Will Texas become too hot for humans? | Hacker News Reader

Will Texas become too hot for humans?

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45 pointsrntn115 comments

I grew up in Texas and I could handle the heat just fine, but why deal with that crap if you don't have to? You can get used to 115º and dry in Dallas, but why would you want to? If you're in Houston and it's 105º and 105% humidity outside, you can just stay indoors all the time or walked around completely soaked through in sweat, but why?

I have the same ridiculous conversations over and over with family and friends who still live there. "It's just so miserable here, I don't want to go outside while the sun is up. But ... " "... freedom ... " (friends) or "... I've never lived anywhere else and I don't travel and can't imagine living anywhere else ..." (family).

I read this incredible article by some idiot who moved from San Francisco to Austin and wrote a list of ten LIES he was told. Four of ten were "it is hot here and no one told me that". One was "electricity is actually MORE expensive in Texas". Electricity in Austin was 1/4 the price of what I currently pay in San Francisco per/kwh, but this idiot moved from a 1500sqft house without AC in a moderately cold climate to a 5000sqft house with AC in an extra-hot climate and was surprised that his utility bill increased. Texas is filled with people like that. I don't miss Texas at all.

The issue is the web-bulb temperature which humans cannot really adapt to. A young, healthy adult won't be able to survive a sustained wet-bulb temperature of 35C (assuming they have access to unlimited water, air fans and shade). The wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to the temperature that humans can reduce their body temperature to by sweating.

Well, how does people survive in jungles?

> Well, how does people survive in jungles?

At wet-bulb temperatures lower than 35C.

Air fans change the game, evaporative cooling can bring the experienced temperature far below the still air wet bulb.

Air movement only helps when the humidity is less than 100%. With a wet bulb temperature of 35C, fans won't help you survive - you'd need some other way of reducing your body temperature e.g. air conditioning.

Well, there is a limit to what temperatures you can get used to and survive. Somewhere above 130f/50c your body cannot cool you down effectively anymore, and you literally need an AC to stay alive. It's not an issue of getting used to it, though old folks will obviously be more vulnerable. And don't take electricity for granted, heat stresses the grid and power plants need cooling. So there are some physical limits, including limits of the human body, it's not just an issue of getting used to it.

People can adapt to heat, but the real danger is that Texas gets too stupid for humans to survive.

"Texas' climate, never forgiving, has gotten significantly worse as the average temperature rose...

"Several of the large agribusiness corporations bought large tracts of Texas wasteland at inexpensive prices and have, at great expense, developed and installed underground irrigation systems..."

--Cyberpunk 2020: Home of the Brave (1992)

Texas is like a small country with a climate gradient. Houston and east texas are hot and muggy like the South, and it progressively turns hotter but drier the farther west you go (with some plains wierdness up in the panhandle).

Hence the biggest thing about this heatwave, from my perspective, is not that its over 100F. Its always over 100F in the summer in DFW. But its very humid and over 100F in DFW, for a long stretch. That humidity is not normal here, and its not sustainable.

Weather-wise, what's weird about the Panhandle?

I have never lived there, but from what I have seen its even windier than DFW, and they get even more rapidly vacillating extremes than we do, with more severe thunderstorms, sudden cold snaps and more frequent hail.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Norther_(weather)

AFAIK Austin, Houston, El Paso and such don't get such rapid temperature changes, especially in the fall.

Ah. They hooked up the thermostat to /dev/random.

Texas, like California, has extensive but empty territory. The question is whether the populated areas of Texas have survivable weather. In the last week, wet bulb temperatures over 90º have persisted from Tallahassee to San Antonio.

Lifelong San Antonio resident here - we actually hit an all time high heat index of 115 this year only to exceed it by another 2 degrees a couple days later. I don't know why people are so anxious to move here (everywhere surrounding Austin has pretty much exploded), but I'm hoping that the real estate prices can hold up until I retire and then I'm moving somewhere north.

Real estate agents never advertise bad weather. I learnt this lesson on the Florida coast.

