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Heat Waves! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's chucking. It's just us, but that's okay because
0:16
Speaker 1: we today are doing stuff you should know. The heat
0:20
Speaker 1: wave addition, that's the heat brows of the fact. Have
0:25
Speaker 1: you been singing that song all day? I've been trying
0:28
Speaker 1: so hard not to and it's not working. How about you?
0:32
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's Martha Invent and the Vandellas. How can
0:36
Speaker 1: you not? Yeah? The problem is is all I just
0:39
Speaker 1: it's just this constant loop of heat wave like heat wave,
0:44
Speaker 1: I know, heat wave. Just that's it over and that's
0:46
Speaker 1: the only part I know. And it's terrible. I think
0:49
Speaker 1: I know that. One of the first lines is uh
0:53
Speaker 1: whenever we oh near me. Oh, that's the same song.
0:56
Speaker 1: I think, so right, because I'm I thinking of something. No,
1:00
Speaker 1: I think it is. But every movie that ever uses
1:02
Speaker 1: it just uses that first line and then starts to
1:04
Speaker 1: fade out before they get to the heat wave card.
1:06
Speaker 1: So I never put two and two together. A great song,
1:10
Speaker 1: great song, for sure, But you don't want just heat
1:12
Speaker 1: wave on a loop in your head. I can tell you.
1:16
Speaker 1: Uh no, No, I just looked at the lyrics and
1:17
Speaker 1: I'm wrong anyway, But whenever I'm with him, Okay, but
1:21
Speaker 1: it's that's what you're talking about. It's not like a
1:23
Speaker 1: totally different song or something. Whenever I'm with him, something
1:27
Speaker 1: inside starts to burning and I'm filled with desire. Heat wave?
1:30
Speaker 1: Could it be a devil in me? Heat wave? The
1:33
Speaker 1: way love is supposed to be? He'd wave, Yes, All right,
1:40
Speaker 1: let's done. Let's never speak of that again. Sexy song.
1:43
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was that sexy. Well, sure, she
1:45
Speaker 1: talking about getting all hot for a dude, you know,
1:48
Speaker 1: I mean, that's your over. That's not what There's nothing
1:52
Speaker 1: sexy about the heat wave that we're talking about. No,
1:55
Speaker 1: deadly maybe the antithesis of sexy. Yeah, they think about
2:00
Speaker 1: it heat wave sex. And there's such a thing as
2:04
Speaker 1: cold waves, which will touch on briefly. They are very
2:07
Speaker 1: much related to heat waves are kind of its polar opposite,
2:09
Speaker 1: if you'll excuse the pun, but the you could make
2:14
Speaker 1: a case that that would be far sexier than a
2:16
Speaker 1: heat wave. Yeah. At least you're you know, warming yourself up, right,
2:21
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Uh, And boy, we we used a
2:24
Speaker 1: lot of great weather website references for this one, right, Yeah, yeah, great, great,
2:30
Speaker 1: great segue there, chuck. So, um, we got some info
2:34
Speaker 1: from from Noah j No. Actually, the thing is, I
2:40
Speaker 1: can't even be taken seriously when I'm trying to be
2:43
Speaker 1: serious and genuine like that was genuine. I'm still learning.
2:49
Speaker 1: So that was so Noah gave us a bunch of information,
2:52
Speaker 1: your nephew. Um. There's also the Center for Climate Change
2:56
Speaker 1: and Energy Solutions. Is this my cue? Yep uh, World
3:02
Speaker 1: Weather Attribution, the New York Times, the failing New York Times, NASA,
3:07
Speaker 1: ACU Weather, Yeah, and a bunch more, but those are
3:10
Speaker 1: the ones that we got the meat of this stuff from. Yeah,
3:13
Speaker 1: and we're talking about heat waves, which is the I
3:15
Speaker 1: was about to call it a phenomenon. I don't know
3:17
Speaker 1: if it is categorized at that, but it's a weather event.
3:20
Speaker 1: It's a natural disaster. Well yeah, and as we'll see,
3:23
Speaker 1: one of one of the worst. It is when there
3:26
Speaker 1: are consecutive days where the temperature is higher than usually
3:31
Speaker 1: is that is to say, higher than the historical average.
3:34
Speaker 1: But there's no like it depends on where you are.
3:36
Speaker 1: What is uh, what a heat wave is like, It's
3:39
Speaker 1: not necessarily like three days and it's eight degrees hotter
3:43
Speaker 1: than usual for those three days. Now, because it varies
3:45
Speaker 1: region to region, like in New Hampshire, a heat wave
3:48
Speaker 1: of two days, two days or two consecutive days where
3:52
Speaker 1: it's ninety degrees fare hight or more is a heat wave.
3:57
Speaker 1: And that's just like yawn to those of us down
3:59
Speaker 1: in the southeast. That's like a fairly nice day. Yeah,
4:02
Speaker 1: it's regional, like spices that go in hot dogs, right.
4:06
Speaker 1: But the thing is is like that depends the reason
4:09
Speaker 1: that they do that. The reason there's no single definition
4:11
Speaker 1: for heat waves because people are acclimated to different kinds
4:14
Speaker 1: of weather, and if you're not acclimated to warm weather,
4:17
Speaker 1: it's going to affect you and your body a lot worse.
4:20
Speaker 1: So it makes a lot of sense. But the two
4:23
Speaker 1: days in a row as low as ninety degrees fair
4:26
Speaker 1: at height, that's the minimum that I've seen in the
4:28
Speaker 1: United States that constitutes a legit heat wave. I'm sorry,
4:32
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, a legit heat wave. Oh boy, we're gonna
4:37
Speaker 1: do that the whole time. I think I'm going to okay. Um,
4:41
Speaker 1: this one speaks to my heart because, as everyone who's
4:44
Speaker 1: ever listening to the show much knows and as you
4:47
Speaker 1: my friends certainly know, I am a I'm a polar bear.
4:52
Speaker 1: So the sun and humidity is not good for Chuck.
4:56
Speaker 1: I hate it. I hate it. I grew up in
4:58
Speaker 1: the South, and it's it's worse now. It feels like
5:01
Speaker 1: it's not like I've gotten acclimated, Like you know, it's
5:04
Speaker 1: easy to say you get acclimated. But even as as
5:07
Speaker 1: much as I sweat, which is a I can't imagine
5:10
Speaker 1: how hot I would be if I didn't sweat like
5:11
Speaker 1: I sweat. Well, yeah, you'd be like one of those
5:13
Speaker 1: people who can't sweat and can die from it. But
5:17
Speaker 1: when I lived in l a uh, it can get
5:20
Speaker 1: very hot out there, but generally if you can park
5:23
Speaker 1: it under a tree, you might get a breeze and
5:27
Speaker 1: you can sweat and you're cooling down pretty good. But
5:30
Speaker 1: it's it's there's no relief when you live in the
5:33
Speaker 1: South because of humidity. We're going to talk about all that,
5:36
Speaker 1: but I just want to kind of set set up
5:38
Speaker 1: my personal involvement with heat waves, which is boo thumbs down.
5:42
Speaker 1: You're personally involved through sweatiness, is what you're saying. Yeah,
5:46
Speaker 1: and when those heat waves, especially the late heat waves
5:49
Speaker 1: in the summer when it should be cooling down come through.
5:51
Speaker 1: It's just it makes me mad. Yeah, those are not
5:54
Speaker 1: fun because your your bodies in your mind has been
5:56
Speaker 1: like okay, great, it's fall, and then you're just dog
5:59
Speaker 1: days summer again. It's terrible. I'm with you on that.
6:02
Speaker 1: But how did these things come about to begin with?
