Territories across the northern hemisphere are suffering through record-breaking heatwaves this summer. Climate scientists are publishing graphs with red lines jagging dangerously upwards as unprecedented numbers pour in. Residents of the southern hemisphere watch on, wondering what the coming hot season will bring.
2023 is hinting at a very real climate change that we can’t ignore. As the mercury rises to new heights, it’s time to educate yourself on the very real dangers of a wet bulb event. Scientists predict that these deadly weather conditions could soon strike in the hottest parts of the world. What you learn here could end up saving your life one day.
Hot Bodies
To understand the danger of a wet bulb event, we must first understand how our bodies work. The human body likes to maintain its temperature at approximately 37 °C (98.6 °F). That temperature can drift slightly, and the body itself will sometimes move its temperature setpoint higher to tackle infection, for example. The body is a delicate thing, however, and a body temperature above 40 °C (104 °F) can become life threatening. Seizures, organ failures, and unconsciousness are common symptoms of an overheating human. Death is a near-certainty if the body’s temperature reaches 44 °C (112 °F), though in one rare case, a patient in a coma survived a body temperature of 46.5 °C (115.7 °F).
Thankfully, the body has a host of automated systems for maintaining its temperature at its chosen set point. Blood flow can be controlled across the body, and we instinctively seek to shed clothes in the heat and cover ourselves in the cold. However, the bare naked fact is that one system is most crucial to our body’s ability to cool itself. The perspiration system is vital, as it uses sweat to cool our body via evaporation. Water is a hugely effective coolant in this way, with beads of sweat soaking up huge amounts of heat from our skin as they make the phase change from liquid to vapor.
Heat Kills
Our body’s inbuilt cooling system is an amazing thing. In extremely dry, low-humidity conditions, humans can survive surprisingly high temperatures. With adequate hydration, ambient temperatures pushing up against 50 °C (122 °F) could potentially be survivable for some time. The body would sweat and thus would be able to maintain a safe internal temperature.
The problem is that the body’s ability to cool itself rapidly falls apart when the humidity rises. This is why scientists talk about dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures. A wet-bulb temperature is taken with a thermometer that is covered in water soaked cloth with air passed over it for evaporative cooling. At low humidity, wet bulb temperatures are significantly lower than dry bulb temperatures as the water cools the thermometer. At 100% humidity, the wet bulb and dry bulb temperatures are the same as evaporative cooling is no longer possible.
Humans are victim to the same phenomenon. Once the air is saturated and can hold no more water, our bodies can no longer effectively cool themselves by sweating. This is why humid climates often feel hotter than drier ones. It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
The danger comes when the wet bulb temperature rises high enough that it threatens our ability to keep our bodies at a safe internal temperature. A study in 2010 theorized that a wet bulb temperature of 35 °C could be fatal for humans and other similar mammals in as little as six hours. At the time, wet bulb temperatures around the world did not exceed 31 °C.
More recent work at Penn State University, however, suggests the limit could be even lower. It tested the 35 °C (95 °F) wet bulb survivability threshold using young, healthy subjects in a laboratory environment. It aimed to determine an accurate critical temperature at which heat stress becomes unavoidable for a healthy human being. The study found much lower critical temperatures for humans operating at even low metabolic rates, on the order of 31 °C (88 °F) in warm, high-humidity environments. In hotter, drier environments, the survivable wet-bulb threshold temperature was actually lower, around 25 °C to 28 °C (77 °F to 82 °F). This was put down to the extra heat input to the body from the hotter ambient conditions, and the fact the wet bulb temperature drops significantly in conditions where evaporative cooling works. The study indicated that there was no one-size fits all limit for all conditions, but that wet bulb temperatures of 31 °C (88 °F) were a critical upper limit beyond which humans could not adapt.
It also bears noting that these are ideal figures, predicated on young, fit, and healthy individuals. Aged individuals, those with weak hearts, and other conditions can all die under less extreme circumstances. High heat and humidity force the heart to work harder, and can be enough to overwhelm those with existing issues.
Survival OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Air Conditioning
briefly rise to levels that threaten human life. Credit: NOAA Climate.gov, Raymond et al., 2020
If weather conditions in your area combine high temperatures with high humidity and the news is talking about an imminent “wet bulb event,” you’re in trouble.
As long as humidity is below 100%, there is some gain to be had by using fans and water to cool yourself off. Forget about using your swimming pool though; any heatwave of more than a couple of days will have heated it to bathtub temperatures. The closer the humidity gets to 100%, the less these methods will work.
In the worst conditions with humidity maxed out, your primary hope for survival will be air conditioning. Proper refrigerant-based air conditioners can remove heat from your home and cool it below ambient temperature regardless of humidity. They will become absolutely vital in the hottest parts of the world. Forget your swamp coolers, evaporative air conditioners, and fans—they will do precisely nothing to cool you off at this point.
If high wet bulb temperatures become common, expect heat-related deaths to skyrocket under such conditions. It’s easy to imagine shopping centers and other large public buildings serving as emergency refuges for citizens without access to air conditioning. Getting there would be a challenge in itself in a hot car or bus. A failed air conditioner could quickly spell doom in an extended-length event.
State of Play
As the world is rocked by intense heatwaves this summer, it bears looking at the current data on wet bulb events. Climate data has shown that wet bulb temperatures of over 30 °C (86°F) doubled between 1979 and 2017. Over that same time, there were around a thousand occurrences of wet bulb temperatures exceeding 31 °C (88 °F). Since 2005, extreme wet bulb temperatures exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) have occurred only a handful of times across the world, in hot subtropical areas like Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. In these cases, it has been for short periods of time, but it shows that these conditions are very real in our modern climate.
Efforts to halt and reverse climate change are of vital importance. In time, we could see huge swathes of the world become uninhabitable due to temperatures literally too extreme to survive in. We’re seeing the prelude to this future today, and it ought to push all of us to act to prevent it.
Why is this a meme all of a sudden? Nobody was talking about wet bulbs a couple months ago, now it’s everywhere.
It’s more flame fanning of the “climate change agenda” while we know the climate is warming and changing, the governments of the world are going to do nothing but burn tax dollars and make it worse.
If the media tells everyone we are all going to die from a “wet bulb” event they are more likely to vote for climate change taxes.
Those taxes only work if they’re placed on the companies doing the damage with bylaws to prevent them from just passing the buck to the consumer. That whole “carbon credit” scam did more harm that good in the long run.
I think a better or at least more palpable solution would be tax breaks for companies that prioritize remote work to reduce fuel consumption and tire dust and we’ll start seeing immediate improvements. Something similar to the X-Prize used to foster commercial space travel, but for carbon capture and air quality improvements. Hell, offering government grants for more vertical farms and hydroponics to reduce the distance produce is transported and food waste would help.
As much as I hate to admit it, taxes are necessary, but there are better ways to use them than slapping on politically charged label to get folks to buy in on the idea.
Of course the cost needs to be passed to the consumer. Oil companies don’t exist in a vacuum. There is no painless way to get ourself out of this problem.
Now sure, I fantasize as much as the next person about drowning Jim Inhofe in a barrel of boiling tar, but that’s not really so productive.
Carbon taxes work phenomenally well. They work even if the company passes on the tax to consumers or trades its credits. Those scenarios are built in.
No they don’t. Carbon taxes are a Ponzi scheme.
Carbon taxes are a cash grab.
Carbon offsets are a grift (but not Ponzi, indulgences).
We’re not all going to die from a Web Bulb heat event, because most of us aren’t in a likely zone for one. However, it will be a cause of mass deaths in certain parts of the hottest regions of the globe. For example, an event in New Delhi.
The major problem with a Wet Bulb event isn’t very clearly described in the article, though it’s great the article is here, because it is relevant to engineers. The problem is that above a Wet Bulb temperature, you can’t sweat to keep cool, in fact it makes it worse, because moisture starts to condense on your body, preventing you from wicking away heat. People will die within hours (depending on how much the Wet Bulb temperature is exceeded).
So, for example, the economy in India isn’t yet capable of addressing it through investment via taxes or any other means. And this applies to most of the locations where it’s likely to happen first. So, sometime in the next decade, it will happen. People won’t realise how bad the situation is until it’s too late (because you can cope for a few hours). AC and most power will fail so that won’t save them. People will try to escape in cars (which will overheat and/or they’ll simply die in the cars). The road surface will melt (this has happened before in New Delhi) so they won’t escape anyway and the city will be jammed with people trying to escape (if they have the energy).
So, they’ll just die en-masse.
You can call that an agenda if you like, but it’ll be a bit late to tax the dead and besides, the places where it’s most likely to happen, don’t have an economy that can adequately mitigate it.
>The problem is that above a Wet Bulb temperature, you can’t sweat to keep cool
But you can still cool by convection. Even if you’re surrounded by 35 °C air at 100% humidity, that is sill below your normal body temperature and with enough air flow you will cool down.
Theoretically, yes. But only if the body’s internal waste heat can get out fast enough. And with only a few degrees difference between inside and outside, heat transfer will to the skin will be slow.
Passive radiative cooling towards the sky might help better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cooling
That’s why the body has a habit of expanding the surface blood veins.
From the paper:
“Human skin temperature is strongly regulated at 35 °C or below under normal conditions, because the skin must be cooler than body core in order for metabolic heat to be conducted to the skin (17). Sustained skin temperatures above 35 °C imply elevated core body temperatures (hyperthermia), which reach lethal values (42–43 °C) for skin temperatures of 37–38 °C”
So it’s only above 35 that you start to get into trouble.
35C is the bottom threshold for a wet bulb event. How is the human body going to cool off if the temperature rises a little higher to 37C during a wet bulb event? Then there will be no evaporative cooling through sweat and no convection cooling through the skin. Guaranteed death unless the person is moved to a climate controlled location
Even at an ambient temperature of 35C the human body can not reject heat fast enough by convection alone. Humans generate heat just by existing and our surface area to volume ratio necessitates sweat at those temperatures
>35C is the bottom threshold for a wet bulb event.
Then why does the article say: “wet bulb temperatures of 31 °C (88 °F) were a critical upper limit beyond which humans could not adapt.”?
>the human body can not reject heat fast enough by convection alone
Forced convection (a fan or wind) helps a lot. As long as you can keep your skin to 35 C then it seems you can maintain normal body temperature. Lower activity, lose clothes, open a window or turn on a fan, stay out of the sun. You should be fine.
> no convection cooling through the skin.
According to numbers you can find in literature, the human skin thermal conductivity is quite good and the body has no trouble bringing heat to the surface of the skin in the hundreds of Watts. Much more than is needed to cool you down.
The trouble is getting the heat off the skin, and with no convection sweating would not work either, because the humidity of the air around the skin would reach 100% and sweating would stop. However, there’s always some air movement – all you have to do is start fanning yourself.
+1
What are you talking about? The article describes exactly that problem (sweating doesn’t work) in great detail.