I grew up in Austin, and I used to make fun of it when I was in high school (post-dell, but pre-boom). I would just joke about how, in the summer, people here would move between air-conditioned facility in air-conditioned pods, like the entire place becomes some sort of approximation of reality like disneyland or something.

I left Texas for college, and tried to come back briefly a couple times, but after the city rejected any-and-all attempt to create a non-automotive transit system, and built an express lane on the highway as a solution to traffic, I finally quit for the Bay Area because of the weather and urbanism.

I still think central Texas is a fine place to live if you don't sunburn much and can stand the summers. The springs that flow out of the aquifer are pretty magical, and the land between San Antonio and Austin really makes me nostalgic.

> Texas is like a small country

As an aside, Texas not very small, as a country (median of the worlds 194 countries is 768k km^2, Texas is 696km^2.)

If we're being pedantic, the median country can be small as well. Country size isn't a normal distribution. One might consider most of them small.

It surprised me how desertic Texas is

"Texas" isn't a person. There are lots of individuals in Texas who are as liberal and eco-minded as any coastal California hippie. And they're suffering right along with the rednecks. And before you say "just move," life situations and budgets don't always allow for that.

So, yes, maybe Gov. Abbott deserves to suffer, and maybe some oil execs do too, but there's plenty of righteous and undeserving people in Texas who never benefited from the fossil fuel industry, but are having to bear the consequences anyway.

Nothing can be done for the people who choose to stay (people who want to move north but can’t afford to can be provided assistance, both direct cash and logistical). The climate change trajectory is already locked in; arguing with a freight train bearing down on you seems unproductive.

We’re just arguing over a quantity of suffering, death, and fiat that is going to be incurred over a window of time at this point.

(Have older extended family in Victoria, Texas that refuses to move; they’re one summer AC failure away from death)

I wonder if the word "redneck" will ever be considered a slur.

If it's meant to mean a person of right leaning ideologies I guess that's fine, but most of the time it means a poor person of low education who happens to be from flyover country.

It wouldnt be appropriate to have a word for that same person if they were from the east or west coast regardless of race.

> If it's meant to mean a person of right leaning ideologies I guess that's fine, but most of the time it means a poor person of low education who happens to be from flyover country.

It is quite amazing how you in a single sentence manage to say it is fine to slur people with 'right-leaning ideologies' while also using the coastal term 'flyover country' for those areas which the coastal elites assume to be good for nothing more than growing the food they eat but nothing else and certainly not worth visiting - your coastal elite colours are shining through but in contrast to Cindy Lauper's song they are not beautiful.

Believe it or not but there is a lot to be learned and gained from those 'right-leaning ideologies', especially for those coastal elites who use terms like 'flyover country'. Society works best when conservatives (or 'right-wing ideologies') and progressives (or 'left-wing ideologies') keep each other in check to avoid excessive Californication or dogmatic stagnation.

I think we went off course a little, English is not my first language and I don't live in the US. I thought flyover country was a non offensive way of saying everything between the coasts. I apologize if I got that wrong.

Also I'm personally not left or right,I see a lot of value in some conservative ideas. What I meant is if the word redneck referred to a conservative I don't find it offensive precisely because there's nothing wrong about being a conservative, whereas being poor or not having had access to (quality?) education is clearly a hardship that we should not mock.

Redneck is already considered a slur by many who use it. But happily the people who it refers to don’t tend to give a damn what coastal elites/city slickers think of them. In fact they often rejoice in the rejection.

I know very smart, fly-over state born and raised, right leaning individuals, I don't know anyone that calls them rednecks. It's meant to mean uneducated, violent, rapey, racist, fake religious, fake patriot, asshole. The aforementioned people even use the "slur" themselves. Calling a duck a duck shouldn't be a source of controversy.

> there's plenty of righteous and undeserving people in Texas who never benefited from the fossil fuel industry, but are having to bear the consequences anyway

That's also going to apply to a lot of people around the world when faced with changing weather patterns and rising sea levels.

You can't pump billions of tons of carbon out of the ground each year and burn it in the atmosphere without any effect.

Texas has been one of the first to deny this so it is only fitting that they be one of the first to bear the brunt of it's effects.

