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Wet-bulb temperature

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Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#81

Post by alangibson »

IKantRead wrote: post #39
alangibson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> It's remarkably how quickly people incorporate tragedy as normal

It's one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses. It let's us keep living, but also allows us to normalize that which shouldn't be accepted.

If the opening of MFTF happened, within 2 weeks people would be posting graphs showing how per capita all cause deaths are actually going down over time.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#82

Post by jpfed »

alangibson wrote: post #59
tchalvakspamm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then explain the total lack of action after Sandy Hook, that Las Vegas shooting, etc

These are good examples of mass casualty events that didn't motivate effective responses. For both climate change and guns, there are people that want to keep the status quo as it is. I believe that popular arguments against gun control will be able to stay effective in ways that arguments against climate action will fail.

First, one of the most popular arguments against action addressing climate change has been that climate change is simply fake. A mass-casualty event would make that argument less effective.

The gun control debate in the United States is linked with people's perceptions of personal agency. Often, a mass casualty event perpetrated with a gun is ended by a gun being used on the perpetrator (sometimes, it's the perpetrator killing themselves, and sometimes it's police killing them). Many people imagine it would be possible to end those events as a bystander with a gun. But I think that it would be much harder to get people to fantasize about being a hero that stops a mass casualty event resulting from extreme heat. Such an event starts and ends when Mother Nature says it does, and it seems like it should be pretty clear to people that the only way personal agency is relevant is in the act of preparing the environment.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#83

Post by gonzo41 »

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…

In the book that event happens to India. I sadly think that when climate change starts killing people in poor countries (like it already is). The western wealthy world will ignore it for as long as possible.

I sometimes get very dark about the future we're headed into.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#84

Post by dogman144 »

prepend wrote: post #70
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 found that passage pretty disturbing too. But my takeaway was that there aren’t any individual plans you can make unless you plan on hanging out in a body of water breathing through a straw for a few days. What prep did you recommend to your parents? I’m interested for what I can reuse or adapt.

I think the most likely option is moving geolocs for water-access safety and heat concerns.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#85

Post by ch4s3 »

allemagne wrote: post #57
dmans0n wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the book, the Indian government takes unilateral action to cool the planet (spraying reflectants into the upper atmosphere, iirc) after the heat wave kills 20 million Indian people in the space of a few days - a few weeks. Given the fractious state of international politics and the urgency of the problem, this seems like a fairly realistic depiction of how efforts to cool the planet might commence IRL.

There was about paragraph or so spent on that realistic response, and then huge swathes dedicated to India switching to collectivized farming (a la early Soviet Union), the world's central banks putting carbon offsets onto a blockchain, and millions of Americans willingly displacing themselves to create a giant wildlife preserve in the midwest.

KSR is sliding in the direction of outright promotion of eco-fascism and I can't say it makes for good literature.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#86

Post by alangibson »

allemagne wrote: post #57
dmans0n wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the book, the Indian government takes unilateral action to cool the planet (spraying reflectants into the upper atmosphere, iirc) after the heat wave kills 20 million Indian people in the space of a few days - a few weeks. Given the fractious state of international politics and the urgency of the problem, this seems like a fairly realistic depiction of how efforts to cool the planet might commence IRL.

There was about paragraph or so spent on that realistic response, and then huge swathes dedicated to India switching to collectivized farming (a la early Soviet Union), the world's central banks putting carbon offsets onto a blockchain, and millions of Americans willingly displacing themselves to create a giant wildlife preserve in the midwest.

> millions of Americans willingly displacing themselves

As far fetched as any science fiction ever written

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#87

Post by wonderwonder »

lukevp wrote: post #5
hiatus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is a "wet bulb event"?

Temperature and humidity are high enough that you can’t cool off naturally via sweat. I would suspect most people don’t realize that’s even a thing. I’m from Texas, and everyone thinks they’re heat adapted and tries to act macho. A lot of people would just stay outside and keep working, ignoring any warnings they received.

