Heat (39 page)
Authors: Bill Streever
I think of those pipes and their innermost beams and all that has come before them, and I try to imagine what might come next, where our understanding might take us, only to remember that no one knows, that none of us can imagine what comes next, that the brightest of physicists were surprised and puzzled by what they found at seven trillion degrees. I think of those pipes and their innermost beams, and what came before them, and what might come next, and a sense of wonder overwhelms me. Those pipes and their innermost beams leave me basking in awe.
How can I say thank you to people who have changed the way I think about the world, the way I see my surroundings, and the way I experience day-to-day life? For that is exactly what happened when I wrote
Heat
. With each page, with each paragraph, and often even with each sentence, I learned to see heat everywhere I looked in ways that I had not previously considered.
Most of the people I talked to in the course of researching
Heat
have no way to know how they impacted my life. To them, I was a writer with whom they spoke for a few hours or a day or a few days. I was a voice on a telephone. I was an e-mail address. And that is often how life works: the greatest impacts result from the smallest deeds.
I contacted Betsy Gallery, a California-based artist, when I heard that she was working on a fire mural. She was one of the first people I interviewed about heat. At that time I did not have a clear idea of how the book would take shape or what might be included or excluded. Despite this, and although she had no way to know who I was, she was immediately helpful and seemed to quickly understand my interest in heat. As I worked on the book, she completed her fire mural, which now hangs at the Santa Barbara County fire headquarters. Although we did not talk frequently after our face-to-face interview in California, I often thought of her working long hours in her studio, converting fire artifacts into fire art, as I worked long hours at my desk, converting words about heat into sentences about heat. The knowledge of our somewhat parallel efforts occasionally offered me solace during the inevitable rough periods that come with writing a book. Also, her explanation of the process of designing and building a mosaic from fire artifacts, in which the placement of any one piece would affect all the other pieces, in which thinking ahead was important but would not replace repeated rearrangements, helped me think about the way in which I arranged and rearranged
Heat
.
Betsy Gallery introduced me to her son, the photographer David Gala, whose house, along with most of his photographs, had burned in a chaparral fire. I was reluctant at first to talk to David about heat. It seemed to me an act of intrusion—an act in which I would gain something from his loss. But he did not see it that way. He drove with me to the remains of his home. He introduced me to neighbors who had also lost homes. He showed me how he shot pictures of fire artifacts, and he showed me a collection of photographs that had escaped the fire, having been stored elsewhere when the house burned. And he was a gracious host to a traveling writer whom he barely knew.
Professor Dar Roberts of the University of California in Santa Barbara took time away from his research and family to teach me about burned landscapes and landscapes that have not yet burned—seemingly the only kind of landscapes in southern California. Despite the financial disarray of the University of California system at the time of my visit, and the resulting uncertainty faced by any academic working in that system, Dar was generous with his time and very patient with what must have seemed to be naive questions.
The firefighter Louis Del La Rosa spent a long day with me in the field, pointing out features that only a seasoned firefighter would see. At Spanish Ranch he guided me across ground that he has toured more than once, patiently explaining what happened there during the fire that ultimately killed four men. He humored my wish to test a fire shelter tent in a parking lot even though I am sure that it resulted in a few raised eyebrows from his colleagues. Before I met Louis, I had great respect for firefighters, and that respect grew with every hour I spent talking to him.
My two firewalking instructors, Matt Carr and Claudia Weber, did not know each other, but they shared their enthusiasm for fire and, by extension, for
Heat
. I did not meet Matt Carr in person but hope to do so in the future, perhaps over hot coals. Nevertheless his willingness to spend hours in conversation over the telephone contributed to my understanding of the firewalking movement, the act of firewalking itself, and what I came to think of as the culture of firewalking. The culture of firewalking can be described in part as one of enthusiasm. Firewalkers are enthusiastic about firewalking, but this enthusiasm spills over into all other aspects of life as well. And it is not a selfish enthusiasm but an enthusiasm for all people and for the power of humans to realize that they are capable of more than they might believe. I saw this same enthusiasm in Claudia, whom I did have the pleasure of meeting when she led me through my first fire walk. Claudia was generous of her time both over the telephone and in person, despite the distraction of managing a group of thirty-four firewalking students in the midst of a pouring rain. Her merging of spirituality with firewalking inspired my own thinking about firewalking and allowed me to see past my training as a scientist to enjoy the experience of firewalking as a human being. I was also quite moved by the obvious impact her efforts had on many of the firewalkers present the night of our walk in central California.
