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The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

advances.sciencemag.org

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Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#81

Post by pablooliva »

perfunctory wrote: post #10

Climate related reports are getting scarier by the day. I am scared. Really scared. Everyone should be. If I may, let me make a little plea. May I remind everyone that we are not a mere spectators of the show. We are active participants. We can influence things. We as in you and I, HN crowd. It may not seem like it, but an average HN reader has a non-trivial amount of influence. And not only in financial sense. Pleas…

You can do something to fight climate change, at the professional down to the personal level. This was my plea to software and tech people: https://dev.to/pablooliva/has-covid-19-made-you-reconsider-y...

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#82

Post by dirtyid »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #66
dirtyid wrote: post #57

>These conditions, nearing or beyond prolonged human physiological tolerance, have mostly occurred only for 1- to 2-hours’ duration (fig. S2). They are concentrated in South Asia, the coastal Middle East, and coastal southwest North America, in close proximity to extraordinarily high SSTs and intense continental heat that together favor the occurrence of extreme humid heat (2, 14). Future Indian geopolitics is certai…

Honestly, the entire urban belt from Islamabad to Delhi is one of the densest parts of the world, and further urbanizing as we speak. I think it will be the hardest hit, with the amount of concrete that is being poured and cars bought without regards to the local climate.

Reminds me of the infographic "over half the world lives in this circle", the circle containing countries in the region of China, India and ASEAN. All on or near equator. All countries in a position to develop rapidly short-term. India/Bangladesh/Pakistan/continental ASEAN corridors are prime waterwars candidates. The only saving grace of island ASEAN is they're geographically constrained from massive conflict and migration. There's a lot of zero-sum resource competition in the area which doesn't bode well.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#83

Post by blueblisters »

dirtyid wrote: post #57

>These conditions, nearing or beyond prolonged human physiological tolerance, have mostly occurred only for 1- to 2-hours’ duration (fig. S2). They are concentrated in South Asia, the coastal Middle East, and coastal southwest North America, in close proximity to extraordinarily high SSTs and intense continental heat that together favor the occurrence of extreme humid heat (2, 14). Future Indian geopolitics is certai…

Many parts of South Asia already have home-grown solutions to battle the heat. The rise of cheap construction without consideration for local climate conditions have made them less prevalent.

For example, in Jaipur, traditional stepwells dug under houses absorb a lot of the mid-day summer heat. With some engineering, these can be scaled up to cool entire neighborhoods with energy efficient geothermal heat pumps [1].

It's easy to be all doom and gloom about climate change. But some mitigations are staring at us in the face. Others will take a while to become usable/cheap enough to be deployed at scale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#84

Post by chewz »

overheadnoise wrote: post #67
kharak wrote: post #14

Personal anectode. I already can't bear summer. I don't have AC, as most people don't have it here in Switzerland. Even offices tend to not have them. There are 1 to 2 months a year where my productivity sinks, enjoyment of life plummets and I just want it all to be over. I also barely see any snow anymore, if I don't hike in the mountains. I love snow. The change is real and I hate it. Couldn't it be global cooling…

I moved to Germany in 2010 and experienced a winter for the very first time. I remember having to wear “pants under my pants” (thermal layer), I bought a thick wool coat, I wore scarves for the first time in my life. (I grew up in Southern California.) I remember one day looking out my window and seeing it start to snow and I could see the snow build up higher and higher on all the bicycle seats outside my window. I…

And yet last year in July Germany observed record-setting cold. The summer in Eastern Europe had been very cold from July on.

The moderate climate of Western Europe is changing probably due to changing jetstream (which is probably result of cooling patch in Atlantic Ocean which is probably the result of melting glaciers in Greenland). But paradoxically what makes West Europe summers hotter makes Eastern Europe cooler in summer.

Moving from London to Minsk and from Paris to Smolensk might seem like a cool idea for summer.

https://watchers.news/2019/07/07/record-cold-july-temperatur...

https://www.ft.com/content/591395fe-b761-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea...

