Guest essay by Eric Worrall
People who work in bakeries, factories or mines deal with 130F / 54C+ on a regular basis. But for climate scientists working in comfortable offices, anything above 122F / 50C seems to represent some kind of death line.
Kuwait is fast becoming unlivable as global warming takes its toll
Temperature records are being smashed all over the world, but Kuwait – one of the hottest countries on the planet – breached 50 degrees Celsius in June, weeks ahead of its usual peak weather.
Fiona MacDonaldJan 20, 2022 – 9.00am
Trying to catch a bus at the Maliya station in Kuwait City can be unbearable in the summer. About two-thirds of the city’s buses pass through the hub, and schedules are unreliable.
Fumes from bumper-to-bumper traffic fill the air. Small shelters offer refuge to a handful of people, if they squeeze. Dozens end up standing in the sun, sometimes using umbrellas to shield themselves.
Global warming is smashing temperature records all over the world, but Kuwait – one of the hottest countries on the planet – is fast becoming unlivable.
In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years. Last year, for the first time, they breached 50 degrees Celsius in June, weeks ahead of usual peak weather. Parts of Kuwait could get as much as 4.5C hotter from 2071 to 2100 compared with the historical average, according to the Environment Public Authority, making large areas of the country uninhabitable.
For wildlife, it almost is. Dead birds appear on rooftops in the brutal summer months, unable to find shade or water. Vets are inundated with stray cats, brought in by people who’ve found them near death from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Even wild foxes are abandoning a desert that no longer blooms after the rains for what small patches of green remain in the city, where they’re treated as pests.
“This is why we are seeing less and less wildlife in Kuwait, it’s because most of them aren’t making it through the seasons,” said Tamara Qabazard, a Kuwaiti zoo and wildlife veterinarian. “Last year, we had three to four days at the end of July that were incredibly humid and very hot, and it was hard to even walk outside your house, and there was no wind. A lot of the animals started having respiratory problems.”
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Read More: https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/kuwait-is-fast-becoming-unlivable-as-global-warming-taks-its-toll-20220119-p59pha
Humans are well adapted to working in extreme heat.
I have personal experience of working in extreme heat. One of my first jobs was working in a chemical factory in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne has scorching hot Summers. The factory floor temperature regularly exceeded 120F in Summer. One week the outside temperature hit 110F every day. There was a factory floor thermometer which hit 130F by 10am every day that week.
The factory floor was wet and steamy like a tropical jungle, because the chemical production line released a tremendous amount of water vapour. The factory also contained lots of ancient steam heated hydraulic presses, fed by leaky pipes, which added to moisture. Conditions were so wet, droplets of water were continuously condensing on some of the machines, even when the shop floor temperature hit 130F.
I’m not sure what the wet bulb temperature was on the shop floor that week, but it must have been impressive. Management were very concerned during the heatwave, they made us drink a plastic cup of electrolyte fluid every 5 minutes. There was a well equipped in-house laboratory attached to the factory which performed regular quality assurance on the products, so I think management knew exactly what the wet bulb temperature was on the factory floor. But if they knew they weren’t telling.
How could myself and my fellow workers possibly function in a web bulb temperature which was almost certainly above 35C? The following offers some insights.
Simplicity lacks robustness when projecting heat-health outcomes in a changing climate
Jennifer K. Vanos,1Jane W. Baldwin,2Ollie Jay,3,4 and Kristie L. Ebi5Author informationArticle notesCopyright and License informationDisclaimer
Extreme heat adversely affects human health, productivity, and well-being, with more frequent and intense heatwaves projected to increase exposures. However, current risk projections oversimplify critical inter-individual factors of human thermoregulation, resulting in unreliable and unrealistic estimates of future adverse health outcomes.
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Capturing these complexities allows researchers to understand the level of heat strain that eventuates from heat stress, and by extension heat-related health outcomes. These complexities are currently neglected within common heat-related health projections. For example, the most commonly used metric for projecting future heat-related mortality is the wet-bulb temperature (Tw) threshold of 35 °C (e.g.10,), which is based on a thermodynamic limit to heat exchange whereby the human body becomes an adiabatic system (Table 1). The conservative assumption that this value must be reached to cause widespread death is only valid under a specific set of conditions, i.e., the person is completely sedentary, unclothed, maximally heat acclimatized, and an average-sized adult free from any thermoregulatory impairments. These assumptions are implausible in the real-world, and severe illness and death can occur at much lower heat stress levels when considering realistic metabolic heat loads, clothing, population demographics, and health status. In essence, using this Tw threshold without questioning such implicit assumptions could result in substantial underestimation of the future range and potential severity in heat-related outcomes. Conversely, the single threshold can also overestimate risk as humans are known to live in harsh climates through buffering the effects of climate extremes using adaptive innovations. Often these innovations involve technological, infrastructural, and behavioral adaptations that support minimizing extreme exposures and/or the amount of time an individual is exposed to the given extreme11.