Matt Patrick of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory corrected misconceptions that I had about the workings of volcanoes. Like many young scientists, he was clearly overworked but was still happy to take time away from his computer and his instruments to talk about volcanoes. He telephoned one evening, after we had been talking most of the afternoon, concerned that I might slip past the warning signs to get a close-up view of the Kilauea caldera. I found his concern for my safety endearing, and in fact when he telephoned he interrupted a discussion I was having with my companion in which we were weighing the pros and cons of exactly the thing he had called to warn us against. Importantly, he also taught me to walk across newly formed and still-hot ground, something I would never have done without his lead, but something I still value as one of the finest of many fine experiences I enjoyed while researching
Heat
.
Vern Miller and Kip Knutson hosted my visit to the Tesoro oil refinery in Nikiski. Without Tesoro’s hospitality, I could not have presented a firsthand explanation of the refining process. Vern’s knowledge of refining and his enthusiasm for the topic were impressive. Kip’s view regarding the importance of transparency was refreshing and not at all in keeping with the reputation of the oil and gas industry.
The physicist Barbara Jacek, with the help of Karen McNulty Walsh from the Brookhaven Media and Communications Office, understood why I needed to see the inner workings of the Brookhaven collider and worked hard to help me understand concepts that remain, for me, quite difficult. The visit offered scheduling challenges that were overcome by Barbara’s patience and Karen’s persistence. Once at Brookhaven, as I talked to Barbara, it became apparent to me that she was searching for the common ground on which we could communicate effectively. Scientists can have a tendency to talk over the heads of nonspecialists or, alternatively, to oversimplify and talk down to nonspecialists, but Barbara found the “just right” Goldilocks zone that stretched my thinking but did not break it. And she did not focus the conversation on her own work and efforts but instead helped me to see that the work at Brookhaven really depends on thousands of people, all working together toward interrelated goals.
Many thanks are due, too, to the entire staff of Brookhaven’s Media and Communications Office. Their outreach program includes their website, their frequent publications in the popular press, and their events for visitors. It is one of the finest scientific outreach programs I have ever encountered.
Antonella D’Antoni, who works for the Italian publisher of
Cold
, organized my trip to Rome and was considerate enough to allow me the time I needed to walk in the footsteps of Pliny the Elder and to visit the Vatican in search of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
John Parsley, my editor at Little, Brown, consistently encouraged me, from our initial conversations about
Heat
, when he offered valuable guidance on how I might structure the book, to the finalization of the manuscript, when he diplomatically offered editorial suggestions. There is an art to working effectively with writers, and John is an artist. Although I cannot pretend to understand the inner workings of the publishing business, I owe gratitude to many others at Little, Brown, including Elizabeth Garriga, Sarah Murphy, Monica Shah, William Boggess, and Peggy Freudenthal.
My agent, Elizabeth Wales, has offered encouragement and advice since I first contacted her about my last book,
Cold
, and throughout the process of writing
Heat
. Writing is about much more than just writing, and an advocate who understands the publishing business is a necessary part of a successful book.
Elizabeth
’s ongoing efforts to educate me and her other writers have not gone unnoticed.
Several people read and commented on drafts or parts of
Heat
, including Frank Baker, Lisanne Aerts (my companion and wife), Ishmael Streever (my son), Dennis Haarsagar, Don Rearden, William G. Henry, and Kathryn Temple. Without their feedback,
Heat
would not be the book that it has become.
