cause was high CO2. There was some significant cooling during the Little Ice Age from roughly 1300 to 1900, but there is no evidence that the cause was low CO2. There was some cooling from 1940 to 1970 and concerns in the media about another ice age, and those years were when there was more CO2 from human activity from WWII and the post-war economic boom. So, in those years, with more CO2, we got some cooling instead of warming.
Again it would be more accurate (though of course still wrong) to say that the data supported that CO2 caused COOLING.
For some details, can start with "Global Cooling" at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#1974_Time_magaz...
which discusses the two famous magazine stories, the 1974 <i>Time</i> story and the 1975 <i>Newsweek</i> story, worrying about "global cooling" and asking if we were entering a new ice age. For more on these magazine stories, at
https://longreads.com/2017/04/13/in-1975-newsweek-predicted-...
can see the April 28, 1975, <i>Newsweek</i> article “The Cooling World”.
So, net, there is no data on temperature and CO2 from the past that says that CO2 will cause warming.
Yes, CO2 is a <i>greenhouse</i> gas. This means that it absorbs some light in the infrared but not the visible. In the case of CO2, it absorbs light out in the infrared in three narrow bands. The absorption spectrum is given at
https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&...
Part of the mechanism is Planck black body radiation.
We have had some warming since the Little Ice Age. It may be that we are still pulling out of the Little Ice Age, e.g., it can take a long time for the oceans to warm up. But even with this warming, it's cooler than in the Medieval Warm period and the Roman times when the polar bears didn't go extinct, the ice in Greenland and the Antarctic didn't melt, the oceans didn't rise and flood the coasts, and apparently humans didn't suffer. Apparently the main effects were greater agricultural productivity, e.g., in England, grapes were grown for wine.
Could the warming since the Little Ice Age be due to CO2? No: The warming is at the surface, and CO2 absorbs high in the troposphere with definition at Google:
<blockquote>the lowest region of the atmosphere, extending from the earth's surface to a height of about 3.7–6.2 miles (6–10 km), which is the lower boundary of the stratosphere. </blockquote>
which, from MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen, Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Emeritus, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has gotten cooler, not warmer.
Several attempts were made to model the atmosphere and calculate and predict the effects of human sources of CO2 on temperature. Nearly all the efforts predicted temperature increases that were rapid and significant.
It has now been some years since the times of the predictions, and the predictions and reality are compared in the graph at
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
Summary: Nearly all the predictions were way too high.
Science: So, so far climate modeling has no predictive value and, thus, is not good science.
Result: The predictions have no meaningful credibility.
Current Summary: There is no credible evidence from either the 800,000 years of the earth or the climate models that human sources of CO2 have had, are having, or will have significant effects on temperature or climate.
As a result of this lack of evidence, there is no scientific reason to attempt to lower human sources of CO2.
Read this, all of it, then come back here and make your argument again: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/
It's simple, really simple, just as in my post:
Observational data: The main observational data used to argue the dangerous effects of CO2 is just the 800,000 years of ice core data. But just looking at that data, as I explained in fine detail, that data does not support the claimed effects of CO2.
Models. Again as I explained carefully, so far the climate models have been proven wrong by reality and, in particular, have no predictive value and, thus, are not good science.
Net, there is nothing credible in data or models that says human sources of CO2 will cause significant warming.
In particular, the IPCC has no data or models that do better.
If you want to make an argument for being alarmed, I can do better than the IPCC: We don't really know what CO2 will do. In particular we have no data or models that are credible and say that we are safe.
I have shown, in just one simple post, that the alarmists don't have credible evidence. But I have not shown that we are safe.
Now the next real question is, what to do when we don't have any credible evidence that we are safe or not.
"It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the global climate system since pre-industrial times."
"The likely range of human-induced warming in global-mean surface air temperature (GSAT) in 2010–2019 relative to 1850–1900 is 0.8°C–1.3°C, encompassing the observed warming of 0.9°C–1.2°C, while the change attributable to natural forcings is only −0.1°C–0.1°C."
This is as far as I go to help educate you, as I remain unconvinced any efforts to do more would be helpful.
Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, just from what I wrote, from either data or models, there is no credible evidence that CO2 from human activities has had, is having, or will have a significant effect on temperature.
When there is credible evidence, I will pay close attention.
The IPCC can say "unequivocal" all they want, but that does not make their claims true.
Actually saying "unequivocal" is at best just a qualitative summary and no evidence at all.
So far, no one has any credible evidence that humans are significantly warming the earth, and in particular the IPCC has no such evidence.
If you want to point to where the IPCC has credible evidence, then fine, but just their claiming "unequivocal" means nothing.
But again, so far no one has any such credible evidence; in particular, the IPCC has none, and there is none to point to in their many long documents.
