Wet Bulb 35. South Asia's New Reality.
I was discussing the heat yesterday with one of my doctors. He was born to an affluent family in Pakistan. While we were talking about the heatwave he mentioned that, in his parents' vicinity, there were two places that had reached "wet bulb 35" or 35 C. TW.
Wet bulb 35 is a death sentence. It occurs when temperatures reach or exceed 35 degrees Celsius and humidity approaches saturation. This combination of high heat and high humidity defeats the human body's natural cooling system. The body loses its essential ability to shed heat through perspiration and evaporation.
Wet bulb 35 will kill even a fit young man at rest in the shade within an hour or two. The person cooks from the inside. Organs fail. Death ensues. If you're not young and you're not fit and you're not at rest and you're not in the shade, well it really sucks to be you. If you're poor it's that much worse.
Our leaders have to choose. They can either make the climate emergency their singular priority and begin taking both mitigation and adaptation seriously or they can consign a lot of us to a very precarious and unpleasant fate.
I was reading about that too, and I can't imagine what to do at this point. We can obliterate fossil fuels today, but we'll still have decades of rising temperatures. Can we move people out of hot and humid zones? Do we have the capacity for that, particularly when our own infrastructure is buckling from the heat? Do we provide free A/C to everyone, knowing the problems with the energy demand that will cause - and, depending on where electricity comes from, could also add to GHGs, furthering the problem? I agree this is the number one problem, and have said so for ages, but, at this point, what's are the steps we should be taking? It's finally bad enough for people to act, but now I'm really afraid it's too late. I used to have hope because I could see the innovations available that could work with just some political will. I'm not as confident in anything working enough to save lives now. More people in BC are dying from heat than Covid right now. Yikes!
ReplyDeleteBecause of the lead time involved, the best options are probably foreclosed. Some argue that we need an emergency interim energy source, nuclear power generation. Even ten years ago I would have rejected the idea out of hand but that was back when we had more options and time to implement them.
DeleteThere is no painless option, not any more. We've had more than 30 years of utter nonsense and empty promises from our leaders and we went along with them spinning tales we wanted to hear.
The first thing we need to do is for Ottawa to invoke the Emergencies Act. Once government begins exercising the extraordinary powers an emergency demands there's at least some hope they'll start taking this seriously. That begins by marshalling national resources, public and private sector, and harnessing them to rapid construction of alternative energy - wind, solar, geothermal (BC especially), tidal, nuclear and hydro-electric. We even have powerful and constant ocean currents between northern Vancouver Island and the mainland that are ideal for seabed turbine generation. The University of Washington has a seabed turbine pilot project underway in the Hood Canal.
There is so much energy just going untapped. Part of that is the fossil fuel lobby, the investment sector and their too obedient political minions. The deaths we're sustaining today can be properly laid at their feet for their years of thwarting action.
Ah, yes. Wet bulb 35 - fifteen minutes in - fifteen out. Or is it thirty? Who cares - those for-publication-only paper proclamations are for the residents and steadies. No problem - the first slug to go down will do it before the blood hits 38.8. There's bound to be at least one of them who didn't drink a gallon of water with his oatmeal. Keep an eye on the tougher guys. We can't put off this kind of contemporaneous evidence of wear-and-tear to some other claim as we do with our contributions to their eventual RSIs.
ReplyDeleteOne problem is that too few of our leaders and principle decision-makers, if any of them, have worked a downturn on a reheat or a blast furnace and too few of the guys who have, ever realized that the whole world was being turned into that kind of can't-sweat shop one or two production facilities at a time.
I talked too much about tidal basin projects when I was studying energy management. The chief instructor, a PE who I think had come to teaching from the hydro sector, believed that these proposals were untenable because of the environmental damage involved. He believed there was no question that the future was nucs and eventually he told me to knock it off. Since then I see that there are other proposals for harnessing tidal power that don't involve the wholesale destruction of river systems and wetlands. The problems remain that public money has to jump through too many hoops and recognition of a real emergency would take the attention of politicians away from the distractions that have become their comfort zone. It sounds too much like work.
We ought to have held your conversation at least 20 years ago, John. Sadly, the petro-state is anything but proactive. No leader (to abuse that term) has the courage and vision to take down our massive but stranded assets.
ReplyDeleteWe are still tied to , what is the most economical and profitable method of providing energy .
ReplyDeleteThis must change.
BTW; how close to wet bulb 35 did BC come?
TB
We never approached anything resembling humidity saturation, TB. We did the heat component handsomely but were spared the humidity. We clocked 49 degrees Celsius but, as we're so fond of reminding ourselves, it was a dry heat.
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