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The general applicability, and thus usability, of projections are questionable when they are based on a single ambient threshold at which mortality is presumed to occur applied to an inanimate unclothed human (e.g., Tw of 35 °C) versus a range of outcomes with underlying uncertainties. Moreover, without considering the temporal duration of exposure, space, activity, clothing, behavior, and most of all, individual physiology, the mismatch between complex climate models and over-simplified human models fails to provide useful information for decision-makers. Embedding more sophisticated human heat stress models into climate projections would provide relevant health projections across a more realistic and therefore diverse population than an assumed idealized individual.
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Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7695704/
My point is, if you are used to extreme conditions, like people who work in hot factories, or people who live in very hot places like Kuwait, those extreme conditions are normal and bearable. I’m confident we regularly exceeded 35C wet bulb on the hottest days for most of our 8 hour work day, given the extreme temperature and the beads of water condensing on the machines – but we were fine.
The most interesting part of the experience, when the work shift ended at 3pm, and I walked out into the 110F outside temperature covered in sweat, I sometimes started shivering. For a few minutes I felt freezing cold on a 110F day, as my body re-adjusted back to cooler outside conditions.
If I walked into that factory today, without adapting to the heat, I would find it very difficult to function. But if you build up to it, work for months in slightly cooler temperatures as outside temperatures build up to peak Summer, most people’s bodies can adapt.
Scientists claim that old people have more trouble adapting to heat. But a lot of the people working in that factory were old. From memory the shop floor people I worked with were half a dozen ageing chain smoking East Europeans, a pregnant Pacific islander and a couple of Asians. Most of them had worked there for years and some were now close to retirement. None of them had any problem coping with the heat.
So why do climate scientists assume 35C web bulb is a hard limit?
I suspect the reason is studying the true limits of human endurance is kindof difficult. It would be highly unethical to put people into a test oven and crank up the heat and humidity until they pass our or die. In any case test subjects would need weeks of adaptation to cope with the kind of temperature and humidity I’m describing, to produce a representative result.
Studying people in Kuwait is also an issue. Ever notice those picturesque towers on top of buildings in the middle east? Medieval air conditioning (see the picture at the top of the page). Even the houses of poor people often had small wooden wind catchers before the advent of modern air conditioning. People in hot climates are not stupid, they don’t prance around in the midday sun testing their personal physiological limits unless they have to – even though they could if they had to.
Scientists could try to find workplaces where people already regularly endure extreme conditions beyond 35C web bulb limits, but getting a company manager to admit such extreme workplace conditions exist might be an issue. Workplace regulations are written by people who believe in hard wet bulb limits, so it seems likely the factory where I worked was seriously breaching health and safety laws by continuing to operate during a heatwave, even if none of us actually suffered any harm.
My factory job was by no means unique – talking to friends, there are plenty of factories and other workplaces which quietly ignore the alleged limits to human survival.
Old news. I was offered a mucho $ KOC job 20 years ago. But even with AC in the school busses my kids would have jerkied out.
It is amazing just how well humans can adapt to radically different temperatures. It’s one thing when we spend most/much of the day in air conditioned spaces. It’s quite another when you are in temperature extremes much of the day. Many years ago working on a horse farm in Maine I got so I could easily go out in a tee-shirt and riding britches in 32 degree temps and be just fine, so long as there wasn’t much wind blowing. Before having been up there, I’d’ve frozen!
That summer, with the hottest day so far only barely and briefly hitting 90, I went down to Texas and taught riding lessons in 100 or slightly over 100 temps – and got heat stress. The horses and riders were all fine, but I sure wasn’t. Temperatures that before I’d gone up to Maine wouldn’t have fazed me one bit, because I was much less adjusted to cold, and much more adjusted to warmth/heat.
Later I wound up moving to the desert SW… and even spending much of my time indoors, but evenings on weekdays and daytime on weekends outside, I was perfectly fine at 105 outside too, no problems what-so-ever, even active, riding, and so on. But I’ve gotta say that for some odd reason, anything above 110 and it seems better to not have much wind – it’s just like a blast furnace. One summer my pickup AC conked out, and I was more comfortable driving with the windows up than down when it was over about 110.
I’m sure if I were outside a lot, however, even 110 wouldn’t be a problem, at least not for otherwise healthy people. There are all sorts of people who work outside in the summers here without any problem, even when it’s 110 or higher.
I lived and drove in California for decades in cars without AC. I similarly decided that 110 deg was the critical temperature were it was more comfortable to drive with the windows closed than to have them down at 65 MPH.
Neat to know it’s not just some quirk of mine! Kind of amazing how that works.
