[HN Gopher] Wet-bulb temperature
___________________________________________________________________
Wet-bulb temperature
Author : vincent_s
Score : 117 points
Date : 2023-08-28 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| gorbypark wrote:
| I worked as a snowmaker at ski resorts for most my my adult life
| before getting into tech. We always use wet bulb temperatures
| because it's a representation of temperature and humidity. With
| extremely low humidity, you can actually make manmade snow at
| about +3 degrees Celsius. That was always fun but scary, because
| a small change in humidity can turn snowguns into water guns in
| the blink of an eye.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've occasionally wanted to try snowmaking at home on brutally
| cold days.
|
| Any tips for someone wanting to try this at home? Let's assume
| that I have access to tap water at 60psi dynamic pressure and
| air at 90psi and 10 SCFM continuous (more for short bursts if
| needed).
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| More discussion just over a year ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30527168
| dmans0n wrote:
| This excerpt from the beginning of Kim Stanley Robinson's novel
| The Ministry for the Future depicts a mass casualty wet-bulb
| event in Uttar Pradesh:
|
| https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...
| carapace wrote:
| I recently spent some time camping in a place that hit daytime
| temperatures of over 100degF. When it's that hot all you can do
| is wet your clothing and spray mist and fan yourself to get
| evaporative cooling. Thinking about wet-bulb temperature in that
| context was terrifying.
|
| The hot dry breeze can cool you off. The hot humid breeze is
| death.
|
| If you live somewhere where this could happen you should move
| now.
| samcheng wrote:
| If you haven't read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the
| Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in
| striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is
| what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around
| climate change.
|
| The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory
| measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the
| book to anyone interested in near-term climate impact!
| gonzo41 wrote:
| In the book that event happens to India. I sadly think that
| when climate change starts killing people in poor countries
| (like it already is). The western wealthy world will ignore it
| for as long as possible.
|
| I sometimes get very dark about the future we're headed into.
| IKantRead wrote:
| > wet-bulb event
|
| It's probably already too late, but I keep seeing people
| confusing the concept of "web bulb temperature" (all
| temperatures have a wet bulb temperature, even ones very
| pleasant for people) with "the human survivable maximum wet
| bulb". I frequently see people saying things like "when we
| reach wet bulb temps..", which feels a bit silly.
|
| This always feels like talking about a "Kelvin event" or
| "Kelvin temps" referring a temperature reaching absolute zero.
| ben_w wrote:
| > This always feels like talking about a "Kelvin event" or
| "Kelvin temps" referring a temperature reaching absolute
| zero.
|
| Reminds me of Ex Astris Scientia complaining about bad script
| writing in Enterprise, specifically "deuterium can burn
| almost as hot as plasma, when it's ignited": https://www.ex-
| astris-scientia.org/episodes/ent2.htm
| evan_ wrote:
| Bad science in Star Trek? Perish the thought.
| samcheng wrote:
| I've used "wet-bulb event" as a shorthand for the scenario
| where the wet-bulb temperature rises above human
| survivability. That's why I used "event" instead of
| "temperature."
| skyfaller wrote:
| I hate speaking negatively about Ministry for the Future,
| because I admire KSR, and we need fiction that confronts the
| climate crisis _and_ shows people taking positive action to
| change the world for the better. Still, I sadly cannot
| recommend this book. To quote from my spoileriffic review,
|
| "This does not help us imagine realistic positive outcomes to
| the climate crisis. Robinson correctly diagnoses the threats we
| face and immerses the reader in a very plausible near future.
| Unfortunately, any happy ending feels unearned as the world is
| essentially saved through magic, as humans/society respond in
| vanishingly unlikely ways."
|
| https://bookwyrm.social/user/skyfaller/review/381179/s/compe...
| mikeholler wrote:
| Yes. Thank you. His book Aurora does a much better job at
| steering us towards action while still showing consequences
| of environmental disaster and I highly recommend it.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| You might enjoy the monk and robot series from Becky Chambers
| in case that you're looking for something more hopeful.
| aaomidi wrote:
| > Unfortunately, any happy ending feels unearned as the world
| is essentially saved through magic, as humans/society respond
| in vanishingly unlikely ways.
|
| Honestly, that just makes the book better in my eyes and I
| haven't even read it.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Have you heard him speak on it? I have, in person, several
| times, and this aspect of the book (which I am tepid on, as a
| novel for other reasons myself) is something that's been
| pulled apart.
|
| I believe you can find recordings from e.g. his interactive
| discussion of it, in the archives of "SF in SF" which are
| typically recorded and available, maybe at SomaFM as Rusty
| usually runs sound. Strongly recommended and it should give
| you a frame for understanding why the narrative takes the
| path that it does.
|
| TL;DR it's overdetermined and the opposite of naivety or
| wishful thinking; it's strategic.
|
| You may disagree with the strategy, of course.
| blueboo wrote:
| Crucially, after it tip goes into the complexity of global
| diplomacy and consensus building, a special black ops team of
| super eco-terrorists effect the change that really needs to
| happen. It's right at home with right-wing military fantasy,
| Frederick Forsyth-"to bear the baddies we need to be worse
| than the worst of em" silliness
| abeppu wrote:
| I agree that the plot repeatedly follows society making
| choices which I find implausible -- but if one reads that
| alienation (one's inner critic saying "this is not the world
| we live in") as part of the experience of the work, then it
| can function as a kind of compelling tool. Noting all the
| points where humanity in the book takes necessary and
| beneficial actions to improve their situation, that are
| available to but refused by our society, one arrives at a
| pretty jarring condemnation. Not only is the current disaster
| entirely of our making, but all the ways in which it will
| fail to be addressed are also our responsibility.
| allemagne wrote:
| Is it particularly jarring to realize that central banks
| issuing a carbon-backed cryptocurrency will probably not
| save us from climate change?
| abeppu wrote:
| I'm not familiar enough with international diplomacy or
| central banking for that to be the most jarring part.
|
| But, when the head of an international organization takes
| a week and a half to get to a meeting on the other side
| of the planet, and thinks that it's nicer to take a
| sequence of trains and sailing ships than it used to be
| to fly ... that seemed totally alien. When subsistence
| farmers were surprised by the large amount of money they
| were paid for getting more carbon into their soil, that
| seemed really implausible. When KSM glosses by how easy
| and quick it was to make giant wildlife corridors across
| North America, and talks about whole communities packing
| up and voluntarily abandoning towns to ceded those areas
| to nature ... that seemed wildly implausible.
