When did we fail going forward? As humanity, I mean.
There have always been people who opposed progress for various reasons, and sometimes their reasons were understandable and even forgivable. Nobody can care about everything at once in equal measure and sometimes the safest default is "let's not rock the boat when things seem to be going well."
There's one current obstacle to progress that I have a harder time forgiving, though. Every time there's discussion of the possibility of doing some research into geoengineering as a means to counteract climate change a whole pile of people come out with "but that will only encourage more burning of fossil fuels" and "haven't you seen Snowpiercer?" counterarguments. It's wearying. The same people usually love the "we've passed an irreversible tipping point" articles that go on about how doomed we all are and how futile any further attempts to reverse climate change are.
If they really think we're doomed and nothing more can be done, then get out of the way of the people who are still trying to come up with solutions. A generation ago the same problem prevented nuclear power from being a useful solution.
What’s sad is nuclear power is still a useful solution. It’s not a perfect solution. Not by a long shot. But as far as non-renewable power sources go, nuclear is by far the most efficient. Yet today the US has virtually no nuclear power development going on.
Well, I sort of push nuclear power back from the "useful solution" slot at this point in history because now the problem is no longer preventing global temperatures from rising - that's a done deal now. Drastically cutting our carbon dioxide emissions are still a good idea but no longer all that's necessary any more. Plus solar and wind power are really coming into their own, so nuclear's good but no longer the only game in town on that front either.
I fear that eventually geoengineering will have been put off for so long that we'll be in a situation where "yeah, reducing global temperatures would be nice, but vast regions of farmland already turned to desert so the real problem we're facing these days is how to rapidly spin up new farmland and that old problem of lowering global temperatures is no longer all that's necessary any more. Maybe if we'd seriously investigated doing it back in the 2020s it would have made a difference then."
Just don't believe this is anything new. Back in time, people used to seriously believe in faeries, trolls, deamons, angels and other supernatural phenomena.
That's how you could lead people to carry holy wars and consider serfdom and slavery as natural order of things.
Back in the 80's, I remember a report from an ethnologist going to Nepal and meeting people who seriously believed that Russians had goat feet.
If anything, the internet has revealed the credulity of the general population, and provides means to fight and contain superstitions of various kinds.
It's really so sad and frustrating for those under the age of 45. Millennials were raised during a time of prosperity and possibilities, only to find out it was all a sham by the selfish, stupid and mostly older generations. Now Millennials, Gen Z and Gen A will reap the outcomes of all that while those who caused it will die off before things get even worse. I harbor no resent towards Gen X, but their refusal to fight the tide certainly didn't help.
as a genXer we were promised and viewed all that could be done and was being done. then they voted in Reagan and was all stripped away. any glimpse of prosperity during the 90s was GenX optimism that was destroyed in 2000 when it was all stolen from everyone again. GenX doesn't do anything anymore because we were told to shut up as we grew up in the 80s and then had it stolen again in the 2000 election.
@thesebits Definitely. I remember as a kid in the 70s all of this innovation and research into getting us off of fossil fuels being taught to us and a real sense of optimism about the future and science. So much changed for the better or was moving in the right direction then fucking Reagan and the Bushes and greedy cronies like Gingrich come into power and ripped all of that away.
I feel like you’re doing Gen X a huge disservice here. Like there’s a chunk of history you’re not familiar with.
Gen X was the first generation to go to college only to come out saddled with debt and only “mcjobs” to show for it. We graduated into NAFTA and globalisation.
There were some hardcore protests, movements, and mobilisations around the issues that matter… Economy, environment, women’s rights, employee rights, animal welfare rights, etc.
It has very obviously continued to deteriorate, but I’ll admit there was optimism because we did see some gains and some promise… I can’t remember the last time I felt any optimism about this world.
I harbor no resent towards Gen X, but their refusal to fight the tide certainly didn't help.
@Ganondorf While growing up, GenX was vastly outnumbered by Greatest Generation, Silent Generation & Boomers. The stereotype is that they cynically opted out but I think a lot of that was because there were limited democratic options available and it was deeply frustrating to many.
It's really so sad and frustrating for those under the age of 45. Millennials were raised during a time of prosperity and possibilities, only to find out it was all a sham by the selfish, stupid and mostly older generations.
I share your frustration. The US is still the wealthiest country on earth by a large margin, with many possibilities if we can convince ourselves to share it equitably. We could make our systemic incentives virtuous rather than destructive. We don't need to squeeze everyone and reward bad actors to have abundance.
I harbor no resent towards Gen X, but their refusal to fight the tide certainly didn't help.