Hardly news. The grazing sheep barely looked. What startled me was that the same energy that takes water from 32 to 33 is the same as 33 to like 90..now that’s a bit scary
Maybe that’s what’s needed… millions less people. Nature doesn’t care how it’s done. In the 1960s there were 2B people. Now there are 5B more polluters affecting our environment. Our current business model demands more and more growth of our population. But as everyone knows, cancer is the unchecked growth of human cells that kills the host (us).
Only it is wrong people who are subtracted, those who generate least pollution, the cause of the die out, while large polluters survive (and increase their polluting in course of managing to survive) hence the control loop feedback fails to stabilize the system. It ends abruptly when life support inputs demand for the high-upkeep part of humanity exceeds the available inputs (and many of those are supplied by people extracting them in most affected parts of the world). When billions in “remote” parts of the world start dieing, we will not be far behind them, the death will be around corner. So, instead of smuggly casually discussing potential desirability of billions of deaths of (not so) distant others, better put your mind on doing something to avert those deaths.
We’d get better results offering tax incentives for companies that facilitate remote work and automation to reduce commuter consumption of fuel and tire dust. Remember how clear the air was at the height of lock downs?
Taxing the worst polluters just gets the buck passed to the customer as higher prices and doesn’t touch the bottom line of the shareholders and CEOs. Whom we’ll never hurt because they can out donate any votes cast by the average citizen.
I firmly believe that we’re hurting ourselves, but taxing the consumer into abject poverty when they can’t afford an alternative, or if the alternative doesn’t exist, doesn’t get change enacted or people to buy in on the message.
This is very much a carrot vs stick problem, and if the failed lockdowns demonstrated anything its that humans have very little tolerance for sticks anymore.
While we’re at it there should be an X-Prize for battery tech research, and grants to reduce food deserts with urban vertical farms. Municipal composting of restaurant food waste would help with soil depletion.
Taxes work, but we have to be smart about it. Slapping on a politically charged label isn’t going to win it much support. Especially if all people see is even less money to live with at the end of the month. I’d have been fine with the ACA if we’d just taken the money from all the useless pork spending, bailouts, and failed military projects like the LCS program.
Coercion is the worst way to get people to do anything. Unfortunately everybody in the world is so used to being coerced that it’s going to take something as intense as watching our neighbors and family members die to get it through our heads that we’ve got to do something to save ourselves. It should have never come to this.
I’m not so sure that coercion doesn’t work on corporations however.
Coercion is necessary for those who had been shielded from reality and can’t or refuse to comprehend an imminent danger, e.g. refuse to vacate a burning building or a site of a deadly disaster. Sure, most everyone changes their mind at the time they face their own death, but then it is too late for voluntariness and the attempting rescuers would certainly die with them.
Remote work isn’t a golden bullet (or even a silver one), though. It just shifts any number of costs from the company onto employees.
And even if it reduces pollution from combustion engines (automobiles), it will likely result in a greater expenditure of energy. After all, keeping the lights on and the temperature regulated all day long isn’t free and your whole living space has to be that way if you work from home.
So now instead of a shared space where those costs are shared across the employees and, in principle, minimized, you have every employee making those decisions for themselves and having to bear the entirety of the cost.
Alternative which also eliminates commute but leaves all the costs to companies is to live at workplace, but that would mean a hit to the standard of living and a faster burnout of the employees.
CO2 Emissions by Country
1 China: 29.18%
2 United States: 14.02%
3 India: 7.09%
4 Russia: 4.65%
Yep, let’s raise the CO2 taxes there. Hope they are happy with this…assuming that they listen at all. Especially Russia.
The clear skies during lockdown didn’t come from home office work but because the industry in China took a hit.
Right, of course, the “cLImATe AgENda!”
Grow up. Climate change is real and has been known for decades.
For instance, check out this 3-decade old video by Shell: https://youtu.be/vTlYYlRN0LY
Yes, climate change is real. That doesn’t mean that there is not an agenda or that climate alarmism is backed by a strong body of scientific evidence. When people insist that we need to make sweeping changes to our very way of life even though we account for such a low proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions as American consumers, it shows that it’s more about control or religious devotion to ideology that motivates most of the proposed “solutions.” Ironically, the form of energy production that causes the lowest amount of greenhouse emissions (nuclear) are being shut down by people who aren’t smart enough to recognize that greenhouse gas emissions accumulate over the entire lifetime of the product, from mining the raw materials to shipping it off to a landfill in some foreign country. They think throwing away a perfectly good product to replace it with a slightly lower emissions product is helping, and they want to force everyone else to follow their example. It doesn’t take a genius to understand how that can be counterproductive (and that’s simply in terms of the raw emissions—once you account for the opportunity costs the utter stupidity of these policies becomes even more apparent). Climate alarmism is more of a tool for narcissists to feel good about themselves than it is a sociocultural imperative in order for us to avoid certain peril. Climate-related deaths are currently at an all-time low.
Amen!
I think you negative connotation on the word “alarmism” is problematic here. If your home was on fire and I shouted “Ahhh! Get out, your home is on fire!” you’d probably appreciate my alarmism. Those who you see as people with an “agenda” I think are people who think we are in a “house is on fire” situation. It’s just clear you don’t. You are free of course to say you think it’s not that important. But it’s unfair and dishonest of you to say that others who genuinely see a crisis are somehow pursuing an agenda more complex that literally trying to save the world.
That said, it’s totally fair that some methods haven’t worked, for lots of reasons. But I think the following shows some interesting counters to your points: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US-1W-IN – that is us CO2 per Capita vs the world and India (which was highlighted elsewhere in this thread as a major wet bulb hot spot). Americans are in fact 10x greater emitters of CO2 per capita than the rest of the world. So we absolutely have to be a part of the solution. Second, we have improved a lot over the time period that laws ro combat CO2 emissions have appeared! Of course that’s correlation not causation, but there is plenty of similar data that show *some* regulation and taxing mechanisms have been a part of this. They don’t all work in all cases but that means we should say “we are slowly destroying the planet, so what did work to fix that?” not “ugh taxes suck, and stop freaking out about climate”.
FWIW, I completely agree with you on nuclear though. Nonsensical fear of the word “radiation” seems to have had a direct negative impact on our climate.
Nuclear scare is not about radiation, but about radionuclide pollution. The first vanes with square of distance from you, and your body has mechanisms to repair the damages from it, while the second gets bioaccumulated along the food chain and get lodged inside your tissues, where they continue releasing highly maximally ionized helium atoms (alpha particles) which aggressively snatch two electrons from the tissue molecules, which is essentially prolonged (until fission transmutation chain ends in “cold”, but still toxic lead) sustained oxydative damage. That is one of the reasons so much hope is invested into nuclear fusion, which deals with light instead of heavy elements – probably even more radiation, but far less heavy elements.
“cLImATe AgENda!” is this supposed to make you look elite and all knowing.
Stop being scared of Covid, climate… turn off your TV
The War on Weather is just another war on terror, poverty… :)
Seems every 20 years there’s a new “war” to increase size and power of government.
Perhaps look at the size of the Sun compared to Earth.
Don’t look up!
No they aren’t. They are less likely when you’re going to die from climate changed is constantly talked about and pushed upon them. Especially when it’s been based 70% of the time in lies.
It’s not true that no-one was talking about Wet Bulb temperatures a couple of months ago. I’ve been aware and concerned about them for at least a decade or so. There are direct references to Wet Bulb heat events in fiction, for example it’s a crucial part of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 book: “The Ministry Of the Future.”
The first chapter scares the hell out of me.
Yeah, I’ve had knowledge of it for decades and in the past few weeks I’ve had to field questions from lots of people who had no idea what it was or why it has that silly name, so of course I bore them with explanations..
The sudden buzzwordification of it smacks of a memo going out. I’ve worked at climate NGOs. I know what I’m talking about when I say that climate change is very, very real, but these people have zero interest in solving it and every intention of exploiting it all the way to the bottom. It’s disillusioning to see, but they need to be ruthlessly cleared out and new systems put in place if anything is going to be improved.
THANK YOU!
If you read a second KSR book, there is something wrong with you.
Red Mars was so stupid.
Red Mars was great. What problems did you have with it?
The first thing wrong with it was it proposed a mars colony will be crewed by people recruited in the parking lot after a dead show. Because they are the ‘smart ones’.
Which was obviously just kissing the butt of the intended audience.
Then it proceeded on to ‘socialism will work on mars’. The earth will just pay for everything, not just let them die and send a new crew of not stupid people.
Then it got really silly/stupid. Chanting over plants to make them grow in near vac. Just blithering.
A a former meteorologist, I’ve used the term “wet bulb” for over 30 years — specifically the part of a sling psychrometer that helps measure moisture content of the air.
Sauna enthusiasts understand.
Once a meteorologist, always a
Only problem for stand-alone wet-bulb measurements is the need for a water reservoir.
This is far from being a “Hackaday” story. Post it on CNN or MSNBC but not on Hackaday, where many come to read about hacks, not the latest scare debate.
For information: the Wall Street Journal very recently confirmed that this summer has been one of the coolest on record for the middle portion of the U.S. Temperatures have averaged around 5 degrees F lower than normal. Yes, other places are running warmer than normal, but there’s no such thing as a “global” climate “crisis”.
Bruh. Ask any search engine what the average global temperature has been this month. It’s breaking records. Despite anyplace specific (such as “the middle portion of the U.S.”) experiencing lower-than-average temperatures, the “GLOBAL” “FUCKING” “AVERAGE” is off the charts.
I expected someone more scientifically-minded than you in a place like this.
The global average they reported the day after it happened?
That’s not even credible. It was obviously planned and pre cherry picked.
Repeat your last sentence back at you.
Why would it be planned? Why is the fact that it was reported a day after hurting the credibility of the claim? You’re asking questions without having tangible answers, which is way too common for people imagining some kind of hidden new world order. What would people gain from that conspiracy?
Because calculating the planets temperature is full of complications. City heat islands being the greatest. Unless this just ignored those issues and used the publicly printed downtown temps of major cities. Which is cherry picking.
It’s on the news and is science, so it’s bullshit. Ask anybody with deep knowledge of any subject that has been reported on. News is batting 000 over the last 40 years. It’s actually pretty amazing, you’d think they’d get something right, just by accident.
Science for ‘press release’ also has a terrible track record. Those ‘scientists’ look at the medias terrible performance reporting science and think ‘we can use this’ not ‘this is a problem’.
You’re expectations were too high I am sorry to say. Even an average like me is here.. I am dumber then a box of rocks but I definitely don’t want to die due to climate change. I will let smarter individuals figure out how to save the world though and stay at home until told to evacuate.
Please link your claims. Because they say June was the hottest recorded
https://www.wsj.com/articles/june-hottest-on-record-heat-b222c05c
And no cherry-picking like “at this very specific place and date it was cooler”
Well, the story does discuss hacks for survival. Many hackers are concerned with survival, and tend toward self-sufficiency. Some of the lively discussion talking place in chat starts to this.
