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Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

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Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#191

Post by no_wizard »

chasil wrote: post #111
jijijijij wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing to think about, is how poorly developed, rural places, without ACs or stable grids , are much more likely to experience heat waves with universally fatal wet-bulb temperatures. Places like parts of India or Bangladesh with high population densities, too. Further more, I think, we also need to consider how non-survivable conditions to humans, may play out for other animals we depend on. The cows, chicken, sh…

As opposed to our current icehouse phase, plants have thrived during intense greenhouse periods of global climate. "Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history... Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Eart...

It would also appear that icehouse periods last significantly shorter than greenhouse periods.

No doubt, if I assume everything reported on Wikipedia is accurate, humanity has never had to sustain itself in the face of a greenhouse period, given we only existed approximately 2.8 million years ago, and in "modern" form for only ~300,000 years.

That should give more pause than it does to society writ large, but alas, because humans are generally poor at long term planning and thinking, it appears we are dooming ourselves to be ill prepared.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#192

Post by bell-cot »

tejohnso wrote: post #91
jessekv wrote: post #81

Countries stock up on masks to prepare for future pandemics. What can/do they stock up on to prepare for extended heat waves? Ground water reserves? Generators and fuel? Underground shelters?

I don't know about countries, but I'd look into a ground source off grid heat pump.

's/look into a/look into an extremely reliable/'

(At least in my part of America, HVAC equipment failures under season-maximum loads are extremely common. And if failure = death...)

And maybe keep kinda quiet about it, too. If your nice & friendly neighbors are facing death by heat stroke, they could grow considerably less nice & friendly.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#193

Post by FrustratedMonky »

netsharc wrote: post #47
sgu999 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the plot of the Ministry for the Future [0]. Power failure during a prolonged wet bulb temperature above 35°C, millions of dead. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future

Is it a plot? It's an event that happens in chapter 1 and paints a "this is what will happen" scenario. The whole chapter is available here: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...

Kind of being pedantic about definition of "plot" or "plot point".

Isn't this whole book about climate change?

And the character experiences a climate 'event', that impacts the direction of the story? Changes their perspective?

"There's a common misconception that a plot point is anything that happens in a story. In this way, people often confuse a plot point for a story beat. Story beats are the smallest units of storytelling, allowing you to break down a story into small parts without looking at individual paragraphs or sentences.

A plot point, on the other hand, marks a major turning point in the plot. So a story beat and a plot point will overlap, but not every story beat is a plot. There are far more story beats than plot points in a given story."

https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/plot/plot-point/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_point https://kindlepreneur.com/plot-point/

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#194

Post by itishappy »

seiferteric wrote: post #169
_heimdall wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would take decades? Nearly every business switched to work from home in a matter of weeks because the fear of a pandemic gripped most politicians. Why couldn't we do that now to reduce our use of oil? The fact is we have a massive amount of waste in the system that we just aren't willing to give up. How much could be saved if we didn't expect that every McDonalds in the country could provide the exact same menu…

I don't mean to be rude, but are you aware that CO2 emissions continue to _increase_ year after year? That despite the world's apparent effort, we have actually made _no_ progress in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions globally? Given this reality, how do you expect to achieve your goals in a reasonable time-frame?

As a counterpoint, the latest IPCC model saw a reduction in the worst case scenario. We seem likely to have missed the 1.5°C average warming cutoff, but the worse case (8.5°C iirc) seems unlikely as well.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#195

Post by Kon-Peki »

jameshart wrote: post #142
donatj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a rag of cold water on you will cool you regardless of evaporation. It is a thing that is cooler than the environment. The water from our taps at least is a pretty constant like 50°F

So you have a supply of water at 50°F - that’s 10°C (an optimistic temperature in many places). And you are using it to try to maintain a body temperature around 37°C. Let’s assume you do so by transferring heat from your body into the water enough to raise its temperature by 25°C - that’s probably overly optimistic given that it will also be warmed by the environment and the rate of transfer will be reduced as the t…

The Great Lakes region of the US and Canada is a truly special place when it comes to fresh water. The experiences in this area can't be extrapolated to elsewhere. You can get hypothermia in the middle of a summer heatwave if you spend too much time in the water more than 1km from the shore. Even if you stay at your local beach, most people would find the water uncomfortably cold. In Chicago today, the high temperature is going to be around 18° or 19° C. The surface temperature of the water at the beach is slightly less than 4° C.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#196

Post by seiferteric »

_heimdall wrote: post #186
seiferteric wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be rude, but are you aware that CO2 emissions continue to _increase_ year after year? That despite the world's apparent effort, we have actually made _no_ progress in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions globally? Given this reality, how do you expect to achieve your goals in a reasonable time-frame?