6:05
Speaker 1: Why is it hot for a week straight way hotter
6:09
Speaker 1: than it normally is, and why doesn't is just cool
6:11
Speaker 1: down every night? Well, first we should say, because I
6:13
Speaker 1: don't want to lose anybody this early on if they're like, uh,
6:16
Speaker 1: two days in a row of ninety degree weather? Why
6:18
Speaker 1: are you guys even talking about this? The reason we
6:21
Speaker 1: are talking about this because, like we said, Chuck, Noah
6:24
Speaker 1: classifies heat waves as a disaster, and a lot of
6:27
Speaker 1: really terrible stuff can happen during a heat wave, even
6:31
Speaker 1: of just a few days. Like it's it's a an invisible, silent,
6:36
Speaker 1: deadly natural disaster that we're only beginning to awaken. Too,
6:41
Speaker 1: silent but deadly. So as you're saying how do heat
6:46
Speaker 1: waves work, you're kind of set me up for that one, right, Well, yeah,
6:49
Speaker 1: but I thought you were going to hit him with
6:50
Speaker 1: the big stat which is heat waves kill more people
6:53
Speaker 1: than all other natural disasters combined. Um or I think
6:58
Speaker 1: you saw somewhere else all but hurricane. But point being,
7:02
Speaker 1: they kill a lot of people, like way more than
7:04
Speaker 1: you think. Yeah, and even if they don't necessarily kill
7:07
Speaker 1: more than uh, kill more people at least in the
7:10
Speaker 1: United States. That it was just the statistic I saw.
7:13
Speaker 1: Um then all other natural disasters combined, that at the
7:18
Speaker 1: very least, it kills more people per year than all
7:21
Speaker 1: other natural disasters. It's the deadliest kind of natural disaster.
7:25
Speaker 1: The thing is is it doesn't happen all at once,
7:29
Speaker 1: like say a flood that takes a bunch of people's
7:31
Speaker 1: lives in a very a very acute area, right concentrated area. Um.
7:39
Speaker 1: It happened slowly over the course of days in a
7:41
Speaker 1: very large region, and people just kind of die. And
7:44
Speaker 1: it's not immediately apparent like like, oh, I found you
7:47
Speaker 1: in floodwater, you drowned in a flood. It's I found
7:50
Speaker 1: you dead on your sofa, you know, in your apartment.
7:53
Speaker 1: And I'm not maybe you had a heart attack or
7:55
Speaker 1: something like that. It's it's not That's what I was saying.
7:58
Speaker 1: We're just beginning to awaken to it because it's not
8:00
Speaker 1: an obvious natural disaster, but it is most decidedly a
8:03
Speaker 1: natural disaster. Yeah, that's a good point. Like it's not
8:06
Speaker 1: quite as grabby in the news. I mean, they certainly
8:10
Speaker 1: report on it, but it's not and you know, the
8:13
Speaker 1: news is is well, I don't want to talk about
8:16
Speaker 1: the news. Um, let's talk about heat waves. Heat waves,
8:19
Speaker 1: that's right. So the whole thing about a heat wave
8:23
Speaker 1: is it's a basically a warm mass of hot air
8:29
Speaker 1: that's a just a lope or no, a high pressure system.
8:32
Speaker 1: So let me just restate that less confusingly. It's a
8:35
Speaker 1: high pressure system that's made up of very stagnant, still
8:39
Speaker 1: warm air that kind of finds its way over a
8:42
Speaker 1: region and doesn't move for a little while and things
8:45
Speaker 1: get really oppressive during that period. Yeah, And these high
8:50
Speaker 1: pressure systems are just part of the normal weather patterns
8:54
Speaker 1: and they generally kind of circulate clockwise and kind of
8:58
Speaker 1: move on through. Uh. The jet stream takes care of that, thankfully.
9:02
Speaker 1: That that west to east air current that moves pushes
9:06
Speaker 1: all the weather around, always shoving the weather around in
9:08
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere at least. Yeah, well, come on, is
9:12
Speaker 1: there any other hemisphere, sorry, America's centric or anything. No,
9:17
Speaker 1: not at all, but are in the northern hemisphere. The
9:21
Speaker 1: jet stream hits us about at the belt between Canada's
9:26
Speaker 1: shirt and America's jeans. And like I said, it usually
9:30
Speaker 1: pushes stuff around and it'll get hot and then it'll
9:33
Speaker 1: push that hot stuff out. But during the summertime, the
9:37
Speaker 1: jet stream slows down. Uh. They have found that overall,
9:40
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk, you know, quite a bit about
9:42
Speaker 1: climate change. Overall, it's slowing down period some, but in
9:46
Speaker 1: the summertime it's it definitely slows down from its you know,
9:51
Speaker 1: two and fifty mile per hour or so peak. And
9:55
Speaker 1: that's gonna obviously keep that hot weather there a little longer. Yeah,
9:59
Speaker 1: even under normal conditions, let alone climate change conditions. So
10:03
Speaker 1: when all of the all those factors are are kind
10:06
Speaker 1: of falling into place where the jet stream is feeling
10:09
Speaker 1: a little logy and not moving too quickly, and there's
10:13
Speaker 1: a big mass of hot air that kind of moves
10:15
Speaker 1: up as a high pressure front and just settles in
10:18
Speaker 1: over a region, you've got everything you need for that
10:23
Speaker 1: massive hot air to just stay put and continue heating up,
10:28
Speaker 1: which is the big problem because a high pressure um
10:31
Speaker 1: weather system forces air downward and it's hot air too. Normally,
10:37
Speaker 1: you have hot air at the surface, or air that
10:40
Speaker 1: warms up at the surface and it moves upward, it
10:42
Speaker 1: floats upward, and it's replaced by cool air that comes in,
10:46
Speaker 1: and you've got breezes. Well, one of the things that's
10:48
Speaker 1: the hallmark of a high pressure system is there there
10:51
Speaker 1: ain't no breezes because it's just sitting there pushing the
10:55
Speaker 1: air downward towards the surface of the Earth, which prevents
10:58
Speaker 1: that air from rye eazing, so there's no cool air
11:01
Speaker 1: to come in, so there's no breeze. But also because
11:03
Speaker 1: that air is just sitting there at the surface, it's
11:05
Speaker 1: just getting warmer and warmer and warm warmer. And the
11:08
Speaker 1: surface air temperature is what we're concerned with, because it's
11:11
Speaker 1: the temperature of the air about two meters above the
11:15
Speaker 1: Earth's surface above the ground, so it's about six and
11:18
Speaker 1: a half feet, which is where a lot of us
11:20
Speaker 1: are trying to take a breath in this really hot air. Well,
11:24
Speaker 1: a lot of you taller people, sure, but even still,
11:27
Speaker 1: if you stood on your tippy toes, it would affect
11:29
Speaker 1: you a lot too. Well, the other thing that happens
11:32
Speaker 1: to because that air isn't rising, that means it's not
11:34
Speaker 1: gonna rain. Uh, and rain obviously can be away to
11:38
Speaker 1: cool things down. So it just it's sort of acts
11:42
Speaker 1: as this uh, it's sort of like a feedback loop
11:46
Speaker 1: basically where the hotter it gets, the hotter it's gonna get. Yeah.
11:51
Speaker 1: And even the other thing about a high pressure front
11:54
Speaker 1: is it pushes like air away from it, outward from
11:58
Speaker 1: the edges of it, so there's no fronts coming in
12:01
Speaker 1: to like kind of relieve it. It's so the stronger
12:04
Speaker 1: they get, the more all of these factors contribute, and then,
12:07
Speaker 1: like you said, creates this positive feedback cycle and basically
12:11
Speaker 1: you're just totally at the mercy of the jet stream
12:13
Speaker 1: to move this thing away eventually, and it can take
12:16
Speaker 1: some time. And so that's what a heat wave is.
12:19
Speaker 1: It's when one of these like all these factors kind
12:21
Speaker 1: of come together and this massive hot air settles in
12:24
Speaker 1: over a region and just keeps getting hotter and hotter.
12:27
Speaker 1: And in the daytime, that's that's the like the money
12:31
Speaker 1: time as far as people are concerned with heat waves,
12:33
Speaker 1: because the sun's out, it's really really hot. The temperatures
12:36
Speaker 1: are really high, and it's pretty bad. No one's going
12:39
Speaker 1: to argue that the daytime during a heat wave stinks,
12:42
Speaker 1: But it's the night time that's the more insidious part.