Some of the droll in chat speaks of how the Hackaday readers have changed over the years.
Because the fact that the current sun cycle is reaching solar maximum doesn’t fit the agenda.
WHICH cycle? The sun spot cycle is ~11 years. We’re at the peak of the current one, but the previous was the 4th smallest since records started in 1755. Sunspots aren’t anywhere near sufficient to explain away climate change. So what cycle are you talking about?
I get what you are saying, media and govs exploit our fears, but it also happens “naturally”, during covid hundreds of mini factories producing sanitizer gel popped out of nowhere, price got multiplied… But for this article specifically, I know I’m just a random internet user but I can’t attest this, I’m from north Africa, our summers used to be 35° Celsius at worst, this summer the temps reached 53° downtown ( cars density and pollution) with humidity above 80%, any house or room without ac was hell, fans were useless. It is basically a preview of the future for the rest of the world, while it will get worse here. It happened before in the middle east, 55° Celsius in irak, rich people stayed at home with ac, while poor people delivered food and necessities. Again, a preview of the future for the rest of the world.
Hardly the rest of the world, this is an issue for tropical and sub tropical zones more than anyone else. The temperate zone is more prone to benefit than suffer from the increased temperature, same applies to the cold zone.
Perhaps because more scientific wording is being used instead of weak phrases such as “feels like temperature”. Weather people have always been including the information in their forecasts.
Exactly !.. glad someone is declaring the “emperor is not wearing clothes”.
You look at historical data, and it’s actually cooler temps now than it was in say, the 1930’s
(where “records” were really shattered and present day temps, not even close).
Sounds like someone’s bulb is getting a bit too wet here. You should trust the experts :^)
I would not care of climate change deniers if they weren´t so noisy.
I’m so sorry that you have to tolerate being disagreed with in public. You must be truly suffering.
Have any of you actually lived through a 50°C / 122°F heat wave? If not, I’d wager you’d be lot more pensive after you have.
I lived through the record-obliterating wave we had in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, without AC. Begged a friend of a friend who had AC to take in my pets, just so they might survive. For 4 days my whole community functioned like a fallout zone, and I’ll never forget the feeling of waking up, waiting for the minor heat stroke symptoms to settle in each day.
Live through novel times like that, then sing “Don’t Worry” in your snarky tones some more. I’d bow to you.
Just leaving this here since the climate change deniers all jumped in the comments:
if you’re reading this comment section, normal people that worry about climate change exist ! It’s just we’re not commenting on these articles because there is nothing to debate: we are living in scary times.
But don’t think every other human is skeptical about global warming. It’s just the loud ones on the internet. There are people who do care and at the end of the day, they’ll be the one making efforts to prevent the crisis as much as they can. Do your part if you can !
This is not unique or even special weather down here and we’ve been surviving it for centuries.
If you lot insist on spouting absurd fearmongering like this, you don’t get to complain when people think every word out of your mouths is a lie.
Sorry, but I live in Texas and have lived through plenty of summers. This current heat wave is not normal. But don’t take my word for it. Even the traditionally hands-off Texas government is warning people.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-heat-dome-sizzling-texas-wont-budge/
Methinks the Mighty Buzzard might be fibbing about being “down here”?
+1 to you good citizen. Stay cool, stay safe. One way or another we’ll make it through this.
It doesn’t matter what weather you’ve got where you are, or whether it’s normal. What matters is that global temperatures are higher again for another year running. Remember there’s a difference between climate and weather. Also: read the article, it’s about a specific type of event that can happen with or without climate change.
Actual false data. When you change the way you measure something, you don’t get to go back and adjust previous data to what you think they would have been using the new system. Climate frauds have done exactly that more than once.
I mean if you wanna just say that you don’t understand statistics, distributed systems, or data collection and analysis, and you’re not interested in learning them, it’d be quicker to just say it.
This is all a little bizarre. I never expected any people with an interest in Hackaday to deny science. In this forum, when you try to claim that raw data derived from repeatable measurements is influenced by the political left, you just sound stupid. Go argue with the other trolls on facebook- you can find plenty of safe fact-free zones there.
The political left in America constantly promotes ideas that they find appealing as self-aggrandizing ideologues and tahen simply invoked science like a Greek poet would have invoked a muse. Climate change is a great example, but the effectiveness of masks against respiratory viruses (as either protection or source control) is an even better example. Now that two Cochrane Reviews have pointed out the fact that there has never been even a single well-designed RCT that has been able to demonstrate a benefit to wearing masks (and not for lack of trying), has anybody on the left admitted that maybe their ideas aren’t derived from strict application of the scientific method to emperical observations? Of course not! They still insist they are following the science as if 99% of them didn’t lack the math skills and journal subscriptions to even be capable of following the state of the art in any field of science.
Alright, I’ll take the bait: If masks don’t work, then why are doctors required to wear them around sick people every day?
If you actually used the journal subscriptions you implied you have for anything other than cherry picking medical articles you’d have a legitimate answer, but instead you’re arguing politics and several year old conspiracies on a topic that is completely unrelated to them because you feel persecuted for being in the minority on a topic you know nothing about. Please go outside and actually have a conversation with someone that has different views than you, and make an actual effort to understand them.
r_d_tex:
Doctors wear masks to reduce the spread of Bacteria. Viri are much, much smaller.
I like how you presume there is no answer to your question. Proves pnemeth’s point nicely. Are you one of his alts?
I, for one, do believe in following the science. Which is why I never follow science _reporting_.
J school students take no non-remedial math or science. They just fail to learn middle school math and science for a third time, get their Cs and ‘never math again’.
Presuming you know some technical subject deeply. Have you ever seen reporting on that subject that wasn’t completely back asswards? If you have, you’re the only one.
There is evidence for masks working against viruses – initial evidence was for influenza virus but evidence exists for Covid now too. Although double blinded randomly controlled trials are the gold standard, they cannot always be done effectively either ethically or logistically. Other trials CAN result in statistically relevant findings.
1) was a cluster randomized trial from Bangladesh where villages with community-level masking saw a decrease in COVID-19 infections.
2)Another recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the impact of mask-wearing in Boston-area schools. Using a difference-in-difference statistical design, that is, comparing the difference before with the difference after changes in mask policy, researchers were able to look at how different schools fared when they lifted mask mandates at different times. The researchers found that lifting mask mandates resulted in an extra 45 cases per 1,000 students and staff, or an extra 12,000 cases.
I am not a “leftist”, I don’t care about politics, just a Doctor who is tired of watching death as a result of ignorance!
Viruses are indeed smaller, but even bacteria and bacterial spores would pass the masks easily. Neither transfer successfuly as isolated free particles in the air. The masks catch droplets of fluids necessary for mechanisms of infection.
The Bangladeshi study is one of the most poorly-designed trials that I have ever seen, and then major mistakes were made in the analysis of the data that should have been detected prior to publication but somehow weren’t. The primary author also failed to disclose a political interest in the results that he had expressed repeatedly before he even decided to do a mask trial.
You say that RCTs sometimes can’t be done ethically or practically, but multiple RCTs have been done on this topic and all of them have failed to show a significant benefit. I assume you have read the Cochrane reviews on this topic. Interestingly, the primary author of both the reviews has said that he was forced by his editors to add language to the effect of “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” even though absence of evidence is certainly a good reason not to develop public health policy around a specific intervention and Cochrane and the rest of the medical community is happy to write off other interventions based on absence of evidence, such as ivermectin (and correctly so).
I’ll leave you with some thoughts on this topic that I have already expressed elsewhere on the Internet
The hallmark of an RCT is that subjects are assigned randomly into a control group and an experimental group, such that members of both groups are equally subject to any confounding factors that might affect the results. This allows you to be confident that any difference in outcome between the two groups is due to the differences in treatment between the two groups. This Bangladesh study, in contrast to any of the RCTs that I have mentioned, does not randomly assign participants into either a mask group or a control group, but rather assigns entire villages into a control and an experimental group. Any confounding variables that act at the village level will systematically affect only one group and not the other–precisely what the random assignment in an RCT is trying to avoid.
In spite of the poor control, the study only found a 1% reduction in the number of cases. The statistically significant result was a 13% decrease in *symptoms*, a result that could plausibly be attributed to the placebo effect (especially since the treatment group wasn’t blinded to either the patients or the clinicians). Additionally, when blood samples were tested after the completion of the study, they failed to actually find a difference in the presence of COVID antibodies between the treatment groups, despite a huge bias in determining who to collect blood samples from.
There’s also a host of other extremely serious methodological problems such as a test for statistical significance that incorrectly uses the number of individuals participating in the study as the sample size (~350k) even though the treatment was applied at the village level, meaning they really only had 600 samples (an error of over 58,000%).
Ben Recht at Berkeley has an article where he demonstrates that using the same type of (incorrect) statistical analysis as the study’s authors, one can support a bunch of absurd conclusions with the same level of statistical significance (such as the conclusion that red masks stop COVID but purple masks don’t). It’s well worth a read (search for Ben Recht Bangladesh RCT).
Hmm, Global warming is real, easily provable with access to any countrys meteoroligal data from the past 170 – 200 years or so. If masks didnt effing work, no surgeons and nurses would be wearing them while poking around in your insides. The mask isnt there to protect you, its there to protect us from you. So take your foil hat and walk off into the sunset, bub.
Antii, you’re the epitome of the self-important ideologue that I described in my original comment. You haven’t even attempted to make an emperical case for your assertions because as far as you’re concerned, alignment with your political ideology is indistinguishable from being supported by scientific evidence.
+1
Spot on!
Skeptical about effects of mediation, and you should be as well. Calling it “denial” makes you sound like an ideologue.
I treasure every Dunning-Kruger response, and not often seen on HaD.
“Calling it what it is makes me seem like a villain for doing it so I have to defend myself”
I am disturbed to see the denial of observed phenomena conflated with skepticism that the people in charge are acting in good faith on it. Of course it’s convenient for these things to be intermingled.
I have read it was over 2 deg C warmer than now in the 100’s of years of the Roman warming. In light of that observation, what would you make of the opinions of these people in charge, some of whom are likely acting in good faith? And some of whom were enthusiastic good faith supporters of fighting the coming ice age in the 1970’s?
>we’re not commenting on these articles because there is nothing to debate: we are living in scary times
Or, we’re not commenting because we’ve experienced the thing and found it not scary. I live in a place where the temperatures swing from -30 to +30 and more with the occasional “hot bulb” events thanks to no air conditioning built in apartments meant for the common people. When it is +32 indoors during a heat wave and 100% humidity, I just strip down and turn on a fan. It’s not comfortable, but it’s hardly scary.
Sounds like you haven’t experienced the thing then. It is normal conditions for where you are.
Try living in Canada, and suddenly experiencing 45-50°C for a few days. The terrain, wildlife, and human infrastructure just couldn’t support it.
At least have some empathy for those who aren’t you.
But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Not that extreme. They’re trying to call “scary” something which I would consider a nice summer day. Oh no, it’s going to be +31 out, how terrible!
