Guest essay by Eric Worrall
NPR author and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett thinks the reason people don’t care about climate change is most people can’t imagine what 120F feels like. But the reality is that Lisa is demonstrating her personal lack of insight.
Simulating The Bodily Pain Of Future Climate Change
September 23, 20179:03 AM ET
LISA FELDMAN BARRETT
Lisa Feldman Barrett is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and the author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. You can keep up with Lisa on Twitter: @LFeldmanBarrett.
Close your eyes and imagine a beautiful spring day in the forest. In your mind’s eye, try to see tall, green trees and smell the aroma of blooming flowers. Can you hear the gentle breeze rustling the leaves above you?
Most people can conjure up this mental scene without much effort, at least for a few moments.
Now, imagine that the temperature rockets upward. It’s 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Try to produce, in your mind, the discomfort you’d experience under that scorching sun. I don’t mean just the idea of being hot — actually try to feel the physical sensations of stifling, smothering heat. Can you invoke these feelings on demand?
Most people cannot.
…
If the sensory consequences of climate change are unimaginable to our government officials, what can we do? Perhaps we can help them feel those consequences directly. The next time a city like Las Vegas has a record heat wave, as it did in June of this year (117 degrees F), we could petition President Trump to travel there. Perhaps a three-day stay at Trump International Hotel — with the air conditioning turned off — would be swelteringly educational. Or shall we ask Vice President Pence to visit Nuatambu, one of the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia, where rising ocean levels have washed away half the habitable land and forced families to flee? Let him live there for a month or two. Or maybe Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, should survive on minimal drinking water for a few days, so he can understand viscerally what a drought feels like.
…
What our leaders cannot simulate, they can make themselves feel. All it takes is the courage to do so.
One of my first jobs was working in a poorly ventilated rubber factory, operating hydraulic hot plates to produce pressed plastic products. I don’t have to imagine what 120F feels like, because in Summer I used to experience 120F pretty much every work day. Some days the temperature inside the factory hit 130F.
My experience is hardly unique – anyone who has worked a factory job or mining job in a place with warm summers has likely experienced similar conditions.
My friends tell me that when they worked day shift in the mines in the scorching hot Marble Bar region, with outside air pumped straight in through the ventilation system, 120F would have been welcome relief.
120F simply isn’t terrifying, for anyone who ever experienced similar temperatures on a regular basis. Uncomfortable, moderately unpleasant, but not a reason for panic.
But Lisa obviously doesn’t know any of this. So she creates specious theories within the limits of her personal experience of the world, of why attempts to frighten people about the horrifying climate pain people will experience on a 120F day fall flat; especially I suspect with working class audiences.
I worked in a cannery for a few years, in the cookroom with semi-trailer sized continuous cookers. It was perhaps 110 F (about 40 C), and very humid from venting steam. I don’t have to imagine such temperatures.
It was also that hot (during the ’80s) at the boiler/turbine control panels in the 1940s vintage power station I worked at. The units were used for daily cycling so on the 3-11 shift I had to go to the top of each of three 8-story boilers (near 150F) and close the main steam outlet valve (3ft handwheel). By the time the valve was shut my eyes would be so dry that I had to squint, despite goggles to keep the fly-ash out. then it was out on a catwalk balcony to cool down in the 90F summer sunset.
Hey Lisa, I don’t need to IMAGINE it. I just need to drive ten miles down the road to Los Gatos to actually experience it for myself.
Most of us also do not know what -94 deg. C (179K) “feels” like; but we can just go to the Antarctic Highlands in the middle of winter midnight and experience it for ourselves; or any other Temperature in an extreme range of about 150 deg. C min to max.
So how do you “feel” that people “feel” about being told what they “feel” about climate by a Psychologist who is 100% ignorant of ANY climate science whatsoever ??
G
She might want to ponder our planet’s amazingly narrow thermal range, and the immense presence of water that makes it happen that way. She might get some perspective on how and why climate actually changes.
Bingo, Pop!
Really, all she has to do is get into a car parked in the NorthEastern University parking lot on a hot Summer afternoon in Boston. Boston is rather cool much of the year but it does reach 100F every now and then in Summer. (And usually a humid, nasty 100F at that). A parked car on a sunny day can easily reach 30-40F above ambient.
Well said G.E. National Propaganda Radio (NPR) and the Propaganda Broadcast System (PBS) have no known unfiltered, independent news traits. It’s all sanitized, sanctified,and fitted to ‘The Bigger Picture’ for public consumption. A waste of time.
Most people can’t feel climate change because a few TENTHS of a degree mostly at night IS UNNOTICEABLE.
Pop, our ” amazingly narrow thermal range ” is only a possible concurrent extreme range from about -94 deg. C to about +60 deg. C, and some say it might get as high as +90 deg. C on the hottest surfaces.
But on any ordinary northern midsummer day, that range, can routinely be from -70 deg. C to + 50 deg. C ALL AT THE SAME INSTANT OF TIME.
And we know; due to an argument by Galileo Galilei, that on any non-crossing line connecting those two extreme end points, one will find EVERY possible Temperature in that 120 deg. C total range.
And one can draw an infinite number of non crossing lines between any two points on a map of the globe, so there are an infinite number of places, that can have any possible Temperature between -70 deg. C and +50 deg. C And that range could be 150 deg. C instead of merely 120 deg. C
So NO ! we do not have an amazingly narrow thermal range on planet earth.
BUT, for the last 650 million years or so, the MEAN earth global Temperature has stayed between +12 deg. C and +24 deg. C.
And in almost any ordinary week the Temperature range in downtown Sunnyvale will vary much more than that 12 deg. C range of the global mean; some times more than 30 deg. F in less than 24 hours.
So I say ho hum to global warming. Wake me, when something important happens.
G
George,
I believe pops was merely stating that the earth’s temperature range is pretty narrow compared to celestial bodies without an atmosphere.
rip
Climate Change Just Changed
https://youtu.be/MS0qLhqaZDM
How about all the vets from Iraq? Temps on their tours of duty range from 120-135F. And they are doing it wearing full-cover uniforms and carrying 100 lbs of gear.
And what this einstein doesn’t know is that the CO2 count under the canopy of her “beautiful spring day in the forest” is 600 PPM. Standard.
Lisa Feldman Barrett appears to be having difficulty envisioning the fact that climate models are laughably wrong….
…but then she’s psychologist (aka wanna-be scientist). She probably has difficulty with a lot of scientific concepts.
MRW & Javert
Yes, a Psychologist telling everyone about science is orders of magnitude harder than a physical scientist telling her about psychology.
I also worked in an iron ore mine in the Marble Bar region of Western Australia and can attest to the fact that you just get used to it. It hits you when you step out of the nice aircondfitioned aircraft at say 9 am after flying up from Perth and its already 40˚C (104˚F) but a week later its just another day at the office.
Lisa Feldman Barrett just sounds like one of those psychs who encourage people to snivel their way through life. Oh the pain, oh the pain. I imagine it ensures lots of repeat business though, so good for the economy.
I spent a few days in the Great Sandy up that way in the early 90’s and experienced 120F, but these clods *really* need to go talk to some botanists – everything they claim seems to ignore the entire plant kingdom’s role in life on this rock – while they’re at it they can go visit an actual greenhouse.. and see how greenhouses actually work – and for an added benefit they can dip their toes into a hothouse or two.
Working in plant nurseries as my wife and I did when younger we’d be experiencing temperatures of 68C /150F . Of course at those humidity levels and at that temperature you didn’t work inside for long before heading out and recovering for a few minutes but I tell you, stepping from 150F into a scalding hot 100 day made that 100 degrees seem like heaven. It’s a perspective thing.. but it’s also not – it became quite apparent to anyone working there that a hot day was easily tolerable once you acclimatized to it and the cleverer folk quickly learned 20 min in the hothouse mean the rest of a *hot* day felt like a mild spring day.