The main energy export of Texas is natural gas, which is responsible for a significant portion of the decrease in greenhouse emissions in the US[1]. Furthermore, Texas has led the nation for 17 years in production of wind energy, and accounts for 25% of US production[2].

If you are going to act joyful for the suffering of others, you should at minimum get your justifications correct.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296 [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=TX

My favorite counter anecdote is all the Texas refineries working until the last minute then dumping tons of pollution in a haphazard shutdown before a hurricane hit. [1] They could've shutdown slowly, but muh profits were at stake. Texas was built on oil, it's only fitting it ends because of it.

1 - https://grist.org/project/accountability/excess-emissions-te...

I'd just keep in mind that the goal isn't to reduce human additions to the carbon cycle, it's to eliminate them entirely. Building nat gas power plants is actually a bad thing, even though they emit less CO2 than coal plants, because their expected service life is well beyond the point at which we need to be at zero.

It’s okay if they can burn hydrogen.

Natural gas still has greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions, even if less than coal, it is however good for air quality at least.

The point above about Texas is probably that their current leaders make claims that reducing greenhouse gases won’t save us from global warming (at this point, no one really denies that global warming and climate change is happening).

Maybe you need to read more than just the headlines?

    > Texas consumes more petroleum than any other state. In 2020, the state ranked third by volume in per capita petroleum use, after Louisiana and Alaska.

    > Texas produces more crude oil than any other state and accounted for more than two-fifths (42%) of the nation's production from both onshore and offshore areas in 2022.23 Texas has led all states in crude oil production in every year but one, since at least 1970.24 The state also accounts for more than two-fifths of the nation's crude oil proved reserves and has more than one-fourth of the nation's 100 largest oil fields as measured by reserves.

    > ...because hydraulically fractured horizontal wells drilled in both the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford shale led to increased crude oil production, a surge in production began around 2010 after more than 25 years of gradual decline.29,30 In 2017, Texas oil production exceeded the state's 1972 peak for the first time.

From your source.

> Texas consumes more petroleum than any other state. In 2020, the state ranked third by volume in per capita petroleum use, after Louisiana and Alaska.

That is the cost of wind. The amount of petroleum needed to make a wind farm is insanely larger, mostly caused by all the miles and miles of wires they need to be insulated.

But go on…

From the same EIA article:

    > Texas is the nation's largest consumer of HGLs, using more than all other states combined. Texas is also the largest consumer of distillate fuel oil, including diesel fuel for highway use, and residual fuel oil.50,51,52 The transportation sector accounts for almost all the rest of the petroleum consumed in the state. The commercial and residential sectors together account for about 1% of petroleum use

Go on...

I don't have any intrinsic issue with the energy export comment, just curious on the "how?" of it since Texas is a little over 40% of U.S. crude oil production.

Is it just that the spread of production minus consumption of oil is smaller that that of natural gas?

They're just exporting natural gas on top of all the crude they can find. Not the revolutionary pivot one would hope for. On top, natural gas extraction is associated with runaway methane emissions, which are among the most potent climate gas. Which we have known for a while, but the industry failed to address this.[^1][^2] It's all cheap talk.

[^1]: https://sci-hub.se/http://www.nature.com/articles/493012a

[^2]: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scien...

By denying global warming and the associated role of fossil fuels, the state government of Texas are the ones acting joyful for what is quickly becoming their own suffering --- as well as others. Without some drastic action, Texas will be almost un-inhabitable in a few decades.

And as pointed out by others, your justifications are the ones lacking.

Says the guy who can eat, dress himself, stay warm in the winter, travel, enjoy the first world because of the stuff Texas pumps out of the ground.

> Texas has been one of the first to deny this so it is only fitting that they be one of the first to bear the brunt of it's effects.

I hope you’re living a net zero carbon emissions lifestyle in a country with a net zero carbon emissions balance, otherwise, I wish you the very same fate.

> Yet you participate in society! Curious!

This has nothing to do with karmic justice.

There’s oil and gas in Texas because it used to be a warm shallow sea near the equator where trillions of organisms lived and died and found perfect conditions to be cooked into oil over millions of years.

