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
Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat
291–296 of 296 posts
Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat
#292Earlier 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…
Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat
#293Earlier 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.)
Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat
#294Cooling 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.
Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat
#295Earlier 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…
Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat
#296Earlier 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.