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Wet-bulb temperature

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Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#91

Post by specialist »

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…

The omission of the reactionary backlash was especially implausible.

> shows people taking positive action to change the world for the better

You might be interested in the Volts' podcast.

https://www.volts.wtf

The recent interviews with Saul Griffith ("use our sunlight and iron ore and rare minerals to transform Australia into the world's forge"), Tim Latimer (Fervo Energy pioneered advanced geothermal, now scaling up), and Ramez Naam (climate tech investor) were quite uplifting.

Lots of gems in the Volts archive too.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#92

Post by alangibson »

jpfed wrote: post #82
alangibson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A mass-casualty event would make that argument less effective

I would have bought this 10 years ago. But following the recent rise of conspricism, especially far out things like Qanon and Pizza Gate, I've come to realize that it's possible for vast numbers of people to just decide to believe something is/isn't true because it suits them.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#93

Post by adolph »

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

Within a year of the Las Vegas shooting, the "bump stock" device used by that person was banned by the US.

The Trump administration has banned the use of bump stocks, devices that let rifles fire like machine guns, after promising to do so earlier this year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46614001

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#94

Post by carapace »

I recently spent some time camping in a place that hit daytime temperatures of over 100°F. When it's that hot all you can do is wet your clothing and spray mist and fan yourself to get evaporative cooling. Thinking about wet-bulb temperature in that context was terrifying.

The hot dry breeze can cool you off. The hot humid breeze is death.

If you live somewhere where this could happen you should move now.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#95

Post by alangibson »

prepend wrote: post #75
jpfed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News media like to have stories they can focus popular attention on, and no one car accident (unless it kills someone famous) will matter to enough people to warrant broader coverage than one's local paper. Despite this lack of media visibility, there actually is some movement at the city level to change the design of roads to reduce the lethality of accidents. This isn't very publicly visible yet, I don't think, and…

The idea in the book was this was a new event that never occurred previously that finally did and was able to demonstrate that climate change is doing some new and not survivable. In the book, people galvanized around it kind of like 9/11 as it was clearly climate change, as opposed to other things that already existed and may or may not be due to climate change (more hurricanes, etc).

> people galvanized around it kind of like 9/11

Be careful what you wish for. 9/11 galvanized Americans to start two disastrous wars. The effect of a mass fatality event like in MFTF could easily be a bunch of pointless, ineffective wars. There's precedent for that, but not for anything like a Ministry for the Future

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#96

Post by jcranmer »

hiatus wrote: post #3
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.

What exactly is a "wet bulb event"?

The wet-bulb temperature is the minimum temperature a wet body can reach via evaporation--effectively the minimum temperature you can reach via sweating. When the wet-bulb temperature reaches body temperature, you can only maintain body temperature via active A/C.

Even if you are the fittest, healthiest human being alive, standing in the shade in a thorough breeze, your core body temperature can only go up. Let it go up, and you get heatstroke and eventually death. And if you're not the fittest, healthiest being alive, or not standing in the shade? It's only going to go up faster, and heatstroke and death will beckon much sooner.

"Wet bulb events" are, in short, when "no A/C means outdoors = death"

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#97

Post by alangibson »

adolph wrote: post #93
alangibson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Within a year of the Las Vegas shooting, the "bump stock" device used by that person was banned by the US. The Trump administration has banned the use of bump stocks, devices that let rifles fire like machine guns, after promising to do so earlier this year. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46614001

Great example of my main point. Instead of fixing the real problems (availability of weapons and to some degree mental illness) we ban an accessory. Meanwhile elsewhere the bodies keep dropping.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#98

Post by carapace »

sjducb wrote: post #56
falcolas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not THAT hard to cool down even if you’re incapable of sweating to do so. How would you recommend cooling down for hundreds of thousands of people at a time? I have to assume that those affected wouldn't have easy access to AC.

Fill a bath and get in it. The groundwater is usually much colder than the air. However there is a limit to how long you can live in the bath.

Many of the places at the forefront of this threat also have water scarcity issues. There's also the problem of what to do with the water once it's heated up. You could pump it back into the ground to cool off, but eventually you're going to heat the ground itself and have an even worse problem.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#99

Post by jcranmer »

makeitdouble wrote: post #6
hiatus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is a "wet bulb event"?

I assume parent means a period of time where the ambient temperature is at or above the wet bulb temperature.

Ambient temperature is always at or above the wet-bulb temperature, by definition. A wet-bulb temperature measures the temperature that can be achieved after energy loss due to evaporation of water, so as long as evaporation is possible (humidity < 100%), it is lower than the actual temperature.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#100

Post by mikeyouse »

dingnuts wrote: post #66
mikeyouse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I didn't even mention climate change or weather? b. Your own source is making a different point that the one you're making.. > What they're saying: Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather summarized the volcano's contribution to 2023's record high temperatures this way: "So, not nothing, but only a small part of the story in the exceptional warmth the world is experiencing," he told Axios via email. > Andrew Dessler, a…

The Maui wildfire was driven by a hurricane, a weather event. Did you not mention that? The Axios article providing context and discussion around a topic -- some of which does argue in the affirmative for climate change -- is not contradictory to my post because I was not arguing against climate change. I'm arguing with your attitude towards the commentators on news stories, who you seem to view as ignorant, when the…

The commenters on news stories blaming HAARP and Directed Energy Weapons in concert with Oprah and the Biden Administration's clean-energy initiatives are in fact ignorant. And there are tens of thousands of them.

You're really convinced I made some sort of argument blaming the fire on Climate Change when I did nothing of the sort..

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