[HN Gopher] Dangerous humid heat extremes occurring decades befo...
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Dangerous humid heat extremes occurring decades before expected
(2020)
Author : perfunctory
Score : 193 points
Date : 2022-01-07 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (research.noaa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (research.noaa.gov)
| roter wrote:
| NOAA has also recently released a mapping tool [0] that allows
| you to dig down to county level (scroll down to county map) for
| various hazards.
|
| [0] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/mapping
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Looks like the data points have more to do with how many weather
| recording stations a region has than anything else.
| roter wrote:
| These are observational station locations, so typically located
| at airports, but will cluster in highly-developed countries and
| where people live or build things.
|
| Wet-bulb temperature is to first approximation the average of
| the dry-bulb (ambient temperature of air) and dew-point
| temperature (direct measure of amount of water vapour in air).
| So we're looking for places that can be both hot & wet in
| summer (e.g. eastern US) or _really_ hot and still somewhat
| moist (e.g. near Arabian Sea) [0].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classifica...
| refurb wrote:
| I'm not sure how to interpret the map either.
|
| The web bulb temperature of the top 0.1% of hot and humid days
| over a 38 year period?
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Yeah its a very poor visualization. Its difficult to tell if
| it is showing the hottest wet bulb temperature of an area
| over the time period, or the most frequent, or what.
| roter wrote:
| It is (likely) showing the 0.1% percentile of measured wet-
| bulb temperatures. i.e. in a given year, we expect 0.1% of
| the wet-bulbs to exceed this temperature or approximately 8
| to 9 hours in a year.
| ospzfmbbzr wrote:
| Dangerous to give any credence to this tripe.
|
| Models like the one mentioned (without references) are created
| by humans and the parameters they use are arbitrary. Scientists
| make some assumptions about parameters and run them through the
| system and get some results. They do this many times and vary
| the parameters to see what happens. It's the change in results
| vs the change in parameters that is the interesting stuff.
| Claiming they can predict the future is dishonest.
|
| Why do all references to climate models refer to 'The models or
| model'? It's like they are supposed to be oracles -- they are
| NOT. There is not just one or a few. They do not all show the
| same things.
|
| Models are a useful way to learn, but picking one result, not
| showing any work or stating assumptions, and then publishing
| click-bait referencing it is not ethical.
|
| > Climate models project the first 35degC TW occurrences by the
| mid-21st century.
|
| Which Climate models? Oh sorry it's the ONE so I won't question
| further. It could never be wrong.
|
| Do other models show anything different? Oh there are no others
| I see.
|
| What parameters were used? What datasets? There are zero
| references to any of this in the original paper but that didn't
| slow down the click-bait climate-fear-porn author who is not a
| scientist but a corporate communications person.
|
| > Looks like the data points have more to do with how many
| weather recording stations a region has than anything else.
|
| As others have said the 'survey data' they do reference seems
| to be mostly about how many stations a region has.
|
| Who funded this?
|
| > The study was supported by NOAA's Regional Integrated
| Sciences and Assessments (RISA) Program.
|
| Big government looking to get bigger.
|
| For my part I have many years experience designing and running
| HPC scientific computing models in related domains.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Friendly hint. If you are skeptical of climate change dogma,
| point out the clearest / most obvious failures in the
| individual paper / article / claim being presented. Do not go
| further by offering conclusions extrapolated from that. That
| enables you to engage people's critical thinking without
| engaging their ideology.
| ospzfmbbzr wrote:
| Good point. I had a coffee and just let it rip when I saw
| that article this morning.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| If you haven't experienced high humidity its hard to understand
| how debilitating it can be. You can't cool down easily doing even
| mild physical work.
|
| I'm in a subtropical zone (Brisbane) and in high humidity weather
| I do about 30-50% of the physical work I can on a non-humid day
| I'd estimate. OOften it's best to work outdoors for an hour then
| cool down for an hour in pool/aircon as if you overheat yourself
| itcan be hard to get back to normal that day.
|
| That said its a good HN opportunity too for entrepreneurs. We see
| more and more kit like ice jackets that you freeze then wear
| outdoors etc for outdoor workers. Tech has to kick in here too.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Hot, high-humidity days are the days I like to go out and run
| several miles. A lot depends on your fitness level. And
| Westerners are becoming decreasingly fit.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| The average hackernews user probably never was ;) But yes, I
| agree. There is a worrying trend of people living
| increasingly unhealthy lifestyles calling for politicians to
| protect them from life.