To explain further, the data from the 800,000 years has not changed. Data from just the last 150 years or so is not very much data. The models that have been tested by comparison with reality have nearly all failed. That's where we stand, including the IPCC.
But, as they say, you can't reason someone out of a position that didn't reason into in the first place.
How much is enough, when is enough enough, what is my purpose for existing, how can I be of service while not being taken advantaged of, and without unreasonable demands?
There is a need for reckoning, though it needs to start from within.
This crisis may be of a more spiritual nature than is evident on the surface.
That's of course cherry picked. But I think the sucky part is increasing the variance of the temperature distribution. So the hot is hotter and the cold is colder, and both ends really suck.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
I found the article through this link: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/07/climate_change_heat_r...
Interestingly, the emory link did not quote how many deaths were due to cold vs heat, but it did say that cold related deaths were going down and heat related deaths were going up.
By cherry picking just the part of the article that support a global warming narrative, but leaving out that cold is still, by far, the main danger, emory is seriously misrepresenting the science, imo.
Btw, the Guardian coverage for the same article is only slightly better:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/extreme-temper...
While it does mention that cold kills more, it does not mention that the ratio is 10:1 in the study.
I peeked at the lancet study, but it didn't support my trollish response to the OP.
The real point I was trying to make was the crazy extremes, the higher variance. I vividly recall running one morning when it got to -40F/-40C the night before. It sucked. The house was cold, work was cold. But one day is just a freak thing we all deal with, like snow in Atlanta. I remember a lot of government buildings shut down, to conserve natural gas. they made that resource available to everyone. Some people lost heat. I don't remember if people died. If that lasted for a week, I don't know what would have happened. I imagine it would have been bad. not riots, but heading in that direction.
There are 7 billion of us. We're pretty well adapted to our environments. We can handle a few bumps and potholes. Pushing those extremes, longer and deeper, that's not going to be fun.
Heat will kill. Cold will kill. Both are tolerable in the short run, but days of it is pretty scary. We're facing more of both. I don't have an answer to solve either case.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I can't say I'll get much use out of it tomorrow, but this is a long haul problem. I'll try to commit this evidence to memory. Maybe in a few months or years I can point at these references.
the statistic, adding 1 degree to the temperature isn't that bad. That statistic nicely glosses over the huge amount of energy added to the system. 1 degree isn't going to melt the icecaps. 1 degree is a huge amount of energy. I think, that energy is going to make things hotter and colder and less predictable.
Moving the mean is, well not fine but that's what we're doing. Have to accept reality as it is. But as far as I can tell, we're not shifting the distribution to the right. We are flattening the distribution, the median is moving +X. So, we've got fatter tails.
Those fat tails suck. we're finely attuned to current variance, we can deal with a cold or hot day. But that fatter tail, that's the fucker. A cold or hot week is deadly.
It makes less sense that it should lead to extreme cold.
Indeed, the Lancet study did say that the number of deaths from cold were on the way down.
Also, if examining the data further, most deaths are NOT in extremely cold countries, but rather in South East Asia and Africa.
I remember spending some time in a tropical country about 10 years ago, and when I was there, there was a few nights of "extreme" weather, where nighttime temperatures fell all the way to +14C (plus!). The government declared a state of emergency, and distributed blankets to the poorest people, to prevent oo many deaths.
Clearly, the main problem is poverty, not extreme weather.
Your "homework" doesn't matter if super heat waves are a new phenomenon since data was collected.
You can't even glean anything useful from total deaths of heat vs cold. You'd need an equal number of people in equally hostile hot/cold environments of the same size. And even then there's still so many other variables can contribute to a result.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-t...
Cold, instead, will not kill you if you are able to cover yourself with a sufficient coat and/or you are able to start some fire.
Most places in the world, even in rich countries, neither have air conditioning nor sufficient energy power plants to cool everyone.
I'm not going to disparage the survival challenges of extreme heat & humidity, but again, cold is no joke, even with a fire...
* Synthetic oil won't really ever freeze. Other car components will freeze up prior to oil ever freezing - notably the battery will freeze if it's cold enough, which will permanently damage it. Most any other car component won't suffer permanent damage from cold.
* A toolbox isn't the best option to rely on if you're driving in a remote area in the cold (I'm basically incapable of wrenching anything at -40 other than a tire change) - if I'm driving in the winter I carry (among some other things) a) a sleeping bag that's warm enough to keep me alive indefinitely given the shelter that a car provides, b) snacks and water that I can thaw with body heat in my sleeping bag and c) a PLB that, in a life or death situation, I can activate regardless of cell service.
From ~ 8:43 in the video: "The scariest thing about being on the road is that people whose cars break down have a risk of dying if they cannot fix it within 30 minutes. Otherwise, engine oil under the hood freezes in minutes. If people get stranded in these rural areas with no phone signal, they have no choice but to freeze to death within a couple of hours. That's why every driver carries a toolbox in his or her car."
