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Heat is less likely to kill you directly if you aren't forced to do physical work without any protection. However, tens of thousands of square kilometers of agricultural land is turned to desert in Central Europe with every single degree the yearly average temperature rises. Droughts are decimating crops made for prices skyrocket even before the war in Ukraine. That has some harder to attribute but none of the less serious killer potential.

On your other thoughts: I live in a well insulated home (30 cm brick wall with 18 cm graphite insulation). With a 30 celsius difference in internal and external temperature and no heating, my living room drops about 1,5 - 2 Celsius a day. Starting from 21, that gives a week before situation starts to become serrious during a complete blackout.

I mean it works both ways, e.g. thousands of sq km of Russia and Canada become would likely become fertile agricultural land.

Not really. Russian and Canadian land will become warmer but does it have good topsoil?

Heat has a well-defined kills-you-automatically limit of ~35 celsius wet bulb temperature. There isn’t a similar limit for cold.

That temperature drop sounds very unlikely. If you live in a well insulated home then you must have ventilation too, and that alone should replace the air inside multiple times each day.

I have measured this while being away for a week during winter.

While there is ventilation in the building, it's off while noone is at home.

Although the scenario in question was for a complete blackout where the ventillation would be off as anyway, your are right that people inside would need to open windows every now and then which would increase heat loss.

Interesting, can you explain more about this type of insulation?

It's just polystyrene. The graphite is a marketing term that doesn't have much to do with the material properties.

> "heat deaths" are limited to geriatrics in the "first world."

There are multiple parts of the world approaching the point of "so hot post-climate-change that you can't survive without air conditioning" at this point, it's not a first world problem.

See the map in https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-ha... to get a sense of how it's an increasingly global problem.

As a result eventually power loss will be able to kill you in the summer, too, depending on where you live.

This claim has been made, but it turned out not to be true (so far). I.e. everyone without AC did not die when the wet bulb temperature exceeded the apparent limit: https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/the-mysteriously-low-death...

Maybe? I am talking about today. The only number of heat deaths I see on this site is average in the US and its like 100-something, likely more related to the aging of the population than anything else.

To be honest I skimmed this article a few times rather that read it but I don't see anything that points to heat being anything close to the magnitude killer that cold is today. (although apparently in the US heat is a bigger deal probably because we are well equipped to handle both and don't have old people taking walks in freezing weather but they venture out in the summer)

> We've moved on from "global warming" to "climate change" language

Presumably because during winter certain people would point at a freak snowstorm and say "so much for global warming!" to try to minimise it (tbh they still do). Temperature rising has a few more side-effects than just your winter being milder by 1-2C, I think using a different term is entirely appropriate

No, because they are both accurate descriptions, but "global warming" is talking about the average temp. Even as the average goes up, the standard deviation could change too, meaning that even with higher average temp, there can be bigger and colder winter storms, which are balanced out by even higher temps the rest of the time.

There were studies 10-20 years ago predicting that global warming will bring with it completely unpredictable weather and harsher extremes in both directions.

Do any governments or institutions have a live(ish) updating model of "what would happen" if trends continue? People reference studies all the time but what's the currently accepted model/outcome in the scientific community?

I remember hearing that melting of the ice caps will stop current flows in the ocean and bring about an ice age. Is that actually a thing or just fake news?

One of the things is a weakening jet stream which has caused all the recent havoc on getting cold polar air come inland.

This is why climate change vs global warming. We’re in for a hell of winters in the US as the jet stream weakens.

It's difficult, like the difference between knowing a car is going crash and being able to estimate how it will look afterward. You can (to some extent) access these models and try them out yourself: https://juliahub.com/ui/Packages/ClimateModels/dFyeI/0.2.15

Is a real concern. Half of Europe is "kissed" by tropical seawater running from the Gulf of Mexico towards Russia. This hot water creates a warmer than expected climate in the coastal areas. Portugal, UK, Denmark, Norway... all is warmer that it should be. If this current stops flowing or is weakened things will suck real fast.