Going to South East Asia many years later I found workers huddled in jackets rubbing their hands in the the morning to stay warm when the temperature dropped as low as 30C (86F) staring at my wife and I asking ‘HOW are you not freezing!?’ – again, they acclimatized to their climate and ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ to them was a different range to me and mine from Perth, Oz.
@Karl,
I live in Tasmania now and going back to Perth in winter is a giggle. The locals are all rugged up in their padded jackets and boots n beanies huddled by the fire in some restaurant and I walk in in shorts and a rugly shirt then sit ouside. Nyuk, Nyuk.
The Nuatambu sea level canard debunked here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/10/busted-claim-data-shows-that-climate-induced-sea-level-rise-didnt-wipe-out-five-solomon-islands/
The canard here is that you don’t need to imagine 120 degrees. Simply imagine the difference between 57 degrees and 58 degrees, because that’s what global warming actually is…
mic drop
I grew up in Southwest Kansas, elevation 3200 ft. During the summer we had brutal heat (110-115). At least it was low humidity. During the winter we had brutally cold sub-zero on a regular basis. So what? it was the weather! The reason we do not attribute our climate to human activity is because what we have now is within the range of natural variability. The far-left loonies think CO2 drives the climate. The truth is there are many factors that affect climate, some we probably do not know about, and clearly we do not understand all the dynamic relationships. The climate seems to be a chaotic, random, nondeterministic system beyond the four seasons. That the left refuses to see the Sun as the biggest factor in our climate proves they are dim-wits with sever mental disorders.
It’d certainly can be more than uncomfortable and potentially dangerous (e.g., people can die stranded in Death Valley). But what this has to do with climate change is beyond me. Which regions are going to jump from comfortable current temps to 120 degrees? And we could just as easily lock people in freezers for hours and say, “See? Do you really care if no place on earth stays this cold? Don’t you want it warmer?”
Bingo. NO ONE thinks AGW will produce 120 degrees. The warming will mostly be less cold in the coldest times and places. AGW, even in the most extreme scenarios/models only raises the highest temps by a degree or two.
She certainly has an uninformed climate scenario in her head. Maybe she should just stick to counseling the cuckoos in her circle.
NOBODY actually needs to be in +120 deg. F air temperature to know what it “feels” like.
It will get much hotter than that right on your skin, if you are just out in direct sunlight on a summer day.
I remember reading detailed NEWS reports about USA troops and no doubt coalition ally troops in Iraq being in +134 deg. F temperatures, wearing their full battle gear.
So Lisa, if you “feel” the urge to get lost; please do so.
G
In places where it’s 119.5 now, 120 degrees could be possible.
Exactly my thoughts. I assume that regions that are in ”danger” of experiencing 120F, already endure similar temps now. Or does she think everywhere on the planet will have a uniform temperature. It’s a non runner of an argument. Totally meaningless. She should try to imagine living in the real world.
As an academic, imagining the real world is as close as she’s ever likely to get.
She doesn’t seem to understand much about real life.
The temperature increase bandied about by the AGW folk is 2 degrees C or approx. 3 degrees F over 80-100 years. Does she really think that people can’t accomodate that when they can go from 65 F to 80 F when they go on holiday or -10 to +100 from winter to summer?
Most academics have no real world experience. They’ve been living on public funds for all of their working lives and have never had to really deal with reality. They are clueless, think that they are gods, and we the unwashed masses should listen to them without question.
It’s about collectivism not science or climate. Until the “skeptic” base solidifies on that fact the social decline junk science politics grows and expands.
Reminds me of the old joke about the guy whose son finally got his PhD. “He got a BS, then a MS, and finally a PhD.” “Yeah, I know all about that”, replied his friend, “BS…you know what that is, MS…more of the same, and PhD…piled high and deep.” Sounds about right.
Jim B, JD. (JD…just dreamin'”
Eric, you have hit the nail squarely on its head. We used to say they live in an ivory tower, but it all means the same….no real world experience.
Old Adage – Those that can Do – the others teach
Second reply to Eric – “Most academics have no real world experience”
For an example – I worked in my profession for 2 years, then went back to grad school while working full time. One of the final courses was taught by a professor that had written several textbooks that were widely used (approx 1/3 of the programs though out the US used his textbooks). By the time I took his class, I had been working in the industry for approx 5 years.
I was essentially the co-instructor in that class. 5 years real world experience dealing with real problems with real money vs 25-30plus years of academia.
I would say, YES! Indeed, let’s imagine 120 degrees, and at the same time, let’s imagine your air conditioner being run off wind turbine generated electricity. Let’s imagine you are in Puerto Rico right now with no electricity and let’s imagine your utility decides to install wind turbines to get the power back on. Then let’s imagine another hurricane comes along and let’s imagine the turbines operating in a 100 mph wind. Isn’t this fun, imagining all the bad stuff that happens when it gets a little warmer, without having to deal with those annoying little details like reliable, on-demand energy?
I see that Lisa Feldman Barrett has thunder biceps. I really want to know how well she can cognitively function.
My bet is outside her field not well at all. Within her field she is just coasting to a halt.
Neurobiological effects of physical exercise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_physical_exercise
TABS: The Academic Blnker Syndrome.
I like to point out to people that the mainstream estimates of projected warming from AGW over the next century are less than the present “urban heat island” warming of a major city.
So if you want to know what this warming would feel like, simply drive from the rural surroundings of a large city through the suburbs and into the urban area. There, you’ve done it!
I worked in a bakery for 9 years or so and 4 months out of every one of those years it was often 120F in the building while I worked in front of an oven. It wasn’t pleasant but I’m not terrified. I could show up to work with a major hangover, drink plenty of water and “sweat it out” in an hour or so. I also experience climate change 4 times a year and have since birth so I can more than imagine it and would prefer warming over cooling to be sure.
Try playing cricket on the wharf at Khorramshahr between 2 and 4 pm on a nice sunny day. I have done this, and it was completely bearable. Unfortunately I did not have a thermometer to check the temperature, but up the Gulf in summer it does get pretty warm!
Where she goes wrong is in thinking that temperature is the only important parameter. It is not. Humidity is just as, if not more, important. If the Relative Humidity is 2% it is totally OK for thermometer temperatures over 100. If the RH is about 97% then it gets very uncomfortable, even if the temp is far lower. I found this that day in Khorramshahr, after the game, as I retired to my cabin, with my breath pushing out water vapour the RH very quickly rose from the 2% that it had been from the fresh air leaking into the cabin, to something far higher – probably the aforesaid 97%, an within minutes the sweat was pouring off me, too fast to evaporate, not that it could with that RH, and the only thing to do was to sit outside in the shade and fan myself.
Our engineers used to go into the boilers before they had totally cooled down, so as to reduce time the boilers were off power. Not quite red hot, but still blistering hot – rephrase that, still bloody hot.
“Mad dogs and Englishmen,” what?
Bandar Mahshahr [transliterated spelling only. Honest] – now Bandar Khomeini; my first visit to the Oil Gulf in 1973. 38000 ton deadweight steel oil tanker to load (heated) Fuel oil. Anchored just off the berth for – I think – about twelve hours.
Temperature on the Bridge wing at noon [inside a Stevenson screen type white wooden box, but exposed to radiative radiation from the steel deck) – 112 F [about 44.5 C].
Move the screen into the sun for five minutes – 130 F – say 54.5 C – still in the screen.
At the bottom of a thirty-plus valve pumproom – more than half of which had to be swung with 18″ [‘half-metre] valve wheels, manually, it was reportedly 170 F – over 75 C. And it was a fifty-some feet climb back up to cooler, fresher air [at 112 F].
The fuel oil is heated to about 50 C – to make it flow easily.
It is the bottom of the crack – too viscous to go for road- mending; at 10 C you can pick up a double handful, and wait f-o-o-o-r-evvverrrr for it to ooooooze out of your hands.
Only there for a day and a half. I was very, very grateful to leave.
