Johnny Carson of the Tonight Show used to do a schtick called “The Edge of Wetness” which was a parody of a soap opera called “The Edge of Night”
It was he first thing that went through my mind after reading this press release citing a new worry about wet bulb temperature. Apparently it’s not just the heat, but the humidity too.
Researchers find future temperatures could exceed livable limits
This map shows the maximum wet-bulb temperatures reached in a climate model from a high carbon dioxide emissions future climate scenario with a global-mean temperature 12 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than 2007. The white land areas exceed the wet-bulb limit at which researchers calculated humans would experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress. (Purdue University graphic/Matthew Huber)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate.
Wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to what is felt when wet skin is exposed to moving air. It includes temperature and atmospheric humidity and is measured by covering a standard thermometer bulb with a wetted cloth and fully ventilating it.
The researchers calculated that humans and most mammals, which have internal body temperatures near 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, will experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at wet-bulb temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more, said Matthew Huber, the Purdue professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who co-authored the paper that will be published in Thursday’s (May 6) issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Although areas of the world regularly see temperatures above 100 degrees, really high wet-bulb temperatures are rare,” Huber said. “This is because the hottest areas normally have low humidity, like the ‘dry heat’ referred to in Arizona. When it is dry, we are able to cool our bodies through perspiration and can remain fairly comfortable. The highest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded were in places like Saudi Arabia near the coast where winds occasionally bring extremely hot, humid ocean air over hot land leading to unbearably stifling conditions, which fortunately are short-lived today.”
The study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios, but explored the impacts of warming. The challenges presented by the future climate scenarios are daunting in their scale and severity, he said.
“Whole countries would intermittently be subject to severe heat stress requiring large-scale adaptation efforts,” Huber said. “One can imagine that such efforts, for example the wider adoption of air conditioning, would cause the power requirements to soar, and the affordability of such approaches is in question for much of the Third World that would bear the brunt of these impacts. In addition, the livestock on which we rely would still be exposed, and it would make any form of outside work hazardous.”
While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change central estimates of business-as-usual warming by 2100 are seven degrees Fahrenheit, eventual warming of 25 degrees is feasible, he said.
“We found that a warming of 12 degrees Fahrenheit would cause some areas of the world to surpass the wet-bulb temperature limit, and a 21-degree warming would put half of the world’s population in an uninhabitable environment,” Huber said. “When it comes to evaluating the risk of carbon emissions, such worst-case scenarios need to be taken into account. It’s the difference between a game of roulette and playing Russian roulette with a pistol. Sometimes the stakes are too high, even if there is only a small chance of losing.”
Steven Sherwood, the professor at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia, who is the paper’s lead author, said prolonged wet-bulb temperatures above 95 degrees would be intolerable after a matter of hours.
“The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan,” Sherwood said. “Although we are very unlikely to reach such temperatures this century, they could happen in the next.”
Humans at rest generate about 100 watts of energy from metabolic activity. Wet-bulb temperature estimates provide upper limits on the ability of people to cool themselves by sweating and otherwise dissipating this heat, he said. In order for the heat dissipation process to work, the surrounding air must be cooler than the skin, which must be cooler than the core body temperature. The cooler skin is then able to absorb excess heat from the core and release it into the environment. If the wet-bulb temperature is warmer than the temperature of the skin, metabolic heat cannot be released and potentially dangerous overheating can ensue depending on the magnitude and duration of the heat stress.
The National Science Foundation-funded research investigated the long-term implications of sustained greenhouse gas emissions on climate extremes. The team used climate models to compare the peak wet-bulb temperatures to the global temperatures for various climate simulations and found that the peak wet-bulb temperature rises approximately 1 degree Centigrade for every degree Centigrade increase in tropical mean temperature.
Huber did the climate modeling on supercomputers operated by Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), Purdue’s central information technology organization. Sherwood performed the wet-bulb calculations.
“These temperatures haven’t been seen during the existence of hominids, but they did occur about 50 million years ago, and it is a legitimate possibility that the Earth could see such temperatures again,” Huber said. “If we consider these worst-case scenarios early enough, perhaps we can do something to address the risk through mitigation or new technological advancements that will allow us to adapt.”
Writers: Elizabeth K. Gardner, 765-494-2081, ekgardner@purdue.edu
Greg Kline, 765-494-8167, gkline@purdue.edu
Sources: Matthew Huber, 765-494-9531, huberm@purdue.edu
Steven Sherwood, +61 (2) 9385 8960, s.sherwood@unsw.edu.au
Related Web site:
Matthew Huber’s Climate Dynamics Prediction Laboratory
ABSTRACT
An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress
Steven C. Sherwood, Matthew Huber
Despite the uncertainty in future climate change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature Tw, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. Tw never exceeds 31C. Any exceedence of 35C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11-12C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.
“12 degrees warmer Celsius”
“Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming”
I haven’t stopped laughing.
Didn’t Purdue used to be a decent school?
A scary, nightmarish ‘what if’ Venus heat scenario.
Great for Hollywood. Forget Monster Horror movies, say hello to Manster Horror movies.
Right now, the Earth does not show this. For the N. Hemisphere, below normal temps from China/Eastern Siberia all the way across the Pacific to the US, most of Canada, half of the N. Atlantic and into Europe proper. Most of S. America. and a good portion of central/north Africa, Indochina as well all forecast below normal.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp5.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp10.html
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp8.html
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
Venus-like conditions on Earth? Not today, anyway.
My my, such certainty. Did they give us some probabilities, like the IPCC does?
Mind if I laugh now?
Well, if you truly believed in the Great God CO2, temperatures ‘could’ exceed a certain limit, and while these temperatures have not been seen in the last 3 – 5 million years -age of hominoids – they could. They really really could, if you twisted those inputs into a climate model really hard and wished upon a star and set parameters not seen for 50 million years and then took the 6 sigma extremes in several hundred runs. I certainly do not deny that a climate model ‘could’ show that. Problem is, that even the IPCC in its glory days never thought this was plausible.
I think this group failed to ask about the effects of a similar but negative temperature extreme – say one that parked 2 km of ice over Europe and North America, but that would require a dollop of common sense, logic and reasoning. Colour me unimpressed, unconvinced and an unbeliever in the Great God CO2.
Hey Sherwood!
No time for any more simulations now! Sell your computer and emigrate north!
Its worst case!
Its imminent!
Its robust!
go, go, go!
“”The team used climate models to compare the peak wet-bulb temperatures to the global temperatures for various climate simulations and found that the peak wet-bulb temperature rises approximately 1 degree Centigrade for every degree Centigrade increase in tropical mean temperature.””
Wet bulb temperatures are the dew point of the air, no more no less.
Due to rapid convection and resulting downpours, like we had in Memphis this last week, way before the dew point gets any where near what, these faulty models conjure up, it just can’t happen unless we suspend the laws of thermodynamics and normal convective trends as evening comes and the atmospheric temps drops below this high dew point, as it swings 15F to 25F degrees from day to night. Insuring that the high levels of moisture ( suggested in the models output) cannot in reality exist in large areas or for long periods of time.
They hope the “Man on the street” will be ignorant enough to not know that “dew point = wet bulb temp”. Most farmers still have wet / dry bulb thermometers tacked to a sturdy barn wall some where to figure when to test cut wheat, or use with the barometer to know when to cut hay, plant seeds, and cultivate.
This is just another fictitious way of presenting unreal data, so it will sound possible and scary (to the supposed ignorant masses). When are they going to realize the general public, either knows at least as much as they (the team) do and most of the time more, some times a whole lot more.
Willis’ thermostatic moisture balance mechanism will have done itz job way before “Wet bulb temps” rise above the night time surface lows, having rained out the days before when elevated by convective heating to cloud forming heights where the temperatures are close to freezing, giving rise to rapid precipitation events like we had this last week. Flash floods are more of a possible outcome of “high wet bulb temps”, than a build up to life threatening excess humidity.
In Tennessee and Kentucky nobody died of the heat and humidity before the rains.
“…could be exceeded for the first time in human history”
Oh no, it’s worse than we thought… again.
How do they come up with this drivel. My respect for universities abates by the day.
That’s nothing. In a few billion years or so the sun will expand to engulf the earth. Now That’s REAL global warming.
“The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan,” Sherwood said.
I think It’s at this point that the person should stop being silly and go inside into the airconditioning, and put some pants on for gods sake.
And these “scientists” get paid for this kind of stuff? This is what we COULD expect in coming centuries?
I’ve just run my computer programme (for free!) and it tells me I COULD make mad, passionate love to Gwyneth Paltrow tonight!
Don’t think she needs to worry too much, though 🙁
This is what happens when you educate people beyond their intelligence and then give them computers to help them think! GIGO
My BS detector just pegged, bent the needle, and scared my budgie to death when it went off. My instinct says the atmosphere can’t hold that much water without forming mammoth circulation cells that will move heat into space by the teraBTU. Besides, that water has to be in the ocean so it can give Big Al his fabulous 20 meter sea level rise. It’s already spoken for.
*groan* “Bad wording” headache coming on…
The surrounding air can be warmer than the skin, what matters is the humidity is less than 100% so evaporation can take place.
Because as we all know the human body is a homogeneous lump of gelatinous material with the core heat transferring to the outer layers. Sorry, that’s not how it works, we have an active pumping system moving a working fluid that continuously circulates the heat. Plus we also frequently shed heat during respiration, which somehow is not mentioned. Do you think they worried about dogs overheating due to not enough heat being removed by sweating?
It would have been far simpler and more realistic to check out the temperatures and humidities to which humans have adjusted in tropical rain forests. Of course such an obvious study would have missed out on climate change research grants.
The west coast will still be comfortable…
Heat… humidity… now add wind in there and the earth will turn into a convection oven! This is great, those pesky huMann beings will roast faster.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but growing up in south florida, I recall many of days with temps well over 95 and humity levels.. well they are always high. I played all sorts of sports and don’t recall dropping dead from heat.
Besides, since when is 12 or omfg 25 degrees a “reasonable” estimate?? Even the ipcc isn’t predicting that.
I know I know, but somebody was bound to say it …
“It’s worse than we thought!”
Sorry.
Lemme see here… fifty million years ago, the dinosaurs had left and what had replaced them as the major actors on center stage. Why, mammals, I believe…
What a bunch of lightweights.
It’s so humid here in Houston, we get dew on the grill when we barbeque brisket.
You gotta give them credit for the sheer brass of their imaginary PlayStation worlds.
Outrageous! And zero mention of the fact that high humidity, by definition, requires much more heat input to raise temperature than does low humidity. That’s why the temperature in Houston rarely exceeds 100 F when temperatures in west Texas are 115 F or more (the west Texas record was 120 F in 1936.)
21 F greater than 2007! 121 F (plus) just isn’t going to happen in Houston. (Besides, we have air conditioning and stay indoors when it gets hot 🙂
When will the nonsense stop?
There you have it, brought to you under the auspices of climate science, yet another demonstration of the incredible depths of stupidity to which mankind is capable of sinking.
Maybe I’d best get a set of tarot cards to find out what the future holds for me.