Wait, why "No"? We're saying the same thing in different way.

you:

> meaning that even with higher average temp, there can be bigger and colder winter storms

me:

> Temperature rising has a few more side-effects than just your winter being milder by 1-2C

Another thing we can spell out is that the rising average temperature is an average over the whole year, over the whole planet. I.e any particular location or country could have a sinking average temperature.

The same thing happens on the flip side. I have a coworker who genuinely believes every big hurricane is caused by global warming and that if it wasn’t for global warming it would snow more.

Well that just goes to show that it's possible to be either naive and broadly in agreement with scientific consensus or naive and in agreement with some loud non-scientists who live in the TV and give you the news :)

I guess the harm in the former is that they'll be held up in bad-faith in a similar manner to the "so much for climate change" argument.

The whole world being a couple degrees hotter is not guaranteed to be equally distributed. The reason why Latvia, and most of "Northern" Europe is livable instead of a frozen wasteland is due to climate mechanisms that we're not entirely sure how sensitive they are to climate change

It might get a bit warmer, it might get a lot hotter or it might even get a whole lot colder

Climate change is a better term because the change itself is unpredictable and likely damaging in the short term

I don't disagree with your logic but your conclusion that one term is better than the other. The globe is warming, and individual climates are changing as a result. One is not a better term then the other, people are just using the wrong terms to suit their agendas.

In an ideal world I'd agree, but since one term is dramatically easier to misrepresent I still think the equivalent but more understandable term is better

> there are a lot of places in the world that would be grateful for a few degree temperature rise

That's not how global warming works. It's not a "everywhere will go up 1 degree". It causes more extremes. Hot places can get hotter, cold places colder, but overall, the average goes up.

The most intuitive way I've heard it explained is that of a long-tailed bell-curve. The mean temperature may only move a few degrees but it causes a more dramatic relative increase in the amount of area under the extreme values.

I'm perplexed how folks using gas or wood apparently have less than a week or two worth of heating stored. Back when I lived in small village we always had at least month+ (not too uncommon to buy the supply for whole winter too) worth of coal/wood there.

Wood is usually cheaper if you buy it green and season it yourself, but it’s a situation where it’s expensive to be poor so maybe they buy it dried or as needed through winter.

You can burn green wood, it’ll just be harder to start/less efficient. If you have no choice…

Wood pellets are usually cheaper in summer (and often not much more expensive than firewood once you account for the higher efficiences of pellet stoves).

Minimizing the fact that real humans die from overheating tarnishes an otherwise interesting comment.

We don't need that every comment is written with an universal viewpoint and covering all the bases. It's a conversation here, not an encyclopedia.

I am not minimizing but comparing two sources of danger.

And that the advent of climate control (Air Conditioning) have significantly minimized heat deaths and allowed humans to live in climates that would have historically been impossible.

Well, unless you're poor, fuck you then

In addition to the above, learn how to start a fire in your fireplace. I had used up my last (easy start) duraflame log a few days ago. "No problem," I thought to myself, "I have this pile of firewood here to use." Fortunately I wasn't under a time crunch to get it started, because I failed on a few attempts, had to forage for some kindling, etc.

This stuff is amazing: https://www.fatwood.com/

Two little sticks of that, and you can mostly skip the super-thin kindling in favor of sticks.

Old newspaper used to work well for kindling. But fewer people get their newspapers delivered in print. Used paper grocery bags could work.

Also proper organization of the wood, I have a wood stove (had one growing up as well) and learning how to build a little pyramid or log cabin like structure around something flammable helps a lot to circulate air allowing the fire to spread to larger pieces of wood. EDIT: old newspaper is good, I often use "junk mail" as long as it doesn't contain any plastic, where I am stores will still send out some paper flyers.

Don't discount using dryer lint and left over cooking grease as a starter. I have a woodstove at the house, and I use both to get it going. Left over bacon grease on a few paper towels with dryer lint around/on top of it, and a few smaller pieces of soft wood like pine. Larger/heaver wood on top and behind it like oak. Make sure to also pre-heat the exhaust vent pipe, get a draft of air going.