|
| Btw before you write angry replies accusing me of not knowing
| what I'm talking about I grew up in a part of Asia that gets
| extremely warm/humid in spring and summer. We're talking way
| above 80% average humidity for over 4 months, some days close
| to 100% and subtropical temperatures around 30-35 and above
| 40degC when it gets really hot.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Producing ice is quite an energy intensive process. But I guess
| energy is cheap, damn the climate etc...
| Someone wrote:
| I don't like the idea of needing tech to be outside, but ice
| packs would be most needed in places and at times when
| there's lot of sunlight, so solar probably will be the way to
| produce it.
| ericd wrote:
| That's why it absorbs so much energy when you wear it. If it
| didn't take that much energy, it wouldn't be that useful.
|
| But heat pumps are actually extraordinarily efficient, so ice
| production isn't bad compared to the cooling it would give
| the wearer.
|
| Which is one of the reasons many buildings build up big
| blocks of ice at night and then use them to cool themselves
| throughout the day.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Building up big blocks of ice at night is inherently less
| efficient than cooling only as much as needed. The reason
| it's done is to take advantage of night time power being
| cheaper. On the scale those buildings operate at it's worth
| it.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| From a naive perspective, energy is energy, so melting 1
| kg of ice eats 300 kJ of energy, and heating 8 kg of
| water from 20 C to 30C also takes 300 kJ.
|
| But if the ambient temperature is 30 C, how much did it
| take to make that 1 kg of ice or that 8 kg of 20C water?
|
| With a heat pump, like your refrigerator or freezer,
| producing cool water is much easier with high efficiency
| multipliers, while producing ice is a lot harder.
|
| If the outside temperature is 30 C, the the ice machine
| radiator must be at a higher temperature, say, at 40 C,
| to radiate heat, and the cold end must be below freezing
| to actually freeze the water. So, the radiator might be
| at 40C and the cooler at -10 C. So, the compressor must
| transport the 300 kJ of heat energy "against the grain"
| from cool to hot, a temperature difference of 50 C.
|
| With the refrigerator, the hot end might be at 40 C and
| the cool end at 10 C, meaning the difference is only 30
| C.
|
| COP or Coefficient power is the amount of energy (J) the
| heat engine uses to transfer 1 Joule of energy.
|
| Some formulas:
|
| eff = 1 - T_cold / T_hot
|
| Refrigerator:
|
| T_cold = 10 C = 280 K, T_hot = 40 C = 310 K
|
| eff = 1 - 280/310 = 0.0968
|
| COP = 1/eff = 10
|
| Freezer:
|
| T_cold = -10 C = 260 K, T_hot = 40 C = 310 K
|
| eff = 1- 260/310 = 0.161
|
| COP = 1/eff = 6.2
| falcolas wrote:
| Ironically, the cosplay space has this covered. They have
| portable battery powered air conditioners connected to
| astronaut-style onesies-with-coolant-pipes.
|
| Unfortunately they're still manually assembled, so not quite
| readily available yet.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Ti4GP0ntE <- Adam savage
| building one for an astronaut cosplay suit.
| klyrs wrote:
| The irony here being that technology won't save us all. It
| will only save the people who can afford the technology.
| Which, unfortunately, doesn't include the people responsible
| for manufacturing that technology.
| varelse wrote:
| I am done with this mindset. It is useless brow furrowing
| and knicker bunching that traps you in an endless doom
| cycle.
|
| One of the few things that still works about capitalism is
| you make an expensive toy, it catches on, and then it gets
| cost reduced ruthlessly to the point that almost anyone can
| afford it.
|
| See flat screen TVs and cell phones for two compelling
| examples of this phenomenon. See Corsi boxes for an example
| of how to build cheap alternatives to an expensive thing.
| In Beijing, they got as cheap as buying a $25 fan and
| strapping a HEPA filter to it in order to filter out small
| particles.
|
| The outlook that nothing ever gets better and there's
| nothing we can do about it because the rich control
| everything is what will get us all killed. The rich will
| make money where they can even if they have to make it up
| with volume.
| klyrs wrote:
| Has capitalism made iPhones cheap enough for the folks
| working in iPhone factories to afford them? Can the bean
| pickers working coffee plantations afford Starbucks? Is
| there zero wealth gap between people who shop at Walmart
| and the people who make the cheap crap that gets sold at
| Walmart?
|
| No, no, and no. Capitalism does not fix this. Capitalism
| exploits this and forwards the profits to the executives
| and shareholders.
| varelse wrote:
| Have you ever been to East Asia? They don't have the
| latest iPhones but they have a better cell phone network
| than the United States and cheap Android phones from
| which they do just about everything. You'll get four bars
| in the middle of nowhere compared to the United States
| spotty coverage concentrated on population centers. But
| pay no attention to geopolitical competitors, what could
| they possibly know that we don't?
