Speaker 1: Oh boy, it is behind the It Happened Could Here?
Speaker 1: I'm Evans, Robert podcast song. Hello. Who else is on
Speaker 1: the call? What are we doing? Where are we It's
Speaker 1: it's it's me. Uh, it's Christopher Wong. I'm gonna talk
Speaker 1: a lot this episode. There's also other people here. You are. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get into that, I should note that we
Speaker 1: were all just looking at the latest episode of podcast Magazine,
Speaker 1: which of course we all read regularly, as I do
Speaker 1: like that to describe you as uh uh, they describe
Speaker 1: you in a few funny ways. Actually, yes they do.
Speaker 1: It's a list of the most powerful people in podcasting. Um,
Speaker 1: of course got me obviously all the great On page
Speaker 1: forty seven we have Robert Evans, who and they do
Speaker 1: say that he has also undertaken an ambitious daily series
Speaker 1: called It Could Happen Here that takes us on some
Speaker 1: of the weightiest issues and problems facing policymakers. I will
Speaker 1: say this, if you are a policy maker and you
Speaker 1: have ever taken a policy suggestion from us, you have
Speaker 1: a legal obligation to like light your own office on
Speaker 1: fire with a molotov. I do like that. Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: don't listen to Chris do it policymakers. I do like that.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans is right above the serial creators, So that's
Speaker 1: that is I'm above Trevor Noah. I mean, I don't.
Speaker 1: I literally don't think it's like it listed, because there
Speaker 1: is no way in in the list. Ben Shapiro is
Speaker 1: above Joe Rogan, and that's just not not accurate to
Speaker 1: the to the to the to the way the industry functions.
Speaker 1: But it's a very silly listening. It's been fun reading
Speaker 1: through our latest tissue of our favorite of our favorite
Speaker 1: podcast magazine, podcast Magazine made by podcast News Daily, where
Speaker 1: you can get all your news about podcasts. The thing
Speaker 1: that I totally knew about for for I've known about
Speaker 1: this for clearly for longer than fifteen minutes. Actually that's
Speaker 1: that's not true. I've known about it for longer than
Speaker 1: eight minutes. Maybe twelve. Yeah, m hmm. It's an amazing photo.
Speaker 1: Was happy to get I was it. Was happy. Was
Speaker 1: happy to get in some fine reading today. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: what's what's what's this? What's our episode actually about? That's
Speaker 1: a great question. It's a podcast power rating episode. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're We're I don't even have any order to go
Speaker 1: with that. No. The thing, the thing the episode is
Speaker 1: actually about is heat waves, and very specifically a heat
Speaker 1: wave in China that has been going on for Why
Speaker 1: this is day seven as we're recording, this is day
Speaker 1: seventy two. I think by by the time Let's Go
Speaker 1: Out goes out, it will probably be like day seventy four. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is and and incomparable heat wave. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read this from Axios. The extreme heat and drought
Speaker 1: that has been vost roasting a vast swath of southern
Speaker 1: China for at least seventy days straight has no parallel
Speaker 1: and modern record keeping in China or anywhere else around
Speaker 1: the world for that matter. Now, okay, so that sounds bad, right,
Speaker 1: but it's actually worse than that, because okay, so if
Speaker 1: if if if you were to read that, you you
Speaker 1: might believe that this heat wave is just affecting southern China,
Speaker 1: and that's like not true. It's also affecting northern China.
Speaker 1: It is affecting like most of China. It's like affecting
Speaker 1: almost like most people alive is nine million people, which
Speaker 1: is like quick question, is that a lot? So okay,
Speaker 1: so if if if you rank all the countries in
Speaker 1: the world, right, the people affected by this heat wave
Speaker 1: would be the third largest country in the world, only
Speaker 1: behind in India. Okay, okay, so that's that's several people.
Speaker 1: It's it's fun, is it? More people than the British
Speaker 1: people who have been logging on to post about it
Speaker 1: being like five degrees and them like, I do love.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's keeping me alive during this
Speaker 1: ugly summer is like all of the photos of British
Speaker 1: people just getting as red as possible because they think
Speaker 1: the tanning needs burning of your body. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me to explain how difficult it was for me to
Speaker 1: comprehend that in California they won't serve you if you
Speaker 1: have your shirt off, because it is a national tradition
Speaker 1: in Britain to take off your shirt and get as
Speaker 1: much some known as possipital or if you're getting into
Speaker 1: a fist fight as well. Well. The number of folks
Speaker 1: pull their shirts off and fights in London. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's part of a natural heritage for many. It's it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful country. But please continue, Chris, Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: so you know, to get a sense of like the
Speaker 1: stakes of this, right, so okay, and like they just
Speaker 1: just the sheer scale of this, because people is an
Speaker 1: amount of people that like, we like is incomprehensible. You
Speaker 1: think that's a number that's too large. So okay, Sichuan Province, right,
Speaker 1: this is this is one province that is being affected
Speaker 1: by this. This province has eighty three million people in it.