12:45
Speaker 1: That's the real problem with the with the heat wave, right, yeah,
12:50
Speaker 1: I mean, even if it gets really hot, but it's
12:53
Speaker 1: not a heat wave. The earth helps itself out by
12:56
Speaker 1: cooling down at night. Your body, like everything cools down
12:59
Speaker 1: at night. It's a it's a great chance to just
13:02
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, kick off your shoes and like
13:04
Speaker 1: relax and recharge. Yeah, like humans, the human body needs it. Uh,
13:10
Speaker 1: Animals bodies need it. The earth itself needs it. The
13:14
Speaker 1: buildings and the concrete and the asphalt and the steel
13:17
Speaker 1: and the glass. It all depends on cooling down some
13:21
Speaker 1: at night. So it can be like, well, I'm gonna
13:23
Speaker 1: get hot again tomorrow, but at least I cooled down
13:25
Speaker 1: tonight and you know, kind of relaxed and like you said,
13:29
Speaker 1: repaired my energy. But when a heat wave comes, it's
13:31
Speaker 1: not cooling down at night. So I mean, just imagine yourself.
13:35
Speaker 1: If you never get a chance to cool down at
13:37
Speaker 1: night and you stay hot, then that sun comes up
13:40
Speaker 1: the next day, it's gonna be twice as bad, Yeah,
13:43
Speaker 1: because you're starting from a higher set point at the beginning,
13:46
Speaker 1: you know. And that's one of the hallmarks of a
13:48
Speaker 1: heat wave is it's hot even before the sun comes up.
13:51
Speaker 1: That's which is not pleasant, and it's certainly not good
13:54
Speaker 1: sleeping weather. Those are the worst, man like, especially here
13:58
Speaker 1: in the South, when you go out, like you go
14:01
Speaker 1: to let your dog out at eleven o'clock at night,
14:03
Speaker 1: and it's like eighty seven degrees or something, you just
14:05
Speaker 1: start sweating immediately before that. It's just brutal. It's pretty bad.
14:09
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's take a break. I need to
14:12
Speaker 1: go I don't know, soaking a bathtub or something. I'm
14:16
Speaker 1: getting a little hot down here. Uh, And we'll talk
14:20
Speaker 1: about the dreaded humidity right after this. Learn it's stuff
14:36
Speaker 1: with Joshua John Okay, Chuck lay it on him that
15:06
Speaker 1: very famous phrase that actually holds true. Um, youth has
15:11
Speaker 1: wasted on the young, sure that one, but also early
15:15
Speaker 1: bird gets the worm and UM never say candy man
15:24
Speaker 1: into a mirror. Well, it's certainly not three times in
15:26
Speaker 1: a row. It's not the heat, it's the humidity. There's
15:30
Speaker 1: the one I was looking for, right that's the one,
15:33
Speaker 1: and that's true. I mean we were talking about humidity earlier.
15:36
Speaker 1: That is what you know the humans have as this
15:39
Speaker 1: great mechanism built in a kind of a self contained
15:42
Speaker 1: air conditioning system which is called sweat. And if it's
15:46
Speaker 1: if the air is fairly dry outside, and like I
15:48
Speaker 1: mentioned getting under that shade tree in Los Angeles, you
15:51
Speaker 1: can sweat and that water is gonna evaporate off of
15:54
Speaker 1: you and a cool breeze will come through and it
15:56
Speaker 1: actually feels good. And that is how you regulate and
15:59
Speaker 1: cool down. When the humidity happens, it's hard to near
16:03
Speaker 1: impossible for that sweat to really cool you down. You'll
16:06
Speaker 1: still be sweating, but it won't have that same effect, right, Um, yeah,
16:12
Speaker 1: it's it's just there's no place for that sweat to go.
16:15
Speaker 1: It doesn't just move into the air because there's already
16:18
Speaker 1: so much water vapor into the air. So the higher
16:20
Speaker 1: the humidity is, the worst off it is for you.
16:24
Speaker 1: And then if you take high temperatures as well, that
16:28
Speaker 1: combination of high humidity and high temperature can be really bad.
16:32
Speaker 1: And back in the seventies there was a guy, actually
16:35
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, somebody named R. G. Steadman. They
16:39
Speaker 1: came up in nineteen seventy nine with assessment of sultry nous,
16:43
Speaker 1: which we call today the heat index. It was the
16:46
Speaker 1: paper that put the heat index out there, and the
16:48
Speaker 1: heat index is basically, yeah, it really is. You know,
16:51
Speaker 1: it sounds it sounds like a Tennessee Williams play or
16:55
Speaker 1: something like that. So the heat index makes a lot
16:58
Speaker 1: of sense because when it's really humid out and it's
17:03
Speaker 1: high in temperature, that humidity makes it feel even hotter
17:06
Speaker 1: because we have trouble sweating. So so R. G. Steadman
17:09
Speaker 1: came up with the heat index that kind of gives
17:12
Speaker 1: you a much better understanding of what the actual temperature
17:16
Speaker 1: as far as your human body is concerned. That's why
17:18
Speaker 1: they also call it the apparent temperature or the fuels
17:21
Speaker 1: like temperature. Yeah, and that's the only one I care about.
17:25
Speaker 1: I don't even know why they less regular temperature. It
17:27
Speaker 1: should just be heat indecks and wind chill in the winter,
17:31
Speaker 1: because that's the only thing that matters. And I guess
17:33
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like showing your math or something.
17:35
Speaker 1: So they have to go through it all, but as
17:38
Speaker 1: far as your human body is concerned, those are really
17:40
Speaker 1: the only two measures that matter, or at least for me. Yeah.
17:43
Speaker 1: So you know how sometimes you can end up down
17:45
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole and like not find a way out
17:47
Speaker 1: and you have to just crawl backwards out of it,
17:49
Speaker 1: and you're you're kind of worse off for the wear
17:52
Speaker 1: because you went a little mad in there. Sure that
17:54
Speaker 1: happened to me. With humidity, heat index, evaporation, condensation, I'm
18:00
Speaker 1: like researching it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, And I'm like
18:03
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's some some connections here between
18:08
Speaker 1: all these things that my brain is not making. I'm
18:11
Speaker 1: just sensing that it's all very much connected, and I'm
18:13
Speaker 1: even reading stuff that's saying it's connected. I just can't
18:15
Speaker 1: figure out how it's all connected because it's not as
18:19
Speaker 1: simple as like humidity or you know, the heat index
18:23
Speaker 1: is humidity times temperature divided by two or something like that.
18:27
Speaker 1: That's not how it works. It's way more sophisticated than that,
18:30
Speaker 1: and it takes into account a lot of different stuff
18:33
Speaker 1: so that if you if you actually put a lower
18:37
Speaker 1: temperature in with higher humidity, it will bring the temperature down.
18:42
Speaker 1: And then there's some temperatures like say seventy degrees where
18:45
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what you do with the humidity,
18:47
Speaker 1: it's still just gonna feel like seventy degrees. So there's
18:49
Speaker 1: like a lot of different weirdness in there. But the
18:52
Speaker 1: thing is the upshot of all this. I was just
18:54
Speaker 1: kind of confessing and getting off my chest that I'm
18:56
Speaker 1: a little obsessed with this and if any any meteorologists
19:00
Speaker 1: or climatologists can explain all this to me, I would
19:02
Speaker 1: love to hear it. But as far as heat waves
19:05
Speaker 1: are concerned, if you have high temperatures and high humidity,
19:08
Speaker 1: some really astounding stuff happens when you put those together.
19:12
Speaker 1: As far as the heat index is concerned. Yeah, And
19:16
Speaker 1: just not to harp on my personal um sweating issues.
