Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to New Scientist, places which can’t afford air conditioning are in real trouble.
Climate change has already made parts of the world too hot for humans
ENVIRONMENT 8 May 2020
By Adam VaughanGlobal warming has already made parts of the world hotter than the human body can withstand, decades earlier than climate models expected this to happen.
…
Wet bulb temperature (TW) is a measure of heat and humidity, taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth. Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating, but lower levels can still be deadly, as was seen in the 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands without passing 28°C TW.
…
“The crossings of all of these thresholds imply greater risk to human health – we can say we are universally creeping close to this magic threshold of 35°C. The tantalising conclusion is it looks like, in some cases for a brief period of the day, we have exceeded this value,” says Tom Matthews at Loughborough University in the UK.
..;
Clare Heaviside at University College London says the work is broadly in line with existing research, but cautioned against the focus on the threshold of 35°C TW. “It is difficult to link a wet bulb temperature threshold to specific health outcomes, and for different population groups,” she says.
…
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242855-climate-change-has-already-made-parts-of-the-world-too-hot-for-humans/
The abstract of the study;
The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance
Colin Raymond1,2,*, Tom Matthews3 and Radley M. Horton2,4
See all authors and affiliationsScience Advances 08 May 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 19, eaaw1838
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw1838Humans’ ability to efficiently shed heat has enabled us to range over every continent, but a wet-bulb temperature (TW) of 35°C marks our upper physiological limit, and much lower values have serious health and productivity impacts. Climate models project the first 35°C TW occurrences by the mid-21st century. However, a comprehensive evaluation of weather station data shows that some coastal subtropical locations have already reported a TW of 35°C and that extreme humid heat overall has more than doubled in frequency since 1979. Recent exceedances of 35°C in global maximum sea surface temperature provide further support for the validity of these dangerously high TW values. We find the most extreme humid heat is highly localized in both space and time and is correspondingly substantially underestimated in reanalysis products. Our findings thus underscore the serious challenge posed by humid heat that is more intense than previously reported and increasingly severe.
Read more: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838
“It is difficult to link a wet bulb temperature threshold to specific health outcomes, and for different population groups,”
Smart advice. Hard wet bulb limits are the fantasy invention of people who have worked all their lives in comfortable air conditioned offices in temperate countries.
A long time ago I had job operating a hydraulic hot press in a poorly ventilated chemical factory. On the very hottest days the indoor temperature hit 55C / 130F, according to the thermometer next to my station, with visible lingering clouds of mostly water steam from polymerisation of the material being pressed.
The management used to look concerned when temperatures peaked, made sure we drank a cup of rehydration fluid every 5 minutes, but otherwise we just carried on.
Plenty of blue collar workers, such as miners, bakers and foundry workers, endure similar conditions on a regular basis.
I completely agree, it’s called “Texas in the summertime”.
The only option for us to to sit inside watching TV drinking ice-cold Shiner Bock (or Blonde) beer.
I think because it’s the world’s fault this has happened, they should have to pay for my beer.
Plus if you wear glasses, you’re blinded when going outside from them fogging up. I guess Colon, et al, never heard of air conditioning.
I expierenced that glasses fogging when i was in Bangladesh in 1995, also people in the tropics tend to put their airco at a freezing 18 centigrade.
Try going from -20℉ to 70℉ in 10 seconds. Instant hard frost on the glasses, that takes five minutes to thaw.
I’ve been in Singapore at 35° C and 90% RH. So am I really dead, Mr Jordan?
I resided in Houston and spent 7 summers there (decades ago). Though playing tennis outside during the middle of the day was challenging, I think I’m still alive.
Softball was easier because we played in early evening and always had a few refreshing beverages in the shade afterward.
Out of curiosity, I just checked Houston’s temperature and it’s 22C. Must be global warming.
I spent about 1 year in Houston (2005, the Katrina/Rita year) and it was nuts in the summer. Worked in a downtown skyscraper; one morning I got to work and noticed the window by my cubicle was wet, so I tried to dry it with a tissue for about a minute until I realized the droplets were condensation on the outside of the building – due to A/C making windows cold. Really hated walking out to the garage at 5pm and having my shirt drenched before I got three steps from the elevator. But I lived to tell the story, and apparently Houston is still 4th largest inhabited city in the nation.
Yogi might say, “It’s so hot and crowded, no one wants to live there.”
It was really cool this morning. Have had the heat on all day
Jim in Houston
Scissor,
I went to college in Houston in the 1970’s. It was easy to find an open tennis court
in the afternnon each summer – wonder why? LOL! The rain messed up our tennis
more than the heat. If it rained I’d sometimes head over to near TSU where there were outdoor basketball courts and play pickup ball. But at that age we were bullet (and humidity) proof. Not so much anymore. Now reside in Arizona.
God help us without A/C.
An Australian summer 40c and 95% RH good beach and beer drinking weather. <:o)
Just watch out for those Bluebottles. Ouch.
“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”
Flying helecopters in the Arab Gulf in late 1970’s 50c+ was common
I worked in Saudi where it was hot and humid in the Eastern Province 50c wasn’t unusual. It never got hotter as the aircraft was only certified to 50.
Some days we checked the temp for laughs. 61 on the apron.
Actually being from Shiner, Texas, and having worked in the brewery there right out of high school, your comment warms my heart!
That bottle shop with the open-air steam-pasteurizer in August in Texas convinced me that I wanted to do something else for the rest of my life 🙂
…there’s always death valley
In about 1982 when I was an apprentice radio mechanic I had to run a coaxial cable through the ceiling of Tully railway station in North Queensland during mid summer. I can tell you that was the most hot and humid situation I have experienced. My clothes were literally saturated with sweat in about 30 seconds. Spent about five minutes up there and was glad to get out into the relatively “cool” air which is typically in the low 30s (celsius) with dew point in the mid to high 20s. I have spent time in the Philippines and lived in North Queensland all my life but that little experience takes the cake.
Here in the U.S. OSHA rules don’t allow that. When I was a cable guy, if the outside air temperature was over about 80℉ (27℃) we were forbidden to go into the attic, there were times when the job had to be rescheduled for the very first thing in the morning.
Without measuring the relative humidity at the same place or the correspondent air temperature doesn’t say anything
Krishna and all,
I agree that a wet bulb temperature of 35 C, which is 95 F, doesn’t say anything about what the air temperature. For any wet bulb temperature, there is a relationship between air temp and relative humidity. But a 35C wet bulb temperature is incredibly humid, regardless of the actual air temperature.
I wonder how many places around the would reach at 35C wetbulb for any length of time. Even the comment above about Singapore being 35C and 90% humidity is a wetbulb temperature of about 89 degrees F or about 32 degrees C.