Texas is still somewhat near the equator, the area that is still warm. And thus will get hotter first.

Unless you don’t burn fossil fuels yourself, you do not occupy any sort of moral high ground. Unless you were particularly prescient and entirely saintly, if you owned a piece of land that had a bunch of oil, chances are almost 100% that you would have sold it to the oil companies too.

At what point the heat becomes unbearable is personal, but a study published in 2010 estimated that a "wet-bulb" temperature of 95F (35C) at 100% humidity, or 115F at 50% humidity is probably as hot as most humans can maintain a healthy core body temperature by sweating. Above that "critical environmental limit" our body temperature rises continuously and the risk of heat-related illnesses such as heat stroke increases.

A 2022 study experimentally found the limit to be 30.5C ± 1C at 100% humidity, and lower in dry environments.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

That 35C temperature is the upper limit, assuming that you're in the shade and have unlimited water and air fans to assist you. In reality, wet-bulb temperatures have caused fatalities as low as 28C

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7209987/

> ... 95F (35C) at 100% humidity

Last summer in Europe there's been 38C for weeks in several places/countries. I was on the Atlantic side (for once), not even much south, and had 38C. We were cycling daily (without electric assistance) to the beach, under the sun, and had zero AC at home. It was hot but nobody there died. I used my car once while the rest of the group was cycling because I wanted my car's AC and music but that's it. It was very hard to enter a water at 17C (Atlantic side, huge tides, very cold water there) while the temperature was 38C outside but besides that meh.

Is "100% humidity" a value that even make sense? Spain regularly gets 40C+. I lived in Spain about five months a year for five years straight. 35C is really common there.

So I don't get it: "You can die at 28C with 100% humidity". OK, I don't dispute that.

But where do you get 100% humidity?

For example Morocco / Marrakesh is 41C today. It's pretty normal there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

> Is "100% humidity" a value that even make sense?

According to the National Weather Service, "If the relative humidity is 100 percent (i.e., dewpoint temperature and actual air temperature are the same), this does NOT necessarily mean that precipitation will occur. It simply means that the maximum amount of moisture is in the air at the particular temperature the air is at."

https://www.weather.gov/lmk/humidity#:~:text=If%20the%20rela....

You get 100% humidity basically any time you're near a large body of water that has been hot and then the air cooled. So usually on hot days like that along the coast, as the sun goes down you'll notice lots of things just getting wet, that's due to the 100% humidity.

It’s always interesting reading stats like these as an Australian. Our most recent heatwave was something like a maximum of 100F during the day and a minimum of 85F during the night at 60-80% humidity. So there was this period of probably >24 hours that was at or above the “critical environmental limit”. It’s too hard to find good stats on how many deaths this caused (you could simply count the number of the deaths on the day to get an upper bound, but how many of those deaths will be “people who would have died this month because of their fragile health and the heat wave merely “gathered” those deaths on that day? Ideally you want something like QALY impact instead), but I believe I recall studies indicating heatwaves like these increase mortality by 5% (so from 40 per 100,000 to 42 per 100,000).

Will Earth become too hot for humans?

It doesn’t need to be too hot every single hour of every single day, but a single event for which you are unprepared could turn averages meaningless.

Some areas most likely will. Parts of India for example. That’s IMO the biggest threat of climate change: hundreds of millions of refugees will cause wars.

Famine is more likely as changing weather patterns can devastate crops if they don't get rain at the appropriate times.

Food is easier to transport than people and a warmer planet might be able to produce more food.

"Might" is doing some lifting there. If long term weather patterns settle down, then that might be true, but in the short term, there's going to be a lot of crops that are dependant on having certain weather within certain times. Maybe there'll be a major shift to only growing irrigated crops, but it's pricey to shift water around to where it's needed.

I think there's going to be more food supply issues than can be solved with simply transporting food (especially to poorer regions).

It’s past time to be thinking about caves or basically burying our cities after they are built. Lots of fiber optics. Have everything well underground and protected from the elements, and come to the surface when it’s nice out. Which is often at night. Start scheduling society based on weather not clock.