I think everyone on board was, in truth.
Did a dry-dock in Dubai a few years ago – in August [would I have chosen then, there? No.]
Even there it was over 50 C – over 122 F – for much of the afternoon watch – 1200-1600 local time. And humid, which didn’t help the hull painting!
And the psychologist in the head comment struggles to get her head round a possible 2 C (3.6F) rise in average temperatures. As noted above most of the rise is in cold temperatures in cold places [even if the models – suddenly, miraculously [we’re doing religion, no?] are right ] and at night.
|And the data is cherry picked – haw many met observing stations are no longer contributing to data sets – perhaps because they are rural show little or no warming, so ‘need’ to be purged? How many are at airports, with copious tarmac and jet exhausts?]
I reckon the difference in temperature between my kitchen and my adjacent conservatory at about 1000 local today [Clear and sunny autumn morning in South London] was certainly over 10 C. Ish.
And the good trick-cyclist is concerned about a (possible, modelled, with potentially imperfect [HAH!!! /SARC] data) 2 C rise – over 80 or 100 years???
Straining to swallow a gnat?
Auto
she doesnt understand the terms clearly she is calling some wild IDIOCY about runaway warming = climate change…….she doesnt understand getting cooler is also climate change……she doesnt know the climate is NOT some force, has no power, and does NOT cause either warming or cooling…..the climate stats come AFTER the changes in weather have been ongoing.
I’m a geologist.
Why? Inquiring mind wants to know.
The head post describes insanity based on total lack of comprehension with some good chutzpah.
Hugs, let me venture a guess about the “geologist” reply. Geologists work with geology, which the last time I checked is mostly outdoors where it isn’t air conditioned. My street creds: 1. Surveying, when it was so hot that the heat shimmers threw off the leveling. 2. Paper mill where the machine room had spot coolers and salt tablet dispensers at the drinking fountains. 3. Southwest US desert where it was so hot that the liquid crystal display turned all black. 4. I could go on and on, but the coddled NPR host needs to get out more, out of her comfort zone where she interacts with real people.
“…the coddled NPR hosts needs to gt out more…” Yeah, good luck with that.
I doubt she will go any place that doesn’t have air conditioning, and certainly not work in an office with an open window.
It’s strange, but I really cannot stand air conditioning. When I’m in a car, and the outside temperature is over 80F, the contrast between the car indoor temp and the outside temp is almost unbearable when I have to get out of that car. I would rather just live with the heat and the humidity. Fans are always good.
There was the summer of 1995 in Chicago when the indoor temp in my 1926 apartment building was so high from direct sun that bottles full of ice (frozen water!) which I removed from the freezer melted in barely 10 minutes. I had all the fans running, the windows open and got bags of ice from the corner store. The July 13 temperature reached 105F. 739 people died of heat -related causes, mostly because they were elderly, poor, lived in poor neighborhoods, were afraid, etc. Now when this kind of thing happens, which is rare, the city will open cooling centers. But that is a heat wave, not climate change. I think that was a summer when people started frying eggs on the sidewalks or car hoods, and sending the photos to TV stations. When has it NOT been hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk in the summer?
In 2003, Europe had a similar heat wave. France had 14,802 deaths from heat-related causes, mostly elderly people. That was 14 years ago. It seems to be repeating itself, with another heat wave and related deaths in 2015. And it’s just weather, nothing else.
Someone please try to get these people who are scare-mongering straightened out.
Climate is long-term change. Weather is short-term. How many times does this have to be repeated?
Several year ago I worked with a young geologist who was an ardent climate alarmist. It puzzled me why a good field geologist could possibly be an alarmist but I avoided debating the subject in order to maintain harmony with my coworkers. For some people it can be a very touchy subject.
I recently bumped into him again, and low and behold he is now a climate skeptic. He said his alarmism was based more on emotion than science and it took him awhile to figure that out. Smart guy.
NPR is always looking for excuses for their failure to convince people of the global warming scare. They also prefer to blame it on the people, them being somehow deficient in some way.
What is even more stupid or narrow in NPR’s thinking is that a warmer climate does not mean hotter highs at all. All you have is longer, not hotter summers and shorter, milder winters and you have the two degrees of warming they fear so much. Wow, a longer growing season, that’s going to be terrible, how will the world survive? In fact, simply warmer nights in the summer can result in a warmer climate as well. The assumption that warming means incredibly high temps a lot of the time or more often is entirely vacuous and based only on the needs of fear-mongering.
The fear-mongering exists to keep listeners’ attention, an imperative for continued funding. NPR is now an enclave of the leftist bubble, shrinking as the air is slowly sucked out of it by the nagging voice of Reality.
In their world everyone’s a victim, the earth is frying, transgenders are a positive, abortion is a feminist sacrament and Trump is Hitler. Only hopelessly indoctrinated bubble-dwellers can now stomach the inconsistencies, and even those diehards are getting tired of listening to Felonia von Pantsuit’s year of whining. I’d love to know exactly how much their donations are dropping.
The standard leftist view is that the people ARE deficient in some way.
That’s why the believe we need to turn all important decisions over to them.
I support Kirk’s remarks. The ship’s Master was an alcoholic and on that day he had consumed a fair amount – normally given his history he would have been another two of three days before coming out of the ‘jag’ – that may not be the correct term, but it will have to do. He played cricket with us that afternoon, and wonder of wonders, that evening he was stone cold sober.
I recommend temps of 120F as a good hangover cure.
For the reverse, try standing on the stern of a ship while it navigates for hours while turning from the Scheldt into Siberia Dock in Antwerp, through the docks and cuttings, and eventually making her fast alongside. Four or five hours was not unusual, and this when the ice was thick on the river, such that when we left and passed Flushing, we could see a coaster’s crew standing overside on the ice to chip off the rust.
Warm is better!
Don’t demand facts. The important thing is the NPR Message: TRUMP IS BAD.
NPR’s “news” has become nothing more than groupthink “comfort food” for the left’s lunatic fringe. You know it’s sinking when they’re still re-running long out of date “Car Talk” episodes discussing repairs on 1992 models.
Hey, people still drive those ’92 models.
Car Talk reruns stopped two weeks ago—alas.
To me NPR seems to have moved a bit toward the center in their news forecasting. This seems to have occurred slowly, over time, since the Republicans took over Congress and they (PBS) fired Juan Williams. They still have a passel of extreme lefties as managers, commentators and show hosts so I imagine it’s the bean counters that are trying to force a little balance at least in the actual news stories so that Congress will leave them and their funding alone.
But of course Lisa keeps on using fossil fuels, driving a car, flying on jets, turning on the lights, heating the house, but she wants to think that the government should make energy from wind and solar. She is naïve.
She may be naïve, but I’ll bet she can quote more Marx, Engels, and Lenin than you can.
I’ll take that bet 😉 😉 I can quote more (Harpo) Marx and (John) Lennon than she can, and play the music better too 😉 😉
Or would want to.
As an amusing aside, Engels was independantly wealthy and frequently paid Marx’s rent, so the deadbeat academic could keep writing about the proletariat without having to join it.
One more in a never-ending daily barrage of NPR advertorials and sermons promulgating the CAGW pseudoscience.
NPR really has become a propaganda broadcast operation. Every time I hear the sanctimonious hypocrites claim the mantle of journalistic balance and even-handedness, I roll my eyes in disgust.
NPR’s crack investigative journalists don’t do much investigating when it comes to climate science. Christopher Joyce and Adam Frank simply regurgitate religious dogma.
Most people can’t imagine global communism as a positive force, the actual lament found at NPR and climate group daily.
“Close your eyes and imagine a beautiful spring day in the forest.”
Many many years ago I was on a family camping trip. Unlike camping trips with friends, where the first things we would “imagine” on a “beautiful spring” morning in the forest would be a hangover, this was a family camping trip (being a little repetitious here but it’s necessary practice for dealing with climate warriors). And, on a family camping trip it’s neither wise nor legal to be unduly inebriated around children.