I talked to many, many others who influenced my work on
Heat
. Some of the encounters were in passing, such as my brief conversation with a train conductor in New York, an impromptu lecture offered by a man running the steam engine at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and shared memories from a Las Vegas man who had been present for a number of bomb tests in Nevada. I am always amazed by people who are willing to talk to strangers about strange ideas, and I cannot help being grateful to people willing to talk to a writer whom they have never met about a book on a topic such as heat. I often felt as if I were coming across as something of an eccentric, but almost without exception, people took my questions seriously and steered me toward their own favorite stories of high temperatures. Without this sort of openness, a book like
Heat
would be far narrower and less imaginative.
Last, I have to acknowledge the many writers who came before me and whose words influenced this book. There are millions of words on the topic of heat, written by thousands of writers, some famous and others unknown, some still alive and writing and others long dead but not silent. The urge to write, to share ideas with unknown readers, is a valuable human trait and one that I hope lasts throughout whatever remains of the future of humankind.
With a Few References, Definitions, Clarifications,
and Suggested Readings
The Chicago firefighter’s description of melting skin comes from Steve Delsohn,
The Fire Inside: Firefighters Talk about Their Lives
(New York: HarperCollins, 1996). In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Delsohn offers a collection of firsthand accounts of what it is to be a firefighter, from making it through a very tough entrance examination to saving lives to being badly burned. The interviews hammer home three striking points: firefighters are hardworking blue-collar men and women doing a dirty and demanding job, firefighters are undeniably heroes, and firefighters are just plain interesting characters.
Antoine Lavoisier is also credited with discovering that combustion consumes oxygen. To some working at the time of Lavoisier, cold was also believed to be a subtle fluid, which they called “frigoric,” but others believed that cold was nothing more than the absence of caloric. Lavoisier’s ideas were described in “Réflexions sur le phlogistique,”
Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences
, 1783, 505–38; reprinted in
Oeuvres de Lavoisier
, vol. 2, trans. M. P. Crosland (1864), 640.
Michael Faraday’s 1860 lecture series
The Chemical History of a Candle
has been reprinted many times and remains widely available. For example, the lectures can be found in vol. 30 of
The Harvard Classics
, edited by Charles Eliot. Faraday is widely admired as one of history’s great experimentalists. Albert Einstein kept a photograph of Faraday, presumably to inspire Einstein’s own thinking and dedication to knowledge. Like Einstein, Faraday believed in the value of explaining science to nonspecialists. Faraday expressed the following belief in his candle lectures: “Though our subject be so great, and our intention that of treating it honestly, seriously, and philosophically, yet I mean to pass away from all those who are seniors among us. I claim the privilege of speaking to juveniles as a juvenile myself.…Though I stand here with the knowledge of having the words I utter given to the world, yet that shall not deter me from speaking in the same familiar way to those whom I esteem nearest to me on this occasion.”
William Herschel discovered infrared light in 1800, more than a half century before Faraday’s candle lectures. Herschel projected sunlight through a prism, breaking it into a rainbow of its constituent colors and then measuring the temperature of each color, finding the highest temperatures in the red band. He set his thermometer in the colorless zone just beyond the red band and found it to be hotter still.
Harry Houdini’s instructions about fire cages and many other tricks come from his
The Miracle Mongers and Their Methods
(New York: Dutton, 1920). The book is widely available in many editions, including a Project Gutenberg edition online. The lengthy subtitle found with some editions says it all:
A Complete Exposé of the Modus Operandi of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc
. In describing Houdini as a pyromaniac, I do not mean to imply that he burned down buildings or forests, or that he was sexually excited by fires, but merely that he was obsessed with fires and often felt compelled to do things with fire that no normal person would attempt. Whether this was an unhealthy obsession or an admirable quality I leave to the reader’s judgment.
The Veritas Society promotes meditation, as well as what it refers to as “the metaphysical arts,” including Psi, Magick, and Body Energy. I am not a member, but I have nothing but the best of wishes for people whose viewpoints differ from my own.