Caves of Steel

More like Silo. Or maybe Tumithak of the corridors.

We're already thriving in many areas with lethally high and low temperatures. The big difference is going from cold being a threat to heat being one. We instinctively know that going out when it's freezing, unprepared, is a pretty bad idea, but the pairing of heat+humidity doesn't tend to give as obvious of signs as 'my spit freezes before it hits the ground.' If anything it'd be a mixture of a mindset change, and also probably a gradual shifting of where the ultra-premium places to live on the planet are, as well as what plants grow most optimally where, and so on.

I'm somewhat confused by wet-bulb calculations. Here [1] is a calculator for converting temperature+humidity to approximate wet bulb temps. Today's weather forecast in Houston is a high of 38 with a humidity of 85%. [2] That's an approximate wet-bulb temp of 35.66?

This article, among a slew of others, are now claiming that's supposed to be lethal? I mean it's uncomfortable, but you're not going to die in that weather in 6 hours. Depending on the season that's a perfectly normal day in many parts of South Asia, and that's been the case for decades.

So, what gives? My first assumption is that the calculator was broken, but another one [3] gave an identical figure.

---

[1] - https://www.calctool.org/atmospheric-thermodynamics/wet-bulb

[2] - https://openweathermap.org/city/4699066

[3] - https://physicscalc.com/physics/wet-bulb-calculator/

Good question! Commenting to read follow up answers.

While fiction, Termination Shock (https://www.nealstephenson.com/termination-shock.html) is a fun look at what Texas may be like in the near-ish future

Texas climate refugees seeking safety elsewhere would be schadenfreudic in more ways than one.

Probably, someone should start making earthsuits, like spacesuits but for earth.

Apparently the BBC can’t deal with Fahrenheit.

> At what point the heat becomes unbearable is personal, but a study published in 2010 estimated that a "wet-bulb" temperature of 95F (35C) at 100% humidity, or 115F at 50% humidity is probably as hot as most humans can maintain a healthy core body temperature by sweating.

> But a team of researchers from Penn State University … showed that the upper environmental limit is a lower wet-bulb temperature of 95F (31C) at 100% humidity.

That would be 87.8F.

To be fair, Fahrenheit isn't any part of SI units and it's bizarre that the U.S. continues to use it.

That's no excuse to get a unit conversion wrong.

Well, it's an excuse at least.

Many imperial units make little sense, but Celsius and Fahrenheit are both equally arbitrary scales.

Yes, but at least Celsius uses the same size degree as Kelvin (which is also arbitrary) and Celsius has simpler fixed points based on freezing and boiling water (0 and 100).

Are the states of water arbitrary?

Given that things can get colder than the freezing point of water, yes it is arbitrary.

I don’t believe that’s what arbitrary means.

That is what arbitrary means. The 0 point of Celsius is arbitrarily chosen. For instance, 0 grams means 0 mass. 0 Celsius does not mean 0 energy.

I’m not sure how we’ve gotten from the state of water being a scale of temperature to specifically why 0 on that specific scale being variable… The choice to choose the state of water, regardless of its variability, wasn’t an arbitrary choice. That’s what’s being discussed. Arbitrary would mean it was chosen on a whim, which objectively it was not.

The choice wasn't arbitrary, but the result is arbitrary. As in, the choice of 0 is not tied to the underlying physics of temperature the way 0s of other units are chosen.

Celsius is not “equally arbitrary - 0 is where water freezes and 100 it boils vs 2 random numbers I can never remember.

Fahrenheit is also only used by one country in the entire world: America.

Yea, well 0F is too damn cold for humans and 100F is too damn hot, so its a pretty good scale for humans.

knowing 0 is where water freezes and 100 where it boils sounds like a pretty dang useful scale for humans in all sorts of applications from science to cooking to safety to weather.

0f is what -15? that really doesn't mean anything meaningfully different then -5c or -20c its all cold and frozen where 0 being where water freezes and you can expect ice means something, as does water boiling at 100.

there is a reason countries who still generally use lots of imperial units have fully switched over to metric temperatures.