19:21
Speaker 1: We've talked about it a lot over the years, but
19:23
Speaker 1: it's the embarrassing thing for me is not that I've
19:26
Speaker 1: sweat a lot, because a It's that's why I never
19:28
Speaker 1: had like acne growing up, because I'm just constantly sweating
19:31
Speaker 1: everything through. We've got like the cleanest pores in the world,
19:35
Speaker 1: um and it you know, it helps cool me down,
19:37
Speaker 1: But it's when it's like seventy six degrees and super humid,
19:43
Speaker 1: and other people are like or even in the sixties
19:46
Speaker 1: or fifties, and they're like, it's really cool. Why are
19:49
Speaker 1: you sweating, like because it's humid. I don't care if
19:51
Speaker 1: it's forty degrees. If it's super humid, I might break
19:55
Speaker 1: a sweat. Yeah, it gets through. If you're sweating at
19:57
Speaker 1: forty degrees, that's that's some sweaty us for sure. Maybe
20:01
Speaker 1: not forty fifty. We could do some tests, all right,
20:05
Speaker 1: let's do oh yeah, let's do some science. I'm gone up. Yeah,
20:09
Speaker 1: like a humidity lab or something. Okay, but I still
20:12
Speaker 1: get to get a lab coat, right Sure of the
20:15
Speaker 1: color of my choosing. Um, I'll let you select from
20:19
Speaker 1: three colors of my choosing. What are they? Cinnamon, powder, blue,
20:23
Speaker 1: and orange? Okay? Great, okay, any one of those, then
20:26
Speaker 1: that's mine. It's mine. Banana yellow was going to be
20:29
Speaker 1: in there, but you missed. You missed the boat. At
20:32
Speaker 1: least you didn't make me dress up in a banana costume. Uh, yeah,
20:38
Speaker 1: I was. It's funny. I was shopping for Halloween for
20:40
Speaker 1: this year and I kind of didn't want to go
20:42
Speaker 1: is a devo, and so I was looking up for
20:45
Speaker 1: those yellow jumpsuits and I was waylaid because you kind
20:50
Speaker 1: of end up having to be whatever your kid says
20:52
Speaker 1: you have to be. So I think we're all gonna
20:54
Speaker 1: be spooky things this year, but I had to put
20:56
Speaker 1: the devo thing on the back burner. You could be
20:58
Speaker 1: like zombie Divo. Not a bad idea, No, it's not.
21:03
Speaker 1: It's a great idea. Yeah, you can be zombie anything.
21:06
Speaker 1: That's kind of the beauty of the zombie Zombie b York,
21:09
Speaker 1: Zombie Mark Mother's Ball, Zombie b York. I like that,
21:15
Speaker 1: Just wear that Swan dress and walk around saying I
21:21
Speaker 1: was trying to think of how Buyork would say brains
21:23
Speaker 1: but not of my head. Couldn't put it together. That
21:28
Speaker 1: was perfect thing. Uh. So you mentioned insidious effects and
21:32
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about those because, uh, very wide reaching.
21:37
Speaker 1: It's not just people get hot and people die. Uh.
21:40
Speaker 1: It affects kind of everything on the planet. And it's
21:43
Speaker 1: easy to kind of think of heat stroke and dehydration
21:46
Speaker 1: and something like that during the day, like you said,
21:49
Speaker 1: because that's when you count on it, and that's when
21:51
Speaker 1: you might take precautions, which, by the way, to go
21:53
Speaker 1: listen to our Desert Survival episode for that kind of stuff.
21:56
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good tips there, but not like you said,
22:01
Speaker 1: it's that's when it's really bad because the human body
22:04
Speaker 1: really depends on that rest and that reset and that
22:08
Speaker 1: cool down. And if you stay hot, your body and
22:11
Speaker 1: is you know, especially if you have like high bread
22:13
Speaker 1: high blood pressure or like heart issues, it's working overtime
22:17
Speaker 1: at night when it should be cooling down because you
22:20
Speaker 1: I think you're like lowest body temperature of the twenty
22:23
Speaker 1: four hour cycle is during sleep. So if you're not
22:26
Speaker 1: hitting that cool down cycle, then everything is just doing
22:29
Speaker 1: a lot of extra work. Yeah, in particular your heart is.
22:32
Speaker 1: And when your heart is working hard and then it
22:35
Speaker 1: has to work hard again the next day, it's like
22:38
Speaker 1: that that set point doesn't ever or the set point
22:41
Speaker 1: starts higher the next day. So after a few days
22:44
Speaker 1: of this, especially if you have a bum ticker to
22:46
Speaker 1: begin with, UM, it can be quite dangerous for you.
22:50
Speaker 1: And so people like the elderly, UM children, like very
22:54
Speaker 1: young children, they're usually the first casualties of UM of
22:58
Speaker 1: a heat wave. But there are a lot of other
23:00
Speaker 1: people who are susceptible to UM, especially people who don't
23:04
Speaker 1: have easy access to air conditioning UH, people who are
23:08
Speaker 1: of low income, who very sadly might even have air conditioning,
23:12
Speaker 1: but don't have power right then, or don't have the
23:15
Speaker 1: money to to to run their air conditioner. The homeless,
23:19
Speaker 1: um people who work outside and sorry, I gotta I
23:23
Speaker 1: gotta work no matter what to keep food on the table,
23:25
Speaker 1: whether it's a heat wave or not. They can be
23:28
Speaker 1: in big trouble as well. But then so can any
23:30
Speaker 1: of us, especially when that heat index starts to jump.
23:33
Speaker 1: Like when you have like a hundred degree temperatures with
23:38
Speaker 1: um like fifty five percent humidity. You put those together,
23:42
Speaker 1: it's suddenly a hundred and twenty four out. That's not
23:44
Speaker 1: good for anybody, you know. No, And you know I
23:48
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that it's like people and animals and buildings
23:52
Speaker 1: and everything. The infrastructure takes, you know, it takes a hit.
23:56
Speaker 1: Um like railway railroad tracks can literally up and buckle. Yeah,
24:01
Speaker 1: they won't run trains during a heat wave a lot
24:03
Speaker 1: of times for that reason because they could derail. Yeah, concrete,
24:08
Speaker 1: an asphalt, any kind of metal and glass on a
24:10
Speaker 1: building you've uh, I mean, buildings can like their shape
24:14
Speaker 1: can briefly change and expand and contract or I guess
24:18
Speaker 1: expand and not contract for a little while, all due
24:23
Speaker 1: to this heat wave. And you know, we talked a
24:24
Speaker 1: little bit about the urban heat island effect at some point, um,
24:29
Speaker 1: but this is you know, this is why you got
24:32
Speaker 1: to New York City and a heat wave and it's
24:34
Speaker 1: it's one of the hottest places on the planet. It
24:36
Speaker 1: feels like, yeah, because it actually is way hotter than
24:39
Speaker 1: other places because of all those building materials number one,
24:42
Speaker 1: that are excellent absorbers of heat, all that blacktop and
24:46
Speaker 1: asphalt and um, all that steel, but also chuck like
24:51
Speaker 1: the distinct lack of vegetation like trees and stuff that
24:55
Speaker 1: actually helped cool the air. Like it's not just shade
24:58
Speaker 1: that they do, Like they actually release water vapor into
25:02
Speaker 1: the air and actually cool the nearby air. So the
25:04
Speaker 1: more trees you have, the lower the urban heat island effect.
25:07
Speaker 1: But that's just not like a huge, huge um trait
25:12
Speaker 1: of the average city. Like somebody actually wrote a book
25:14
Speaker 1: called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. That's how significant the
25:18
Speaker 1: idea of a tree in Brooklyn was. You know what
25:20
Speaker 1: I'm saying. That's funny. Uh. Energy takes a big wall
25:24
Speaker 1: up to um for the obvious reason and more um
25:27
Speaker 1: obvious when being that you know, everyone's cranking those air
25:30
Speaker 1: conditioners everyone's refrigerators and freezers are working over time. Um.
25:35
Speaker 1: Industrial refrigeration is working over time. And you combine that
25:41
Speaker 1: with the fact that transmission capacity is reduced during these
25:45
Speaker 1: high temperatures, it's gonna strain the electrical grid even more. Uh.
25:50
Speaker 1: It's just nothing is running with any kind of efficiency.