Blahblah, more bullshit, blahblah, more bullshit.
I once worked in a cannery’s cook room, which was quite warm, with 250 degrees F continuous csn cookers all around, venting steam. Obviously, I survived those conditions several seasons.
One must remember, 20C gets called a heat wave in Britain.
Skill-testing question for everyone in freezing-cold Eastern USA and Canada:
How’s that global warming working for you?
NASHVILLE’S SNOWIEST JAN SINCE 1985; MISSISSAUGA RECORDS MOST SNOW SINCE 1944; FOUR DIE IN RARE CANADA TO U.S. BORDER CROSSING ATTEMPT; ICE-COVERED STREETS IN ST. PETERSBURG; + THREE-QUARTERS OF JAPAN BELOW FREEZING
January 21, 2022 Cap Allon
Most of us — anything Canada, Me, Vt, NH, Ct, Ma, Pa, and most of NY except to NYC & a few counties north of it — are used to the weather we received the past week. It’s normal in the sense that it is within the range of variability. We’re coming into February and I remember two times since ’75 where some 20 days were in the singles during the day and negatives at night.
Last Sat night – Sun morn we in Western NY got 12 to 20 of fine snow so it was dense but ppl were on the road through most it and Monday was just a bit below normal.
I have to say the advance notice map was on the low side of actual by oh 5dF.and the wind wasn’t anything they hinted.
If this high pressure windless phase we have been in for the past two weeks in the UK continues, we will be reviewing our heat wave indicator temp. Maybe move it down to 15 deg C. 🙂
We are privileged to live in a country with such mild weather range. When it goes above 26 deg C we regard that as sweltering weather!
I’ve always thought that the main problem is you get used to the climate of the place where you live. But it takes several years.
I spent several years in central France, I found the summers incredibly hot to begin with, 35’C+ for a week or two at a time every year. But in winter when the other hand in winter when the locals were wrapped up in coats and scarves I’d manage with a nice woolly jumper. The first question friends would ask was “Aren’t you cold?” I wasn’t. On return to the UK I find winters and summers cold.
A friend of mine, a regular snow skier in the Alps and Colorado where temperatures fall to -10/-20, went to Aviemore in Scotland one year where daytime temperatures rarely fall to much less than -5/-10.
He told me it was the most miserable experience of his life as he had never felt so cold. Chilled to the bone was his description.
But then you go there in midsummer where it might reach 25C occasionally and it’s equally, miserably hot.
Both are due to the moist air carried by the Gulf Stream which permeates even the best clothing one can buy.
Yes, multiple factors affect how cold we feel. Humidity, elevation, wind and presence or absence of sunshine greatly affect comfort. Generally for example, Houston at 0C feels colder than Denver at -10C.
Mark Twain famously said that the coldest Winter he had ever experienced was a Summer in San Francisco. Anyone who has visited SF in the Summer is acquainted with the fogs that blow in and chill everything.
I worked out a foolproof method of managing that problem. Don’t go back.
“Global warming is smashing temperature records all over the world”
Sorry?
2021 was the coolest year since 2014 according HadCRU data.
What’s going on? Atmospheric CO2 has risen unchallenged for generations now and is universally blamed for rising temperatures.
Is it somehow teasing us, sentient perhaps? Playing with our emotions? Teasing us with a bit of ducking and diving?
Am I missing something here?
Sorry……Of course, it’s just weather when temperatures fall, but climate when they rise.
“2021 was the coolest year since 2014 according HadCRU data.
What’s going on?”
The author is talking about the year 2016, the “hottest year evah!” according to the Dishonest Temperature Data Mannipulators. But this author also shows it was just as warm in 1940, as it was in 2016, so does not show something unprecedented, as he was trying to do. It’s happened before, when CO2 composed less of the atmosphere, yet it got just as warm in 1940 as it did in 2016.
And now, as you say, the temperatures are cooling. They are much cooler than 1940 now.
“Temperature records are being smashed all over the world”
2021
USA, -38.8 °C (-38 °F) at Hibbing/Chisholm, MN on February 15. The previous record was -35.5 °C (-28 °F) set on February 15, 1939.
Spain recorded its lowest temperature on Thursday 7th January with the mercury dropping to -35.8°C.
Srinagar, India recorded a low of -8.4°C which was the coldest temperature recorded in the city in 30 years.
Sweden’s coldest spot Nikkaluokta, near Gällivare in Norrbotten, 27th November, low was -37.4°C, the lowest in the country in November since 1980.
Finland, -32.2°C in Utsjoki Kevo Kevojärvi, that’s the lowest November temperature in Finland since 2010, when -34.0°C was recorded at the same station.
The temperature in Beijing dropped to -19.5°C on January 7th, coldest since 1966 (-19.3°C)
Antarctica, from April through September, the average temperature was -60.9°C, a record for those months.