If you want to know if its freezing out just look at the water. Is it boiling? Again look at the water. Having the units align with human sense makes quite a bit of sense, I reiterate. Is it 50F? Well, that's quite dandy. Is it 50C? Am I dead or am I fine, couldn't tell you based on that dumb scale based on one particular molecules behavior. To be clear I'm not saying Celsius and Fahrenheit are on even footing, I'm saying Celsius is totally worthless when you already have Kelvin. Also the supposed benefit of Celsius goes out the window when you are not at Standard Pressure, woops!

from the other side: 50F? is that cold or really hot? whats 100? will 0 kill me? i have no idea the numbers are random. 50C? oh that is halfway from frozen to boiling. 5C? water is nearly freezing. 0C its frozen better watch out for ice on the road (because you do realize you can't easily see blackice on roads?) what temp in F does water even freeze at? i have no idea. boil? ditto some random numbers.

Fahrenheit gives you nothing over Celsius and makes literally no sense unless you grew up with it. it does not "align with human senses" in any real meaningful way - the numbers are random and only feel right to you as its what you are used to, just like anyone who grew up with Celsius has adjusted to those numbers, while also getting all the benefits of a logical scale.

Celsius is logical, easy to grasp, provides a number of benefits in many applications, and used by 95% of the people on this planet.

No, its not logical because we don't spend most our time doing science experiments. We do spend most of our time fighting the elements to survive. If you are confined to a hemisphere at average latitude you will see 95 percentiles between 0 and 100F (i.e. we fix the endpoints to human sensory perception thats why 50F is not some unimaginable value) and if you are outside those values then beware. That is a much more useful scale for 99.9% of humans outside of science. If you are in science/engineering and fuck up the conversion then probably you should get out of science/engineering.

I’m pretty sure fighting the elements to survive includes knowing when and how close one is to water freezing, and water boiling.

So I’ve yet to hear a good argument for why Fahrenheit is better here, it does not really “relate to humans”. Humans regularly sense, encounter, and use temperatures above 100F so that is not the “endpoint of human sensory perceptions” and in the northern areas going before 0F is common. Not to mention you fridges freezer likely goes below 0F and again you sure can feel the difference between -10c and -20c

You've already lost the point if you are talking about interaction with human instruments like freezers. The point is about percentiles of typical weather experience. If you are getting scalded by boiling water I doubt a thermometer on the centigrade would have saved ya.

you are the one making claims like "the 0F to 100F scale matches human senses" not me. I am only pointing out that on both sides of the scale it is exceeded. Now you are moving the goal post to limit it to weather? every walk on hot sand or rock thats been in the sun all day. so air temperature? where that also doesn't match the natural weather in places all over the globe.

so whats next "it matches the typical weather experience of these states in the US therefore its.. better" ? because many states will experience -F and over 100F.

gotta say i do find the mental gymnastics used to defend F pretty funny

  20C is about room temperature (22C is about where I like it, 18C at night)
  25C is pretty pleasant outside
  30C is pretty warm
  35C is hot
  40C is crazy hot
  45C is GTFO
  50C is i'm definitely dead, dunno about you

And I'm American, I've just visited enough other countries enough to get a handle on the scale.

David Goodstein in the old PBS Mechanical Universe series gave a good lecture about this.

https://youtu.be/eZdUKMDfJ_o?t=1365

> Fahrenheit is also only used by one country in the entire world: America.

Firstly, America is a continent, not a country and secondly, there are some other territories such as the Cayman Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia that also use it.

north america is a continent, not america. america is a short term/name oten used for the united states of america: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation)

and ok you are right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#Usage

its the USA, Cayman Islands, and liberia that do not use Celsius so i will rephrase: 95% of the worlds population uses Celsius not Fahrenheit.

Just because most of the world uses one arbitrary scale doesn't make that scale less arbitrary. Consider this: temperature is a measure of kinetic energy of a substances molecules. Surely, the molecules of something measured at -5C have negative kinetic energy, right? Right???