Speaker 1: This is the entire combined population of California, Texas, Indiana,
Speaker 1: and New York City. Um, here's here's in France twenty
Speaker 1: four about what's happening here. Since July this year, the
Speaker 1: province has faced the most extreme high temperatures, the lowest
Speaker 1: rainfall in the corresponding period in history, and the highest
Speaker 1: power load in history. Local authorities said, So, it is
Speaker 1: hotter than it has ever been. It is drier than
Speaker 1: it has ever been except and and this is the
Speaker 1: fun part. This is the similar similar happening in Texas.
Speaker 1: And I think, yeah, well, I'm texts probably the best
Speaker 1: example this. Okay. So it's really really, really unbelievably dry,
Speaker 1: except for when there's giant flash floods and they've killed
Speaker 1: twenty two people already have to have died from the
Speaker 1: flash floods um the different province, but yeah, it is
Speaker 1: unbelievably bleak um. One of the big things that's happening
Speaker 1: is that the Yanksy River is like the lowest anyone
Speaker 1: has ever seen it. Who's like, anyone alive has ever
Speaker 1: seen it. It's the lowest we have recorded measurements of
Speaker 1: because like, and this is everything is happening here, like
Speaker 1: there is no record of it ever being this bad.
Speaker 1: And this is a real problem because particularly in sich One,
Speaker 1: because of this, province's power is drawn from hydro electric
Speaker 1: and you know, it turns out it's it's really bad
Speaker 1: if the rivers that you are relying on for your
Speaker 1: hydro electric power are basically drying up. And like like
Speaker 1: there's there's pictures of like like you can go find
Speaker 1: pictures of this that there are pictures of the Yanksty
Speaker 1: that like it looks like a riverbed on Mars, Like
Speaker 1: it is just just completely dry, like it's like dry
Speaker 1: ragged stuff. It's really Again, this is just to kind
Speaker 1: of bring out how worldwide this problem is. We're seeing
Speaker 1: pieces of this everywhere else, right Like Texas, which is
Speaker 1: also in a horrible drought, has been having flash floods
Speaker 1: that have been disastrous recently because when it's been super
Speaker 1: dry for a while and you have these these heavy rains,
Speaker 1: it's it's a huge fucking problem. And you've got riverbeds
Speaker 1: drying up all across the Southwest and things like Lake
Speaker 1: Mead getting low enough that hydro electric power isn't going
Speaker 1: to be reliable in a huge chunk about like the
Speaker 1: the again, because it's important not to distract from like
Speaker 1: what's happening in China, but because it's important, like this
Speaker 1: is this is everybody, This is everybody, yes in India
Speaker 1: all over yeah yeah, and and you know, okay, so
Speaker 1: the seat wave in China, like there's been very very
Speaker 1: little English coverage of it, and the thing everyone focuses
Speaker 1: on is the fact that like the power out ofgy well,
Speaker 1: the the reduced ability to generate power and the fact
Speaker 1: that everyone has to turn on the air conditions so
Speaker 1: not like literally die is you know, it's wreaking havoc
Speaker 1: on China set of productive capacity since such one has
Speaker 1: like there there there's an enormous like industrial base there
Speaker 1: that you know, produce stuff from everything from like Tesla
Speaker 1: to apple. And this is what the sort of the
Speaker 1: anglephone media cares about, right, like everything that almost everything
Speaker 1: written about the heat wave is about this effect on
Speaker 1: like supply chain disruption, disruption to like semi conduct your
Speaker 1: production and like batteries for electronics, on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I do not give a shit about this, um
Speaker 1: And the reason I don't give a shit about this
Speaker 1: is because the actual human impact of this is just
Speaker 1: sort of unfathomable, and the media outlets we're talking about
Speaker 1: it like don't seem to be paying attention to it
Speaker 1: at all. Um So, while I was originally okay, so
Speaker 1: uh when I when I was originally writing part of
Speaker 1: this episode, I went and like looked back at weather
Speaker 1: data for Shanghai, and so okay, when I was running
Speaker 1: this on August, that day was a hundred and three
Speaker 1: in Shanghai, like two weeks before that, it was a
Speaker 1: hundred and eleven. And I found out that from July
Speaker 1: to August, the like the high temperature, like the daily
Speaker 1: high temperature like did not go below a hundred. On
Speaker 1: the one it finally rained and that dropped the temperature
Speaker 1: to merely four. I think either tomorrow today or tomorrow,
Speaker 1: I think it will go below ninety. This is at
Speaker 1: now this is this is this is this is the
Speaker 1: temperature of the day. But after you in the night
Speaker 1: aren't going below like seventy either, then a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of times are the eighties or nineties. And and
Speaker 1: that the temperature at night does just for people who
Speaker 1: are not aware of like heat. One of the things
Speaker 1: that's most important for like the survivability of a heat
Speaker 1: wave is whether or not it gets cool at night,
Speaker 1: because you can survive pretty hot temperatures during the day
Speaker 1: if you were able to cool your body down at night.
