Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

advances.sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 414 posts

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

#111

Post by vidarh »

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.

Yes, but combining a swamp cooler and a dehumidifier is most of the way there to a modern AC unit, both in concept and electricity need.

Most modern ACs in fact dehumidify and cool in one step with a compressor and then use the collected water to help carry heat away from the compressor by letting the water evaporate into the exhaust to save power (it's why you rarely have to empty water from modern dehumidifying ACs).

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

#112

Post by princeb »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #53
princeb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i probably have a comment somewhere recently, but singapore is already in WBT >35 conditions in the day. it eases to around 30 at night or when rain falls. as long as power is running, it's actually fine in this country, but that's because we've designed our living space around the heat. it is entirely possible to never be exposed to the sun in a normal day in the life of a working resident here if you stay in the ri…

https://data.gov.sg/dataset/wet-bulb-temperature-hourly?view... The Changi airport weather station does not have any recordings of a 35C wet bulb temperature. And this paper suggests that it is a very uncommon occurrence as yet. What source are you using?

https://www.wbgt.sg/allstations

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

#113

Post by russellbeattie »

wildpeaks wrote: post #39
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.

If mankind has to start living at night because daytime is too hot, at least night owls will no longer have to shorten their life expectancy to fit into a daytime schedule.

Welcome to Spain.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

aaron695 wrote: post #86
hamburgerwah wrote: post #12

It's hilarious to me that people somehow think hot is MUCH more dangerous than cold. If you do any homework you will see which end results in more deaths.

It's sadly probably more a societal wide mental illness. Big corps like the environmental movements can use the internet for wide spread control and have destroyed peoples minds. You could argue the idea hot is bad meets expectations for hackers, computers should be kept air-conditioned. Although this is not quite true, I think uniformity is what matters (same as humans, sudden drops in cold like walking outside is w…

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by cma »

WillDaSilva wrote: post #5
newbamboo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we know based on the science we’re not going to see a stabilization in temperatures for at least 30 years under the best scenarios. We should focus on ways to save these lives. Solar powered swamp coolers is what is I’m thinking about. They require water however and that’s going to be as big of a problem as heat. Already is in many places.

Swamp coolers do not work in high humidity. Running cool water from underground over oneself works, but is unsustainable and impractical. Going underground to someplace cool is also sometimes an option that does not require electricity, but is often impractical and highly situational. Ultimately all that really works in our modern world at scale in such a heat wave is powered air conditioning, so ensuring that electr…

You could potentially heat up a dessicant to dry it out and use that indoors to survive the humidity without having to go underground or have AC.

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

#116

Post by poorjohnmacafee »

andi999 wrote: post #75
poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I sometimes feel like I'm at death's door when jogging outdoors. Myself and some Westerners I know haven't "adapted", even after years being here. The strategy is just always have ice water in hand if outdoors for prolonged time. I sometimes get laughed at for not adjusting to the heat, but I think it's just too much for some genetic lineages from outside tropics. Unfortunately a large percentage of folks in HDB…

When you use AC during nighttime you never get adapted to the heat. Try slowly phasing it out.

That's contradictory to leading sleep scientists like Matthew Walker, Peter Attia, etc. which is clear about need for chilly environment for sleep quality, eg < 21C. Granted, sleep science isn't oriented towards the genetics of the tropics yet, but there's plenty of evidence about temperature and sleep quality for more northern genetics anyway.

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

#117

Post by trashtester »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #27
hamburgerwah wrote: post #12

It's hilarious to me that people somehow think hot is MUCH more dangerous than cold. If you do any homework you will see which end results in more deaths.

What numbers are you looking at where cold kills more people than heat?

"The study found that extreme heat and cold killed 5.08 million people on an average every year from 2000-2019. Of this, 4.6 million deaths on an average occurred annually due to extreme cold while 0.48 million deaths occurred due to extreme heat"

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-t...

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

#118

Post by nostrademons »

tessierashpool wrote: post #82
nostrademons wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Migration. Large parts of the taiga and permafrost are about to open up to human habitation. All the folks in the Middle East and India should move north in search of better weather. Human societies have been historically very bad at handling large scale migrations, but it's about to become necessary.

there was an article during the recent Oregon heat wave by someone who moved to the PNW as a hedge against climate change. that heat wave killed almost 200 people and is estimated to have killed a billion marine animals. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/08/pacific-nort... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/08/heat-dom... Migration is not going to cut it. Climate change is making weather more…

No place is going to be safe, but some places are going to be a lot safer than others. The PNW or Canada is a lot better bet than the Middle East or Bangladesh.

Reversal is not really an option either; the best scientific evidence I've seen is that we've already past several tipping points that will accelerate warming regardless of what we do, and even if we haven't, we've had about zero decrease in worldwide CO2 emissions and a terrible track record in getting humanity to work together for common good.

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

#119

Post by eCa »

nostrademons wrote: post #47
newbamboo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we know based on the science we’re not going to see a stabilization in temperatures for at least 30 years under the best scenarios. We should focus on ways to save these lives. Solar powered swamp coolers is what is I’m thinking about. They require water however and that’s going to be as big of a problem as heat. Already is in many places.

Migration. Large parts of the taiga and permafrost are about to open up to human habitation. All the folks in the Middle East and India should move north in search of better weather. Human societies have been historically very bad at handling large scale migrations, but it's about to become necessary.

Apart from all the other issues (societal, etc) with that the climate of Yakutsk[1] can give an indication of how hospitable that region is. Spoiler: It’s temperature span is over 100C (nearly 200F). Brutal winters, brutal summers.

Not saying you’re wrong, though..

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutsk

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

#120

Post by reilly3000 »

itmayno wrote: post #98
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…

A mass death event will likely happen in a city with 26 million people that most folks outside China aren’t aware of the danger..Shanghai. Shanghai has been having extreme heatwaves, the worst one in 2017 where the temperature went to 46 degrees. Shanghai is projected to be unlivable in this century.

I’m not sure if it’s an issue specifically around Shanghai, but electric power has been unsteady in China at large. An energy crisis during a heatwave could be indeed deadly, especially with the ambient temperatures of city life. I’m bullish on Chinese acumen for major infrastructure projects and I’m sure they will adapt, but that seems like a crazy costly set of projects. At this point ultrawhite paints look promising.
Post reply on HN