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Doing climate research in Fahrenheit in 2025 gives me second hand embarrassment.
by Supersaiyan_IV 2y ago
Doing climate research in Fahrenheit in 2025 gives me second hand embarrassment.
- artursapek 2y agoCelsius is useful if you're a beaker of water. Fahrenheit is useful if you're a human.
- inetknght 2y agoNah, Celsius is useful if you're a human. Fahrenheit is useful if you're an American.
- artursapek 2y ago0 is cold as fuck, 100 is hot as fuck. Perfect human scale. Stay jelly
- beAbU 2y ago-40 - cold as fuck, 40 - hot as fuck. 0 - shit freezes, better drive carefully. I don't understand why this is always breought out when farenheit is criticized, as if the 0F-100F thing is the "killer app" for temperature scales.
- artursapek 2y agoIn what country do people encounter -40 degrees
- zeagle 2y agoParts of Canada for sure. When it’s below -35C my garage stored vehicle’s cold engine light turns after a bit on while driving!
- timschmidt 2y agoWe had a -40F windchill day here in Michigan a few years ago.
- nukem222 2y agoRussia, canada, sweden, norway, finland, us... probably missing a few. Edit: mongolia too, I think. curiously, nothing in the southern hemisphere?
- olddustytrail 2y agoAntarctica
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoAs an American I’m biased, but Fahrenheit matching the 1-100 scale used in so many other things just feels nice. Maps cleanly to 0-1.0 in a float/decimal type in programming which is neat too. Feels less arbitrary even if it actually isn’t. I prefer metric otherwise but for temperature Fahrenheit just “clicks” in ways that Celsius doesn’t.
- taberiand 2y agoFahrenheit doesn't match the 1-100 scale, though - Celsius does. 0 water freezes, 100 water boils.
- artursapek 2y ago[flagged]
- hollerith 2y agoHerr Fahrenheit measured the temperature many times over a period of one year in some town in Germany. He defined 0 degrees as the coldest measurement, 100 the hottest measurement.
- taberiand 2y agoOk but Celsius works wherever you are (adjusting for pressure)
- 0rzech 2y ago> some town in Germany The Polish city of Gdańsk, of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was also born there at the time. [1] > He defined 0 degrees as the coldest measurement, 100 the hottest measurement. Nope. It was neither about the temperatures in Gdańsk, nor about the temperature of his wife, btw. ;) [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Gabriel_Fahrenheit [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit
- briHass 2y agoAnytime your scale has to go into negative numbers to represent common scenarios, it's not human friendly. If you're not tying your scale to human-specific temps, why not just use Kelvin? At least that won't go negative.
- cyberax 2y ago20F is also cold as fuck. 90F is also hot as fuck.
- chrismcb 2y agoIf you are used to Celsius, sure. But the point the op was making is Fahrenheit was designed with humans in mind and Celsius with the changes of the state of water. Your average person didn't really care what temperature water boils at, just that it is hot.
- nukem222 2y ago> Fahrenheit was designed with humans in mind If there was a design, it's not clear what the intent was. It seems about twice as precise as it needs to be (i certainly can't perceive 1F°—for all intents and purposes, 70 feels about the same as 69 and 71) and doesn't seem to correlate to any scale that is immediately based off the needs of humans. At least compared to celcius.
- timschmidt 2y agoThis is very interesting, because I absolutely can feel one degree F difference in house temperature. I wonder if using a lower resolution scale dulls the senses like other forms of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- nukem222 2y agoI live in the US and can't change my thermostat, so I don't think that's it. I'm sure I could feel the difference if i split myself between two rooms with one degree difference. I just don't think this is a useful granularity—I typically move the thermostat by 2-5 degrees at a time.
- throwaway657656 2y agoFarenheit set 100F to be his wife's internal temperature. 0F was the freezing point of brine and humans are mostly brine. F is human centric.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit
- 2y ago
- timschmidt 2y agoWho needs 2x the effective resolution at human temperature scales? Or useful temperatures without significant digits beyond the decimal?
- mass_and_energy 2y agoAgreed, there's a reason most of the world uses it.
- tremon 2y agoWhat significance does 0°F have to a human?
- rpastuszak 2y ago?
- asciimov 2y ago0°F was the outside temperature with 40 mph winds (60mph gusts) the time I had to venture to the middle of an empty field to break the ice on water tank with a hatchet so cows could get water.