Speaker 1: It's one of the like one of the saving graces
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest end during its heat waves. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this is this is a real like so Chunking,
Speaker 1: which is an enormous city. It has nine million people
Speaker 1: like regularly in the city. It's Chunking. The city is
Speaker 1: also the municipal like government there, so there's a whole
Speaker 1: sort of complicated thing there. But like the municipality of
Speaker 1: Chunking is thirty two million people in it. Uh. They
Speaker 1: had a night I a couple I think a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago that was ninety four point eight degrees
Speaker 1: and which is again like that is a night that
Speaker 1: is significantly hotter than the average summer day. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I want to go back to Shanghai
Speaker 1: for just like a second, because like, Shanghai, I looked this,
Speaker 1: I I looked this up. Shanghai has not had a
Speaker 1: day where the high has been below eighty nine degrees
Speaker 1: for two consecutive days since mid June. It has been
Speaker 1: over ninety degrees every single day, like with without two
Speaker 1: days back to back. It wasn't that hot since mid June.
Speaker 1: Um and you know, okay, so like the theft, this
Speaker 1: is having enormous effects. One of the big ones, the
Speaker 1: most noticeable ones, is lie Basically like any excess power
Speaker 1: usage that a city can have is just getting shut off.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of uh, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff where like businesses aren't allowed to open before
Speaker 1: like four pm because it's literally just too hot and
Speaker 1: you can't deal with electricity load and yeah, like and
Speaker 1: you know the other the other problem here again it's
Speaker 1: like it's not cooling off at night. And if it's
Speaker 1: not cooling off at night, yeah like that this is
Speaker 1: this is the thing that kills people, um and so well,
Speaker 1: the one of the things I want to talk about
Speaker 1: this is just like looking at this, looking at what
Speaker 1: this looks like on like a very very granular individual level,
Speaker 1: because this stuff also just sort of gets ignored. Um,
Speaker 1: there is a really horrible story in six Tone, which
Speaker 1: is like it's hard to describe them. So six Tone
Speaker 1: is a state media outlet, but they're like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess you consider them like they're they're like the
Speaker 1: left wing state media outlet, which means that like they
Speaker 1: have somewhat more like editorial independence than like something like
Speaker 1: China Daily or like a lot of the other state
Speaker 1: when they and they like they criticize the government a
Speaker 1: lot more than uh, most of the sort of state
Speaker 1: run outlets. And they did this story about a migrant
Speaker 1: worker who was working at a freight depot about like
Speaker 1: he's this is this is depots about like two and
Speaker 1: a half hours outside of Shanghai, and Okay, so he's
Speaker 1: he's working and it is you know, it is it
Speaker 1: is unbelievably hot. I think I think the last day
Speaker 1: that he's working here, it's a hundred and four degrees
Speaker 1: and that night it only cooled off to eight four.
Speaker 1: Here's from six Tone about sort of just the conditions
Speaker 1: that people are working in here on the hottest days,
Speaker 1: the temper side of the carriages is at least fifty
Speaker 1: degrees celsius, which is a hundred and twenty two degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: Says you. He had Dong, a worker from Drunk c
Speaker 1: and other Inland province. It feels like you're on fire
Speaker 1: standing here. Around noon, his employer, an outsourcing agency, hands
Speaker 1: out heat stroke profession drugs, which he takes twice a day.
Speaker 1: At the freight depot. Managers sit in air condition rooms,
Speaker 1: but workers like him rest under trees. The office is
Speaker 1: not for us, you says, now, okay. In theory, under
Speaker 1: Chinese law, if it hits a hundred and four degrees
Speaker 1: outdoor work is supposed to immediately stop, and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to move everyone indoors and like give them water and stuff.
Speaker 1: Because it turns out if you're working like a hard
Speaker 1: many or labor job outside and hundred and four, you
Speaker 1: might die. But you know you and you're you're supposed
Speaker 1: to get paid heat breaks and like you know, as
Speaker 1: as anyone who is familiar with, for example, how American
Speaker 1: farm labor works, you know what happens about to happen next? Uh,
Speaker 1: it turns out that, you know, okay, so you can
Speaker 1: take a break, but your employers won't pay you for it,
Speaker 1: because like they don't know who's who, who's gonna at
Speaker 1: who's gonna atually force them to do it. John, who's
Speaker 1: the work of the story is about, you know, is
Speaker 1: extremely poor. His family is poor. He's trying to support
Speaker 1: a family like back home because again he's he's a
Speaker 1: migrant worker, and he you know, he can't he can't
Speaker 1: afford to take a break on his ship. So he
Speaker 1: doesn't die, and so he he literally collapses on the
Speaker 1: job and then gets back up and finishes his work,
Speaker 1: and he tries to cool down by like laying in
Speaker 1: his tiny, young, un air conditioned apartments with like an
Speaker 1: electric fan pointed at his head. And he died on
Speaker 1: a bed that was held up by two broken cinder blocks,
Speaker 1: making maybe four dollars an hour. Yeah, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean, you know, the the thing about this,
Speaker 1: right is so in theory he's working for for a
Speaker 1: state owned company, right, but you know, as as as
Speaker 1: we talked about like a little bit in that the
Speaker 1: sort of quote earlier, he's not actually working for the
Speaker 1: state owned firm what he's working for is one of
Speaker 1: these like labor agencies, which are these like sort of
Speaker 1: contracting things that allow you to actually get a job.