|
| There were a lot of these moments for me, and while I get
| the people that use these as a criticism against the
| realism of the book, I also think that gap is a criticism
| against all of us.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| As much as the story centered around central banking
| machinations, the buried narrative was that a lot of
| people in power probably have to die. This realization
| and it's impossibility make the story a tragedy when
| compared to the real world.
| abeppu wrote:
| Sorry, why is it an impossibility for people in power to
| die?
|
| I'm not advocating for violence, to be clear, and in the
| novel KSM seems to take the stance that at some point
| violence is really counter-productive. But certainly
| there have been places and periods in which e.g. targeted
| kidnappings of rich people, assassination attempts on
| politicians, and terrorist attacks against high-profile
| targets have all been around -- why do you think is it
| impossible for those to be directed at people in power in
| the future? Especially if there are progressively more
| climate victims, it seems like we're setting the stage
| for a generation of people to be ripe for radicalization.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| TMftF heavily hints and at times outright describes the
| existence of secretly funded UN blackops missions that
| target and assassinate people in power with strategic
| importance. It's been a few months since I read it, but
| if I can recall, it also described it's connection with
| ostensibly grassroots eco-activist/terrorists.
|
| Submarine accidents not withstanding, I'm not convinced
| the UN in our current timeline could be transformed into
| one that engages in this behavior.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The ways in which we fail to address societal issues are
| not in fact our responsibility, they're a systemic issue
| that is a function of human nature - or political
| nature/societal nature - that will not be solved by morose
| feelings of condemnation. "Why can't people not be the way
| they are" is just as useless a sentiment as "Why can't
| mathematics not be the way it is", and will be just as
| ineffective at causing 2 and 2 to add to 5.
|
| I'm going to go back to my comparatively easy computer
| engineering tasks after writing this comment, and have the
| greatest respect for those willing to confront coordination
| problems in the political sphere. That's playing the game
| on hard mode.
|
| The whole thing reminds me of this thread [1] from a few
| weeks ago referencing Orwell's critique of Dickens:
|
| >> _The truth is that Dickens 's criticism of society is
| almost exclusively moral. Hence the utter lack of any
| constructive suggestion anywhere in his work. ... His whole
| 'message' is one that at first glance looks like an
| enormous platitude: If men would behave decently the world
| would be decent._
|
| > I can't help but feel like TS Eliot's "public-spirited
| pigs" are the same thing as Dickens' "good rich men".
|
| The good news is that we've developed systems of governance
| and economics that are not exclusively worse than
| uneducated tribalistic hunter-gatherer anarchy - a very
| large number of people live in significant comfort in
| relatively ordered, mostly polite societies, generally free
| to do what they want, and for the most part those societies
| build things like roads, landfills, electric grids, and
| fire departments together that make the community better.
| It's not perfect, for sure, and we're really missing the
| ball on this particular externality of global warming, but
| I have some hope that we'll figure out a way to address the
| problem that doesn't rely exclusively on weak moral
| appeals.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130896
| allemagne wrote:
| Can't agree more. The wet bulb event chapter is definitely
| worth a read, though.
|
| The sad reality is that the world's actual response to
| something like that happening will probably be about as
| disappointing and anticlimactic as the rest of the book was
| to read.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| If the comment sections on any news story about e.g. the
| Maui fire or any other natural disaster are an indication -
| the world's response will be hyperpartisan conspiracy
| mongering involving random rich people (Oprah, Zuckerberg
| and Obama in Maui), shady groups of profiteers (developers
| and clean energy installers), and fictional tech (directed
| energy weapons and various "lasers) rather than the
| shortest moment of introspection.
| dingnuts wrote:
| If climate activists wish to change minds, they simply
| cannot react with apoplexy that after a generation of
| messaging about how "weather is not climate" that the new
| generation responds to catastrophic weather events with
| "weather is not climate"
|
| But of course, weather isn't climate.
| https://www.axios.com/2023/08/14/climate-change-heat-
| wave-ca...
|
| If climate activists only wish to broadcast how virtuous
| and smart they are for not denying The Science, by all
| means, look down on the uneducated unwashed masses for
| arguing as to whether or not a hot day or season is
| definitive evidence of human caused climate change --
| even though that's exactly what the climate activists
| taught them not too long ago.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| 1. I didn't even mention climate change or weather?
|
| b. Your own source is making a different point that the
| one you're making..
|
| > _What they 're saying: Climate scientist Zeke
| Hausfather summarized the volcano's contribution to
| 2023's record high temperatures this way: "So, not
| nothing, but only a small part of the story in the
| exceptional warmth the world is experiencing," he told
| Axios via email._
|
| > _Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A &M
| University, also thinks the significance of the volcano's
| warming role pales in comparison to human-driven climate
| change and other influences._
|
| > _Dessler likens climate change to a "rising tide" that
| is elevating the baseline temperatures from which heat
| waves begin. "This means that our heatwaves become
| hotter, essentially 'floating' on the 'rising tide' of
| our warming world," he said via email._
| dingnuts wrote:
| The Maui wildfire was driven by a hurricane, a weather
| event. Did you not mention that? The Axios article
| providing context and discussion around a topic -- some
| of which does argue in the affirmative for climate change
| -- is not contradictory to my post because I was not
| arguing against climate change. I'm arguing with your
| attitude towards the commentators on news stories, who
| you seem to view as ignorant, when they are parroting
| exactly the messaging that the climate activists trained
| them to parrot.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The commenters on news stories blaming HAARP and Directed
| Energy Weapons in concert with Oprah and the Biden
| Administration's clean-energy initiatives are in fact
| ignorant. And there are tens of thousands of them.
|
| You're really convinced I made some sort of argument
| blaming the fire on Climate Change when I did nothing of
| the sort..
| specialist wrote:
| The omission of the reactionary backlash was especially
| implausible.
|
| > _shows people taking positive action to change the world
| for the better_
|
| You might be interested in the Volts' podcast.
