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Places Are Increasingly Getting So Hot That People Just Die
- princeb 5y agoSingapore is already completely inundated in severe WBGT conditions: https://www.wbgt.sg/allstations https://www.wbgt.sg/allstations thankfully, much of the population are within easy reach of conditioned air, either their home, office or an indoor mall. many parts of the shopping district are connected underground, so that people don't have to over-expose themselves to the climate to get from place to place. we've not been able to terraform our habitat, but we've been able to create sufficient pockets of habitable spaces for us to continue functioning as a society. it's always a bit of a fascination for me. soon strenous outdoor activities in singapore will be completely impossible, and maybe, in the near future, even idling outside will be a risky endeavour. this feels almost dune-like, except frank herbert never thought lethal humidity would be the other way around.
- nmfisher 5y agoI moved to Singapore from Australia about 18 months ago. I’m still struggling to cope with the heat (or more accurately, the humidity). I still exercise outside regularly, but only after dark. Admittedly, I seem to live in a hot part of town (inland, no wind, densely built urban island with little greenery) and on the top floor of an older building. Either way, I think I’ll need to move back to Australia soon. I can handle a 40+ degree dry Adelaide summer, but constant 30 degrees @ 85% humidity is just too much.
- darepublic 5y agoJust imagine when the power goes out.
- ncmncm 5y agoExpect mass migration out of such places, and Fascist governments to arise in places they would migrate to. In fact, we already see that happening in many places, including Europe. Hungary is well down that road. Once we have enough fascist governments, expect war, because fascism and war go together.
- Dma54rhs 5y agoI can assure you no country in Europe, Hungary or not, sees border protection as fascism.
- ajuc 5y agoI wouldn't call it fascism, but Hungary is certainly nationalist, antiliberal and authoritharian. In last decade government closed, bought or taxed into oblivion all media that were critical of it for example. And the state propaganda (so all media) constantly blames everything on leftists and Jews. And the same is now happening in Poland.
- ArcturianDeath 5y agoTheyre spot-on with their nationalism, they have a right to it, and their "state propaganda" bias, its accurate. Blaming the jews and calling-out dumb liberal mentalities is never baseless.
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoBorder protection in-and-of-itself is not the thing. I think they mean that heavy migration pressure rightly or wrongly does tend to lead to distrust of "others" in society. And all forms of distrust in society are things that Fascism does prey on.
- ncmncm 5y agoCorrect. A democratic polity can elect a government that then rescinds, either formally or de-facto, the possibility of democratic transfer of power. Immigration pressure has been seen in numerous instances to drive politics rightwards. Fascism is not a unique state of government, but simply a point on a continuum that can be arbitrarily difficult to turn back from. The point of no return is impossible to discern before it is past. Hungary is in a condition where the government in power is eroding its democratic institutions. Many US states, similarly, have enacted or are in the middle of enacting measures aimed at making it harder for a certain class of citizen to vote. Are Hungary and these states Fascist? By formal definitions, we can never declare any particular government fascist unless they agree, in public. But their actions are characteristic of fascism, and move society in that direction. The practice of hiding behind a formal definition is itself characteristic, post WWII.
- Proven 5y agoThey identified 7,000 cases on a planet with 7 billion people.
- tardismechanic 5y agohttps://outline.com/H5fR9b https://outline.com/H5fR9b
- DantesKite 5y agoI wonder if there's an efficient way of converting the latent heat in the air, even in places with high humidity into energy.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoNope. Heat is disorganized high entropy energy. We can't convert it into lower entropy energy like electricity or motion. Now, a heat difference (resulting in heat movement) can be made to do useful work.
- jbrot 5y agoMy understanding is that underground is a constant 50-60°F — wouldn’t that provide a heat difference?
- alephaleph 5y agoYep, there are even commercial applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump
- ArcturianDeath 5y agoI would hallucinate the heat death of the universe, or so it resembled, when I was a kid. In my late twenties, something occurred, my eyes glowed at night, things were like that movie, information was emanating, I saw everything. Underneath, its horses running, and snakes. I interfered with electrical equipment, a sweet flavor was always dripping, I started to float
- GreaterFool 5y agoHow much of that is climate change and how much local development policy? There is an ever continuing push for creating extremely high density urban areas with hardly any greenery. Those are becoming barely habitable. Cramped offices, people packed like sardines. Does it have to be this way to sustain economic activity that leads to prosperity? Can’t we somehow spread it out a little more and give everyone some room to breathe?
- SiVal 5y agoMany people die of cold and many die of heat each year. If you raise the temperature, the extra heat both reduces cold deaths and increases heat deaths. Lowering temperature (or preventing its rise) would also both prevent and cause deaths. If, as statistics seem to indicate, there are far more cold deaths than heat deaths, the extra heat is more likely to produce a net saving of lives, not a net loss. But even if not, any article that uses extra heat deaths as an argument without so much as mentioning concomitant prevention of cold deaths is not reliable if your goal is to save lives.
- fithisux 5y agoWhat you describe is equilibrium. What the article describe is not the shift of equilibrium but a departure of it that may eliminate cold deaths and start increasing hot deaths without bound.
- SiVal 5y agoI'm not describing any equilibrium. Heat deaths and cold deaths move in opposite directions, but that does not imply that they are equal or produce any restorative force on one another that would lead back to an equilibrium state. Since death won't affect the weather, if temperatures change, both heat and cold deaths will change, with some net change in total deaths. With more cold deaths currently than heat deaths, an increase in average temperature is more likely to reduce total deaths than increase them. If saving lives is your real goal, net lives saved/lost should be your yardstick, regardless of your opinion about the relative magnitude of heat deaths and cold deaths. But if your real agenda is something else then, sure, talking about increased heat deaths without ever mentioning reduced cold deaths might better serve your needs.
- lb0 5y ago> With more cold deaths currently than heat deaths I disagree even to that. Any numbers for that statement, at least rough dimensions? And, given world average rising a few more °C, and we get a similar extreme weather condition persisting for few days like described here, but where wet bulb goes not just close/slightly but significantly over 35°C, what will that numbers be in poor.. but heck, even in rich countries? You cannot be serious.. (Adding: Btw.. after all what models tell and we already see, we are in general not getting rid of extreme colds as well, but even getting also more persisting ones of these.. )
- RGamma 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322 (open via sci-hub) has a map that shows predictions which regions will become uninhabitable (deadly heat/humidity ~year round). The equatorial regions are basically fucked. This will trigger mass migration on the scale of billions with everything that entails :/