😉
Mill Chemist in a paper company taking samples in the bowels 120°F and full humidity. Engineer for aerospace forged fasteners. Composite structures engineer at the autoclaves. Climate dead a dozen times over.
Why are they taking samples in bowels? Sounds dodgy to me…
Making paper involves a building several hundred meters long. At one end raw materials arrive by rail and truck. The materials are mixed at the ton level and the mill chemist goes down several stories to the digesters and mixers for observation and measurement. Vats 80°C 10m deep churning the ingredients.
If we didn’t take direct measurements we’d be no better than climate poseurs and your paper would never last more than a few years.
I’d wager it smells like bowels there too.
It does. I’ve lived in a paper mill town. Trust me, it does.
I worked several summers during college in paper factories. What bothered me was that nobody ever taught me anything. The full time workers just thought of us summer helpers as a nuisance and would tell us nothing- other than to move something heavy around, or whatever. I remember one day when a “third hand” or “back tender” was rubbing his hand over a huge roll of paper being wound up at high speed- like he was sensing something about the quality. I dared asked what he was sensing and he told me to get lost.
A climatologist-in-training. Reading chicken entrails is a long recognized tradition for forecasting the future.
Yeah, but it’s a dry heat….
Seriously, in the UAE, I saw construction workers in 40C heat with jackets on. I asked my taxi driver why, and he said that it was winter. In summer it might hit 50C. They’ll take their jackets off.
Apparently they import workers from Central Africa who are used to extreme heat. Obviously they all die immediately in 50C temperatures, though, according to Climate Scientologists.
Kuwait has always been unlivable. What’s your point?
To emphasize the point, the population of Kuwait now is more than 23 times what it was in 1950. No one wanted to live there before modern air conditioning.
Another reason the Global Average Temperature is a joke. You can’t break it down into regional temps. Neither can you tell what temperature is changing, Tmax or Tmin. Has anyone run a trend line on Kuwait’s temperature to see if any changes have occured? Has the climate designation changed recently or has it always been hot?
One acclimates. I flew in to Dubai at 7 in the morning once, in July, 1999 and it was already 93 deg F. I just wanted off that cold airplane and warm up in the sun a bit but no chance.
I regard Emirates Airlines to be perhaps the best airline as far as service is concerned. Their First Class lounge in Dubai was something to behold.
I had an uncle who definitely did not acclimate. He was from San Francisco. He and his wife flew to Phoenix to visit cousin’s. Uncle Harry stepped off of the plane and onto the tarmac in Phoenix, and dropped dead on the spot.
He didn’t drop dead on the spot from heat. That’s far too quick for the temp. in Phoenix to have had a thing to do with it.
No problem, Eric, us geologists know how to deal with it. A group of us decided to cross Death Valley, from east to west, in July, 1989. We were in a Chevrolet Blazer, dark blue with black vinyl top. The engine temperature went up alarmingly and we turned off the air conditioner. Looked like around 122 to 124 degrees. Motor got really hot and we turned the heater on max, which is another radiator/heat exchanger. the dash cracked in half. How hot inside? For sure over 140. However, as we always do, we had a cooler full of survival fluids, and we drank these and poured some over our heads. No problem.
I had a vehicle that was having heat issues which required that I kept the heater running full blast during the day. Being that my job at the time was driving as a courier up to 10 hours a day that was no fun.
I had one of those in southern France. Heat up to max, defrost windshield setting and windows open works ok.
Eventually I worked out that the temperature regulator in the water system was not opening until over 100C. Removed it and all was hunky dory (until winter).
If Saddam only knew..
The population of Kuwait City rose from 3 million to 4.25 million from 2010 to 2020; shouldn’t they be fleeing to Sweden?
No. The only continent where life will be able to exist after 2030 is Antarctica. Tell all your greenie friends to move quickly before prices shoot up!
Been to Kuwait in summer. Ditto Riyadh. Hot, but mostly a dry heat. No worse than Phoenix in August—Was on business there one time with afternoon temp of 128F and the parking lot asphalt palpably softened. So hot they significantly reduce max aircraft loads at Sky Harbor in order to safely take off.
The ‘people gunna die’ from global warming heat exhaustion crops up from time to time. It is always easy to debunk with ridicule, as here. Reality is that cold, not heat, is a far bigger killer.
Kuwait is warm, but Khorramshahr is hot. And a fair way up the Shatt al Arab. As the wharfies worked only about 0700 to 0900 they had filled the shunt of railway trucks by then, and all retired to await the afternoon shunt. Made it easy for Ship’s Master, me (third mate) and some of the Indian seamen to play cricket on the wharf. Temp well above blood heat, but no worry. When I finished playing, went to my cabin and in two minutes was absolutely drenched in sweat. I think outside the RH was about 2%. In the cabin it started at that but just breathing out water vapour rapidly raised the RH to 100%.
