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 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.