For the relationship between wet bulb temp, air temp, and relative humidity, see simplified psychometric chart at this link (it is in degrees F):
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-826f72467a9ae73177ba3540644bf549
But I no longer have access to a sling psychrometer
you really don’t need it ( . not sure if you were being a bit sarcastic . . 🙂 ).
ust look at the chart for temp and relative humidity, which is often what the weather report (or temp and dew point), and you can find the wet bulb temperature.
Eric – I can confirm your hydraulic press experience. I worked at a paper mill with some areas having the same conditions. Water coolers, salt pills, and spot coolers were the solutions. Addendum – working in the Mojave Desert, it was so hot that the liquid crystal displays turned black and unreadable. That was welcome, because we had to work in the morning and evening with the instrumentation being more sensitive to the heat than the humans holding the instrumentation.
That’s hot, Neil, but I was even hotter to the north of Mojave Desert. We geologists were drilling a project on the west side of the Panamint Mountains in California, and we decided to cross Death Valley to get to the project, this in the middle of July. Imagine three geologists, cooler full of bottles of rehydration liquids, in a dark blue Blazer with black roof. About a third of the way across, temperature around 46 deg C, motor starts overheating, so turn off air conditioner. Still motor temperature goes up dangerously, so turn on heater max heat and full blast, windows open, temperature inside around 60 deg C. Clever geologists that we were the re-hydration liquids were sacrificed, some over our heads and some internal. About two-thirds across the dash splits in half and the motor makes funny noises, but more importantly, re-hydration liquids almost gone. Finally across, turn off motor at Furnace Creek, replenish re-hydration liquids, and eventually continue to project. Moral of the story: if three geologists can adapt probably other people can also.
I spent a few hours in a silicon metal plant near Montreal in mid summer about 45yrs ago. The quartz raw material (SiO2) in a crucible with wood chips was reduced and melted using carbon electrodes ~a foot in diameter.
The molten silicon when hardened was dumped on the concrete floor and pushed with a small wheeled dozer to a jaw crusher feed bin. The workers had heavy heat resistant gear on and I a lighter visitors outfit. It was 30C+ outside and it felt almost chilly when I left in my car.
This dishonest report is part of the preparation for “greensplainin” the snowfall Im seeing out my wind on this fine May day. They never mentioned a place we can look up to check. The big La Nina is setting up and we will be seeing a lot of this burning up BS over the summer. I new it had to be a UK climateer when he mentioned a puny 35°C. I’m sure his Ozzie climate worriers will be chastizing them for unremarkable 35 degrees.
I helped pay for my undergraduate engineering education by working summers at Chrysler St. Louis Assembly in Fenton, MO. I did two summers at Truck, and one at Car (1973-1976). Chrysler hired temporary workers during the summer to fill in for vacationing UAW people.
Missouri summers are brutal, but you take a Missouri summer and put it inside a half million square foot machine dissipating megawatts of power as cars or trucks are assembled, and throw in 3,000 people under each roof, and you have a real sweatbox.
There were fans scattered around, but I think they probably warmed the air more than anything else. Every 20 feet or so was an upright steel I-beam, and every one of them had a box of Morton salt tablets hanging on it. You can’t find those today…salt is bad, according to our nannies. They kept us healthy, though.
The only air conditioned parts of the plants were the break areas, and the various engineering and management offices. The second summer I worked there was the best, in many regards. I was assigned janitor duty. I got to see every square inch of the plant, and learn how every operation was performed – and clean the air-conditioned spaces! (The break areas were always inhabited by the rest of the janitorial staff, who had seniority and played cards all day with impunity.)
One other aspect of that summer that made it bearable: My starting pay – as a janitor – was $15,000 a year. The average starting salary of a Mechanical Engineer (my major) with a bachelor’s degree that same year was $13,800.
And they wonder why Chrysler went BK….
Surveyed in Death Vallet. 106 F (41.1+ C). It was called, no kidding “a cold snap.”
Drank a gallon of juice in one afternoon. When you’re young, you do stuff like that.
I worked for Toronto Hydro as underground engineer in chambers and vaults…on a hot, muggy day (over 32c) they would order all non-emergency workers in, as the vaults, especially those with 1500kva or higher oil cooled transformers, would spike at well over 40c. I measured one vault on Front Street at 48c, though that transformer was also percolating.
The Vaughan is a politician, and quite left wing (a Dipper), as well as a known warmunist.
Well I guess global cooling is arriving just in time.
In the NH, …. it is “seasonal warming” that is arriving just in time, …. and I now know why.
Cause I just realized that “seasonal warming” in the Northern Hemisphere is caused by decreasing atmospheric CO2, ……whereas, ”seasonal cooling” in the Northern Hemisphere is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2.
And the Keeling Curve Graph is literal proof of that happening.
When atmospheric CO2 starts decreasing in the Springtime, … air temperatures start increasing.
When atmospheric CO2 starts increasing in the Autumn, … air temperatures start decreasing.
“YUP”, the more CO2 in the atmosphere, …. the more “heat” is radiated to space.
Given the above, ….. CO2 will henceforth be referred to as a “globalcooling” gas.
Eritas
When fully examined, there is really little correlation of CO2 with warmth on almost all timescales.
+10
According to CFSR we have cooled .8 C in the last 3 months. Hey, if I’m going to pick cherries they might as well be ripe ones. ;))
Hi, Richard M. 🙂
Hope all is well back there in Minnesota. I will always be grateful for your being willing to help me out. That was so kind of you. Even though I couldn’t take you up on that offer of aid — just that you were WILLING helped me keep on walking up the road with a broken heart (hard to have someone you thought cared very much give you the cold shoulder — and that has happened multiple times, now).
Take care and enjoy spring (it WILL happen).
In late June 1975 I lived in Moorhead Minnesota, it rain 8 inches in Moorhead and twelve east and west of town. It turn hot the 4th of July it was 95 F and foggy. I survived that even though at the time I did not have AC in the house or the car. House I lived in was manufactured and cheaply made, funny I survived both the flood and the heat.
Clown world.
Wicked clowns. Ghouls.
You can just see the fiendish glint in their swamp green eyes as they rub their bony hands together, slimy drool trickling down their chins, muttering, “Die, humans, diiiiiiie. There are too many of you.”
Okay, okay. Tom Matthews, et al. are probably not THAT horrible, but, they are creepy (is it for money you tell these lies, Tom, et al.? academic prestige? whatever it is, it isn’t good.)
Mandibles. There should be mandibles.
Ha ha. Yes, mandibles!
And maxillas
Janice, you are appearing more frequently these days! Nice to see you brought your literary harpoon. The social climate worriers seem to be clubbing themselves in the head these days though.
