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If you haven't experienced high humidity its hard to understand how debilitating it can be. You can't cool down easily doing even mild physical work. I'm in a

If you haven't experienced high humidity its hard to understand how debilitating it can be. You can't cool down easily doing even mild physical work. I'm in a subtropical zone (Brisbane) and in high humidity weather I do about 30-50% of the physical work I can on a non-humid day I'd estimate. OOften it's best to work outdoors for an hour then cool down for an hour in pool/aircon as if you overheat yourself itcan be hard to get back to normal that day. That said its a good HN opportunity too for entrepreneurs. We see more and more kit like ice jackets that you freeze then wear outdoors etc for outdoor workers. Tech has to kick in here too.

arethuza 5y ago
Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock" has "earthsuits" that people wear in hot and humid locations.
- steelframe 5y ago
  > Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock" has "earthsuits" that people wear in hot and humid locations. Reminiscent of Frank Herbert's stillsuits in Dune (1965).
falcolas 5y ago
Ironically, the cosplay space has this covered. They have portable battery powered air conditioners connected to astronaut-style onesies-with-coolant-pipes. Unfortunately they're still manually assembled, so not quite readily available yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Ti4GP0ntE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Ti4GP0ntE <- Adam savage building one for an astronaut cosplay suit.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  The takeaway I see here is that we're looking at putting people, on Earth, in environmental suits, because we collectively haven't been able to agree on how (or whether, for that matter) to stop making it uninhabitable.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Technological solutions to discomfort can be done fairly easily at an individual level (though it may not be affordable to all). Solutions to our runaway climate change need to occur at corporate and government levels. Once you identify which is easier (to implement and/or to monetize), it makes an unfortunate kind of sense.
    - ehnto 5y ago
      The only lever we have as a society is regulation, and that is only because it has the capacity to change where people can make money. See what happens in countries where green energy is cheaper, it booms. It's not because they love the planet, it's because they can save or make money. There is zero chance corporations will suddenly have a long-term outlook on saving the planet and decide on their own to cut emissions, so we can forget that angle. There was always a lot of talk about carbon taxes, but since we're somewhat past that point now, what about a carbon capture rebate as well? If you can make money from thin air, I'm sure carbon capture technology and industry would boom. If a company can't avoid carbon tax from it's process, which some products simply can't, it then has to offset that tax with carbon capture rebates to be profitable and exist in society. If the math doesn't make sense, they don't make the money, so sad, tears in the unseasonable rain.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Saying the only lever we have is regulation is just saying the only lever we have is violence but with an extra intermediary steps The reason you don't litter, dump used oil down the toilet, buy conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets caught using sweatshop labor isn't because some jackbooted thug will put you in a cage, it's because you know it's the right thing to do. Sure there might be some laws you begrudgingly put up with because of the risk vs reward but making a lot of people do that at scale that doesn't work well. Convincing people to voluntarily do what you want is far cheaper than violence or threat of violence and it comes with a much lower risk of you being shot in the hole you just dug.
        5y ago
- klyrs 5y ago
  The irony here being that technology won't save us all. It will only save the people who can afford the technology. Which, unfortunately, doesn't include the people responsible for manufacturing that technology.
  - varelse 5y ago
    I am done with this mindset. It is useless brow furrowing and knicker bunching that traps you in an endless doom cycle. One of the few things that still works about capitalism is you make an expensive toy, it catches on, and then it gets cost reduced ruthlessly to the point that almost anyone can afford it. See flat screen TVs and cell phones for two compelling examples of this phenomenon. See Corsi boxes for an example of how to build cheap alternatives to an expensive thing. In Beijing, they got as cheap as buying a $25 fan and strapping a HEPA filter to it in order to filter out small particles. The outlook that nothing ever gets better and there's nothing we can do about it because the rich control everything is what will get us all killed. The rich will make money where they can even if they have to make it up with volume.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Has capitalism made iPhones cheap enough for the folks working in iPhone factories to afford them? Can the bean pickers working coffee plantations afford Starbucks? Is there zero wealth gap between people who shop at Walmart and the people who make the cheap crap that gets sold at Walmart? No, no, and no. Capitalism does not fix this. Capitalism exploits this and forwards the profits to the executives and shareholders.
      - varelse 5y ago
        Have you ever been to East Asia? They don't have the latest iPhones but they have a better cell phone network than the United States and cheap Android phones from which they do just about everything. You'll get four bars in the middle of nowhere compared to the United States spotty coverage concentrated on population centers. But pay no attention to geopolitical competitors, what could they possibly know that we don't? Or if you call capitalism a failure because only rich people can afford MacLarens, you're just being disingenuous. See also cheap perfectly serviceable 60" flat screen TVs versus a 85" Samsung Goliath. I don't want a society with zero wealth gap. They tried that during the cultural revolution and it sucked every bit as badly as the libertarian dystopia Peter Thiel wants to make happen. We have a really serious inequality problem with fairly simple answers that are politically infeasible until we federalize all campaign funding.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