Hadn't thought of dryer lint, with three kids I have that in abundance!

> Make sure to also pre-heat the exhaust vent pipe, get a draft of air going.

How does one do that?

After stocking the woodstove and building the base, I get a wad of newspaper and put dryer lint in it. Then put the wad on top of the log pile right under the flue/exhaust pipe and light it. Then immediately light the rest of my kindling to get the fire going.

If you can start with a hot fire and sufficient kindling, you don't always need to do it as a separate step, but otherwise you can burn crumpled newspaper, use a hairdryer or heat gun, or sometimes even a large candle. If the room temp is higher than the outside, sometimes just a fan is enough.

Is the fireplace ready to use? Is it clear of obstructions (e.g., birds, bats and insect nests)? Have you cleared out any "creosote" (deposition from incomplete past combustion) which can make the chimney burn like a jet engine (very exciting)?

Actually started a fire in the chimney and keeping it burning safely for several days can be enlightening (i hesitate to say "fun", except for the children). Try it with someone knowledgeable assisting. Keep fire extinguishers (emphasis on the plural) handy.

Moreover, the way fireplaces work is that the fire heats up some kind of heavy construction (cast iron, brick, etc) and that then radiates heat. Not every fireplace is built that way - some of them are decorative and will actually make you colder.

Quite a few people found out in not a nice way last time Texas has winter storm.

Yeah if you want to rely on it as heat source you should probably get something modern that doesn't waste exhaust heat and doesn't suck the air out of the room getting more cold air in. Not just "a hole in a roof above a fire".

I am the original poster. As I said in my post, the fireplace is mainly decorative and we are NOT relying on it for heat. However it is our plan B/C if shit hits the fan, in which case huddling the family in front of the radiant fire is a much preferable alternative to dying of cold, efficiency aside.

Well, wet heat (35+ degrees Celsius and 90+ humidity) can potentially kill you as well, as you might not be able to keep your body temperature within safe range by sweating.

Very few places use electricity for heat. It’s super inefficient unless you use a heat pump, and residential heat pumps typically don’t work too far below freezing.

Most furnaces require electricity to run even if the heat isn’t generated by electricity.

Exactly

Very few? Maybe for single family homes, but electric heat is very common in apartments - Every apartment I've ever lived in had electric baseboard heaters.

Apparently it's #2 is the US with 37% of homes.

https://www.climatecentral.org/news/your-heating-fuel-depend...

Now that I live in a single family house I use oil to heat the house - but the boiler requires electricity.

37% makes sense. When you live in a moderate climate and minimally need heating, low capex and high opex makes sense.

Too bad so many air conditioners don’t have reversing valves. One day I want to install a window-shaker “the wrong way” and see how well it works as a heater.

As an alternative, one could put water containers in their freezer and throw the ice outside as it freezes as a rudimentary sneakernet liquid<-> solid phase change heat pump.

If you put a woodstove insert into the fireplace, you will get a lot more heat radiated into the house.

I'm not a fan of either of those terms. "Climate instability" seems a better way to depict what's going on. "Climate abnormalities", "climate volatility", etc.

Net zero will make this more common, sadly, either through energy insecurity or people being unable to afford to heat their homes.

Energy will be far cheaper when we switch to a fossil fuel free grid, because the newer technologies are cheaper, and unlike fossil fuels they are on a decreasing cost tech curve. So the sooner we build out the tech, the sooner prices fall.

During the winter, and in storms like this, solar and wind is almost nil. Upstate NY gets very cold. And they are mandating people transition away from oil or gas into using heat pumps. Heat pumps are next to worthless in subzero weather. Oh, and they are also trying to phase out nuclear.

I think the ultimate combo will be air source heat pumps and pellet stoves.

Pellet stoves should keep the insurance companies happy. Semi-renewable fuel. Semi-automated operation with minimal fire risk.