Hi, Gary! 🙂
Thank you! Well, I have been on a “staycation” for quite awhile, now. 45 days, to be exact. And I like it, for the most part. My job is BORING and LOW-pay, so, while I am AGAINST this lockdown (see my many comments over the past month or so, lol), the fact is, I am getting paid to do NOTHING and that’s pretty cool (not morally, but, I can’t do anything about that — so, I’m just enjoying relaxing, reading, and BLOGGING! Sure wish we could still post images and videos 🙁 ). The site itself is irritating (technically and lukewarmingly), but you WONDERFUL COMMENTERS, all you fine geologists (smile) and chemists and physicists and mathematicians and engineers and witty, kind, well-informed thinkers of many types — YOU PEOPLE ARE SO COOL TO HANG OUT WITH.
Wish the software here made “chatting” (to a limited degree, I mean) easier and less annoying to try to accomplish.
Anyway. I have NEVER had a paid vacation in my LIFE! Not likely to have another one, either, if I keep getting the responses from potential employers I have been getting for years, now. The only jobs I can land are not the paid vacation kinds… .
And all THAT blah, blah, blah shows you that I have NO ONE TO TALK TO.
Thank you for listening.
Take care.
Janice
Hi Janice,
”YOU PEOPLE ARE SO COOL TO HANG OUT WITH.”
I always thought that, everyone was here to hang out with you.
Best to you all, Eamon.
Eamon! (*blushing*)
You are SO KIND to say that to me (to take the time to write and tell me was a lovely gift). Thank you. I am going to press the petals of that little blessing 🌺 between the pages of my heart and smile all day long. I realize that there are some who will read your words and think, “Speak for yourself, Eamon,” but I daresay that there are a few here who enjoy my company. And that sure is nice.
I hope all is well with you over in Ireland. Are they listening to you YET about the effectiveness and logic of nuclear power? Keep at it — the seeds you are planting for truth may not grow quickly, but, they are growing… .
Take care,
Gratefully,
Janice
“Places which can’t afford air conditioning are in real trouble.” Ban fossil fuels. Then everybody is in real trouble, equity achieved. Carve a notch.
History informs us that when the ruling elite ban something for the great unwashed masses, they always have an excuse for exempting themselves from the ban.
Truer words were never spoke!!! EVER!!!
A good example is the crossbow, which was so demonic it was banned against all civilised enemies. But the Islamics… they were another matter.
How did the world survive before the invention of AC? Especially in the tropics where civilization arose.
How did the Bushmen survive in the Namib?
Funny how they always go back to 1979
Yeah, interesting, isn’t it.
For anyone not getting Grant’s excellent point (now that most of us can no longer post graphs/images/videos (when is this site going to get fixed!!!!), it is harder to show) but, imagine this:
START 1936 trend line *——————————————-
START 1998 trend line *——————————————-
I reckon a new regulation is needed (because there aren’t already enough regulations) –
when a person is sitting in the shade and the temp hits 35C, they should be legally allowed to take off all their clothes, no matter where they are or who is around them.
A tried & proven adaptation measure observed by early explorers such as Captain James Cook etc etc
My clothes come off at 25°C, lower if there is no wind.
OK JohnM, you just need to be careful you don’t have a Ron White moment –
“I didn’t realize it was that cold that day . . .”
That would require millions of blindfolds to be handed out to prevent an eye condition called “Walmart Vision Stress”.
Heh. Maybe it’s good we CAN’T post images and videos here anymore… . 😆
Mr. – May 9, 2020 at 10:37 am
Then summertime sightseeing would be great in …….
Phoenix, AZ average temperatures
Month —-– day — night
June ——- 104° / 76°
July ——- 106° / 82°
August — 105° / 81°
Mesa AZ st present time 100 F it was 106 a few days ago. Relative dry here now May and June dry months July, August more humid, I missed one day after a two in rain late July, left town before it hit 116. The people who service my car work out in this heat a summer long. I hike the desert in 100 plus temps, to the most part snakes are a problem at those temps. This time of year there is a flat of water in my pickup all the time.
Samuel
When I lived in Phoenix 20-some years ago, my pool got up to 95° F in early-August — just about the average between the daily high and low. I would get home from work and my Rhodesian Ridgeback would be waiting for me at the back gate, and there was a wet trail from the pool to the gate. She apparently spent all afternoon sitting or lying on the top step into the pool, to keep ‘cool.’
And the look on her face said – “what??”
Mr.
It said, “I’m glad you’re home!” And the later I was, the happier she was to see me.
In tropical climes
There are certain times
Of day
When all the citizens retire
To take their clothes off and perspire
It’s one of those rules
The greatest fools
Obey
Because the sun is far too sultry
And one must avoid its ultry-
Violet ray
The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts
Because they’re obviously, definitely nuts!
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
–Noel Coward
Umm. You do know what happened to the good Captain. Right?
In high school (in Adelaide), I had a textbook that showed a Darwin (I think) shopping mall with people shopping naked, because it was over 45 degrees Centigrade. Those were the days BA (Before Airconditioning). In fact, I remember seeing advertising for airconditioners for factories which promoted the increase in productivity you got when people weren’t so hot.
Time to panic, because if it continues to warm, soon we’ll be at the same temperature as the Medieval Climate Optimum when the human population was reduced by 40%….oh wait, that was the Little Ice Age.
Never mind.
I received this link from Sigma Xi some time back, and wondered about it, having been to sea helping measure temperatures up to two decades before 1979 where there weren’t very many (Gulf of Mexico).
“While our analysis of weather stations indicates that TW has already been reported as having exceeded 35°C in limited areas for short periods, this has not yet occurred at the regional scale represented by reanalysis data, which is also the approximate scale of model projections of future TW extremes considered in previous studies (14, 15). To increase the comparability of our station findings with these model projections, we implement a generalized extreme value (GEV) analysis to estimate the amount of global warming from the preindustrial period until TW will regularly exceed 35°C at the global hottest ERA-Interim grid cells, currently all located in the Persian Gulf area (Fig. 4).”
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838
In Severdrup, et al., The Oceans, 1942, p 162, chapter on “Distribution of Variables in the Sea.” “A warning appears to be appropriate–namely, a warning against confusion between individual and local changes (p. 162).” I guess that has been solved along with all the missing historic area SSTs.
Two mistakes, Sverdrup and local changes (p. 157), considerable discussion
Just more Green falsehoods.
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER SEPTEMBER 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
__________________
Allan
Another article on the topic makes the claim, “…, heat-related illnesses already kill more U.S. residents than any other weather-related hazard including cold, hurricanes or floods.”
[ https://scitechdaily.com/emerging-across-the-globe-potentially-fatal-combinations-of-heat-and-humidity/ ]
I question the accuracy of the claim.
Another point is that people have different tolerances for heat. When I was about 18, a friend and I drove to the Mother Lode in July. It was very hot, as is usual for July, and while I was uncomfortable, my friend was laid out with hyperthermia and I had to cool him down with water before he could make it back to the car.
