Anonymous ID: f48e32 June 22, 2022, 4:55 a.m. No.16487818   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7820 >>8020 >>8183 >>8228

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ynm5/scientists-studying-temperature-at-which-humans-spontaneously-die-with-increasing-urgency

 

Scientists Studying Temperature at Which Humans Spontaneously Die With Increasing Urgency

 

"Wet-bulb" conditions are when heat and humidity can cause otherwise healthy humans to overheat and die. They're happening more often than ever.

 

Last week’s historic heatwave saw portions of the Northwest breaking all-time temperature records and gearing up for wildfire risk. The temperatures are now being attributed to an excess of 100 deaths across the region as it gears up for another week of extreme highs.

 

The heat can feel apocalyptic, and scientists are increasingly studying the heat and humidity conditions at which some humans suddenly die, a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common as a result of extreme weather driven by climate change. This is perhaps best illustrated in a study published last year in Science Advances, alarmingly titled "The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance."

 

Originally, conditions like this weren't expected until the mid 21st century, according to climate models. But they are actually already here. In that study, Radley Horton, Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and co-authors surveyed weather station data from across the world, collected between 1979 and 2017, and found over 7,000 instances of so-called "wet bulb" conditions, which can lead to human deaths. Wet bulb temperature is the point at which humidity and heat hit a point where evaporation due to sweat no longer works to cool a person. Most of these wet bulb conditions were concentrated in South Asia, the coastal Middle East, and southwest North America (areas denoted in red and orange on a map Horton and his colleagues created, below).

 

The conditions aren't actually that hard to imagine: Wet bulb conditions occur when relative humidity is above 95 percent and temperatures are at least 88 degrees F, according to the study. The human body, Horton's study found, is essentially unable to withstand wet bulb conditions at all once temperatures hit 95 degrees F. Under these conditions, it's possible for otherwise healthy people to die.

 

“Even if they're in perfect health, even if they're sitting in the shade, even if they're wearing clothes that make it easy in principle to sweat, even if they have an endless supply of water,” Horton said. “If there's enough moisture in the air, it's thermodynamically impossible to prevent the body from overheating.”

 

Horton's research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meaning that the U.S. government has been actively studying the weather conditions at which otherwise healthy humans spontaneously die: "Some locations have already reported combined heat and humidity extremes above humans' survivability limit," a NOAA press release stated. NOAA is also supporting a few projects that further study wet bulb conditions.

 

Sweating is a necessary function for coping with hot days. Once on the surface of the skin, sweat droplets can get hot enough that they turn into a gas and dissolve, eliminating heat and keeping the body’s internal temperature down.

 

The problem is, the atmosphere’s ability to take up moisture is finite; water can only transform into a gaseous state if the air surrounding the body is dry enough to accept it. In overly humid conditions, sweat is less likely to evaporate into the atmosphere than in dry conditions, Horton said. Dry heat, like that of the desert, is typically more comfortable than humid heat for this reason.

 

“We need a differential between the human body and the environment, and if the air is already holding as much moisture as it can, you don't have that gradient,” Horton said. “Your body's not able to get the atmosphere to take that moisture from it.”

 

So, on humid days, the water our bodies emit just stays there, getting hotter and hotter without ever evaporating into a gas. (Think of what happens in a steam room, when your body collects sweat instead of eliminating it, until the heat becomes so overwhelming that you need to step out.)

 

A growing number of other regions are nearing this point: The Southeast US, the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Australia, all denoted by green on the map, are seeing higher daily maximum wet bulb temperatures.

 

Horton believes that, in the short term, reducing exposure to wet bulb temperature will be a matter of behavioral adaptation—simply avoiding these conditions by taking respite in air conditioning, for example. But as severe heat straddles the country and energy grids in Texas, New York and beyond show signs of buckling under the pressure of extreme use, the reliability of AC becomes increasingly uncertain.

 

1

Anonymous ID: f48e32 June 22, 2022, 4:55 a.m. No.16487820   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7868 >>8020 >>8183 >>8228

>>16487818

 

Access to AC is also not guaranteed, Horton notes. Migrant and farm laborers and those living in energy poverty will have a harder time withstanding these conditions by cooling off indoors, he says.

 

Matthew Lewis, director of communications at housing advocacy group California YIMBY, noted in a recent Twitter thread that wet bulb temperatures could soon be a factor at the helm of climate migration.

 

“Many of the places humans currently live on the planet are on their way to being functionally uninhabitable by humans,” he said. “They will have to move.”

 

Lewis urges states and municipalities to prepare for this eventuality: “Depose the NIMBYs in your city government. Defeat the car-stans who deny that all of this is happening,” Lewis wrote.

 

He also urges weather broadcasts to include wet bulb indices in temperature announcements “as a matter of public service,” the way some do air quality and humidity metrics. Horton says “feels like” measurements are the closest many forecasts come to this—but units aren’t standardized across weather stations, and this can create confusion.

 

“The very fact that there isn't one standard that everyone uses, and that most people couldn't explain exactly what these mean suggests that we could do more,” he said.

 

2

Anonymous ID: f48e32 June 22, 2022, 4:58 a.m. No.16487829   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7831 >>8020 >>8183 >>8228

https://brownstone.org/articles/california-plotting-to-punish-medical-dissent/

 

California Plotting to Punish Medical Dissent

 

I will be heading to Sacramento next Monday to testify at a Senate committee hearing on California Assembly Bill 2098. The bill, sponsored by Senator Pan—who has been in Pharma’s back pocket for years and the source of much legislative health policy mischief in my home state—would give the medical board the authority to punish any physicians who challenge the safety and efficacy of covid vaccines.