25:55
Speaker 1: And if you want to really have some people die quickly,
25:59
Speaker 1: you have an energy power outage during a heat wave
26:02
Speaker 1: because of these overstressed systems. And that's when all of
26:06
Speaker 1: a sudden, like nobody has refrigeration or air conditioning, and uh,
26:10
Speaker 1: it can get brutal pretty quickly. Yeah, because I mean,
26:13
Speaker 1: if you, if you think about it, you've got incredible
26:16
Speaker 1: demand on the system. And then the system itself can't
26:20
Speaker 1: really um, it can't get rid of its you know,
26:23
Speaker 1: waste heat like it needs to, just like a human
26:25
Speaker 1: body does. So Yeah, if the system blacks out or
26:28
Speaker 1: even browns out, it's that's not the time to do it,
26:31
Speaker 1: but that's when it's most likely to happen. And then
26:34
Speaker 1: on the same on the opposite side of the same coin, chuck,
26:37
Speaker 1: are those cold waves I was talking about? Um, And
26:40
Speaker 1: that was what happened in Texas. Uh this past winter
26:43
Speaker 1: it was a high pressure front, but instead of a
26:46
Speaker 1: mass of like super hot air, it was a massive
26:48
Speaker 1: super cold air and it just settled in and stayed
26:50
Speaker 1: there and froze Texas and Texas infrastructure suffered. I think
26:54
Speaker 1: we talked about in the electrical grid episode. Um. And
26:57
Speaker 1: it was the same thing. They just couldn't keep up
26:59
Speaker 1: with the demand, and the weather itself was taxing the
27:03
Speaker 1: system too. And uh, it's the same thing in a
27:07
Speaker 1: heat wave. It's just for the opposite reasons, but the
27:09
Speaker 1: same outcome, right. Uh. And if you're thinking, hey, you know,
27:14
Speaker 1: look at the bright side, warmer winters mean we're not
27:17
Speaker 1: going to be using as much energy in the wintertime
27:19
Speaker 1: to heat our homes, so it all balances out. Uh,
27:23
Speaker 1: that's not true. They've done a lot of studies and
27:26
Speaker 1: they're pretty much coming to the conclusion that the heat
27:30
Speaker 1: is out is tipping that scale too far in the
27:33
Speaker 1: other direction. And even if we are saving a little
27:36
Speaker 1: bit of energy and or even a great deal of
27:38
Speaker 1: energy in the wintertime due to warmer temperatures, it's not
27:41
Speaker 1: going to balance it out. Um. Water is another big
27:44
Speaker 1: one to chuck, which makes a lot of sense, Like
27:47
Speaker 1: people drink more water they need more water. Uh, they
27:50
Speaker 1: might take cool baths to cool down, but not just humans.
27:54
Speaker 1: Livestock need more water during this time. Um power plants
27:58
Speaker 1: need more water to stay a cool, crops need more water.
28:02
Speaker 1: Everything needs more water. But the problem is is during
28:05
Speaker 1: heat wave when you need water the most, that's when
28:08
Speaker 1: it's like the least available because it becomes pretty scarce.
28:11
Speaker 1: Because drought and heat waves are they work really well together.
28:16
Speaker 1: They kind of go hand in hand. Actually in a
28:18
Speaker 1: lot of cases. Yeah, I mean that kind of creates
28:21
Speaker 1: a similar feedback feedback loop, and that when there is
28:26
Speaker 1: moisture in the ground thanks to rain and stuff like that,
28:29
Speaker 1: even when it gets hot, the earth is going to
28:32
Speaker 1: soak up a lot of that sun and use some
28:35
Speaker 1: of that energy to get rid of that water and
28:38
Speaker 1: turn it into water vapor. If that ground is already
28:42
Speaker 1: super dry because of a drought, then it's just it's
28:45
Speaker 1: basically just baking like an oven, and that energy has
28:49
Speaker 1: no other use. It doesn't have the use of turning
28:52
Speaker 1: it into water vapor, so it's just baking, yeah, just
28:55
Speaker 1: heating that ground up instead, so it just gets hotter
28:57
Speaker 1: and hotter, which is terrible stuff. So UM plus also
29:01
Speaker 1: with drought stricken landscapes. Those are more susceptible to wildfire.
29:05
Speaker 1: So as there's more and more heat waves, we can
29:08
Speaker 1: expect worse and more widespread wildfires. Basically too, we talked
29:15
Speaker 1: about animals, it's not animals. I think a lot of
29:19
Speaker 1: people forget about animals and situations like this. Uh. I
29:23
Speaker 1: think people think more about animals when it gets super
29:26
Speaker 1: super cold and like really bad cold. Friends come in.
29:30
Speaker 1: But they're susceptible to the heat too. And it's not
29:32
Speaker 1: just you know, our little you know, domesticated pets that
29:36
Speaker 1: we love and and unfortunately some of the street animals
29:39
Speaker 1: like really suffer. But livestock, you know, if you're on
29:42
Speaker 1: a farm, those cows and chickens don't like that kind
29:45
Speaker 1: of heat either. Uh. Sometimes it can affect their mortality rates. Uh,
29:49
Speaker 1: it can affect things way downstream because uh they might
29:53
Speaker 1: be rep you know if they don't want to have
29:55
Speaker 1: that heat wave sex either, so that they might be
29:58
Speaker 1: reproducing less, which is gonna have a down on stream effect. Uh.
30:01
Speaker 1: And then you know all the crops are going to
30:03
Speaker 1: be affected too, Yeah, especially the ones that cops when
30:06
Speaker 1: it comes snatch that what cops want to come and
30:11
Speaker 1: snatch my crops. I don't what is that? You do
30:14
Speaker 1: remember that as a Cypress Hill lyric, a very famous one.
30:17
Speaker 1: I don't. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I remember. Now, boy,
30:19
Speaker 1: we mentioned cypers Hill a lot on the show. They're
30:23
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, they're like a mascot now, like
30:26
Speaker 1: Frank the Chair. I knew that sounded familiar. Cops come
30:29
Speaker 1: and try to snatch my crops. Here it is, and
30:32
Speaker 1: then that has to be followed, of course by heat Wave. Boy,
30:38
Speaker 1: somebody should sample that on a on a hip hop tune.
30:41
Speaker 1: That'd be great. What heat Wave? Yeah, I bet it
30:44
Speaker 1: has been sure. I could see Puff Daddy sampling that.
30:48
Speaker 1: That'd be up his alley. Oh yeah, did ever tell
30:50
Speaker 1: you I went to his house one time. It sounds
30:55
Speaker 1: vaguely familiar, but I'd like to hear it again. It's
30:58
Speaker 1: not the biggest story, but I ran an errand as
31:00
Speaker 1: p a over to his house one time and had
31:01
Speaker 1: to drop something. Now, so I had to go go
31:03
Speaker 1: knock on his door and walk inside the front and
31:06
Speaker 1: drop something off. Something was something in air quotes. No,
31:11
Speaker 1: it was some for the job. It wouldn't a big deal,
31:13
Speaker 1: but it was like clothes or something. But it was.
31:15
Speaker 1: It was just very shiny and white. Everything was shiny
31:19
Speaker 1: and white. I can imagine, which is you know, it's
31:23
Speaker 1: a way to go, I guess, but I don't know.
31:25
Speaker 1: It's a look it's too much. It's too much. I
31:27
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, there's a long time ago. He
31:29
Speaker 1: may not be into that now. But white couches and
31:31
Speaker 1: big white marble floors, I mean, I like white couches
31:34
Speaker 1: and and I do like white stuff, but it's also like,
31:36
Speaker 1: gotta have lots of color. Like the white stuff is
31:39
Speaker 1: just a it's just a backdrop for your color. That's
31:42
Speaker 1: in my that's my opinion. We are too messy. We
31:45
Speaker 1: can't have white things. I understand, you know. Yeah, told
31:49
Speaker 1: well you need to have if you have a white couch,
31:51
Speaker 1: it's got to be a uh slip cover because you're
31:55
Speaker 1: gonna have to wash it, yes, if you drink red wine.
32:00
Speaker 1: But but there is one that we haven't covered you.
32:02
Speaker 1: I think we should before we take a break, and
32:04
Speaker 1: it is air pollution, which uh might be overlooked by
32:08
Speaker 1: some people, but it really makes a lot of sense
32:10
Speaker 1: because number one, we're like demanding way more from power
32:16
Speaker 1: plants than usual during a heatwave with all that a c.
32:18
Speaker 1: So those power plants are putting out more emissions than usual.
32:22
Speaker 1: But then the actual like conditions of the heat wave
32:25
Speaker 1: itself make the air pollution worse, does it not? Yeah?