In Minneapolis, they have skyways between large buildings so you're not exposed to the elements in the winter when moving between buildings. I imagine we’ll see similar in hotter climates (underground where the geography supports it, aboveground where not), with folks avoiding the outdoors for significant part of each year. TLDR It's an urban planning story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_tunnel_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_tunnel_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Pedway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Pedway
- nradov 5y ago
  Of course the unintended consequence will be even higher rates of vitamin D deficiency and chronic low nitric oxide levels. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11567-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11567-5
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Diets will need to change accordingly. Vitamin D supplements are inexpensive.
    - max-ibel 5y ago
      And of course, it would not be difficult. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
- captainoats 5y ago
  I live in a very cold part of the US but for a couple years traveled frequently to the south of Israel for work. I think a lot of people don’t consider dressing or designing spaces for high heats because most people live in temperate climates. It wasn’t unusual to have 113+ days there in the summer and no one but me (the American) seemed phased by it.
Gravityloss 5y ago
Producing ice is quite an energy intensive process. But I guess energy is cheap, damn the climate etc...
- ericd 5y ago
  That’s why it absorbs so much energy when you wear it. If it didn’t take that much energy, it wouldn’t be that useful. But heat pumps are actually extraordinarily efficient, so ice production isn’t bad compared to the cooling it would give the wearer. Which is one of the reasons many buildings build up big blocks of ice at night and then use them to cool themselves throughout the day.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    Building up big blocks of ice at night is inherently less efficient than cooling only as much as needed. The reason it's done is to take advantage of night time power being cheaper. On the scale those buildings operate at it's worth it.
    - Gravityloss 5y ago
      From a naive perspective, energy is energy, so melting 1 kg of ice eats 300 kJ of energy, and heating 8 kg of water from 20 C to 30C also takes 300 kJ. But if the ambient temperature is 30 C, how much did it take to make that 1 kg of ice or that 8 kg of 20C water? With a heat pump, like your refrigerator or freezer, producing cool water is much easier with high efficiency multipliers, while producing ice is a lot harder. If the outside temperature is 30 C, the the ice machine radiator must be at a higher temperature, say, at 40 C, to radiate heat, and the cold end must be below freezing to actually freeze the water. So, the radiator might be at 40C and the cooler at -10 C. So, the compressor must transport the 300 kJ of heat energy "against the grain" from cool to hot, a temperature difference of 50 C. With the refrigerator, the hot end might be at 40 C and the cool end at 10 C, meaning the difference is only 30 C. COP or Coefficient power is the amount of energy (J) the heat engine uses to transfer 1 Joule of energy. Some formulas: eff = 1 - T_cold / T_hot Refrigerator: T_cold = 10 C = 280 K, T_hot = 40 C = 310 K eff = 1 - 280/310 = 0.0968 COP = 1/eff = 10 Freezer: T_cold = -10 C = 260 K, T_hot = 40 C = 310 K eff = 1- 260/310 = 0.161 COP = 1/eff = 6.2
pier25 5y ago
I lived for 2 years in Cancún and the climate was just horrible for me. I spent like 8-10 months every year trapped indoors with AC. Just being a couple of minutes outside meant sweating _a lot_. Heck, after showering you had to dry yourself two times because you got way too sweaty unless you had AC in the bathroom. No thanks. I really don't understand how people like living in tropical weathers.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Yeah, so long as it's not too extreme you can wrap up against cold. There's nothing you can do against heat. My idea of ideal weather is the coolest place where I don't need to contend with snow accumulation.
  - wsinks 5y ago
    Have you moved to San Francisco? Haha, just a light joke.
hereforphone 5y ago
Hot, high-humidity days are the days I like to go out and run several miles. A lot depends on your fitness level. And Westerners are becoming decreasingly fit.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  The average hackernews user probably never was ;) But yes, I agree. There is a worrying trend of people living increasingly unhealthy lifestyles calling for politicians to protect them from life. Btw before you write angry replies accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about I grew up in a part of Asia that gets extremely warm/humid in spring and summer. We're talking way above 80% average humidity for over 4 months, some days close to 100% and subtropical temperatures around 30-35 and above 40°C when it gets really hot.
alx__ 5y ago
An interesting example of this was at the recent Summer Olympics in Tokyo. With the wide view of athletes everything looks fine, just another nice sunny day. But when the camera cuts in close many of the athletes look like they're about to pass out but they're barely sweating.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
https://stacoolvest.com/ https://stacoolvest.com/ These are vests like you describe. You take ice packs from the freezer and fit them into pockets of the vest. Not very high tech but they work.
jacquesm 5y ago
> That said its a good HN opportunity too for entrepreneurs. No, it isn't an opportunity for anybody, the only opportunity we get is to get off our asses and address the root cause instead of the symptoms to see if we can make money off the symptoms. That's what got us in this situation in the first place.