|
| Or if you call capitalism a failure because only rich
| people can afford MacLarens, you're just being
| disingenuous. See also cheap perfectly serviceable 60"
| flat screen TVs versus a 85" Samsung Goliath.
|
| I don't want a society with zero wealth gap. They tried
| that during the cultural revolution and it sucked every
| bit as badly as the libertarian dystopia Peter Thiel
| wants to make happen. We have a really serious inequality
| problem with fairly simple answers that are politically
| infeasible until we federalize all campaign funding.
| klyrs wrote:
| > I don't want a society with zero wealth gap. They tried
| that during the cultural revolution and it sucked every
| bit as badly as the libertarian dystopia Peter Thiel
| wants to make happen.
|
| No, they didn't. That was the story the masses were sold,
| but power and wealth were a function of the hierarchy
| rooted at Mao Zedong. But also, I don't believe that zero
| wealth gap is a reasonable goal, so kindly lay off the
| strawman. Nordic countries show that there is a lot of
| room for improvement in terms of inequality, without a
| blush of the totalitarianism that you fear.
| varelse wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly what happens when you try to create a
| zero wealth gap - people cheat. You are the one that
| brought up the zero wealth gap with "Is there zero wealth
| gap between people who shop at Walmart and the people who
| make the cheap crap that gets sold at Walmart", not me.
| So if you don't want to be contradicted on a subject, try
| not mentioning it in the first place, pro-tip even.
|
| And libertarianism is just institutionalized cheating for
| all. Same result as communism in the long run - a tiny
| ruling class and a world full of peasants where it's good
| to be the king. I'll take neither.
|
| But I'd love socialized healthcare, medicare for all
| even. Spoilers: a country infested with a bunch of
| temporarily embarrassed millionaires will never let that
| happen. And even in a global pandemic, if you don't get
| private money out of campaign financing, you'll never get
| a shot at convincing those temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires of anything else. But by all means, you be
| you.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| What? People cheat in america constantly. Wasn't there a
| whole ton of fraud recently when it came to unemployment
| and the small business loans? People cheated for
| billions, capitalism definitely doesn't prevent thag
| varelse wrote:
| Yes, people cheat* because they are selfish, and any
| economic system has to take that into account which is
| where communism and libertarianism fall apart.
|
| But I thought we were talking about how if we have to
| wear stillsuits in the future, no one will be able to
| afford stillsuits except the rich despite the historical
| evidence 100% to the contrary. The rich will get them
| first though, designer stillsuits even, deal with it.
| Can't have everything.
|
| *But if you had any idea how many weird tricks the $100M+
| class employs to avoid paying taxes, 100% legally ATM
| because our 2500+ page WTF tax code, you'd probably want
| to storm the Capitol again (or maybe not because you
| might have convinced yourself those weird tricks might
| come in handy some even though they probably won't).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| When the government gives away money or makes loans with
| zero effort to qualify the recipients/borrowers, yes
| there will be cheating. That's not capitalism though.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| The takeaway I see here is that we're looking at putting
| people, on Earth, in environmental suits, because we
| collectively haven't been able to agree on how (or whether,
| for that matter) to stop making it uninhabitable.
| falcolas wrote:
| Technological solutions to discomfort can be done fairly
| easily at an individual level (though it may not be
| affordable to all). Solutions to our runaway climate change
| need to occur at corporate and government levels.
|
| Once you identify which is easier (to implement and/or to
| monetize), it makes an unfortunate kind of sense.
| ehnto wrote:
| The only lever we have as a society is regulation, and
| that is only because it has the capacity to change where
| people can make money. See what happens in countries
| where green energy is cheaper, it booms. It's not because
| they love the planet, it's because they can save or make
| money. There is zero chance corporations will suddenly
| have a long-term outlook on saving the planet and decide
| on their own to cut emissions, so we can forget that
| angle.
|
| There was always a lot of talk about carbon taxes, but
| since we're somewhat past that point now, what about a
| carbon capture rebate as well? If you can make money from
| thin air, I'm sure carbon capture technology and industry
| would boom. If a company can't avoid carbon tax from it's
| process, which some products simply can't, it then has to
| offset that tax with carbon capture rebates to be
| profitable and exist in society. If the math doesn't make
| sense, they don't make the money, so sad, tears in the
| unseasonable rain.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Saying the only lever we have is regulation is just
| saying the only lever we have is violence but with an
| extra intermediary steps
|
| The reason you don't litter, dump used oil down the
| toilet, buy conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets
| caught using sweatshop labor isn't because some
| jackbooted thug will put you in a cage, it's because you
| know it's the right thing to do. Sure there might be some
| laws you begrudgingly put up with because of the risk vs
| reward but making a lot of people do that at scale that
| doesn't work well.