|
| https://www.volts.wtf
|
| The recent interviews with Saul Griffith ("use our sunlight
| and iron ore and rare minerals to transform Australia into
| the world's forge"), Tim Latimer (Fervo Energy pioneered
| advanced geothermal, now scaling up), and Ramez Naam (climate
| tech investor) were quite uplifting.
|
| Lots of gems in the Volts archive too.
| adolph wrote:
| > we need fiction that confronts the climate crisis and shows
| people taking positive action to change the world for the
| better.
|
| Like Termination Shock?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Termination-Shock-Novel-Neal-
| Stephens...
| jbu wrote:
| I really prefer Ministry to termination shock. I mean, it's
| a fun book, but it offers no solution (eg sulphur seeding
| does nothing for ocean acidification, not to mention
| termination shock). The fact that people read it and thing
| it offers a solution is puzzling. Now Anathem is another
| matter! Brilliant! (although again I have quibbles).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Indeed; terraforming mars is more likely than the end-game of
| Ministry for the Future.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I feel similarly, and really love his older books. However
| his slide towards glorifying terrorism in his recent work is
| really troubling. The increasing focus in his work on uni-
| bomber like characters is really off putting.
| prepend wrote:
| I found that passage pretty disturbing too. But my takeaway was
| that there aren't any individual plans you can make unless you
| plan on hanging out in a body of water breathing through a
| straw for a few days.
|
| What prep did you recommend to your parents? I'm interested for
| what I can reuse or adapt.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I think the most likely option is moving geolocs for water-
| access safety and heat concerns.
| samcheng wrote:
| I've recommended an emergency battery system for their house
| / air conditioner, a reserve stock of water in the house, a
| "go bag," and an escape plan to the mountains. Longer term,
| they are realizing that their primary residence risks
| unhabitability in summer months. I realize they're in a
| privileged position, though.
| alangibson wrote:
| I stopped reading it because the premise is entirely
| unbelievable. A mass casualty event of pretty much any size
| would not lead us to do anything about climate change.
|
| For evidence, look at the deaths in the USA from gives and cars
| _every year_. Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything
| about those from a policy standpoint.
| dmans0n wrote:
| In the book, the Indian government takes unilateral action to
| cool the planet (spraying reflectants into the upper
| atmosphere, iirc) after the heat wave kills 20 million Indian
| people in the space of a few days - a few weeks. Given the
| fractious state of international politics and the urgency of
| the problem, this seems like a fairly realistic depiction of
| how efforts to cool the planet might commence IRL.
| allemagne wrote:
| There was about paragraph or so spent on that realistic
| response, and then huge swathes dedicated to India
| switching to collectivized farming (a la early Soviet
| Union), the world's central banks putting carbon offsets
| onto a blockchain, and millions of Americans willingly
| displacing themselves to create a giant wildlife preserve
| in the midwest.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| KSR is sliding in the direction of outright promotion of
| eco-fascism and I can't say it makes for good literature.
| alangibson wrote:
| > millions of Americans willingly displacing themselves
|
| As far fetched as any science fiction ever written
| jpfed wrote:
| News media like to have stories they can focus popular
| attention on, and no one car accident (unless it kills
| someone famous) will matter to enough people to warrant
| broader coverage than one's local paper. Despite this lack of
| media visibility, there actually is some movement at the city
| level to change the design of roads to reduce the lethality
| of accidents. This isn't very publicly visible yet, I don't
| think, and there's certainly very little in the way of public
| desire to drive less lethal vehicles.
|
| I haven't read the book, but if the event the book describes
| kills hundreds of people or more, it seems like a plausible
| seed that news coverage can accrete around.
| prepend wrote:
| The idea in the book was this was a new event that never
| occurred previously that finally did and was able to
| demonstrate that climate change is doing some new and not
| survivable.
|
| In the book, people galvanized around it kind of like 9/11
| as it was clearly climate change, as opposed to other
| things that already existed and may or may not be due to
| climate change (more hurricanes, etc).
| alangibson wrote:
| > people galvanized around it kind of like 9/11
|
| Be careful what you wish for. 9/11 galvanized Americans
| to start two disastrous wars. The effect of a mass
| fatality event like in MFTF could easily be a bunch of
| pointless, ineffective wars. There's precedent for that,
| but not for anything like a Ministry for the Future
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Haven't read the book (I'm interested now), but you could
| maybe look at it as a war against climate change.
| pjtn8 wrote:
| A sudden mass causality event triggered 9/11 responses,
| pandemic response.
|
| A heat related mass death event most likely would trigger a
| response. The real question is would it be organized and tidy
| response, or civil unrest?
|
| When 4% hunt anymore and no one can grow a carrot? Suddenly
| logistics are interrupted worse than covid because, what,
| Phoenix burns down?
|
| Oh, it'll trigger a response.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| It's a bit different than 9/11 though. Climate change is
| like a fully loaded supertanker. You can hit an emergency
| break all you want, but _still_ that ship will have a
| 5..10km (or longer?) breaking distance.
|
| So if a mass death event were to occur, and policy were to
| change course drastically, the changed climate would
| continue to pound our biosphere for many decades (if not
| centuries). Or hit tipping points and get worse & worse no
| matter what we do.
|
| To put it blunt: at some point, prolonged mass suffering &
| death is practically guaranteed. Just with a decades-
| delayed fuse. That fuse is already lit, while we can't see
| (with any certainty, that is) how big a powder keg it goes
| into.
| alangibson wrote:
| You sighted two totally ineffective responses to crises.
| We'll do _something_ , it just won't be what is required to
| actually fix the underlying problem.
| pjtn8 wrote:
| You sighted a problem and cited zero anything else.
|
| Pandemic response was effective at avoiding healthcare
| system collapse and churning out a vaccine. It's as good
| a plan as we can get with 30% of 300 million
| intentionally indifferent, centrists too absorbed in low
| effort consumerism, and anyone espousing concern being
| called a tree hugging pussy.
|
| What else do you want? Too many seem to think the MCU
| should hop on saving them from themselves.
|
| Say something useful yourself or get over it. You were
| never going to make it out of this life alive anyway.
| alangibson wrote:
| > You sighted a problem and cited zero anything else.
|
| Perhaps you missed the analogy in my original between
| climate deaths and gun+traffic deaths.
|
| > It's as good a plan as we can get with 30% of 300
| million intentionally indifferent, centrists too absorbed
| in low effort consumerism, and anyone espousing concern
| being called a tree hugging pussy.