arethuza 5y ago

Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock" has "earthsuits" that people wear in hot and humid locations.

steelframe 5y ago
> Neal Stephenson's latest novel "Termination Shock" has "earthsuits" that people wear in hot and humid locations. Reminiscent of Frank Herbert's stillsuits in Dune (1965).

falcolas 5y ago

Ironically, the cosplay space has this covered. They have portable battery powered air conditioners connected to astronaut-style onesies-with-coolant-pipes. Unfortunately they're still manually assembled, so not quite readily available yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Ti4GP0ntE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Ti4GP0ntE <- Adam savage building one for an astronaut cosplay suit.

0_____0 5y ago
The takeaway I see here is that we're looking at putting people, on Earth, in environmental suits, because we collectively haven't been able to agree on how (or whether, for that matter) to stop making it uninhabitable.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Technological solutions to discomfort can be done fairly easily at an individual level (though it may not be affordable to all). Solutions to our runaway climate change need to occur at corporate and government levels. Once you identify which is easier (to implement and/or to monetize), it makes an unfortunate kind of sense.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    The only lever we have as a society is regulation, and that is only because it has the capacity to change where people can make money. See what happens in countries where green energy is cheaper, it booms. It's not because they love the planet, it's because they can save or make money. There is zero chance corporations will suddenly have a long-term outlook on saving the planet and decide on their own to cut emissions, so we can forget that angle. There was always a lot of talk about carbon taxes, but since we're somewhat past that point now, what about a carbon capture rebate as well? If you can make money from thin air, I'm sure carbon capture technology and industry would boom. If a company can't avoid carbon tax from it's process, which some products simply can't, it then has to offset that tax with carbon capture rebates to be profitable and exist in society. If the math doesn't make sense, they don't make the money, so sad, tears in the unseasonable rain.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Saying the only lever we have is regulation is just saying the only lever we have is violence but with an extra intermediary steps The reason you don't litter, dump used oil down the toilet, buy conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets caught using sweatshop labor isn't because some jackbooted thug will put you in a cage, it's because you know it's the right thing to do. Sure there might be some laws you begrudgingly put up with because of the risk vs reward but making a lot of people do that at scale that doesn't work well. Convincing people to voluntarily do what you want is far cheaper than violence or threat of violence and it comes with a much lower risk of you being shot in the hole you just dug.
      - 5y ago
klyrs 5y ago
The irony here being that technology won't save us all. It will only save the people who can afford the technology. Which, unfortunately, doesn't include the people responsible for manufacturing that technology.
- varelse 5y ago
  I am done with this mindset. It is useless brow furrowing and knicker bunching that traps you in an endless doom cycle. One of the few things that still works about capitalism is you make an expensive toy, it catches on, and then it gets cost reduced ruthlessly to the point that almost anyone can afford it. See flat screen TVs and cell phones for two compelling examples of this phenomenon. See Corsi boxes for an example of how to build cheap alternatives to an expensive thing. In Beijing, they got as cheap as buying a $25 fan and strapping a HEPA filter to it in order to filter out small particles. The outlook that nothing ever gets better and there's nothing we can do about it because the rich control everything is what will get us all killed. The rich will make money where they can even if they have to make it up with volume.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Has capitalism made iPhones cheap enough for the folks working in iPhone factories to afford them? Can the bean pickers working coffee plantations afford Starbucks? Is there zero wealth gap between people who shop at Walmart and the people who make the cheap crap that gets sold at Walmart? No, no, and no. Capitalism does not fix this. Capitalism exploits this and forwards the profits to the executives and shareholders.
    - varelse 5y ago
      Have you ever been to East Asia? They don't have the latest iPhones but they have a better cell phone network than the United States and cheap Android phones from which they do just about everything. You'll get four bars in the middle of nowhere compared to the United States spotty coverage concentrated on population centers. But pay no attention to geopolitical competitors, what could they possibly know that we don't? Or if you call capitalism a failure because only rich people can afford MacLarens, you're just being disingenuous. See also cheap perfectly serviceable 60" flat screen TVs versus a 85" Samsung Goliath. I don't want a society with zero wealth gap. They tried that during the cultural revolution and it sucked every bit as badly as the libertarian dystopia Peter Thiel wants to make happen. We have a really serious inequality problem with fairly simple answers that are politically infeasible until we federalize all campaign funding.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