I used to live in an apartment that had thick stone walls, that would soak up the sun’s heat through the summer and it would gradually heat up over 30 C and stay there for months. At the end of the summer, it would start to rain and the humidity went up to 100% for days at a time. Having experienced that, I’ve found that I can tolerate quite extreme temperatures without discomfort. At first it was awful, but then it just became normal. However, listening to these guys talk, I should be twice dead already.
You have clearly missed the point of the article. If you say it is hot outside and then even hotter inside, the 100 percent humidity outside is no longer 100 percent humidity inside. Therefore you were able to use a fan to cool yourself. Otherwise it would be beyond minimal effect from a fan.
If it’s 32°C indoor and 100% humidity, you are at the limit of the survivable wet bulb temperature.
Add 2 little degree and you’re dead.
One thing this article doesn’t mention is the metabolism effect. If you lay inactive (for example, sleeping) while it’s deadly hot and wet, you might survive (since you’ll be only producing a 100W of heat). But as soon as you have **any** activity, your metabolism will produce up to 400W of heat that you can’t reject to the atmosphere, and you’ll die.
It’s more like 80-90 Watts while sleeping and 120-150 Watts while awake and active, doing normal chores. You need to do something special like ride a stationary bike as hard as you can to get 400 Watts sustained heat output – but why would you do that?
Instead of replying here to all us plebs, why don’t you show your expertise by publishing your research paper with nature or pubmed. Until then, I’m more prone to trusting the actual scientist, rather than an anonymous “dude” on the internet.
There’s nothing new or controversial in what I’m saying.
One would put themself at risk of doing 400 joules/sec of work in such conditions for the same reason as occurred during height of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic …
To cook and/or deliver food to the hoi oligoi, so they can feed their family, and pay rent.
No RCT of effectiveness of masks at filtering fine respiratory droplets? No problem. Request that no one in the OR wear any sort of mask at your next surgery. Nevermind that the practice has been epidemiologically proven effective en vivo many times for over one hundred years. Tell them that they must not wear masks until you get your RCT! Surely you don’t want your surgeon getting lightheaded from low O2 saturation due to wearing mask whilst operating on you (there is an RCT on that, right?!?)
>Add 2 little degree and you’re dead.
Then I should be dead, yet here I am.
An adult human has a body surface area of roughly two square meters. The core is at 37 degrees, and let’s assume the surface is at 34 degrees to reach your “deadly” condition with a temperature difference of 3 K and a heat flux of 150 Watts under normal active conditions. That is 75 W/m^2
The thermal conductivity of human skin according to the literature is 0.37 W/m-K for the top 1.5 mm, which means your skin will easily pass 247 Watts for each Kelvin of temperature difference, or up to 740 Watts in this case. Ten times more than what is required.
With blood veins bringing body heat under the skin, there is no trouble for a human to get rid of heat even at small temperature differences. The troubles start at the skin-to-air interface because air has a conductivity of just 0.026 W/m-K which is about ten times worse. However, we actually do have that margin to spare, and things improve dramatically when we add convection – a fan to move the heated air off your skin.
A simple calculation shows that even without sweating, a “hot bulb” event like that should be easily survivable as long as you have a fan or any air movement in the room. Besides, you won’t die immediately if your body temperature exceeds 37 C anyhow.
Note that thermal conductivity assumes heat over unit area. It’s defined as q = k*(dT/L) where q has a unit of W/m^2. If you don’t notice that, the units look “wrong”.
If we calculate in total watts for all the surface area, an adult human should easily be able to shed over 400 Watts for each degree of temperature difference with convection over the whole body.
Why humans need sweating at all is because we can generate kilowatts of heat for short periods of time, but mainly because the sun can strike us with a kilowatt of heat per square meter, which we have to remove or we would die. Humans have evolved to survive standing outside in the midday sun when other animals have to seek shelter and can’t move (makes them easier to avoid or hunt).
Our own body heat is not sufficient to kill us even under quite extreme conditions.
Too much information is too much, I can’t process why are you all arguing? This seems like too much effort.
“Research found that 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to be 37–43%.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy#Public_opinion
So there’s a 50/50 chance. But only a 10% chance of that. At least we can rely on the opinions of the public.
Humans are a funny species.
What most of them don’t realize is that the future will tell without a doubt who was right.
So there’s no need to get upset and argue with people when you’re sure that you’re on the right side. Just chuckle and wait…
Sadly in this case it’s nothing to chuckle about and people need to be educated.
Just like you “educated” us “conspiracy theorists” during the height of the COVID hysteria? Funny, that…
> … the future will tell without a doubt who was right.
Like the so-called “conspiracy theorists” during the COVID hysteria? Turns out, they were right. Oops.
I welcome our space-alien terraforming over-lords.
The wife-unit and myself are ready for the wet-bulb ‘events’. We have improved cardio capacity almost 2x during past three years, so the heat index has minimal effect to our person. My PV panels put approx 1.6x juice back into the grid compared to the joules that I suck out (the utility scumbags actually owe me). Along with my batteries and my generator, I entered this summer prepared.
My (over-weight) neighbors have been spending too much time at my place. But they pay rent by suffering my diatribes on technology, society, and my profound hopes for humans becoming a slave race to cruel space-alien over-lords.
Capture that energy spent increasing your cardio capacity. Heck, create an opportunity for your neighbors to increase their’s and put energy into your system when they come over as an additional ‘rent fee’.
Personally I’m waiting on someone to come out with a good quality, commercial grey water system.
Last year’s hosepipe ban lead my dad to DIY a grey water collection system by putting a water butt in line with the down pipe from bathroom. Ok it wasn’t all the grey water from the house, but it was enough for watering his garden.
Fertiliser too!
“…Personally I’m waiting on someone to come out with a good quality, commercial grey water system.”
If you’re waiting on a “commercial” grey-water system, you’ll likely be waiting a long, long time.
Build your own; I did, and it’s remarkably very easy. This is probably one of the easiest hacks that you’ll ever do, and guess what: this one pays continual real and measurable money-in-your-pocket benefits.
All it takes is common sense and some piping changes to your dwelling.
The biggest down-side–for some here–is that, for maximum reliability (i.e., to maximize your chances of NOT ever having to file a water-damage claim with your insurance provider), it–a grey-water system design–very specifically requires you to not use a Raspberry Pi–or any electronics, for that matter–anywhere in the design and implementation.
Not even an SE/NE 555, 2N2904, or R/2R-ladder DAC.
KISS.
Bummer!
[It goes without saying that the best time to ‘build-in’ a grey-water system is when you’re building a new house]
That’s surprising, and somehow also not.
What part about your raspberry pi’s involvement led to a water damage claim in your insurer’s inbox?
I think their point is that any electrical system (especially around water) will fail eventually, so it shouldn’t be an important part of the functionality – simple passive system that will work and be entirely unable to overflow etc even when the computer or sensor that monitors it dies. That overflow protection in your sink for instance, would you really want to replace that simple pipe that drains excess away if you left the tap on for a solenoid/servo actuated main plug valve? As soon as the sensor fails or the actuator gets sticky you have a sink that will overflow, or possibly one you can never fill…
I’d be all for tossing a monitoring system in, so you can know and log over time the quality of the water out, the flow rate etc. But if you need the computer to see x condition to activate pump y all time as part of the basic operation you are asking for a catastrophic failure in the end, or setting yourself up for near infinite maintenance time. You could still do it that way if you want, but then you want failsafe upon failsafe to be sure it can’t ever go really wrong and need some really solid electronics and software for it to actually be worth it – otherwise every time the electronics crashes somewhere or the redundant sensors disagree with each other you have to rush home and debug it.
It’s not even a question of breaking down.
Batteries run down and blackouts happen, so electronics are not walk-away safe even without a physical failure.
So, electronics is not trusty enough for plumbing, yet it is good enough for fly-by-wire and nuclear power plants?
You’re fortunate to have options. If there was such an event when I was a kid, in the days after a hurricane when fuel was scarce and the grid services were out, we’d have had no real recourse to cool off once the fuel ran out, because everyone would be in the same boat.
It would have scared me too but I saw that map and found out that I was outside all day in the unsurvivable area, so I must have already died earlier this week. Guess I can blow off work and go fishing.
You almost certainly were not outside in an unsurvivable wet bulb temperature all day though. Maybe the peak temperature for the day was unsurvivable but that wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of hours. You are not immune to physics.
I wonder if some people are just waiting for the billionaires to try and block out the sun.
Whatever transpires, things aren’t going to be boring over the next few coming decades.
There’s seemingly new promise at the moment for a room temperature and ambient pressure superconductor. Looking at the formula, it doesn’t seem like a stretch for someone to make it at home, with minimal equipment and some trial and error.
Although I wonder if it’ll prove too late, at least for a large number of plant and animal species.
It is always too late for a large number of species. That is how it works.
You’re not funny. At all. I feel bad for the people exposed to you.
Nice to hear you created your own protected bubble to live in.
You are aware you still rely on the unprotected environment outside to provide you with food, water, fuel…? Or are you going to stay inside and eat from tin cans the next 30 years?
You are clearly an insufferable person
For awhile there were several projects posted here to try and pull water out of dry air to get clean water for desert areas instead of having to desalinate. It might be worthwhile to pull clean water out of areas with high humidity to both get clean, desalinated water AND decrease wet bulb chances.
(I’m sure it’s difficult if not impossible to noticeably decrease the humidity level in open air to make it worthwhile on its own, but maybe the value to also get additional clean water would help justify the cost. If it’s something that could be easily/cheaply done in conjunction w/ wind power farms in OK, TX then maybe it’s win/win/win.)
What I was thinking, although overall I wonder how efficient that would be. Plus the problem with AC is basically turning heat islands into even bigger heat islands. Be better to architect our cities into greener spaces with all the attendant benefits.
…thus increasing the humidity and chance of wet bulb?
More complex than that, there will definitely be more water in the area as the plants and soil for them will hold a heap but plants by being there also have a regulatory effect on the local climate. So the humidity and temperature will likely end up lower overall than had they not been there.
However I’m not sure if in the places it really gets hot and humid enough for a wet bulb event to be a big problem will work that way – I just don’t know enough about how the sort of plants that survive in those environments react, and if they can even survive it in a garden CITY. A massive jungle of them probably would be fine, but as soon as you start adding in lots of concrete and brick that will really catch the heat and break up the root networks…
It’c almost be like you’d want to lay out some sort of network of nutrient/water lines to encourage specific and focused root growth? I’m not sure whether that would work for sure though.
Use only succulent plants 😁
The net effect is roughly zero. The vegetation raises the humidity, but the rising humidity stores a lot of the temperature in the latent heat of vaporization. The main effect, here, is making it easier for A/C compressors to cope, as well as providing shade and subjecting the plant, not the people, to the brunt of the radiant heat from our life-giving deadly laser 7 light-minutes away.