Where in this world, other than the frigid Antarctic, do people not live under conditions normal for that area? If you take a Swede and drop him in the Congo, he may not be able to quickly adapt. Same as it you dropped a Congolese in the middle of a Siberian Winter. That does not mean that it is impossible for humans to live in either area.
I am a northern New Yorker (average yearly temp 9.1C ). I was scooped up from northern Michigan in June and dropped in Thailand where I worked 12 hour shifts on a large blacktop surface often exceeding 40C. I adapted in three days (no choice). There was no AC to make the transition more difficult.
The IPCC’s climate simulation models have been proven unskilled.
(Source: https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/new-book-climate-models-fail/ )
Thus, your findings have negligible meaning for “global warming.”
******************************
And, EVEN IF, we granted all of your assertions as true,
the fact remains:
not one piece of data proves causation between human CO2 emissions and global climate ANYTHING.
What they forget to tell you that this Global Warming is natural.
Even if we allow the Global Warming produced by increasing CO2 to be 0.2C per century that is not going to have any appreciable affect for Thousands on years. At 3ppm per year it will take 130 years to double CO2 and another 520 years to double it again.
You mean 2+ C per century (what they’re ballyhooing for this century.)
You are correct. I meant per decade.
Of by a factor of 10 is par for the course.
Zeroeth Law of Climate Science.: One is approximately equal to one hundred.
From the “New Scientist”. This must be for the practice of New science, not the Old science which relied upon experimentation, empirical data, and the Old scientific method. The New science is the enlightened version – similar to New math – where truth is relative and empirical data no longer are facts – only imaginary projections from computer models are the New facts.
What a steaming pile of horse manure!
That would be about 38C, since that’s a typical rectal temperature for a horse.
Horse manure has some value. This paper, not so much.
A predictable prediction from couch potato pansies
Quotes from the New Scientist article authored by Adam Vaughan, referenced above, and my related questions and comments:
“Global warming has already made parts of the world hotter than the human body can withstand, decades earlier than climate models expected this to happen.”
— Just wondering if you have any facts to go with that? And please explain how inanimate climate models have expectations.
“Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating.”
— Just wondering if you consulted the people of these INHABITED cities to see how they manage to stay alive:
“Aziziyah, Libya. The former crown bearer of the hottest place on earth, this small town in the Jafara district of Libya is no stranger to blistering heat. In 1922 the temperature was recorded as a crushing 58C. However, this controversial reading was later discounted by the World Meteorological Organisation, who questioned the experience of the person who recorded it. That being said, it’s still hot hot hot: with daily temperatures climbing over 48C”, and
“Dallol, Ethiopia. Famed for its hydrothermal field of salt formations, acidic hot springs and gas geysers, Dallol also claims the title of the world’s lowest sub-aerial volcano. Average daily highs reach 41C. Spare a thought for the people who live there: these numbers make it the highest average temperature of any inhabited place on earth.”
— sources of the above-quoted information: https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/916462/weather-the-hottest-places-on-earth
“The crossings of all of these thresholds imply greater risk to human health – we can say we are universally creeping close to this magic threshold of 35°C.”
— Does your universe include the temperate and polar zones of Earth? If so, please cite where on Earth, excluding the tropic zones, we are “close” to a sustained daily temperature of 35°C?
Bottom line: Mr. Vaughan, I ain’t buying what you’re selling.
“And please explain how inanimate climate models have expectations.”
Perhaps the same way that Dallol can “claim the title of the world’s lowest sub-aerial volcano.” :>
Personification, a figure of speech.
My model said that you would say that.
All models are required to contain the following statement:
expectations -= results;
This ensures that whatever the result is, it will exceed expectations.
Singapore appears to be incommunicado, not because of the heat, wet or not, but because they all find themselves on the floor under the table with laughter.
Singaporeans reading the above article by Adam “Electric cars really are a greener option than fossil fuel vehicles” Vaughan
😐🤨🤭😀😄😆🤣🙄
The authors obviously have never worked in the boiler room of a Navy ship. If your rate was Fireman or Boilerman who got to spend your whole career down there.
130 degrees 24/7.
And everything you touched was wrapped in a blanket to asbestos…
Bulova: Right on! CVA 11 Intrepid 1960 FA…
Go Navy! (ex-tin can FTG)
…it is rumored that steel mills can be on the “warm” side of comfortable.
I’ve spent hours on the USFS Tanker Base Ramp at the old Phoenix Airtanker base. 122F the aircraft (DC7) was a good 130F. worked in those conditions for a few days. Didn’t die -salt stains on my Nomex
from sweating . Gallons of Gatoraide, but we lived…
The trouble with this study is not they are trying do this but the credit they give our intelligence..
“It am worse than we thunk.”
Shouldn’t we be able to find these areas based on their being depopulated? Which areas are those? Shouldn’t there be abandoned ruined cities? Maybe they came to northern canada when we weren’t looking, temps there are well below these horrific levels, which should please the authors. I invite them to explore the inviting temperatures of Inuvik.
I recommend bringing extra diesel, just in case
🙂
LOts of abandoned cities in Central and South America. It must have happened before.
“Recent exceedances of 35°C in global maximum sea surface temperature provide further support”
Except for ‘closed’ small ‘seas’ the maximum temperatures for sea surfaces in the oceans is 31C. Evap and convection is the reason. ‘Make stuff up’ is the late Stephen Schneiders legacy for climate science. As if they needed extra encouragement.
Yes, indeed.
“At the ocean surface, the ocean and atmosphere place a natural cap on water temperature thanks to convection, the force that causes strong vertical movement in the atmosphere and makes towering thunderstorms.
“As ocean temperature rises in a given region, convection pulls moisture upward into the atmosphere and builds clouds. Those clouds limit the sunlight that reaches the ocean surface and thus cool it. This process begins to take place when ocean surface temperatures reach 26° C (79° F) or so.
“Very small areas of water can get very hot for short periods of time but that doesn’t say much about the overall warmth of the ocean so let’s consider regional or larger scales and monthly averages. At the present time, the limit to which ocean surface temperatures can rise at those scales is estimated to be about 30° C (86° F), though monthly maximums in a few areas in the tropics have reached 31° C (88° F).”
— souce: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/voyager-there-limit-how-much-sea-temperatures-can-rise
But the predicted (and not yet happening very much) warming is expected to be almost exclusively extra tropical. So the hottest places on earth are not expected to get much (if any) hotter.
So far the traces of warming we’ve seen are mostly at the poles at night in the winter.
The prospects of Arctic nighttime winter temperatures occasionally dropping to only -64 degrees instead of -67 degrees by the end of this century is upsetting as hell.
lol😄
Bingo! If these authors are in fact remuneratively required to tip their hat to “Global Warming” (which in turn no doubt signals their virtuously sensitive feelings for the less fortunate), they will surely be much relieved to discover that those changes have been documented mostly to have consisted in elevation of nightly lows in high northern latitudes (to the modest relief of those many more among us threatened with hypothermic mortality).
