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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)

#311

Post by electroly »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #300
spywaregorilla wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that people are trying to downplay this because it is feasibly survivable in their opinions. If you're wondering "how I can survive these circumstances in my own home?" things are already really, really bad.

95 Fahrenheit is actually quite survivable. It is dangerous for old people, young people, and the very sick when combined with sun exposure and other factors. I spent much of my life living in that temperature range without A/C, working outside during the day in the sun. It's hot but not going to kill you. In fact, there are massive homeless encampments outside my window right now in extremely humid, hot, Texas weath…

They're talking about wet bulb 95 degrees which occurs at somewhere around 130 degrees of open air temperature. You have not spent much of your life at wet bulb 95 degrees.

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

#312

Post by monktastic1 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #242
selimthegrim wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure Jacobabad has cars.

Some people having cars != everyone having cars.

But the claim wasn't everyone having cars, it was "They are in a city with ... no cars."

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

#313

Post by spywaregorilla »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #300
spywaregorilla wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that people are trying to downplay this because it is feasibly survivable in their opinions. If you're wondering "how I can survive these circumstances in my own home?" things are already really, really bad.

95 Fahrenheit is actually quite survivable. It is dangerous for old people, young people, and the very sick when combined with sun exposure and other factors. I spent much of my life living in that temperature range without A/C, working outside during the day in the sun. It's hot but not going to kill you. In fact, there are massive homeless encampments outside my window right now in extremely humid, hot, Texas weath…

95F in dry air is not the same thing as wet bulb 95F. That is the majority of the discussion being had in other threads.

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

#314

Post by gilbetron »

skeptic249757 wrote: post #304

This post appears to be fully within the Hacker News "approach to comments" and "site guidelines". The atmospheric temperature discussed as dangerous has been common in many parts of the earth for many years and is not nearly new. The real threat discussed is from heavy consideration of "business-as-usual RCP8.5 emissions scenario" and that is based on climate models evaluating the future, 2050+, effects of human sou…

If you posted this in the 90s, it still would be a terrible, uneducated post.

Read this, all of it, then come back here and make your argument again: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

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

#315

Post by throwaway5752 »

We should call them exterminating heat events, make it clearer.

Love the people calling for air conditioning. They should make peace corp or something compulsory, the degree of out-of-toucedness on some people about the degree of infra and poverty that exists here is extraordinary.

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

#316

Post by Marsymars »

briantakita wrote: post #218
Marsymars wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple notes from someone who lives somewhere less cold than Yakutsk, but still cold: * Synthetic oil won't really ever freeze. Other car components will freeze up prior to oil ever freezing - notably the battery will freeze if it's cold enough, which will permanently damage it. Most any other car component won't suffer permanent damage from cold. * A toolbox isn't the best option to rely on if you're driving in a re…

I got my information from local lore in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz4ZMLsPzqM&ab_channel=Disco... From ~ 8:43 in the video: "The scariest thing about being on the road is that people whose cars break down have a risk of dying if they cannot fix it within 30 minutes. Otherwise, engine oil under the hood freezes in minutes. If people get stranded in these rural areas with no phone signal, they have no choice but…

> I've watched documentaries on Mt. Everest ascents where the climbers faced brutal cold, wind, & avalanches. Perhaps gear adapted to the conditions of the tundra could be an effective "survival pack" enabling people to survive for a few more hours should a car be stranded.

Having a car simplifies life a lot compared to alpine ascents. A car is going to be a better shelter than any tent available, and you don't really need to be concerned about volume/weight/water resistance of sleeping bags. (So it's still not cheap, but buying and layering some cheaper synthetic options saves a lot of money compared to -40C down bags.)

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

#317

Post by [deleted] »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #300
spywaregorilla wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that people are trying to downplay this because it is feasibly survivable in their opinions. If you're wondering "how I can survive these circumstances in my own home?" things are already really, really bad.

95 Fahrenheit is actually quite survivable. It is dangerous for old people, young people, and the very sick when combined with sun exposure and other factors. I spent much of my life living in that temperature range without A/C, working outside during the day in the sun. It's hot but not going to kill you. In fact, there are massive homeless encampments outside my window right now in extremely humid, hot, Texas weath…

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by IgorPartola »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #306
IgorPartola wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t. Let’s say that you find a magic box that can offset 20% of the carbon emissions globally. Yay you just reduced carbon emissions. But there is no budget for carbon emissions. So those who produce it (agriculture, heavy industry) can now feel free to just produce more CO2 and toss it into the air. Besides, not every place is as industrialized as the US or China but they want to be. So the emissions will soon…

If (some) people already emit however much CO2 they want, why would offsetting emissions cause them to emit even more?

People emit little CO2 by themselves. Your choice of a Prius vs a Camry isn’t by and large as important as the food you eat. Just by being alive you are consuming about 10kW if you live in the US, the majority of which is the fact that the food you eat is grown on mega farms. Between agricultural machinery, fertilizer, and transportation of that food from the farms to your grocery store, that’s the major part of your energy consumption. Per capita energy consumption is a surprisingly strong indicator of quality of life. Third world countries often top out at less than 1kW for example.

So in a world where everyone is trying to get to a high quality of life and only about 1B out of 8B have it, and in a world where for 7B to get to that quality of life we need to increase their energy consumption by a factor of 5-10, we are in a constant increase of total human energy consumption. Combined with population growth, we are nowhere near peak human CO2 output. In other words if you can make a device that can remove 20x of the CO2 we are currently putting out, then yes we could use that tech, assuming we don’t come up with some more quality of life ideas that push the energy budget further up the scale of course. But anything less than that won’t be enough as there is an accelerating growth in CO2 emissions with more or less no end in sight.

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

#320

Post by tomrod »

beervirus wrote: post #279
tomrod wrote: post #206

I wonder if people confuse wet bulb and dry bulb here. Wet bulb is related to how well your air conditioner or sweating will cool you. Dry bulb is what we usually say when taking a temperature reading, or listening to the local news' meteorologist.

Wet bulb temperature doesn’t have anything to do with air conditioning, unless you’re only talking about evaporative coolers.

Fair. Cooling towers in commercial HVAC use evaporative cooling. Residential cooling doesn't, but still has to exchange heat to a system above the load it common transfers. I think it may be worse in these situations, but I am not sure.
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