The question is going to be, how do we choose vegetation that’ll reflect the most heat away? How do we know when to choose plants, and when to choose barium sulfate pigments as seen on, among others, Tech Ingredients (which throw the heat off into space by utilizing a specific frequency of IR that the atmosphere does not absorb)?
“For awhile there were several projects posted here to try and pull water out of dry air…”
Yes, although for practical purposes it’s a pretty well debunked concept given the amount of air that must be dehumidified and the amount of energy needed to do that just to get enough to keep a person alive.
“worthwhile to pull clean”
I’m not sure where people get the idea such water is clean. Because it looks clear? There is a lot of junk in the air and when you process so much air to get water you are going to concentrate that junk. Not to mention bacteria which are going to start reproducing as soon as you concentrate the humidity.
At a Mini-Maker Faire I once saw a presentation where someone had taken air filters and installed them outside in various local cities, ran them for a controlled time and then displayed them to show relative outdoor air quality. It was bad. Even one city which has little local industry and lots of environmentalists was particularly bad. The hypothesis was that air currents bring soot from coal plants in another city about 50 miles away. I know people in that city who collect rainwater as part of their sustainable, off-the-grid lifestyle. I like solar but that was enough to convince me not to drink water from the air!
“I’m sure it’s difficult if not impossible to noticeably decrease the humidity level in open air to make it worthwhile”
Are we talking outdoors? Yah, that would be a pretty big mega-project. I’m thinking no.
Doing this to your own air in an enclosed space?
Most central air conditioners are also dehumidifiers exactly because dry air helps one to feel cool. This isn’t anything new!
“also get additional clean water”
Umm, still no.
Now, if you really were doing this but stopped calling it clean water and rather considered it to be the input to a water treatment plant… It’s still going to be way too inefficient to be practical but at least nobody gets legionnaires’ disease. In that case I would be willing to drink a glass of your more-expensive-than-fancy-wine water IF I’m not paying for it.
” If it’s something that could be easily/cheaply ”
Nope.
The formula for dehumidification is not:
Wet Air in = Dry Air + Water out.
It’s more like:
Wet Air + 1 Metric F’Ton of Energy in = Slightly Less Wet Air + a little unpotable water out
So… the point is there is no easy solution to this problem.
The only relatively easy solution would have been to take the environment more seriously a generation or two ago.
I think we are going to have to try for Geoengineering sooner or later. It’s too late to fix it by just polluting less. We don’t know what the side effects will be or how easy we could mess this up. So it’s NOT an ideal solution, just a desperate one. So I think it’s good that we continue to act like it isn’t going to happen and keep trying to push emissions down. Hopefully that way the future Geoengineering project can be as small and as temporary as possible. But I do hope somewhere in some government organization they are NOT pretending we won’t be doing this and instead preparing.
Also.. whatever they dump into the atmosphere to cool it off.. that’s eventually going to end up in your glass of magic air-water.
I realize it shouldn’t be any cleaner than rain, but that also means it doesn’t have to be directly human potable. You might not want to drink it out of the spigot, but animals (that have higher immune defenses in their GI system) or plants shouldn’t have a problem drinking it.
The original problem in the article was “damp, hot air won’t cool”, so if you could make the air less humid, you’d end up with water as a byproduct that as a benefit was also desalinated.
If wind farms in humid areas are already ‘touching’ this air, could they both remove the energy and then pull off some of the water? Make the blades a big peltier cooler? You also have ‘free’ energy from gravity, so could you run this (trickle) of water passively down a big Sawyer filter to avoid water treatment facilities?
I realize some of this is just spit in the ocean, so it was more thought exercise than a complete solution. I think you’re right that there will have to be larger geoengineering efforts at some point even if there are some technological break throughs with existing tech.
Rainwater nowadays contains chemicals like PFAs at a higher level than what is allowed for drinking water at the tap. Understand: rainwater is not drinkable. Anymore.
The formula is:
Wet Air + 1 Metric F’Ton of Energy in = Slightly Less Wet HOTTER Air out + a little unpotable water out
You don’t have to add a bucket load of energy, you can also shed a bit of heat to space passively or into giant thermal masses like the ground thus bringing the working surface down enough it will dew. If you have really high humidity you don’t need to be that much cooler to extract water from the air.
To make a difference doesn’t require you to fit a compact and powerful phase change AC pump to really quickly and energy intentively extract that humidity, you might want that for your personal space to be as comfortable as possible, probably around 50% humidity quickly. But for a city prone to humidity that just wants to survive a near 100% humidity situation a heap of passive or low power collectors will not find it hard to extract water. So the local humidity is lowered by them enough to hopefully keep it habitable if uncomfortable without expending lots of energy – you are not interested in brining down to comfortable human humidity, just keeping it from fatally hot and humid! (most of the time anyway, as you can’t prevent weather brining in lots of fresh humid air).
“Also.. whatever they dump into the atmosphere to cool it off.. that’s eventually going to end up in your glass of magic air-water.”
No need to dump. All the volcanoes and wildfires will do that for us.
A lot of AC units use that unpotable water to cool the condenser coil. Without it, the efficiency goes down
A team just claimed the X-Prize for water abundance last year as I recall. The conditions to win it were to pull 2,000 liters of water from the air per day for 2 cents per liter or less.
https://www.xprize.org/prizes/water-abundance
If you’re just worried about dehumidifying and not making drinking water it’s an easier problem. There are a huge number of dirt cheap hydroscopic salts that will hoover water out of the air. e.g. magnesium sulfate = Epsom Salts
The main problem is that removing humidity from air increases GREATLY its temperature. You just go from a 34C humid air to a 50C or more dry air…
People on the Canadian prairies knows this effect: there’s a special wind called Chinook that can elevate the temperature several degrees in a few hours. It occurs because humid winds from the Pacific lose humidity when passing over the mountains and heat up.
It once made the temperature go from −23.2 to 2.2 °C (−9.8 to 36.0 °F), in one hour.
Removing humidity from air, as I know it, happens by cooling the air and then the water condenses out of the air. The cooling is done by using a compression/decompression loop that exposes the air to a part of the loop where the decompression of a gas is taking place. Why would that increase the temperature of the air? I mean, it is energy intensive, but it cools and dehumidifies the air. Right?
“it´s energy intensive” That´s it. Entropy goes only in one direction you know.
The hot side gets hotter than the cold side gets cold. As someone in the dorms at school found out, a window a/c unit sitting on a chair will warm the room up – it’s basically a kilowatt space heater. We gave that guy absolute living h*ll. :-) I’m going to remember his name in a about a week.
You have to fight latent heat. You expend more power condensing water from air than just cooling air. Swamp coolers are the opposite of this: it increases the humidity removing heat. When you remove humidity, the heat comes back.
It works, surely, but you are using several times more power to dehumidify the air than to just cool it.
Goodness, how much energy is used for both processes all depends on set temperature, set humidity (if your AC also dehumidifies to a desired RH), current temperature, atm. pressure, and humidity … The last three result in relative humidity and dew point, which themselves (respectively) determine additional humidity or reduction in temperature required to reach 100% humidity.
To say that one takes more energy than the other wholly depends on the starting vs. desired temp and humidity. I.e. where do you come from, where do you go? (As the song says).
There are lots of resources out there to answer your questions… “How does it work?” Websites, etc. Suggest you review these.
If we are talking about a wet bulb event then assume both high, and difficult for conventional evap/condensing ACs to keep up. Modifications to these systems to exchange heat with geothermal pumps, or perhaps (as temporary measure) even to mist them with water from garden hose in order to make them more efficient and less burden on grid…
Again, vapor barriers on houses would become important.
I don’t want to do the calculations, but I wouldn’t say one costs more than the other. An evap unit will naturally cause water to condense as it cools interior below dew point. If ambient temps can be maintained low enough, then society can inch on during such periods.
Someone mentioned evaporative cooling. This will not work at all in a wet bulb event, as air is 100% RH. Sorry.
Btw someone asked for hacks … See last post. Condensor heat rejection on central ACs can be expected to exchange heat with ambient air less efficiently due to lower temperature differential at over 100 degrees, but conversely high humidity will help this exchange.
If you don’t have a fan on the part of the AC system that is outside your living area (the condenser), as with some smaller window units, then you may want to rig one.
On the other hand, water is a better conductor of heat iirc (higher specific heat) and therefore it might be in your interest to mist or spray the condenser coils. Water from well or city is usually 10-30 degrees cooler than ambient air temperature, too. Tricky part is that the condenser coils are usually housed along with pump and electronics controlling the pump (incl capacitors to start and maintain operation of the motor), and therefore such attempts to wet down coils with cool water must be carefully engineered… Or carefully hacked.
An appropriately-sized generator to keep (if nothing else) your AC and fridge working would be advised in advance of such an event.
So there you go, some hacks to help you save energy.
Ultimately, a geo-thermal loop is best, and this is the way the heating/cooling industry is going. If your central AC or boiler dies, then you might want to consider investing in such a system. Energy cost savings and (with gene) independence are just two reasons you should look into this. It is also better for environment, for sure.
The Chinook is a katabatic wind. The loss of humidity comes from the heating, not the other way ’round.
Swing by West Tennessee, you can just about collect it with nothing but a bucket every summer. I needed scuba gear to mow my lawn last week. Welcome to as much as you want.
This is the level of last-minute climate hacking I come to this site to read about.
Funny, we expect a record cold summer this year in the Netherlands and last I checked, I’m in Europe. My parents turned on the central heating yesterday. That’s not normal in a summer. Usually around this time of the year, my older house reaches about 40-45C inside (still need an AC but need to do some other work first), while right now, it’s 18C inside. Outside temperature will drop below 16C tonight. Projected to be 11C outside in two weeks (night temperature). My sister is in Spain right now on holiday and it’s 23C where she is. A lot colder than the 30-35C it usually is there.
I hear Greece and Croatia is hot this time of year.
FEAR = FUNDING
= grant whores lining up with “what results do you need?”
Keep your head in the sand, the rest of us will try to fix things.
You should try the snow and ice. It killed all of us you know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0&t=25s
“Ah ha, you see though people said a crazy thing sixty years ago and that invalidates everything that’s occurred in the past ten!
“Climate literally cannot be detrimentally changed if you point out when activists say things that are wacky and untrue or that you deliberately misunderstand. It simply won’t be allowed to do so and it’ll go back to how it was before.”
Of course it will go back, after we’re all dead tho
“Efforts to halt and reverse climate change are of vital importance. In time, we could see huge swathes of the world become uninhabitable due to temperatures literally too extreme to survive in. We’re seeing the prelude to this future today, and it ought to push all of us to act to prevent it.”
lololol. Tell me when the heat-related deaths increase faster than the cold-related deaths decrease. https://lomborg.com/heresy-heat-and-cold-deaths
Use common sense. Up to a point, increases in average temperature would reduce cold deaths, but there is a threshold after which it’s too hot and the deaths from heat overtake any positive short-term impact. A feedback system doesn’t have to saturate immediately, these small, slow changes are not destructive in and of themselves but they are part of an accelerating trend. Of course the problem addressed in the article is heat waves which are a distinct thing comorbid with those small yearly temperature increases.