|
| Convincing people to voluntarily do what you want is far
| cheaper than violence or threat of violence and it comes
| with a much lower risk of you being shot in the hole you
| just dug.
| ehnto wrote:
| I'm talking about regulating corporations, taxes,
| tariffs, trade restrictions, material bans and so on,
| maybe that wasn't clear in my argument or maybe I don't
| quite understand yours?
|
| But even on an individual level, money is still a huge
| guiding factor for society in general, so taxing certain
| items even at the individual sale level could influence
| things. Putting fuel in your car? 10% carbon tax, both
| you and the corporation paid a tax, that goes into the
| coffer to pay for other kinds of more active carbon
| reduction programs.
|
| > The reason you don't litter, dump used oil down the
| toilet, buy conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets
| caught using sweatshop labor isn't because some
| jackbooted thug will put you in a cage, it's because you
| know it's the right thing to do.
|
| People do all these things, knowingly ignoring all the
| externalities of their actions. The world is full of
| decent human beings, and yet the above is still true.
| Just look at the roads, we're all thoroughly aware that
| cars pollute our cities even in the immediate tense, let
| alone long term, yet the roads are still full.
|
| Let's not blame the individual for industrial pollution
| anyway, since the majority of emissions are still from
| industrial activity. People have marginal agency on
| changing that. What's a consumer going to do about bunker
| fuel in shipping ships? How am I going to influence the
| processes used in steel mills?
| dempseye wrote:
| Regulations on corporations are ultimately backed up by
| threats of violence too.
| ehnto wrote:
| Not practically they're not. They would suffer fines, at
| worst you'd have the people running the company get
| fined, at an absolute extreme they'd go to jail
| (VW/dieselgate). You could argue that prison time is the
| point that it backed by violence, but I must admit I'm
| fairly surprised that we're discussing the validity of
| laws and regulation as a concept in general, in response
| to regulating industrial pollution.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I used to listen to Libertarian talk shows back in the
| day. Those people thought all laws, regulation, and
| taxation were violence (they only work because government
| will point a gun at you and throw you in prison). They're
| not exactly wrong, but I no longer find the argument very
| persuasive.
|
| In the same sense, corporations are committing violence
| on us also, by destroying the planet that we all live on.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > so taxing certain items even at the individual sale
| level could influence things. Putting fuel in your car?
| 10% carbon tax, both you and the corporation paid a tax,
| that goes into the coffer to pay for other kinds of more
| active carbon reduction programs.
|
| The issue is that there's no guarantee that the 10% extra
| burden is going to green initiatives. It ends up going to
| the ever ballooning government budget and pays for
| pension funds for underperforming government employees.
| falcolas wrote:
| > you don't litter, dump used oil down the toilet, buy
| conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets caught
| using sweatshop labor
|
| Funny, the first three are covered by laws and
| regulations - local and international. I'm less certain
| about the conflict diamonds, but I believe there are
| regulations around those too.
|
| > Saying the only lever we have is regulation is just
| saying the only lever we have is violence but with an
| extra intermediary steps
|
| That's because there are enough people who value money
| and power that they will never do the right thing unless
| forced. The tragedy of the commons, as it is.
|
| The Meditations on Moloch paper covers quite a bit of
| this.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| No, because of the need to power such systems. Putting a
| long duration powerpack on an environmental suit is going
| to be a problem! There was a cave in Mexico (AFIAK now
| underwater) where they ended up using plain ice as the
| cooling medium for environmental suits.
| robcohen wrote:
| In the Marine Corps I used to run 8 miles a few days a week
| in direct sunlight in southern california. It wasn't even
| particularly humid, and I'd still get perilously close to
| heat exhaustion. Then I realized I could put a large
| icepack under my close-fitting camelback. Instant portable
| AC. This hack alone made a shocking difference in my
| performance.
| sbate1987 wrote:
| thanks this is a great idea - I discovered this last
| summer... This really does work - I had to keep an
| icepack in my bag to keep my emergency protein bar from
| melting on my all day bike rides and I realized how much
| cooler I was from just that tiny bit - but then I have
| the condensation issue.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Interesting idea! Hiking I fill my hydration bladder with
| ice cubes then add water and I slip the whole thing in an
| insulated bag, but I never thought of using an actual ice
| brick for cooling. (And in most situations I don't think
| I would, anyway--too much extra weight. The ice in my
| pack becomes drinking water later.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| In Minneapolis, they have skyways between large buildings so
| you're not exposed to the elements in the winter when moving
| between buildings. I imagine we'll see similar in hotter
| climates (underground where the geography supports it,
| aboveground where not), with folks avoiding the outdoors for
| significant part of each year.