Speaker 1: But you know what what happens is that the state
Speaker 1: owned firms like outsourced of labor to the to these
Speaker 1: contracting firms, and the contracting firms just like pick people
Speaker 1: up and bring him to the side. But this means
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a contract. And the problem is if
Speaker 1: you don't have if you don't have a contract right,
Speaker 1: you can't get any government benefits, you can't get insurance.
Speaker 1: And it turns out this matters because you know China,
Speaker 1: China has like a payout right that they're supposed to
Speaker 1: pay to families when you know, if someone dies in
Speaker 1: the job. But you know, it's almost impossible to collect,
Speaker 1: especially if you don't have a contract. It is it
Speaker 1: is almost impossible to to get this thing. Um And
Speaker 1: you know, like this is this is how like most
Speaker 1: of the Chinese economy works. The Chinese General Trong calculated
Speaker 1: that in funk One, which is one of like China's
Speaker 1: big industrial cities, if companies actually paid out the insurance
Speaker 1: benefits they were legally required to pay out, it would
Speaker 1: cut corporate profit by and bankrupt, like most of the
Speaker 1: company's working here. You know, the entire economy is based
Speaker 1: on this. And Jong's family drives like three d and
Speaker 1: fifty miles to the city where he died and starts
Speaker 1: like harassing government officials and bosses for like literally weeks.
Speaker 1: They are trying to get people to like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: will you pay out the insurance money you're legally required
Speaker 1: to pay us? And they refuse, like the local officials
Speaker 1: like won't even give them like surveillance footage of like
Speaker 1: what like of him on the job dying. And you know,
Speaker 1: after like several weeks of his like four or five weeks,
Speaker 1: their finally able to get a sixth of the money
Speaker 1: they're supposed to get if you die if someone dies
Speaker 1: under sort of like there's they're able to get a
Speaker 1: sixth of the money that you're supposed to get in
Speaker 1: a Chinese law if one of your family embers dies
Speaker 1: in the workplace. And you know, I'm focusing on this
Speaker 1: story because it's one of the few stories that we
Speaker 1: have directly about sort of the sheer magnitude of the
Speaker 1: suffering the heat waves is causing and part of part
Speaker 1: of what's going on here is that we don't know
Speaker 1: what the death told heat wave is. There's there's nothing
Speaker 1: about it, right. You'll see a couple of reports talk
Speaker 1: about like two or three heat related deaths, but it's
Speaker 1: it is literally impossible that there are that few deaths.
Speaker 1: Um there there there was a study in the journal
Speaker 1: Lancet that was looking heat related deaths in China over
Speaker 1: the last thirty years and it showed that like heat
Speaker 1: related deaths have died increased by a factor of four
Speaker 1: since and you know, so there was there was another
Speaker 1: heat wave in China that was like pretty bad in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and they calculated that eight hundred people have
Speaker 1: died from heat related deaths Jesus, and you know, and
Speaker 1: again that that that heat wave, heat wave was pretty bad.
Speaker 1: This heat wave, like it has just utterly destroyed every
Speaker 1: single record that heat waves set, Like it is in
Speaker 1: like its own universe of heat waves. So it has
Speaker 1: killed like probably by the end of this it will
Speaker 1: have killed like tens of thousands of people, yep. And yeah,
Speaker 1: which is really bleak. And you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think like part of the reason also I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about like the specific story is that like
Speaker 1: you know, so the weather itself like is trying to
Speaker 1: get like is enough to kill you, right, But like okay,
Speaker 1: so like this like this kind of heat is survivable
Speaker 1: if like you know, if if if you're in a
Speaker 1: situation where you can be inside and where you can
Speaker 1: be hydrated and stuff like that. But you know, hey,
Speaker 1: capitalism exists. I means you have to keep working during
Speaker 1: this ship and that's just going to keep killing people. UM.
Speaker 1: I wanted to sort of also look at sort of
Speaker 1: some of the historical heat waves to also to get
Speaker 1: a sense of how many people like probably died in
Speaker 1: this one. Um. I think like maybe the most famous
Speaker 1: heat wave like in in my lifetime, well I tell
Speaker 1: this one, I guess was that heat wave in europeousand
Speaker 1: three and that one killed something like seventy people. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of very interesting stuff that we
Speaker 1: learned from this heat wave about what heat waves to you.
Speaker 1: It's sort of in general. The United Nations, like in
Speaker 1: finne mental program like released a report about this, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of really interesting stuff in it. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so the obvious one is that this has a massive
Speaker 1: effect on agriculture, which okay, Yeah, Like you can ask
Speaker 1: a four year old and they will tell you that it.
