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341

It’s Too Hot to Fly Helicopters and That’s Killing People (gizmodo.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Six motorcyclists rode into Death Valley National Park on July 6. Only five came out alive. With temperatures reaching 128 degrees Fahrenheit in California, the cyclists faced extreme heat exposure that killed one and sent another to a local hospital, according to the National Park Service.

When there’s a medical emergency like this, helicopters are typically dispatched to get people to a hospital. However, the extreme heat made it impossible for the helicopters to fly.

The next day, an emergency helicopter pilot in Stanford, California had to cancel a flight because the tarmac near a patient was too hot for him to land. As reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, the pilot said he’d never seen temperatures this bad in his 27-year career.

Extreme heat, as many across the U.S. are experiencing this summer, can cause computer and mechanical systems on board helicopters to overheat and malfunction. But it’s not just a mechanical issue as air pressure is also a factor. Air expands when it’s hot and contracts when it’s cold. As it gets hotter outside, air pressure plummets. The air literally gets thin which means that spinning helicopter blades have less air to cut through and it’s harder for them to achieve lift. That makes it dangerous, and sometimes impossible, to fly.

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 month ago (4 children)

People need to start changing their behavior about this heat. I know this sounds like victim blaming. I know people shouldn't have to change their behavior because we saw global warning coming for 30 years and should have prevented this from happening. But it's happening. You can't go into Death Valley in the summer anymore. You just can't. Please don't put yourself in this position.

It's a tragedy that this death happened. We absolutely need to adapt our emergency services to this heat to try to prevent something like this from happening again. But we also need to change our behaviors so we don't end up in that position in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I know people shouldn’t have to change their behavior

The whole reason we're in this situation is because we refuse to change our behavior.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No, we're in this position because of a failure of leadership. Leaders can unite people behind doing things they don't want to do. It's how rationing was tolerated for years in WWII. But we have an entire political party built around telling people what they want to hear while working against their interests for the wealthy's short term gains. We could have conquered this from the top-down with a good plan and charismatic leaders supporting it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Except we wont elect leadership that will do something. The electorate has been brainwashed by decades of advertisements that have convinced them that they deserve the very best of everything. Any possible leader that would push for a strong solution to climate change wouldn't get the votes and they wouldn't get those corporate "campaign contributions".

We have two entire political parties built around telling people what they want to hear.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Even mild solutions get shouted down. In Canada we have a carbon tax that mostly ends up getting returned to Canadians in the form of a rebate. Reportedly 80% of Canadians receive more from the rebate than they spend on the tax.

The conservative party have managed to politicize the tax and seem poised to win the next election, with "scrap the tax" being a big part of their platform. We have a province literally going rogue and refusing to pay the tax, causing our tax agency to garnish them essentially.

Shit is fucking wild. All over a marginal tax that benefits poor people and punishes the heaviest polluters. People are so fucking stupid and selfish it drives me fucking nuts.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Leaders can unite people behind doing things

It seems to me that people want to make the world worse, because that's what people are doing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"We" is incorrect, it is mostly the rich refusing and sabotaging change,

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It’s the global 1% not just the ultra rich

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Exactly, a middle class American has an enormous carbon foot print compared to a middle class person in the rest of the world.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (5 children)

This is cope. I know too many people who roleplay as environmentalists, but are fully engaged in consumerism. Friends who look at me funny when I insist that we can have the same conversations over discord that we can when I drive an hour to to see them or who think that Biden's Green Deal will be enough. My primary concern for the past 30 years, more time then I've been an adult, has been to reduce my co2 output or make sure that what co2 I do output has been productive. There's a huge disconnect between myself and my supposedly like minded friends that can only be explained my a deep unwillingness to be put in any sort of discomfort. So they cope by telling themselves that they deserve this vacation that requires air travel or ignore the mountain of waste that the average movie production produces or that plastic recycling works and you can drink your Pepsi(tm) if you just put the bottle in the recycling.

If the rich are responsible for all of our problems, we're responsible for letting them be rich.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Man, it's almost like it's called Death Valley for a reason or something

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

You can still ride safely in Mild Bummer Valley.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah but judging by the success of Liquid Death water, there is a certain group of people who are attracted to things with morbid names.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

And behaviour includes food, agriculture, luxuries (like hobbies), etc.

But not gamers, we are doing all the right things already.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I know people shouldn’t have to change their behavior because we saw global warning coming for 30 years and should have prevented this from happening.

no we quite literally do, if we want global warming to not kill our asses faster than our lack of intelligence in a fleeting moment where it mattered, we absolutely do need to change our behaviors.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I never knew that was a thing - crazy.

I don't understand why anyone would think taking a motorcycle ride through 130F temps is a good idea.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It doesn't even sound like a fun idea!
But I hate the heat.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

It's a terrible idea, having been a biker in socal. You'd think ventilated fabric, even a regular t-shirt with air moving on you from your forward motion would cool you..

It doesn't. You're actually adding heat (thermal energy) to your body faster than it can be removed by your sweat glands, the glands cannot output water fast enough to match the thermal energy being injected into you as the hot air passes over your body. You actually need to insulate yourself with a wind blocking jacket, at which point fuck that, stop riding, and wait a few hours.

It's a very odd sensation, but you understand it almost without explanation if you've tried it... So what were these guys thinking, ignoring their body's alarm bells?

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Six motorcyclists rode into Death Valley National Park on July 6. Only five came out alive. With temperatures reaching 128 degrees Fahrenheit in California, the cyclists...

The shorter word for motorcyclists is "bikers." "Cyclists" is a term for people that actually pedal.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (5 children)

“Six motorcyclists rode into Death Valley National Park on July 6. Only five came out alive.”

ffs gizmodo, five out of the six survived. That a bit over 83% as a survival rate.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

It's because "all but one survived" would melt their readers' brains

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

My friends and I don't consider a ride successful unless at least all six of us die

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

You're right about the wording, but I'd say that a four out of five survival rate when it comes to a group of motorcyclists and heat death isn't really great odds.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Sounds like the beginning of a riddle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Same as Russian roulette...

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

why are people riding motorcycles into death valley? Aren't you like, advised to not even step out of your car, or like, stop moving. I'm pretty sure there are recommendations on riding motorcycles out there also.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd consider it a form of elaborate suicide pact.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

yeah no that seems like a fair assessment to me.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, why would you do sports in death valley?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It’s quite a nice place for that sort of thing … in the spring when the highs are 80 or maybe 90 at the very worst…

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

and climate change deniers are probably still at it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

No probably about it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Oh no, what a tragedy, are they saying golfers in the Death Valley have to travel by car like plebs?!

It's only to get to their private jets in an airfield immediately next to it, but the humanity!!

(Not the Devils Golf Course, thats just named that, the actual thing is in the lowermost point, in 'Furnace creek')

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Death Valley is not going to be the only place where this is an issue. It could even be an issue where you live at the height of summer.

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