Did I say children? My brother’s eight year old son was present. And this boy, on that “beautiful spring day” did not get bitten to smithereens by mosquitoes, mauled by a raccoon, stung by a bee, or contract Lyme disease. But, on this “beautiful spring day” he did discover a tick on a uniquely male part of his not fully developed eight year old anatomy.
The other family members begged, pleaded, and implored our lovely brother in law not to joke about this with the eight year old because we knew, for the remainder of that weekend, and perhaps eternity, that young’ un would forever gleefully chant what my brother in law was about to say.
But, he said it anyway.
Let this be a lesson to all those global warming obsessed psychologists who implore us to “imagine a beautiful spring day in the forest” because in the real world us normals may not conjure up the same thing,
Instead, the first thing that may come to mind about a “spring day in the forest” may be a “tick on the dick.”
Oh. My. God.
I can’t tell you how hard I was laughing at your story but suffice it to say there were quite a few tears trickling down my cheeks. Fond memories of childhood will forever take place no matter what the climate is like 20, 50, 100 or 10,000 years from now. Thanks for starting my Sunday off on a high note!
I got a “tick on the dick” several years ago and tried to remove it myself; I got only part of it. I called my doctor, who said to get in to see him right away. Quite expertly and gently, he removed the rest, washed my affected part with some truly potent anti-whatevers, and lectured me about the diseases ticks in Virginia are known to carry (which was mainly a direction to come to him immediately if that should happen again, which it hasn’t). I can’t recall whether I got an injection; but my doctor took the absolute minimum of risks. Ticks are no joke!
She should move to the Coachella Valley. We have temps above 115 F a lot and it reached 122 F twice this past summer. It is like this every year in Palm Springs, Rancho MIrage, La Quinta, Indio, etc. We don’t have to imagine it, we live here.
Don’t expect any kind of reasonable argument or a balance of views from NPR on the subject of AGW. Indeed it’s quite astonishing how they manage to insert references to it in interviews and programs quite unrelated, as if it flowed into nearly every aspect of life. Their continual reported mis-facts is often breathtaking, to the point where one has to wonder if they’re genuinely naive and ignorant adherents to the cause – like so many in the general public – or are simply following Goebbels’ prescription of repeating a lie often enough…..
Notice how all of these people seem to think they need a strongman to prevent global warming.
And they need one NOW, not yesterday. I get tired of these one-way claims in which the media makes no attempt to challenge these claims. Why does she think anyone needs to do anything? Isn’t it obvious that 1) electric cars are about to take over and 2) advanced nuclear power technology will dominate power generation, for economic reasons if nothing else ?
Art: The greenies think that wind and solar will displace oil and gas because of economics. Yet, in today’s Houston Chronicle, the business columnist weeps that new installations of both will come to a screeching halt when the tax credits expire. Some economics!
Ditto with the cars. I read this the other day somewhere. The subsidies for electric cars goes away as soon as they’ve sold 200,000. (Someone can correct me if I’m wrong.)
I believe one of their louder complaints is that we already have a strongman of sorts, and they don’t like them. Perhaps “strongman” has not been done properly, previously, but they think they’ll get it right this time.
The left has always favored the strongman form of government. So long as it’s their strongman.
I’ll have to fact check the fleeing families from Nuatambu. It sounds like these poor families woke up one morning with their furniture floating.
Those reef islands were about 100 m lower 10,000 years ago.
I’ve been in Stovepipe Wells in July, I don’t need to imagine what 120 degrees feels like, and I’m still not concerned about AGW
Most people can’t imagine an attack by space aliens. Imagine yourself on a beautiful Spring day. There’s a gentle breeze wafting through your hair, birds are chirping, bees are buzzing, and butterflies drift by. In the distance can be heard the joyful cries of children as they romp, with an occasional dog barking. Suddenly, from out of nowhere giant spacecraft appear, and there are blinding flashes of light. In an instant your world is turned upside down. As you are dying a horrible death, you think to yourself, if only Trump had done something, and then you think, I hope he’s getting what he deserves and then some, because that makes you feel better.
I have 3 daughters, one just out of college, one just entering college, and one that’s a junior in high school. On top of that my wife believes that none of them is capable of doing any wrong. In a metaphorical sense I’m under constant attack by space aliens.
I can. Just imagine the alien space commander planting the alien flag in the President (who looks suspiciously like Jack Nicholson) then all you have to do is wait for Slim Whitman to sing “Indian Love Call” and explode all the alien’s heads. Works for me. Thought aide:
I’d forgotten what a hilarious romp Mars Attacks was. I have a copy somewhere. I was SciFi fan in the 50’s, and it replicated the classic films’ atmosphere perfectly, right down to the non-functional little parabolic antennae on the Martians’ electronics.
“We come in peace,” they say. How come nobody asks why there are so many of them if they come in peace? That many aliens is obviously an invasion.
I imagine when we can just ask Dust Bowl survivors and read accounts of what 120 F on the plains feels like. Oh that’s right, those temperatures never happened and needed adjusted out of existence, people were just sensationalist and weak back then compared to today.
It makes sense to her. That speaks volumes.
Even the alarmists have given up trying to claim that AGW is going to warm the planet by more than 3 to 5C.
Where the heck did this 120F nonsense come from?
Just her 15 minutes of fame.
The reason people don’t care about c̶l̶i̶m̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶ space invaders is most people can’t imagine what 1̶2̶0̶F̶ being zapped by a laser gun feels like
Wow!
What a load of babbling drivel that was,since large areas of the world will NEVER get above 100 F. Her silly essay died immediately.
Meanwhile people living in HOT Phoenix Arizona and HOT Las Vegas Nevada where it is really hot, stay there anyway.
Not only stay they move there from places like Chicago and Buffalo where the January highs average 33 degrees and the lows average around 20. If you are AGW fanatic I expect you believe that people are migrating in large numbers from the south to Alaska. If you believe the AGW stuff you are terrified by the difference in climate between Atlanta Ga and Washington DC. Having moved from Washington to Atlanta the heat did not scare me.
Imagine you’re a Canadian snowbird, and it’s mid January in Montreal, you’re freezing your backside off and you get the news that you’ve won a 3 week all expenses paid trip to Miami, but the temperature there happens to be 120 degrees, so you graciously decline the offer.
I have worked in the summer in a building with a steam boiler, quite warm, thank you. I also was outside on a scorcher of a day on duct work taking data. We had to record the ambient temperature, it was 125F.
NPR? Is it still on air? And as to global warming: Sure, the globe is warming. We are in an interglacial period during which the globe warms up, after it quits warming we are back into an ice age. And: the catastrophists still haven’t explained why CO2 levels alway lag behind temperature increases. Purely political.
It would be helpful if all those posting articles would remember this blog has a world wide audience. The abbreviation NPR is one I never heard of and means nothing to me. Had to go and look it up.
Double click obscure word to highlight, then right-click and select “Search [default search engine] for [selected word/phrase]” from menu. I have to do it all of the time. It’s easy.
I know its easy but if post writers bear my point in mind it wouldn’t be necessary and thus make for a better read ( you don’t have to veer off elsewhere).
“Double click obscure word to highlight, then right-click and select “Search [default search engine] for [selected word/phrase]” from menu. It’s easy.”
I had no idea that this could be done. Easy yes, obvious no.
OK IYSS WDS PDQ
Thanks. I checked PDQ – People Dedicated to Quality.
National Public Radio (NPR), Reverend.
I know, I looked it up!
(United States of America) “national”. I suspect the Russians have a national public radio, UK certainly does and is paid by license fees, and so on.
McIntyre has a useful acronym list at climateaudit.org. I need it from time to time.
Good point.
Yes, there are some snow and ice enthusiasts, but the majority of people in temperate climates go — or want to go warmer regions for vacations. Ideally, the sunny beach somewhere in the tropics. I’ve lived and worked in hot and cold climates and as others have said, warmer is better.