|
| You're so close to getting it. We will be talking about
| "sensible solutions" that maintain our current lifestyle
| until the planet turns into Venus.
|
| > What else do you want?
|
| I reluctanty have to admit I'm black pilled at this
| point. I see no reason to believe that our species is
| capable of the kind of collective action that's needed.
| There are no positive examples and so many negative
| examples.
|
| > You were never going to make it out of this life alive
| anyway.
|
| You don't have kids do you?
| pjtn8 wrote:
| I do have kids. Which is why your post bugs me.
|
| My whole effort here is throwing your low effort back at
| you; including your misuse of sighted for cited.
|
| Frankly I think I get you a lot better than you get me.
| _You are your own generalization /analogy/metaphor_.
|
| You're doing nothing substantive while complaining about
| lack of substantive effort in the part of others.
|
| Functional illiteracy in the raw, dog
| alangibson wrote:
| See my comment about being blackpilled on this issue. I
| don't think humans have what it takes to deal with this.
|
| > Functional illiteracy in the raw, dog
|
| Not your dog, dog
| sottol wrote:
| Car accidents and even COVID deaths in a hospital ward are
| possibly different because they're isolated and you can
| rationalize that it will not affect you.
|
| Might be different when a lot of people die in a whole region
| and it's very obvious. But who knows, I made detailed
| predictions at the onset of COVID and believed it would be
| handled like SARS and the likes and stopped in about 3
| months. Well, I was completely wrong.
| IKantRead wrote:
| Or the million+ deaths in the US from Covid, which I have
| seen brushed off on HN as not a big deal.
|
| It's remarkably how quickly people incorporate tragedy as
| normal when it doesn't fit their worldview. If you travel to
| 2000 and told people "in 2020 a pandemic will kill over 1
| million Americans, and a good portion will brush it off as a
| 'nothing burger'" people would think you were being
| ridiculous and would dismiss it as unbelievable fiction.
| alangibson wrote:
| > It's remarkably how quickly people incorporate tragedy as
| normal
|
| It's one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses. It let's
| us keep living, but also allows us to normalize that which
| shouldn't be accepted.
|
| If the opening of MFTF happened, within 2 weeks people
| would be posting graphs showing how per capita all cause
| deaths are actually going down over time.
| tchalvakspamm wrote:
| That's aggregate deaths one at a time, though. If all the car
| deaths happened all at once in a localized area and took out
| half of Rhode Island, it would spur action.
| alangibson wrote:
| Then explain the total lack of action after Sandy Hook,
| that Las Vegas shooting, etc
| jpfed wrote:
| These are good examples of mass casualty events that
| didn't motivate effective responses. For both climate
| change and guns, there are people that want to keep the
| status quo as it is. I believe that popular arguments
| against gun control will be able to stay effective in
| ways that arguments against climate action will fail.
|
| First, one of the most popular arguments against action
| addressing climate change has been that climate change is
| simply fake. A mass-casualty event would make that
| argument less effective.
|
| The gun control debate in the United States is linked
| with people's perceptions of personal agency. Often, a
| mass casualty event perpetrated with a gun is ended by a
| gun being used on the perpetrator (sometimes, it's the
| perpetrator killing themselves, and sometimes it's police
| killing them). Many people imagine it would be possible
| to end those events as a bystander with a gun. But I
| think that it would be much harder to get people to
| fantasize about being a hero that stops a mass casualty
| event resulting from extreme heat. Such an event starts
| and ends when Mother Nature says it does, and it seems
| like it should be pretty clear to people that the only
| way personal agency is relevant is in the act of
| preparing the environment.
| alangibson wrote:
| > A mass-casualty event would make that argument less
| effective
|
| I would have bought this 10 years ago. But following the
| recent rise of conspricism, especially far out things
| like Qanon and Pizza Gate, I've come to realize that it's
| possible for vast numbers of people to just decide to
| believe something is/isn't true because it suits them.
| adolph wrote:
| Within a year of the Las Vegas shooting, the "bump stock"
| device used by that person was banned by the US.
|
| _The Trump administration has banned the use of bump
| stocks, devices that let rifles fire like machine guns,
| after promising to do so earlier this year._
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46614001
| alangibson wrote:
| Great example of my main point. Instead of fixing the
| real problems (availability of weapons and to some degree
| mental illness) we ban an accessory. Meanwhile elsewhere
| the bodies keep dropping.
| adolph wrote:
| Great example of moving the goalposts. You wrote "total
| lack of action" for which there is counter-evidence in
| the form of a national government action. With the same
| logic, one might as well claim that an entire firearm is
| an accessory to whatever is redefined as the "real
| problem."
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Most likely the politicians that belong to the NRA are
| controlling the narrative.
|
| Almost all politicians are also owned by the car and oil
| industries, so that would explain the lack of action with
| the high number of RTCs.
| jlmorton wrote:
| All life is a trade-off. There has been _massive_ effort at
| reducing traffic fatalities, representing probably trillions
| of dollars of investment, including road design and barriers,
| speed limits, signaling, car safety features like crumple
| zones, seat belts, air bags, all manner of crash safety
| testing, enforcement actions, and much more.
|
| We haven't entirely banned cars, and carbon emissions weren't
| totally banned after the wet-bulb event in Ministry for the
| Future.
| alangibson wrote:
| A massive failure judging by the numbers. Which is my
| point. We will continue to feel bad, maybe drop in some
| metaphorical traffic circles, but do nothing to actually
| solve the issue.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Vehicle fatalities per capita and per mile travelled have
| been dropping in the US for decades. As has the absolute
| number of deaths.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_ra
| te_...
| alangibson wrote:
| Still proving my point. 35K deaths per year.
|
| We will normalize climate related deaths the way we have
| normalized traffic related deaths.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Without being clear about what replacement transportation
| mode you expect to substitute for cars, it's not clear to
| me that your point is being proven. If we replaced cars
| today with walking or the current state of public
| transport in the US, I think my life is made vastly
| better by the near-ubiquitous presence of cars, even if
| it means I have a lifetime risk of just under 1%.
|
| If cars save me just 10 minutes per day, my life is
| improved as compared to the just under 7 minutes per day
| of life lost to the lifetime risk of dying in a car
| accident.