Speaker 1: I this is bad, and this is happening. This is
Speaker 1: affecting China right now too, because um, this drought is
Speaker 1: hitting like right in the middle of a lot of
Speaker 1: China's bread basket. So yeah, there's all these sort of
Speaker 1: like downstream effects that we'll see later. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the other fun parts about this this is when she
Speaker 1: doesn't three heat wave. I'm just gonna read this quote.
Speaker 1: Massive alpine glaciers decreased by ten pc in two thousand
Speaker 1: three and yeah, okay, so you know what you're seeing here, right,
Speaker 1: is this sort of sickler thing where each each heat wave,
Speaker 1: you know, does things like melt glaciers, right, and that
Speaker 1: makes the next heat wave worse because when when you
Speaker 1: when you lose glacier mass, you're you're you're you're losing
Speaker 1: surface area that reflects light, which increases level of warming.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of you know, this is one
Speaker 1: of the sort of feedback loops that we're we're dealing with. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know another thing that we've been seeing a lot
Speaker 1: in the US had this like pretty badly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess like anyone who lives the specific Northwest like
Speaker 1: understands this. There's just there are just fires constantly because
Speaker 1: it turns out that when it's really hot, things just
Speaker 1: lead on fire. Um. In the in the two thousand
Speaker 1: three one there were twenty five thousand fires and they
Speaker 1: burned something like six fifty thousand head acres of forest.
Speaker 1: And even the places it didn't burn, it causes sort
Speaker 1: of like severe, severe ecological damage to these forests because
Speaker 1: like the they the heat leaves trees, for example, like
Speaker 1: a lot weaker than's supposed to mean. This leads in
Speaker 1: vulnerable to things like plagues, into like into the waves
Speaker 1: of insects and this. You know, like everything that's happening
Speaker 1: here with these heat waves, like we weakens the environments
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be sort of like mitigating the
Speaker 1: effects of climate change. Um So we also like on
Speaker 1: the sort of like human front. We we talked about
Speaker 1: how heat waves can knock out uh, heat waves can
Speaker 1: knock out hydro electric power. It turns out they can
Speaker 1: also knock out nuclear power plants because nuclear power plants
Speaker 1: rely on like dumping their cooling water back into rivers.
Speaker 1: Now there's like there's there's legal limits on how hot
Speaker 1: like the water you can dump into these rivers is
Speaker 1: supposed to be. Because it turns out, you know, if okay,
Speaker 1: if you have a bunch of boiling water into the
Speaker 1: river is gonna kill everything in it. But as the
Speaker 1: sort of cooling process like gets more difficult because the
Speaker 1: water levels are lower, you have to take power plants
Speaker 1: offline because otherwise you're going to just kill everything in
Speaker 1: the river. When you when you're venting your sort of
Speaker 1: exhaust heat and into it got into three. It gets
Speaker 1: bad enough that like a bunch of companies get exemptions
Speaker 1: right there, like okay, it's an emergency, we can turn
Speaker 1: this on. We can like we can vent all this
Speaker 1: hot water back in the rivers. But you know, you
Speaker 1: can only do this so many times before you revocably
Speaker 1: funk up the ecosystem of the river. And again this
Speaker 1: is this is this is the problem. Right like you
Speaker 1: you get you're getting into these feedback loops, You're destroying it.
Speaker 1: You're destroying the ecosystem like you're showing the river ecosystems.
Speaker 1: This also again has problems with like it reduces it's
Speaker 1: it's the river's ability to serve the harbon sink and
Speaker 1: but but it's like, you know, what, what choice do
Speaker 1: you have? Right? Because you're energy the energy consumption heat
Speaker 1: waves massively increases because you need to cool yourself down,
Speaker 1: you need air conditioning, you need things like fans or
Speaker 1: people are going to die, and so like every single
Speaker 1: one of these, like heat waves just sort of spirals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the last thing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: is something that we haven't We talked about this in
Speaker 1: like the very very early episodes of the show, but
Speaker 1: like haven't talked about much sense, which is wet bulb temperature.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, so for for for people who don't
Speaker 1: remember what this is, um, I mean we're talking a
Speaker 1: little bit about it earlier, and that when you can't
Speaker 1: cool down at night, like the big things about a
Speaker 1: wet bulb temperature. But yeah, it's it's more complicated than that. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like I guess the the basics of it is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so your body like cools itself down by sweating, and
Speaker 1: when when the water evaporates off your skin, it cools
Speaker 1: you off, and this is one of the big ways
Speaker 1: that your body sort of keeps your internal temperature under control.