Another academic revealing how their lofty education can fail to provide them any authentic wisdom, common sense, savvy or obligation to honesty.
To be cruel, many of them are simply weirdos, oddballs, creeps and/or chronic dumbshats.
I’m discovering these days that it’s now possible for those with a “lofty education,” certainly a name-brand one, to graduate without the remotest understanding of how human biology even works; hence the popularity of “health” products like Gweneth Paltrow’s “Goop!” (Look it up if you want some laughs).
Lisa has never heard of sauna? It’s a room heated usually +80°C, 176 F, and above. Some people can enjoy it for an hour.
Yes, the regular setup is +80C. Hot sauna is 90 or 100 C. I enjoy it cool, just +50C or +60C warm. I’m afraid my wife beats me in liking hot for long time.
Good reminder. Lisa probably hasn’t heard of a lot of things.
Good example.
What an incredibly quaint and parochial view she has, pretending everyone in the world is as privileged as she is and has actually been to a forest. I think I’d have to explain things to her the way I would to my four-year-old.
One wonders how these simple, backward folk end up as professors at a university. I question both her position and her institution.
As the saying goes: If you can’t do, teach. If you can’t teach, teach teaching.
This professor is completely misreading the way in which societies are moving .
A slight diversion will illustrate what I mean . Uber , a consumer led transport movement has been forbidden a licence to operate in London , in favour of the traditional and very expensive black cabs and in response to heavy union pressure on the London Mayor. Articles in the press suggest that for all the problems Uber has had ( I have never used them and have no connection with them) , it is favoured by millions of users because it synchronises with the technological control that they have to hand , and gives the consumer a choice: public transport , black cabs , unlicensed minicabs or Uber.
The climate action choices that this Professor demands are not in fact choices , but diktats from international; or Govt bodies in which the consumer has little or no say. This is contrary to the way society in countries without obvious oppressive control is moving , thanks to technology, and that is why there is an apparent scepticism amongst the general public.
Good analysis.
Lisa fails at the most basic emotional level by assuming that an increase in the global average temperature will necessarily present itself during the high temps of the summer months. The reality is that (pleasantly) warmer winters and early evening temperatures seems to be where the warming actually happens, if at all. The global temperature range seems to be the same as it ever was. That’s why the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth happened in 1913 and still remains the record.
Yep. Australian records are very longstanding too – not just nationally, but at state levels too. (Cold records, not so much.)
She also ignores the fact that with maybe 1F of unadjusted warming seen in satellite data, that in such a place it would have been 119F without the alleged warming. No one would have been in Death Valley or Marble Bar in summer. And while people may have been in Riyadh anyhow, they’re not walking around the streets.
I went to Bahrain in summer. It was 105F at NIGHT.
Just sit in a sauna. Most people have. They are typically 175F. Look it up. Don’t have to imagine anything.
Well I have to admit I would not like to live in a sauna, not for a day. On the other hand, projected 2 or 3 or even 6 degrees of warming are still pretty far from 175F.
spent one summer during college working in a rather large machine shop. My job was to pull the chips out from under those big old turret lathes and horizontal boring machines. This was up on the east coast where relative humidity would often reach 95% and higher with temps in the 90’s too. later in life, I did masonry work in central Texas, and then worked as a carver in a stone mill–quite similar to the machine shop of my youth. I know what high heat is like, and know that it is easily adaptable to. In fact, the first a/c vehicle I ever bought was in 2000, (my Texas stoneworking career started in72), and for a lot of years did not even live with A/C since the hardest part physically would be going back and forth from the A/C into the heat
It only depends only on the l’atitude of the observer.. Move if you don’t like it where you are. Or it the real question I’d like you to have less than optimal colder because I don’t want hotter …
Some time ago I worked on an oil rig about 120 km east of Derby WA in the Kimberly ranges. It was December, early summer in the build-up to the rainy season. Mostly about 40 C max, but we had a rainy/hot spell where it was 46 C in the shade in the afternoon,and very humid from the intermittent rain. Inside the logging unit we could get the temperature down to 30 C. My job was partly inside in the ‘cool’ 30 C, and partly outside. The drill crew were out in it all the time (shift changes were midnight and noon to share the heat and cool), and when they were busy and I was slack I’d go and re-fill the drink cooler at the camp. On the worst shift our crew of 7 got through 15 gallons of the Staminade. Hard physical work, not sitting on the porch fanning yourself. Nobody keeled over or died, we all just got on with it and looked after ourselves as the conditions dictated.
Definitely no ‘snowflakes’ on that job.
I’ve shovelled a meter of snow off my roof when it was -35C and I’ve shovelled a meter of dirt out of a trench when it was +30C. I’ve seen the temperature “rocket up” by 5C during breakfast. I guess it would come as a surprise to this chirping academic that I CAN imagine an increase of 2-3C over 80 to 100 years… yawn.
I Close my eyes and imagine a beautiful spring day in the classroom. In my mind’s eye, I see tall, green trees and smell the aroma of blooming flowers I Can hear the gentle breeze rustling the leaves and see a room full of attentive faces.
I can conjure up this mental scene without much effort, at least for a few moments.
Can I imagine that scene as a professor spouting about how emotions are made ? I Try to produce, in my mind, the discomfort of mental gymnastics. I don’t mean just the idea of being thick— actually try to feel the physical sensations of being an arrogant other-worldly prig. I cannot invoke these feelings on demand
Most people cannot. So lets defund her. and them.
close your eyes and imagine being retarded. most people can’t – so they listen to NPR!
I spent a few years in Iraq at temperatures around 120-135°F. Not only was it really fricken hot, but then add a Kevlar (~3-4 lbs), Body Armor (~30-35 lbs), ruck (with about 2 gallons water, ~16 lbs), and carrying an M4 (~7.5 lbs) with 210 rounds of ammo (~5.5 lbs) just for added comfort. Was in many buildings without A/C and survived by drinking water, a lot of water (and not getting shot). Now live in AK where it is very fricken cold in the winter often getting down to -40°F in the winter. Operations are so much easier at 120-135°F than they are at -30 to -40°F. Fingers and toes work much better at hotter temps too. Light contract gloves provide protection vice mittens which gives no dexterity. All you have to do is drink A LOT of water and stay hydrated.
Point is I hung out at 120-135°F daily for prolonged periods of time (over 8-10 hours) with a lot of extra weight and wrapped in stuff (long clothes, contact gloves, boots, helmet, body armor) that does not allow sweat to evaporate and cool the body as intended. Way to survive was to drink A LOT of water. I challenge anybody to hang out at -40°F under same conditions for the same time frame without external heat. They will die, quickly.
Heat is not the issue. Cold is. My take.
Well -40C is why we invented sauna, I guess. To melt people.
Frankly some people dig a hole to a lake and start fishing, angling through. In minus 40C.
Yes, they do. And most (all that I have seen) people have a shed over the hole (or on the ice near several holes) that they warm up to 30°F or more which is 70°F warmer than -40°F. I have also started a fire on a frozen river at -40°F to stay warm. Burning wood melts ice the until logs sink under water (about 5″), but the fire stays going on wood which is dry and out of water. Pretty neat actually, a fire on a frozen river.
There is a huge difference between 30°F and -40°F. At -40°F, I can pound a 16 penny nail into a 2×4 with a frozen solid banana. When it gets back up to 30°F, we all start hanging out in shorts, forget about gloves, and some hardy folks actually begin wearing flip-flops.
Not saying people cannot survive at -40°F. However, I am saying without external heat, a person’s time at that temperature is very limited no matter how well dressed a person is (unless doing active work and still hands, feet, and face are at risk). Also, having been at very hot temps (~130-135°F) and very cold temps (-55°F), it is much easier to do work and survive at hotter temps even with a whole bunch of stuff that weighs a lot and prevents cooling via evaporation of sweat.