A wet bulb (sling hygrometer) temperature nearing that of its companion dry bulb thermometer simply indicates the high humidity of the air. So of course in muggy, hot conditions you are not going to get much sweat cooling relief as the wet bulb temperature approaches your 37 C. body temperature. However more equatorial latitudes benefit from the very humidity that considerably limits the comfortable heat regulatory efficiency of sweating by at the same time providing the condensing atmospheric water vapor for cloud formation (that increased albedo reflecting more of the insolation), as well as the recurring cooling effect of condensed descending cooled water droplet rain showers that limit extreme temperature elevation itself.
It’s in the drier air of low temperate latitudes where the truly high temperature deserts are located and where sweating and other augmented evaporation at the body surface such as water soaked clothing cooled by the breeze or an electric fan, shade seeking adaptations and afternoon muscle heat generating activity limitation (siestas), not to mention refrigerated air conditioning, come into play as effective defenses against hyperthermia. They clearly need to get outside of the computer facility more often.
Some folks have already beat me out on hottest working conditions stories, but thought I would add mine just to pile on…
During high school (mid-70’s), we would fix fences and haul hay (60 to 80 lb bales) during summer. Frequently, we would spend 6 hours straight in 100+ F at 95% humidity. We had to wear long sleeves, gloves and hats to keep the mosquitoes from sucking us dry.
Not a single one of us died, although we thought we might at times.
So you know that you were read (and I wish I could write to all on this thread, but, I can’t go through putting little atta boy/girl comments on EVERY comment — I talk enough as it is! lol) — wanted to use a Reply to your great example to point out:
and these men (no women commenting thusly, so far that I could see — they could, though, I have anecdotal evidence for that — not working quite as hard, but hard enough) were all working hard in that humid heat.
The article implies that just sitting around on the front porch drinking sweetened iced tea and occasionally shuffling over to the refrigerator to get a popsicle would be hotter than the human body can withstand … .
Unbelievable.
Sort of related – carbon dioxide doing its thing and creating a wave of cold records on the East Coast. Meanwhile, here in N. California, beautiful and verdant foliage to go with the climate crisis-induced lovely weather.
This guy never lived in the American South, with 95% humidity and 100+ degree temps in the summer without air conditioning.
Hi, Mr. Wingo,
How are things going these days with the ISEE-3 project?
(https://www.arworld.us/pr_html/141014-ISEE-3-Spacecraft.asp)
The valiant attempt by headed by you (and helped much by the late Robert Farquhar and others) to try to regain control of the spacecraft was SO WONDERFUL and so heartbreaking, no doubt…
How are things going with it now? The latest I could find (and I just got lazy and only searched for about 15 minutes) was this from August, 2014 (other than the vague text from October, 2014, in the linked page above):
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/isee-3-returns-home-on-sunday-with-new-life-as-citizen-science-project/
Is any data being received now from the ISEE-3? Or, has it gone out of range, for now? How close to earth must the ISEE-3 be on its return (in 2029, I think?) before you can receive data from it once again?
Thank you, SO MUCH, for including the WUWT people in your fine effort. That was SO COOL.
And, how are you doing?
I hope you are doing very well.
Take care,
Janice Moore
P.S. I have no idea if you could get published on WUWT these days — things appear to be different around here, now… — but, IF YOU CAN, do write a little update for us. I am sure that many people here would be very interested to hear from you.
Dennis (and Andrew a little upthread); you mention 100+ degrees and 95% humidity, but I don’t think they are occurring at the same time. That would equate to a dew point of over 95 degrees F (not even on this chart:
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-826f72467a9ae73177ba3540644bf549).
The record dew point in the U.S. is 88 degrees F; average summer dew points in the US south and midwest do typically range through the 70s, and occasionally reaching 80 degrees.
Now I could see a dew point 80 degrees F, and in the morning if the temp is around 83 degrees, that would be 90% humidity. But as the temperature reaches 100 degrees (with the 80 degree dew point), the humidity will be around 55%.
No argument that is still quite humid; but that equates to a wet bulb temperature of about 85 degrees F. This is 10 degrees below the article discussion of 35 degrees C wet bulb temp, or 95 degrees F (which I suspect is rare in the world, though likely occurring occasionally around the Red Sea/Persian Gulf regions . . . ).
Perhaps his mummy and daddy won’t yet allow him to travel abroad. 😕
In September 1970 I was in Port Sudan loading cotton for Japan. The temperature at noon in the shade (only there wasn’t much) was 125F with around 10% humidity.. The local dockerrs worked very hard and managed fine. The crew were mostly Singaporean and they thought it was good ‘cos it was so dry. And no, the ship didn’t have aircon.
So where are these guys living? Oh yes, Loughborough. Really hot place.
Hi, Old Sea Dog! 🙂 Just wanted to say hi. (Good example with a good point, too.) Remember me? I am still very respectful of your nautical knowledge. Take care.
I think I can better that. Try Khorramshahr, many miles up the Shatt El Arab – before you get to Basra. We used to get a shunt early morning and it took the wharfies about 90 minutes to fill the wagons. They then knocked off. We got another shunt about 4 30 in the afternoon, and they resumed work, for another 90 minutes.
Once, it looked like a good afternoon, so some of us decided to play cricket on the wharf, using a ball containing a nut (steel) wrapped around with rope yarn. We had a very enjoyable afternoon, with the temperature a comfortable 50C. The ship’s Master had just started off on a three day bender, and being full of the joys of spring (or something) decided to join us. At 4 we knocked off and retreated to our cabins. As soon as I got into my cabin I started sweating,, and within a minute or so my shirt was soaking wet. Only solution, lay starkers on the bunk with the fan on.
The best thing was that the Master was de-juiced from the cricket, and that evening he was stone cold sober. Recommend Khorramshahr for a pain free hangover cure.
Not sure what the wet bulb temperature was, probably about 10C.
”The crossings of all of these thresholds imply greater risk to human health – we can say we are universally creeping close to this magic threshold of 35°C.” Who are these ‘we’ and where are they located?
“We find the most extreme humid heat is highly localized in both space and time and is correspondingly substantially underestimated in reanalysis products.” From which we can directly infer that they have no clue as to the actual areas, and thus no knowledge of their historical temperature records.
All I can glean from this study is that it may get uncomfortably hot somewhere, for short times. So if it hits a record high temperature in any present-day hotspot they can point and shout, “climate change!” Sorry, they lose. They must tell us WHERE and HOW (we can even let them slide as to WHEN) an area’s climate will change, using the actual definition of climate – a prolonged period of time during which the temperature or precipitation has shifted to a new long term average. Temporary heatwaves are weather; they only count if they are sufficiently frequent in one area as to change that area’s long term averages.
You would have to be ignorant to write this article and a damn fool to believe it. Sadly there appear to be lots of both.
