
The human body is already close to thermal limits in many regions - anigbrowl
https://theconversation.com/heatwave-think-its-hot-in-europe-the-human-body-is-already-close-to-thermal-limits-elsewhere-121003
======
peacetreefrog
We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Economist John Cochrane had a good blog post
about this recently (I actually posted to HN a few days ago but it got
buried):

[https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon-
tax....](https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon-tax.html)

From the end:

"Climate policy was headed to this kind of bipartisan technocratic resolution
in the 1990s before it became a tool of partisan warfare. The challenge, from
both sides, is to remove the political baggage that climate policy has
accumulated."

He then makes that appeal to both sides:

"To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate
carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. To my green-warrior
friends, if the government is actually going to reduce carbon, not just
subsidize cronies and engage in worthless value-signaling gestures, a trade of
carbon taxes for absurdly costly regulations and subsidies is the only way to
get anywhere."

~~~
mieseratte
> To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to
> regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage.

First, that starts off with a false premise. You don't know that the
government is going to regulate carbon.

Second, ignoring the "climate change is a myth" crowd, there are those that
believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we
might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. That
attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in
it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that
way is not worth the unknown outcome of attempting to save the current state
of climate.

This isn't even a "not my problem" situation. I've heard this from folks
leaving in a coastal region that already suffers some amount of regular
nuisance flooding. It's not as if rising tides will skip over them.

Failing to understand that viewpoint is going to result in two sides yelling
past each other. One side thinks we must do everything in our power to
preserve nature's status-quo, the other is firmly of the mind that it is an
impossibility and to try would be wasted effort with much risk and unclear
gain.

Your first task is convincing them of the horrors that await for them.

~~~
esotericn
> there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of
> helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever
> changes await

Pricing in externalities is a part of that adaptation. It literally is
"getting on with it".

It's unclear to me what you mean by this.

If your farm is on fire, maybe you lose a room. OK, so you adapt. Perhaps
you'll never earn enough again to rebuild it properly. You might be a bit
traumatised - maybe you buy more smoke alarms, cameras, sprinklers, stuff like
that.

What you don't do is set the whole thing alight, burn it to hell, and adapt to
the changes having contributed to your life savings going up in smoke.

If a family member or close friend dies - you hang out with friends, you go to
therapy. You certainly don't buy some weapons and decide to finish off the
rest of your friends for good measure!

A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going to
be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to build
permanent structures again.

What's the goal here? 800ppm? 1200? Literally just whack the thermostat up 10c
and have every city in the world suddenly be in the wrong place?

> attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place
> in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives
> that way

It's unclear to me why pricing in externalities would do this.

Shifting consumption to more efficient "happiness/usefulness per damage" stuff
wouldn't ruin anything.

It's difficult for me to understand why people would think that carbon pricing
pushing people towards different foods or smaller cars or cycling or whatever
would "destroy the economy". I think they have a different definition of the
word 'destroy'. Consuming a bit less is not destruction. Your hometown being
underwater is a destroyed economy.

~~~
malvosenior
> A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going
> to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to
> build permanent structures again.

Why would we not be able to build permanent structures?

~~~
avisser
Because, eventually, the place they were built would become uninhabitable for
humans.

~~~
malvosenior
Even the most aggressive global warming estimates are no where near making the
entire earth’s surface uninhabitable to humans.

------
rjmunro
Something that would help the risk of power outages killing air conditioning,
would be to power air conditioning directly by solar panels installed
alongside.

There is a high correlation between solar generation and air-con demand,
although it's not perfect, as e.g. heat can persist into the evening, so you
could have a grid connection to allow the air con to continue working in the
evenings, and to absorb any excess power but in the event of grid failure, the
air-con power should just follow the solar generation directly. I don't know
if such a system exists commercially at the moment.

Even in the event of wide scale power outages, it would not lead to wide scale
deaths as most people would have air conditioning that still worked. Air
conditioning failures would be a very serious issue, though, requiring
evacuation to another building.