100 equal divisions between water freezing and boiling is less arbitrary then to random numbers. negative numbers in one represent being below a phase change of water vs the other it means... ?

there is a reason the entire world uses C

> is less arbitrary then

Maybe it's slightly less arbitrary, but it's still very arbitrary.

> there is a reason the entire world uses C.

Again, the fact that C is widely used doesn't mean the scale isn't arbitrary.

i never said it wasn't arbitrary, i was disputing that they were equally arbitrary and pointing out one is far more sensible and useful.

these aren't random numbers at all.

0 F is the lowest temperature a saturated mixture of water and ammonium chloride salt freezes at. Adding salts to water depresses the freezing point until you can't absorb any more salt.

100 F was an estimate of human body temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

in agreement with the parent comment, F (1724) is no more or less arbitrary than C (1742). Pick the temperature of two things and divide into 100 parts. Liking one or the other better doesn't make it more or less arbitrary.

there's a lot to recommend SI units of course, it's a very neat system and wonderful how it fits together. but C was invented 50 years before the metric system was proposed and, while convenient, is simply an arbitrary choice, albeit convenient.

> (1724) is no more or less arbitrary than C (1742). Pick the temperature of two things and divide into 100 parts.

F is basically 2 random guesses at what 0 and 100 should be.

C is the difference between water freezing and boiling / 100, at sea level.

F is more arbitrary the C.

C is less arbitrary as the 0 and 100 points are grounded in reality.

> F is basically 2 random guesses

I'll assume good intent. F is definitely not two random guesses.

Please read carefully what I posted, F is no more random thah C. It has well defined, but different choices for the two points. The saturated mixture of water and salts is the coldest one can get liquid water to go at 1 ATM which is a reasonable idea for the time period.

And why water? that's choice itself is arbitrary. Why not the triple-point of methane and the temperature of burning magnesium?

It's clearly just a typo since they got it right just above.

Dallas here.

Usually "summer" lasts May through October, with July August being the worst of it. here is the high for the next 10 days:

94, 96, 96, 97, 93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 98

10 years ago we had 3 months straight of ~110 in Austin. Downtown was a hellhole with all the concrete. But even in 110f I was fine with walking the greenbelt in the shade.

We'll have to pickup less spicy Pace and hold meetings from the pool.

(And also address climate change by scalable bio carbon capture and sequestration.)

No, but habits will change over time, similar to Spain. Less activities during the hottest hours, longer opening hours in shops, staying up later. Culture is formed around the weather for the most part. Spanish people don't do siesta because they are lazy, but simply because it's too hot to do anything between 2pm and 5pm.

Texas is significantly hotter than Spain, this is not a reasonable analogy.[^1][^2]

If Texas becomes too hot for human life, that means you can effectively only survive with air conditioning. Heat also stresses the electrical grid and makes it more difficult to operate power plants which require cooling, i.e., water. The risk of power failure increases exponentially, and those heat waves will translate into death waves. And if Texas becomes too hot for human life, it will also become too hot for most wild life, which usually does not have access to AC. And it will stress the agriculture even further, which will thin out many rural populations. Hard to say what way Texas is heading.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Spain

[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Texas

How so? Sevilla and most of Andalusia has 40C summers. Even last week was 44C, 111F during the day.

Right now in Sevilla, the relative humidity is 25%, making 101F feel like 102F.

The relative humidity in Houston is 60% right now, making 90F feel like 100F.

It’s easier to cool down by sweating and having that sweat evaporate with a lower relative humidity. Texas has more water in the air than Spain does, exacerbating the heat problem.

The wet-bulb temperature is a better indication of how deadly the temperature is as it's equivalent to the temperature that humans can obtain by losing body heat from sweating/evaporation. A wet-bulb temperature of 35C is pretty much the upper limit that humans can survive for a sustained period and 32C is considered "extreme risk".

Well if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions…

It already is for women, queer, and poc.

Betteridge's law applies, what an absurd question.

No.

Because you don't want it to be true?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

Yes. And it'll be a leopards ate my face moment when it happens. Pretty much everywhere that get's hot and humid today, will become deadly to normal life in our CC wonderland.

Move north, or south, or underground.

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