
When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot for Humans? - eref
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html
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flashman
"The article argues that climate change will render the Earth uninhabitable by
the end of this century. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The article fails to produce it." \- Climatologist Michael Mann [1]

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/14705390...](https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/1470539096335621)

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ocschwar
Climate change is already making the earth too hot for SOME humans,
specifically atoll dwelling people who are being forced to relocate.

It could make the earth too hot for SOME humans, as in it will force the human
population to decline, something guaranteed not to be pleasant.

We're a long way away from any prospect of climate change making the earth
unable to support the species homo sapiens, and it's a waste of breath talking
about it.

~~~
leggomylibro
Yeah, but it might not be too long until earth can't support 7 Billion human
beings.

I mean, plenty of people are already dying of starvation and dehydration, but
you know what I mean. Wasn't that the backstory to Battlefield 2142? Arable
land either became desert or ice and everyone went to war over a few
breadbaskets?

~~~
natecavanaugh
So I might be misunderstanding climate science, but wouldn't the change be a
seesaw like change where climates are relocated based on all of the pressures
(man-made and local)? So maybe the Bahamas become a frigid zone, but the
Amazon becomes a Napa valley and Texas turns into jungle like weather? It just
had always seemed odd to me that short of an event that decimates the
atmosphere, there wouldn't be a series of controls and counter balances like
every other natural system. Again though, I truly could be wrong.

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octaveguin
Dinosaury time periods were often much hotter and much more filled with co2.

They thrived. Plants thrived. The danger is in the change part.

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jimbokun
We are not dinosaurs.

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candiodari
That's true. We're warm blooded _. That means we 're far more capable of
dealing with different temperatures than dinosaurs will ever be.

_ (yes there are cold-blooded mammals and warm-blooded dinosaurs, but they're
rare exceptions)

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SAI_Peregrinus
Warm blooded (endothermic) dinosaurs are currently thought to have been the
majority, or possibly even the entirety. Crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles,
etc) likely diverged from endothermic dinosaurs, as they have features shared
with other endothermic animals and not with ectotherms (cold-blooded animals)
such as 4-chambered hearts.

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fractallyte
Ecological collapse will affect humans far earlier than 'too hot'
temperatures.

The TL;DR versions of nuanced articles too frequently consider only humans to
be significant. We're part of a big ecosystem, and the collapse of that system
will inevitably take us down with it.

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spraak
Ah yes! That's human's biggest downfall perhaps.

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xupybd
Wow that seems to paint a very very bad picture. I thought the impact of
climate change was still a matter of great contention, or is this article a
pretty accurate prediction?

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khedoros1
Well...they _did_ focus on the median-to-high scenarios. It seems like in a
case like this, it makes sense to plan around the pessimistic end of the range
of possibilities, when they're so dire.

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gsmethells
The article seems to suggest that turning to carbon capture is our best option
currently. If that is the case then what is the best carbon capture technology
we have right now and could it even make a dent?

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0n34n7
The best tech we currently have is bio-engineered algae. It won't make a dent
unless we can farm lakes full of the stuff.

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gsmethells
That's scary.

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pbreit
If Elon thinks we could live on Mars I would imagine we'd have no trouble
adapting to merely higher temperatures on earth.

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everdev
Yes, and the fact that business isn't betting on "climate adaptation"
technology here at home feels like this is still far off or won't be as
apocalyptic as the article suggests.

If the worst does come to pass, I'm sure it will alter life as we know it, but
the danger would probably be more to animals that can't compensate with
technology like we can.

~~~
dragonsky67
Historically in natural systems when there are large changes in the
environment, such as deforestation, salination of waterways or introduction of
more a more successful niche occupant you see massive die off of the apex
species.

In this case there are 8 billion members of the apex species. Humans will
survive, but it's not going to be much fun until the new normal emerges.

Technology will help, but it will only cushion the fall, not prevent it, and
only if we react quickly enough to reduce the impact. When enough people start
starving they will start looking for food and water wherever they can find it,
and they won't be very charitable towards those who they believe caused the
problem.

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lproven
That's a foolishly simplistic view.

From simple models -- e.g. foxes and rabbits:
[https://niko.roorda.nu/computer-programs/fox-rabbit-
theoreti...](https://niko.roorda.nu/computer-programs/fox-rabbit-theoretical-
model/) \-- to more complex web models --
[http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004440..).

In any such models, sometimes, with extreme population growth of any one
member species, the result can be collapse so severe that that species goes
totally extinct.

We're not looking at a simple redistribution. We're looking at exponential
explosions, and they tend to be followed by a total collapse.