|
| TLDR It's an urban planning story.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_tunnel_system
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Pedway
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Certainly a popular solution for harsh winters in Canada.
| Even some of the universities have tunnel systems. E.g.
| Carleton with 5KM of tunnels connecting almost every
| building.
| pjerem wrote:
| Some southern cities in Europe like Barcelona have historical
| city centers with really narrow streets (enough to walk but
| no more) with tall buildings. This allows those streets to
| almost never directly receive sunlight. It's so impressively
| effective that you can sometimes even feel cold in summer,
| and in very hot days, heat doesn't accumulate.
|
| http://hdr-photographer.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/07/barce...
| sidibe wrote:
| Barcelona is not a humid place in the summer, this wouldn't
| be as effective in humid places where shade doesn't effect
| temperatures as much
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| It's pretty humid at least compared to other cities in
| Spain like Toledo.
|
| But yeah, being in the shade doesn't help that much
| either as the temperature is still high (and even remains
| high at night).
| xwdv wrote:
| Construction like this is now mostly illegal in the United
| States.
| goda90 wrote:
| That cooler temperature has got to be compounded by the
| lack of cars pumping out heat as well. But I wonder how
| such a design would handle large snow falls. Old northern
| cities in Europe don't seem as compact.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah--my car has an outside air temp thermometer. Big
| streets are a few degrees warmer than small streets. The
| only reasonable cause I can see is the heat is coming
| from the other cars. (Note that this isn't even in heavy
| traffic.)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's also the heat from the sun warming the
| asphalt/tarmac/concrete and that heat warming the air
| (which will continue long into the night -- "urban heat
| island" is I believe the name for the effect).
| rsj_hn wrote:
| In the Phoenix metro, we moved to an area farther away
| from downtown that has more nature (there are large parks
| on two sides of our house). The temperature is regularly
| 5 degrees cooler here.
| cipher_system wrote:
| Older parts of northern cities can be very compact. Never
| heard of snow being a problem there, they probably just
| use smaller plowers.
| captainoats wrote:
| I live in a very cold part of the US but for a couple years
| traveled frequently to the south of Israel for work. I think
| a lot of people don't consider dressing or designing spaces
| for high heats because most people live in temperate
| climates. It wasn't unusual to have 113+ days there in the
| summer and no one but me (the American) seemed phased by it.
| nradov wrote:
| Of course the unintended consequence will be even higher
| rates of vitamin D deficiency and chronic low nitric oxide
| levels.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11567-5
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Diets will need to change accordingly. Vitamin D
| supplements are inexpensive.
| Someone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy:
|
| _Coober Pedy ( /'ku:b@r 'pi:di/) is a town in northern South
| Australia, 846 km (526 mi) north of Adelaide on the Stuart
| Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal
| capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious
| opals that are mined there. Coober Pedy is renowned for its
| below-ground dwellings, called "dugouts", which are built in
| this fashion due to the scorching daytime heat._
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Do people still build underground there?
| alx__ wrote:
| An interesting example of this was at the recent Summer
| Olympics in Tokyo. With the wide view of athletes everything
| looks fine, just another nice sunny day. But when the camera
| cuts in close many of the athletes look like they're about to
| pass out but they're barely sweating.
| arethuza wrote:
| Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock" has
| "earthsuits" that people wear in hot and humid locations.
| steelframe wrote:
| > Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock" has
| "earthsuits" that people wear in hot and humid locations.
|
| Reminiscent of Frank Herbert's stillsuits in Dune (1965).
| pier25 wrote:
| I lived for 2 years in Cancun and the climate was just horrible
| for me.
|
| I spent like 8-10 months every year trapped indoors with AC.
| Just being a couple of minutes outside meant sweating _a lot_.
| Heck, after showering you had to dry yourself two times because
| you got way too sweaty unless you had AC in the bathroom.
|
| No thanks. I really don't understand how people like living in
| tropical weathers.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, so long as it's not too extreme you can wrap up against
| cold. There's nothing you can do against heat. My idea of
| ideal weather is the coolest place where I don't need to
| contend with snow accumulation.
| wsinks wrote:
| Have you moved to San Francisco? Haha, just a light joke.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| north will become south, and south will become north
|
| i expect a switch in the coming decade
|
| it's speeding up
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/earth-mag...