32:30
Speaker 1: I mean that that same cap that uh kind of
32:34
Speaker 1: forces all that air down and keeps everything stagnant, that
32:37
Speaker 1: same cap is in place for uh, these emissions that
32:41
Speaker 1: are going up into the air. So it's just it's
32:43
Speaker 1: just like bottling it all up. It's gonna make things
32:45
Speaker 1: a lot worse. Yeah, and so, and also ozone is
32:48
Speaker 1: more easily produced. You've got ozone and like particulate matter
32:51
Speaker 1: from from emissions, all combining to make your breathing much
32:55
Speaker 1: more difficult. Danger. Right, So let's take a break, man,
32:58
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about some couple of famous heat
33:00
Speaker 1: waves and what the future holds. How about that, let's
33:03
Speaker 1: do it. Learn it's stuff with Joshua John stuff all right.
33:47
Speaker 1: So if you were alive on the earth this summer, um,
33:54
Speaker 1: you might remember and said, all you almost started with it,
33:57
Speaker 1: and you didn't. You've really come a long way John
34:00
Speaker 1: with what you almost said, unless you're living under a rock.
34:03
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, no, it really wasn't all right, Um,
34:07
Speaker 1: so between June and June, Uh, something was brewing down
34:11
Speaker 1: in Mexico that was very hot, and this big, massive
34:15
Speaker 1: warm air moved up and kind of settled over the
34:19
Speaker 1: middle of the United States and and didn't move for
34:22
Speaker 1: a while. And uh, it was just sort of your
34:25
Speaker 1: classic heat wave. But even in places like where that
34:29
Speaker 1: they're used to the heat in the summertime, it got
34:32
Speaker 1: exceedingly hot. Like if you were in Arizona and Phoenix,
34:36
Speaker 1: you're used to hot weather for sure, but it it
34:39
Speaker 1: cracked a hundred and fifteen degrees for six consecutive days,
34:43
Speaker 1: which is a record for even Phoenix. That is not
34:46
Speaker 1: okay for anybody, no, but so so it's bad enough
34:52
Speaker 1: for Phoenix. But still, I'm sure the people of things
34:54
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, it's kind of hot, but come on,
34:56
Speaker 1: we could we could handle worse. Um, it was play
35:00
Speaker 1: this is where it's not normally hot at all. That
35:02
Speaker 1: really took the brunt of that heat wave. And as
35:05
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, the heat wave is generally called
35:07
Speaker 1: referred to as the Pacific Northwest heatwave because that's where
35:10
Speaker 1: it really stunk the worst. Yeah, I can't believe Portland,
35:15
Speaker 1: Oregon got up to a hundred and twelve degrees. That
35:18
Speaker 1: is bananas. Yeah, And we should say when you're talking
35:21
Speaker 1: about air temperatures and you are seeing the temperature on
35:25
Speaker 1: the news or whatever, that measurement was taken in the shade.
35:29
Speaker 1: That's not the sunlight sunshine temperature. That's what that the
35:32
Speaker 1: temperature is in the shade. Okay, So wrap your head
35:35
Speaker 1: around that one. Yeah. So a hundred and twelve in
35:39
Speaker 1: Portland's hundred and four in Seattle, which broke a record.
35:45
Speaker 1: Um it was. It was bananas and and that kind
35:48
Speaker 1: of like a lot of people in that part of
35:50
Speaker 1: the country. I don't really know percentages, but there are
35:53
Speaker 1: there are people who don't have h VAC units. They
35:57
Speaker 1: count on opening their windows and stuff like that. There
35:59
Speaker 1: are places in the United States, believe it or not,
36:02
Speaker 1: that don't have HVAC and that that use ceiling fans
36:05
Speaker 1: and stuff and they just don't eat. Yeah, for sure. Um.
36:09
Speaker 1: There was another town too that we have to mention,
36:11
Speaker 1: chuck Lytton, British Columbia, which is north a couple hundred
36:15
Speaker 1: miles north of Seattle. They hit a hundred and sixteen
36:19
Speaker 1: and set a new record not just for themselves but
36:21
Speaker 1: for Canada as a whole and then the town burned
36:24
Speaker 1: down from a wildfire right afterward. Very sad, so like
36:28
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal. And one of the
36:31
Speaker 1: things that that I think this the Pacific Northwest heat
36:34
Speaker 1: wave in June, and I think there were multiple ones
36:38
Speaker 1: around that region over the well not just in the
36:41
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, but in like the Midwest States in particular
36:44
Speaker 1: U this year. But what I think these the heat
36:47
Speaker 1: waves in the U s s you're kind of woke
36:49
Speaker 1: people up to, is like these things are like really deadly.
36:53
Speaker 1: They looked at excess deaths, which they kind of take
36:56
Speaker 1: the background number of deaths, the deaths you'd expect, and
37:00
Speaker 1: then see how many more occurred on a particular day
37:04
Speaker 1: or over a particular period or during a heat wave.
37:07
Speaker 1: And they've concluded thus far that in Washington State alone,
37:11
Speaker 1: six people died from that heat wave over the course
37:14
Speaker 1: of a few days. Yeah, like thousands of people total
37:18
Speaker 1: um all over that region. And you know this is
37:22
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of a squishy number because it's
37:25
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about this, like people
37:27
Speaker 1: who study is kind of stuff, they're doing the best
37:29
Speaker 1: they can. They can't necessarily say like every single one
37:31
Speaker 1: of those deaths was because of the heat wave. But
37:34
Speaker 1: it is a really good measure. Um, And if you're
37:37
Speaker 1: if you're just looking at sort of round numbers, uh,
37:39
Speaker 1: it's it's not the kind of thing that you can dismiss.
37:41
Speaker 1: And Plus, if history is any kind of guide that
37:44
Speaker 1: those numbers will probably be revised upward in the next
37:48
Speaker 1: year or so, I would guess. Yeah. And it's not
37:51
Speaker 1: just the United States. There was a heat wave in
37:53
Speaker 1: Europe in two thousand three that was it was the
37:56
Speaker 1: warmest summer on record since the fifteen forties. And I
38:01
Speaker 1: was like, how do they know that? I don't know.
38:03
Speaker 1: So I looked, there's a bunch of different ways they
38:06
Speaker 1: can kind of miss us out. Yeah, parchment is the answer. Um,
38:10
Speaker 1: there's there's They take bore holes is basically one of
38:14
Speaker 1: the best ways I saw, where when when it's hot
38:18
Speaker 1: on on this Earth's surface, that temperature radiates downward through
38:23
Speaker 1: the Earth. And if you take a core sample, a
38:26
Speaker 1: borehole sample sample, you can actually kind of deduce from
38:30
Speaker 1: whatever temperature a specific moment in time is, like say
38:35
Speaker 1: like in the fifteen forties, this would have been at
38:38
Speaker 1: the surface, that it actually that you can actually get
38:42
Speaker 1: the temperature roughly from that era. I think we talked
38:45
Speaker 1: about that before. This was really familiar. Okay, well it
38:49
Speaker 1: sounded new to me. I had no idea, But I
38:51
Speaker 1: think that's pretty interesting because there was nobody in fifteen
38:54
Speaker 1: forties saying, oh, it was eighty degrees celsius it was
38:57
Speaker 1: super hot, which I think that's like really really hot,
39:00
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. But um, nobody was recording temperature
39:04
Speaker 1: like that. Some people did record the weather, but it
39:06
Speaker 1: was just like a smattering of observations and nothing scientific.
39:09
Speaker 1: Because this is pretty scientific. Um, so they have to
39:12
Speaker 1: use even more scientific stuff today to kind of deduce
39:17
Speaker 1: what it was before. Right. You might see, like it
39:20
Speaker 1: was very hot the day we burned this person at
39:22
Speaker 1: the stake, right, and we made even hot glancing reference.
