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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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank you for that. I guess where I have a problem is the notion that 2.2 degrees higher on the wet bulb than where we were earlier this week is going to lead to millions of deaths. Like, this is the tropics, it's always hot. It's been a lot hotter than it was this week, and yet there was no extinction event. It's very hard for me to parse this idea from an Internet forum filled with white dudes in air conditioned NA/EU offices saying that millions of us are going to die because the weather will be basically the same as it's always been here. There has got to be some breakdown in the logic between the observations about the wet bulb and the conclusion that humanity will go extinct because it can't sweat or whatever. There are like a billion people sweating in temperatures around what this study says will kill them.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank you for that. I guess where I have a problem is the notion that 2.2 degrees higher on the wet bulb than where we were earlier this week is going to lead to millions of deaths. Like, this is the tropics, it's always hot. It's been a lot hotter than it was this week, and yet there was no extinction event. It's very hard for me to parse this idea from an Internet forum filled with white dudes in air conditioned NA…

Bezos said if your data and anecdotes disagree, it's usually your data that is wrong

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your body, when not working hard, produces about 200W of heat. That’s 200J per second. Minor quibble, 2000 (kilo)calories / 1 day = ~100 Watts.

Fair - I took a number for an active, awake human. You don’t produce that wattage all the time; resting and sleeping have much lower heat output; average power over a day is probably more like 100W (hence that being a reasonable average ‘healthy calorie intake’ number which I assume is where your 2000kCal comes from.)

Focused resting probably reduces it even further. You're not just "not working hard" in a situation like this, you are barely moving and probably slowing down your metabolism if anything.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#294

Cooling by a degree takes less energy than heating by a degree (not to mention it's electric). Cooling a house from 35 (outside) to 23 (inside) takes is better for "the environment" than heating one from 11 to 23.

Why wouldn’t running a heat pump in reverse to heat a room be ~same energy as running it in forward to cool a room? I suspect you’re comparing an airconditioner against a resistive heating unit.

Yes with heat pumps you're 100% correct but right now most of the US north does not use heat pumps to heat their house while the vast majority of the south US does use A/C which is way better per degree of temperature change than say heating oil which the vast majority of New England still uses.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#295
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cubans are richer than the Burkinabe.

I apologize for my parent comment, it was terrible. I just don't know how to respond to the the broad idea complex that we need less/no economic growth. The way I see it there are two ways it could go. Either the poor countries don't develop or we somehow transfer the economic resources from away from the countries that are currently rich. Non-development is cruel, redistribution is impossible politically and there i…

What about sustainable development funded by developed countries? They can help poor countries leapfrog the fossil fuel stage by paying for or subsidizing solar- and wind-powered grids, hydro power, batteries.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Making sure they can't have stable electricity, affordable transportation or otherwise decent infrastructure sure won't either.

It isn't a binary choice between fossil fuel development and no development. There's a third option, where developed countries subsidize sustainable energy for developing countries on the condition they use zero additional fossil fuels.
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