It’s very cool to “lololol” about people dying, thanks for signaling that you’re so enlightened and above this.
Yes, obviously. My point is that the rate of change of both is such that we’ll be in life-saving domain for quite a while. The current attitude is basically “wearing a seatbelt can kill you from seatbelt injuries” writ large – yes, people die from wearing seatbelts, but more are saved by wearing them. Maybe your “common sense” needs adjusting?
I want to see what happened in the 100’s of years of the Roman warming when it was over 2 dec C warmer than now and the sea was over 3 deg warmer. Why is anyone still alive?
The medieval warm period? That was quite a localized event and we’re likely having warmer temperatures now.
Never mind that wet bulb events will only happen in a few places around the world. They won’t kill everyone, but they will kill more.
The immigrant problem will only become more so.
No. 250BC to 450AD. When the Romans had vineyards in England and the hot Mediterranean was the seat of civilization and learning. Heat in the Middle East is handled by a different kind of architecture.
Didn’t know that, interesting. Here are more details and a more nuanced discussion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/hot-cold-extreme-temperature-deaths/
It’s going to hit poor countries much more and death from cold is way easier and cheaper to prevent.
This isn’t a “detailed and nuanced discussion,” it’s an apology for alarmism. Note how they only project impacts on poor/rich countries in the future – the current data doesn’t support their conclusions or models. They’re trying to say “yes increasing temperatures save lives but that’s actually a bad thing and it’ll stop real soon we promise”
Both will increase as climate change brings disruption of long-time established weather patterns. E.g. circumpolar jetstream system disruption results in unexpected surges of cold polar air at lower latitudes during winter and spring.
This being Hackaday, I’d love to see conversations about alternatives to heat pumping. For instance, drawing the coolth out of the ground, which maintains a relatively stable temperature throughout the year once you dig down deeply enough. Some of the solutions are pleasingly primitive — basically a stack that pulls air through tubes in the ground using the combined force of the Venturi effect (wind blowing across the top of the stack) and convection (sun heating the air in the stack). Ground-source heat pumps do something similar but work when the wind’s not blowing, and can store that heat in the ground for the winter in climates that need it. Retrofitting apartment buildings and even suburban homes would be pretty challenging compared to standard air conditioners, but we may need to embrace challenging solutions to our challenging problems.
But besides that, I would love to see folks put their heads together to figure out solutions that haven’t yet been imagined! This is Hackaday, after all…
I recently asked about dropping pipes to the sea bed to prompt thoughts on harnessing the pressure difference, 400+ that at sea level, no response.
Probably because, if I understand your very brief description correctly, it’s just as bad an idea as building a pipe to space for free vacuum (not even considering construction difficulty). Either one is a claim that unlimited free energy can be extracted from gravity, and without changing the arrangement of mass in the gravitational field or even while making that arrangement less energetically favorable. It’s equivalent to saying “a magnet will stay on my fridge indefinitely without needing a power source, so unlimited free energy could be extracted from it if only I had the right apparatus”.
He’s trolling, nobody is that dumb.
There are two groups that have thought johnrpm claims to have. Smart grade schoolers that need to learn and adult blithering morons that will never learn. I recall inventing perpetual motion in the sixth grade.
I did initially respond, making the ‘kind’ assumption (that he’s a kid). The editors deleted it.
Thank you for your comments, you are absolutely right in saying it is totally impossible in any way shape or form to harness the pressure difference between sea level and sea bed. I shall now refer myself to the appropriate authorities for re-education and correction, I shall also enroll in the institute of naysayers, do you have the address.
Just take a physics course. One will get you there, even no-math arm wavey ‘physics for babies’ will do.
Nobody here is going to try to spoon feed you HS science. Stop asking.
Like I said, you’ll ether get to it, you’ve chosen not to do the work already or you just can’t.
I would just go into my cellar, constant 12C all year round. Hack done!
P.S. There is beer and wine down there too.
Hacks are simple, by nature. See my other post re: using ground water supply (well or city water is 10-30 degrees cooler than ambient air temps …. Moreso during heatwave) to lower your temperature with misting …. And possibly the temperature of your AC condenser, if you can without causing a fire. The greater temperature differential and increases specific heat will help it run more efficiently.
There you go, a hack.
Where do people live that write this crap? As a life long resident of Alabama these people have no idea what humidity or temperature are and how they work. Is it hot? Yes. It is July in Alabama. Does it feel like 125F (like Acuweather showed last week) ? Absolutely not. If anything, everyone I know here says its a milder summer than usual. I’m old and I rode my mountain bike on single track for 11 miles with “feeling like” it 125F. Worked in the yard, cut my grass,. and watch my neighbors do the same last weekend… Yet we are still here. People it is summer! If you think you are going to die remember there are people near the equator still doing just fine with it much hotter than where you are. My recommendation is go outside and enjoy the summer, save your complaining for when we are about to freeze to death because of the onset of the next ice age when December rolls around. (Which is what was supposed to happen as I was taught by Leonard Nemoy when I was a kid…)
“With adequate hydration, ambient temperatures pushing up against 50 °C (122 °F) could potentially be survivable for some time.”
I have survived temperatures pushing 90 °C, and so do millions of people on a daily basis. It’s called a sauna.
You can step out of a sauna whenever you want.
People have died in hottest sauna contests.
Weird Rusky and Finn thing. I think they stopped the official contests after.
Whether you believe climate change is anthropogenic or not, half of North America is on fire or flooded right now. Using cheap rhetorical tricks to deny climate change doesn’t work any more when people are constantly getting displaced by extreme weather. Do you want people to die?
Cheap rhetorical tricks worked during a certain pandemic. Why do people think the next disaster will be different?
You talking about that 20-something kid, who said “COVID = hoax; watch me lick this doorknob” and then died of covid 12 days later?
Actually that rhetoric doesn’t seem very cheap to me. He probably coulda made a bunch more dollars in his life if he hadn’t died.
For what it’s worth, the fires are started by normal lightning, and particularly combustible because it’s not wild forest, it’s planted pine meant for the lumber industry.
Didn’t know we had a distinction between normal lightning and climate-caused lightning.
That lumber industry wouldn’t happen to belong to humans, would it?
That’s from converting gravitational potential energy into heat as they fall down the mountain. The air loses its humidity *before* it heats up, in that process. The basic observation you make when you watch a phase change occur is that heat goes into the phase change instead of changing the temperature according to the specific heat of the substance. Condensation requires heat flow, not a temperature change.
Struck by the comment glitch again.
That’s from converting gravitational potential energy into heat as the winds fall down the mountain. The air loses its humidity *before* it heats up, in that example. The basic observation you make when you watch a phase change occur is that heat goes into the phase change instead of changing the temperature according to the specific heat of the substance. Condensation requires heat flow, not a temperature change.
Comment glitch x2
Bike workshop in the basement, i gain 10 degrees. I even considered installing a sleeping camp down there where it is too warm in the night.
What a piece of shit comment to make
> The human body likes to maintain its temperature at approximately 37 °C (98.6 °F).
36.5±1 °C (95.9-99.5 °F) these days https://health.clevelandclinic.org/body-temperature-what-is-and-isnt-normal/
“As the world is rocked by intense heatwaves this summer,” <– doesn't make any sense at all, the seasons are opposed in the different hemispheres.
Most landmass is north of the equator, sot his isn’t an entirely unreasonable statement to make, time-wise.
Presumably the heat in the north has some indirect effects in the south, maybe with changes to trade and tourism or something like that, though I don’t know if any such change “rocks” the south. Alternatively, for the case of the south, “this summer” can be read to mean “this coming summer”. Southern seasons tend to be a bit more intense, too, due to southern summer being aligned with Earth’s perihelion and southern winter with Earth’s aphelion.
Now they are in Winter and some places are having record cold.
the jet stream is real wobbly. as foretold by the prophecy. we’re having a hot blast (up to 0°C) after an arctic blast (down to -38°C) where I’m at. it’s chaos
Not to come off as a denialist, but the Penn State study mentioned seems very odd to me, e.g. “The study indicated that there was no one-size fits all limit for all conditions, but that wet bulb temperatures of 31 °C (88 °F) were a critical upper limit beyond which humans could not adapt.” Clearly hundreds of millions of people live in the tropics, where the humidity can be very high, and temperatures exceed 31C regularly? Just looking at the forecast for Manila, tomorrow is supposed to be 31C with 90% humidity. I am sure if it got steadily hotter things would become extremely unpleasant, but it clearly isn’t outright fatal right now?
Interesting point, but note there’s a big difference between 90% humidity (sweating still works) and 100% humidity (sweating does nothing).
i.e. at 31 C at 90% humidity – the wet bulb temperature is somewhere below 31 C.
It’s very unusual for it to be 100% humidity except at the coldest part of the day.
“It’s easy to imagine shopping centers and other large public buildings serving as emergency refuges for citizens without access to air conditioning. ”
We already have that here (Toronto) during heat waves. Libraries and big city buildings open up as cooling centres.
Cities will start resembling Coober Pedy more and more.
…which makes it very easy to imagine.
Where is the hack?
Don’t let the current weather anomaly scare you.
The Tonga Vulcan eruption increased the water vapor in the stratosphere by 10% (or maybe more). Water vapor is a climate active gas, so its expected to have stronger climate change phenomenons for a couple of years.
The Tonga eruption was comparable to the Krakatau vulcan eruption 1883 and that caused a year without summer because of the ash this explosion put into the atmosphere.
Here is Nasa’s take on the tonga eruption:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere
We’re a tropical species. Please note the X axis:
https://hotair.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/heat-cold-730×704.jpeg
From:
Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold: a health impact assessment study in 854 cities in Europe – March 16, 2023
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00023-2/fulltext
We’re a tropical species. Please note the X axis:
https://hotair.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/heat-cold-730×704.jpeg
From: The Lancet: Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold: a health impact assessment study in 854 cities in Europe – March 16, 2023
Dehumidification is a huge part of the air conditioning process and effect. The removal of the latent heat in the humid air (the energy that turned the water into vapor; vs the sensible heat of the hot air) leads to the water vapor condensing out of the air and producing a significant impact on the air quality and effective cooling. The cold, humid air of a cave is nice, but not so comfortable in your house.
The title of this article is either click-bait or the author thinks WBGT is some new thing.
WBGT is an older but, more interesting tool vs the Heat Index. There is also a newer tool called HeatRisk.
Here is a nice overview of the three tools and when you might want to use each tool: https://www.weather.gov/media/safety/heat/Heat-Tools-Reference-Sheet.pdf
But, using the Heat Index is usually fine for most people, which is why it is so common.
Government weather services will issue watches, advisories and warnings, along with advice for at-risk people to follow.
Where I live, we actually have a Heat Advisory today, along with the attendant advice. Today is going to be a great day for swimming, but a miserable day for working outside in direct sunlight.