Speaker 1: The problem basically is what if you sweat can't evaporate,
Speaker 1: and that that brings us to what what web bult
Speaker 1: wet bulb temperature is. Here here's NASA quote. Web bulb
Speaker 1: wet bulb temperature is the lowest temperature to which an
Speaker 1: object can cool down when moisture evaporates from it. So
Speaker 1: what is measuring for us is how cool our bodies
Speaker 1: can actually get from sweating. The problem is that at
Speaker 1: a web bulb temperature for about nineties seven degrees fahrenheight,
Speaker 1: your sweatsofts evaporating and you can't cool yourself, and this
Speaker 1: kills you really really fast. Um. Here's NASA again talking
Speaker 1: to Colin Raymonds, who's from Who's I think he just
Speaker 1: climate stuff at the nasag Gepropulsion Laboratory. Once wet bulb
Speaker 1: temperature exceeds thirty five degrees celsius or ninety five degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: no amount of sweating or other adaptive behavior is enough
Speaker 1: to low your body to a safe operating temperature, said Raymond.
Speaker 1: Most of the time it's not a problem because the
Speaker 1: wet bulb temperature is usually five to tend degree celsius
Speaker 1: blow body temperature, even in hot, humid places. But you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a point of no here by the
Speaker 1: way that like the wet bulb wet bowl temperature is
Speaker 1: like not the same thing as regular temperature. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's measuring something like that's different from how hot it is.
Speaker 1: And and it's worth noting that like the current heat waves,
Speaker 1: like they're really bad, but it hasn't really been hitting
Speaker 1: the web bowl temperature hasn't really been hitting the place
Speaker 1: places where they just are absolutely lethal and start killing
Speaker 1: huntreds of thousands of people. But that is going to happen, right,
Speaker 1: even even in sort of like if even even in
Speaker 1: even in the climate models where you know, we we
Speaker 1: keep emissions to like two degrees, right, which which at
Speaker 1: this point is looking like some of the optimistic models
Speaker 1: like this stuff is going to happen in the ex
Speaker 1: thirty fifty years and unless something drastically changed, is like
Speaker 1: we're we're going to watch this happen. We're gonna watch
Speaker 1: country city seperatoris We're going to watch enormous numbers of
Speaker 1: people fall over dead. And yeah, this is um, this
Speaker 1: this is where climate change is heading. And it sucks.
Speaker 1: And the heat waves better that are hitting China. The
Speaker 1: heat waves are hitting India. The heat waves that we've
Speaker 1: seen here are like this is this is as goes
Speaker 1: is going to get. It's just going to keep getting worse.
Speaker 1: I guess I should back up one second and talk
Speaker 1: a bit about the Chinese heat wave, which is it
Speaker 1: like the Chinese seat wave isn't just like just a
Speaker 1: climate change thing. There's other stuff going on here. There's
Speaker 1: there's there's like a very specific like confluence of like
Speaker 1: weather phenomenon like the Indi India and stuff like that
Speaker 1: that like Cohen's had to coincide to make a heat
Speaker 1: wave this bad. But the problem is like that stuff
Speaker 1: is all going to happen again, and you know, so
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna we're gonna get like, yeah, We're we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep getting heat waves like this and yeah, unless
Speaker 1: we do something differently, yeah, I mean we won't. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll twiddle around the edges Um. The bind
Speaker 1: administration snuck some language into the inflation bill that might
Speaker 1: allow the federal government to regulate CEO to still after
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court said they couldn't but maybe not could you, Chris,
Speaker 1: would you why why don't we send a message to
Speaker 1: the people in Shanghai and let him know that that'll
Speaker 1: that'll listen to the podcast. Yeah, policymakers who listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast, UM, I don't know like it. This is
Speaker 1: it's one of those if we were to take if
Speaker 1: all of the policymakers who listened to our show were
Speaker 1: to take all of our advice immediately, um, and we
Speaker 1: were to transition every city away from being vehicle centered
Speaker 1: and like effectively cut our emissions by or more, we
Speaker 1: would still be locked into escalating heat waves like this
Speaker 1: all over the world for the rest of our natural
Speaker 1: lives because of the way the carbon cycle works. Um.
Speaker 1: Not that that wouldn't help in the long run, but
Speaker 1: it would certainly not. Like that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that's so scary about this is we're all girding ourselves
Speaker 1: for the inevitability that this will just become more common
Speaker 1: and more devastating. So true. Um, And for everyone that
Speaker 1: has a hard time breathing, there's always always the hope
Speaker 1: that via geoengineering, we can just pump more pollution into
Speaker 1: the air to reflect more sunlight, which will increase well,
Speaker 1: which of other diseases you know. I watched the first
Speaker 1: seven seconds of the movie snow piercer, and that does
Speaker 1: seem like an idea that would work. It's funny when
Speaker 1: when I was in school, I read like I read
Speaker 1: one of the first papers that was talking about this,
Speaker 1: and like the guy in the paper is like the
Speaker 1: opening of the paper is him literally going, this is
Speaker 1: a bad idea. We should only do this if there's
Speaker 1: literally no other choice. And then also like, this is
Speaker 1: the thing we do for like ten years to buy
Speaker 1: us more time to deal with regular climate change. And
Speaker 1: then as the years have gone on and as nothing
Speaker 1: has happened, you just gotta watch like, well, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a Barack Obama's favorite book, Ministry for the Future, which
Speaker 1: is legitimately very good book. It's just funny that he
Speaker 1: likes it because it absolutely embraces terrorism in different killing politicians.