I had two clinical thermometers blow up in my luggage from heat that left wet tire tracks in the asphalt at Yelwa on the Niger R. in Northern Nigeria (I learned my regular thermometers wouldn’t do!) . I had my wife and two very young children with me (mid 1960s). There was no air-conditioning indoors but sitting having lunch under wafting fans seemed most luxurious.
Nor was the world into the collective OCD of never taking a step without lugging a bandolierr of water bottles. Nigerians I worked with advised only sips of water, about a liter on a day’s geological compass and pace traverse. Rehydrate in the evening on lots of tea and a cup or two at breakfast. He said ‘Bature’ drink far too much water in the heat. I got accustomed to it and became lean wiry and healthy. I haven’t quit yet 50yrs later.
Gary,
I did my Summer Field Mapping for two months in the White Mountains at about 5,000 feet elevation, east of the Owens Valley in California. It was well over 100 every day. I’d carry two canteens and a couple of cans of soda, and get dehydrated every day. I’d then spend the evenings getting re-hydrated. I don’t think that there was any long-term damage to going without a bandolier of water bottles.
You’d probably sweat out as much extra water as the bottles would replace. Water is heavy!
I’ve noticed this getting some fitness up walking in some steep hills. Keeping hydrated during the walk is not a bad thing but it doesn’t help as much as keeping up the fluid intake for many hours afterwards.
Tribe’s have lived in the Amazon under heat and humidity for a long time and adapted and this twit would not last a few day’s there. People adapt to slow changes and fast changes in climate and have throughout history everywhere on our planet. People living in climate controlled buildings most of their lives are whom complain the most when they venture outside where reality hits them.
“Most people” is the 97% science by consensus fallacy restated.
I dehydrated a large fraction of the world’s prunes in 1966. I worked in the engineroom of a Forties vintage steam ship. I walked in the heat in Pinnacles NM and Death Valley.
Took 27 semester hours of various behavioral studies as electives in engineering undergraduate school and during my masters as they were interesting and easy. Only had one really bright professor and he also had his “stuff” together, as we used to say, though not how we said it. He was a psychoanalyst, ie phd, md, clinical psychologist to boot. All of the rest of my behavioral sciences professors were marginally interpersonally adept, at best, and personality basket cases at worst, and none of them, other than him, very bright. This lady fits the mold of what I experienced with rank and file psychology profs. Probably couldn’t find her kiester with both hands and a flashlight.
A friend of mine took a 2-year graduate degree in Psych. She said the first year was mostly no-brainer survey courses with multiple choice exams that nobody could flunk. (To flunk them would deprive the school of tuition.) The second year was group-oriented, with team assignments where incompetent or lazy students were allowed to take a free ride on the more capable students’ work.
The curriculum included a laughably low requirement of 4 hours of personal therapy. I just checked the school’s latest curriculum and discovered that personal therapy is now “highly recommended.” Programs at other institutions have similarly lowered (deleted) the requirement, so this is not unusual in the field.
I pity the unfortunate client who goes for help to a practitioner who should have flunked out of such a program or been given a “Section 8” by a therapist. The standards have been irresponsibly ‘dumbed down’ below a safe level.
I experienced 140 F on the tarmac in Kuwait, but not for long. However I worked in 120 F a number of times, including in Afghanistan.
Notice that in almost every alarmist scare statement, there’s a stack of assumptions which are supposed to be taken as “givens”:
– It’s going to be 120 F. (somewhere? everywhere? now & then? every day?)
– That’s because the climate is getting dangerously warmer.
– That’s because humans are putting “too much” CO2 in the atmosphere
– Reducing CO2 will make the climate stop warming
– If you give governments enough money, authority & power they can “fix” the climate.
There is no evidence for any of these, except the first (barely).
I worked in tomato canneries as a state inspector where the tomato towers could reach 130+ degrees F. The workers would only go up there for about 10 minutes at a time and were hydrating constantly. I have also been in Redding when it was over 120 F. There is nothing difficult about discerning those temperatures being hotter than say a 105 degree F. Central Valley day.
One of the hottest days I have experienced was July 4th weekend in 1968. In California, when a high pressure system sets in over the Sacramento Valley, the isotherms tend to run north-south, paralleling the Sierra Nevada. I was on the North Fork of the American River, near Colfax, experiencing what was obviously a warmer than typical Summer day. After lunch, I went up to where I had parked my vehicle and turned on the radio. I got a weather report of 120 deg F in Sonora (CA), which was about 50 miles south on the same line of longitude. It was more comfortable spending our time in the river, but we would have survived had we not had the river so conveniently available. What was interesting was that whenever a gust of wind blew up the canyon, it would flash evaporate water and instantly raise the relative humidity. All of us would cough as we drew a breath of the hot, humid air.
There is a reason that many people, such as the Spaniards and Mexicans of New Spain, adopted the practice of a siesta during the hottest part of the day. Humans can handle a wide range of temperatures with physical and cultural adaptations to the extremes. Incidentally, I lived in California for some 50 years and never owned a house or vehicle with air conditioning, and I only once experienced any serious issues (coming back from a trip to Mount Lassen); it wasn’t until I moved back to the Midwest, where it is much more humid, that I finally succumbed to the Dark Force and adopted air conditioning as a way of life.
I once drove from the Bay Area to Tahoe. In the Valley at about nine o’clock, it was already 121 degrees F. Cars with steaming radiators were pulled over to the side of the freeway like so many abandoned wagons on the Oregon Trail.
More people have experienced 120 F than Ms. Barrett imagines.
Have to agree about humidity. But leaving a small air conditioned store in Houston out into 100 degree heat and nearly 100% humidity is a shock.
Gosh, how can we make people believe? When Leo Dicaprio gives me his private jet or his property on Malibu beach, I promise to be a believer. Fair enough?
Just relax everybody, the global temperatures only rise some 1,5 deg C per century and there is no significant increase for the time being…
Las Vegas couldn’t possibly have gotten hotter because of all that pavement, auto engines, those buildings and air conditioning pumping heat outside, could it?
If the temperature goes above 120 F and stays there, most people will die. link
Heat waves are common in South Asia and thousands of people die. 50 C, 122 F If it gets warmer, more people will die.
The good professor isn’t as cracked as most people commenting here say she is.
mostmore people will dieAargh!
You may have missed mycomment Bob but to repeat- warming doesn’t generally manifest as an increase in daily high temperatures. It shows up as warmer winters and taking a little longer to cool off after the sun goes down.
That’s the problem with averaging temperatures. Any additional warming can show up anywhere on the scale and everyone just assumes it pushes up at the top end. If you just charted the daily high temps for the last 150 years, you wouldn’t see much if any difference. That’s how alarmists try to decieve people.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/extreme-heat-in-1896-panic-stricken-people-fled-the-outback-on-special-trains-as-hundreds-die/
The sort of heat wave that has happened before when CO2 levels were perfect. As Hoyt pointed out, a higher global average if 4C does not mean extreme days are going to be 4C worse. Most of that will be higher min temps at high latitudes.
This has never happened again in Australia. The heat waves kept coming but we dealt with it better because of fossil fuels
Commie 120 in a mid day doesn’t stay that way at night. The places you get those temperatures are generally arid and at night you would be wise to have a blanket handy! In the equatorial regions, it normally doesn’t reach more than mid 90s though it is very humid. You also get afternoon showers that cool a bit in those areas. I’ve worked outdoors in those situations and it’s more a matter of attitude and acceptance of sweating and discomfort. Fretting over it can whittle you down. I’ve also lived and worked in -35 40, no room for error or foolishness, especially in the wilderness.
And…if people used common sense they’d notice that the way Arabs have dressed for thousands of year’s is for a good reason. It protects them from the heat. Sweating act’s like a evaporated cooler between the layers when air flows through it. Exposed skin is dehydrated causing sunburn. On the other end people dress warm in frigid climates.