But, there is no “event” to “survive”.
(For a less sensationalist source with a good overview : https://www.weather.gov/safety/heat-index)
“The title of this article is either click-bait or the author thinks WBGT is some new thing.”
I don’t recall WBGT being mentioned even once in the article.
(For the uninitiated, WBGT stands for wet-bulb globe temperature. It’s like wet-bulb temperature, but it also takes into account radiant heat transfer, such as from the sun, hot pavement, etc., and to the sky and any other cold things in line of sight. There’s a Wikipedia article on it.)
What is Celsius?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius
A weird arbitrary measure of temperature that has less precision than Fahrenheit and is less used in science papers than Kelvin.
Why mention Kelvin when you have the Imperialist Rankine scale?
Celsius is a weird, abritrary measure of temperature just like Fahrenheit is a weird, abritrary measure of temperature. I mean, Fahrenheit just picked a day when it was freaking cold outside and called that zero. Celsius has two easily reproducible points – 0 is the freezing point of pure water while 100 is the boiling point of water at standard temeperature and pressure (approximately room temperature at sea level.)
Kelvin degrees are the same size as Celsius degrees.
“Precision” doesn’t matter. Ever heard of decimals?
0°C is freeze-up, 100°C is boil off. -40° is the same in C and F.
So, this entire article of “how to survive a wet bulb event” is 99% describing what a WBE is, and 1% saying “be somewhere with AC”. Really? That’s it?
To be fair, this would be the sort of thing that would push localized species into extinction. We have the advantage of relocating anywhere on the planet, or using technology to live in inhospitable places. Assuming global warming is truly heading in the direction the science community says it is, those would be your options. Relocation or surviving using the only technology we have to control high temperatures in a small controlled environment.
I’d say that really is it. This would be something we aren’t meant to survive if we were localized like other past human species. We’re lucky to have even a single option.
Do you know how difficult it is to have a wet bulb of 95? Humidity at 100% also means a dew point of 95. This also means a 2m temperature reading of 95 as well. Unheard of in the United States and in fact has only been achieved ONCE in 2003! At that time the actual temperature was in the 120’s. Tjis resulted in the hottest heat index ever recorded at 178 degrees. Ambient temp of 95 with dew point of 95 is not going to happen any time soon. I’m talking at least well into mid century. Quit scaring people with this climate change propaganda bs! Maybe, possibly within the next 50 years this could be achievable in the United States.
“this climate change propaganda bs! Maybe, possibly within the next 50 years this could be achievable”
So you admit, it’s not bs?
All these climate change deniers are really making me lose respect for this community.
Unfortunately, welcome to the Internet.
You _would_ expect a little more respect for empirical science among this crowd, though.
Not any more, unfortunately.
…oh: and why are you giving this crowd legitimacy by suggesting–tacitly–that it has respect for any type (real) science?
I am 100% confident that the climate is changing.
I am 100% confident that some of that change is due to the Gigatons of CO2 we are pumping out yearly.
I am NOT 100% confident that the Gigatons of CO2 are responsible for all/most of that change versus things like alignments between solar, Milankovitch, etc. cycles especially when some of those cycles are observed at 120,000+ years in length.
We also due to the green revolution chemical farming have cratered the carbon stored in soil organic matter, in some of the US states the soil carbon levels used to be around 15%, now the soil organic matter levels are less that 2% in those same areas, so undo-ing the green revolution practices and restoring the soil carbon levels does give us an option for a nice natural carbon sink.
If we wanted to go the full Geo-engineering route there are those sulfur pyramids in Canada that we could burn and get into the upper atmosphere to produce a pseudo-volcanic winter, while also producing an acid rain increase.
What more than likely happened is that non hackaday readers just picked this up on Facebook where some antivaxer climate change denier posted it in a group and then a bunch of angry idiots started chiming in and resharing it in their own science deprived echo chambers of friends lists, with some of that eventually spilling in here. That’s how the anti science movement started gaining momentum in the age of disinformation that is social media and it continues to hold our world back to this day.
1) climate change denier is a loaded term which is associated with holocaust denier, it’s an ad hominem without any factual argument
2) nobody denies the climate is changing, there are climate optimists and climate alarmists
3) this article is simply wrong. Regardless of a warming climate the weather and the climate are completely different things. The earths temperature has increased about 1 degree kelvin since the industrial revolution. That’s not enough to explain a breaking few temperature records by over 1 degree in a few years. And the number of heat waves has actually dropped.
Drink lots of iced water and then pee out the heat.
What is it with us humans? Just about every blog I have followed to the last entry turns into insults and name-calling. Climate change is real, period, full stop. But, another (and equally troublesome) problem is the anger and lack of civility in our private and public discourse. If we don’t solve THAT problem, we’ll never solve climate change or anything else.
I find it immensely discouraging – – – – – –
It’s a real pity this forum doesn’t have an “up-vote/down-vote” system.
Never mind; I just created one just for you, and here’s your total so far. This vote is simply because of your badly-needed, prescient comment which is applicable to most all forums, sadly, nowadays—
⇧ +10
Good on you, mate.
It’s the heat, it’s making everyone on edge!
“period, full stop”
Good argument. You’ve changed my mind.
This is just describing every summer I’ve ever had growing up. Never known it to be less than 80%+ humidity in the hot months. Heat index is typically 20+ degrees from the “dry bulb” temp.
You could always get in your shower to cool down. The water pipes are below ground enough that you should be able to lower your body temperature easily enough. But you are wasting a lot of water during what is presumably a drought.
I take issue with the article saying that in situations of 100 percent humidity and temperature can’t be effected by fans. First off as a meteorology nut 100 percent humidity means it’s actively raining or you’re in a fog bank, but I digress, condensation or evaporation works on two factors not just on temperature but also on air pressure. We know that with Bernoulli’s law that air movement lowers pressure which absolutely does cause evaporation to occur. Even in a wet bulb situation turning a fan on is still effective, and if it’s truly 100 percent humidity then you get to see it clear up in the air stream and re-condense as the air slows down. To be fair you need an exceptionally large fan in order to see that, we used a barn fan to make that happen when I was growing up.
As a side note what also isn’t being discussed is the extravagance of a dehumidifier in these situations. Once the AC brings the temperature down to 75 f you’re still wet and marginally cooler but using a dehumidifier in tandem really makes 78 feel like 72 f.
“…Once the AC brings the temperature down to 75 f you’re still wet…”
Doesn’t apply to any A/Cs I own, have ever worked on, or am even remotely familiar with; auto A/Cs included (Q: How do you know how good an auto’s A/C is? A: By the size of the condensate puddle under the car when the car is standing still).
If you know anything at all about air conditioners, you know that a proper air conditioner (NOT an evaporative cooler) IS a dehumidifier.
If you know anything at all about dehumidifiers, you know that a dehumidifier is simply nothing more than a self-contained air conditioner.
Self-correcting problems are self-correcting.
1. Way past the point that we can stop global warming. It’s counter productive to talk about actions to stop it, given that we are way past the tipping point.
2. The cost of SLOWING the change greatly exceeds the benefit. Should we spend the money moving everyone inland and north? Or delay the moment when we will be forced to do so, but waste the money to save a year?
3. Earth Day started by talking about Zero Pop. Any article that doesn’t start it’s zero pop is a non-solution.
4. WW3 will solve all these problems: large population reduction, dust clouds I’ll reduce insolation, etc.
Will millions of poor people die? Yes.
Nothing new. Covid showed us what will happen when climate change starts killing massive numbers. Nothing.
Nothing will happen.
Rich countries will help their own. With some small charity to the rest.
Expecting humans to change for the better, when the evidence shows the reverse is true, isn’t helping.
Bread and Circuses
One of the more … expected consequences of global warming, is that electric cars are not fairing well in the heat. Lower ranges because you have to run the AC. And the batteries don’t like charging while they are on fire.
Oops.
Interestingly, heat is easier for electric cars than extreme cold. The ac does draw power, but less than heating the batteries, and the chemistry in the batteries works better when hot (within reason).
If I’m being honest, everything based on relativity, if we all conditioned ourselves to more humid environments, evolution would EVENTUALLY kick in and cool our successors.
well, yes, but that would require billions of people dying over multiple centuries
… which has, in fact, never happened before, as you can clearly gather by all the humans running around that have multiple centuries on their shoulders.
Ice around the neck or on the heart will pump cold blood to the rest of the body. Would have died of heat in august and pregnant without it when air conditioning died in texas back in 2011. Its a great trick.
Yep, definitely the hottest summer ever… for a lot of places
Strangely enough not for me : mimima 16°c maxima 28°c peak 33°c last week… I got temps like that in the 80s
Quite cool here with lots of rain. Nothing like previous years. Scandinavia.
I didn’t realize that hackaday was a terror shill for big climate.
There must be something I’m missing here. In Tennessee we regularly have temperatures above 105 f in hot years with humidity of 80% or greater. To “survive” it outdoors you sit in the shade of a big tree on grass on the ground, fan yourself, and drink sweet tea. If you can, you go swim in a creek or lake. It’s unpleasant, but not the end of the world. The crazy thing is I’ve seen roofing crews out working in that heat. I don’t know how they do it.
You’re not missing anything; the answer is societal and psychological.
Simply consider that a good percentage of all types of buildings in the 1950s, 60s, 70s (and, perhaps, even later) were not air-conditioned, and had windows which could be–and were–opened, regularly, to let in fresh air.
Not many people do hard work (as per your example regarding roofers), out in the open, any more. Most ‘work’ can no longer be characterized as ‘manual labor’, and is performed in temperature-controlled, air-conditioned environments. The turning point was the mid-1960’s, when the US’s economy flipped from being more production-based to being more (greater than 50%) service-based.
There are still hard-working individuals and groups whose jobs require that they work in the ambient, un-air-conditioned environment, and the amazing thing is this: they do it; they go to work every day, never complain, and, amazingly (to most people), never give it a second thought.
[Just one guy’s opinion–who used to dig ditches with a pick and shovel in the summers of the (US) South…and never gave it a second thought]
———————————————————
“What this country needs is cleaner minds and dirtier fingernails.”
–Will Rogers
Yes, but what he described (105 degree weather and 80% humidity) , as uncomfortable as it is, is not a wet bulb event….
Extra heat on top of roof even more uncomfortable, but even this heat changes the dynamic by lowering the heat of evaporation for water (sweat).
So the point is being missed, entirely. Aye. Sitting in the shade of porch with mint julep won’t save us.
As DIY hacker, I otherwise agree. Big fan of hard work. Fan of hard workers.
And fan of fans rather than ACs.
The global mortality rate of malaria and others has decreased by 90% since 1900. This, at least partially, because of use of antimicrobials.
Even the WHO cites bad data comparisons on their website, regarding AMR. They compare current deaths due to cancer to projected far-future AMR death rate (current AMR death rate dwarfs trust of cancer).