Speaker 1: It embraces sneaking into the house of oil and gas
Speaker 1: executives and murdering them in the night, as well as
Speaker 1: a wonky carbon crypto fucking investment portfolio. But like, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different ideas that yeah, like like a
Speaker 1: lot of the characters in that book would have killed Obama.
Speaker 1: Like it's yes, it's very like um, but one of
Speaker 1: the things that book deals with. The inciting incident of
Speaker 1: that book is a horrible wet bulb um moment in
Speaker 1: India that kills I think it's millions of people and
Speaker 1: just that like a nightmare disaster. Um. And one of
Speaker 1: the things the Indian government does, as a result, against
Speaker 1: the express wishes of the global community is start like
Speaker 1: essentially like an atmosphere exceeding program in order to mitigate
Speaker 1: how bad the heat waves are. And like there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of consequences to that. And I kind of think
Speaker 1: one of the things that's most realistic about that book
Speaker 1: is as we have more ship like this happen, you
Speaker 1: will have nations on their own carry out climate mitigation
Speaker 1: efforts that could have serious effects on other countries. Because
Speaker 1: any of this stuff you do, like if you if you,
Speaker 1: if you seed clouds in the Southwest or whatever in
Speaker 1: order to increase rain, to raise the level of lake
Speaker 1: mead um, that will like you can't funk with the
Speaker 1: water cycle like that and not have impacts other places. Um.
Speaker 1: And And this is a thing that certainly global law,
Speaker 1: like like the international legal system is not ready to
Speaker 1: deal with. Um And it's certainly something that our media
Speaker 1: ecosystem is not ready to deal with and it it
Speaker 1: it will happen. This is an inevitability in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, one of the things that we do
Speaker 1: want to talk more about is the reaction to this
Speaker 1: type of thing is going to be by capitalist countries
Speaker 1: and like the climate Leviathan model is going to be
Speaker 1: too basically privatize the atmosphere and privatize the sky um
Speaker 1: and different ways that sure, but in pure hate in
Speaker 1: your face their gear. But between all of like the
Speaker 1: corporate like space projects and then stuff with g engineering,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be renting out sections of the atmosphere
Speaker 1: so that people can pump things into uh to for whatever,
Speaker 1: for whatever kind of carbon neutral thing they want to do,
Speaker 1: or pumping ship into the atmosphere here is what got
Speaker 1: us into this problem and it's what's going to get
Speaker 1: us out so true to make money somehow. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny that in the U. S H.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this, but like this
Speaker 1: month which we were recording this in August, there was
Speaker 1: a discussion about how the water was going to be
Speaker 1: used in the Colorado River by the various states that
Speaker 1: I did I did read that yes, very very depressing report.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, yeah. I just it ended with like
Speaker 1: basically each of them chest stumping at each other, a
Speaker 1: big like no funk you. I'll take as much water
Speaker 1: as I want. I'm upstream of you. I think Utah
Speaker 1: were the ones particularly belligerent in that case. But it
Speaker 1: is the opposite of what we need to do. But
Speaker 1: here we are doing it. I was in Utah last
Speaker 1: this month looking at new golf courses being built by
Speaker 1: Fisher towers. Sound of the desert there and it's great.
Speaker 1: There's a fun Okay, So andreas Mom's last book before
Speaker 1: he kind of went off the like weird Nico leninist rails,
Speaker 1: it was called Fossil Capital, and he's a really interesting
Speaker 1: argument that like one of the reasons that we got
Speaker 1: into his mouse in the first place, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons like country companies started adopting Cole was that even
Speaker 1: though coal was less efficient as like a source of
Speaker 1: electricity than having like water mills water like having a
Speaker 1: succession of water mills going down the same river requires
Speaker 1: a bunch of different corporations to like coordinate with each other,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to do that. And because sort
Speaker 1: of like the laws around who controls rivers is really
Speaker 1: sort of unclear, like they were just like not screwed
Speaker 1: this where it's gonna use coal even though it's worse.
Speaker 1: And the fun part about this is now we get
Speaker 1: to get this again with like river law, where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh hey, it turns out that capitalists and capitalist states
Speaker 1: are just utterly incapable of like sharing resources with each other,
Speaker 1: and they're just gonna try to section off increasingly large
Speaker 1: parts of it, which is going to go increasingly badly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like one of the things you're the
Speaker 1: failure to be able to imagine anything that exists outside
Speaker 1: of a profit and loss kind of mentality. Um is
Speaker 1: one of the major problems that we have like all
Speaker 1: over with this, like there's right now. One of the
Speaker 1: big stories coming out of the UK is that as
Speaker 1: a result of the war in Ukraine and gas prices,
Speaker 1: the cost of heating has risen fucking massively. This is
Speaker 1: a problem for all of Europe UM and a lot
Speaker 1: of families in the UK are looking at the numbers.