|
| We normalize traffic deaths because there is a net
| benefit. Just like we normalize other negative outcomes
| from overall positive-utility activities.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| How is a ~24x reduction in deaths per mile driven a
| massive failure?
|
| What would you call a success? No death, total ban on
| driving?
| alangibson wrote:
| Another post demonstrating my point. 35K people in the US
| alone die in traffic every year. We have normalized this
| figure (see your response) as we will normalize climate
| deaths.
|
| What I would do about traffic deaths is irrelevant to my
| point.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| I find your approach arrogant; of course I understand
| that people die in car crashes and yet we continue to use
| them.
|
| Your original point was:
|
| >Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything about
| those from a policy standpoint.
|
| This is clearly false. There are many effective
| regulations and travelling by car continues to get safer.
|
| Yes people still die, yes we already somewhat normalise
| people dying from e.g. air pollution (not something that
| will happen, we already do it)
|
| There are people who do think about these things every
| day. There are people who dedicate life to working on
| problems and progress is being made.
|
| Saying that a major event would have no impact on the
| zeitgiest is questionable given history.
| MH15 wrote:
| First chapter of Ministry for the Future- incredibly powerful
| and harrowing.
|
| Every following chapter- terrible, not worth your time.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I clicked into this to see if MFTF was mentioned. Powerful
| opening scene.
|
| Other commenters criticizing the book for the ending and the
| positivity turn it takes are missing the point of why the book
| is valuable, I think.
|
| Like for you maybe, it was the first book that got me serious
| about climate. The value isn't in the ending, but in the first
| half with unpleasantly accurate the early "oh sh*t" disasters
| were and same for the totally inept societal responses.
|
| Made me realize we were likely procrastinating our way into an
| emergency, and any magical way out we find IRL will be at a
| high cost of suffering. We will probably get disasters, we will
| get climate terrorism, and it will get much worse before we get
| saved (by magic blockchain carbon fediverse haha?).
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| If you enjoyed that, you might enjoy Perihelion Summer by
| Greg Egan. It's climate change scifi kicked off by cosmic
| scifi. A micro-blackhole is discovered that will pass through
| the solar system, slightly modifying earth's orbit and raises
| the tides by a few feet while it passes. It's essentially
| "what if we instantly jumped forward by 500 years on our
| current climate progression".
|
| Spoiler, I found the ending very unsatisfying. It feels like
| a cliffhanger into a second book, but there is no second book
| it just ends without much resolution. The actual climate
| change/societal terror in the first 75% is great though, it
| was on pace to become a favorite book of mine.
| drbig wrote:
| Temperature without humidity is like voltage without current, or
| per-capita GDP without the Gini coefficient. Many measures alone
| are of little practical value.
|
| Stay _comfortable_ there!
| weinzierl wrote:
| I find it interesting that in the US the weather report seems
| include the related dew point but in Europe it usually isn't.
| bradford wrote:
| Maybe this is a pet peeve of mine, but I'm annoyed with the use
| of the term 'wet bulb event' here and elsewhere. Wouldn't it put
| less burden on the reader to just say "wet bulb 35C"? (That is
| the temperature that most people seem to be referring to when
| they say 'wet bulb event'.)
|
| Every place on earth has a wet bulb temperature, all of the time.
| Saying "wet-bulb event" doesn't really help explain the web-bulb
| temperature's significance, which is buried in the wiki page:
|
| "It has been thought that a sustained wet-bulb temperature
| exceeding 35 degC (95 degF)--given the body's requirement to
| maintain a core temperature of about 37degC--is likely to be
| fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next
| to a fan;"
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I feel like the terms in use around this are quite abstract and
| hard to reason about. I like that the wikipedia article
| converts this to something more useful to intuit for most of
| us:
|
| > _Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor
| activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32 degC (90 degF),
| equivalent to a heat index of 55 degC (131 degF). A reading of
| 35 degC (95 degF) - equivalent to a heat index of 71 degC (160
| degF) - is considered the theoretical human survivability limit
| for up to six hours of exposure._
|
| The US NWS, for example, uses heat index commonly. In the US
| south I seldom see it go much over 110F, and six hours is a
| _long_ time to be exposed to the elements even at the current
| levels of heat.
|
| This isn't just a case of hitting some threshold where we all
| drop dead, but as temperatures rise it will slowly cause people
| to migrate to more temperate climates and/or seek out better
| cooling structures (either actively through air conditioning or
| passively where that isn't an option).
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Sounds like we will be needing lots of reliable carbon-free
| energy, excellent electricity infrastructure, and lots and lots
| of air conditioning.
| dahwolf wrote:
| I personally believe that I've been in a short-lived "wet bulb"
| situation twice in my life. In both cases, in the Amazon, pretty
| much at the equator, at some of the hottest days of the year.
| 40-45C, humidity near a 100.
|
| A cold shower does nothing, it actually makes it worse as it
| activates your body to warm up. Stripping naked does nothing.
| Sweat just streams down the entire body as if a tap is open. It's
| near impossible to keep up with drinking water.
|
| It was short-lived as the weather was extremely variable, but the
| feeling of being completely unable to cool down despite throwing
| everything and the kitchen sink at it, is memorable.
| studmuffin650 wrote:
| in my opinion, a lot of folks won't take climate change seriously
| until it adversely affects their way of life in such a dramatic
| way that they cannot deny it any longer.
|
| A wet bulb event, occuring over multiple hours, would be that
| signal. Piles of dead bodies from folks who either were
| misinformed or weren't able to move to safety would be quite the
| wake up call.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| But think about the solution. It's making A/C very accessible
| and reliable. That requires cheap energy with a high-uptime
| grid. There are many ways to solve this problem but adding
| difficult to meet constraints to energy companies that risk
| price and availability is not one of them.
| gopher_space wrote:
| I too see nationalizing our power grid as inevitable.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| The _short term_ solution is making A /C very accessible and
| reliable. The _long term_ solution is no longer putting huge
| amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. It is imperative to do
| both, no matter the (e: monetary) expense.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| whycome wrote:
| The 1896 New York heat wave lasted 10 days and killed ~1500
| people. And has just 2 short paragraphs in Wikipedia (https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Eastern_North_America_hea...)
