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Wet-bulb temperature

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Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#131

Post by aaroninsf »

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…

Have you heard him speak on it? I have, in person, several times, and this aspect of the book (which I am tepid on, as a novel for other reasons myself) is something that's been pulled apart.

I believe you can find recordings from e.g. his interactive discussion of it, in the archives of "SF in SF" which are typically recorded and available, maybe at SomaFM as Rusty usually runs sound. Strongly recommended and it should give you a frame for understanding why the narrative takes the path that it does.

TL;DR it's overdetermined and the opposite of naivety or wishful thinking; it's strategic.

You may disagree with the strategy, of course.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#132

Post by squeaky-clean »

dogman144 wrote: post #73
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 clicked into this to see if MFTF was mentioned. Powerful opening scene. Other commenters criticizing the book for the ending and the positivity turn it takes are missing the point of why the book is valuable, I think. Like for you maybe, it was the first book that got me serious about climate. The value isn’t in the ending, but in the first half with unpleasantly accurate the early “oh sh*t” disasters were and same…

If you enjoyed that, you might enjoy Perihelion Summer by Greg Egan. It's climate change scifi kicked off by cosmic scifi. A micro-blackhole is discovered that will pass through the solar system, slightly modifying earth's orbit and raises the tides by a few feet while it passes. It's essentially "what if we instantly jumped forward by 500 years on our current climate progression".

Spoiler, I found the ending very unsatisfying. It feels like a cliffhanger into a second book, but there is no second book it just ends without much resolution. The actual climate change/societal terror in the first 75% is great though, it was on pace to become a favorite book of mine.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#133

Post by alangibson »

jabradoodle wrote: post #105
alangibson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A massive failure judging by the numbers. Which is my point. We will continue to feel bad, maybe drop in some metaphorical traffic circles, but do nothing to actually solve the issue.

How is a ~24x reduction in deaths per mile driven a massive failure? What would you call a success? No death, total ban on driving?

Another post demonstrating my point. 35K people in the US alone die in traffic every year. We have normalized this figure (see your response) as we will normalize climate deaths.

What I would do about traffic deaths is irrelevant to my point.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#134

Post by alangibson »

pjtn8 wrote: post #109
alangibson wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 soluti…

I do have kids. Which is why your post bugs me. My whole effort here is throwing your low effort back at you; including your misuse of sighted for cited. Frankly I think I get you a lot better than you get me. You are your own generalization/analogy/metaphor . You’re doing nothing substantive while complaining about lack of substantive effort in the part of others. Functional illiteracy in the raw, dog

See my comment about being blackpilled on this issue. I don't think humans have what it takes to deal with this.

> Functional illiteracy in the raw, dog

Not your dog, dog

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#135

Post by drbig »

Temperature without humidity is like voltage without current, or per-capita GDP without the Gini coefficient. Many measures alone are of little practical value.

Stay _comfortable_ there!

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#136

Post by jbu »

adolph wrote: post #74
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…

> we need fiction that confronts the climate crisis and shows people taking positive action to change the world for the better. Like Termination Shock? https://www.amazon.com/Termination-Shock-Novel-Neal-Stephens...

I really prefer Ministry to termination shock. I mean, it's a fun book, but it offers no solution (eg sulphur seeding does nothing for ocean acidification, not to mention termination shock). The fact that people read it and thing it offers a solution is puzzling. Now Anathem is another matter! Brilliant! (although again I have quibbles).

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#137

Post by adolph »

alangibson wrote: post #97
adolph wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great example of moving the goalposts. You wrote "total lack of action" for which there is counter-evidence in the form of a national government action. With the same logic, one might as well claim that an entire firearm is an accessory to whatever is redefined as the "real problem."

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#138

Post by jabradoodle »

alangibson wrote: post #133
jabradoodle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a ~24x reduction in deaths per mile driven a massive failure? What would you call a success? No death, total ban on driving?

Another post demonstrating my point. 35K people in the US alone die in traffic every year. We have normalized this figure (see your response) as we will normalize climate deaths. What I would do about traffic deaths is irrelevant to my point.

I find your approach arrogant; of course I understand that people die in car crashes and yet we continue to use them.

Your original point was:

>Yet there is zero momentum toward doing anything about those from a policy standpoint.

This is clearly false. There are many effective regulations and travelling by car continues to get safer.

Yes people still die, yes we already somewhat normalise people dying from e.g. air pollution (not something that will happen, we already do it)

There are people who do think about these things every day. There are people who dedicate life to working on problems and progress is being made.

Saying that a major event would have no impact on the zeitgiest is questionable given history.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#139

Post by sokoloff »

alangibson wrote: post #77
rpdillon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vehicle fatalities per capita and per mile travelled have been dropping in the US for decades. As has the absolute number of deaths. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...

Still proving my point. 35K deaths per year. We will normalize climate related deaths the way we have normalized traffic related deaths.

Without being clear about what replacement transportation mode you expect to substitute for cars, it's not clear to me that your point is being proven. If we replaced cars today with walking or the current state of public transport in the US, I think my life is made vastly better by the near-ubiquitous presence of cars, even if it means I have a lifetime risk of just under 1%.

If cars save me just 10 minutes per day, my life is improved as compared to the just under 7 minutes per day of life lost to the lifetime risk of dying in a car accident.

We normalize traffic deaths because there is a net benefit. Just like we normalize other negative outcomes from overall positive-utility activities.

Re: Wet-bulb temperature

#140

Post by sokoloff »

falcolas wrote: post #129
jncfhnb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re going to need to set some practical constraints here. Can you survive wet bulb temperatures given a bucket of water indefinitely? No. Can you survive working hard labor with the water bucket? No. Can you survive wet bulb events significantly higher than the threshold? No. Can you survive several hours in a typical (current typical) wet bulb event? Yes, definitely. Bucket of water is fine.

> Can you survive several hours in a typical wet bulb event? I'm going to vote maybe. At best, it'll be close. Resting metabolic output is about half the active value I provided (per NASA's PDF). That means for a bucket of water that starts at 32°, you have 5 hours before the bucket is also 95° if you discount ambient heating from the air, circulatory constriction, and assuming no prior conditions. Since you can't di…

> survival for more than an hour or two is nowhere near guaranteed.

Does that pass your personal sniff test for reasonability? Have you ever soaked in a 104°F (40°C) hot tub for an hour or more? Was your survival in serious doubt?

Wet bulb temperatures in excess of 35°C need to persist for around 6 hours to represent a serious hyperthermia risk. This is not a "you will die inside of 1-2 hours" scenario.

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