Speaker 1: I've seen any like four thousand and even six seven
Speaker 1: thousand pounds to heat their houses during the winter. Which
Speaker 1: is like ten to fifteen thousand real dollars. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of money, um, and it's substantially an excess of
Speaker 1: of what they have been paying in the past. And
Speaker 1: it's like that is enough. I mean, imagine yourself how
Speaker 1: many people live. I mean, I guess it's a small
Speaker 1: fraction of people listening who could afford an extra ten
Speaker 1: to twelve thousand dollars in builds this winter and not
Speaker 1: have it completely fucked their lives up. So obviously people
Speaker 1: cannot a for their heating um this winter. And like,
Speaker 1: if you can't pay a bill, you're not going to
Speaker 1: pay a bill, right, That's one of the laws of
Speaker 1: the Iron laws of finance. Bills that can't be paid
Speaker 1: won't be paid. So the state is coming in, but
Speaker 1: the state is not. Again, these companies, basically all of
Speaker 1: these companies are would be essentially insolvent, like if things
Speaker 1: were allowed to proceed naturally, So the government's going to
Speaker 1: have to do something. But the thing the government isn't
Speaker 1: going to do is like actually nationalize any of these
Speaker 1: heating companies. It's it's just going to like pump more
Speaker 1: tax anyway. It's it's it's it's the same thing. It's
Speaker 1: a failure to kind of imagine anything outside of this.
Speaker 1: Well maybe if capitalism has broken down around this issue,
Speaker 1: this isn't an issue that should continue to be in
Speaker 1: the hands of corporations. Yeah, well, and but the fun
Speaker 1: part about this too is that like okay, it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: well okay, well nationalize this and that will save us.
Speaker 1: And then you look at like what do act what
Speaker 1: do most of the world's nationally owned corporations look like?
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, okay, so the government owns it
Speaker 1: the stock, but then it functions actually like a normal company.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying like the solution is not Sorry James,
Speaker 1: you're you're the actual Britain in this room. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny because in Britain people are living on
Speaker 1: state pensions or a certain other like state programs, state
Speaker 1: disability and stuff. Get a winter fuel allowance normally, and
Speaker 1: the winter fuel allowance to schedule to go up like
Speaker 1: like less than a tenth of that that that amount
Speaker 1: that you just said would be the increased in the
Speaker 1: cost of heating, right, And it's still sort of it's
Speaker 1: just so funny to see like in theory Britain has
Speaker 1: several political parties, all of them especially with labor under
Speaker 1: kiss DAMA like a clustered under a neoliberal consensus and
Speaker 1: kiss that like, rather than considering doing anything, they are
Speaker 1: bickering over like how much of a pittance they want
Speaker 1: to throw to poor people. I mean, yes, yeah. It's
Speaker 1: also very funny that Britain did build a desalination plant
Speaker 1: in the Thames Estuary um and forgot to account for
Speaker 1: the fact that due to it being an estuary the
Speaker 1: river coming in and out, the levels of salt in
Speaker 1: the water would change and that would make the decentation
Speaker 1: And it's fucking I think it's bio diesel fueled. It's
Speaker 1: just awesome. It's magnificent. Yeah, we've got great leaders over
Speaker 1: there and we don't need to change. Yeah. No, you
Speaker 1: you you seem to. Whenever I think of countries that
Speaker 1: have their ship together, I think the UK um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to remember that Nazis used bicycles when you're
Speaker 1: considering your options for transport and climate change in the future.
Speaker 1: Deranged British tweets of the day. Yeah, I mean, hey, okay, look,
Speaker 1: look the one the one very dim silver lining is
Speaker 1: that maybe this will cause the British the entire British
Speaker 1: political system to collapse. It never happens like twice a year, right, No,
Speaker 1: but but what collapse? Well, like, okay, here's the thing,
Speaker 1: right if if you have enough people who the government
Speaker 1: is trying to pay their bills, they start throwing Maltov's
Speaker 1: that stuff like this is a it's like this, this
Speaker 1: is actually a pretty reliable like one of the very
Speaker 1: reliable things that gets people to go fight police is
Speaker 1: like you suddenly increased the price of gas that you
Speaker 1: don't need to drive or need to like heat their houses.
Speaker 1: So maybe I don't know, but then British people will
Speaker 1: also be barking for us to send the troops against
Speaker 1: the people who are protesting for the right. Yeah, with dignity.
Speaker 1: It's one thing we love to do. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a fun it's a fun country.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's a fun tree. Oh man, all right,
Speaker 1: well are we are? We? Are we good? Have we
Speaker 1: have we solved this one? For all the policy makers
Speaker 1: who listened to our show, Yeah yeah, hit me up.
Speaker 1: Fucking Lindsay Graham, huge fan of the pod, Lindsay Graham,
Speaker 1: Old yeah, Lindsay Graham's actually just voted to subsidize Molotov
Speaker 1: cocktail production. So thank you, Thank you. Lindsay are are
Speaker 1: based fan of the policy makers who listened to our show.
Speaker 1: He must have been looking at the research. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: It's the only way, it's the only real way to
Speaker 1: stop climate change, to make use of fossil fuels in cocktails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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