You can get used to just about anything.
But note, even in England, the road asphalt softens in summer. Note how at bus stops there is a decent groove where the bus tyres have squeezed the asphalt out to the side.
Dubai (UAE) in the same region isn’t, it has seen a spectacular growth in population from around 0.2 million to 3.4 million in the forty years 1980 – 2020..
‘The growth of the city can be attributed to the administration embracing economic liberalism and a desire to become a huge metropolis with massive projects highlighting the growth of the city’.
The UAE is one of the richest country in the world.
Tall and thin (at least naturally), no fur and sweat all over. Humans are one of the most heat tolerant animals on the planet.
You know it’s hot when the rattlesnakes slither to a shady spot.
In western Oman on the Saudi border the young Omanis kept their wooly head scarves on (evap cooling) until it got to about 52 degC. They happily continued to pull casing from our troubled well until I told them to stop and takes a rest when I saw 57.1 degC on the properly shielded thermometer. Heck, on 1 28 day hitch the lowest maximum temp was 52 degC. After about 1 week was acclimatized – mind you I was used to working the Oz desert.
Is there anywhere to which humans cannot adapt? I far prefer -50C to +50C. link
Great article. Enjoyed reading it. I saw this in the news today https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-59977193
What do we think about this? I want to know your guys’ thoughts.
A friend used to work in an underground mine near Marble Bar, 450 miles East of Onslow. Marble Bar has an extreme climate like Onslow, both among the hottest places on Earth. The average annual temperature in Marble Bar is 95F.
Conditions in the underground mine were unspeakably hot, they used to pump large volumes of unprocessed 110F+ outside air into the mine, to try to cool it down.
My friend had one of the most extreme jobs in the mine, his job was to be first in after they detonated explosives to shatter the rock and extend the tunnel, to inspect the rock face and ensure all the charges had detonated. There was a lot of pressure to resume production as soon as possible, having hundreds of workers sitting idle waiting for everything to cool down after the fireball was expensive, so when he went in temperatures were still hovering around 70C / 160F. The rock also had some moisture content, so there was substantial humidity.
Like I said, you can get used to extraordinary conditions if you build up to it.
This is only the very early stages of the Northern Hemisphere June warming that began 400 years ago.
Northern Hemisphere land masses have experienced just 0.2W/sq.m increase in June insolation over the last 400 years. In 1000 years, June insolation will be 2W/sq.m more than present and will peak at 488W/sq.m above present in 9,000 years time.
If you wind the clock backwards 10,000 years from present the average June insolation over land was 504W/sq,m. That was melting glaciers at a fierce rate despite much higher NH rainfall.
The Mediterranean Sea surface temperature will eventually reach the 30C limit before the insolation peaks; meaning it will move into monsoon mode. That will bring more rain to Northern Africa with the prospect of revegetating part of the Sahara. Not sure if that will extend to Kuwait though.
The Persian Gulf is one of the bodies of connected ocean water that does not go into monsoon mode. Its surface temperature always exceeds 30C in August.
My first job out of the Army, was working in a factory blowing 5 gallon glass bottles for Sparkletts. My job was to work the mold around the semi-molten glass to form the bottle. No air was around in the area because that would have caused the glass to crack. Once the bottle had somewhat cooled, while wearing thick fiberglass gloves and a face mask, I used a long handled fork to move the white hot bottle to the annealing oven conveyer belt directly behind me. It was literally hell. I did make very good money. Obviously, people can survive pretty extreme heat.
According to “the models” (so it must be true!), as well as actual weather records, most of the “global warming” is occurring, has occurred and will continue (until it doesn’t, that is) in high latitudes, in winter, at night. So the tropics won’t get hotter, according to the models.
As far as I can tell, what these twits are documenting is the UHI effect in a very densely packed, very big city with precious little green space or trees to give shade, in a very hot, very dry tropical country. They call it climate change and try to scare us into thinking that Oslo and Winnipeg will be like that if we don’t mend our ways by 2030 or whenever.
I wonder if there will come a time when we don’t have to listen to this crap any more. Probably not in my lifetime, but I can always hope.
Anyone who has lived in a desert area knows that there is a considerable difference between the temperature in the sun and in the shade and when this is combined with much lower humidity the heat is far more bearable than lower temperatures in say a tropical area because one is able to cool through perspiration.
In the 1950s I worked in Sturt’s Stony Desert in central Aus and 122f [50c] was reasonably common. Often it occurred when there was no wind so I had to pump water for cattle from the well with an air cooled diesel because the windmill was non functional.
This temperature was recorded on a verandah with spinifex thatch wicking water out of a bore drain a la Coolgardie Safe principle to keep the house cool.
