Tuesday 9 March 2021

"Global heating pushes tropical regions towards limits of human livability"

I know we've done this sort of story before, but they are an easy target.

From The Guardian:

The climate crisis is pushing the planet’s tropical regions towards the limits of human livability, with rising heat and humidity threatening to plunge much of the world’s population into potentially lethal conditions, new research has found.

Should governments fail to curb global heating to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era, areas in the tropical band that stretches either side of the equator risk changing into a new environment that will hit “the limit of human adaptation”, the study warns...

“If this limit is breached, infrastructure like cool-air shelters are absolutely necessary for human survival,” said Sadegh, who was not involved in the research. “Given that much of the impacted area consists of low-income countries, providing the required infrastructure will be challenging. Theoretically no human can tolerate a wet bulb temperature of above 35C, no matter how much water they have to drink,” he added.


"Theoretically"? Maybe not. In practice, clearly we can.

Timeanddate.com shows that in Calcutta (the first hot, humid place that sprang to mind, I'm sure there are even hotter and more humid places) there are two months in which the average daytime high is over 36 degrees and for ten months of the year the average daytime high is 30 degrees or more. How often does the temperature go over 35 degrees with high relative humidity?

I have no idea, but I am sure the answer is "quite often" and they seem to manage just fine. Even London breached 35 degrees on a couple of days last year. Was it unpleasantly hot if you're not used to it? Yes. Did everything grind to a halt and Londoners start dropping like flies? Not that I recall. But there again, I am a climate denier, so maybe it did and we did and I have just suppressed that memory.

9 comments:

Bayard said...

I think the sleight of hand is not where you think it is. Like a good conjurer, the Alarmists have got you looking in the wrong place. A wet bulb temperature of 35C means that the minimum temperature you can reach through the evaporation of water is 35C and the dry bulb temperature (the one recorded as "the temperature") can be way above that and still be tolerable.
The sleight of hand is juxtaposing this piece of information with the usual alarmist crap without any causal link. Sure, we may not be able to tolerate a wet bulb temperature of 35C, but the Groaniad is not actually saying that anywhere is going to reach that sort of temperature and humidity, even if "governments fail to curb global heating to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era". They are leaving you to make that erroneous connection.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, thanks, I have now looked it up.

Dinero said...

Where are the positive global warming stories. If the earth is heating, then half the locations are moving away from the previous average and half are moving towards the previous average.

Dinero said...

Bayard well spotted , but Dhahran has been 33.3 Deg C.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?ei=Z95IYOLPBMPYxgOcvrrAAQ&q=dhahran+wet+bulb+temperature+&oq=dhahran+wet+bulb+temperature+&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQghEKABMgUIIRCgATIFCCEQoAEyBQghEKABOgcIABBHELADUPTcAVj03AFghugBaABwAXgAgAGCAYgBqwKSAQMyLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6yAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwiin-Gc_qXvAhVDrHEKHRyfDhgQ4dUDCA0&uact=5

Mark Wadsworth said...

Din, good question.

Bayard said...

Din, 1. sshh! We're not supposed to be looking forward to the sort of climate that the Saxons enjoyed a thousand years ago. That's why there's all the emphasis on "extremes".
2. Jeez, that must have been unbearable even for the natives, who are presumably used to that temperature and humidity. No doubt they were thanking God for air-conditioning.

OTOH "Theoretically no human can tolerate a wet bulb temperature of above 35C" is clearly wrong as lots of Scandanavians willingly subject themselves to wet bulb temperatures far higher than that in their saunas.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, another good counter example.

Lola said...

The usual suspect. " ..a recent report says...". If there are lots of subsidies for something you generally get more of that something. In the case of 'global warming' there are lots and lots of subsidies. So 'experts' are incentivised to write reports that garner more of them subsidies.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, it's not just "subsidies". These people at uni's have steady jobs provided they toe the line. If they don't, they get shuffled off. And if they do a report with a horror scenario, they know they'll get their names in the papers.