And…if people used common sense they’d notice that the way Arabs have dressed for thousands of year’s is for a good reason. It protects them from the heat. Sweating act’s like a evaporated cooler between the layers when air flows through it. Exposed skin is dehydrated causing sunburn. On the other end people dress warm in frigid climates.
She’s cracked because the places where hitting 120F is even possible are few and far between.
She’s cracked because she seems to think that facing temperatures of 120F will be an everyday experience for most if not all people.
Nobody has claimed that 120F is not dangerous.
Alarmists also forget when it is convenient that the least warming occurs around the deserts, tropics and sub-tropics. Least warming occurring in Summer with most in Winter. Least warming occurring during day compared with night. Lets not get facts in way of a scary story. There is no doubt that very high temperatures are dangerous for people unprepared, but in very limited areas of the planet.
Spent a whole summer as an inspector for an Interstate paving project. Stuff comes off the trucks at 250-300F. Then you have to walk on it to take samples, measurements, etc. We would pray for rain.
After 5PM quitting time the beer came out. Black Label as I recall. Never tasted so good.
Suggest the NPR author do the same sometime soon.
Black Label tasting good? Perhaps the heat got to you more than you realized.
Its like spam after a days hiking
Probably, but no one was drinking Bud or Miller then…
This was back in the early 70’s…
We didn’t have any 120s this year, just some 114s and 115’s . . per usual . .
Another typical progressive elitist that assumes they “know-it-all” while deep in their isolated ivory domes.
Las Vegas gets that hot every summer.
People live in Las Vegas and experience that heat regularly. Only tourists from pleasant temperate locations are stupid enough to make like Las Vegas is a window into the future caused by Climate Change.
Workers work outside all year round in Las Vegas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California where desert temperatures climb into the hundred+ °F every day and plunge low every night.
NPR author and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett is a clueless pampered urbanite.
Psych Lisa Barrett wants too cause innocent people to suffer temperatures other worker endure every day. I suppose that give Psych Barrett some guilt release.
Several years ago, Natgeo made a huge deal about “scientists” and “experts” joining underground workers in Mexico’s caves with immense selenite crystals.
Conditions in the caves are brutal; near zero air movement, maximum humidity and 100+°F temperatures.
The scientists and experts brought in cobbled together field cooling packs, which did not work very well. Especially when the extra weight drains a person’s strength quickly.
The Natgeo show made much of the effort and suffering these fools underwent, with copious TV time devoted to heat exhaustion close up.
Then the “scientists” and “experts” met some spelunkers, who happily volunteered to assist collecting samples.
Not a problem! These amateur spelunkers went without fancy protection and cooling packs; easily reaching depths and collecting samples, the Natgeo stooges only dreamed about.
Did they sweat? Yes.
Were they tired? Yes?
What the amateurs were not is absurdly unrealistic while the amateurs were in far better shape.
Like many other commenters above I’ve spent quite a bit of time working in hot places; e.g. U.S. Steel Open Hearth and Steam Generation facility, Upper floors of barns storing hay, attics of houses and garages, etc.
All of which explains why I enjoy wandering the Mojave Desert and BLM lands of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
Yes, in summer too.
Adventuring in the desert is better when places like Las Vegas are very hot. There are far to many asphalt parking lots in Las Vegas; one needs water carriers just to walk across some of those parking lots during the day.
i am french, i can’t imagine what 120°F feels like.We use Celsius…so what s the point?
About 48 C
But, of course, the whole point about global warming is that temperatures are rising by no more than a half a degree or so.
Therefore, if you live somewhere where the average temperature varies between 30F and 80F each year, ther new climate might be 31F and 81F. I defy anybody to notice the difference
You forgot about the hurricanes. Don’t forget the hurricanes! And the sea level and.. and….I think alien invasion was in there somewhere, or is that next year now?
Shoot, Rev. I’m just glad we all made it through the 23 without getting whacked –don’t think anything else could possible compare to that.
that should be 23rd
don’t forget earthquakes and volcanoes
Living in Arizona during the summer i certain know what 120F feels like, an I have news for the Lisa Feldman Barrett 120F feels a lot better than -50F been in both don’t want to do -50 ever again. She should be forced to face both in normal clothes, for fifteen minutes. He stupidity would end if she survived the -50 for 15 minutes, she would definitely get frostbite unprotected, 120 not a problem you won’t dehydrate in that time. I now understand why my father did give so called educated people much time since most were less intelligent than him, yet they thought he was stupid.
I am very tempted to write to said professor about “How ridiculous arguments are made” and the emotional consequences of making yourself look like an idiot.
Anyone who has had to eat salt pills knows heat and humidity.
I worked lifting 16 kg buckets of dried sultanas in a shed with temperatures outside reaching 117f (47C). We were told that it reached 120 inside. I eventually cramped, stopped work, was abused by the foreman until someone gave him a mouthful, went home and recovered, then came back to work lifting about 20 tons for the shift (that day being much cooler).
The town gets 6 days a year over 40C (104F) and the highest recorded at the airport was 47 on that day. The highest, but ignored, recording at the PO was 124F in 1906 (after a 123F day). 4C warmer days for the globe on average translates to less than 4C increase in day time temperatures in temperate regions so those few 45C days might be 47C instead but at those temperatures, it makes little difference. I’d rather such companies didn’t skimp on air-conditioning to save a few pennies.
Felt 120 degree F temperature in Arizona.
Endured 130 degrees while operating one of the diesel generators to power the aircraft carrier I was stationed on to allow it to leave dry dock. And I’ve encountered over 140 degrees in the main engine room while underway.
It is both funny and sad to see what sort of arguments are presented to justify ideologies.
Even worse is that the alarmists can’t accept the real reasons why their arguments aren’t taken seriously. Well, except by MSM.
I was born in Mesa, Arizona 1960. Lived here all but 2 year’s back in 84-85 in Texas and New Mexico farming and diaries until 2005. Digging ditches, shoveling mangers, hoeing weeds and burning weeds on ditch banks in the heat of summer that is over 90 degrees at sun up on some mornings until it got hot a few hour’s later. Most farm equipment never had HVA/C until the mid 1970s and the few that had a shade or umbrella only worked when the sun was high. Cabs were 80% glass and when the A/C quit it blocked the breezes and reached 170F inside on calm day’s. Working in green field’s had high humidity with CO2 and high Oxygen too. As a welder and I wore leathers in these conditions fixing or building equipment and I fixed mechanical problems in the field when needed in 100 to 120 F. I’ve loaded 3 to 4 tons of 80 to 100 lbs hay bales by hand every day between 1972 to 1976 as a pre and teenager. The Humidity Chamber I now run for Corrosion gets to 140 F and 100% humidity at the time I have to remove the vehicle to another chamber. The heat builds up in them to 160 F. Just opening the door will take your breath away when the heat escapes. It’s on a time schedule and no time to let it cool off before moving them. I’m sure a lot of us – from reading other’s experiences – have done thing’s and lived in conditions this woman has never fathomed. Pre-industrial age people and people in most of the world live without the modern conveniences I would bet she lives in. The old and young that are infirm have always been those most affected by weather. And the only real cure to help them… is cheap and reliable electricity.
Increasingly, on all this chatter about climate change, I think Rhett Butler got it right: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”. The wreckers have won.
Lisa Feldman Barrett is clearly living in an academic bubble and should get out more to see how normal people actually live. She is welcome to visit lovely Ivanhoe in NSW where today it was a pleasant 16C. but in summer can reach 49C (120F) in the shade, such as there is.
Imagine human-caused climate change. Priceless.
You just can’t make this stuff up!
Ms. Barrett could learn something from this video….
(youtube)
2:15 “I think imagination means creating silly things in your mind….”
*************
For all the “Ms. Barretts” of the world:
Imagination: human CO2 controls the climate of the earth.
(There is not even one piece of evidence substantiating this conjecture.)
Reality: CO2 UP. WARMING NOT.