Can’t do much worse than all the computer models which were in complete agreement that we were going to have a very soggy Sunday here in Bufffalo, except … nary a drop, till this Tuesday morning’s stray thunderstorm woke me with a clap of thunder and a need to reset a couple digital clocks. And Monday morning we got yet another dose of the predictive powers of these climate high priests, when they once again warned of dense fog, after the area was socked in. (Psssst … guys – when the lake’s temp is in the mid-40’s and the air moving over that large body of water has a dew point in the mid-50’s, you don’t need to wait for a computer model to tell you about the potential for fog forming downwind. Heck, you might even beat the computer!! Now there’s a shocking thought for you. Having a thought without a computer model telling you what to think.)
And then these con artists try to attack the mark by claiming that their climate forecasts (aka projections) differ from weather forecasts. Son — your climate is a sum of thirty years of weather and if you keep getting your weather forecasts wrong, your climate models aren’t too far behind.
Or we can listen to some really smart guys, like Dr. S. Hawking, whose latest rant was to warn about contacting ET, that they might swarm us like locusts and strip the planet of resources … oh wait, I’m sorry, that story’s already been done by Hollywood about 14 years ago — it was called Independence Day.
The scariest aspect to this article is that there are ignorant dolts out there that will take these computer modeled scenarios as real predictive data. Too many of them will not have heard, nor understand, the scientific axiom: All computer models are wrong; some are useful.
And what did they mean by “for the first time in human history.” When, in their minds, did human history begin — with the first appearance of anatomically modern humans around 195,000 ybp; with the advent of agriculture 8,000 years ago? The former period encompasses sea level swings of 130 m. Seems humans have been rather adaptable to endure such climate variation.
I’d love to have an opportunity to debate these authors and explore their general knowledge of the paleoclimate.
Our local steam room runs at 150 F, and humidity of 80% and so far as I know nobody has died of this ‘massive heat stress’!
I suggest we stick Huber and his mates in a room set at the temperature/humidity he suggests is possible for a few hours and monitor how they respond. Although I suspect they’d rather believe in their failed models, rather than doing a real experiment which could falsify their result?
This report is cargo cult science at its best!
Some places already reach these wet bulb conditions. I’ve gone jogging in Houston on hot/humid summer days when the ground level ozone was allegedly at “dangerous” levels. Ditto for Dallas, Washington, DC, and New York City. It didn’t hurt me one bit.
Isn’t the web bulb temperature the same as the “real feel” temperature on Accuweather?
This isn’t even junk science it is junk modeling. Simply propaganda based on unreliable models and already falsified hypothesis. I guess if you have super computer time being paid for by someone else you can do about anything. That does not mean it is credible. Perhaps they should use that time to do something useful like create avatars and play sim city.
What utter dross! The fools involved in churning out this alarmism for grant dollars might learn something if they took the case off their super computer, instead of feeding garbage into it. The heat sink would probably include a component called a vapor / condensate heat pipe. Taking the time to learn how this component moves heat could enlighten these fear mongers for hire about the role of water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere. Of course it may be asking too much for a professor of Post Normal Climate Science to take an interest in real world physics.
Comparing these two maps, it could be concluded that the W & NW Europe are heading for a cold summer and onwards.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/images/factors/arc_clm.jpg
Quote: “This is because the hottest areas normally have low humidity, like the ‘dry heat’ referred to in Arizona.”
Errrr… are we sure this isn’t a parody article? Ok, probably not, but that was my first thought upon seeing the above.
The fact is that “it’s a dry heat!” is both a slogan of a Phoenix area tourisim campaign from years ago, and as a result, an instant gag line here in Arizona. Why? Because it’s such a glaring lie. (hrrrm, much akin to AGW…)
The deserts of Arizona (Where I live in AZ we had snow last week, so its not all desert) does indeed have hot, dry summers, for about 20 days. Then it starts to get humid, more and more as the days pass. We call it “Monsoon season”, and by around July 4th, it’s so humid that we have freqent thunderstorms, sometimes daily. The humidity drops the temperatures a bit, so it rarely gets above 115 when very humid (Phoenix’s record day, 122, was a true dry heat. I lived there then, and I don’t care if it was dry, it was HOT)
Anything over 110 when it’s a high humidity day is downright miserable, and Monsoon season often lasts until early September. So, in a nutshell, that’s why “it’s a dry heat” will cause most Arizonans to snicker.
A strong contender for the Alarmist Prat of the Year award…
# kwik says:
# May 4, 2010 at 10:36 pm
# Hey Sherwood!
# No time for any more simulations now! Sell your computer and emigrate north!
Typical NH bias – Sherwood should flee south!
Gosh, why stop at 21 degrees, lest aim for 50. The first to die will be the warmists then we’ll die laughing at them – about 50 years later.
This is Prof Sherwood’s notion of risk management (from an interview with the Australian ABC)
“When you’re planning sensibly for anything you plan for the worst case scenario”.
In the real world we manage risk according to ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Practical), accepting that we can’t eliminate risk entirely, and then there’s the world of academia where risk is managed on the Panic Principal. Give me a break!
What’s known as tightening the screw.
50 million years ago? That was during the Eocene Thermal Maximum right?
But there where two major things different then, the atlantic ocean stood in direct connection with the pacific ocean because the panama landbridge had not yet formed and the drake passage was still closed and thereby preventing the thermal isolation of Antarctica.
What we also see in that period is that life in the sea did suffer, but on land it is a different story, in fact during this time species like horses, primates and even toed mammals wich would result in pigs, hippo’s, camels, deer, giraffes, pronghorn, antelopes, sheep and goats made a rapid appearance on this planet, evolution at a breakneck speed.
The Eocene Thermal Maximum gave the final boost for mammals as the new dominant species during the 10 million years when nature experimented with new and old species after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
I doubt it that where would be around here in this time if it was not for the Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago. Mammals where already there but evolution could have taken another route eventually never giving rise to humanoids.
And for Independence day, on the science it was bad on huge scale, but damn it was entertaining.
The dream goes on. These folk are completely out of touch with reality. Even the IPCC couldn’t go above 7ºC and for that they had to multiply expectable fossil fuel reserves by 4.
If you’ve ever spent a winter in West Lafayette, you’d know why the esteemed Professor thinks that anything over 75F is hot. To me, anything under 80F means turning the heat on.
It thier ‘worse than we thought’ thinking gets any worse, we’re going to see headlines proclaiming renowned GCM scientists bursting into flames. Spontaneous AGW Alarmist Combustion Syndrome = SPAGWACS.
I knew there would be a “puter” model somewhere in this tripe! WAGTD! What would be more refreshing & even lend more credence to it all IMHO, would be for one or two models to contradict the mantra from time to time, suggesting the balance of evidence points towards doom & gloom. Trouble is, they have all lost the plot & we can only expect doomsday scenarios every time! Come you AGWers, put your thinking caps on, must try harder!
Mike McMillan says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:22 pm
What a bunch of lightweights.
It’s so humid here in Houston, we get dew on the grill when we barbeque brisket
Sorry to be Mr Picky, but it’s spelt, “barbecue”! :-))
I’ve been in these conditions, and I am here to tell the tale. I recall extremely well climbing the strairs to the upper floor in Victoria Station in Bombay (as it was then) in July IIRC. The temperature was in the mid to high 30’s, and the humidity seemed to be over 100%, although I’d say it was 99% (and I know exactly what 99% humidity is – we used to get that every day in North Queensland in the wet season).
I had to stop half-way to get my breath, as it is a 2 storey climb and my rucksack weighed about 30 Kgs, but I definitely did not die. I’d have noticed that.
COULD BE is not hard science. It’s speculative science.
At what point will climate scientists stop being COULD BE scientists and start to be WHAT ACTUALLY IS scientists?
Richard Feynman makes this point. He’s interested in what actually IS rather than the any number of COULD BE’s that will sting you every time.
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2010/02/19/cargo-cult-science-a-lesson-from-richard-feynman-for-scientists-of-today-to-learn/
It’s time to bring some responsible predictions into climate science. Prosecute those that make nightmare gore scenarios for yelling fire in crowded venues. It’s illegal in most jurisdictions to yell fire. Maybe even the threat of a criminal action will get them to clean up their act? Nah… not likely, they are too in love with soothsaying gore.
Net warming between 1945-2010, according to HadCRUT is 0.3 deg C. What is the physical mechanism, which will deliver 12 deg C warming in the future?
I am tempted to use the attached e-mail of the author.
Somebody must have sensed that the sheep are no longer being alarmed by invocation of rising sea levels (relocate), droughts (build reservoirs), hurricanes (build better housing), floods (build better drains) or plagues (just see your doctor).
So “somebody” has come up with a final solution. If they can somehow manufacture a scenario where human existence, the very ability of the human body to function, are stopped working by the immutable laws of physics, then they have invented the doomsday weapon of global warming hysteria.
The fact that the GATA required to make this physics work has never occurred in the history of life on earth seems immaterial to the publishers of this paper. They had the idea anyway, so the next logical step was to see if by pumping the correct models with as much GHG as possible – models built with steroidal levels of positive feedbacks – and run them long enough into the future, they could get it to spit out the sacred number they dreamt of.
So sad. Science is being reduced to no more than what if scenarios.
These guys are straining at the upper limits of credibility; my BS meter is hard against the ‘maximum’ stop and my ribs are beginning to ache with laughter. Why have this group of ‘scientists’ indulged themselves in this silly exercise?
I remember one road trip when we stopped at Gulfport Mississippi in August by the Gulf of Mexico… Got out of the car into 99 F air temps and had instant heavy condensation of dew on me. The A/C had my skin temp about 80 F and 99 F at 99% or so humidity made me a wet condensation surface. (We were all of about 20 yards from the water…)
So of course, we all got out of the car and went swimming. Now that’s 100 % humidity! And the water, especially in the shallows, was not much cooler(!). Not exactly my favorite pastime, but livable.
BTW, in an earlier life I worked in a peach cannery stacking boxes of peaches. At times in my home town it was “110 in the shade and there aint no shade”… so you can imagine it was hot in the warehouse. (NO A/C. In fact, the fork lifts would blow hot air on you from their radiators and the cans from the cookers were in the overheads cooling down from 200 F or so.. ) So, it was “way hot” in their and pretty humid some times. One shift we averaged over 400 cases per hour for our line (one guy stacking…) of about 50 lbs / case. Yeah, you sweat… Don’t remember dying from it…
Oh, one of the other “good jobs” in farm country was working at the prune dryer. You would move around large racks of prunes in the oven as they dried. It was, IIRC, 165 F or so in the oven. It was a “good job” because you only worked every other 20 minutes… It was 20 minutes in the oven, 20 minutes recovering. And as you might guess, a load of fresh prunes is kind of wet…
Wonder what they would say about survival in that environment? …
And IIRC there a lot of deep mining operations with humidity near saturation and temps up in the 100+ F range.
Somehow I think they are just making stuff up.
(Oh, and to the commenter about Florida: Yeah, “existence proof” comes to mind. Soon as it gets too hot, this boat load of rain gets dumped and it cools off. Almost like there was some kind of convective feedback loop in operation… Hot -> Humid -> convection -> downpour -> cooler… )
and then the ice age comes ….
