GAIA and MEDIA

 

Canada must return to the Fahrenheit scale

This morning, January 20, 2015, 680New radio announced by 8:00 a.m. that Toronto Public Health had declared an Extreme Cold Weather Alert warning.

 

The high today was forecast as -5 C and the low a -12 C with winds at night creating a wind chill factor of up to -19 C.

 

The on-line Toronto Star today has a critical article attacking Toronto Public Health and the system in general for not declaring a Cold Weather Alert for Monday when a man died overnight at a bus shelter dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. [http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/01/06/how_many_torontonians_does_it_take_to_declare_an_extreme_cold_weather_alert_keenan.html]

 

Last week, as well, 680News radio reported that a Toronto councilor has recommended the city treat temperatures below -10 Celsius as hazardous and activate emergency weather centres and warnings.  

 

680News also ran some ads warning that hypothermia can occur even if the temperature is above 0 Celsius. 

It also reported a study which found that people's body temperature drops when shown a video of cold weather conditions.  An example of the power of mind over body.

And 680News, in its 4 times per hour weather reports, continues to treat temperatures below -5 Celsius as 'dangerously cold’ if wind chill is taken into account.

 

Now I am not a fan of winter cold.  I do not ski or skate and wish every homeless person had access to heated daytime areas and permanent homes, but as someone living in the second warmest part of Canada outside of the Vancouver area, I find the attack on normal Canadian weather disconcerting.

According to the American National Weather Service chart at

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/winter/windchill.shtml,  on a calm, windless day, only below  -50 F (-46 C) can one get frostbite in less than 5 minutes on exposure body parts.  Yes, frostbite can occur in 5 minutes at higher temperatures such as -10 F  (-23.33 C)  but only if you are uncovered in 60 mile per hour winds—but how often do you go out in gale force weather!

Environment Canada’s website ( http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=En&n=d9553ab5-1#extremeCold)  states that for South-central and Southwestern Ontario it does not declare a cold weather alert unless “the temperature or wind chill is expected to reach minus 30°C for at least two hours”.

 

But over the last two years the Extreme Cold Weather Alert threshold used by 680News is no longer the long time standard of a temperature of -15 C (still Toronto’s official criteria) but initially was a wind chill factor of -25 C and since last winter a wind chill of -17 Celsius. 

 

Adding wind chill as a factor, however, has always been questionable because buildings and even street homes minimize or block and eliminate the wind factor.

And if a Toronto councilor has his way, the extreme cold weather trigger would rise to a -10 Celsius -- and be in effect most nights in the GTA from mid-December through January and February!

 

The reality is that Toronto at least is having an unusually mild winter so far: warmer temperatures and only one modest snow storm. 

 

Yes, the homeless and anyone who goes out in summer dress in sub-zero Celsius temperatures for any length of time is at risk, but that is not the norm for the 2.79 million people of Toronto today and the 5.5 million in the GTA  (Greater Toronto Area).

But the mindset – whether a perverse side effect of the belief Global Warming should increase our winter temperatures, self-interest to make weather 'newsworthy' and to get an  audience by exaggeration and hype, or well-meaning advocates for the poor --  feeds into the psychology of cold found in the aforementioned study.

If we are constantly bombarded with weather reports that treat normal or mild winter weather as 'dangerously cold' , our minds will take over and make us actually feel colder – fulfilling the false media message.

 

To defend and protect us from this psychological paranoia, I suggest that Canada officially revert to Fahrenheit from Celsius,  or at least have forecasts give both numbers and ensure we teach Fahrenheit to all school age children.

We switched to Celsius as part of metrication some 40 years ago but the U.S.A. did not and kept the more useful – and psychologically better – Fahrenheit scale.

On the Celsius scale, water freezes at 0 C and boils at 100 C, but on the Fahrenheit scale, that freezing point is 32 F and the boiling point is 212 F.

Consequently our American cousins do not get psychologically upset if the outdoors in winter are even close to 0 F = -17.8 C.   After all, NFL Superbowl playoffs and even the ‘big game’ have been e played outdoors in frigid January weather.

The aptly nicknamed Freezer Bowl (January 1982) was played in the coldest temperature in NFL history in terms of wind chill.  Air temperature was −9 °F (−23 °C), but with a sustained wind of 27 miles per hour (43 km/h), the wind chill was −37 °F or −38 °C.  For The Ice Bowl, the 1967 final, the game-time temperature at Lambeau Field was about −15 °F (−26 °C), with an average wind chill around −36 °F (−38 °C)                  [All figures using the current, revised National Weather Service wind chill index]. (See Wikipedia.)    

Certainly  we often see U.S. and Canadian football games with snow falling and gusty winds and heaters on the side to keep players from hypothermia.

So, maybe the best gift you can give and get at Christmas or Chanukah or Kwanza or Chinese New Year is a Fahrenheit thermometer – and the chance to stay ‘mentally’ warm.