- fernmyth 2y agoI thought at 0°F you're supposed to bring the cows inside! Also at 100°F I guess it depends on the cows
- asciimov 2y agoThis was in the Texas Panhandle, temps this low are abnormal. Cows can survive this temps as long as they have adequate feed and water. They can endure high temps pretty well, again as long as they have water.
- bongodongobob 2y agoExactly. Where I live we have temps from -20F to 110F, which is -30 to 43C. Idk, seems to me the hottest normal temp being 90ish and coldest normalish temp at 0 is a decent scale.
- ikiris 2y agoIt’s cold.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago[dead]
- NortySpock 2y ago30 is hot. 20 is nice. 10 is cold. 0 is ice. Not hard to remember for converting Celsius to how humans typically perceive temperature.
- artursapek 2y agoCool yeah let's compress the entire scale to 0-35 and waste the other 65 up to 100 lol yeah what a great scale
- timschmidt 2y agoMy problem isn't remembering the scale, it's that Fahrenheit offers me double the effective resolution and descriptive accuracy without awkward decimal points in the numbers used. I like my room at 73F, not 72F or 74F, and I can feel the difference. That's 22.77C. :-/
- ttepasse 2y agoMy main observation in temperature scale and imperial lengths discussions om the Internet is that Americans seem to have a strange aversion against fractional parts of numbers, as if those were irrational. (On the other hand a lot of Americans consume fava beans.)
- timschmidt 2y agoAu contraire base 12 measurement is _all about the fractions_. 12 can be divided evenly by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Metric gets 5 and 2. By that measure it's y'all that are afraid of the small numbers. US units are pinned to Metric standards anyway. We're just using the most creative ratios. :)
- typewithrhythm 2y agoHumans cannot reliably determine the difference in one degree c, even though it's bigger... Fahrenheit is too fine grained, and has no interesting points relative to the things I interact with. I freeze an boil water often, however
- djtango 2y agoI grew up during the F to C transition in the UK and F is not intuitive. 0 = ice 100 = steam That is pretty intuitive if you ask me. And for gravy comfortable room temp is about 25
- bee_rider 2y agoFahrenheit is sort of intuitive if you think of it as somehow, impossibly, a percentage scale. 0C/32F is still decently comfortable anyway. 0F is, like, not at all comfortable. 100C is dead. 100F is the most unbearably hot temperature that isn’t immediately deadly.
- jltsiren 2y ago100°C is somewhat uncomfortable, and it usually indicates that someone is trying to show off. 80 to 90 is much better. (In a sauna.)
- k_roy 2y agoJust curious on what planet you exist where 100C is only “somewhat uncomfortable”
- bee_rider 2y agoIt does kinda depend on humidity, fwiw. In New England, the 90’s are hot, unpleasant sticky weather. I guess it doesn’t happen often, but I saw some upper-90’s temperature in the Portland, Oregon area. It feels relatively mild actually, compared to New England 90’s, I’m pretty sure because it is so dry. The lighter air just carries the heat away, rather than having it stick to you.
- CamperBob2 2y agoWe'll be doing it in caves before long, if present trends persist.
- AngryData 2y agoWhy? Celsius is just as arbitrary a choice as Fahrenheit. It brings nothing extra to the table. You might as well complain that tapered pipe threads are in US inches or that astronomers use AUs and light seconds rather than meters.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- anthk 2y agoIn Science, global standards matter. Such as Metric and Celsius.
- cowfarts 2y ago[dead]
- AngryData 2y agoFahrenheit and Celsius are defined perfectly with one another so are as easy to convert as using a different number base though. And both were originally defined at arbitrary points making neither one better suited than the other at really anything. If they used an absolute scale like Kelvin, then sure it would be an objectively better standard, but Celsius has been defined via the Kelvin scale for over 70 years now, the same as Fahrenheit.
- pgkr 2y agoWhat makes you think the research was done in Fahrenheit? This is a blog post by a science communicator who’s trying to reach a wide audience of American-English speakers. It stands to reason that they’d use units that their audience is familiar with.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoSo, Kelvin then?
- timeon 2y agoSure, 273.15K ± something.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago[dead]
- cowfarts 2y ago[dead]
- mrguyorama 2y agoUnits gatekeeping/purity testing is the most pathetic "I'm more smart than you" bullshit ever.