39:27
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean Milan, Paris, London, all these places
39:29
Speaker 1: broke record temperatures, uh, temperatures, temperatures. I can say that
39:35
Speaker 1: like a lazy Southerner temperature temperature because of hookworm, you
39:39
Speaker 1: say it like temperature. Yeah, but in the you know,
39:44
Speaker 1: in a couple of years after they calculated that, about
39:47
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people died all over Europe, and then later
39:51
Speaker 1: on they said that could have been as high as
39:53
Speaker 1: seventy tho people when they studied it. Years after that,
39:57
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people died from a two week Hey wave
40:01
Speaker 1: in Europe in two thousand three, and this may be
40:04
Speaker 1: what we're looking at going forward. Yeah, so we talked
40:08
Speaker 1: about you were you were saying, like, um, that there's
40:10
Speaker 1: there's people who like are trying to figure out how
40:14
Speaker 1: much this is increasing, how much of it has to
40:16
Speaker 1: do with climate change. There's a it's a new branch
40:18
Speaker 1: of science called attribution studies, and it's pretty much in
40:21
Speaker 1: league with climatology. I get the impression that it's made
40:24
Speaker 1: up of climatologists and it's a brand new type of
40:28
Speaker 1: science and it's really hard to do. Um. But they're
40:32
Speaker 1: they're starting from an article I read the data set
40:37
Speaker 1: post climate change. Basically this this one point to degrees
40:41
Speaker 1: celsius that has risen since we started keeping records in
40:45
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty. I believe it's like the benchmark here that
40:49
Speaker 1: it's starting to happen, like weird stuff is starting to
40:51
Speaker 1: happen in more and more frequency, that this data set
40:54
Speaker 1: is growing. And then they have since the eighteen eighties
40:56
Speaker 1: to compare it against and so using a lot more
41:00
Speaker 1: sophisticated statistical analysis that I can quite wrap my head around. Um,
41:05
Speaker 1: they're figuring out how to say this weird weather event
41:09
Speaker 1: like the one in the Pacific Northwest had ex chance
41:14
Speaker 1: of happening had climate change never happened, had we never
41:18
Speaker 1: started releasing greenhouse gas emissions during the industrial age. And
41:22
Speaker 1: they've actually done that. There was a study that that
41:24
Speaker 1: actually kind of came to some pretty interesting conclusions about that. Yeah.
41:30
Speaker 1: They you know, they you hear about like a hundred
41:33
Speaker 1: year storm or something like that. Uh, they did a
41:36
Speaker 1: calculation and they said, you know, this was that that
41:39
Speaker 1: heat wave in this year in the United States was
41:43
Speaker 1: in a one thousand year event. And that's factoring in
41:47
Speaker 1: like the current climate that we are already in. Yeah,
41:49
Speaker 1: like if we frozeur if our climate did not get
41:51
Speaker 1: any hotter or change in any way than it did
41:54
Speaker 1: now for from now on, that it would have been
41:58
Speaker 1: a thousand year event like now basically right, And then
42:02
Speaker 1: they can further extrapolate and say with this was pre
42:06
Speaker 1: um pre end of the nineteenth century, I guess, Yeah,
42:10
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty that's that benchmark date when everyone around the
42:13
Speaker 1: world started to keep like pretty accurate weather records from
42:16
Speaker 1: that point on. They said that that would have been
42:18
Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifty thousand year event back then,
42:22
Speaker 1: and in the future it might become like a five
42:25
Speaker 1: or ten year event. Yeah, by the twenty fifties maybe, Yeah,
42:29
Speaker 1: because I think that it's like thirty or forty years
42:32
Speaker 1: from now, the overall global temperature there it is again,
42:39
Speaker 1: is gonna rise in another two degrees celsius. No, two
42:41
Speaker 1: degrees celsius total since eighteen eighty Okay, yeah, I guess
42:45
Speaker 1: that would be catastrophic. Yeah, I don't know what would happen.
42:48
Speaker 1: I think we should do an episode explaining temperature rise
42:51
Speaker 1: in like what effects it's going to have and all
42:53
Speaker 1: that sure sot into our doomsday series. So even even
42:58
Speaker 1: taking aside like climate chain UM and an increase from
43:02
Speaker 1: climate change, UM, there's there's a lot of data that
43:07
Speaker 1: just says, yeah, we're actually seeing a lot more heat
43:09
Speaker 1: waves than we used to just in the past, like
43:11
Speaker 1: fifty sixty years UM, and just taking data starting in
43:16
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty I think UM the weather the National Weather
43:20
Speaker 1: Service to a study that basically said, UM, looking at
43:26
Speaker 1: fifty cities in the United States, forty six of them
43:28
Speaker 1: have seen a signific statistically significant increase in heat waves
43:33
Speaker 1: since the nineteen sixties, so much so that like during
43:36
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties they could expect about two heat waves
43:39
Speaker 1: per year these fifty cities in the United States. Now
43:41
Speaker 1: they're averaging about six per year. And the season for
43:45
Speaker 1: heat waves in these cities is on average forty seven
43:48
Speaker 1: days longer than it was in nineteen sixty. So there's
43:52
Speaker 1: definitely a big upward trend in heat waves. It's becoming
43:55
Speaker 1: this new normal for us. Yeah, and it's it's really
43:58
Speaker 1: all about data. Um in more data you have, because
44:01
Speaker 1: they you know, there are still freak weather events that um,
44:06
Speaker 1: they don't want to just throw everything in there and
44:08
Speaker 1: say it's all caused by the rising climates all over
44:10
Speaker 1: the world. Uh. But the more time goes on, like
44:14
Speaker 1: the more of this data set is enriched and the
44:18
Speaker 1: the wheat is separated from the chaff just sort of naturally,
44:22
Speaker 1: the more data you get, and those statistical anomalies will
44:25
Speaker 1: they will be revealed, yes as such. Yeah, well, which
44:29
Speaker 1: I think it behoo's us to say, like any good
44:32
Speaker 1: attribution um climatologists is going to tell you like that
44:37
Speaker 1: that heatwave in the Pacific Northwest could have just been
44:40
Speaker 1: statistical bad luck. It may have had nothing to do
44:43
Speaker 1: with climate change. It could have just been like that
44:45
Speaker 1: was the one we drew. Because a thousand year event
44:48
Speaker 1: means you have a one in a thousand chance on
44:50
Speaker 1: any given year of that you could happen next year. Again,
44:54
Speaker 1: statistically is unlikely, but it's possible just from statistics that
44:59
Speaker 1: it was just bad luck that it happened. But um, yeah,
45:02
Speaker 1: what you were saying is actually totally accurate that the
45:05
Speaker 1: more unfortunately weird freak weather events go on, the bigger
45:09
Speaker 1: the data set they're going to have to compare to
45:12
Speaker 1: pre you know, climate change times and see what is
45:17
Speaker 1: actually trending upward. And it looks like they're probably right
45:20
Speaker 1: about heat waves. Yeah, and they you know, people should
45:24
Speaker 1: feel good knowing that they're really trying to get good
45:28
Speaker 1: accurate data. It's it's not they don't want to just
45:32
Speaker 1: be doomsday uh people and say, you know, they want
45:37
Speaker 1: to really get good accurate numbers in there. So if
45:39
Speaker 1: you're a person who thinks climate change is bogus or
45:43
Speaker 1: it's not human caused or whatever, or they're just trying
45:46
Speaker 1: to scare you, and you know they're going to throw
45:48
Speaker 1: everything in there that happens and say it's because of this.