The problem is that ‘the computer models’ that these Purdue University climate ‘scientists’ used do not model the hydrologic cycle correctly and show positive feedback to CO2 increases (without limit). This is actually out of date even by NCAR and others. There is now a team of researchers – the “Climate Process Team on Low-Latitude Cloud Feedbacks on Climate Sensitivity (cloud CPT)” that are actually trying to model the hydrologic cycle rather than use a parameter approach based on assumptions. They have found that cloud feedback is strongly negative and that the atmosphere is NOT as sensitive as the previous models claim. See their paper here .
Perhaps Purdue need to ensure that their researchers carry out a full literature survey and keep up to date with research in their field.? Although that would result in less publicity, Purdue would at least still be seen as a serious research establishment.
UK Sceptic said on May 5, 2010 at 12:22 am:
Here’s another. I found this short Discovery News article while searching for something related. Checked Tips & Notes and found this longer article about the new study.
Okay, for a long time now here on WUWT it’s been pointed out how plants benefit from increased CO2 levels. An interesting effect, with more CO2 the plants not only grow larger but can do so with less water.
The new research: Since they will use less water, they will release less water to the atmosphere, which will increase warming. Oh look, they’ve discovered a positive feedback mechanism showing how dangerous CO2 is, that also counters a popular argument for why more CO2 would be beneficial!
Please, pretty please, let there be a new post here on WUWT about that paper. It deserves its own post where we can tear it apart completely and at length, rather than just slip in a few comments at this post about another act of not-really-scientific idiocy and madness.
P.F. says:
“And what did they mean by “for the first time in human history.” When, in their minds, did human history begin”
Maybe just over 4,000 years ago, just after the Adam.
Australia’s AGW megaphone, the ABC (Alarmist Bull Crap), will fast track this story for sure. Catalyst, one of the ABC’s junk climate science friendly programs, may be the one to run it.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2886106.htm
“The highest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded were in places like Saudi Arabia near the coast where winds occasionally bring extremely hot, humid ocean air over hot land leading to unbearably stifling conditions, which fortunately are short-lived today.””
Does anyone know what the number of deaths were on these “short-lived” “wet-bulb” days? If “short-lived” is say 2 hours then wouldn’t people have dropped like flies? Just askin.’
Here in southern Minnesota we not only have the privilege of enjoying stretches of winter weather of -20 to-30F, but it’s balanced out by July and August days of 90 to 100F with 80-90% RH, although in recent years the range seems to have narrowed. Having busted my hump through quite a number of those 90 90 days, I can attest they are nothing you would wish for, and they are certainly at least potentially deadly. But having visited Florida in summer, a large strategic error in planning, I think the essential point of this study is utter hogwash.
They claim wet bulb temperatures never exceed 31C. By my reconning that’s 100F @88% RH, hard to imagine that doesn’t get surpassed fairly regularly already.
Here’s a fascinating site on the weather & temperature and effects on human physiology – with an emphasis on sports:
http://www.zunis.org/how_hot_is_hot_how_safe_is_safe.htm
Be sure to hit ‘next page’ at the bottom of each page to reach some interesting data, including info about the effects of UHI on sports.
Its vodoo science, and its been allowed into PNAS, that is the most amazing fact!
We were too hasty in criticising Pachauri, he was correct, there is a lot of vodoo science about.
It’s a stupid fallacy to think that we’be using fossil fuels for that long regardless of the arguments and activists. We’ve been on the road to decarbonisation since the dawn of history, going from burning hay (more cabron atoms) to the nuclear power.
In a century or so, as long as government gets out of the way and consumers demand more energy, we’ll either have fusion power or corporations will have massive heat recievers orbiting close to the sun which will transmit power across space from one transmitter to another until they reach Earth.
And there’s so much more to discover – we might even be stealing energy away from parallel dimensions where energy is exists but is of no use to anyone there because they are devoid of lifeforms.
Iwas on an Shell oiltanker in kuwait in the early 1950’s. This was the time of of an uprising in Iran which closed Iranian oil fields and ports. BP , who at that time had a monopoly on Iranian oil shipping, could not get their tankers into Abadan and they were all anchored off the coast of Kuwait. They had, when we arrived, been there several weeks. The point of this story is, that during all that time and whilst we were there for several days, the temperature was over 100F and the humidity was also extremely high so that the whole area was in a thick mist 24hrs a day. Although there were reports of several cases of heat exhaustion, our pumpman was one of them, there were no deaths reported. The only precautionary treatment prescribed that I remember was an increased dosage of salt tablets per day. Perhaps someone out there has some records of this Gulf phenomena of high temperatures combined with very high humidity. I also think that these conditions also currently exist in tropical rainforests around the world in which indigenous peoples survive quite happily so why the scaremongering?
Fahrenheit? Who uses Fahrenheit?
If this research does show anything, it must be the following:
1. Using models you can get any situation you could dream of. The same model can be used to show that CO2 would fall down as snow, like it happens on Mars in winter.
2. This kind of crap is now even accepted for publication in PNAS. It is the most striking evidence of how corrupt the peer-review process has become.
The Journal of Irreproducible Results would not accept it. But that may have to do with the fact that any simulation is reproducible…
This is a very good example of PlayStation science, or how to produce papers playing with electronic gadgets without even lookig at their meaning.
A prerequisite for excessive warming in higher CO2 concentrations is that relative humidity (RH) remains constant, otherwise CO2 alone cannot produce enough radiative forcing. Constant RH implies higher water vapor in the atmosphere.
Thus, lets check some of the “non-livable” regions of the future, like Toumbuctu in Mali, in the Saharan desert, Asswan in Egipt, or Central Australia. In these regions wet bulb maximum temperature would reach 40°C. Current mean relative humidity is 25-35% (this is mean values, the actual value is smaller when they reach the maximum recorded temperatures). The important thing here is that the lowest the RH, the highest the actual air temperature must be to reach a given value of wet bulb temperature. Wet bulb T is defined as “the temperature an air parcel would have if cooled adiabatically to saturation at constant pressure by evaporation of water into it, all latent heat being supplied by the parcel.” If we have to cool the actual air parcel and it has low RH we must cool it a lot to reach saturation. That means that for a very high wet bulb temperature with low RH, the actual air T should be extremely high.
Well, a simple calculation shows that to reach 40C wet bulb temperature in Toumbuctu or Asswan with 35% RH, the air temperature should be about 58°C, that is 18°C higher than the atual maximum values. Another interesting thing is that in that situation there would be condensation every night following the current daily temperature fluctuation. The amount of water from that condensation would transform the Sahara in a very nice garden. Remember that the same RH at higher temperatures means much more water vapour content in the air.
Not to mention the problem of finding the source of water for the increased humidity in the Sahara.
Can’t wait to see the actual paper and methodology…..
This reminds me a very good book by Vit Klemes, it was about hydrology, but it is equally applicable to climatology. The title of the book: “Common sense and other heresies”
Alan the Brit says:
May 5, 2010 at 1:40 am
It’s so humid here in Houston, we get dew on the grill when we barbeque brisket
Sorry to be Mr Picky, but it’s spelt, “barbecue”! :-))
Alan you are wrong, both spellings are acceptable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue
[BBQ, anyone? ~dbs]
It takes about 3 to 6 weeks to acclimate to significant changes in climate. Ask any soldier who spent time in Vietnam.
“While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change central estimates of business-as-usual warming by 2100 are seven degrees Fahrenheit, eventual warming of 25 degrees is feasible, he said.”
Right. And the eventual sprouting of wings and flying of pigs is feasible as well. I have computer models which prove it. That’ll be a $million bucks please.
Uh, their emails are provided. Now, for all those who have a much more scientific background than me, and who can refute their (clearly bonkers) scenarios, can you please contact them and let them know?
The rest of us, chill out. And please don’t harass these folks just because you now know their emails. (On second thoughts, be alert to Warmists, masquerading as sceptics, crapping on them just to get us a bad name.)
“The study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios”
Of course they didn’t. Who would look at a study where the likelihood was zero.
I didn’t bother to read any further.
Somewhere in my files I have a paper graph trace of my rectal body temperature in excess of 103 deg F for more than 4 hours, peak at 104.5, caused by infection of unknown origin. That was in Sydney, Winter 1983, not far from Uni of NSW.
BTW, the old-fashioned Scots nurse mumbling “Starve a cold, feed a fever” kept on adding more blankets. The external RH & temperature were governed by the hospital air conditioner. The latter part of the 8 hours above 100 deg F was in Intensive Care Unit in front of fans with wet towels draped over my naked skin. I lived. But it might have affected my mind. my mind. my mind. my mind.
Does this match up with the models?
These people are paid
governmenttax payers’ money to produce government propaganda. Do you think they might just have a little self-interest in producing such nonsense?Well,
I think it is really important for all of you to stop laughing at this.
My Great, great, great Uncle Earl graduated from Purdue in Civil Engineering.
He helped build railroads across Central and South America.
He helped advance civilisation. Like the route from Rio to Recife.
So, please stop laughing at Purdue!
Please don`t start stealing energy from my dimension,we would have to start burning magnetism to keep the thrittles kelouming…and we all know what that would lead to.
According to GISS, the globe has warmed less than 1C during the last 120 years.
It is NOT a legitimate possibility that this kind of warming will happen. They take an extreme scenario and then say it is a possibility when it is far outside even the IPCC predictions. Alarmism at its best!
When will they stop wasting our money?
Their goal is simply to alarm people.
Let’s all get worried that the plants will evolve rapidly to produce toxins specific for killing humans – a kind of vegetative revenge. Thus, we need to either marry a plant (everybody will have their own plant to nurture and protect) or wipe them all out in self defense. We will also have to find some other food source (meat is out) to make the plants happy, of it’s not too late. Better safe than sorry.
It is illegitimate for them NOT to (also) examine the effects of a 12 deg C DROP in temperature. That’s actually much more likely considering that we are overdue for an ice age and that the warm period peaks have been declining since the Holocene Optimum.
Idiots, all of them – an idiot defined as one who does not know what is going on around him/her.
Good grief
Juraj V: May 5, 2010 at 1:51 am
Net warming between 1945-2010, according to HadCRUT is 0.3 deg C. What is the physical mechanism, which will deliver 12 deg C warming in the future?
——————-
Positive CO2 feedback!!! Of course the fact that we’re around today despite CO2 levels and temperatures in geological history exceeding those of today is down to the knife-edge balance of solar output (30% less, but don’t ask me for evidence), water /ice /vapour albedo, oceanic coverage, volcanic ash and dinosaur gas which for some inexplicable reason managed to cancel out each other’s effects smoothly and continuously over time to ensure earth’s survival. Of course, as modern CO2 is man made as opposed to natural, most of the previously moderating factors have now become positive feedbacks instead. It’s the only way to account for what the models tell us..
“Fahrenheit? Who uses Fahrenheit?”
many of us colonials still have a fondness for it. Saying “wow! It’s a hundred degrees!” conveys is a much more satisfying way of saying “damn, it’s hot!” than “I can’t believe it’s 38 degrees out today!” does.