Not much more expensive than nat gas, much cheaper than oil and propane, and most importantly: no nat gas network/connection/account/delivery charge.

How are pellets semi-renewable? Pellets are still burned up. Are the ashes re-used?

Pellets grow on^W^W are trees.

Wood-pellet fuel is largely a by-product of existing forestry activity.

<https://www.canr.msu.edu/wood_energy/bulk_pellets>

In the sense that trees are a resource which regrows after harvesting, unlike mined fossil fuels,[1] wood pellets are renewable.

There's reasonable concern that at quantities meaningful for replacing existing fuels, fuel-wood, including wood pellets, would not be renewable, though at what quantity that concern manifests I'm not sure.

Reasonably small-scale local burning of wood on an occasional basis can be sustainable. There are significant issues with air quality especially in traditional open-hearth fireplaces. The best heating stoves are enclosed as with cast-iron stoves, masonry heaters / masonry stoves, and the like. The actual firebox is often not directly visible, air intake is directly from the outside (so that warm air isn't sucked out of the structure), and heat is radiated through thermal mass and channeling. These stoves also burn more efficiently (high temperatures and optimised airflow) greatly reducing pollution concerns with particulates.

See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater>

________________________________

Notes:

1. Note that the "fossil" in "fossil fuels" doesn't refer to petrified bone, but to things which have been dug up. "Fossil fuel" is fuel dug from the ground, as "fossil bones" are bones dug from the ground. The meanings of "turned to stone" (e.g., fossilised), or "old" (he's a fossil) are much more recently acquired meanings. <https://www.etymonline.com/word/fossil>

Of course you re-use the ashes. Great source of potassium for the garden. The modern day fertilizer potassium-source isn’t called “potash” for nothing.

Improves traction on ice, and could melt snow if it’s close enough to freezing.

Could also make soap with it if you wanted to get really creative. Or bricks or mortar (or a concrete supplement).

Pellets come from atmospheric CO2.

The end state is great. It's people dying during the transition that worries me.

Why would anybody die during the transition? Especially if we do the transition as quickly as possible, we will be adding new resources to the grid while existing fossil fuel resources are still there.

In the US the grid problems are generally from having inadequate grid resources, and adding more will only help.

Have you not seen energy prices lately? I feel like when we discuss energy transition we get into a no-true Scotsman argument.

Is this true? It contradicts everything I know about energy. Can you post some evidence?

Here's a paper that is the best single source of quantification of learning curves that I know of:

https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2021-01-empiricall...

With a detailed podcast episode here:

https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-159-the-cost-of-d...

But any single paper in the literature shouldn't be trusted on its own. So I would encourage anybody who is interested to look for themselves at cost curves over time for solar wind and storage, and notice how they all follow Wright's law very well. And then look at the ever-increasing cost of fossil fuel extraction, as we need ever more sophisticated techniques to continue matching supply to demand as the easier sources are extracted.

Wind solar and storage behave like proper technologies. Fracking did to some extent, but it is technology for making something that was impossible into the possible; and there's finite amounts of frackable resources. Oil and natural gas have price floors set by these fracking costs, which have not dropped precipitously in the past 10 years.

We have not yet reached the inflection points on wind water and solar where the logistic curve switches to the linear phase. So we likely have decades of similar cost reductions for these technologies, almost certainly. If you look at where that leaves us for an energy future, it's unbelievably rosy. That is, as long as we invest in the tech.

The technologies you mention are all intermittent, though.

Storage is not intermittent, and it's on there.

Distributed solar with storage is baseload technology.

I can't imagine what people in upstate NY are going to do in temperatures like this with only a heat pump, since they are trying to transition everyone off gas or oil. A heat pump is next to worthless in sub zero temps. Many will use wood.

Where I live in rural England, when the new gas prices were announced in July that chap that sells one tone bags of logs for wood burners had his busiest day ever. Log burners are lot less clean than gas.