In Murcia (Spain) 35ºC in summer is a cool temperature and with 40ºC it is already getting hot.
Does anyone write counter papers to contest these loopy ones or do they just remain in the peer reviewed list and wither for lack of citations.
1. Yes. Here is one:
(https://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/10/michael-manns-lecture-at-uri-and-the-blogger-who-must-not-be-named/#comment-41725 )
Other scholars who have been successful include:
John R. Christy
William Gray
Richard Lindzen
Roger A. Pielke, Sr.
S. Fred Singer
Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon
And two more:
(Itoh’s comment is here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/25/japans-society-of-energy-and-resources-disses-the-ipcc-says-recent-climate-change-is-driven-by-natural-cycles-not-human-industrial-activity/#comment-81150 )
Anthony Watts 🙂
Analysis of the Impacts of Station Exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network Temperatures and Temperature Trends
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2010JD015146
*************************
2. Getting a not-pro AGW article published is more difficult.
(https://www.masterresource.org/debate-issues/lindzen-choi-special-treatment/ )
Yet another case of “scientists” thinking the planet should remain static at some arbitrary point. Unevolving, unchanging. That is indeed a fantasy land.
Ever wondered why climate related deaths have plummeted over the last 150 years or so . It’s called air conditioning. A 10 degree temperature increase or decrease can be negated by a simple switch . The only risk to that failsafe climate control is if the electricity that runs the air conditioners becomes too expensive or unreliable for people to be able to use.
Governments have spent bazillions trying to extract a degree or two less of a rise where a better result could be achieved far cheaper by making sure everyone in the world had an air conditioner and cheap reliable electricity.
Clean drinking water may also play a role in decreasing summer deaths. Bacteria grow in warm water. It would be interesting to investigate what change has been saving most lives. With some data, we could set priorities. Cheap reliable energy should be top of the list because it provides A/C as you said and clean water, light, etc.
Well, I live in NJ. It’s May 9th and the temp here is 39F degrees. I’d love some that global warming right now.
Come to Arizona it about 39C 100 F today. I move here from North Dakota glad I did.
It’s a miracle that all those people in Cairo, Baghdad and Mumbai have survived there for 6000+ years.
The people most affected by heat … are the same who are most affected by the flu. So they were goners anyway.
But they didn’t survive. All those who lived there 6000+ years ago have died.
QED.
“… 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands without passing 28°C TW.”
If I recall what I was told at the time, the actual cause of that heatwave was that it was caused by GW Bush failing to sign the Kyoto Accords, which he could not sign because Bill Clinton had already signed it…
When was Death Valley ever considered survivable?
Hasn’t it always been named Death Valley?
I’ve soaked my entire body (minus my head, I mean below my head) for scores of minutes in 113 F (45 C) hot springs without any ill effects.
I’m guessing that most of the northern Australians are in bed right now. As they awake and read this I’m expecting the guffaw heard around the world.
Not just northern.
Try summer in Adelaide.
“It is difficult to link a wet bulb temperature threshold to specific health outcomes, and for different population groups,”
I went through basic training at Ft. Jackson in SC. in June and July. They used the wet bulb at that basic training post. Had a special flag they would run up the flag poles when the wet bulb temp got to a certain level and that flag signaled that all training be moved to CTAs (Covered Training Areas) and the uniform would be T-shirts with pant legs un-bloused and rolled up. I always wondered WTF? There ain’t gonna be no wet bulb flag on a battlefield! We did have several cases of heat stroke and one death in my training battalion despite the precautions but that just goes to show how variable reactions to heat can be even in large groups of relatively young and healthy people.
Same at Ft Knox, KY. Went through Basic and AIT from June through August. We had a few wet bulb warning days.
I blacked out once on a road march with weapons. We were coming back to the weapons holding area (we just called “Holder”), and I lost about 15 minutes from the end of the march. I “came to” in the middle of cleaning my weapon. No one said a thing, no one noticed. A couple other guys actually passed out on that march.
And thereby you show you haven’t understood the article.
I’ve done 55°C around Death Valley in August. As long as you hydrate it’s fine
But 35°C at Chichen Itza just before a thunderstorm was almost unbearable.
Sweating does not work. All you can do is radiate and hope.
It is of course possible for humans, especially dark skinned humans, to survive. But it is not a happy temperature at high humidity
“Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating, but lower levels can still be deadly, as was seen in the 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands without passing 28°C TW.”
Of course not mentioned is the high mortality was related to the elderly in nursing homes (sound familiar?) and those living alone without cooling shelters available who were not looked in on by friends and relatives since the heat wave was over a holiday. There was a lot of guilt associated with these deaths and the simple solution was to off-load the guilt onto the failures of government.
I am a northern New Yorker (average yearly temp 9.1C ). I was scooped up from northern Michigan in June and dropped in Thailand where I worked 12 hour shifts on a large blacktop surface often exceeding 40C. I adapted in three days (no choice). There was no AC to make the transition more difficult.
Yeah Sal. Maybe the “scientist” meant to say that Snowflakes won’t be able to adapt. I’m having trouble being bothered by that.
When I was stationed at Bad Tolz in Bavaria I always looked forward to what they would call a heatwave. It was funny to see the Germans acting as if it was killer hot when the temp got to 80 deg. F. But the best part was that the frauleins would come out in their sun skirts wearing no slips or go down to the banks of the Isar River for some topless sun bathing.
Funny thing is having served in the middle east and having done training in various deserts, and ran PT and ruck runs in San Antonio, the place I came nearest to becoming a heat casualty was at about 7,000 ASL climbing up the side of a mountain in the Kaiser Wilhelm range in Austria.
When were you in, rah? I was stationed at Bad Kissingen 81 to 83 as a 19D (professional target) in the 2/11 Armored Cav. We were supposed to protect the southern end of the Fulda Gap in case the SHTF.
1980 to 1992. Stationed at Flint Kasserne in Bad Tolz, January 1983 till Dec. 1986 though I was in Germany several times TDY before that. The day I departed to come back to the states was when the PanAm flight went down at Lockerby. I departed for permanent change of station from the exact same gate after that flight had left from. They even made me take my military ink pen apart before boarding after pointing out my luggage on the ramp. The Arabs almost got me three times. That time and another when a Syrian artillery shell landed about 15′ away from where I was sitting in Lebanon in Feb. 1984. There was a short stone wall between where I was sitting and where the shell landed that saved my ass. Rang my bell pretty good though. Another, also in Lebanon, when a sucker shot at me and hit the corner of the building I was looking around close enough I got a little cut on my head and dust in my eyes.
I want to know *where* this is occurring. I want an exact latitude and longitude. Then I can get the cooling degree-day data for the past 36 months at that location and see if cooling requirements are actually going up of if this is just another “we think this is happening somewhere”!
70% of Earth is uninhabitable without special measures.