| tejohnso wrote:
| "Faster than expected" is a common phrase in climate research.
| For example, the arctic is warming 4X faster than the rest of the
| planet, antarctic ice melt, arctic ice extent reduction, methane
| emissions, etc, all happening faster than expected, depending on
| the source. Someone even put together a namesake blog,
| fasterthanexpected.com - it's a decent source for a high level
| picture of what is going on.
|
| I say "depending on the source" because there are some extreme
| doom and gloom types for whom these changes are happening more
| slowly than expected. However, the difference is negligible. The
| doom and gloom types might say the end of the world is only 2
| years away, which is extreme, but now even peer reviewed research
| in respected publications are starting to mention very severe
| outcomes within decades. In previous decades, these publications
| wouldn't publish anything like that at all, then eventually they
| began to publish papers that mention these events happening
| within centuries, and now papers are coming out with very serious
| consequences being only decades away. The really scary thing is
| that the likelihood of sudden catastrophic change (eg: methane
| bombs, Thwaites Glacier collapse) is increasing, which could make
| the shorter time frame predictions actually come true.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| That the 'expectations' are wildly off-base when predicting the
| extent and timing of climate change is a staple of the field.
| Sharlin wrote:
| It was difficult enough to get the powers that be to believe
| even those very conservative predictions - even those were
| incessantly attacked and/or ignored for being propaganda,
| alarmist, unrealistic, bad science, a conspiracy by climate
| scientists just trying to secure grants...
| webmaven wrote:
| _> It was difficult enough to get the powers that be to
| believe even those very conservative predictions - even
| those were incessantly attacked and /or ignored for being
| propaganda, alarmist, unrealistic, bad science, a
| conspiracy by climate scientists just trying to secure
| grants..._
|
| It was a lost opportunity to shift the Overton window,
| which led to the moderate -- rather than the extreme --
| projections being labelled as alarmist.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yeah, but had there been a loud minority of climate
| scientists professing less moderate views, then the
| opponents would have simply retorted "see, they
| themselves can't even agree on what they think will
| happen!" And the scientific community was painfully aware
| that any internal disagreement would be used by the
| opponents to spread doubt, as seen in the leaked
| Climategate correspondence. Of course, this call for a
| united front was then used by the denialists as evidence
| for their climate conspiracy theory, so it's not like the
| humanity had any actual chance of winning against itself
| here. We really done fucked up this time.
| vkou wrote:
| It's a staple of the field because the official expectations
| are, by design, conservative.
|
| Because, well, nobody wants to listen to 'alarmists' and
| 'extremists'.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Weird how the IPCC reports have consistently pushed their
| models' disaster and negative effect predictions further
| into the future every year for over a decade then.
| redprince wrote:
| So much so that it is known for at least 10 years that this
| is the case. And also why: Fear of being accused of being an
| alarmist or sounding too extreme.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-
| science-p...
|
| "Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least
| drama?"
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09593.
| ..
| jp57 wrote:
| How much confirmation bias is happening here? If things happen
| more than expected, would they get reported? The non-
| disappearance of the glaciers in Glacier National Park[1] is
| one example I can think of.
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-
| park-202... -- In 2020, Glacier National Park in Montana had to
| remove signs saying that the Glaciers would be gone by 2020,
| since the glaciers were still there.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If only the glaciers could read, then maybe they would have
| listened.
| irrational wrote:
| It's like the lady wanting to know how the deer know how to
| read the deer crossing signs so they know where to cross.
| webmaven wrote:
| Also like the 115 yo who has been drinking and smoking
| heavily for most of their life managing to live a long
| life because when they were young nobody knew those
| things were bad for you.
| amelius wrote:
| The problem is that it's an N=1 experiment. In medicine, if we
| have RCT data for 1 patient, then 4X better/faster/anything
| wouldn't mean a thing.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| I can appreciate why its used. It's a retort to common thought
| terminating cliches often said to dismiss climate reporting,
| which are, "this won't happen anytime soon," and "it won't be
| that bad." Once you get that out of the way, you can move on
| from rhetoric and focus on content.
| titzer wrote:
| They are happening faster than expected because IPCC reports
| have been sandbagging for decades. Which, TBH, is entirely
| rational not only for political, but also scientific, reasons.
|
| I, for one, might be a doomer, but have no illusions about us
| meeting goals to keep warming under 1.5C, or even 2C for that
| matter, and it is going to happen "faster than expected".
| yesbut wrote:
| We should just sit back wait for solutions to climate change
| to become profitable enough for the owner-class to act.
| Nothing to worry about. I'm sure they will figure it out
| before it is too late. If only they had been made aware of
| this problem earlier. The market will solve this in no time.