In Minneapolis, they have skyways between large buildings so you're not exposed to the elements in the winter when moving between buildings. I imagine we’ll see similar in hotter climates (underground where the geography supports it, aboveground where not), with folks avoiding the outdoors for significant part of each year. TLDR It's an urban planning story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_tunnel_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_tunnel_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Pedway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Pedway

nradov 5y ago
Of course the unintended consequence will be even higher rates of vitamin D deficiency and chronic low nitric oxide levels. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11567-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11567-5
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Diets will need to change accordingly. Vitamin D supplements are inexpensive.
  - max-ibel 5y ago
    And of course, it would not be difficult. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
captainoats 5y ago
I live in a very cold part of the US but for a couple years traveled frequently to the south of Israel for work. I think a lot of people don’t consider dressing or designing spaces for high heats because most people live in temperate climates. It wasn’t unusual to have 113+ days there in the summer and no one but me (the American) seemed phased by it.

Gravityloss 5y ago

Producing ice is quite an energy intensive process. But I guess energy is cheap, damn the climate etc...

ericd 5y ago
That’s why it absorbs so much energy when you wear it. If it didn’t take that much energy, it wouldn’t be that useful. But heat pumps are actually extraordinarily efficient, so ice production isn’t bad compared to the cooling it would give the wearer. Which is one of the reasons many buildings build up big blocks of ice at night and then use them to cool themselves throughout the day.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Building up big blocks of ice at night is inherently less efficient than cooling only as much as needed. The reason it's done is to take advantage of night time power being cheaper. On the scale those buildings operate at it's worth it.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    From a naive perspective, energy is energy, so melting 1 kg of ice eats 300 kJ of energy, and heating 8 kg of water from 20 C to 30C also takes 300 kJ. But if the ambient temperature is 30 C, how much did it take to make that 1 kg of ice or that 8 kg of 20C water? With a heat pump, like your refrigerator or freezer, producing cool water is much easier with high efficiency multipliers, while producing ice is a lot harder. If the outside temperature is 30 C, the the ice machine radiator must be at a higher temperature, say, at 40 C, to radiate heat, and the cold end must be below freezing to actually freeze the water. So, the radiator might be at 40C and the cooler at -10 C. So, the compressor must transport the 300 kJ of heat energy "against the grain" from cool to hot, a temperature difference of 50 C. With the refrigerator, the hot end might be at 40 C and the cool end at 10 C, meaning the difference is only 30 C. COP or Coefficient power is the amount of energy (J) the heat engine uses to transfer 1 Joule of energy. Some formulas: eff = 1 - T_cold / T_hot Refrigerator: T_cold = 10 C = 280 K, T_hot = 40 C = 310 K eff = 1 - 280/310 = 0.0968 COP = 1/eff = 10 Freezer: T_cold = -10 C = 260 K, T_hot = 40 C = 310 K eff = 1- 260/310 = 0.161 COP = 1/eff = 6.2

pier25 5y ago

I lived for 2 years in Cancún and the climate was just horrible for me. I spent like 8-10 months every year trapped indoors with AC. Just being a couple of minutes outside meant sweating _a lot_. Heck, after showering you had to dry yourself two times because you got way too sweaty unless you had AC in the bathroom. No thanks. I really don't understand how people like living in tropical weathers.

LorenPechtel 5y ago
Yeah, so long as it's not too extreme you can wrap up against cold. There's nothing you can do against heat. My idea of ideal weather is the coolest place where I don't need to contend with snow accumulation.
- wsinks 5y ago
  Have you moved to San Francisco? Haha, just a light joke.

hereforphone 5y ago

Hot, high-humidity days are the days I like to go out and run several miles. A lot depends on your fitness level. And Westerners are becoming decreasingly fit.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
The average hackernews user probably never was ;) But yes, I agree. There is a worrying trend of people living increasingly unhealthy lifestyles calling for politicians to protect them from life. Btw before you write angry replies accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about I grew up in a part of Asia that gets extremely warm/humid in spring and summer. We're talking way above 80% average humidity for over 4 months, some days close to 100% and subtropical temperatures around 30-35 and above 40°C when it gets really hot.

alx__ 5y ago

An interesting example of this was at the recent Summer Olympics in Tokyo. With the wide view of athletes everything looks fine, just another nice sunny day. But when the camera cuts in close many of the athletes look like they're about to pass out but they're barely sweating.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

https://stacoolvest.com/ https://stacoolvest.com/ These are vests like you describe. You take ice packs from the freezer and fit them into pockets of the vest. Not very high tech but they work.

jacquesm 5y ago

> That said its a good HN opportunity too for entrepreneurs. No, it isn't an opportunity for anybody, the only opportunity we get is to get off our asses and address the root cause instead of the symptoms to see if we can make money off the symptoms. That's what got us in this situation in the first place.