They’re called ships.
Nice! But I hear Communist China has set about changing all of that.
The biggest landmasses of the Northern hemisphere are uninhabitable without supplementary heating and warm clothing.
A while back in my life I was ultra running, and putting in 50 to 70 miles a week on the trails year round. I had a lunch routine of a 10 mile, 1200 foot gain, out and back from my Lab at NAWC China Lake to the top of “B” mountain out on the North Range. During May the temps would climb from low 80’s to high 90’s. June typically low 100’s, July and August hotter. I would adapt fine into summer though I found around 105F to be my comfortable limit on the steep parts. Above 105 things started looking beached out and I would hear a kind of rushing sound. One thing that always struck me was how watery my sweat became as I heat adapted. If I did a run on an abnormally warm day in say March, I’d be all sticky and salty. In July I’d sweat buckets on a run but it was just water, after a bit it all evaporated away and it was as if I had not run. Oh, if you are wondering, I typically worked alone.
The heat sure is getting out of control!
So much so that we had snow flurries today in Connecticut. ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Hey, still six weeks to the summer solstice, so what’s so unusual about that?
Like many of the correspondents here I served in Malaya mid 1950’s (and later in Malaysia early ’60’s) and can recall wearing a suit, admittedly lightweight but still jacket and tie, when the temperature dropped below 80 degrees F. Tony W
From the New Scientist article:
‘Steven Sherwood at University of New South Wales in Australia, who was not involved in the research, says … “The implications of this study are that such extreme conditions which push the tolerance of the human body are not as far off into the future as we thought, at least in a few locations on Earth …”‘.
Steve Sherwood (UNSW) is a hot spot aficionado:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/06/sherwoods-devout-unscientific-faith-in-climate-change-and-the-hot-spot/
A fair skinned relative of mine lived and survived Dubai for around 20 years. These ivory tower academics should go and live in places like this before pontificating on where it is unsurvivably hot.
At 50 Celsius dry bulb (temperature not that unusual in desserts or deep mines) and 35 C wet bulb the relative humidity is only approximately 40%. Very hot but not exactly feeling humid. Just shows what you can do with half the data.
wiki tells 41°C and 50% rel.Hum. = 35°C WT
That’s why the most popular tourist and retirement destinations are in warm to hot, humid areas. Now it all makes sense!
nicholas
Are you saying that they are nice places to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there? 🙂
From the article:
The don’t tell who and why.
Most were elderly people, often in nursery homes, if I remeber well.
Later it was detected, most of them didn’t drink enough.
If an heatwave occurs, most meds, politicians, scientists advise to close windows, don’t let the heat come in !
That’s the best and quickest way to kill people.
No air exchange, no air move, increasing humidity from breathing, heating from walls, and often no fans, of course.
We live under the roof, windows to SE and NW. If it’s hot, we have night and day all doors and all windows open, the fans are runnig full power, and we never had the one or the other problem, even with wished and appreciated draught.
That’s the second ironic story in this context, in sommer, at the beach, hot weather, and everybody is happy about some little wind blow.
The problem with wind is, if it’s blowing trough a door or a window, it’s called draught and makes supposedly ill. 😀 That makes head shaking 😀
Let me see if I have this straight. Going from 34.5C to 35.0C over 150 years, takes a place from survivable, to unsurvivable?
Really?
Let’s not forget a fact that even the IPCC acknowledges. The more water vapor in the air, the less influence CO2 has.
Edvard Munch’s bad picture of a dog …
look …
You can’t unsee it ….
The highest wet bulb temperature I have endured was 64C, in Jubail, KSA (the “Official Temp” never exceeded 50C but, the black flags were flying at 0700) . It was God awful miserable. I was outside for about an hour and a half. I drank 2 liters of water in that period of time. It took another 2 liters of water and a little over 2 hours in the AC before I had to pee… and I kept drinking water. A wet bulb temp of 35C stinks but, it’s easily survivable.
I too lived in Saudi for a couple of years and can attest that the official temp never went over 50C in Riyadh because if it exceeded 52C all the Korean outside workers had to be stood down. It used to be pretty warm walking to the shop from the office at midday in July.
The temperature in Riyadh was bearable because the humidity was always low but Jeddah and Dubai could get unbearable. We used to play tennis at 35C with bottles of water at the net. The pool in my compound used to lose 2 inches a day.
I recall driving in Dubai at sundown and the whole car was covered in condensation and I had to use the wipers.
So I say bah humbug to the study.
Blah, blah, blah! BS and more BS!
You dimwit have zero, zip clue! It’s called weather and we were mortals have no control over it! Anyone who thinks we can are beyond stupid or just digging into your wallet to make us poorer than we already are!
Living on Luzon where the average high in April is 35C. Babies popping out everywhere. What frauds! New Scientist – “People Magazine” for progressive morons.
These blokes are right on the money.
It’s only 3 years ago that I was snow skiing in Agadez, Mali and now it is so hot that all the ski resorts have gone out of business.
Due to a one degree rise (possibly)? They must be joking or desperate or true believers. It reminds me of an old Peanuts cartoon where Linus wrote in his letter to Father Christmas: “Everyone tells me you are a fake, BUT I BELIEVE IN YOU.”
Eric Worrall: “can’t they bake cake”.
That’s pretty hot/humid but who knew that humans had this magic maximum threshold of 35 degrees.
Get above that, and we all die. Stay below that and we live.
We should not be surprised that it’s worse than predicted. It’s always worse than predicted, even when it’s the opposite of what was expected.
They forgot to tell us that its the coldest places during the coldest times of year and coldest times of day(night time) on this planet that are warming the most and many of these hotter places are not warming as fast.
OK, maybe they knew and thought that it wasn’t important.
OK, maybe they knew, realized that it was important but decided it would mess up the narrative/weaken the sensationalism to state that.
Climate change rule of thumb: cold “things” warming faster than warm things
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/climate-change-rule-thumb-cold-things-warming-faster-warm-things
I have lived in the tropics in Malaysia and in the 18months that I was there, the nighttime temperature was never below 22C (~72F). Daytime temperatures were usually over 30C but rarely over 35 or 36C. Malaysia is a peninsula between the Malacca Straight and the Gulf of Thailand so the humidity is constantly high, so much so that there is rain almost every day of the year (and twice as much in the wet season). I also lived in Texas near Dallas where on the day that I chose to clean out my garage it was 114F (~46C) although it was dry. I have also been in Saudi Arabia where the daily temperatures are usually in the high 40sC and I was told that during a few days the temperature actually reached 55C (131F). So there are many parts of the world mostly around the equator where the daily temperatures are well in excess of this so called maximum where literally millions of people live and the New Scientist article is quite ludicrous to suggest that humans cannot live there because of an apparent rise of 1 or 2C in global temperature. I have subscribed to NS for some 40 odd years and I have read it since the early 1960s but recently it has become infected with the Climate alarmist craziness. This has meant that it has gone from being a reputable popular science journal to one that is becoming difficult to read because of this obsession which parrots all the excesses attributing just about any obervational change to “climate change”.
