Last week I was in a thread where someone wondered about heat, human survivability/habitability, and climate change. I've done some technical work on this specific question, so, quick thread on basics, and what to worry about.
Key term to know: The "wet bulb" temperature.
"Wet bulb" temperature is the temperature + relative humidity at which water stops evaporating off a "wet" thermometer bulb. If air is sufficiently humid (saturated w/ water vapor), evaporation will no longer cool the bulb, and it gets continuously hotter.
This matters for humans, because our bodies regulate heat via evaporation: sweat glands carry heat from body to the skin surface, where it evaporates, dissipating heat into the air. As long as you stay hydrated (and take salts! salt is important), you can stay cool at high temps
However, key interaction here is evaporation, which is controlled in part by a) amount of energy in the sweat (how much heat it is carrying) and b) how much moisture is already in the air. E.g., when people tell you "it's a dry heat" as if it's "more tolerable," they are correct.
Dry air has essentially infinite capacity to absorb moisture, so, humans can survive in very high temps if the air is dry - though when you get up into the high 120's and above, you'll start seeing hyperthermia death among children, the elderly, and infirm.
But, the wet bulb.
Wet bulb takes a minute to grok because it's not about *heat,* per se. It's about the absorptive capacity of air. A wet bulb temperature in the mid-80s F can, and does, kill humans. Heat waves in the EU & Russia in 2003 and 2010 killed over a hundred thousand people at ~ 82 F.
Reason: While body temp is ~ 97-99 F, we maintain temp by sweating. If sweat won't evaporate, our body temp rises, continuously. And when body temp hits ~108, we're dead.
For a vulnerable person in wet bulb temp, this takes much less than an hour. Naked. In the shade.
(Side note: Weather forecasters should announce the wet bulb temperature or Human Heat Index as a matter of public service)
So, what does this have to do with you? Well, up until last ~ 40 years, wet bulb temperatures were *extremely rare* on this planet.
But that's over, now. We're already seeing multiple wet bulb temperatures per year in multiple locations. By mid-century, parts of the Southeastern U.S will see *weeks* of wet bulbs *every year.*
This is quite bad. Thousands of people will die on each of those days.
This has ... implications. Human habitations get very difficult to manage when thousands and thousands of people are dying every day, for weeks, every year.
So, the moral of the story: Many of the places humans currently live on the planet are on their way to being functionally uninhabitable by humans. They will have to move. Some may try to "adapt," and some may pull it off. But this will be exceptionally difficult.
If we do everything right, starting now, there's a chance we could return some of those places to habitability for future generations, in the 3rd millenium or so. But as of today, we've already roasted most of them. Carbon emissions have a very long life in the atmosphere.
So please, help your city prepare for the refugees. Depose the NIMBYs in your city government. Defeat the car-stans who deny that all of this is happening.
Because the heat is coming. It's already here.
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The thing to know about Democratic Party politics that nobody seems to have raised, so, I will:
The structure of the United States’ federal republic is an abomination. The Senate is a deeply evil institution, designed by horrible people to prevent democratic governance.
🧵
How does this relate to D-party politics? Well, in functioning democracies, voters elect parties that have platforms, then those parties work to enact those platforms.
And since real democracies — i.e., countries with no Senate (almost all of them) — allow parties to compete …
… parties form coalitions that represent giant blocks of voters to craft a majority, compromise among themselves where necessary, then, enact what’s left of the platform.
But what if you have a fascist institution embedded in the structure of your government — like a Senate?
Something lost in the whole “but there’s no transit where I live!” is utterly massive cost violent drivers impose on society via under-insurance & very low maximums:
You could go outside, get hit by a violent driver, maimed for life, and not only would they go free but
… their insurance would only pay $50,000 of your million-dollar medical bills (and lifetime of medical care).
So now you’re also destitute and living off medicaid, which is, to an under-reported degree, one of the largest car industry subsidies in the United States.
America is ripe for fascism specifically because of this incredibly high tolerance for driver violence, massive government apparatus to incentivize and subsidize their violence, and the writing off and denigration of victims.
Over the holiday weekend I met a woman who works for forest service in Nevada City, California. We got to chatting about fire risk, as one does.
She noted that her county -- like every other California county -- is still approving new homes in areas ...
the forest service is very, very sure will burn, and that those new homes make it increasingly impossible to manage the forest for future fires:
To manage fire, you have to burn the forest. But if you put homes there, you can't. It's already nearly physically impossible ...
... to treat California's forests, due to the extreme slopes and remoteness of most forest lands. Sprinkle them with homes and humans, and just about all you can do is sit back and pray.
And worse: The non-burn methods needed to treat high-risk forests -- mechanical thinning ...
Last night I attended a 3-hour transportation commission hearing about removing 5 parking spots from a public street to build a new protected bike lane next to a massive new infill housing project at a BART station.
There were ~ 45 people there.
15 of the attendees were staff for the city, for BART, and consultants.
15 of the people were NIMBYs who mistakenly think the parking “belongs to them.”
And 15 were people who are tired of driver violence and want protected bike lanes so we’re not assaulted or killed.
The staff time alone cost easily $10,000. But then, they had to prepare documents and presentations and drawings and print notices and flyers and etc. So, let’s say $50,000.
This is over 5 parking spots on a public street.
Then consider: The 15 NIMBYs who’ve come to expect …