 

This bill is advanced even as evidence continues to emerge of safety problems with the mRNA shots, including a study this week showing the vaccines lower sperm counts in men.

 

Bummer. I mean, who would have thought? pic.twitter.com/qbDQc86g9d

 

— Aaron Kheriaty, MD (@akheriaty) June 19, 2022

But this proposed measure seeks to enshrine in law “scientific” conclusions which are highly dubious:

 

All three of these statements are demonstrably false:

 

(a) The death count figures cited are grossly overestimated by hospitals failing to distinguish dying from covid vs. dying with covid and the financial incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to overestimate covid deaths;

 

(b) the efficacy of vaccines has declined with time and new variants, so the statistic cited here is no longer true of the vaccines against omicron;

 

(c) the CDC has consistently failed to follow-up on serious safety signals, apart from myocarditis, and the post-marketing surveillance data acquired from our FOIA request showed serious safety issues in the first three months of vaccine rollout.

 

If this bill passes, any physician who raises these or other inconvenient scientific facts or study findings could be disciplined by the medical board, as the text of the bill explains:

 

“It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”

 

The supposed scientific “facts” mentioned in the bill make it clear just what information will be considered “misinformation” under this law. This bill will spell the end of scientific integrity and medical freedom in California. I worry that if it passes, other states could follow suit. As I have said before, California is the tip of the spear.

 

Here is the text of a letter I submitted last week to the committee where the bill is currently being reviewed:

 

13 June 2022

 

To: California Legislators and Committee Members

 

RE: AB 2098: Physicians and Surgeons: Unprofessional Conduct – OPPOSE

 

As a licensed physician in California I strongly oppose the proposed California bill AB 2098 and urge you to vote no and oppose as well.

 

Advances in science and medicine typically occur when doctors and scientists challenge conventional thinking or settled opinion. This is the very nature of scientific progress. Fixating any current medical consensus as “unchallengeable” by physicians will stifle medical and scientific advances and give undue authority to a few gatekeepers who act as guardians of the consensus. As I testified in January at a U.S. Senate panel on Covid policy: “The scientific method suffered [during the pandemic] from a repressive academic and social climate of censorship and silencing of competing perspectives. This projected the false appearance of a scientific consensus—a ‘consensus’ often strongly influenced by economic and political interests.”

 

One need only look at the last two years to see how frequently public health recommendations and consensus thinking about Covid changed from one month to the next with the advent of new information. It was frontline ICU physicians who discovered and spoke out about bad outcomes when patients were prematurely placed on ventilators. This shifted the consensus in the direction of avoiding ventilation as much as possible. Likewise, it was frontline physicians who discovered that placing covid patients face-down in the prone position while they were ventilated could improve outcomes, challenging another consensus. Both of these advances came by way of challenging the way things were currently being done. Other physicians challenged the early consensus, which did not recommend the use of steroids to treat Covid. Eventually, this dissenting opinion gained ground and now represents conventional thinking: corticosteroids for critically ill covid patients are now standard care. Many other examples regarding guidelines on masks, social distancing, and other Covid policies could be cited here.

 

pt 1

Anonymous ID: f48e32 June 22, 2022, 4:59 a.m. No.16487831   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7892 >>8020 >>8183 >>8228

>>16487829

Allowing the free interchange among competing perspectives is absolutely necessary for scientific and medical progress. Good science is characterized by conjecture and refutation, lively deliberation, often fierce debate, and always openness to new data. The censorship of free speech in AB 2098 spells not only the demise of civil liberties and constitutional rights, but the end of the scientific enterprise when it comes to dealing with Covid in CA.

 

Patients will not trust physicians if they believe their physician has been muzzled by the law and cannot speak his or her mind honestly. Patients want to know that if they ask their physician a question, including a question about Covid, they will get their doctor’s honest opinion—regardless of whether they follow that opinion, seek a second opinion, or whatever. Patients will not trust physicians if they know their doctor is simply parroting a consensus judgment that he may or may not agree with or endorse.

 

This bill will not help us to deal with Covid more effectively. Doctors will be punished for practicing medicine according to their best judgment. Informed consent, the foundation of good medical ethics, will be seriously compromised, and the trust necessary for the doctor-patient relationship will be shattered. I strongly urge you and your fellow lawmakers must oppose AB 2098. It will harm not only physicians and medical institutions in California, but even more concerningly, it will harm patients.

 

Sincerely,

 

Aaron Kheriaty, MD

 

pt 2

 

https://twitter.com/akheriaty/status/1538615177095942144

Anonymous ID: f48e32 June 22, 2022, 5 a.m. No.16487837   🗄️.is 🔗kun

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/video/6255836-pge-expands-instant-blackout-program-to-reduce-wildfire-risk-in-some-areas/

 

PG&E Expands Instant Blackout Program To Reduce Wildfire Risk In Some Areas

 

PG&E has been shutting off power to prevent wildfires since 2019, but now it is happening without warning. The utility company is relying on technology to shutoff powerlines in high-fire risk areas, especially when there’s a threat of critical fire weather.

Anonymous ID: f48e32 June 22, 2022, 5:02 a.m. No.16487843   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7875 >>8020 >>8183 >>8228

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/video/6255798-nearly-350k-rainbow-trout-to-be-euthanized-after-bacteria-outbreak/

 

Nearly 350,000 Rainbow Trout To Be Euthanized After Bacteria Outbreak

 

Nearly 350,000 rainbow trout must be euthanized as California wildlife officials battle bacteria outbreaks at two fish hatcheries in the eastern Sierra.