The real temperature was probably a lot hotter.
And, when I used to go for hikes in the desert north of Phoenix, with my Rhodesian Ridgeback, she quickly learned to take advantage of the ‘shade’ from a lone saguaro, when she was lucky enough to find one.
Temperature alone isn’t the issue. 54C in death valley with fluids is fine at 0% humidity.
But 35C at 100% humidity at chichen itza was far far worse.
Wet bulb takes that into account wet bulb in death valley around 30C dry bulb 50C
54C is fine with drinks and shade
My point is I don’t think 35C wet bulb is a hard limit. The factory example I gave, water was dripping off machines and the thermometer read 55C, so I’m pretty sure we blew through wet bulb 35C that week. But we had plenty of time to adapt and build our tolerance, that week was the pinnacle of a very hot summer.
I’ve worked rigs from +40 to -50c in canada
It’s fine
It’s not great, I’d rather have a nice steady +15 if working steady but wishes and rainbows as they say
I’ve not analyzed Dubai data, but …
Heatwaves are not getting hotter in Melbourne.
Here are the average temperatures each year for the hottest 10 consecutive days, 5 consecutive days, 3 days and 1 day each year from 1856 to 2018 when I did the sums.
These are official BOM figures. All I have done is find the hottest spell of Tmax each year and calculate its average.
How any official body, like the BOM, has not produced a similar graph is beyond me.
Instead, they endorse the post-modern fuzzy assertion that heatwaves are becoming longer, hotter and more frequent. The do not mention, except for Melbourne. Or for Sydney. Or for Hobart, Adelaide, Brisbane. Maybe for Perth. That covers about 80% of Australia’s population.
“When the facts change, I change my model”. Geoff S
http://www.geoffstuff.com/melbheat2018.jpg
Yes, they deny well known history, Geoff:
https://realclimatescience.com/2022/01/january-21-1896-130f-in-new-south-wales/
A bit warm today.
No cyclones to dump rain on the Pilbara and cool it [where are those increased cyclones that global warming promised?]
A blocking high in the bight and a trough down the west coast dragging rather warmish air to the south.
The upside is it’s lovely on the beach in the late afternoon.
Kuwait has always been this way. Its a freaking nightmare.
“In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years.” So there have been hotter? Oh dear.
In the early 1980s we had a mineral exploration camp near Lake Disappointment, in the North-West of West Australia.
Google Earth lats and logs roughly 21 deg 24 min South and 122 deg 07 mins East. Dial it up and see some really hot desert.
A colleague baby-sat the camp over Christmas, in 1984 IIRC. He noted 5 consecutive days over 50 degrees C. One can argue about the nature of the temperature apparatus we used, but it was competent and certainly not in direct sunshine.
Had we found a good mine, we would have developed it. In those days when men were men (and knew what they were) and women were beautiful, climate was a variable that you coped with. Geoff S
Really!!!!!! Anyone who ever thought Kuwait was “habitable” is f**ked in the head.
From the article: “In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years.”
So it was just as warm in 1940, as it was in 2016.
Just another example showing that it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today.
Which means there is no unprecedented warming today, as the alarmists claim, and since there is no unprecedented warming today, that means CO2 is a minor player at best, in determining the Earth’s temperatures, and also means that CO2 does not need to be regulated or restricted, and that means we can do away with the windmills and industrial solar, and save ourselves a ton of money. And we can stop scaring the children and destroying the wildlife with these crazy schemes.
woops
(Unofficial) Record-breaking temperatures across the Globe (coolwx.com)
I understand how greenhouse gasses delay the onset of an uneasy equilibrium. But that affects the low temperature.
They don’t tell us how fast Kuwait cools down at night. That would give an indication of the GHGs. But I don’t see how GHGs can make it hotter. What am I missing?
When someone is busy pushing the panic button, they don’t have time to provide facts.
Shhhhh… Don’t let this get out to the Kuwaitis. Mum’s the word.
That’s why climate change supporters are called Snowflakes.
The latest astonishing climate idiocy in the UK is that the Government is seriously proposing to ban conservatories on new build unless they can prove that they will not excessively warm the house they are attached to.
You could not make this up.
Conservatories in the UK are a typical middle class home improvement project, they usually have pvc framed glass window walls and lightweight plastic roofs, and they are of modest size. They stick out into the garden in rural areas and people mostly put a table and some comfortable garden furniture in them, and use them as a semi-outdoor living room in the spring, early summer, early autumn.
Why not in the winter and high summer?
Becauise Britain started out years ago with regulations that forced conservatories to have transparent or semi transparent roofs, and to have lots of glass. This was to make sure that people really were putting up conservatories and not house extensions. Why this should have been so important? What’s wrong with house extensions? Who knows?