|
| > "This was 10 days [with temperatures reaching] 90 degrees at
| street level and 90 percent humidity, with temperatures not
| even dropping at night,"
|
| https://www.npr.org/2010/08/11/129127924/the-heat-wave-of-18...
|
| It wasn't necessarily a wake-up call then. But it may have at
| least been the crisis that spurred one guy...
| pakyr wrote:
| > A majority of the deaths were of working-class men in their
| twenties who performed manual labor.
|
| Seems like in this case most of the mortality was due to
| young men who had no choice but to work in those conditions.
| This event, among many other work-related disasters of the
| time, probably helped spur the push for better working
| conditions during the Progressive Era.
| gaulish wrote:
| [flagged]
| __alexs wrote:
| If a thing that used to be a 1 in 100 year event starts
| happening every 10 years and all the science says it's
| because of man made climate change then yeah we can totally
| do things to make it go back to happening once every 100
| years again.
| truculent wrote:
| Wouldn't the rain today spit in the idea of so-called
| "summer"?
| hiatus wrote:
| What exactly is a "wet bulb event"?
| jcranmer wrote:
| The wet-bulb temperature is the minimum temperature a wet
| body can reach via evaporation--effectively the minimum
| temperature you can reach via sweating. When the wet-bulb
| temperature reaches body temperature, you can _only_ maintain
| body temperature via active A /C.
|
| Even if you are the fittest, healthiest human being alive,
| standing in the shade in a thorough breeze, your core body
| temperature can only go up. Let it go up, and you get
| heatstroke and eventually death. And if you're not the
| fittest, healthiest being alive, or not standing in the
| shade? It's only going to go up _faster_ , and heatstroke and
| death will beckon much sooner.
|
| "Wet bulb events" are, in short, when "no A/C means outdoors
| = death"
| irdc wrote:
| A wet bulb event occurs when the combined temperature and
| humidity (the so called "wet bulb temperature") exceeds the
| limits of human physiology, causing humans to overheat and
| perish even in the absence of any activity beyond basal
| metabolism.
|
| I'm not sure it'd look like the "bodies in the street" image
| GP likes to call up, but yes, a prolonged wet bulb event
| would result in mass casualties.
| truculent wrote:
| Earnest question: what makes you doubt the depiction? Trust
| in infrastructure or institutions?
| irdc wrote:
| The widespread availability of air conditioning plus the
| fact that we've had such events before on rare occasions
| (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-
| bulb_temperature#Highest_r...) and we didn't see bodies
| piled up in the street back then.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| True.. so far.
|
| All that's needed is an intersection of high-humidity
| heat wave + densely populated area + extended power
| outage.
|
| And/or too few buildings that have A/C or other places to
| escape the heat like swimming pools, metro tunnels or
| whatever.
|
| Probably more likely to occur in less-developed areas
| like India or Africa. But regardless, _could_ happen in
| many places. Just a few degrees might be the difference
| between 1000s or 100k+ deaths.
| lukevp wrote:
| Temperature and humidity are high enough that you can't cool
| off naturally via sweat. I would suspect most people don't
| realize that's even a thing. I'm from Texas, and everyone
| thinks they're heat adapted and tries to act macho. A lot of
| people would just stay outside and keep working, ignoring any
| warnings they received.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I expect Texas to be the first state to experience a wet
| bulb event. Its only a matter of time before we get a
| combination of extreme heat and a massive failure of their
| power grid.
|
| Hundreds of deaths in a single day will lead to... nothing.
| Same politicians will be voted in and the deaths will just
| be counted as the price of freedom
| ChatGTP wrote:
| People will probably blame "the woke" and of course China
| and India.
| nocoiner wrote:
| We had hundreds of deaths in the span of 2-3 days during
| the winter storm in 2021. It didn't catalyze any
| political change then, so unfortunately I think you're
| right about the effect the next time it happens.
|
| I have been surprised by the resilience of the grid this
| summer. Thank god for solar.
| no_wizard wrote:
| In part, I'm sure culture in this particular instance is
| partly to blame here.
|
| That said, in more general terms, this is a relatively new
| concern for many people, even in Texas or Arizona, where
| these wet bulb events were rare. All told, I can understand
| how people really don't grok it because 10+ years ago, they
| could keep working in the heat taking relatively simple
| precautions.
|
| However since 2021 web bulb events have been increasing in
| regularity and many models suggest that starting this year
| and going forward, these extreme heat events are going to
| become the norm, with increasing intensity, making this a
| permanent concern now. This makes a lot of simple previous
| precautions folks take less effective or even worthless.
| gaulish wrote:
| [flagged]
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I assume parent means a period of time where the ambient
| temperature is at or above the wet bulb temperature.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Ambient temperature is always at or above the wet-bulb
| temperature, by definition. A wet-bulb temperature measures
| the temperature that can be achieved after energy loss due
| to evaporation of water, so as long as evaporation is
| possible (humidity < 100%), it is lower than the actual
| temperature.
| Zaskoda wrote:
| Basically, it's when the wet-bulb temperature exceeds 35C.
| From the Wikipedia entry:
|
| "It has been thought that a sustained wet-bulb temperature
| exceeding 35 degC (95 degF)--given the body's requirement to
| maintain a core temperature of about 37degC--is likely to be
| fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade
| next to a fan; at this temperature human bodies switch from
| shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it"
| losvedir wrote:
| People will need to start thinking of the summer months in some
| places like the winter months in others: during certain periods
| you need shelter with working HVAC systems, and when you go
| outside you need suitable gear and emergency arrangements.
|
| I live in the Chicago area, and in the winter working from my
| heated home and traveling between heated places in my heated
| car, it's sometimes possible to forget how uninhabitable it is
| outside! But you need to carry emergency jackets and other
| things in the car in case it breaks down and you lose your
| climate control. And I remember how scary it was when my
| furnace broke during a winter cold snap!
| btbuildem wrote:
| The one key difference is, in cold climates we heat our
| spaces and any heat that "leaks out" or is otherwise
| incidental is absorbed by the cold outside.
|
| In the hot climates, we cool our spaces, but in the process
| we pump extra heat outside, making it warmer when it's
| already too warm.
| mrjaeger wrote:
| That's actually the inciting incident for the cli-fi book "The
| Ministry for the Future". Overall I really enjoyed the book,
| was a good mix of interesting economic/policy ideas interwoven
| through a compelling character based narrative.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Some people have fantasies about these heatwaves that just
| decimate all living things. It's not that simple.