The caloric theory of heat (heat as a subtle fluid) and the mechanical view of heat (heat as an expression of molecular motion) were both discussed before Faraday and Tyndall, but the mechanical theory of heat did not completely replace the caloric theory until after Faraday’s death. John Tyndall’s
Heat: A Mode of Motion
(New York: D. Appleton), is available in both paper and electronic forms. My source throughout this book is the fourth edition, first published in 1875. The first edition was published in 1863.
Constantin Yaglou and David Minard were the doctors whose work eventually led to the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature as a measure of heat impact on humans. Their report was titled “Prevention of Heat Casualties at Marine Corps Training Centers” (Washington, D.C.: Office of Naval Research, Physiology Branch, 1956). The report comes with a cover sheet that says, in large bold font, at both the top and the bottom of the page, “UNCLASSIFIED.” The yellow and red flag condition descriptions come directly from their report. The black flag condition description comes from Marine Corps Order 6200.1E W/CH 1, dated June 6, 2002.
The Wet Bulb Globe Temperature is typically measured as WBGT = 0.7T
w
+ 0.2T
g
+ 0.1T
d
, where T
w
is the wet-bulb temperature, which captures the cooling effect of evaporation, T
g
is the globe thermometer temperature, or the black globe thermometer temperature, which captures heat from exposure to the sun, and T
d
is the dry-bulb temperature, or air temperature in the shade. T
w
decreases in dry air and in a breeze, and T
g
decreases under overcast skies.
Claude Piantadosi offers good technical summaries of dehydration and heatstroke in
The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
The fatty sugars that are released from the intestine as a response to overheating are lipopolysaccharides, or lipoglycans. They are commonly found in Gram-negative bacteria. Once in the blood, they act as toxins and trigger an immune response, which can include a fever.
In their article “Heat Stroke,”
New England Journal of Medicine
346 (2002): 1978–88, Abderrezak Bouchama and James Knochel define heatstroke as “a form of hyperthermia associated with a systemic inflammatory response leading to a syndrome of multi-organ dysfunction, in which encephalopathy predominates.”
Casual exploration of abandoned mineshafts in Death Valley—or, for that matter, anywhere—is not recommended. Possible dangers include cave-ins, bad air (concentrations of methane, carbon dioxide, or other gases), falls down vertical shafts, presence of old and unstable explosives, and rattlesnakes. While the borax shafts that I found in Death Valley did not seem dangerous, warning signs and discussions with rangers suggest that it is possible and even easy to find shafts that pose real risks.
Lavoisier summarized his thoughts about respiration in “Experiments on Animal Respiration and the Changes Occurring When Air Passes through the Lungs,” read to the Académie des Sciences in 1777.
Antoine Lavoisier’s comments about sweat come from vol. 2 of
Oeuvres de Lavoisier
, a collection of Lavoisier’s correspondence, originally published in 1864 and later translated by M. P. Crosland. The collection is widely available electronically.
W. J. McGee’s “Desert Thirst as Disease,”
Interstate Medical Journal
8, no. 3 (March 1906), describes Pablo Valencia’s ordeal. The paper is fascinating not only for its content but also for its style—a narrative style that would not be published in a scientific journal today. For such an amazing piece of work on a topic that should interest anyone visiting deserts, McGee’s paper is surprisingly difficult to find outside academic libraries. The paper was reprinted in
Journal of the Southwest
30, no. 2 (1988), and it may be possible to obtain copies for a small fee from the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona. It can be found online at JSTOR, for those with JSTOR access, and at least occasionally on other sites, such as http://eebweb.arizona.edu/courses/ecol414_514/readings/thirst.pdf, where it is accompanied by a historical commentary called “W. J. McGee’s ‘Desert Thirst as Disease,’” written by Bill Broyles, B. W. Simons Jr., and Tom Harlan, which originally appeared in the
Journal of the Southwest
side by side with the reprint of McGee’s original article. According to Broyles and his coauthors, McGee’s article was first presented to a group of Missouri doctors in 1906, after which it was more or less lost for decades and then circulated as photocopies before finally being reprinted in the
Journal of the Southwest
. It has been especially popular with desert rescue organizations in part because it extends the time of viable survival (and therefore the time that should be allocated to a search).