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#85

Post by k33n »

Intermernet wrote: post #50
k33n wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way off. The vast majority of their doom and gloom claims have been completely disproven. Only the woefully ignorant peddle this stuff. It’s perfectly natural for the weather to be extremely hot and humid sometimes.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo... Unless you believe that NASA are in on the whole conspiracy because of, um, some reason I can't even fathom...

Conspiracy? I think it’s mostly incompetence. But I get it’s a touchy subject.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#86

Post by humanrebar »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #61
finolex1 wrote: post #13

Color me optimistic, but we'll learn to survive and adapt. Humans in temperate climates (Chicago, Toronto, etc.) already live in places where it's too cold to survive outside for long in winter. Just replace heaters with ACs in this case.

Having lived both in the extreme heat of South Asia and the extreme cold of the Canada, cold is technically a lot easier to deal with physically. Wearing the right clothes will let you survive indefinitely in temperatures as low as -10C. You are also not in danger of dehydration. Note that -10C is -30-35C away from comfortable temperature (20-25C). If you just go +20C from comfortable temperature, no amount of clothi…

Fair point, though we are very far away from people dressing for Antarctica while they sit on the couch watching Netflix.

You are also leaving snow and ice out of it. There are economics and externalities of moving tons of solid matter around with relatively low latency (people have to work, trucks have to ship). There are also the safety implications and costs associated. Traffic and accident rates do not go up because the precipitation was unexpectedly ten degrees warmer.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#88

Post by tarsinge »

pochamago wrote: post #69
tarsinge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m grateful AC are frowned upon in Europe. Putting a band-aid by consuming even more energy is insane in large scale, with the perverse effect of hiding the problem and delaying awareness.

AC literally saves lives. Calling an invention that prevents thousands of deaths a year a bandaid seems kind of callous to me.

I’m talking AC in the context of large scale deployment in whole regions, not specifically for people with health problems and/or elderly.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#89

Post by Intermernet »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #71
Intermernet wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo... Unless you believe that NASA are in on the whole conspiracy because of, um, some reason I can't even fathom...

Don't feed the low effort trolls. Downvote, flag and ignore.

The only options available for dealing with misinformed conspiracy theorists are downvoting, flagging, ignoring and rebuttal. The first three are interpreted as validation. It sucks, but that's the reality.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance

#90

Post by chr1 »

ArnoVW wrote: post #19
ganzuul wrote: post #7

The narrative of combating global warming / climate change is ineffective and it misses the point. The Earth can quite naturally be inhospitable to human life. The narrative needs to be one of terraforming our own planet.

There are several problems with this approach. The person performing the forming would essentially be cleaning up the polution of everyone else. Terraforming would require global agreement and adherence to a highly capital-intensive enterprise. This is not unlike the discussions about limiting global warming, which are not a frank success. We currently have no means of cleaning up that is more efficient ie less costl…

> But to propose it as an alternative is not helpful in the current political context

Suggesting that we should keep silent about a way of solving the problem, so that other people don't get "ideas", is even less helpful in any context, as you lose your credibility in the eyes of people whom you are trying to convince.

> essentially be cleaning up the pollution of everyone else. Terraforming would require global agreement and adherence to a highly capital-intensive enterprise

That would be true if we were talking about a toxic substance, CO2 is not a pollutant, and there are ways to use it: for instance by terraforming deserts into living ecosystems that would use the extra CO2. And this includes not only deserts like sahara, but also vast areas of ocean devoid of life because of currents not lifting nutrients from the bottom of the sea.

People do not accept to pay costs for "limiting pollution" because they are not convinced that proposed solutions can work with anywhere reasonable cost. And for that we need not to simply talk everyone into accepting unviable solution out of fear, but to propose something that works and provides additional benefits. Terraforming deserts and controlling the weather is one such solution, which gets unfairly dismissed and downvoted.

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