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The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

advances.sciencemag.org

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Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#101

Post by akiselev »

losteric wrote: post #59
nradov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of sun exposure can cause hypovitaminosis D, which is a known risk factor for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. It also impacts nitric oxide production which is a factor in cardiovascular system health. Supplements can mitigate the problems to an extent but are inferior to natural sun exposure. And before anyone brings up skin cancer, there is no reliable evidence that brief daily sun exposure increases al…

> Supplements can mitigate the problems to an extent but are inferior to natural sun exposure. Inferior how?

Supplements for fat soluble nutrients like vitamin D generally have poor bioavailability unless used with specialized emulsifiers for insoluble compounds that aren't widely used [1]. The body has a hard time buffering and storing the excess, which it can't filter out through the kidneys.

It's like fast acting insulin versus insulin produced by a functioning pancreas - it's going to keep someone alive but it's not ideal for the body long term.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6631968/

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#102

Post by chrisco255 »

mrow84 wrote: post #63
chrisco255 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat." Study: Cold kills 20 times more people than heat https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/05/20/cold-weath...

Do you think that having more extreme weather events will reduce the number of weather related deaths, or increase them?

Deaths from natural disasters are at or near civilizational all time lows on a fractional basis of the population, see quote below. This trend in lower deaths should continue. It is not clear to me that we are experiencing more extreme weather events than 100 years ago. We haven't had anything like the Dust Bowl (1930s) or the Great Chinese Famine that killed 45 million (https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/great-chinese-fam...) or the Chinese Famine of 1907 that killed 25 million (https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Deadly-Famine-And-The-190...). Or the Bengal famine or the Vietnamese famine of the 40s. Or the Yangtze flood of 1931 that killed 2 million. Or the Bhola cyclone of 1970 that killed 500K (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Bhola_cyclone)

"What we see is that in the early-to-mid 20th century, the annual death toll from disasters was high, often reaching over one million per year. In recent decades we have seen a substantial decline in deaths. In most years fewer than 20,000 die (and in the most recent decade, this has often been less than 10,000). Even in peak years with high-impact events, the death toll has not exceeded 500,000 since the mid-1960s.

This decline is even more impressive when we consider the rate of population growth over this period. When we correct for population – showing this data in terms of death rates (measured per 100,000 people) – we see an even greater decline over the past century. This chart can be viewed here."

https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#103

Post by dash2 »

At the start of the article: "Results suggest that, under the business-as-usual RCP8.5 emissions scenario..."

Roger Pielke is good about this. He points out that the "business-as-usual" scenario is extremely unlikely:

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentu...

I'm not arguing that the original article is uninformative or unimportant.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#104

Post by snovv_crash »

rudedogg wrote: post #6
boplicity wrote: post #2

Kim Stanley Robinson's recent book The Ministry For the Future starts with a very disturbing scenario: A heatwave with a "web bulb" temperature of 35 Celsius. It turns out, in those temperatures, even young and healthy people can't survive. Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die. It's looking increasingly likely that such heatwaves are possible in t…

Little pedantic, but you meant "Wet-bulb" temperature ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Temperatu... ). I only know from owning a swamp cooler.

Isn't it basically the same as the dew point temperature? I believe a lot more people are familiar with that.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#105

Post by chmod600 »

WillDaSilva wrote: post #62
nradov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of sun exposure can cause hypovitaminosis D, which is a known risk factor for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. It also impacts nitric oxide production which is a factor in cardiovascular system health. Supplements can mitigate the problems to an extent but are inferior to natural sun exposure. And before anyone brings up skin cancer, there is no reliable evidence that brief daily sun exposure increases al…

> Supplements can mitigate the problems to an extent but are inferior to natural sun exposure. I've never heard of such a claim, and that seems unintuitive. Why would that be? Do you have a source you could direct me to to learn more about this?

I have heard that sunlight also causes the skin to produce nitric oxide, which supposedly has all kinds of benefits.

I am not claiming this and don't have a reliable source to point to.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#106

Post by binoct »

WillDaSilva wrote: post #62
nradov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of sun exposure can cause hypovitaminosis D, which is a known risk factor for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. It also impacts nitric oxide production which is a factor in cardiovascular system health. Supplements can mitigate the problems to an extent but are inferior to natural sun exposure. And before anyone brings up skin cancer, there is no reliable evidence that brief daily sun exposure increases al…

> Supplements can mitigate the problems to an extent but are inferior to natural sun exposure. I've never heard of such a claim, and that seems unintuitive. Why would that be? Do you have a source you could direct me to to learn more about this?

My understanding is that it’s extremely hard to get large scale controlled studies on sun exposure vs vitimin d supplementation, so there is lots of uncertainty still on relative efficacy. I wouldn’t say certainly that it’s inferior to sun exposure, but sun exposure can clearly have many more effects than just stimulating production of vitimin d that could then appear to correlate with D serum levels.

Some more reading specifically on vitimin D:

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-health%20Professi...

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#107

Post by wtallis »

newbamboo wrote: post #80
saeranv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swamp coolers cool based on evaporative cooling: water evaporating into dry air reduces the (dry bulb) temperature of the air. So with high wet bulb temperatures indicating air is already saturated with moisture, the swamp cooler won't work.

Dehumidifiers are a thing. I presume that having water and electricity is a bigger problem for most people, but I’d love to be educated more on the problem, if you have links or literature.

Dehumidifiers are air conditioners that put the heat back in the air they treat instead of dumping it outside. Your electricity would be better spent operating a real air conditioner.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#108

Post by toast0 »

newbamboo wrote: post #80
saeranv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swamp coolers cool based on evaporative cooling: water evaporating into dry air reduces the (dry bulb) temperature of the air. So with high wet bulb temperatures indicating air is already saturated with moisture, the swamp cooler won't work.

Dehumidifiers are a thing. I presume that having water and electricity is a bigger problem for most people, but I’d love to be educated more on the problem, if you have links or literature.

(Commercially available) Dehumidifiers are basically small air conditioners with both the hot and cold side in the same room. You can't run them without electricity, and if you can run a dehumidifier, you may as well dump the heat outdoors instead and cool and dehumidify your space.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#109

Post by leppr »

elihu wrote: post #89
Causality1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how practical it would be to sink 30 foot deep concrete tube shelters with a ladder and a lid. They could serve as emergency daytime shelters and someone could climb out at night to search for a location with working power or cooler weather.

I suppose the best available option for a lot of people if designated shelters aren't available would just be to walk to the nearest body of water and climb in, and wade around until the heat subsides.

You're assuming the nearest body of water is somehow cool enough, which is often not the case.

Re: The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

#110

Post by theshrike79 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #73
boplicity wrote: post #2

Kim Stanley Robinson's recent book The Ministry For the Future starts with a very disturbing scenario: A heatwave with a "web bulb" temperature of 35 Celsius. It turns out, in those temperatures, even young and healthy people can't survive. Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die. It's looking increasingly likely that such heatwaves are possible in t…

If the water is still running - can't people spend a lot of time in the bathtub?

It only works if the water is cooler than the ambient air. A bathtub full of water will warm up to ambient at some point and won't be as effective after that.
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