McGee’s “Thirst in the Desert,”
Atlantic Monthly
81 (1898): 483–88, begins with a seven-word sentence: “It is not a pleasant thing, thirst.” This article, written seven years before McGee’s encounter with Pablo Valencia, is based in part on his own experiences with thirst. The article describes the stages of death from lack of water, and McGee establishes his authority by describing himself as “one who has run the gauntlet two thirds through.” He writes of stumbling on a spring and soaking in it for an hour before he regained the ability to swallow. “Then,” he wrote, “despite a half-inch cream of flies and wasps, squirming and buzzing above and macerated into slime below, I tasted ambrosia!” His later article, in 1906, used the encounter with Pablo Valencia as a springboard for further discussion of the stages of dehydration.
Prospectors sometimes say that desert trumpets are a sign of gold, but really they are a sign of mineral soil, which might or might not contain gold.
To make mesquite pinole, the mesquite seedpods should be collected in September or October. The pods can be dried in the sun or in an oven until they become crumbly. Traditionally, the next step would involve grinding, probably using stones, one of which would probably be worn into a bowl or at least a depression and might be called a metate, but today’s cooks can use blenders or food processors. The pinole can then be used just as other flours are used, but most recipes suggest mixing it with modern white flour, presumably to kill the mesquite taste, which does not suit the modern palate.
The California professor who tethered lizards to watch them die in the heat was Raymond Cowles, famous for his work on thermoregulation. He worked in the western Sonoran Desert near Indio, California. Written with Elna Bakker, his book
Desert Journal: A Naturalist Reflects on Arid California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977) describes some of the work, including the personal revelation about his own ability to survive while dozens of reptiles were killed.
W. Hale White’s “A Theory to Explain the Evolution of Warm-Blooded Vertebrates,”
Journal of Anatomy and Physiology
25, pt. 3 (April 1891): 374–85, is available online at www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1328175.
Many references provide information about warm-blooded fish. One is Stephen Katz’s “Design of heterothermic muscle in fish,”
Journal of Experimental Biology
205 (2002): 2251–66. Katz examines the role of warm-bloodedness “in fish whose swimming performance is considered elite,” including some sharks, tuna, and billfish.
The arrangement of blood vessels in tuna allowing warm blood from muscles to raise the temperature of cold blood from gills is the same as that found in whales, birds, and some other animals, the so-called
rete mirable,
or “miracle network,” a countercurrent exchange system much like that which would be designed by an engineer to maximize the use of waste heat in certain kinds of motors and generators.
The statistics on heat-related deaths in America come from the Centers for Disease Control. See www.cdc.gov/climatechange/effects/heat.htm. A growing medical literature warns of the dangers of hot-weather events, documents impacts from past hot-weather events, and offers suggestions to minimize potential dangers. For example, J. Semenza and coauthors, in “Excess Hospital Admissions during the July 1995 Heat Wave in Chicago,”
American Journal of Preventative Medicine
6, no. 4 (1999): 269–77, write: “The majority of excess hospital admissions [during a heat wave] were due to dehydration, heatstroke, and heat exhaustion, among people with underlying medical conditions. Short-term public health interventions to reduce heat-related morbidity should be directed toward these individuals to assure access to air conditioning and adequate fluid intake.”
It is possible under extreme conditions to lose as much as 0.66 gallons of water per hour as sweat, but only for a short time. Sustained water loss seldom exceeds 0.20 gallons an hour.
K. N. Moss’s paper was “Some Effects of High Air Temperatures and Muscular Exertion upon Colliers,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character
95, no. 666 (1923): 181–200. The work described in the paper was undertaken by Moss when he was working as a Tyndall Research Student. The refusal to drink when working in hot conditions—such as those found in deep coal mines—was later called “voluntary dehydration.”