Anyway, the consequence of all this glass, and especially the roofs, was that the conservatories got too hot in high summer if they were on south or west facing walls. And they also needed heating in winter to be usable.
So this carried on for decades until some climate hysteric decided that not only are conservatories bad from an energy efficiency point of view – they burn a lot of fuel to heat, if you do heat them in winter.
They also decided that, in the hot weather that is coming to Britain as a consequence of what the Guardian calls global heating, conservatories would be a real health threat because they risk making the houses to which they are attached too hot.
The solution to this dire threat to the nation’s health is to change regulations so the windows in them are smaller. Make them, in fact, more like the extensions the current regulations were specifically designed to stop them from being.
As to the idea that a conservatory can overheat your house, I can only say that no-one who takes that idea seriously can have spent a summer in Britain. There are going to be a couple of weeks every year when the conservatory is too hot to use with the windows closed, so you just open its windows. There is absolutely no way that any conservatory I have ever seen in the UK could possibly cause the house itself to overheat to any extent, still less to any extent that has any health implications. It might perhaps add some insulation in the winter as a sort of extended porch. But that, you would think, is something the green fanatics should applaud.
Once again one has the impression that these people are living on another planet. Look at recent UK temperatures. You can get them on Woodfortrees, and Paul Homewood plots them every so often. Whether there is global heating or not, there is certainly no UK heating. The UK still has a climate where houses generally neither have nor need air conditioning. In fact, at least in the country, air conditioning in cars is only really necessary for a few weeks in the high summer.
But as you can see from this absurd story, none of this makes any impression on policy makers in the grip of climate hysteria. The only thing more absurd than their fantasies of disaster is the absurd means they choose to implement to try to avert the imaginary disasters.
You could see where it was all going when an interview with a leading green advocate of this measure was put out. She was filmed, guess what, sitting in her own conservatory!
If you lived in North Korea, you would find it a lot easier to obtain planning permission to carry out work on your own property than if you are an unfortunate denizen of the UK. Britain’s bizzare mix of elite oligarchy with burocratic small-minded marxism means that “private property” only exists for millionaires. For the rest it’s green-woke serfdom in a tiny regulation hovel.
Climate-which-never-changed-before-humans looks like its spreading to Saudi Arabia too, making that unlivable.
Cold weather and freezing waterfall in Saudi Arabia:
Waterfall in Saudi Arabia frozen solid amidst cold snap (msn.com)
(Don’t forget that “cold” must be followed by “snap” even if its a 100,000 year ice age.)
At this rate they’ll have to wear thermal underwear under the long robes.
During the 1973 oil crisis this little ditty by a dutch satirical program caused a diplomatic incident.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nXVR650JsE
Perhaps it still applies.
Seriously, you are proposing that it is OK for people to be outside regularly, all day, in 40C plus temperatures?
Because a few workers do shifts in hot conditions?
The last I knew, we are considered mammals. Are you intimating that no mammals (who have fur) can withstand and flourish in temps above 40C? Seems to me that adaptation is the key to survival.
H sapiens is the only mammal with such a high concentration of sweat glands along with almost naked skin.
This allowed our ancestors to hunt down faster running prey by tiring them out over a long chase.
This human ability to withstand heat was also a pre-adaptation to allow us to burn stuff and survive the global warming that would follow. Can’t argue with biology! David Attenborough would agree.
“Nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
No, its not OK.
But that is not really the question. The question is whether there is such a thing as global warming which makes higher daytime temps more frequent and higher than they are now.
The main IPCC forecast of rising AVERAGE temps is that night time temps will rise, and the gap between daytime and nightime ones will narrow in consequence.
I see no evidence that peak daytime temps are doing anything in particular. Not rising, not getting more frequent.
And there is no reason to forecast that they will, even if you forecast that average global temps will rise by a couple of degrees, there is no reason to think that will produce any significant changes to daytime max temps. By ‘significant’ I mean with an effects on peoples ability to live and work in hot regions.
The BBC at the moment has an unhinged series running where it looks at various people living in very hot places. But you notice that it never gives and quantified values to how much hotter it allegedly has got.
If you think either that there is an implication from modestly rising global temps to alarmingly rising peak temps in some reasons, explain what it is. If you think daytime global temps are rising dramatically in some regions, say which ones and by how much.
Of course not! California should immediately pass legislation that all the braceros harvesting vegetables in the Great Valley and Coachella Valley, supplying the world with food, should work indoors in air conditioned rooms ‘mining’ bit coins, or other such essential work.
40 degrees Celsius is no big deal – ask anyone of us who lives in the top half of Australia. Sure, a touch on the warm side, but certainly liveable.
Marble Bar in Western Australia has only a few days each year under 40C. And people have lived there for over 100 years.
We just had 5 days over 50 degree in Perth … Best summer ever.