Regarding the original article, I think this is much more of a Dim Bulb controversy than a wet bulb one.
This is garbage research at its highest. I can’t tell you how many ways this pile of horse apples flies in the face of every tenet of the scientific method. That we follow such a method (or did at one time) testifies to the history of whence it came. We have truly cycled back to the days of faith in devils, angels, and holy writ. If this is not stopped where it stands, we may yet get to experience the dark ages again.
Penance will no longer be the recitation of three Hail Mary’s and one Our Father. It will be based on how much money you must give up to pay for your sins. A seat in the centers of faith will be based on how much sweet talking boot licking you can cram into a day along with coinage from your purse. Any voice that is raised in opposition to the faithful will be silenced. And…(pause to ponder)…wait a $#%@ minute! This is already happening!
Luís says:
May 5, 2010 at 1:06 am
with a global-mean temperature 12 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than 2007
The dream goes on. These folk are completely out of touch with reality. Even the IPCC couldn’t go above 7ºC and for that they had to multiply expectable fossil fuel reserves by 4.
I agree, I wonder where they think we can get that much CO2 generating fuel from?
Another massively stupid study which denies a seemingly endless amount of realities. From the human respiration process to the human condition worldwide. What?, suddenly we’ll be without the ability to find shelter. Perhaps, they didn’t know that there already exists climate conditions in both extremes in which people perish if they don’t think. To be charitable, perhaps unmentioned yet critical to the findings is the dumbing down of people worldwide. Given this study, I see that it is already happening, apparently starting with academia. Soon, humanity will be too stupid to find shelter when necessary and combined with the sharply increasing price of various energy sources, humanity, thanks to insidious windmills and food sourced ethanol blends, will lack the intelligence and substance to find shelter and cool themselves. We won’t know what shade is! Just a guess, but I think the Tree of Liberty will be re-watered before this occurs.
High Wet Bulb Temps are not ‘new’ to human beings. The fiction this overpaid ‘research’ addresses is also not new. The remedy is in a substance that is normally available to animals during such periods, water. Yes, people can die if they don’t take in enough water during high wet bulb temp periods, whether this be 1 day or whatever. The human body is a fantastic machine, if people take care of their body, their body will take care of them. If you ever find yourself in such conditions the secret is water, drink up, drink frequently. If you find that while drinking so mucho water that your bladder is always empty, your body has shifted from that form of excretion to the persperation cooling mode –don’t worry about it. What can people do when they’re in such weather? Not a lot. Not initially. But the longer you’re conditioned to the conditions, the better you’re able to deal with those conditions. Life’s a beach! Sometimes its not too pleasent.
PS: During “Black Flag Days”, as they say in the military, you also won’t eat very much. That’s normal too!
IF i win the lottery i’m buying a S Type Jag.
Researchers find future temperatures COULD exceed livable limits? All of mankind is going to die, and all these guys can come up with is COULD??
We need something definitive here, and we need it now. We need to hire the best astrologers to do the horoscope for the earth and know with a far greater degree of certainty what the temperature is going to be.
Duke University, you gave it your best shot, but we need to bring back Linda Goodman.
John Maddox, publisher emeritus of “Nature” magazine would have condemned this sort of ridiculous study. In fact, he already did:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday_pr.html
His book, “The Doomsday Syndrome” is a classic. It is available on line:
http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Syndrome-John-Royden-Maddox/dp/0070394288
Poor reporting. Using both Fahrenheit and “Centigrade” indicates either ignorance or deliberate obfuscation.
And choosing a worst-case scenario of possible climate that hasn’t occurred for 50 million years while ignoring one that has only been 15 thousand years gone is weird.
Ah well, such is climate science, keep those models coming.
I am assuming none of these bozos have ever been to Columbia, S.C. where it regularly tops 90% RH in the summertime. And yes I have been to Houston and Columbia is substantially more uncomfortable. BTW folks barbecue requires pork.
Tell that to Lewiston, Idaho. They are not used to cold, they are used to hot. Alas, they are under a freeze warning at the moment. My stepmom’s vegetable garden, filled with appropriate zonal new plants not made to withstand such temperatures this late in the growing season, will not survive. The toms will die before blooming. The lettuce will wilt. Even the cool season crops will not make it. And very likely every spring wheat field (there are many, many acres) will end up being plowed under before the fields even get to look like something other than a large golf course.
And now, Pendleton is under a winter storm watch. Yep. We could get snow on the ground this week. It will be quite amusing to watch teenagers waiting at the bus stops shivering in their flipflops, tank tops, and short short shorts.
Ian W : “There is now a team of researchers – the “Climate Process Team on Low-Latitude Cloud Feedbacks on Climate Sensitivity (cloud CPT)” that are actually trying to model the hydrologic cycle rather than use a parameter approach based on assumptions. They have found that cloud feedback is strongly negative and that the atmosphere is NOT as sensitive as the previous models claim.”
Much as I would like to believe their findings, it seems that this is yet another computer model whose results have not been tested against the real world. Until that has been done successfully, we should treat its results – and the results from all other climate models – as unreliable. To do otherwise is unscientific.
So let’s see…These catastrophic results won’t happen this century, but could maybe possibly eventually happen in the next century, or up to 190 years from now. I wonder if they can predict the weather for next week?
As a Purdue grad, I find this article embarrassing.
It is about as sensible as saying ” If the whole world catches on fire, we might all die”. True, but that’s not going to happen, or if it does , the odds are going to be next to none. So who cares. This is perhaps the single worst alarmist article I have ever seen.
The first thing that went thru Anthonys mind was “the edge of wetness.”
The first thing that went thru my mind was “in your wet dreams”
Wow! As Lord Monckton would say: A new theory from the “Bedwetters”!.
Interesting.
Seems all AGW scientists ONLY look at the high temp anomalies from warmer climates and somehow forget to balance it with the cold anomalies.
Playing the temperature game, balancing congested stations to very few in cold regions, can give any researcher whatever number they want to achieve for their theories.
Especially when FORECASTING.
No doubt the grants to these BOYS will keep rolling in for years.
The danger is politicians can use this garbage science for policy changes that certain companies can capitalize on. Am I right, AL???
The Government Sponsered Entities, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, managed to create a gigantic market for “bad paper” by aggressively buying almost as much of it as possible, thus setting the ground zero loan originators on course to a frenzy of “lending money to anybody and everybody” at rediculously low rates of interest, at least initially. Finally the sh** hit the fan, and here we are.
Now Government Sponsered Science is buying a lot of “bad science paper”. What could possibly go wrong?
In their next scenario, they will show what happens when the moon falls on the earth. Both scenarios have equal probability.
This is a good example of subjective research using what-if computer models without understanding the realities of the physical processes that we observe as weather. A rise in CO2 does not cause a rise in dew point temperture. Conversely, dew point is a factor in controlling the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Clouds form when adiabatic cooling of rising water vapor lowers to the dew point. Cold water droplets absorb CO2, and rain returns it to the oceans from which it came. However, some clouds tower into freezing temperatures where CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. This process is repeated many times as CO2 is carried by atmospheric water from it’s source near the equator to it’s eventual sink in cold polar waters. The primary driving force being the temperature difference between the two sea surfaces.
What is a “reasonable worst case scenario”?
This is the taliban wing of AGW, resorting to a collective death threat to promote their agenda, coyly phrased as “mitigation”. The science needless to say is total snip.
They have spent too much time smoking pot in the sauna!
Nobody can take this garbage seriously!
I remember spending 2 nights at the Baja Anchicaya hydro oroject about 8 years ago. This is a project on the Pacific vertiente.
Don’t remember elevation (I could look it up). It was, however, very hot and very humid. When I woke in the morning it was already 30 deg C and there was a cm of condensate on the floor.
Amazingly, I didn’t die.
Hey Mike, Thumbs Up!
And, being a simple red neck engineer, I don’t care how it’s spelled!
**********************
Mike McMillan says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:22 pm
What a bunch of lightweights.
It’s so humid here in Houston, we get dew on the grill when we barbeque brisket
***************************
Steamboat Jack
Jon Jewett’s evil twin
Richard Holle says:
May 4, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Spot on, raining here too funnily enough! Anyone else had rain in the last week? It was so dry through April, the ground was cracking.
Wet bulb? More like dim bulbs…
All I can say is “wow”.
Purdue used to be a respected institution.
How this even got published is should tell us alot about the “peer review” process. Evidently, even after climategate, completely corrupt peer review still goes on.
“Hey Jack! Here’s some complete GARBAGE that really sounds awful! Make sure it gets in next month’s issue so we can get some more GoreDollars!”
I did think this paper was leading the pack to be the worst paper on climate sensitivity;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/19/insufficient-forcing/#comment-161653
But this Huber and Sherwood one has surged ahead.
Tw never exceeds 31C. Any exceedence of 35C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible.
In what world? I spent a year in +35C (and higher) temperatures and the dew point was within 1C for six of those months and never dropped below +30C for the remaining six. In 2007, I spent June through September in another garden spot where the temperature normally hovered around +40C and the humidity was so high, you couldn’t see farther than a mile.
In neither of those places were people keeling over dead from heatstroke.
Same category as: If my aunt had testicles, she’d be my uncle.
These “scientists” have beclowned themselves. Perhaps we should rename Purdue University as Purdon’t University in their honor. Their death scenario sounds a lot like a typical summer day here in Florida. I’d laugh except they are spending my tax dollars on this garbage.
My guess is grants need to cut drastically.
Steve in SC says:
May 5, 2010 at 5:36 am
Come on guys, let’s use some realistic numbers. It’s fine to poke fun at this
researchspeculation, but at least use data that is relevant. Generally those 90% RHs are in the morning and plummet during the day. We’re much better off looking at air temp, which varies during the day, and dew point, which varies with air mass and much less during the day. Dew points don’t get much about 70F in New England, and I think not much about 75-80 in places like Brownsville TX.100F & 75F dewpoint is only 81 wet bulb. Livable, but you won’t find me living there.
120F & 80 dp is 89, still livable they claim, but not to my Swedish genes.
http://www.4wx.com/wxcalc/dewpoint.php
They should look at the bright side – just think of all the millions of people with cold winters who will stop freezing to death each winter.
The great successes of science from 1800 to the late 20th century gave a mantle of trust to those who practiced it. Since then the charlatans of the environmental movement have used this mantle to cloak their hatred of humanity and their agenda to destroy the great advances that science has brought to our society.
This study is so ludicrous on its face to any who know the basics of science that it boggles the mind how it ever got funded let alone published by the National Academy of Sciences.
I can imagine the advice to policy-makers on the back of this paper…
Stop everyone breathing or we’re all going to die!
Some people will go to great length to get other people to give them money, no matter how ridiculous the how in reality is.
A doctorate is no shield against irrational delusional behavior and fraudsters, educated or not, will always go above and beyond in their hunt for money or fame or fortune or all the above.
DJ Meredith says:
May 5, 2010 at 5:29 am
“We need something definitive here, and we need it now. We need to hire the best astrologers to do the horoscope for the earth and know with a far greater degree of certainty what the temperature is going to be.