He mentioned engine oil freezing a few times throughout that video.
Perhaps their information & strategies are outdated, or perhaps there's some specifics to Yakutsk that is different from your circumstances. The people there seem to recognize changes in temperature based on the visibility & other heuristics, where it's recognized that a 10 degree Fahrenheit difference in temperature is something to consider.
Perhaps you have some innovations that could help these people. The PLB seems like a good idea, though 30 minutes does not seem like enough time for a search/rescue effort. Either way, it's interesting to see how people adapt to their circumstances.
I've watched documentaries on Mt. Everest ascents where the climbers faced brutal cold, wind, & avalanches. Perhaps gear adapted to the conditions of the tundra could be an effective "survival pack" enabling people to survive for a few more hours should a car be stranded.
Having a car simplifies life a lot compared to alpine ascents. A car is going to be a better shelter than any tent available, and you don't really need to be concerned about volume/weight/water resistance of sleeping bags. (So it's still not cheap, but buying and layering some cheaper synthetic options saves a lot of money compared to -40C down bags.)
There are some interesting documentaries on Yakutsk, the "coldest city in the world".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/20/everything-is-...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305971138_Evidence_...
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018RG00...
We are in for a bumpy ride of wild temperature swings & extreme terrestrial weather driven by space weather & Earth being relatively under-protected. We need to adapt to these changes & focus on surviving & thriving with new conditions. Guilt trips about human emissions will not help our survivability when there are significantly bigger forces at play. Only preparedness & focus on the cyclical changes that have occurred on Earth throughout history, some of which is recorded in human history in books, myths, & prehistoric art, will help humanity.
IPCC 6th assessment report, summary for policymakers, page 8/42. Read it.
IPCC is the most conservative science body ever created. It comprises hundreds of scientists from all over the world, including Saudi Arabia and others, who need to unanimously approve each sentence. The role of human emissions in the current warming has been assessed without any possible doubt.
The role of human emissions as the key driver of climate change has plenty of doubt & plenty of money involved pushing a pre-determined outcome with the purpose of imposing taxes & centralizing power.
In the meantime, humanity is left unprepared for cosmic & geologic events (volcanic activity is driven by ionic activity from space) that are going to occur within 1-2 decades which will have drastic impacts. Since other planets in our solar system are seeing major perturbations in their climates, we should take nature more seriously.
There are other models that more heavily use solar forcing, which are gaining in number. It seems like there is increasing momentum in models which feature Solar forcing & recognizing the Geomagnetic field strength as a major factor in climate. These are all just models, but there are a growing number of scientists who are taking natural cycles more seriously than the APGW crowd.
http://www.raa-journal.org/docs/papers_accepted/2020-0449.pd...
The big global institutions are behind APGW with $Trillions invested in that industrial complex, but there are many independent scientists who are finding that natural phenomena have always been and are still the key drivers of climate change. My bet is on nature, not the wealthy 1% owned institutions with PR departments & editorial spin.
IPCC scientists are volunteering for the report, they are not wealthy. They are literally spending their own free time and money writing thousand-pages long reports.
You just choose not to believe the most rational answer because it's inconvenient.
Most of the models factor in Solar Forcing, which was only introduced in CMIP6, to varying degrees. This means models based on <CMIP6 did not include Solar Forcing, which means there has been institutional inertia that completely ignored an important factor into what drives the climate.
This meta-analysis shows the different models & how the different factors are weighted.
http://www.raa-journal.org/docs/papers_accepted/2020-0449.pd...
> You just choose not to believe the most rational answer because it's inconvenient.
Key word is "believe". You have a belief & your scientific opinion follows that belief. Are you willing to look at the data from the perspective of other beliefs? Are you open to unknown unknowns? If not, you are in danger of practicing Pseudoscience with a pre-determined outcome. Your "belief" determines your understanding of nature.
What's "convenient" is to go along to get along, make as much money as possible over APGW, & receive the social validation that one is "saving the world". There's plenty of money, personal reputation, & many careers that depend on APGW being an "existential crisis".
You should consider if you just choose not to believe the most rational answer because it's inconvenient.
Norway and Russia have a handful of towns near the cost north of the Arctic Circle, but that is largely due to the Gulf Stream keeping the temperatures more livable. Inland, temperatures are not very compatible with human life.
You could argue the idea hot is bad meets expectations for hackers, computers should be kept air-conditioned. Although this is not quite true, I think uniformity is what matters (same as humans, sudden drops in cold like walking outside is what can kill)
And what runs better, a warm car or a cold car.
The number don't lie, but number don't matter. Telling people they will die in more and more crazy ways gets more control.
All-in-all 10 times more people die from cold every year (according to the study) than from heat.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...