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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

#221

Post by triceratops »

thworp wrote: post #147
varelse wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the burgeoning economic development of full self-driving space needles! Sure, their former homes will be uninhabitable, but imagine how much they'll get selling the land? Why they'll be able to move to Antarctica if that's what it takes! I'm getting a tear in my eye right now over all that profit and shareholder value as we boldly evacuate the planet into the future!

I encourage you to take a crash course in Mooré, go to Burkina Faso and spread the word to the people. "You will not improve your cirumstances, any more prosperity will destroy the planet." I'm sure they will appreciate your wisdom, almost as much as Cubans appreciate their very eco-friendly economic circumstances. Good Luck.

Cubans are richer than the Burkinabe.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#222

Post by triceratops »

codebolt wrote: post #170
jijijijij wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an opportunity for many of the people living near the equator to become more prosperous Please tell us, what you have in mind. More economic growth?

As someone who frequents poorer regions of West Africa, that is exactly what I had in mind. Economic growth driven by increased use of hydrocarbons could massively help the populations there.

Giving a starving person bags upon bags of sugar, and literally nothing else, will definitely help in the near term.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#223

Post by _heimdall »

moffkalast wrote: post #209
_heimdall wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is a type of project where the results will never be fully possible to predict, but the same goes for what happens if we do nothing. It impacting the entire plant is kind of irrelevant imo, basically everything we do these days impacts the entire planet anyway and we don't lose much sleep over it. The way I see it, we can either act and run the risk of getting it wrong and making a bad situation worse, o…

This feels very similar to the arguments for pushing on with AI research. The argument usually ends that we must default to intervening because the risk of inaction is too high.

> And later regretted it before he died. I just hope we don't regret our inaction as well.

Yep that's very true, I also hope people don't regret their decisions (I wouldn't necessarily classify it as inaction, that sounds like the default should be to act).

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#224

Post by jijijijij »

jameshart wrote: post #203
jijijijij wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A large body of cool water works great at moving heat way from you, obviously - an ‘acre foot’ of water is 1.2 million liters - 300,000 gallons. So a fairly small one acre lake that’s ten feet deep has 12 million kg of water, which can absorb 48GJ of heat before it rises in temperature by a single degree. The big question though is how long will that lake remain cooler than the air in the face of wet bulb temperature…

Yeah, but the question rather is, would let's say 32°C water, 5°C temperature gradient, work to cool the body, if completely submerged? When ambient conditions are deadly wet-bulb 32°C, would it still cool the water to its original 32°C?

So, my thinking would be, if the heat transfer from the body to the water and from water to air (through large surface) is sufficient. In a shaded pool, so all heat transfer from the outside is by convection and conduction.

I guess, if it would be sufficient cooling, you could also "just" drink the water and remove hot sweat from the skin, or dispose urine, instead. In theory, never mind electrolytes.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#225

Post by hintymad »

cromulent wrote: post #2

A friend of mine who lives in Queensland (Sunshine Coast) was talking about a recent spell of 32° and 100% humidity and how oppressive it was. My understanding is that such weather is not survivable long term [1] without air conditioning. A power failure would be disastrous. [1] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/humans-cant-endure-t...

> is that such weather is not survivable long term [1] without air conditioning

I seriously doubt it. I grew up in an area that frequently hit 35C with close to 100% humidity, and I didn't even have an electronic fan before 9 years old. And multiple cities with 10s of millions people had the similar condition too. It was not pleasant but let me assure you, more people died of cold than heat, orders of magnitude more. In a poor country, or an Asian country more than 100 years ago, 10s of thousands of people in a single city would die in a snowy winter. Not having air conditioner? Seriously, that's a first-world problem.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#226

Post by triceratops »

wholinator2 wrote: post #95
brazzy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that at some sufficiently high humidity, fans and wet rags do not help any more, at all ! Combine that with sufficiently high temperatures, and it's not survivable. And will kill people with weak circulatory systems (i.e. the elderly and babies) quite a bit earlier.

Yes, the fan cannot cool. But have your ever experienced the cold water tap being cooler than the ambient air temperature? They mean that they soak a rag in cold water, from the tap, and then apply that to themselves. This will 100% help cool the person down. You could run a cold bath, take a cold shower, even drink the cold water (but not too much too cold!) If you have cold water, you can survive.

That only works if the water pipelines are underground and all the above-ground plumbing is shaded. If the water heats up on its way to the faucet it's useless.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#227

Post by saalweachter »

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…

Hmm, taking this in the opposite direction, what if you stop relying on water for evaporative cooling?

What if I cover myself in alcohol or gasoline some other easily-vaporized substance? Would that still evaporate at a satisfactory rate when the wet bulb temperature is high?

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#228

Post by JumpCrisscross »

olalonde wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reason why people in developing countries are the least concerned about pollution or global warming Hyperbolic discounting?

Do you believe that the economic progress of the last century wasn't worth a 1-2 degrees in temperature rise? Most people, especially those in countries that developed enormously, would not agree. The positive impacts of economic progress so far vastly outweigh the negative impacts of global warming.

> Do you believe that the economic progress of the last century wasn't worth a 1-2 degrees in temperature rise?

Unfair as it is, the last two degrees were less impactful than the next two will be. In the short term, the positives will still outweigh the costs. But in the long run, it’s not clear—particularly for tropical countries—that the gains will be worth the cost.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#229

Post by cromulent »

safety1st wrote: post #215
darkerside wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With high enough heat, a fan will only make things worse, no?

I can only report what I see, which is that in many parts of the world including where I live, it's always in the 30s, humidity levels are high, a lot of people can't afford air con, and there are no mass heat deaths. If they don't have access to AC they run fans all the time, and they stay indoors or in the shade. In fact in the cold months where it dips under 30 the local news always runs a story or two about the (…

I can report that the science is pretty solid.

35° at 70% (your peak today) is wet-bulb 29.8°.

45° at 20% (desert) is wet-bulb 24.3°.

32° at 100% is wet-bulb 31.8°.

At 100% sweating is useless. You can't lose heat through evaporation.

https://www.mit.edu/~eltahirgroup/calTW.html

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#230

Post by triceratops »

thworp wrote: post #174
hackerlight wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who live in the humid tropics are already on a knife's edge. A small increase makes the heat intolerable and you will see either mass death or mass waves of immigration. "Just build aircon" doesn't work when you're talking about people with intermittent (or no) electricity and who have an annual income equal to a single aircon unit.

All the more reason to urgently develop the world to at least the level of Malaysia / Thailand (or ~Western Europe ca. 1950). If we quit fossil fuels cold turkey it is those very same people in the tropics that will starve. But making that connection requires thinking about second order effects, a tall order for the degrowth cult.

I'm all for growth for the tropics. Developed countries have to all chip in so that they grow with green electricity grids and no fossil fuels.
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