Not all of us were apathetic; there were many who tried to fight for what was considered really progressive ideas at the time, like fighting for equal rights and against climate change, but there weren't enough of us. We're a smaller generation anyway, didn't have a good way to make our voices heard since the internet was still in its infancy, and were turned into a punchline by the media. And everybody believed it. Slacker, freeloader, tree-hugger, JFC it's no wonder why nobody took us seriously. I mean, frick, in the 90s everyone got their news from four network channels and a few cable channels on tv, so America believed the hype and largely wrote us off.
We tried, man. We did the absolute best we could with a shitty situation, and it stings to think about how we weren't able to accomplish more in our youth. Please don't write us off as a useless apathetic generation, we've already been through that before. Besides, you're probably thinking of our parents, the Boomer generation (born 1945-1965). They aren't entirely to blame for the country's problems, but they held (still do in many ways) most of the power and chose to throw their support behind rich wealthy conservative assholes, and we're still feeling the affects of their decisions. Again, they don't deserve all the blame, but the sheer amount of Boomer shit contributions to society dwarfs what the worst of Gen X ever did.
People are selfish and stupid no matter the age. My city is full of people driving gas guzzlers, traveling all the time, and ordering UberEats for every meal. They are all under 45. Then gen Z are particular bad and refuse to use public transit.
It's not about age. It's about class/wealthy. The poor use far fewer resources than the wealthy do. Rich young people are living in 5000sq ft homes by themselves and burning through natural gas and oil. They aren't living in 500sq ft apartment like ordinary folks.
Agree with everything you’re saying, but one slight problem with public transit is just how ridiculously unsafe it feels. People might be much more likely to get injured in a car crash, but the fear of being attacked or otherwise molested on public transport is simply bigger.
In my neck of the woods,if I have to choose between getting stuck in traffic for 10 minutes or wait for a bus to be late (if it shows) for a 2 hour roundtrip, I'll just get in my car.
That's not even the real issue imo, just the symptom. Public transit needs to be an actually viable alternative to driving which is hard to do when it's underfunded and we bulldozed our cities to build low-density car-dependent hellscapes we now call cities. If I get out of the states at some point I want to go somewhere walkable with nice transit so badly. Not Just Bikes has me wanting to go to Amsterdam, that looks heavenly
Your comment makes me feel self conscious as a mid 30s bachelor lol. After I got divorced…and kept the house I bought for us and our future family, I now live alone in a 3500sqft house.
It’s a god damn burden more than anything. There’s so much wasted space, and everything is more. More expensive to maintain, more expensive to heat and cool, and so much more to clean. Otherwise, I live a pretty modest life; cook, clean, and maintain everything solo.
I really just like my location and workshop. I’d be more than happy to have 800sqft living… the thing is that this house was cheap relatively speaking ($245k in 2017).
At this point, it would cost substantially more for me to downsize and move… I kinda feel trapped but more in an analysis paralysis way. So many variables and too many decisions.
My mom is in a similar situation. We all grew up and moved out of the 5 bedroom house, then Dad died and now she lives in it alone. She doesn't want all the space, but selling and buying a small home would actually not net her any profit and it's a huge hassle.
As long as all the air-conditioning is chugging along, most people won’t even notice. Thank god the texan electric grid is stable enough to never cut out. Wait…
Oh god don't even mention it... I was already afraid it would break down last year (when we didn't have this extreme heat). I'm planning to leave Texas as early as possibly can partly because of all this craziness, meanwhile some of my coworkers don't even notice what kinds of nightmarish scenario is happening down here
My power just went out again. It has failed 3 times in the last 2 weeks. I'm in Houston. The storm that blew through took me out for 3 1/2 day. A week later another storm downed us for 3 hours and now I'm typing this in my powerless house once again. I heard a pop this time so I'm assuming it's a transformer. Centex says it will be back in a few hours. The only reason I'm still in this sh*t hole state is because my husband's parents are here. Thank God I have an appt with a generator company tomorrow. Eff this state in the A
When I work at military facilities in the US, they use wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) which adds the heating effect of direct sunlight.
We use it to prevent heat stroke. DoD has a system of colored flags that index to the WBGT. Red and black flags indicate that folks working outside need to take breaks at some increased frequency.
I've been wondering whether it'll be possible to make skin-friendly formulations of the sky-cooling paints, which might help with this sort of situation. NightHawkInLight just released a YouTube video about a way to make a version of the pigment using items from the grocery and hardware stores, and the final result was Calcium Carbonate nanospheres. It seems like it should be possible to make a skin-compatible paint from this, much like the titanium oxide based sunscreens, with the advantage that this one would actively cool you by about four degrees centigrade, which is really quite a lot in this kind of scenario.
Well, clothes made with the right pigments might work in a similar way. But regular light clothes aren't enough in a wet bulb event. Regular light clothes can keep you from getting further overheated due to sunlight, but if the ambient air temperature and humidity is such that you can't get evaporative cooling from your sweat, you're still in trouble. Sky-cooling pigments can cool you below the ambient air temperature by up to 4°C even in direct sunlight, which could be life-saving in certain circumstances.