| taurath wrote:
| We should just enshrine into law that we won't bail them
| out this time
| lisper wrote:
| > I'm sure they will figure it out before it is too late.
|
| It's already too late.
| foxes wrote:
| Might need an /s on that.
| vanusa wrote:
| _The doom and gloom types might say the end of the world is
| only 2 years away,_
|
| No one talks of the "end of the world" being 2 years away.
|
| There are some who speak of "tipping points" happening N years
| from now, but that is something very different. Right?
| ducleonctor wrote:
| There is something peculiar on the map in the article that caught
| my eye:
|
| The formerly split country of Germany is also sharply split on
| the map! The western part (BRD/FRG) has significantly more hot
| humid days than the eastern part (former DDR/GDR). The colored
| area edge almost exactly matches the border.
|
| A political map of FRG/GDR for comparison:
| https://www.stepmap.de/karte/brd-ddr-ddIwvxHotF
|
| _Why does this data follow political borders so sharply in this
| case?_ Is that effect real or caused by methology error or skewed
| data?
|
| Apparently the basic data stems from the HadISD database:
| https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisd/v311_2020f/index....
|
| This file lists the stations (version v311_2020f) in the
| database:
| https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisd/v311_2020f/files/...
|
| Many stations in the former GDR seem to be present, for example:
| 104880-99999 DRESDEN 51.133 13.767 230.1 1931-01-01
| 2020-02-06 094690-99999 LEIPZIG/SCHKEUDITZ& 51.417 12.233
| 142.0 1975-07-01 1991-10-31
|
| If the effect is real: Which difference between FRG and former
| GDR areas causes it?
| ianferrel wrote:
| One possibility: Western Germany is more industrialized and
| urban, with higher population and population density. Thermal
| measurements in the west are more likely to be taken in urban
| heat islands?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| An incredibly "glass half full" take, but it looks like the
| location of all the places that will be most affected are also
| the biggest producers - maybe this will be a good thing in
| encouraging change? Unfortunately I assume it'll take a lot of
| death before that happens, and even then probably not, but I feel
| like at this point it's either look for a silver lining or
| descend into complete despair.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The trouble is the people most in power to make decisions are
| personally insolated from the affects of hot humid conditions
| (quite literally) by cooling infrastructure. If COVID has
| taught us anything there's a lot of capacity to ignore diffuse
| death, /maybe/ an event like the mass heat death in Ministry
| for the Future would get some people's attention but COVID has
| really knocked my expectations for coming together in the face
| of a collective disaster.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| True, but looking at the map the most populated sections of
| the United States are marked as danger zones. Though I
| realize after writing that line that the last few years have
| taught us that mass casualty events in Florida won't exactly
| cause dramatic societal change.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The effect will be blunted because in the US we have AC and
| a fairly robust national power grid so the number of people
| affected will be limited to poor and houseless people who
| we're already very good at ignoring suffering from. We've
| already had pretty bad heat waves in the past that have
| caused dozens of deaths in a day but they're diffuse and
| not in one giant group so they're easy to ignore like
| COVID, heart attack, and general poverty deaths.
| soperj wrote:
| Didn't you just have people freezing to death in Texas
| because of a power outage?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Texas is a bit of a special case in the US power grid...
| They're not a part of it, Texas decided to not connect
| itself to the national power grid because it wanted to go
| way further in on deregulation and couldn't do that if it
| was connected to the national grid and had to follow the
| rules that came with that. That's why you don't really
| see huge blackouts very often in the rest of the country,
| power outages are usually due to direct storm damage and
| only affect things on a particular line/circuit. Texas
| couldn't bring power in from unaffected areas to balance
| the spike in demand so they lost the whole grid, it's
| harder to have that happen in other parts of the country.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > a fairly robust national power grid
|
| The local grid particularly in (parts of?) California is
| everything but robust.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| >If COVID has taught us anything there's a lot of capacity to
| ignore diffuse death
|
| How has COVID taught us that? Is it because the response
| wasn't as perfect as we would have liked? I really don't
| think I've seen a lot of ignorance about diffuse death from
| COVID; quite the opposite actually.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| In the United States, I've heard a number of people say
| they would rather old people die than have their freedoms
| violated. Their reasoning is people who die of COVID would
| have died anyway if COVID didn't happen.
|
| My own parents still claim COVID isn't serious, despite my
| grandfather dying and me being very sick for four months.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Essentially yeah. Look at the proposed alternatives from
| the right in the US which basically amounted to "If he dies
| he dies" but scaled up to millions of people. One of the
| most consistent deflections is that "only the already sick"
| are dying of COVID which beyond being wildly untrue also
| has the strains of "it's your own fault you're dying why
| should I do anything to prevent it?" which doesn't bode
| well for our response to climate disasters.