|
| It's not THAT hard to cool down even if you're incapable of
| sweating to do so. People aren't idiots either. Despite
| imaginations of cultural hubris, people can tell when it's
| deathly, disgustingly hot, and do not casually tank it until
| they die. And even if they did, they're not idiots. If one
| person collapses, they're not going to ignore them and continue
| to assume the heat is negligible. You don't have to realize the
| nuances of your circumstances and the probability of death to
| understand that you are intolerably uncomfortable.
|
| Yes of course heat waves are bad and can kill people. But wet
| bulb events are not a magic threshold that completely change
| the game.
| falcolas wrote:
| > It's not THAT hard to cool down even if you're incapable of
| sweating to do so.
|
| How would you recommend cooling down for hundreds of
| thousands of people at a time? I have to assume that those
| affected wouldn't have easy access to AC.
| generic92034 wrote:
| Also, can we all be sure that electricity will be available
| during such an event?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Heat waves are dangerous. My point is that wet bulb
| events are not a magical inflection point.
|
| The point to take away is that humidity matters in
| addition to raw temperatures. Not that there is a
| specific threshold at which things matter or didn't
| matter.
| generic92034 wrote:
| I think that point was well understood, by falcolas, to
| whom I was replying. But your assumption that it is not
| that hard to cool down seems a bit strong to me.
|
| In some countries electricity becomes unavailable quite
| regularly, so relying on A/C during a crisis like that
| might fail. And that is assuming that A/Cs are common
| (they are not, in large parts of the world).
|
| Cooling yourself down by using water from a tap may also
| fail, if, in such a situation, everyone in a city tries
| to do that. You are assuming a very high level of
| infrastructure and no critical failures.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You don't need much water. It doesn't need to be that
| cool either. If you lack access to the water required to
| do this, which does not even need to be clean, then the
| lack of water is probably the bigger crisis.
|
| Heatwaves and infrastructure failures can undoubtedly be
| serious threats. But the vast, vast majority of people
| survive wet bulb events when they encounter them.
| generic92034 wrote:
| So you are saying a small amount of water would be enough
| to cool you down when it is (for example) 35deg C at 90%
| humidity? How would that work? Evaporative cooling is
| out, for the most part and a small amount of water would
| be heated up to 35deg C in no time.
| sjducb wrote:
| Fill a bath and get in it. The groundwater is usually much
| colder than the air.
|
| However there is a limit to how long you can live in the
| bath.
| carapace wrote:
| Many of the places at the forefront of this threat also
| have water scarcity issues. There's also the problem of
| what to do with the water once it's heated up. You could
| pump it back into the ground to cool off, but eventually
| you're going to heat the ground itself and have an even
| worse problem.
| falcolas wrote:
| And how many bath tubs there are per-capita. Many newer
| homes are built with only showers.
|
| You also have to worry about power when it comes to
| having access to sufficient water to cool a person in the
| first place.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You do not need to submerge yourself underwater if that's
| what you are suggesting. A bucket of water for your feet
| will do lots. A shower is good too.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm not sure a bucket would be enough to cool a person
| down if they have no other form of heat dissipation
| available to them - specifically I'm not sure feet alone
| could dissipate heat fast enough. If the water is too
| cold (around 70degF IIRC), your body would constrict the
| blood vessels to your hands and feet, limiting how much
| heat could be moved to those extremities from your core.
|
| Hence mentioning a bath tub.
|
| Some interesting reading to go along with this topic:
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19750007244/downloads
| /19...
|
| Of particular note is the need to remove about 1k
| BTU/hour when walking/doing light work, and that's only
| from metabolic heat generation.
|
| And 1 BTU raises 1 pint of water 1 degree, so 1k BTU/hour
| would raise 5 gallons of water by an unrealistic 25deg
| every hour.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You're going to need to set some practical constraints
| here.
|
| Can you survive wet bulb temperatures given a bucket of
| water indefinitely? No. Can you survive working hard
| labor with the water bucket? No. Can you survive wet bulb
| events significantly higher than the threshold? No.
|
| Can you survive several hours in a typical (current
| typical) wet bulb event? Yes, definitely. Bucket of water
| is fine.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Can you survive several hours in a typical wet bulb
| event?
|
| I'm going to vote maybe. At best, it'll be close.
|
| Resting metabolic output is about half the active value I
| provided (per NASA's PDF). That means for a bucket of
| water that starts at 32deg, you have 5 hours before the
| bucket is also 95deg if you discount ambient heating from
| the air, circulatory constriction, and assuming no prior
| conditions.
|
| Since you can't discount those (and are unlikely to find
| barely-not-frozen water for an entire city's population),
| survival for more than an hour or two is nowhere near
| guaranteed.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > survival for more than an hour or two is nowhere near
| guaranteed.
|
| Does that pass your personal sniff test for
| reasonability? Have you ever soaked in a 104degF (40degC)
| hot tub for an hour or more? Was your survival in serious
| doubt?
|
| Wet bulb temperatures in excess of 35degC need to persist
| for around 6 hours to represent a serious hyperthermia
| risk. This is not a "you will die inside of 1-2 hours"
| scenario.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| True but you should also recognize the world has more than
| humans. most other species will not be able to survive such
| even. Second thing is instead of counting how many dead I'd
| rather count how many man-years of lives reduced. I'd bet
| with every such event the average life expectancy goes down,
| especially for old, super young & sickly. so overall impact
| would be large number of man-years of lives removed from
| humanity. some will be discovered immediately & some will be
| found in retrospect.
|
| Also, IMO most of deaths will come from decimation of food
| crops brought on by climate change induced 'weather
| randomization'. our world currently is super optimized for
| supporting 8B people. any one of the optimizations in the
| chain fail and we wont be able to easily recover. when
| multiple fail realistically the world economy sill settle
| into a non-globalized setup. that will support far fewer
| people than exist today.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| > Second thing is instead of counting how many dead I'd
| rather count how many man-years of lives reduced. I'd bet
| with every such event the average life expectancy goes
| down, especially for old, super young & sickly. so overall
| impact would be large number of man-years of lives removed
| from humanity.