Our use of oil has also continued. We like to collectively talk about reduction but its incremental at best, and not enough to keep up with increased consumption elsewhere or actually meaningfully reduce anything. > Given this reality, how do you expect to achieve your goals in a reasonable time-frame? In the context of this thread, there's a bit of a false dichotomy here. You're asking why I should expect that peopl…

There is no false dichotomy because we absolutely should be reducing our emissions as much as possible and I never said otherwise, it's just that it probably won't be enough to achieve any significant cooling effect in a reasonable time scale to prevent the scenario described in TFA. It's possible we will see mass death in the coming decades due to extreme heat events. I am just saying we should be preparing alternative courses of action rather than putting all our eggs in the hope basket.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#197

Post by jijijijij »

jameshart wrote: post #142
donatj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a rag of cold water on you will cool you regardless of evaporation. It is a thing that is cooler than the environment. The water from our taps at least is a pretty constant like 50°F

So you have a supply of water at 50°F - that’s 10°C (an optimistic temperature in many places). And you are using it to try to maintain a body temperature around 37°C. Let’s assume you do so by transferring heat from your body into the water enough to raise its temperature by 25°C - that’s probably overly optimistic given that it will also be warmed by the environment and the rate of transfer will be reduced as the t…

Thank you for doing the math!

At least in my area in central Europe, 10°C would be wildly optimistic in summer. I also presume when submerged in cold water, your body will start heating up, at first. So there is probably only a narrow temperature window for effective cooling. Not to mention, you may have to work and be awake to exchange the water, and being constantly wet for a prolonged time may come with it's own set of health problems.

I imagine there could be a situation with a deadly wet-bulb temperature, but below body temperature, where a large body of water may work to cool the body by convection, no?

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#198

Post by megaman821 »

richrichie wrote: post #136
jijijijij wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not understand the issue at hand. Whatever you experienced was way less severe, because evaporative cooling obviously was still possible. There is a point where you simply cannot cool yourself passively. That's the point where survival is at risk regardless of health. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

Heat is far more easily managed than -20 deg C. Cold deaths being far more than heat deaths proves that point as well.

It's true the cold is more deadly, but heat is more dangerous. A 50F delta from room temperature is dangerous for heat but easily manageable for cold. Unfortunately, cold deltas from room temperature can easily be 100F, which is less survivable than extreme heat.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#199

Post by _heimdall »

moffkalast wrote: post #185
_heimdall wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we control that? The medical industry has the challenge of having to intervene to a late stage illness with multiple interventions that must be titrated appropriately. They have the benefit of a much smaller scale though, and they've researched and learned from past cases. How do we intervene in the entire planet with multiple modes of change without making things worse? I reach for the solution of removing im…

Well there are risks of course, and it will most likely make things slightly worse for a while with less solar power and smaller crop yields with less sunlight, but there's really no other way to fix this mess. The simple fact is that removing all of our impact in terms of just stopping release of C02 and methane (as impossible that would be to achieve with our entire society built on energy dense fuels and entrenche…

It sounds like we likely agree that there is some level of reduction that would work, but that unrealistic that people will be willing to go that far.

Where we may be talking past each other a bit (sorry if I am) is the risk and reward of untested, theoretical solution that impact the entire planet.

> To continue your medical analogy, you've got a smoker with lung cancer and having him quit smoking and moving to the country isn't going to be enough to save him, the damage is done. He needs some goddamn chemotherapy or he'll end up like Steve Jobs.

While I agree here in theory, we know the general side effects and efficacy of chemotherapy. We also know the scale of impact when it doesn't work.

We aren't so lucky with global interventions like releasing chemicals into the atmosphere. We only have theories of what may happen, but we're talking about the entire planet and everything on it. We don't know what the real effects will be, or as they say - we don't know what we don't know.

As for Steve Jobs, I never really understood the idea of him as a cautionary tale. He knew what his diagnosis was, what treatments were available, and what would likely be the outcome. He exercised the ability to decide what to do with his own life and body. I hope everyone is that lucky.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#200

Post by Faaak »

richrichie wrote: post #188
mempko wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what's wild? Global Warming will create more extreme cold events in places that don't have them! Why? Because global warming is causing the jet streams to weaken and cold air in the arctic escapes more to the south. Isn't that interesting?

[flagged]

You should read the IPCC reports, educate yourself on how it works overall, before saying absurdities like this one :).
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