MEMO (to the Ms. Barretts of the world from a “real” climate scientist):
From: Kevin T r e n b e r t h
To: Michael M@nn
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: *****
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
had 4 inches of snow. … ***The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t. …”
(Source: Dom, here, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/#comment-227456 )
heh, heh, heh
I think Elton John could add this to his song “Imagine” I think you could right a nice couple of stanzas, Janice.
“Imagine” was John Lennon, not Elton John, to be an old annoying pedant.
I AM SO SICK OF WORDPRESS I COULD
There. I feel better now. (just tried 3 times to post the same comment….. sometimes, yes, my attempts are rescued by the mod, and sometimes, not, or hours later when it’s largely moot….. so, I yelled).
Selects one type of job as an example, 120F? Big deal, my father used to rebrick brick kilns. If
Lisa Feldman Barrett is so worried about heat she and her psychology department at Northeastern University should be moved to a cooler location, Fairbanks is nice this time of year.
Absolutely. Living in the UK I would never normally experience such temperatures, but in 1976 we had a record heatwave. I was working in a factory on machines which had steam heated drying cylinders. In the afternoons it was 100 outside and the temperature inside easily reached 120 to 130. Yes, it was very uncomfortable for people like us who had never experienced such heat, but we still managed to do our jobs and maintain output.
I remember it well. But I live in Aus now so 40c+ isn’t unheard off in western Sydney in summer. In fact, when the humidity is low, 47c is quite nice.
Maybe 120F is the cause of the sizzling vocal fry at NPR.
First of all, why do taxpayers still fund National Propaganda Radio (NPR)?
A rhetorical question, btw,…
Secondly, no one has to “imagine” anything… Anyone can simply analyze manipulated HADCRUT4 data, and know we’ve ENJOYED about 0.83C of beneficial global warming recovery since the end of the LITTLE ICE AGE in 1850, of which, CO2 forcing has beneficially contributed about 0.3C of the total….
Oh, the humanity…
Leftist ideology can’t survive close empirical scrutiny, so Leftists must make emotional appeals by evoking fake images of implausible and/or irrational scenarios..
Unfortunately, such Leftist strategies are often successful, especially if public schools teach students what to think rather than how to think critically; critical thinking has been replaced by critical theory.
I fully agree that imagination and climate change are connected, but not in the way alarmists would like to think.
I do not believe simply because to me my yardstick is how accurate has the tipster been so far. Climate science is way below the racing correspondent of a cheap local paper. Once a group has a significant failure I demand external verification and examination of any work they do and they not only refuse to accept that but intimidate and have the media hound anyone right up to presidential level who asks for that.
They should be saying to Trump by all means have a red and blue team equally funded for a year and then we will have shown you we are right. They know full well they cannot do this and have to rely on blind obedience by the great unwashed public for their support as the science is hopelessly inadequate for the task of modelling climate.
Why can these so called super bright academics not understand something as basic as that?
To me climate scientists are bigoted brainwashed narrowly over educated half wits and no more than that. I have been in a hot chamber doing tests where you can only survive for ten minutes and have to take salt tablets and be monitored so 120F is just borderline cold in comparison. This makes me certain that if the system had positive feedback, or forcing as the technologically retarded like to would call it, we would have had unstable conditions so life would never have evolved.
This woman is a mere psychologist and that is a study I did for a second degree as entertainment so to me her opinion does not rate one jot on any scientific or engineering matter, having met the calibre of technical expertise in this group. When science became applied is should no longer have been allowed peer review it should have had to go through a proper certified quality assurance program with external quality control group which they have no influence over.
Eric…120F simply isn’t terrifying…for anyone who ever experienced similar temperatures on a regular basis..
Even to most Aussies, including those who live in such a climate, 120 F or 48.8C is just too bloody hot and is dangerous.
Fortunately this extreme is most often experienced in the vast, and low population, area of inland or outback Australia. In Summer.
The locals adapt and mitigate. Big Aussie cities would meltdown.
The author of the paper, Ms Barnett is pictured wearing a sleeveless dress and looks very comfortable in her workplace picture.
That means her office is air conditioned for cooling, heating or both.
Imagine that typical hypocrisy if you can but, given the side she is a cheerleader for, it is not that hard to imagine.
Hypocrisy is Par for their Course.
I baled and stacked hay in Florida.
I spent 3.5 years in a Main Machinery Room on a conventional Aircraft Carrier
5 years I taking and commissioned plastics extrudes in hell holes worldwide.
Now 18 years making steam with CoGens and boilers at a hospital.
I’ll take heat over the alternative any day.
Not sure why anyone would need to imagine 120F anyway… the IPCC is talking about a TINY change in temperature.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature-projections
“Results from a wide range of climate model simulations suggest that our planet’s average temperature could be between 2 and 9.7°F (1.1 to 5.4°C) warmer in 2100 than it is today.”
Even under the wildly exaggerated 9.7F change in 80+ years time, only the places that are already hot as hell would hit that. 2-4F is much more likely, and people have no trouble imagining that… they experience that change on a day to day basis.
For Warmunists, it’s all about the imagination, and about feewings. I mean, “think of the children” (or grandchildren) is one of their favorite refrains. “Save the polar bears” has fallen by the wayside much their chagrin, since even they finally had to admit the polar bears weren’t in any danger, and were in fact thriving. Of course their favorite one “save the planet” is still in vogue. Because, if you hate the planet, what kind of a monster are you?
I’m afraid of 120!
I checked the Weather Channel and they said 90 here Thursday, then a cool down this weekend.
Nothing about 120. What’s she going on about???
She jumped ahead to why we should fear 120, but never told us why we should believe it’s going to get to 120, nor where nor when.
Apparently Ms. Barrett does not have an attic in her house, or if she does she has never been in it during the summer.
This seems a very strange alarmist piece on climate change and hot temperatures. I can invoke these feelings on someone who doesn’t understand what they are on about.
If climate change was suppose to people experiencing temperatures of 120 degrees F outside, then 99% of the planet have never seen climate change. They will also never experience climate change during their lives unless they go to a holiday destination that might. Although a lot will have experienced these temperatures say in a car or small building without air conditioning.
The average temperature of the planet warming or cooling generally means nothing to local climate that people actually experience. Maximum record temperatures are generally going no higher than the global temperature rise observed. Imagine near record temperatures upwards of 1-2 degrees F, nobody will notice the difference to last time it was near that.
The UK will never see 120 degrees F over the next century and neither will most of Europe. The entire continent Antarctica and Arctic will never see it. Only the hottest regions on the planet may see it and some do yearly especially in the Middle East and around some desert regions.
For virtually all the planet they might at sometime experience 41c (106f) instead of 40c (104f), 35c (95f) instead of 34c (93f), or 29c (84f) instead of 28c (83f) or 19c (68f) instead of 18c (66f).
Typo – 28c (82f)
Also 19c (66f), 18c (64f)
Doing the weekly thermal scan on the industrial lime kiln I used to operate, at the fire end I scanned the building wall, 140f. Always fun when you had to unplug the lime crusher which was located at the fire end of the kiln.
If 97% of psychics believe the Earth will end tomorrow and then it becomes the day after tomorrow, people take note.
It’s been colder recently than the period 1980s to 2000.
There, I just imagined climate change!
Nobody told that poor lost soul that her nightmare is not going to happen. She’d better creep back under her stone where it is nice and cosy. She may tell her story to the centipedes and snakes. I doubt they’ll listen.
She’s a psychologist. Her concern is not with truth or facts or the good of mankind, but how to influence people to believe whatever she wants them to believe.
It is a ploy to make listeners FEEL like they are superior to those who oppose her policies. She’s implying that her opposition is ignorant and out of touch. She knows that most people will not even take the time to think through if what she is saying even makes a bit of sense.
It’s pure propaganda and it is very intentional. She has no interest in finding out if what she is pushing for is true or not.