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Wet-bulb temperature

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Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#31

Post by irdc »

truculent wrote: post #20
irdc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wet bulb event occurs when the combined temperature and humidity (the so called "wet bulb temperature") exceeds the limits of human physiology, causing humans to overheat and perish even in the absence of any activity beyond basal metabolism. I'm not sure it'd look like the "bodies in the street" image GP likes to call up, but yes, a prolonged wet bulb event would result in mass casualties.

Earnest question: what makes you doubt the depiction? Trust in infrastructure or institutions?

The widespread availability of air conditioning plus the fact that we've had such events before on rare occasions (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Highest_r...) and we didn't see bodies piled up in the street back then.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#32

Post by gopher_space »

nonethewiser wrote: post #18
studmuffin650 wrote: post #2

in my opinion, a lot of folks won't take climate change seriously until it adversely affects their way of life in such a dramatic way that they cannot deny it any longer. A wet bulb event, occuring over multiple hours, would be that signal. Piles of dead bodies from folks who either were misinformed or weren't able to move to safety would be quite the wake up call.

But think about the solution. It's making A/C very accessible and reliable. That requires cheap energy with a high-uptime grid. There are many ways to solve this problem but adding difficult to meet constraints to energy companies that risk price and availability is not one of them.

I too see nationalizing our power grid as inevitable.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#33

Post by jncfhnb »

studmuffin650 wrote: post #2

in my opinion, a lot of folks won't take climate change seriously until it adversely affects their way of life in such a dramatic way that they cannot deny it any longer. A wet bulb event, occuring over multiple hours, would be that signal. Piles of dead bodies from folks who either were misinformed or weren't able to move to safety would be quite the wake up call.

Some people have fantasies about these heatwaves that just decimate all living things. It’s not that simple.

It’s not THAT hard to cool down even if you’re incapable of sweating to do so. People aren’t idiots either. Despite imaginations of cultural hubris, people can tell when it’s deathly, disgustingly hot, and do not casually tank it until they die. And even if they did, they’re not idiots. If one person collapses, they’re not going to ignore them and continue to assume the heat is negligible. You don’t have to realize the nuances of your circumstances and the probability of death to understand that you are intolerably uncomfortable.

Yes of course heat waves are bad and can kill people. But wet bulb events are not a magic threshold that completely change the game.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#34

Post by IKantRead »

samcheng wrote: post #12

If you haven’t read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around climate change. The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone intereste…

> wet-bulb event

It's probably already too late, but I keep seeing people confusing the concept of "web bulb temperature" (all temperatures have a wet bulb temperature, even ones very pleasant for people) with "the human survivable maximum wet bulb". I frequently see people saying things like "when we reach wet bulb temps..", which feels a bit silly.

This always feels like talking about a "Kelvin event" or "Kelvin temps" referring a temperature reaching absolute zero.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#35

Post by pjtn8 »

alangibson wrote: post #27
samcheng wrote: post #12

If you haven’t read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around climate change. The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone intereste…

I stopped reading it because the premise is entirely unbelievable. A mass casualty event of pretty much any size would not lead us to do anything about climate change. For evidence, look at the deaths in the USA from gives and cars every year . Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything about those from a policy standpoint.

A sudden mass causality event triggered 9/11 responses, pandemic response.

A heat related mass death event most likely would trigger a response. The real question is would it be organized and tidy response, or civil unrest?

When 4% hunt anymore and no one can grow a carrot? Suddenly logistics are interrupted worse than covid because, what, Phoenix burns down?

Oh, it’ll trigger a response.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#36

Post by sottol »

alangibson wrote: post #27
samcheng wrote: post #12

If you haven’t read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around climate change. The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone intereste…

I stopped reading it because the premise is entirely unbelievable. A mass casualty event of pretty much any size would not lead us to do anything about climate change. For evidence, look at the deaths in the USA from gives and cars every year . Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything about those from a policy standpoint.

Car accidents and even COVID deaths in a hospital ward are possibly different because they're isolated and you can rationalize that it will not affect you.

Might be different when a lot of people die in a whole region and it's very obvious. But who knows, I made detailed predictions at the onset of COVID and believed it would be handled like SARS and the likes and stopped in about 3 months. Well, I was completely wrong.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#37

Post by HPsquared »

cogman10 wrote: post #29
hkpack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in my opinion, a lot of folks won't take climate change seriously until it adversely affects their way of life in such a dramatic way that they cannot deny it any longer. It won't. People you are talking about have access to air conditioning. They will not care about people dying in distant places, whom become an annoyance after a while. They will just wish people die silently without complaining.

Hate to agree but yeah. We've already seen a number of deadly heat waves in Europe. In 2003, 70,000 people died in the EU from a heat wave [1]. A fact that is never really comes up in talks about climate change. The death toll could be millions and we'd still see deniers clamoring that we need to burn more coal for grid stability or whatever. [1] https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20230717-parisians-a...

The short-term patch is to install air conditioning (or go to the mall, or even an air conditioned car). That's what people at risk of this will do.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#38

Post by allemagne »

skyfaller wrote: post #25
samcheng wrote: post #12

If you haven’t read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around climate change. The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone intereste…

I hate speaking negatively about Ministry for the Future, because I admire KSR, and we need fiction that confronts the climate crisis and shows people taking positive action to change the world for the better. Still, I sadly cannot recommend this book. To quote from my spoileriffic review, "This does not help us imagine realistic positive outcomes to the climate crisis. Robinson correctly diagnoses the threats we fac…

Can't agree more. The wet bulb event chapter is definitely worth a read, though.

The sad reality is that the world's actual response to something like that happening will probably be about as disappointing and anticlimactic as the rest of the book was to read.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#39

Post by IKantRead »

alangibson wrote: post #27
samcheng wrote: post #12

If you haven’t read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around climate change. The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone intereste…

I stopped reading it because the premise is entirely unbelievable. A mass casualty event of pretty much any size would not lead us to do anything about climate change. For evidence, look at the deaths in the USA from gives and cars every year . Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything about those from a policy standpoint.

Or the million+ deaths in the US from Covid, which I have seen brushed off on HN as not a big deal.

It's remarkably how quickly people incorporate tragedy as normal when it doesn't fit their worldview. If you travel to 2000 and told people "in 2020 a pandemic will kill over 1 million Americans, and a good portion will brush it off as a 'nothing burger'" people would think you were being ridiculous and would dismiss it as unbelievable fiction.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#40

Post by tchalvakspamm »

alangibson wrote: post #27
samcheng wrote: post #12

If you haven’t read it yet, the first section of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson describes a wet-bulb event in striking detail. The horror of this climate-change catastrophe is what finally triggers a significant global cultural shift around climate change. The passage was vivid enough for me to suggest preparatory measures to my retired parents. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone intereste…

I stopped reading it because the premise is entirely unbelievable. A mass casualty event of pretty much any size would not lead us to do anything about climate change. For evidence, look at the deaths in the USA from gives and cars every year . Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything about those from a policy standpoint.

That’s aggregate deaths one at a time, though. If all the car deaths happened all at once in a localized area and took out half of Rhode Island, it would spur action.
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