“Duke University, you gave it your best shot, but we need to bring back Linda Goodman.”
I thought I was only person left who remembered Linda Goodman. She was actually a very fine, very humorous writer.
Off to the shower, where I will be experiencing 100% humidity at a fairly high temperature. If I don’t survive, you can donate my body to Purdue.
My copy of Roy Spencer’s new book The Great Global Warming Blunder arrived today. It’ll take a few days to read. Roy’s low feedback, non-hysterical climate views will calm my nerves for sure.
The worst part of this is that the research was funded with your tax dollars via the National Academies . It seems as though they will waste our tax dollars on anything that will alarm the folks about global warming. The NAS have been taken over by the radical environmentalists.
but one of global warmings biggest names says is isn’t about mitigation. it’s about Cap N Trade.
Lon Hocker:
May 4, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Your comment trumps anything that anyone can come up with
Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation.
Wherever we find that word, psychology says, there is a deep doubt in he/she who used it about his/her own assertions.
I find this is amusing, having spent 11 years in Indiana, in the northern Fort Wayne area. One of the big crops there was corn, which likes high humidity. I recall many nights in the 70°s (F), lying in bed with no covers, literally pouring sweat from body in spite of a fan on full blast, and no way to cool down. The days were more miserable with temperatures in the 90s and humidity in the 90%s. Purdue used to be in Indiana, if it still is, these folks need to shut off their air conditioning and experience the real world they desire to be prophets in.
rbateman says:
May 4, 2010 at 10:21 pm
To be fair, you would have to admit there was a lot of”red” showing around the world right now if you look at all of the maps.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/clim.html
The jet streams have been very twisted since the 23rd April, and are dumping bits of cold air in certain regions. Needless to say there has been polar warming and ice melt.
“These temperatures haven’t been seen during the existence of hominids, but they did occur about 50 million years ago, and it is a legitimate possibility that the Earth could see such temperatures again,” Huber said. “If we consider these worst-case scenarios early enough, perhaps we can do something to address the risk through mitigation or new technological advancements that will allow us to adapt.”
—–
They should be worrying more about the legitimate possibility their computer model is predicting that taxpayers are going to take their computer away.
What if the paper read like this:
“Reasonable Worst Case scenarios fora global Zombie outbreak could lead to deadly zombie attacks on humans in coming centuries…”
“The zombie study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future zombie outbreak scenarios, but explored the impacts of zombie infection. The challenges presented by the future zombie scenarios are daunting in their scale and severity…”
Would the researchers get funding? Would anyone in the scientific community take the paper seriously?
IMO, same difference.
As dogs don’t perspire, won’t they spontaneously combust when it gets hotter? 🙂
In the good old days, any thesis should be presented before a jury, composed not of “peers” but by professors, then, if them approved it, the student could attain the professional degree.
Having a lot of graduates does not make any country more educated or more developed, but perhaps, more confused. This is what you have behind, interred in your subconscious, while you proclaim yourselves being the epitome of a developed nation, of the human civilization.
It is time now for you to ponder if this is a really “robust”fact or it is just a bedwetter kids’ fantasy.
Wet bulb? More like dim bulbs…
It goes to show that we Aussies have the same variety of STUPID! here too.
I apologise for ours.Too much red cordial maybe?
What’s scary is not that this is a scenario birthed within an academic environment and proposed as a serious possibility. No, what’s scary is that no one turned to the originator(s) of this proposal and said, “Hey, you do know you are certifiably nuts?” And then think of how many smart people encouraged this effort — and paid for it. Obviously again, we see hysterics have gone mainstream.
There’s a group of people who exceed their purported “highest tolerable wet-bulb temperature” for extended durations on a daily basis. They are the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who toiled, with often extreme exertion, in full body armor in the summer heat in the river valleys and deserts of Iraq. I would hazard a guess that the protective gear, long sleeves and trousers guaranteed that they spent a lot of time well above the limits described in the article. Not being able to dress the same way as the locals, their heat stress index numbers would be way higher than that of the people who grew up under those conditions. Yeah, there were heat casualties, but those were not anywhere close to the scale touted in the article.
The authors failed to address the long-demonstrated capacity for homo sapiens to adapt to environmental conditions, be they extreme cold or extreme heat and humidity.
The fact that this paper will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences does not reflect well on the NAS. Not even a little bit. Can we say peer review failure? Sure we can.
@ rbateman (May 4, 2010 at 10:21 pm)
It may not be fair to compare current conditions with what the soothsayers prognosticate for the distant future, but in just 7 weeks the days will start getting shorter again and where I live in Idaho, the forcase low for tomorrow night (one of the few I give any credibility at all) is for 24 degrees F. Our leaves are only half out and our trees could be frost stunted with this–it happened a few decades ago and for that entire summer, the leaves were small and never did grow to full size. Currently whatever fruit is in blossom or even in bugs will be destroyed with this cold weather.
This is in stark contrast to what these “climate scientists” are predicting and my fears are based on what I observe. But you can see their dire need to eliminate the existance of the MWP, since our ancestors survived that period of a warmer earth and even thrived. But “thrived” isn’t allowed in a Warmer’s vocabulary; only scare-mongering and fantasy.
Oops…”forecast”, not “forcase”, and “buds”, not “bugs”….
Totally insane,
According to widely available data, this earth has never had a mean global Temperature that is 12 deg C higher than the present level of about 288 K, anytime in the last 600 million years !
So who funded this moronic research ?
“The study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios, but explored the impacts of warming. ”
So basically the study showed that if it it gets really hot………then it will get really hot.
Two inches of snow this a.m. in La Grande, Ne-Oregon. Arizona CJ-this country is much like Northern Az. Especially the Mogollon Rim., and Flagstaff. Not quite as high though. That said, We’ve had a cold, nasty spring. Been afraid to plant tender stuff as I’ve already zorched a hardy Lilac, and somewhat tender Rose.
Cold Kills not warm. Someone got some grant money….
I wonder who paid for this garbage?
Does this mean we will not grow gills either?
Like Kevin Costner in “Waterworld”.
This is surely shocking news and excellent science.
Yet another computer model based “crisis?” I’m reminded of a TV series where the leading character would say “Well then, would you believe…” I think that these “scientists” are probably affecting average citizens the same way.
Could someone point me to historic wet bulb data for North East Texas (or Houston)? Several years ago, we experienced over 30 days in a row of 100 deg. F (or higher) dry bulb temperatures and it’s usually pretty humid here. I’m just trying to figure out if we should have all been dead if we experienced “a potentially lethal level of heat stress at wet-bulb temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more”. Or maybe we have become acclimated…….
When I was in the Army, they had guidelines on working in a variety of WBGT (wet bulb globe temperature(s)). See https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://chppm-www.apgea.army.mil/doem/pgm34/HIPP/HeatRiskManGuideMar04.pdf . From what I recall, they don’t say that death is imminent, they just say you need to follow their guidelines to make sure you reduce/minimize the potential for heat injuries.
The University of NSW has serious issues regarding climate change.
These people should be ashamed of themselves!!
http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/staff/academic.html
I guess none of these researchers have ever been to Orlando Florida in August. This is a proof principle of survival under the most extreme humidity conditions.
I have prepared a “worst case” model as well. In this worst case, all the melting ice causes the crust to HEAVE upward, shooting some people into outer space.
Then, the crust will give way, and lava will be ejected everywhere. The surface of earth will turn into a boiling cauldron with a temperature of a Trillion degrees. (I checked with Al on the final calculations)
There is only 85% certainty of this outcome. There is still a chance to save mankind if we act NOW. Take only direct flights, recycle, and buy a cloth bag for your groceries.
This is what they produced last December
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/press.html
..blah..blah… robust (takes a drink)
..blah..blah… warmings of 12C (takes a drink)
..blah..blah… Reasonable worst-case scenarios (takes a drink)
..blah..blah… warming of 25 degrees is feasible (takes a drink)
..blah..blah… climate modeling on supercomputers (takes a drink)
..blah..blah… While this never happens now, it would begin to occur (takes a drink)
Wow, this new alarmist drinking game sure makes me dizzy…
During the extremely warm periods of the early Eocene, the equator-near areas were actually cooler than now (the polar/equator temperatur difference was much smaller than now). I wonder why they assume their hypothetical future earth will be significantly different from earlier warm periods?
The early Eocene was wonderful for mammals and land plants (most of the earth was covered with forests). Only some ocean bottom-dwelling simple organisms had a hard time.
I wonder if anyone has developed a computer model that can accurately predict just how stupid you need to be to believe anything coming from climate research organizations anymore.
I’m sorry, but you have all fallen for it. This is a spoof article written by a young student by the name of Huber who passed it on to Al Gore. He took it seriously and released it to the press. The student I understand has been expelled from his college for wasting his time, but has been given a job by the IPCC as they will be including his article in their next report to the U.N. now that it has been peer reviewed. They stated that the computer model could not possibly be wrong.
I used to work at a UPS hub loading boxes by hand into their semi trailers. In June one year, it was 98 outside and incredibly humid. Inside the trucks, which had been left to bake in the sun until 4pm with the doors shut, it had to have been 130. You would begin sweating just from walking into the truck, before ever touching a single parcel. We loaded about 400-600/hr at an average weight of 30 pounds, it was very physical work. In 120-130F trucks. I am obviously still alive.
Please, bring on the GW, any kind, they’re predicting snow here for tonight. Salt Lake area…on May 5-6. I’m trying to cycle.
On May 4, Mike McMillan said: …”when we bbq brisket.” Is that Mike R (rocky66) McMillan?
JKL
R. de Haan 6:20 am
“too much time smoking pot in the sauna!”
I think we should force all climate scientologists to smoke large quantities of pot in a sauna. That way, they would be so busy laughing at themselves for this type of drivel that “research” like this would never actually be submitted for publication. “Dude, we can’t submit this. If we do, they’ll KNOW we are high! Hey, who bogarted all my Doritos?!?!?”
What a world we live in! Apparently, we won’t have to worry about it for too much longer.
After a good night’s sleep I have given this some sober thought. This press release is not real. It is the test plot for a science fiction movie. Perhaps these armature fiction authors should stick to something they know at lest something about. I wonder if they could do better at pornography?
What is obvious is that college professors have entirely too much time on their hands. The finding for grants (paid for by taxpayers) should be substantially be reduced. The government organization which determines which grants are approved should also be taken to task. After a ridiculous “study” conclusion such as this one, the professor should be placed on a black list, whereby not only would the professor be forbidden future grants, but any grant proposals where the grant proposal included this professor’s participation in any way should be rejected.
If you are to have a decent garden, the weeds have to be removed. As it is, the garden of government paid grants is over-run with weeds such as this. Perhaps Hollywood would be willing to pay professors such as this one to write fantasy doomsday stories, but we taxpayers certainly shouldn’t be forced to do so.
…could lead to deadly temperatures…
…could be exceeded…
…did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios…
Very convincing stuff. I could be up to twelve feet tall. There could be a monster under your bed. We could have another Ice Age soon.
Well according to their global Temperature map, the entire ocean will be at about 32 deg C from Antarctica up to the Arctic ocean.
