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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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It's a real thing. When temperature and relative humidity get high enough at the same time, homeostasis breaks down. Sweating can no longer bring your body temperature low enough to prevent heat stroke, you brain starts to cook, your kidneys stop working, etc.

Eg, when the wet bulb temp. is above homeostasis and you have 100% relative humidity, you physically can't cool down even in the shade and you are guaranteed to die pretty quickly if you can't get inside or in a cave or something.

This is an unusual condition in the modern history of the planet and even in the BAD climate change timeline will be seasonal and local, but it has already started to happened in short bursts in eg. pakistan and the punjab region of india; where you get just extraordinarily shitty weather even in good times.

Wet bulb only guarantees mass casualties if all power fails because there’s no electricity. Energy is becoming more plentiful and may well become significantly cheaper in the coming years and decades.

True, but ehhhhhhh.

This assumes a level of robustness to the power grid that is not present, and will never be present under market conditions.

I mean, one kinda bad but not unknown or unknowable snow storm knocked out the grid for one of the richest areas in the richest country in the world.

Re. cheap energy: again, yes but. The only source of energy I know of that is dropping price is renewables, which I would not stake my life or even my extreme discomfort on.

Again, this could be solved easily with sufficient investment. I just don't believe that investment will ever come from any market driven source.

Do you believe renewables will be improved sufficiently and in time to offset the declining EROEI of oil and gas?

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