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.
…
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.
…
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.
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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.