While consulting for a foundry suffering investment casting issues, I spent entire days in temps between 120-130°F. We drank lots of Gatorade and took breaks, but it was just plain hot.
The Afar region in Ethiopia *IS* the hottest, habitable, place on earth today. People live there and have been for thousands of years. That’s not going to change with a 2c rise in global averages.
“Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating”
1. That’s a bald faced lie.
2. Lots of parts of the world routinely go above 35°C in the summer.
3. Looking at pictures of people in the UK and America protesting against “global warming”, one is struck by how much clothing they have to wear, just to protect themselves against the cold.
Grew up on the equator ( PNG) and took the kids to the Equator (Indonesia) to grow up. Bush walking, push bike riding in humid 35deg heat. Open air dining and theatre. Long drives in the country.
These authors haven’t lived. Personally, I cannot understand how people can live in North America or Europe. It gets so cold it kills people.
In inland Australia, 35 degrees Celsius during summer is nothing unusual.
There are days when that feels like a cool change.
I worked on a mining railway in the north west of Australia where temperatures reached about 47C fairly often. The diesel locos were maintained in a workshop that was not air conditioned. You could plot the relationship between loco availability and maximum ambient temperature. But we all survived.
These scientists appear to have forgotten what has been known for thousands of years , namely that TW is as much a function of temperature as it is of air movement. Hence the use of fans, puncka* wallahs etc. (*sorry can’t spell). prior to air conditioning. Where does the wind chill factor come in here? Best be careful what you measure before jumping to conclusions.
and there lot of places unsurvivably cold.
When I was younger I worked at a remote community and at lunch time I would nude up and go jogging and it was over 50 deg C some days.I am an Englishman living in Australia.Mad dogs and English men go out in the mid day sun
Duncan John Grey Was that Marble Bar? From Wikipaedia:
“Marble Bar has a hot desert climate (Köppen BWh) with sweltering summers and warm winters. Most of the annual rainfall occurs in the summer. The town set a world record of most consecutive days of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or above, during a period of 160 days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.[9] Although annual temperatures indicate Marble Bar should be within the tropics, with a July (winter) mean of 19 °C (66 °F), it does not have the high precipitation requirements for hot-weather climates to sustain tropical vegetation.
During December and January, temperatures in excess of 45 °C (113 °F) are common, and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal human body temperature for six months each year. Marble Bar receives 159.6 clear days annually. Dewpoint in the summers is between 10 and 15 °C (50 and 59 °F). In contrast to most of the year, winters are warm, with days averaging 27 °C (81 °F), low humidity and clear skies. Nights from June to August can be chilly, occasionally as low as 5 °C (41 °F) but frost is unknown. Even in mid winter however, brief bursts of heat can result in the temperature rising to as high as 35 °C (95 °F) for a few days before dropping back to normal.”
Somehow I survived working as a roofer in New Orleans during the summer while in high school. Yes, it was hot. I really hated when I had to work with melted tar. Just wore light colored clothes and drank a lot of water.
The hottest place on earth is Death Valley Ca.
The median age in Death Valley (zip 92328) is 49.7, the US median age is 37.4.
Dang facts!!
“We should not be surprised that it’s worse than predicted. It’s always worse than predicted, even when it’s the opposite of what was expected.”
U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
PETER JAMES SPIELMANN June 29, 1989
https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
Speaking of what would be expected. During previous climate optimum’s like this, Medieval, Roman, Minoan and especially the Holocene climate OPTIMUM , the warming is always greatest in the coldest places……where it benefits the most……. which is why it’s a climate OPTIMUM for life-at least according to authentic science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
“Out of 140 sites across the western Arctic, there is clear evidence for conditions warmer than now at 120 sites. At 16 sites, where quantitative estimates have been obtained, local HTM temperatures were on average 1.6±0.8 °C higher than now. Northwestern North America had peak warmth first, from 11,000 to 9,000 years ago, and the Laurentide Ice Sheet still chilled the continent. Northeastern North America experienced peak warming 4,000 years later. Along the Arctic Coastal Plain in Alaska, there are indications of summer temperatures 2–3 °C warmer than present.[5] Research indicates that the Arctic had less sea ice than the present.”
Maybe I’m wrong but I strongly suspect that ancient Egypt, a cradle of civilization and the breadbasket for Roman civilization, exceeded this apocalyptic wet-bulb temperature over most of the summer.
These people need to get out of their air conditioned offices and see how the rest of the world lives and works.
I was in the USN during the first Gulf War (1991) cruising around in the gulf. Incoming air was over 100F, working in the steam plant means all the watch stations were above 100F with the hottest reaching 130F. Humidity? You tell me, hot wet ocean air coming into a steam plant but I’m guessing right around 100%. Over 100F we were required to run heat stress monitoring which is taking wet bulb temperature and comparing that to a chart. We ran a couple tests and came up with a maximum allowed time of 2 hours so we never wrote anything higher than 100F on our logs. We would spend up to 12 hours a day in that environment and not a single person came down with heat exhaustion/stroke let alone died because some idiot proclaimed it to hot to survive.
“A long time ago I had job operating a hydraulic hot press in a poorly ventilated chemical factory.”
How very odd. I wonder if it was the same job I had doing exactly the same thing a long time ago. But for only one week.
I have gone 2 km deep down a gold mine in South Africa. Rock temperatures reach up to 66°C, RH 95%. Survived it just fine. The phosphorus mines in the north of the country, at Phalaborwa would stop work when temperatures reached 45°C. This was in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Did not think anything about this out of the ordinary. Now live in Canada, and even here have experienced temperatures up to 34°C with high humidity. A lot depends on what your body is used to, you acclimatize.
There are far more places in the world that are already to cold to survive without a man made heat source. Why is that OK but we can’t have places where cooling is essential to live. Why the distinction? We need to evaluate how many of the cold places will become livable vs hot places made unlivable. Both are livable if we apply man made technology and energy. Oh there’s the problem they don’t want us to use energy anywhere.
Lived in Houston for 14 years, I enjoyed the Summers. Jogging at noon, typically I ran 4 miles, was difficult but possible, with precautions.
Surprised to find out that I should be dead.
So I looked at Weather Underground this morning, and what do I see? An article sensationalizing this very subject!
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/heat-and-humidity-near-the-survivability-threshold-its-already-happening
I live on the Gulf Coast. For a fun project I analyzed many months of our recent weather data in comparison to the norm and found the temperature has been running several degrees above average – but the interesting thing is that we do not have highs in the summer that get warmer than they ever have. What happens is the nights don’t really cool down as much as they used to. The main effect this has is preventing more of our occasional winter freezes.