| shrubby wrote:
| Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future. The
| beginning is cool. Not.
| swader999 wrote:
| I went skiing in minus 34 C a couple of weeks ago. It took a fair
| bit of thought to dress for it but I was able to last about three
| hours outside and had a great day. I don't think you can deal
| with heat extremes as easily.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Gas or chemically powered personal air conditioners may become
| more common. Of course this solves the problem for the
| individual while worsening it for the planet/society.
|
| Edit: At 500 watts, you could combine your personal cooler with
| a solar panel. The system would be 2-3000 dollars. A bit more
| than a parka but less than a car.
| odonnellryan wrote:
| That's without wind chill?
| swader999 wrote:
| Yeah. Wind chill is a difficult measure to use. Varies a lot,
| you make wind when you ski fast, it really only affects
| exposed skin which you don't have at this temp.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Why I like winter. I can always add more layers. However, in
| the summer, you can only remove so many layers until it becomes
| a crime.
| Sharlin wrote:
| And being naked would not help much, or would make it even
| worse, depending on how sunny it is.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Removing that last layer doesn't gain you all that much in
| high humidity conditions, and in some situations it's going
| to cause you sun protection issues.
| ck2 wrote:
| Based on the past two years and especially right now, we're not
| going to do a damn thing about it. Everyone's going to have an
| excuse or "don't tell me what to do" until it finally kills
| everyone or destroys the economy. Then it will be too late.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Don't look up!
| jmugan wrote:
| "Your dad and I are for the jobs the comet will provide."
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Research from ~20 years ago forecast this result, I'm not sure
| it's entirely unexpected, although the focus in those studies was
| on air temperature alone:
|
| > Because of the loss of life, damage to crops and vegetation in
| general and the impact on water supplies, these recent heat waves
| have stimulated much interest in their climatological features,
| recurrence times, and, especially, whether they are a portent of
| greenhouse-induced climatic change. For example, Trigo et al.
| (2005) state that the hot summer of 2003 in Europe exceeded any
| over the past 500 yr, and Schar et al. (2004) claim that this
| event was statistically very unlikely, and was also consistent
| with results from climatic change simulations. Stott et al.
| (2004) estimate that past anthropogenic influences doubled the
| probability of the occurrence of the 2003 heat wave. More intense
| and frequent heat waves are also predicted by Meehl and Tebaldi
| (2004) and Beniston (2004) on the basis of greenhouse
| simulations.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/20/15/jcli42...
|
| In the climate science literature, there's a recent focus on the
| humidity factor:
|
| > Recent studies have pointed to a growing concern on increasing
| heat stress considering humidity effects as well as extreme
| temperatures. Kang and Eltahir emphasized the important role of
| humidity, and pointed out that North China Plain is likely to
| experience deadly heat waves with wet-bulb temperature exceeding
| the threshold defining what Chinese farmers may tolerate while
| working outdoors [15]. By applying 35 degC as a threshold for
| human adaptability, Pal and Eltahir predicted that extremes of
| wet-bulb temperature in the region around the Arabian Gulf are
| likely to approach and exceed this threshold under business-as-
| usual emission scenarios [16]. Lin et al. determined trends of
| heat wave variation and stress threshold in three major cities of
| Taiwan based on WBGT, and suggested that the heat stress in all
| three cities will either exceed or approach the danger level
| (WBGT >= 31 degC) by the end of this century [17]. Russo et al.
| quantified humid heat wave hazards in the recent past and at
| different levels of global warming using the apparent
| temperature, showing that humidity can amplify the magnitude and
| apparent temperature peak of heat waves [11]. There have also
| been some studies assessing the adverse effects of heat stress on
| health and labor productivity [18,19]. [2]
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6539408/
|
| Ultimately this is going to result in population migration away
| from the most severely affected areas, or drastic (and expensive)
| measures like shifting to living underground in termite-mound-
| like habitation will have to be implemented.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| (May 2020)
| hiidrew wrote:
| Recently read a novel, Ministry for the Future, the opening
| chapter illustrates a heat wave that happens in an extreme
| humid/heat climate. I was not a big fan of the rest of the book
| but this opening chapter was pretty alarming, that scenario would
| be terrifying.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future
| gathly wrote:
| just was about to post that. that opening chapter horrified me.
| i had to put the book down and come back another time
| jmugan wrote:
| Agreed. The more I read of that book the less I liked it, but
| that first chapter was amazing.
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