I think one trick to that working is using a very thick coat of the paint. It needs to be thick enough to scatter light like using the same properties as snow. A thick coating like that all over your skin would probable block sweating and create a dangerous health issue.
I wonder. He did need the snow-scattering effect to get the barium-based pigment to work, but it seems like the dense packing achieved by the varied sizes of nanoparticles might suffice for light rejection without that effect. It didn't sound like he re-tested that with the new recipe.
Tech Ingredients also covered cooling paint and referenced the NightHawkInLight Video but they went into a bit more on application. It still needed a thick coat. https://youtu.be/dNs_kNilSjk
It's been a while since I watched that one. I'll have to give it another look. They were also using the barium pigment, but I can't remember if they used the multiple sizes of nanospheres.
Yes, wet bulb index takes into account the relative humidity to give a realized temperature that takes into account your body can't shed heat through sweat.
Basically you put two old-style thermometers next to each other. One has a conventional ‘dry’ bulb. The other has damp gauze or something similar wrapped around the bulb.
In low humidity conditions, the wet bulb thermometer will read considerably cooler as the evaporating water cools the thermometer
At 100% humidity the two thermometers will read the same, as no water will be evaporating.
I posted this elsewhere but think it’s relevant here:
For the past couple of years it’s been a lot of news of “Hottest Day Ever” to which my favorite response has always been a slightly cheeky “So far!”, but I’ve realized with the recent coverage of large swaths of the US reaching deadly wet bulb temps that that’s going to change. The headlines won’t be for the hottest day, they’ll be for the highest death count, and nobody will say the second part but we’ll all be thinking it.
This article doesn't actually mention the values of the temperatures (probably to cover relieve themselves of the responsibility of those details) so I'll go to their first link, the theHill.com one. They don't directly give a value in their text either...
Basically, wet bulb globe temperature is being conflated with wet bulb temperature. Globe is in the sun, the other is not. The thehill.com source uses a chart and description for globe, doesn't mention the word globe anywhere, then says you can't survive more than 35C with a link to a study. That 35C/88F is the limit for a wet bulb temperature, not wet bulb globe temperature. Obviously measuring something in the sun is going to give a higher number than in the shade. You can't say "it's this temperature" referencing wet bulb globe and also say "you couldn't survive that temperature" using the "survivability" limit of wet bulb without any sort of qualification/clarification as to the distinction. Obviously it's hotter in the sun. If that same temperature is reached in the shade it's that much hotter in the sun.
Sure, we're all facing extreme climate apocalypse, but this is annoying that the terms are being used as the same thing, and I'd argue detrimental to the cause. When these things are incorrect, it's just more ammunition for deniers and doubters to point at to justify their continued intentional ignorance.
I woke up to TWO lawn mowers going today. It feels like 100 out and its the hottest day of the week. I hate these people!!! I actually wish it would get hotter! Not really though for the sane peoples sakes.
Global humidity is rising. Kinda sucks looking for data on it because it just shows an average and because it’s an average it only moves a few points. I’d be really interested in seeing what’s happening in populated areas. It’s completely anecdotal, but I really feel that humidity has shot up a lot when I’m outdoors. Unless you’re in a arid area, it’s feels so much steamier and harder to cool off.
But that can be a big problem because humans cool themselves by sweating: the ambient heat evaporates sweat from our skin, and that keeps us from getting too hot. If the relative humidity is already near 100 percent, the air simply can’t take any more. Our sweat doesn’t get evaporated as easily, and we can’t cool down. This makes humid heat not just uncomfortable, but dangerous.
An earlier version of this article was published in June 2021.
I'm not sure if I should be alarmed that this is happening frequently enough to recycle older articles or comforted that we've already dealt with this trouble once before.
they updated it on july 4th 2023. i think when they originally wrote the article, they were explaining what wet bulb temperature meant. Now they're pointing out the frequency of reaching that threshold...which really sucks...so alarmed for sure.
Nothing is being dealt with, is the problem. Every year people die to heat related problems. This year there will be a lot more of them. Next year there will be a lot more than this year.
The problem with saturated humidity is that your sweat can't evaporate to cool you. Unless you directly remove yourself from the hot and humid environment, which is sometimes possible but isn't always, any temperature above body temperature (roughly 95-98 degrees F) can and will prove fatal over long exposure. Even having moving air blow over you, like sitting in front of a fan, won't help you if it's too humid to evaporate sweat.
Without artificial ways of cooling your environment, such as air conditioning, you're going to be pretty screwed. Many places don't have access to air conditioning at all, and the places that do have it will be using it so much that they'll constantly be doing more progressive damage to the environment, which then in turn makes the heat waves worse and snowballs it all to deal with an even worse problem next year. Repeat until mass extinction is achieved.
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