I expect Texas to be the first state to experience a wet bulb event. Its only a matter of time before we get a combination of extreme heat and a massive failure of their power grid.

Hundreds of deaths in a single day will lead to... nothing. Same politicians will be voted in and the deaths will just be counted as the price of freedom

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#88

Post by LeifCarrotson »

abeppu wrote: post #51
skyfaller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that the plot repeatedly follows society making choices which I find implausible -- but if one reads that alienation (one's inner critic saying "this is not the world we live in") as part of the experience of the work, then it can function as a kind of compelling tool. Noting all the points where humanity in the book takes necessary and beneficial actions to improve their situation, that are available to but…

The ways in which we fail to address societal issues are not in fact our responsibility, they're a systemic issue that is a function of human nature - or political nature/societal nature - that will not be solved by morose feelings of condemnation. "Why can't people not be the way they are" is just as useless a sentiment as "Why can't mathematics not be the way it is", and will be just as ineffective at causing 2 and 2 to add to 5.

I'm going to go back to my comparatively easy computer engineering tasks after writing this comment, and have the greatest respect for those willing to confront coordination problems in the political sphere. That's playing the game on hard mode.

The whole thing reminds me of this thread [1] from a few weeks ago referencing Orwell's critique of Dickens:

>> The truth is that Dickens's criticism of society is almost exclusively moral. Hence the utter lack of any constructive suggestion anywhere in his work. ... His whole ‘message’ is one that at first glance looks like an enormous platitude: If men would behave decently the world would be decent.

> I can't help but feel like TS Eliot's "public-spirited pigs" are the same thing as Dickens' "good rich men".

The good news is that we've developed systems of governance and economics that are not exclusively worse than uneducated tribalistic hunter-gatherer anarchy - a very large number of people live in significant comfort in relatively ordered, mostly polite societies, generally free to do what they want, and for the most part those societies build things like roads, landfills, electric grids, and fire departments together that make the community better. It's not perfect, for sure, and we're really missing the ball on this particular externality of global warming, but I have some hope that we'll figure out a way to address the problem that doesn't rely exclusively on weak moral appeals.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130896

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#89

Post by bradford »

Maybe this is a pet peeve of mine, but I'm annoyed with the use of the term 'wet bulb event' here and elsewhere. Wouldn't it put less burden on the reader to just say "wet bulb 35C"? (That is the temperature that most people seem to be referring to when they say 'wet bulb event'.)

Every place on earth has a wet bulb temperature, all of the time. Saying "wet-bulb event" doesn't really help explain the web-bulb temperature's significance, which is buried in the wiki page:

"It has been thought that a sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F)—given the body's requirement to maintain a core temperature of about 37°C—is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan;"

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#90

Post by alangibson »

pjtn8 wrote: post #78
alangibson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sighted two totally ineffective responses to crises. We'll do something , it just won't be what is required to actually fix the underlying problem.

You sighted a problem and cited zero anything else. Pandemic response was effective at avoiding healthcare system collapse and churning out a vaccine. It’s as good a plan as we can get with 30% of 300 million intentionally indifferent, centrists too absorbed in low effort consumerism, and anyone espousing concern being called a tree hugging pussy. What else do you want? Too many seem to think the MCU should hop on sa…

> You sighted a problem and cited zero anything else.

Perhaps you missed the analogy in my original between climate deaths and gun+traffic deaths.

> It’s as good a plan as we can get with 30% of 300 million intentionally indifferent, centrists too absorbed in low effort consumerism, and anyone espousing concern being called a tree hugging pussy.

You're so close to getting it. We will be talking about "sensible solutions" that maintain our current lifestyle until the planet turns into Venus.

> What else do you want?

I reluctanty have to admit I'm black pilled at this point. I see no reason to believe that our species is capable of the kind of collective action that's needed. There are no positive examples and so many negative examples.

> You were never going to make it out of this life alive anyway.

You don't have kids do you?

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