The only other explanation is that they simply forgot about the 70% of the earth surface that is water.
Sounds like a realistic model to me.
Maybe I should stick around to watch this miracle happen; I don’t recall from their article; what did they say the percentage of global cloud cover was going to be ? Did I skip over that somehow ?
Dull speculation.
Can you spell AIR CONDITIONING?
Stay in school kids.
I sat in a sauna in Ukraine that was 70C for a good half hour and they watered the rx and lightly slapped the skin with a bunch of birch twigs. I’m good for 12C added on. Although the jump into icy water and some cold beers may have brought me back from the brink.
And people would be hard pressed to live in a glacier also. But we don’t. And the Earth isn’t 12C degrees warmer. The fact that someone spent time on this demonstrates the depth and conformity of the AGW believers. They have forgotten it is a mere hypotheses. No wonder America is falling behind in real science. Our scientists are out playing games.
Science, once again, showing Einstein to be mostly correct!
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former”.——Albert Einstein
@ CodeTech May 5, 2010 at 8:31 am
Great idea!!! But I think it should be ‘chug’ after the word “robust”. Though I’d probably have to revisit the thought if Pachy were to give an interview. That would be like playing “hi Bob” all over again!!
Dave F says:
May 5, 2010 at 9:03 am
…could lead to deadly temperatures…
…could be exceeded…
…did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios…
Very convincing stuff. I could be up to twelve feet tall. There could be a monster under your bed. We could have another Ice Age soon.
—————
Reply: I only believe that last one, Dave. Actually, you could say “We should have another Ice Age soon.” The rest are obviously fiction.
For sale (cheap): New subdivision lots in Antarctica Heights and Greenland Gardens.
I understand offshore Persian golf the water surface temps can go up in the upper 90’s Fahrenheit. This means a lot of water evaporation which forms high level condensation, clouds and rain somewhere. I have enjoyed yacht racing in a lot of places and being stuck in the doldrums for a week is miserable.
On the topic at hand, I suggest these “pretend scientists” transfer to the drama department. There they can use the visual arts and draw pretty pictures and charts. The dramatic language and over acting reminds me of Mexican Television.
“it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7C,”
OMG now we are looking at an even higher temperature disaster in the making.
RUN FOR THE HILLS.
oh wait wasn’t there something about no rise in global temperature since 2001. Where do these people come up with this stuff?
Could somebody please tell them that you can’t use the word “find” to discuss future events. “Predict” or “estimate” would be OK, but “find” is right out.
Was it actually necessary to spend money on a study that nearly doubles the mean global temperature and finds it would be bad? Gosh, you think?
We are to be blamed guilty, too, as from SA goes all that white stuff inhaled by these distinguished professors et.al. when concocting these studies.
*******************
pat says:
May 5, 2010 at 9:29 am
And people would be hard pressed to live in a glacier also. But we don’t. And the Earth isn’t 12C degrees warmer. The fact that someone spent time on this demonstrates the depth and conformity of the AGW believers. They have forgotten it is a mere hypotheses. No wonder America is falling behind in real science. Our scientists are out playing games.
*********************
Where’s the AG when you need him?
Did nobody pop their head round the door and say “you do realize this is all extrapolated from 0.6K per century don’t you?”.
A C Osborn says:
May 5, 2010 at 4:34 am
Alan the Brit says:
May 5, 2010 at 1:40 am
It’s so humid here in Houston, we get dew on the grill when we barbeque brisket
Sorry to be Mr Picky, but it’s spelt, “barbecue”! :-))
Alan you are wrong, both spellings are acceptable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue
[BBQ, anyone? ~dbs]
You have hit the nail right on the head. This spelling would never be acceptable to the Brits. The shortening of the word barbecue to “BBQ” became fashionable over here many years ago, I cannot speak for the Colonies or elsewhere, & coupled with bad spelling in general, has become the spelling to which you refer, eg barbeque! It’s an issue I have taken up many a time with som friends, the husband says langauges evolve, which is true, but mis-use of language through poor English (or whatever language), & or bad spelling is unacceptable IMHO. I have come across this “alternative” spelling on many occasions, at times used by people who should know better. Wikipidia has issues itself. Just because something becomes the “accepted norm” does not necessarily make it correct, after all, is that not what we are challenging on this blog? If I went into a hall with 100 people in it, & asked if they believed that faries really do exist, & 95 said they did, & only 5 said they did not, that does not make it true:-))
You have to figure if basic education is corrupted, then the WHOLE system is that way. Corruption builds on itself to create a society with no more morals or values. Just greed and starvation for power.
Interesting increase in propaganda so called scientific papers and as Pielke Jr. showed, the HSBC climate funds index is up…
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/04/climate-science-and-financial-markets.html
George Lawson said on May 5, 2010 at 8:44 am:
It is clear that you have not been exposed to colleges for some time. They want the money.
Here is another example of the insane direction the peer-review process has taken what used to be rational science. The authors of this study argue that China has the least environmental impact — while the U.S. is one of the worst environmental offenders.
So millions of destitute farmers living in mud huts and burning animal dung don’t adversely impact the environment? And it is the relative handful of farmers in wealthy countries, producing high quality food for millions, who cause the most environmental impact because they use efficient machinery powered by fossil fuels?
The fact that the authors of this ridiculous study are employed by a university to write a paper so contrary to the observed facts shows how irrational and rigid the lock-step eco-mindset in academia has become.
Even Stevie Wonder could see that China is extremely polluted, to the point that people routinely put on masks before venturing outside. Industrial effluents and raw sewage are poured right into the rivers and streams without any pollution mitigation whatever. The air is filthy; one-third of all U.S. West Coast air pollution and particulates comes directly from China. But according to this peer-reviewed paper, China gets one of their “Best” scores of any country.
The U.S. has strict environmental laws. In the 1950’s Pittsburgh was so polluted that people often could not see across the rivers. Today the air in Pittsburgh is clean, as are the rivers. The same dramatic change has occurred across the U.S., which has cleaned up over 99% of its industrial and air pollution over the past half century. That is why an oil spill is big news here. If it had happened along the China coast, their only concern would be the lost revenue.
When scientific fools and grant beggars write papers about the Edge of Wetness and the Relative Environmental Impact of Countries, claiming that China is clean and the U.S. is polluted, it is time to eliminate tenure and government grants.
The only “Wet-Bulb” is the intellect that came up with this nonesense.
There goes that word again: MODELS. You can not with any certainty have all the variables that have to do with weather or climate of a region, much less the globe. Each region or hemisphere has its own climate. Here in Austin TX, it’s “hot” in summer and cool in winter, sometimes down right cold for a couple of days and back to cool, and right now its nice outside. I wish they would stop saying their models are saying this is going to happen unless we do somthing now! HOGWASH!!!!!
Pamela Gray at 5:21 am said:
This is garbage research at its highest. ……. If this is not stopped where it stands, we may yet get to experience the dark ages again. …… A seat in the centers of faith will be based on how much sweet talking boot licking you can cram into a day along with coinage from your purse. Any voice that is raised in opposition to the faithful will be silenced…..
PG, isn’t that exactly (at least according to a popular book I read), what happened to a young fellow about 2,000 years ago? Knock over a bunch of tables – in a temple or something – got “the faithful” all upset. As I recall it didn’t have much to do about science, more about “religion” —– hmmm, wait. It wasn’t about religion, was it.
IT WAS ABOUT MONEY! AND GREED! But what should one expect when money becomes your moral compass? And that as you pointed out is underlying narcotic of so much “science” today and what is so very dangerous and detrimental about groups that thusly addicted. When the universities and the professors therein are themselves 100% hooked on that narcotic and selectively blind to it, you are most often going to get what the “drug pusher” is looking for, “science” that fits the agenda, NOT real science that lets the chips fall where they may. It is out-right science fraud and tax larceny! Time to knock over tables again, I’d say.
Someone’s got to talk about accountability,
Someone’s got to raise some hell,
It might as well be me – – us?
Maybe we can get Jimmy join us….
Alan the Brit says:
seeing we are correcting – faries don’t exist but maybe fairies do.
Alan the Brit
If I went into a hall with 100 people in it, & asked if they believed that faries really do exist, & 95 said they did, & only 5 said they did not, that does not make it true:-))This is it! You have touched the key fault of the New Age Culture: The “statistical truths”, from election polls to “climate science” computer modelling. This is the same as “show business science”, pamphlet science or yellow journalism-science. It’s what Herman Hesse called (“pamphlet era”) as such in his novel “The Glass Bead Game” (aka “Magister Ludi”).
“When it is dry, we are able to cool our bodies through perspiration and can remain fairly comfortable.” Have these people ever gotten out of their labs. I live in south eastern Alberta, Canada, and in the summer we very often get dry heat temperatures at +35 Celsius or more for days on end. Their assumption that in a dry heat, a fan can keep you comfortable is laughable. I have found that after + 32 Celsius, using a fan to cool your your self is like using a hair drier on hot to cool your self, it is an exercise in futility.
The temperature here often exceeds +35 Celsius for days in a row for an average of 8hrs or more. People here spend hours outside working in it and surprise, surprise, no body drop’s dead from heat stress. Some of the work around here involves welding for oil and gas pipelines. Those workers deal with even higher temperatures for hours on end and we never here of any welders dropping dead of heat stress.
It’s time these people put there computers away and do some real research.
Journalistic “Peer Review” strikes again! And again, and again, and again….
Several web sites say that the highest dew point on record was at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on 2003 July 8. The local airport data is available at http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/OEDR/2003/7/8/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA and at 1:00 PM lists 107.6 °F air temp, 95.0 °F dew point, 68% RH.
That corresponds to a wet bulb temperature of 97.2°F, 36.2°C, so there is still some cooling potential there. Not much, though. The paper says “The researchers calculated that humans and most mammals, which have internal body temperatures near 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, will experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at wet-bulb temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more.
An hour later, the air temp climbed to 109.4, the dp declined to 91.4, the wet bulb declined to 94.8.
It was also sunny, all that’s required for high humidity to not make clouds is to have hot temperatures aloft so convection can’t develop.
So, setting the fantasy of future temperature gains aside, say few people here have experienced the potentially lethal conditions described above.
And now your latest news from the Wet-Bulb Capitol of the US. (Other wise known as Tampa Bay, Florida)
143 landscapers died yesterday (a new record) from the Wet-Bulb temperature anomaly of + .04C that we experienced throughout the Bay area….. (well, they mat not have actually “died”, that’s what the computer model said happened, and of course, if the Computer Model God, says so, AND that fits the Emperor’s agenda, we are obligated to report it). And pay no attention to that person behind the curtain…. and just wait until August, when it’s REALLY hot! The computer is predicting 1,000!
It’s currently 80°F in Charleston SC. I need to go put on some long pants and a shirt – a bit too chilly for me, even with my gluttonous 3 computers pumping out wasted heat.
I have 3 thermometers, the Windows 7 widget and 2 web sites telling me the temperature. Strangely enough, I always have to actually *go outside* to see what the temperature really is.
It is becoming apparent that these Models are simply the modern day version of the psychics Crystal Ball.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but havn’t they just worked out a temperature that they THINK MIGHT kill you and then simply stated that thats what they THINK MIGHT happen?