45:51
Speaker 1: They're not doing that. They're really really working super super
45:54
Speaker 1: hard to get a super accurate record and picture of
45:58
Speaker 1: what things are like now and and what they're like
46:00
Speaker 1: moving forward. You're not being good winked. I think people
46:04
Speaker 1: who are still saying that are basically like standing in
46:06
Speaker 1: a burning house being like, the house isn't on fire,
46:09
Speaker 1: It's fine. Yeah, Um, so what can we do to
46:12
Speaker 1: stop this stuff? Well, you can't stop it. What can
46:15
Speaker 1: we do to help ourselves out in the meantime. No,
46:17
Speaker 1: eventually we probably will be able to control the weather,
46:20
Speaker 1: which sounds like Bond villain esque, but we'll probably be
46:22
Speaker 1: able to control it to our benefit and the benefit
46:25
Speaker 1: of the planet I'm guessing in the next like hundred
46:27
Speaker 1: years possibly. But until then, we can do absolutely nothing
46:31
Speaker 1: about this except kind of try to mitigate the effects
46:34
Speaker 1: of it. One of the things that's starting to happen
46:36
Speaker 1: our local governments are starting to get a little more
46:39
Speaker 1: hip to the idea that they need, you know, plans
46:41
Speaker 1: in place so when a heat wave comes along, because
46:44
Speaker 1: they're actually pretty easy to forecast by many days out,
46:49
Speaker 1: so you can give people a lot of warning and
46:51
Speaker 1: then if the government has this plan in place, they
46:53
Speaker 1: can open up cooling center. So you've got a convention
46:56
Speaker 1: center is not being used well that now is a
46:58
Speaker 1: cooling center where you're running lots of ace for residents
47:00
Speaker 1: who don't have a c to come cool off. You
47:03
Speaker 1: can start um reroofing buildings in your city with you know,
47:08
Speaker 1: green roofs or even like like um cool roofs, which
47:13
Speaker 1: is basically a roof that's not black and that's all
47:16
Speaker 1: it takes to to cool that roof by fifty degrees
47:19
Speaker 1: sometimes on a sunny day. Um. There's just a lot
47:22
Speaker 1: of stuff where if you just stop and look at
47:24
Speaker 1: the infrastructure and even the color of the infrastructure use
47:27
Speaker 1: in cities, just changing it to lighter colors would have
47:30
Speaker 1: an enormous effect on the urban heat island effect. Oh yeah,
47:34
Speaker 1: plant more trees. I love those green roofs are good
47:37
Speaker 1: looking anyway, Sure they look like Hobbit houses, a Hobbit skyscraper.
47:40
Speaker 1: No less uh, making the electrical grid more efficient because again,
47:45
Speaker 1: if you've got a heat wave and that thing breaks down,
47:47
Speaker 1: it's just exacerbating the problem. So those are all things
47:51
Speaker 1: we can do to help out a little bit. Yeah,
47:53
Speaker 1: we'll probably figure it out more as it goes on,
47:55
Speaker 1: but does it's a pretty good start. And the other
47:57
Speaker 1: thing that you can do is you can actually if
47:59
Speaker 1: you watch your local news and the weather person says
48:01
Speaker 1: there's a heat advisory today, like that means that it
48:05
Speaker 1: could be dangerous to be outside. Like they're not just
48:07
Speaker 1: whistling Dixie there, hope. I had a borderline heat stroke,
48:11
Speaker 1: uh this summer, first time in my life. What I
48:15
Speaker 1: was playing golf, I got I was able to play
48:18
Speaker 1: the historic East Lake Golf Club near where I live,
48:21
Speaker 1: and I it was brutally hot. It is a walking
48:26
Speaker 1: only course, so it's not like you're riding around a
48:28
Speaker 1: golf cart. And you know, golf courses aren't their trees
48:32
Speaker 1: on the edges, but you're out on that sun if
48:34
Speaker 1: you're hitting them straight, you know what I mean. And
48:37
Speaker 1: I started feeling funny. I got a little dizzy a
48:40
Speaker 1: couple of times. And I'm at the age now where
48:43
Speaker 1: I'm smart enough for where I was like, I gotta
48:46
Speaker 1: do something here, dudes, Like this isn't right. I don't
48:48
Speaker 1: feel right. I've been hot all my life and I
48:49
Speaker 1: don't feel right, So I they called sort of embarrassing,
48:55
Speaker 1: but they called a golf cart out and I went
48:57
Speaker 1: back to the clubhouse for like three holes in cool down,
49:00
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and then went back out. I missed those
49:03
Speaker 1: three holes, but I rejoined my buddies and uh and
49:05
Speaker 1: finished out the back nine. But you had the lowest
49:07
Speaker 1: score of all then, exactly it was. But I'm glad
49:13
Speaker 1: that I was smart en if I was like, well,
49:14
Speaker 1: this is a little embarrassing, but I just I've got
49:16
Speaker 1: to take care of myself, Like not dying of pete
49:19
Speaker 1: stroke is much better than you know, playing on to
49:23
Speaker 1: not be embarrassed. I mean, that's come on, because you
49:25
Speaker 1: know what's really embarrassing is dropping dead. Of course it is.
49:29
Speaker 1: And then it would think about how it would affect me, chuck,
49:33
Speaker 1: I would have to explain it to all of our listeners. Man. Uh.
49:38
Speaker 1: It took me a long time to cool down. Like
49:42
Speaker 1: I went in the icy, coldest clubhouse I've ever been
49:44
Speaker 1: in and it was just pounding water and it took
49:48
Speaker 1: me fifteen minutes to feel normal. And then I took
49:52
Speaker 1: a cold shower upstairs in the clubhouse. In the clubhouse
49:56
Speaker 1: and the bought a new shirt in the clubhouse nice
50:00
Speaker 1: and um, and then came back out and I was like,
50:03
Speaker 1: I felt normal again. But it took a half hour.
50:05
Speaker 1: There there's your answer. That's why it's an all walking course,
50:08
Speaker 1: because they want to move those replacement shirts unsuspectingly eive. Wow. Well,
50:17
Speaker 1: I'm glad you made it, buddy, and you did the
50:19
Speaker 1: right thing. And I hope everybody learns a lesson from you.
50:21
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's embarrassing. We're talking about your
50:24
Speaker 1: life and your health here. You just go cool off,
50:27
Speaker 1: or you stopped playing, or you just don't gotta do
50:30
Speaker 1: it like you gotta look out for yourself everybody. Yeah,
50:32
Speaker 1: and it's just dumb golf. Yeah, who cares? Okay, Uh,
50:37
Speaker 1: you got anything more on heat heat waves? Nope? Well,
50:41
Speaker 1: if you want to know some more stuff about saving
50:43
Speaker 1: your took us from heat stroke and stuff again, go
50:46
Speaker 1: listen to our Desert Survival episode. And since I said that,
50:50
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this Merchant's
50:56
Speaker 1: house museum. This from the Embalming episode. Hey, guys, been
51:00
Speaker 1: listening since you started when I was in high school.
51:04
Speaker 1: You've been a real comfort more than ten years and
51:06
Speaker 1: You've kept me company, distracted me, and made me laugh.
51:09
Speaker 1: I'm emailing you because Josh mentioned the Merchant's House Museum
51:12
Speaker 1: in the Embalming episode. I work at the Merchant's House
51:16
Speaker 1: and it was so cool to hear you guys mentioned
51:17
Speaker 1: the museum. I'm impressed Josh even remembered Seabury Treadwell's name.
51:24
Speaker 1: It's a great small museum in the Greenwich Village East
51:26
Speaker 1: Village area that most New Yorkers and tourists don't even
51:29
Speaker 1: know about. I wanted to see if you could plug
51:31
Speaker 1: the MHM a bit because for the last ten years
51:34
Speaker 1: has been fighting a real estate developer who wants to
51:37
Speaker 1: do construction on the site next to the house, and
51:41
Speaker 1: now it would endanger the hundred and eighty nine year
51:43
Speaker 1: old building. Enforced UH force it to close temporarily, if
51:47
Speaker 1: not permanently. Our small staff are always looking for more visitors, volunteers,
51:52
Speaker 1: and donors interested in saving the landmark. Thank you for
51:55
Speaker 1: mentioning the Merchant's House Museum. And this is from Lizzie
51:58
Speaker 1: in Deck UH. She her and Lizzie and everyone else
52:02
Speaker 1: out there doing the work at the Merchant's House Museum.
52:05
Speaker 1: Thank you, And if you go to New York City.
52:07
Speaker 1: Go visit the Merchant's House Museum. If you can't go,
52:10
Speaker 1: maybe go in line and make a donation. Yeah, nicely done, Chuck,
52:13
Speaker 1: Thanks again for writing in Lizzie. That was good stuff.
52:16
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did. Um and who could ever forget
52:19
Speaker 1: Sea Barry Treadwell's name, Come on, great name Well. If
52:23
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us like Lizzie
52:24
Speaker 1: did and help you fight off a real estate developer
52:28
Speaker 1: who wants to ruin your museum or historical location, we
52:32
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. You can send us an
52:34
Speaker 1: email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
52:41
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
52:43
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