Furthermore, as global temperature good up, so will malaria and other heat-favoring diseases.
All of these issues are of concern. All need to be addressed. None should be dismissed.
As long as comprehensive analysis of global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) estimates resistance itself causes ca. 1.3 million deaths annually – more deaths than HIV/AIDS or malaria – and that antimicrobial-resistant infections played a role in ca. 5 million death, death by wet lightbulb syndrome (or whatever you call it) ist just a diversion from the complete failure in adressing the MRSA (et al.) threat.
How about hacks and survival tactics?
Yes – we all KNOW having an Air Conditioner is the best practical situation.
However – those will die and need power input. ACs die when being used (master of the obvious) most of the time and when needed the most and thus they are sold out from the stores, especially in our “Post Soviet Lite” post lockdown economy. Or the power goes out because the head of the power company, even if and espcially if “Privatized” spent all the higher rates and tax $ on the CEO’s 25th yacht than improving the lines or adding another generator.
SO – long and short:
The AC goes out and you can’t buy another or the power will be out a week – Aunt Mildred is dying and you can’t take her to a cabin in the mountains and you’d shoot her or yourself if she stayed with you – what DO you do? What are systems you can rig up to keep her alive and perhaps cool? You mentioned the humidity for example – what ways to rig up dehydrating a room but not turning her into a mummy?
Wow. Ok.
There is condensing tech in development where they’ve mixed salts (that draw water from the air even in high temps), and silica gel like in diapers (that holds lots of water) to dehumidify. You’ll need a lot to keep on storage and place in the barometric chamber for aunt Mildred.
Vapor barriers will otherwise become important on houses, especially survival shacks in order to keep humidity out. Perhaps vault with scrubber/rebreather. Otherwise you should buy a baro chamber for yourself.
Then you can also try harvesting ice in winter or ahead of time, as solid->liquid phase transition will take away heat. Put in front of fan old-style.
If you have a genny outside, turn all other electric off and use it to run a fan over you and Millie. You can also fan Millie manually, but the less work you do during such an event, the better for your survival.
They are working on ionic solid->liquid ACs btw. Not sure if these will operate better during such an event. Probably equal. So far energy to operate comparable. Just avoids carbon gasses. Main reason for the tech to be developed.
You’ll need to replace the fluids you lose to pointlessly sweating. Make melted water from fan potable or else stock fluids. Salt tabs VERY important too. Need to replace what is lost in sweat.
Ultimately, a Frank Herbert Arakkis-like Stillsuit might be the only thing to save you… And allow you as well as society to function . That is, If you can develop one in time. Again, science fiction becomes science.
Anyway, that’s all I got.
That, and just keep in mind that if Mildred is not in great health, then her fluids might be a degree or two below ambient temps right after she passes.
We are taking about survival situation, here. RIP Mildred.
Here in Tennessee, we deal with high humidity and temperatures as a regular facet of life in the summer. There are some tricks. Houses with porches that shade the south facing windows shade out the sun when it’s high overhead but let in the sun when it’s low in the sky in the winter. Most houses are built with screens in the windows so you can open them without letting the bugs in. Do your outside work early in the morning and late in the evening when it’s cooler. Water recreation is pretty common, swimming pools, lakes, creeks, etc.
A thing that makes a huge difference is a box fan. Half the natives I know literally *cannot* sleep without a fan on. That’s a learned thing from parents and grandparents that didn’t have AC growing up.
If you don’t have AC in your house or car, go sit on a swing on a porch or in heavy shade under a tree during the hottest part of the day. Strip down to the minimum level of clothing permitted by your religion or local statutes, drink some iced tea, don’t eat a midday meal, have some watermelon, gripe about the heat to your neighbors, fan yourself, and pray for rain.
Oh, and let’s not forget that the deeper you go underground, the cooler it gets. Ultimate vapor barrier, as long as you aren’t blowing air down.
Deep bunkers best for temporarily surviving. Need to avoid exchanging air with outside, so would be like living in submarine.
Dig a cellar. Useful for all sorts of things.
You know, from the the late 1960’s to the early 1980’s, people were talking about the world ending through overpopulation and resource depletion. Read Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb”. Or watch, the movie “Soylent Green”.
Then, the whole thing kind of petered out. The population climbed and some of the issues that were threatened never showed up. Other issues that did exist were dealt with. But, we never even came close to the Apocalypse that the Neo-Malthusians predicted.
With resources depletion, it has more to do with social issues (The price of gasoline, for example, owes a lot to NIMBYism with regards to fracking, pipelines and building new refineries.) or political issues. (The vast majority of famines in the last century have been political. The Ukraine under Stalin. North Korea under the Kims. It isn’t a coincidence that the Ethiopian Famine occurred during the 10th year of their civil war.)
And now? The exact opposite is true. Many countries are facing population collapse. Not enough people are being born.
The point I’m making? How many of the Climate Change predictions have come true?
We’ve spent decades listening to the predictions. How many have come true?
And, second, what is the solution? With all of the other environmental issues, there is usually a clear end game. A river is polluted? Clean it up. Whales are being driven to extinction? Stop hunting them and promote ways of increasing their numbers.
What exactly do we have to do to fix Climate Change? At what point do we say, “Okay, solved.” I hear a lot of activists saying, “You have to do this and that.” And, once we spend money/give something up, the activists promptly move on to the next thing and say, “Now, you have to do this and that as well”.
When does it end?
Kind of a Gish gallop here, but I appreciate the crafting of this rhetoric. I’ll just review this post as a critique of climate change discourse.
Paragraphs 1 and 2 are suggesting that since we were wrong about those things, we’re also wrong about climate change, because apparently we’re always wrong, because of these examples where we were wrong in the past. So therefore, climate change is stupid to worry about. If I over-boiled that down, I’m sorry.
Paragraph 3 is a complete digression about how resource depletion is often the fault of politics instead of actual scarcity, which is irrelevant even if true, which it… *checks notes* probably is, actually.
And the rest of RemoWilliams’ post here is a sort of rhetorical appeal to the idea that we should not take action about climate change, and anything we do is stupid because there were some wrong predictions made in the past. We should just say “Okay, solved.” in spite of not actually doing anything. Evidently, the climate change agenda is just a thing being used to bully us into caring about the environment.
Again, if I over-boiled that down, I’m sorry. 2.5 stars out of 5.
Wonder which ones history will remember, assuming there’s someone around to remember?
I would be careful about paraphrasing RemoWilliam’s original post, at the end of your reply, with “Evidently… [climate change agenda is just … used to bully us, etc.]”.
The sarcasm may be lost and it may sound to many as if you are taking his/her side, when in fact you may have intended to point out the lack of substance, relevance, fact, and progressivism of RemoWilliam’s original post.
Also, prefacing your post with something like (iirc) “… This may be somewhat of a Gish Gallop …” sounded like like you were admitting that you were about to go on a rant with many half-truths, lies, or unrelated to facts — when you may have been intending rather to comment on the original post.
Again, the sarcasm was lost in the plaintext.
Just some suggestions (and perhaps for other readers, clarifications) regarding what I perceived from your reply.
Thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully tear down the rhetoric of the original post.
I intended to indicate that the post I was replying to was a Gish gallop; it certainly is.
Everything after the quotation marks in this post was just wrong. There is no standard definition of a heat wave, which is a local event, though we know their cause and their correlation to global warming.
See https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-waves for one generally accepted view. This provides a chart of averages per decade, going back 60 years, and shows consistent increase in that time. Perhaps you would like to refer readers to a chart that goes back to the industrial revolution?
Or perhaps there is a real conspiracy afoot? The source their data is bad? Other data conflicts? If so, then which?
Please site your sources, e.g. “… According to Breitbart News …”. Please do this before you claim that the established science is BS, and you, yourself, take part in propagating BS.
That will help support your opinions and rhetoric, which must be considered personal and misleading unless backed up by data and science of some sort.
Everything after the quotation marks in this post was just wrong. There is no standard definition of a heat wave, which is a local event, though we know their cause and their correlation to global warming.
See U.S. EPA heat-wave information page for one generally accepted view (attempted to post link previously). This provides a chart of averages per decade, going back 60 years, and shows consistent increase in that time. Perhaps you would like to refer readers to a chart that goes back to the industrial revolution?
Or perhaps there is a real conspiracy afoot? The source their data is bad? Other data conflicts? If so, then which?
Please site your sources, e.g. “… According to Breitbart News …”. Please do this before you claim that the established science is BS, and you, yourself, take part in propagating BS.
That will help support your opinions and rhetoric, which must be considered personal and misleading unless backed up by data and science of some sort.
“When does it end?”
Your question is the answer.
Without clearly defined end goals and without a way to measure the effects of policies it literally is never enough.
Hey now, don’t look up!
“Heatwaves are worsening many times faster than any other type of extreme weather because of the climate crisis”
This is of course 100% BS. The earth’s average temperature has only increased about 1 degree Kelvin since the industrial revolution and the number of heatwaves has actually decreased. A heatwave is a spike in temperature while the climate talks about the average over a period of 30 years. These two are completely unrelated.
Why are we breaking records? We haven’t been measuring for that long and there are infinite ways to define records. So naturally, even if the climate would stay exactly the same, statistics predicts we would keep breaking records. I predict we will experience both unusually extreme and unusually mild weather in the future. And if if we break a previous record by more than a whole degree that cannot logically be explained by a global temperature rise of a fraction of a degree since the previous record.
What does contribute to heatwaves? The urban heat island effect; cities are simply hotter. And natural variability of the climate. B.t.w., 10 times more people die from the cold. Any increase in global temperature will reduce climate related deaths. Any measure to try to reduce the global temperature that will also reduce economic growth and increase energy prices will slow down the adoption of AC in the places that need it the most.
Your assumption that the variability of weather stays the same, but is just neatly shifted up by 1 degree for each 1 degree of global warming is wrong. A simple counter example is the fact that the Arctic has warmed a lot more than the rest of the world. Local changes in climate lead to shifts in weather patterns that can bring heatwaves to places that were previously cool. At the same time, it may be cooler in other places, so the average doesn’t change much.
> Any measure to try to reduce the global temperature that will also reduce economic growth
How much will economic growth be impacted when we run out of fossil fuels?
“Your assumption that the variability of weather stays the same, but is just neatly shifted up by 1 degree for each 1 degree of global warming is wrong. A simple counter example is the fact that the Arctic has warmed a lot more than the rest of the world”
You just contradicted yourself here. If the Arctic has heated up the most than other places must have heated up less. So uneven distribution of heating cannot explain heatwaves.
“Local changes in climate lead to shifts in weather patterns that can bring heatwaves to places that were previously cool. ”
But this has nothing to do with global warming and CO2. This is just changing weather patterns.
“How much will economic growth be impacted when we run out of fossil fuels?
We will never run out and banning them won’t fix the problem that they will become more scarce in the future. We need nuclear energy. There is no alternative and there never will be. You cannot run the entire world on solar and wind.
This is an amazing article on wet bulb temperature