this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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Lots of places in the US don't even get to a comfortable temperature at night. Right now I'm in Pennsylvania which is pretty far north and the lowest it's going to get tonight is 80F with 80% humidity. It was 100F today with the same humidity. I actually got sick at work from it.
Honestly, for me a reason why humans shouldn't live in such places. For the Europeans here (that have not much clue of weird American units):
80 F = 26.667 C
100 F = 38 C
26? It's pretty warm, but not too hot.
Over night, with 80% humidity? Are you sure? I'd be close to hospital with that temperature without some kind of AC, or at the very least ventilation... (I'm sensitive to heat). And sleeping with that temperature even with ventilation is going to be very uncomfortable and not relaxing...
Also we're talking about lows, so this is likely not the temperature inside when there's no AC, more like 30+C
https://meteoinfo.ru/pogoda/russia/moscow-area/moscow
80%, 20°C at 10.07 01:00
Then you certanly need ventilation or AC. I just have window open.
The temperature is not a big problem imo. The humidity though.
Temperature is absolutely a problem. Without getting too deeply technical, a heat index above 99F/37C is dangerous even for healthy adults. Las Vegas this week has seen temperatures up to 120F. The forecast today is for a temperature high of 118F/48C (low of 90F/32C overnight), with a relative humidity of 8%. That works out to be a heat index of 111F/44C.
Where I am, today's high will be 82F, but humidity is sitting at 90%, which is a heat index of 92F.
You can also look at wet bulb temperatures; at a certain point, your body can't cool fast enough through evaporative cooling, and you'll die from heat.
I lived through dry summers around 40°C without ACs without a problem my whole 40+ years of life. But 30°C with a high humidity is a different thing. Much comes down to being accustomed to things though naturally. I have friends who grew up in southern China who get problems when the heat is dry.
But people live in areas that get 35+°C every year for several month since the beginning of humanity itself.
So you're trying to say most of North America is uninhabitable? I'm in North Carolina, the temperature and relative humidity were in the 90's yesterday. It's July.
I mean it's thanks to modern technology not uninhabitable, but we're "wasting" a lot of energy to make it habitable, and this is getting worse in the future, because of climate change. I couldn't imagine living somewhere where, I can't get out (of AC cooled buildings) because it's too hot.
25º during summer nights either already was or is going to become normal around gigantic areas of the world. Getting all Indians to just live anywhere else is never going to be plausible.
I didn't say it's realistic to move that much people around the globe, it did grow like that historically, but I do think, that migration because of this is becoming a sociodemographic and political problem in somewhere near the future. And is already somewhat in areas that are less wealthy and instable politically (e.g. northern Africa).
People live there for many thousand years now and most of the time without ACs. It is defintly inhabitable. We "waste" the energy to make it comfortable.
Considering the energy we "waste" to make most of Europe inhabitable on the other hand... And here it really is about "inhabitable", because without heating we couldn't live in e.g. Germany.
If we only lived in areas where it would be comfortable without heating and ACs we'd have to kill of 90% of humanity.
True, there's a lot of heating necessary to make life comfortable in Europe (but also in USA btw. probably even more, because I'd say the standards for insulation are better in Europe, and temperatures are more extreme more in the center of the continent).
But it's absolutely possible to live without (most of) the heating, by:
Though as you correctly notice, the combination of high temperature and humidity is what potentially creates a dangerous climate for life, even with things such as cooling wests in "low" high temperatures (within 30-40C), because evaporation chill stops working, so there are times and places, and these times and places will get more frequent where humans can't survive outside (without some serious technological counter-measures) while with cold temperatures you can always wear (somewhat specialized) clothing.
Evaporation chill does work even with quite high temperatures, but at some point (and I do think there are places that reach that point), the quite effective human cooling system is not able to catch up anymore (I think somewhere around 50+C IIRC).
I would still insist that heating is the only way to make much of Europe permanently inhabitable. Yes, houses get more efficient and the energy necessary gets less (same is true for cooling a house though). Still, we had a week of permanent -10°C 1,5a ago. Without heating we'd probably have to count the deaths in the millions for that week alone.
Yeah, certainly it would increase the risk of deaths, humans aren't made for these extremes. (Btw. I think you mean "habitable" instead of "inhabitable").
But getting above some temperatures on average really makes these places deadly. Interesting article dealing with this topic, and more approachable article (which is based on that study)
Damn, I didn't expect it to be that bad outside of the southern states.
I'm currently getting ~30°C peak but about 15°C at night. We only have a few nights every year that reach 20°C. Austria.