In the next century, all the people over 50 years old today, will be at least 150 years old. This is a catastrophe in the making. No planning or infrastructure is in place to take care of these old people. It will be unprecedented – this has never happened before but could happen at the current rate of aging…
Didn’t I see this in a classic Twilight Zone episode? I guess these guys got their “degrees” from the University of Hollywood!
Hey, if I could survive summer in Tulsa, OK, I can survive this! What nonsense….
Dave Wendt says:
May 5, 2010 at 2:25 am
Show me one, either in Minnesota or Brownsville, TX. 100F at 88% RH corresponds with a dew point of about 96F.
http://www.shorstmeyer.com/wxfaqs/humidity/humidity.html says about Cincinnati OH, “One last thing if you ever hear someone say it was 90°F and the humidity was 90%, that has never happened in Cincinnati, (and unless the greenhouse effect goes into overdrive never will). 90°F/90% requires a dew point of 85.5°F. In Cincinnati the highest ever dew point was 81°F. for just a few minutes.”
In August 1995 we had four hours of 78°F,79°F,78°F,77°F dew points, the highest persistent dew points I have seen in Cincinnati since working here as a meteorologist. For one hour I did see a dew point of 81°F, just after a thunderstorm.”
Every time I read a study and think it just can’t, it just CAN’T, get any more ridiculous… I find out that I am not very good at predicting the future. I can’t even summon a sarcastic remark. The effects might start to show up with a 7 degree C rise? Full blown at 12? Based on a computer model that exceeds the wildest predictions of even the IPCC? Can I ask, why did they stop at 12? What it it turns out that we can survive +12 or +15 even, what happens at +85? Will the oceans start to boil? Is that not a larger concern than just surviving high wet bulb? We can build giant indoor cities with climate control, but what about the oceans boiling? is that not the greater threat? Would that not disrupt shipping? Would the sea creatures all die or would they evolve to survive the heat? and if they evolved, would they still need to be cooked before eating? Would sauna manufacturers all go out of business and would the government have to subsidize them because they are too big to fail? What about money? Paper money would turn to much wouldn’t it? OK, maybe the sarcasm gene didn’t get totaly suppresed, just wilted for a bit.
Just in case the warming is natural and CO2 abatement won’t help, perhaps we should look at a water sequestration system? It we bottle it ALL we can then control how much gets released into the atmosphere.
I’M WET! I’m wet and I’m in pain and I’m still hysterical!
[The Producers]
Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight…
In order for this scenario to play out, it must meet the following criteria :
– consistant neverending overall complete global temperature rise of up to 25C (that means pole to pole, all year round, night and day, nonstop)… basically, the same temperatures around the globe at the same time, consistantly.
– no more seasons… being closer or farther from the sun no longer matters, nor does the tilt of the earth matter either… temperatures will be globally consistant and continueously rising, all the time.
– ongoing increasing atmospheric saturation levels (that means no limit to saturation levels globally, which means no cloud formation, rain, snow, clumping droplets, etc etc).
– the hydrologic cycle (especially ocean circulation) must come to a complete halt and be consistantly so (forever and ever, amen).
– global climate must revert back to cambrian conditions when CO2 levels were at 4000 ppm, the globe was covered in vegetation, the oceans had higher algae count, and the sun was 30% hotter… even though the global temperatures weren’t 25C higher back then, we should still count this in anyway and add to our ‘what if’ scenario just to be on the safe side.
– all glaciers, ice caps, ice floes, etc etc must all be completely melted and permanently gone… which of course would mean that sea levels globally would be 20 metres higher… everywhere… which of course would mean more water surface coverage and less land coverage globally… (but the hydrologic cycle is at a halt anyway, so ignore the water coverage thing).
– consistant runaway net positive feedback… no matter what, come hell or high water (pun intended).
Hmm… have I missed anything else ?
Alrighty then. I’ve taken into account all criteria mentioned above and have come to the conclusion that, YES, this scenario is very highly feasible…
…In an actual enclosed glass greenhouse, that is !
Okay… NOW I understand why they call it the greenhouse effect. And just think, all this time we thought our planet was an open atmosphere… but in reality our planet is actually completely surrounded and enclosed in a glass casing ! Why haven’t the scientists told us this ?!
… which leads me to other questions :
How did the astronauts get to the moon ?
Is there a glass door somewhere out there that they have to punch in their PIN number in order to open it up to continue with their journey ?
How does the rocket come to a stop so that they can pull up alongside the control panel to punch in their code ?
Is the glass door maintained and operated from earth or is it a natural cosmic thing on piano hinges ?
And how come the glass casing doesn’t shatter whenever a meteor plows through the sky and hits the earth ? Or is there sky-glass greenhouse repairmen that we’ve never heard of ?
What does the fact that this paper is being published by the NAS indicate about the NAS? It is an embarrassment.
Research requires money. Researchers require more money.
How much money was spent and from what source gave us this drivel?
Reform in climate science requiring publishing or providing data, both massaged and more importantly raw, is a must.
It would also be interesting if all science research products included reference to the amount and source(s) of funding for that research.
Many years ago I heard that this educational debacle had begun during the II WW when a kind of ‘”fast-food” professionals were needed to be produced and delivered ASAP, then synoptic tests were invented, where answers were provided beforehand so the students had just to check the correct answer.
So, this is “Fast Food Science”.
Northern Exposure, they use an adaption of the military’s IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) that has the password loaded in in the software. Today’s password is “Mann”
Smokey says:
May 5, 2010 at 10:20 am
“Here is another example of the insane direction the peer-review process has taken what used to be rational science. The authors of this study argue that China has the least environmental impact — while the U.S. is one of the worst environmental offenders.”
You misrepresent grossly now (cf. part of the abstract below).
The proportional index is what counts; you don’t find US or
China there (but Netherlands!). The absolute index just says
that large populated countries accumulate most impacts
(naturally) and Brazil, USA and China are on equal footing
(naturally). Where do you get your ‘China best – USA worst’
conclusion? Nowhere.
from the abstract
“Our rankings are based on natural forest loss, habitat conversion,
marine captures, fertilizer use, water pollution, carbon emissions
and species threat, although many other variables were excluded
due to a lack of country specific data. Of 228 countries considered,
179 (proportional) and 171 (absolute) had sufficient data for
correlations.
The proportional index ranked Singapore, Korea, Qatar, Kuwait,
Japan, Thailand, Bahrain, Malaysia, Philippines and Netherlands
as having the highest proportional environmental impact, whereas
Brazil, USA, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia
and Peru had the highest absolute impact (i.e., total resource use,
emissions and species threatened).”
davidmhoffer says:
May 5, 2010 at 11:08 am
It we bottle it ALL we can then control how much gets released into the atmosphere.
We are currently doing this to trillions of gallons a day. Also creating many products and storing them with the main ingredient; water.
I visited one of the authors’ websites… Mathew Huber’s Climate Dynamics Prediction Laboratory.
What Paleogene greenhouse?
CO2 levels during the Paleogene ranged from 200 ppmv to 900 ppmv. Though the eaarly Paleogene was very warm, there’s no indication that it was due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
The Jurassic-Cretaceous might be aptly described as a “greenhouse,” with CO2 levels ranging from 900 ppmv to 2,500 ppmv.
Phanerozoic Temp and CO2
mikael pihlström,
For the first time I can recall, you are right. I conflated two of the tables in the paper.
However, see the 5th table down [Twenty Worst Ranked Countries]: The USA is ranked worse than China.
This reminds me of one of my professors, who put about two dozen unrelated nouns on the blackboard [I’m giving away my age here], and told the class to put them into two columns, using any criteria we wanted.
The result was that everyone easily came up with two columns of words they thought were related. But everyone had different words in their columns.
The professor explained this as an example of uncritical thinking. Human minds are made to recognize patterns, even when there really are none, as in numerology or phrenology.
That is the same thing that these perfumed, coddled and tenured educrats are doing here. By ranking the U.S. as having a lower environmental score than China, they are implicitly making China more virtuous environmentally. That is preposterous, as anyone who has traveled in both countries knows.
Finally, the quote regarding “species threatened,” which of course is intended to make the U.S. look bad, is an artifact. Polar bears are listed by the EPA as “threatened,” even though the population has exploded by 500% since the 1970’s. And where do the figures for countries like Gabon or Djibouti come from? The WWF? Greenpeace? PETA?
I suspect that anyone with access to the complete data and methodology could show that this ‘study’ is the equivalent of arbitrarily putting countries into columns with one hand, while putting the other hand out, palm up, toward the nearest government grant agency.
To Alan the Brit:
Sorry for the OT but:
If language didn’t evolve we’d still be saying:
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Chaucer 1342- Notice also he is talking about a drought.
If this scenario were to happen, mankind would be forced to respond with one of its earliest adaptations to climate, we’d head to the caves.
Dig down about 10 to 15 feet where it is in the 50’s (Fahrenheit) all year long, make a home. The spring or fall temperatures in the temperate zones, which just about anyone can survive in just fine. Except for local water table issues, this option is widely available to even the poorest of people who would be impacted. If there’s too much water to go down, go sideways until you find a hill. If you can’t find hills, then build a mound, humans have done it before. Use proper construction at the openings to prevent intrusion from precipitation events and you’re all set.
Another concurrent adaptation is shifting our schedules to nighttime when it’s cooler. We’ve evolved to normally having a daytime schedule with lousy night vision compared to practically any other critter. Well, as opposed to the original caveman days, we’ve developed great sources of artificial light so working at night isn’t that much of an issue. In much of the developed world we’re become a 24/7 society so we’re already nearly there.
You can already see such changes adopted in, amazingly enough, Las Vegas. There was an “alarming” TV piece not that long ago about the “tunnel people” who live in the runoff tunnels (storm drains) under the town. Some living spaces are actually set up rather comfortably, better than many third-world homes. Here’s a recent article with pics. Seemingly victims of the recent recession, the first page of Google results has articles going back to 2007. It’s a safe bet people have been setting up homes down there long before that, likely right after the construction was done.
Humans running back to their caves, leaving more of the surface to go back to nature; something the greenies will likely approve of.
Sioned L,
Isn’t that how doctors still write prescriptions?
Ric Werme says:
May 5, 2010 at 11:01 am
Dave Wendt says:
May 5, 2010 at 2:25 am
Here in southern Minnesota…
They claim wet bulb temperatures never exceed 31C. By my reconning that’s 100F @88% RH, hard to imagine that doesn’t get surpassed fairly regularly already.
Show me one, either in Minnesota or Brownsville, TX. 100F at 88% RH corresponds with a dew point of about 96F.
You got me. Admittedly it was 4 in the morning and I was running numbers in my head. According to the tables on this page
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/humidity-measurement-d_561.html
a wet bulb temp of 31C actually results in an RH value of 87% @ 33C or 91.4F dry bulb temp. which unless the local weather guys have been lying to us all along is not that uncommon even here in Minnesota.
Even if I still have it all messed up, the presumption of a 12C rise in global temp still puts this in the category of “what were you guys smoking” and “did you bring enough to share?”
