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

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

#191

Post by cameronh90 »

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #147
ghshephard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in Singapore for five years (2012-2017) (and worked out in the field for about 50% of that time) I can say that Singapore is one of the milder places to live. It never ever gets particularly hot (I genuinely can't recall a 100+ degree day in the entire time I was there), and the humidity, while, "sticky" is never really extreme. The thing that gets to you is that the climate never seems to change (with t…

> I can say that Singapore is one of the milder places to live. It never ever gets particularly hot Singapore is almost exactly on the equator. UV readings get up to 11 each day (extreme), whereas the most I ever saw in say SF was 5. Your experience is one experience, mine is that it's a sauna every day of the year. I've experienced extremely hot days in terms of subjective experience of WBT as explained in article.…

" the most I ever saw in say SF was 5."

Really? London is 6 today, was 7 last week and 8 earlier this year.

I do also concur with the GP that Singapore is relatively mild as far as equatorial/tropical climates go. India, the Middle East, the Philippines and even Australia are sometimes much more oppressive.

The hottest day ever recorded in Singapore was 37c, whereas London is 38c and SF is apparently 41c. Of course, Singapore is more humid (and thus higher WBT) - but it's also much more consistent. In theory that would make it easier to acclimate..... but then Singaporeans seem to run their AC set to freezing.

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

#192

Post by ajuc »

kevingadd wrote: post #162
sershe wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: does old-style insulation not help? From when I was a kid I remember that a log house built using 60ies village technology (realistically probably more like 19th century technology), insulated with something stuffed in the triangles between logs and wallpaper and logs and planks (and partially eaten by mice ;)), stayed pleasantly cool on 90-degree days. And the dugout under it that we used to store…

Eventually it'll be hot enough outside that the "cooler" inside is not cool enough without air conditioning.

This is temperature of air (big amplitude) vs temperature of ground X meters undergrounds. If you go deep enough it doesn't matter how hot it is outside - the temperature is basically constant the whole year.

http://www.rynekinstalacyjny.pl/images/photos/24/3877/__b_An...

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

#193

Post by Pelam »

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…

What will the vegetation and animal life look after such a heat wave? Mad Max desert?

Or are they so much better adapted that it won’t be a problem (I don’t think so)

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

#194

Post by stavros »

stevekemp wrote: post #189
jiggawatts wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die. That's an exaggeration. Extreme heat (including heat waves that exceed this threshold) happen semi-regularly, and the death rate when they occur is nowhere near 100%. More like 0.1% or less. Electrically-powered air conditioning is not the only way to cool a human body. Simply escaping to an underground or s…

The problem with lots of people in water is that leads to drownings. "There is a clear connection between heat and drowning. That's when people want to go in or near the water, and the risks of drowning increase," FSL's Executive Director Kristiina Heinonen told Yle in July: https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/drowning_deaths_reach_10-...

Well yes, and the problem with lots of people out of the water is that it leads to traffic accidents. Is there a name for this fallacy that proclaims things risky by comparing them to a theoretical situation where everyone is immortal?

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

#195

Post by agumonkey »

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…

Small questions, Arab countries used to build cooling towers a few centuries ago. Would that help for countries you were thinking of?

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

#196

Post by xornox »

jiggawatts wrote: post #143
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…

> Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die. That's an exaggeration. Extreme heat (including heat waves that exceed this threshold) happen semi-regularly, and the death rate when they occur is nowhere near 100%. More like 0.1% or less. Electrically-powered air conditioning is not the only way to cool a human body. Simply escaping to an underground or s…

How tens of millions people can escape underground or rivers? I think that there will not be space available for most of them.

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

#197

Post by amanaplanacanal »

trashtester wrote: post #117
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Excellent! Thank you!

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

#199

Post by jfoutz »

fighterpilot wrote: post #187
jfoutz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good stuff! I peeked at the lancet study, but it didn't support my trollish response to the OP. The real point I was trying to make was the crazy extremes, the higher variance. I vividly recall running one morning when it got to -40F/-40C the night before. It sucked. The house was cold, work was cold. But one day is just a freak thing we all deal with, like snow in Atlanta. I remember a lot of government build…

If the ratio is 10:1, then even if you have increasing variance (which is bad), an increase in the mean may offset that badness. I can't comment beyond that, I'm just talking generally about distributions with two fixed cutoffs at both extremes (beyond which = death or high likelihood of death).

I'm going to quibble. This is all unfounded, you're probably right and I'm a fool.

the statistic, adding 1 degree to the temperature isn't that bad. That statistic nicely glosses over the huge amount of energy added to the system. 1 degree isn't going to melt the icecaps. 1 degree is a huge amount of energy. I think, that energy is going to make things hotter and colder and less predictable.

Moving the mean is, well not fine but that's what we're doing. Have to accept reality as it is. But as far as I can tell, we're not shifting the distribution to the right. We are flattening the distribution, the median is moving +X. So, we've got fatter tails.

Those fat tails suck. we're finely attuned to current variance, we can deal with a cold or hot day. But that fatter tail, that's the fucker. A cold or hot week is deadly.

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

#200

Post by rstuart4133 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #143
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…

> Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die. That's an exaggeration. Extreme heat (including heat waves that exceed this threshold) happen semi-regularly, and the death rate when they occur is nowhere near 100%. More like 0.1% or less. Electrically-powered air conditioning is not the only way to cool a human body. Simply escaping to an underground or s…

> Extreme heat (including heat waves that exceed this threshold) happen semi-regularly

The threshold is wet bulb 35 for 7 hours. That is when fit young humans can't survive. Older people die well before that of course.

And no, it doesn't happen regularly. I wasn't aware it had happened at all, although others here say it has. But it has come close. From https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people... :

> Jacobabad crossed the 35C wet bulb threshold in July 1987, then again in June 2005, June 2010 and July 2012. Each time the boundary may have been breached for only a few hours, but a three-day average maximum temperature has been recorded hovering around 34C in June 2010, June 2001 and July 2012.

These people don't have the escapes you mentioned. They are in a city with no running water and no cars, let alone car parks. There is no river, but there are a couple of small lakes.

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