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Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

wired.com

151–160 of 296 posts

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#151
post #14

Fun fact I remember reading in some studies: increased heat increases tendency for violence. Ah, not the ones I had in mind, but these will do: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/16/two-new-s... https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/308Readings/Anderson2001...

Entirely obvious for anyone living in a city that both heat and the full moon have a tangible effect on that.

Explanation?

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an opportunity for many of the people living near the equator to become more prosperous Please tell us, what you have in mind. More economic growth?

Yes, of course. There's a reason why people in developing countries are the least concerned about pollution or global warming. It's because economic growth has a much greater positive impact on their lives than an imperceptibly slow warming of the planet.

The majority of people in all country groups are concerned. Maybe you are just in the minority.

https://www.undp.org/publications/peoples-climate-vote

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2003 heatwave killed 70.000+ in Europe. But nobody seems to remember/know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heatwave

Extreme cold kills far more. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessiv...

You know what's wild? Global Warming will create more extreme cold events in places that don't have them! Why? Because global warming is causing the jet streams to weaken and cold air in the arctic escapes more to the south.

Isn't that interesting?

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#156

[flagged]

Demo-what-ic?

The article (admittedly brief and as lacking corroborative research) was published in WIRED UK, and quotes "Tom Matthews, a senior lecturer in environmental geography at King’s College London".

The examples included the UK in summer 2022 (I lived through that. Not fun, and I'm glad it was only a few days!), Lagos, Karachi, and Shanghai.

No the US isn't immune [0], but regardless, to argue that this specific article is Democratic election propaganda is just nuts. The world does not revolve around your oyster.

[0] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-die-from-extre... (but pick your source – there are many)

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#157
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smol nit: immigration means moving into a country. In your example we'll see a lot of emigration, people moving out of the country. You emigrate from one country and thereafter you immigrate into another. Mnemonic: IN=IMmigrate, EXIT=Emigrate

Even smaller nit: Isn't it basically two sides of the same coin in this context? I'm not sure what the intent was in the previous post, but it could just as well be from the perspective of someone living in a desirable country worried about a lot of immigration of less fortunate people.

My interpretation was that countries with growing cimate problems will start seeing more and more immigration, which is wrong. It'll see more and more emigration.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#158
post #31

A friend of mine who lives in Queensland (Sunshine Coast) was talking about a recent spell of 32° and 100% humidity and how oppressive it was. My understanding is that such weather is not survivable long term [1] without air conditioning. A power failure would be disastrous. [1] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/humans-cant-endure-t...

I grew up poor and without AC in Minnesota where we regularly get spells of 100°F+ (37.7°C) at VERY high humidity thanks to all the lakes. It’s survivable, it’s absolutely not pleasant though and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Fans and wet rags help some. I used to fill a 2-liter bottle with cold water and hold it against my chest. A lot of sleepless nights. When we got a local second run $2 movie theater, it was a li…

I don’t think of Minnesota as a place where 100f+ occurs with regularity or for sustained periods. A brief search confirms my assumptions, but I’m happy to be proven otherwise.

There are parts of the US where 100f is reached by midday and persists past sunset for over a month, with high humidity.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#159

This is why I think we should be seriously considering atmospheric aerosol injection already. Not sure why there aren't more large government funded studies of this.

Before we start filling our atmosphere with theoretical solutions, shouldn't we reduce as much of emissions and consumption and possible? We humans consume an insane amount of natural resources. We have built many of our societies around global interdependence. We produce a constant flood of stuff that is consumed quickly and discarded. We could make a big impact simply shifting to more local economies. For example,…

This would take decades at least, we need something else in our back pocket in case millions start to die from heat exhaustion. Even if somehow we stop all CO2 emissions today, the earth will continue to warm for like a couple more centuries.

Re: Humanity Is Dangerously Pushing Its Ability to Tolerate Heat

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, our two most sacred institutions: democracy and science, neither of which have a (literally) actionable plan to solve the problem at its source: human behavior. The twin hills that humanity may die on if something doesn't happen to wake people up to their foolishness.

We have a large number of actionable plans that happen to reduce profits for very rich organizations that hence spend a lot of money to prevent their implementation.

Your "actionable" makes assumptions about the true nature of several things, one of them being democracy.

I can make a semi-actionable plan to fly, but if I am not able to achieve flight via the plan, in fact, my plan is not fully actionable, so this fully part is a pretty big deal.

What if you people are wrong? Like, what is it about certain topics that cause having backup plans to be a bad idea? Why are there certain topics that people are determined to not contemplate, even if they are literally existential threats?

If we can't talk about the topics themselves, could we at least talk about the second order mass psychological phenomenon, or is that off limits too? I pose this as a question to humans in general, sorry if I'm taking it out on you individually.

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