Serious you pommies need to get out in the sun and teach your cricketers how to play in it.
Rubbish. I lived in Abu Dhabi 5 years and walked to work in 50 degree heat a few days with high humidity. It required a shirt change once I reached my hospital but it was not “life threatening”. I visited Kuwait to teach a few times and found to no-one’s surprise that they have adapted to a very hot climate. Who would have thought?
Being in the mining industry I have had the pleasure of working all over the world and experienced varied environmental conditions.
Canadian Arctic = -45C for six to eight weeks every winter
Danakil Ethiopia = +45C always!
South African Gold Mine = 12,000ft below ground and hot!
Peru = 15,000ft in the mountains
The most unpleasant was no question the altitude in Peru because there was no mechanical relief to the altitude
As for Canada and Ethiopia there is no question that the heat was far more tolerable than the cold.
The problem in Kuwait isn’t unique to them. When I lived in Phoenix in ’95-’98, I observed that the bus stops typically had water misters attached to the little ‘sheds’ that provided seating and shade; most of the gas stations also provided misters to cool patrons while re-fueling their cars. I even survived without either of my California cars having air conditioning.
Another approach used to adapt is to shift activities to nighttime, which I first observed when my parents and I lived in Phoenix in the early-’50s. We would do all our shopping after the sun set; the major stores like Sears stayed open until 10:00 every night.
There are — or at least were — tunnels under downtown Phoenix. During the late-1800s through the early-1900s, people would bring ice from the frozen lakes around Prescott and Flagstaff in Winter, place it in the tunnels, and then have fans blow the air into the buildings in the Summer.
Mad Dogs and Englishmen Song by Noël Coward
In tropical climes there are certain times of day
When all the citizens retire
To tear their clothes off and persprie.
It’s one of those rules that the greatest fools obey,
Because the sun is much too sultry
And one must avoid its ultry-violet ray.
The native grieve when the white men leave their huts,
Because they’re obviously definitely nuts!
Mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun,
The Japanese don’t care to.
The Chinese wouldn’t dare to,
Hindoos and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one.
But Englishmen detest a siesta.
In the Philippines
There are lovely screens
To protect you from the glare.
In the Malay States
There are hats like plates
Which the Britishers won’t wear.
At twelve noon
The natives swoon
And no further work is done.
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.
It’s such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see
That though the English are effete,
They’re quite impervious to heat,
When the white man rides every native hides in glee,
Because the simple creatures hope he
Will impale his solar topee on a tree.
It seems such a shame
When the English claim
The earth
That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth.
Mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.
The toughest Burmese bandit
Can never understand it.
In Rangoon the heat of noon
Is just what the natives shun.
They put their Scotch or Rye down
And lie down.
In a jungle town
Where the sun beats down
To the rage of man and beast
The English garb
Of the English sahib
Merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok
At twelve o’clock
They foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.
Mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit
Deplores this foolish habit.
In Hongkong
They strike a gong
And fire off a noonday gun
To reprimand each inmate
Who’s in late.
In the mangrove swamps
Where the python romps
There is peace from twelve till two.
Even caribous
Lie around and snooze;
For there’s nothing else to do.
In Bengal
To move at all
Is seldom, if ever done.
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday
Out in the midday
Out in the midday
Out in the midday
Out in the midday
Out in the midday
Out in the midday sun.
If the warmunists are right all of the fatal warming of Kuwait is cauSed by the use of Kuwait’s most famous and only product — fossil fuels.
Is not the overheating of Kuwait condign punishment for the realm?
Why then should I care?
If Kuwaitis can’t stand the heat, let them get out of the kitchen.
In a doubled CO2 world, the same heat pattern is another 1.5°C higher. When it’s over 45°C, it irrelevant. It’s time to stay hydrated in the shade until the temperature cools. Is there any evidence that the GHE effect creates more stinking hot days other than bumping the temperature above some threshold?
Warmer than that is because of a positive feed back – but this is due to increased humidity that only bumps up minima, and in a dry place like Kuwait, keep those extreme days from getting as hot.
Kuwait’s population
2000: 2 million
2005: 2.3 million
2010: 3 million
2015: 3.8 million
2020: 4.3 million
“One of my first jobs ” you were young. A lot of old people cant handle the heat so well.
https://www.theroar.com.au/2015/08/19/dean-jones-210-v-india-29-years-on-and-still-an-epic-innings/
Anyone remember Dean Jones inning of 210 in Madras in 1986. I am pretty sure the wet bulb temp was way above 35 degrees Celcius during that innings.
Co2 radiating at 15micrometers, as it does in the atmosphere, corresponds to a blackbody at temperature 193K(-80C) according to wiens law. That cannot raise any daytime temperatures in the middle east desert. Co2 acts only as a limit for low temperatures, it doesn´t raise top temperatures.