@ Ric Werme says:
Dave Wendt says:
Heh, your little discussion peaked my curiosity. So, I engaged to find high dew points. During my course, I found this little gem. http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/dewpoint050723.htm . Essentially it discusses an abnormal event in Minnesota where dew point hit 86 degrees. But the real interesting part(considering the history of this web site.) was in the addendum. I quote “[Addendum: July 28, 2005]
In a follow-up investigation, the State Climatology Office discovered that the Pipestone and St. James dew point temperature sensors were reading three to four degrees higher than neighboring stations during June and July of 2005. Therefore, dew point temperatures in Pipestone and St. James reported on July 23 may have been erroneously high. However, both stations are well-maintained, government-sponsored observation sites whose data are widely distributed. Thereofore, the 86 degree dew point temperatures will remain part of the historical database.”
Sigh, who cares if it right or not, IT’S A RECORD!!! As I recall, and as is seemingly every other year, wasn’t 2005 one of the “hottest ever!!” What do you bet these two stations’ temps were part of that “record year”?
Hey, “National Academy of Sciences” – isn’t a situation like what you propose what air conditioners/humidifiers for?
(I’m in a rush.)
James Sexton says:
May 5, 2010 at 12:56 pm
James, you obviously are still not comprehending the rules and procedures. Corrections to the record are only allowed if they show temperatures that are too LOW, except of course, if they are far enough in the past. In which case we will correct them whether there is any evidence to show they were in error or not.
It’s all very complicated and unless you have a double doctorate in climate science and the literature of Steven King it’s not really worth taking the time to explain it to you. You just send us the check and then you can go out and play with the other children, we’ll take care of everything, we promise.
And I thought wet bulb meant this thing from EternalLEDs
Dave Wendt says:
May 5, 2010 at 1:31 pm
James Sexton says:
May 5, 2010 at 12:56 pm
James, you obviously are still not comprehending the rules and procedures. Corrections to the record are only allowed if they show temperatures that are too LOW, except of course, if they are far enough in the past. In which case we will correct them whether there is any evidence to show they were in error or not.
It’s all very complicated and unless you have a double doctorate in climate science and the literature of Steven King it’s not really worth taking the time to explain it to you. You just send us the check and then you can go out and play with the other children, we’ll take care of everything, we promise.
lol, I agree, and once again showing our earlier thinkers correct, “I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”
Michel de Montaigne
Richard Holle says:
May 4, 2010 at 10:42 pm
“Wet bulb temperatures are the dew point of the air, no more no less.”
Utterly incorrect. Back to Met kindergarten for you. No wonder the warmistas treat this site as rubbish.
[Reply: You’re using inductive logic, cementhead, an alarmist trait.]
I have modelled the effects of a 7 to 12 degree temp increase on the common mosquito. My conclusion is that a higher temperature environment has an exponential effect on growth rates of mosquitos and this will possibly result in mosquitos evolving to a wingspan of 4 feet or more within the next century. The climate model used to arrive at this was the same as one used in the wet bulb study itself. The predicted wing span of the hot weather mosquito was derived from a similar computer model that used no experimental data at all, a truly major achievement in the advancement of computer modeling techniques. I allow that, as some of my critics point out, the Square Qube Law requires that a mosquito of this size would collapse of itz own weight, but as physics parameters were excluded from the model this has no bearing on the final result.
While no modeling on behaviour was done, it follows that due to increased size the mosquitos will be more agressive and territorial, defending any prey from other mosquitos due to the dwindling supply by mass comparison. The possibility that this will cause mosquitos to seek weaponization tools is a real consideration.
I note that other post normal entomologists have suggested the giant mosquitos would be kept under control by similar processes resulting in helicopter size dragon flies. I will only respond that the mere notion of a helicopter sized dragon fly is patently ridiculous, and should be dismissed out of hand as having no basis in science.
Alan the Brit says:
Mike McMillan says:
. . .we get dew on the grill when we barbeque brisket
Sorry to be Mr Picky, but it’s spelt, “barbecue”! :-))
Ahem – Not that we trust Wikipedia, but
Barbecue – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barbecue or barbeque (common spelling variant) (with abbreviations BBQ, Bar-B-Q and Bar-B-Que; and diminutive form barbie, used chiefly in Australia and New …
And we don’t spelt in Texas.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/update-to-andy-revkins-question-in-2005-is-most-of-the-observed-warming-over-the-last-50-years-likely-to-have-heen-due-to-the-increase-in-greenhouse-gas-concentrations%E2%80%9D/
Seems that natural variation is up to the task, unless you view Spencer as a creationist or something.
Sherwood said. “Although we are very unlikely to reach such temperatures this century, they could happen in the next.”
Lucky fellow! You will long be dead before that and you’ll be spared the embarassment of listening to people laughing at your predictions!
Back on January 3rd, 1975 (hottest time of the year), after a week of torrential rains and floods in La Rioja province, Argentina, in the capital city was recorded 48ºC with a 90% humidity, way above of what this moron Sherwood states as dangeorus wet bulb temepratures.
Amazingly -and sadly- , all those hundred of thousands of horrible, greedy, fossil fuel burners managed to suvive until now. Mother Gaia must be quite sad she failed at eliminating her cancerous tumor.
Eduardo Ferreyra says:
May 5, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Do you have a reference for that? That makes for a dew point of about 46ºC and a wet bulb temp slightly above that, 10ºC above the Saudi Arabia world record dew point. I bet that 90% was recorded overnight and that the wet bulb temp at the time was in the livable range.
I tried find some La Rioja weather records on the web, but failed. Perhaps they’re all in Spanish.
I did the same, and after reading the humorous FAQ’s in Sherwoods CC Research Unit I started to feel that they sense that the game is up, that the AGW Orbiter has lost altitude, is slowing and just starting to burn up in the upper atmosphere.
The problem I see is, where is the oversight to critically review this nonsense before it is published ? It shames the Universities that they have allowed this to be published under their banner.
Really? I do long distance backpacking in the desert at temperatures of at least 95 degrees all the time. On many backpacking adventures, I’m on the trail for three to four days not only exposed to the heat but exerting myself in it. Sure, I stop for breaks, carry plenty of water, wear UV resistant long sleve wicking clothing and pants, etc… but I figure if the potentially lethal heat I’m exposing myself to hasn’t killed me in 40 years, it probably isn’t all that lethal.
With the above said, I may just be acclimated to the heat but wouldn’t non-hikers acclimate to 95 degree temperatures over time too? I can’t help but feel this is yet another “we’re all gonna die” proclamation based on flimsy assumptions and flawed reasoning.
Climate World model is a jar with a lid and no moving air.
In Climate World, the human body is a homogeneous lump of gelatinous material with the core heat transferring to the outer layers
In Climate World we have no circulation – just like Climate World Earth.
Phyorg.com published this prominently. I’m sad that they have degenerated so far and hope an intervention might save them.
I have to say, after sitting in an astronomy and geography course for the last week, this is what college professors, almost without exception, advocate. For example, the ice age predicted in the early 70’s was averted because we are pumping out so much CO2. That mussels, clams and oysters are in danger of extinction due to rapid acidification of the ocean as all this excess CO2 has no where to go. That we are in real danger of becoming another Venus….I’m older, somewhat more aware than the average college student. The level of outright …propaganda is nearly overwhelming.
To PHYSorg_Support –
Dear Mods and Whoever actually cares about the future of this site:
I’m no longer able to tolerate association with this site as it has degenerated from a once fine aggregator of recent journal publications into a shill for cargo cult science.
Where highly speculative and uninformative articles may be interesting on occasion, they are fiction.
Where highly speculative and patently absurd doomsday scenarios are presented AT ALL, the character of the site which hosts it is defined immediately and significantly.
The fools pushing the awg agenda have cost you your reputation for quality.
You are now reliably trashy.
I’m saddened by this, as I will no longer mention the name of your site despite the regular occurrence of good articles – because they no longer define the character of this place.
Sorry, but you’re too bad to remain associated with in any way.
Seek intervention. I wish for your recovery, but I know that the prognosis is a death spiral of delusion. If there are no rational individuals protecting the interest of this site, it must fail.
Luckily humans invented air conditioning and dehumidifiers. We’ll be fine.
Hank Hancock says:
May 5, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Name me one desert that has wet bulb temperatures above 95°F. (Besides the Persian Gulf!)
In 2003, my family went on a bicycle tour that included the high desert of Central and Eastern Oregon. Several days were over 100°F, but I’d guess the dew point was under 45°F. That corresponds to a wet bulb temperature of only 67°F.
For a wetbulb temp of 95°F you need something like 120°F and dew point of 90°F. You didn’t say where you go backpacking, but I don’t think those conditions exist in the United States for more than six hours at a time.
Well Purdue can forget any alumni donations from me if this is the type of idiotic stuff they are producing. And to think just this weekend I recommended a high school senior checkout Prude U – – -No more recommendations either.
Nice glacier you got there, friar.
Be a pity if something happened to it.
Dave McK says:
May 5, 2010 at 6:42 pm
To PHYSorg_Support –
Dear Mods and Whoever actually cares about the future of this site:
I’m no longer able to tolerate association with this site as it has degenerated from a once fine aggregator of recent journal publications into a shill for cargo cult science.
Where highly speculative and uninformative articles may be interesting on occasion, they are fiction.
Where highly speculative and patently absurd doomsday scenarios are presented AT ALL, the character of the site which hosts it is defined immediately and significantly.
From the PR that inspired this post
“said Matthew Huber, the Purdue professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who co-authored the paper that will be published in Thursday’s (May 6) issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
I assume you have forwarded a similar message of disavowal to the publishers of the POS… excuse me PNAS.
As one who’s own attempts at irony and satire have managed to crewcut the crowd around here on a regular basis, as they whizzed by overhead, I apologize if I’ve been similarly slow on the uptake of your own effort at humor. If, however, you were in fact serious in your post, I can only say for myself, as I would never presume to speak for others here, “don’t let the screen door hit you where the Good Lord split you!”
Had I paid attention to the wet bulb part I wouldn’t have made such a foolish mistake. Thanks for sorting me out. I hike in the Nevada, California, Utah, and Arizona desert areas. Several times thorough the Grand Canyon in the summer and a few times in Death Valley. So I’m figuring that with the normal humidity ranging between 8% – 12% in my parts the temperature has to get incredibly hot reach a wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees.
Would a dim bulb be warmer than a wet one?
Dave Wendt says:
May 5, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Dave McK says:
May 5, 2010 at 6:42 pm
To PHYSorg_Support –
Sorry Dave I missed the PHYSorg salutation and misinterpreted your comment. You have my apology.
These are the headlines I am now expecting over the next few months:-
“Human heads to explode in warmer climate!”
“Nuclear warheads to be detonated by global warming!”
“Surge in paedophilia expected due to global warming!”
“Murder rate to increase as earth warms!”
“Statue of Elvis found on Mars!”
I like the one my grandmother used to use.
It’s so hot families are out BBQ’ing on their sidewalks!
Oh. That’s right. Mustn’t indicate sidewalks were hot enough to fry eggs in the past mustn’t we.