|
| I know you threw babies in here but it feels like I have to
| point out that the old and sickly dying have a negligible
| effect on man years lost.
|
| > Also, IMO most of deaths will come from decimation of
| food crops brought on by climate change induced 'weather
| randomization'. our world currently is super optimized for
| supporting 8B people. any one of the optimizations in the
| chain fail and we wont be able to easily recover. when
| multiple fail realistically the world economy sill settle
| into a non-globalized setup. that will support far fewer
| people than exist today.
|
| I don't really agree that the world is as fragile as you
| propose. But I feel like need to clarify that I'm not
| arguing against the threat posed by climate change broadly.
| thworp wrote:
| In my experience the issue is not about taking it seriously,
| I've rarely met someone totally unconcerned in real life. The
| real issue is what to do about it, how to do it and in what
| timeframe.
|
| With these wet bulb events and the breathless death counts in
| the media people get the impression that heat waves are bigger
| killers than cold winters, when it's the opposite (and if you
| include indirect and long-term deaths by an order of
| magnitude).
|
| There are also some serious and well connected organizations
| advancing plans that I can only see as attempted mass murder.
| If your plan projects no cargo ships by 2035 you will kill
| millions from the fragility of food supply chains alone.
|
| If you want to reduce fertilizer use, fine. Better targeting
| and smarter application can reduce the consumption by at least
| 30%. But if you want to use _no fertilizer_ you will kill
| billions.
|
| Even the more grounded and non-murderous proposals have some
| serious question marks. Electrify almost all energy use by
| running 300% overproduction of renewables, to be stored in
| batteries and pump storage that isn't even planned yet while at
| the same time increasing electricity demand by 400%? Yea sure
| that will get done in 30 years, no problem.
|
| The climate doomers always insist that the extinction event
| will be caused by climate change destroying food supply. But
| crops can be bred, new areas can be cultivated and ressource
| use reduced. The fact that 6 billion of us only exists thanks
| to chemical fertilizer, mechanized agriculture and amazing seed
| variants is not open to argument though.
| jmcqk6 wrote:
| > In my experience the issue is not about taking it
| seriously, I've rarely met someone totally unconcerned in
| real life.
|
| The Republican Party just held their first primary debate
| among the presidential candidates. They were asked about
| climate change and only one of them was willing to recognize
| it as a problem, and my understanding is that she directed
| action towards China and India. The candidate leading the
| pack, Trump, was not present, but has called Climate Change a
| Chinese hoax.
|
| If you are not encountering people like this in real life,
| you are living in a bubble yourself.
| zarzavat wrote:
| A "wet bulb event" is not just a heatwave. A heatwave is a
| sustained period of high temperatures. You can protect
| yourself from a heatwave by staying indoors, using a fan,
| drinking water, etc.
|
| A wet bulb event is a period of _complete local
| inhabitability_ due to the temperature /humidity rising above
| the threshold where the human body can cool itself by
| sweating. These events are so far almost unheard of.
|
| Anyone who is in the affected area during such an event would
| only survive if they had air conditioning and uninterrupted
| power. Anybody without AC would die, unless they found some
| non-evaporative way to cool themselves.
|
| It's the most terrifying natural disaster conceivable.
| NotMichaelBay wrote:
| > Anybody without AC would die
|
| Couldn't you just eat ice to keep cool? Heat from blood
| transfers to the ice as it melts and warms in the stomach,
| then it leaves the body completely through urination.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes, consuming below-ambient liquids can cool you off.
| This will likely involve some form of refrigeration.
|
| Similarly you could put a giant block of ice in front of
| a fan and sit there; most people would call this a from
| of AC though.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Indeed, we still refer to "tons" as the colloquial
| measure of cooling capacity in AC.
|
| A ton of cooling being defined as 12000BTU/hr, or the
| latent heat of fusion of 1 ton of ice at 0degC being
| consumed via melting over 24 hours.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > Anyone who is in the affected area during such an event
| would only survive if they had air conditioning and
| uninterrupted power.
|
| Could you survive in a basement?
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Or in a river ?
| p1mrx wrote:
| It's a lot easier to build a basement than a river.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I was actually serious ?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The really short answer: If the wet-bulb temperature in
| your basement is sufficiently low, then yes. Otherwise
| no.
|
| Note that for a small poorly-ventilated basement, the
| humidity will rise from respiration, thus increasing the
| wet-bulb temperature. For a well-ventilated basement, the
| air temperature will approach the outdoor temperature,
| thus increasing the wet-bulb temperature.
|
| If you have a giant, well-shaded, pool of water, the
| water temperature will usually be below the peak air
| temperature (water has high thermal mass, so it will take
| a long time for it to come up to the ambient temperature,
| even at high humidity, where evaporation effects are
| negligible) so that's another non-AC method of staying
| cool.
|
| In any event pools of water and basements don't scale to
| densely populated areas.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I don't even think that would change people's minds. They'll
| just call it fake news and blame it on someone's laptop.
| hkpack wrote:
| > in my opinion, a lot of folks won't take climate change
| seriously until it adversely affects their way of life in such
| a dramatic way that they cannot deny it any longer.
|
| It won't. People you are talking about have access to air
| conditioning. They will not care about people dying in distant
| places, whom become an annoyance after a while. They will just
| wish people die silently without complaining.
| dahwolf wrote:
| As is the case with the new social media meme where
| "Europoors" don't have ACs and should be ridiculed for it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Hate to agree but yeah. We've already seen a number of deadly
| heat waves in Europe.
|
| In 2003, 70,000 people died in the EU from a heat wave [1]. A
| fact that is never really comes up in talks about climate
| change.
|
| The death toll could be millions and we'd still see deniers
| clamoring that we need to burn more coal for grid stability
| or whatever.
|
| [1] https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20230717-parisian
| s-a...
| aeternum wrote:
| More people die of cold than heat, a fact that never comes
| up in talks about climate change.
|
| Obviously there's a limit, but based on the data about
| lives lost due to cold vs. warm temps, we should expect
| increased global temps to first save human lives since a
| lot more people freeze to death.
| ironlake wrote:
| And think of all the money we'll save on jackets
| HPsquared wrote:
| The short-term patch is to install air conditioning (or go
| to the mall, or even an air conditioned car). That's what
| people at risk of this will do.
| olliecornelia wrote:
| [flagged]
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