Can We Survive Extreme Heat?

[Newest Reality]

Humans have never lived on a planet this hot, and we’re totally unprepared for what’s to come

On a scorching day in downtown Phoenix, when the temperature soars to 115°F or higher, heat becomes a lethal force. Sunshine assaults you, forcing you to seek cover. The air feels solid, a hazy, ozone-soaked curtain of heat. You feel it radiating up from the parking lot through your shoes. Metal bus stops become convection ovens. Flights may be delayed at Sky Harbor International Airport because the planes can’t get enough lift in the thin, hot air. At City Hall, where the entrance to the building is emblazoned with a giant metallic emblem of the sun, workers eat lunch in the lobby rather than trek through the heat to nearby restaurants. On the outskirts of the city, power lines sag and buzz, overloaded with electrons as the demand for air conditioning soars and the entire grid is pushed to the limit. In an Arizona heat wave, electricity is not a convenience, it is a tool for survival.

As the mercury rises, people die. The homeless cook to death on hot sidewalks. Older folks, their bodies unable to cope with the metabolic stress of extreme heat, suffer heart attacks and strokes. Hikers collapse from dehydration. As the climate warms, heat waves are growing longer, hotter, and more frequent. Since the 1960s, the average number of annual heat waves in 50 major American cities has tripled. They are also becoming more deadly. Last year, there were 181 heat-related deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County, nearly three times the number from four years earlier. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2004 and 2017, about a quarter of all weather-related deaths were caused by excessive heat, far more than other natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/climate-crisis-goodell-survive-extreme-heat-875198/

Turn me over, I'm done on this side.

[virgogal]

1. I am NOT arguing here,but I think that some

of the vulnerable,like seniors and the homeless,also freeze to death.2 elderly sisters in RI froze to death a couple of years ago. I do not know the stats on that,though.

[Newest Reality]

2. Oh, no...

Of course. That's another issue that factors in because climate change can also impact Winter weather.

I know from experience how easy that can be in frigid weather. This is an article about NYC, but they mention the statistic.

Each year in the United States, about 1,330 people die of cold exposure, essentially freezing to death. You may picture outdoor adventurers dying of hypothermia on snowy mountaintops. While rates are higher in rural areas, many cold-related deaths and illnesses occur in cities too.

https://www.publichealthpost.org/research/counting-cold-related-deaths-new-york-city/

[hunter]

10. Healthy people can pile on the furs, clothing, and blankets to keep warm.

People survived in cold arctic and high mountain environments even without fire.

There's no similar simple technologies that will make a deadly high humidity heatwave survivable.

It's not difficult to imagine a heat catastrophe killing thousands when an electrical grid fails.

Worldwide refugee problems that are bad now will only get worse.

Here in the U.S.A. displaced U.S. citizens won't be especially welcome in parts of the nation that remain habitable, no more than people displaced by the 1930's Dust Bowl were.

[The_jackalope]

3. Add in high humidity and the lethality soars

Any temperature over 90F with 100% humidity is not survivable for long unless AC is available. A wet bulb of 95F is deadly within a few hours, as the body can't shed enough heat.

[htuttle]

4. We just need the right equipment

[Newest Reality]

5. Heheheh!

That'll do the trick!

We will have to also watch out for when bed bugs mutate into giant sandworms, too.

[Duppers]

6. Expanding on The Jackalope's post...

Article from Dec, 2017

https://slate.com/technology/2017/12/humidity-will-combine-with-heat-to-be-deadly-thanks-to-climate-change.html

When humidity is at 100%, temperatures around 85° Fahrenheit actually feel as hot as 107.5 degrees Fahrenheit on the heat index.

At 100% humidity, 89 or 90 degrees Fahrenheit can feel like 132 degrees Fahrenheit on the heat index. And previous experiments show that this is the limit for what most humans can withstand before they start to fall apart from the one-two heat-humidity combo—and really, many people would fall apart way before that.

Currently, those kinds of temperatures hit the southeastern U.S. about one or two days a year and occur about three to five days in places in South America, Africa, India, and China. They’re conditions that very few people in the world have ever experienced.


The study’s model predicts that in many places in the world, under worse estimates for global warming rates, those temperatures could stretch for up to 100 to 250 days a year by 2080. The most devastating effects would happen in northern India, eastern China, the coastal Middle East, and in parts of the Amazon rainforest. Furthermore, hundreds of millions could experience a staggering 95 degrees Fahrenheit at 100% humidity—in “dry” heat terms, this would feel like 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Duppers]

7. Why do people not believe this?

This IS happening.

[Newest Reality]

8. Reality Tunnels.

Bubbles of denial. Blinders of obedience. Conceptual filters. Dungeons of distraction. Idols of imputation. Perceptual prejudice. Houses of the Holy. Dancing in a dream. Cones of confirmation bias. Camping at The Mountains of Madness on the Isle of Ignorance. Cradled in conditioning. Creatures compelled by conditioning. Myopic minions. Magical thinking. Wish fishers.

When ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

[Duppers]

9. 😁👍

🙈🙉🙊