~~~
olivermarks
You would need a huge number of solar panels and batteries to power an air
conditioning unit. Dehumidifiers are far more energy efficient (removes the
hot water droplets suspended in air to cool air temp)

~~~
volkl48
> Dehumidifiers are far more energy efficient (removes the hot water droplets
> suspended in air to cool air temp)

Do you have some sort of citation for that?

Because a dehumidifier is pretty much an air conditioner that doesn't make the
room cooler from a mechanical perspective, so the premise that there's a wide
gap in efficiency, or that the unit which blows it's heat _indoors_ is the
more effective one, seems unlikely to me.

~~~
olivermarks
I was interested in off grid and RV vehicle AC solar, this video pretty much
sums up how and where we are today on that.
[https://youtu.be/B0rZY5uotKI](https://youtu.be/B0rZY5uotKI)

Others recommend dehumidifiers as a compromise which uses less power, you can
find this in multiple discussions in relevant forums

------
perfunctory
If this doesn't scare you I don't know what will. We have to do something
about it. By 'we' I mean you and I. As someone said - if you don't think you
can change the world you will just be one of the ones who didn't.

We need fundamental cultural and policy change. The question is how to achieve
it. Despite popular believe I don't think voting matters. Think about any
significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil
rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these were initiated
by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion and direct action.

So what are we to do.

\- Change your lifestyle. Less flying, driving, meat.

\- Divest fossil

\- Get out of the techno bubble and get your hands dirty with direct action
and civil disobedience. e.g. [1]

[1] [https://rebellion.earth/](https://rebellion.earth/)

~~~
bryanlarsen
"Despite popular believe I don't think voting matters. "

In the end, voting is the only thing that matters. Individual choices by a
small minority of the population are going to be completely ineffectual
without government setting policy so that doing the right thing is also doing
the most profitable thing.

But despite you being wrong in your core point in my opinion, you're
absolutely right about the method. (change your lifestyle, divest fossil,
direct action, civil disobedience)

The reason that voting is useless is because voters don't care about the
environment. Climate change is #11 in the list of top priorities for
voters.[1]. Fix that, and then voting might make a difference. And you do that
by making it clearly visible that it's important to you, and by convincing
others that it's important to them.

1: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/244367/top-issues-voters-
health...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/244367/top-issues-voters-health..).

~~~
kasperni
> Climate change is #11 in the list of top priorities for voters

I think you wanted to write:

Climate change is #11 in the list of top priorities for voters _in the United
States_...

In many countries it is a lot higher on the list of priorities.

For example, in the UK it is on the 4th place for voters [1].

In Denmark it is the highest priority in latest polls [2] (sorry danish only)

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/21/environm...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/21/environment-
of-greater-concern-than-housing-or-terrorism-uk-poll)

[2] [https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/ny-maaling-den-groenne-
dagso...](https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/ny-maaling-den-groenne-dagsorden-
tager-en-suveraen-foersteplads)

~~~
hedora
Climate change is a much more important issue to US voters than it has been in
the past:
[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/07/climate-c...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/07/climate-
change-election-2020-226797)

------
rebuilder
This is why I think that in addition to swift action to curtail emissions, we
need strong international organisations for discourse, crisis management and
mutual aid. If we walk into a new age of mass migrations and instability with
the currently popular mindset of nationalist separatism, I don't see how we'll
be able to avoid another world war. What will happen between India and
Pakistan, for example? These are both nuclear powers.

~~~
johnchristopher
Could it be either Russia or the US have contingency plans regarding those
countries ? Like... nuke them now or send them a suicidal elite special forces
mission to take out the top and assume command in the name of peace keeping ?

~~~
black_puppydog
Doesn't get more "typical US brute force approach" than that, eh? Imagine what
would happen if India or Pakistan (a muslim country on top of everything
else!) did that to the US. How do you think "assuming command" would go down
there?

~~~
johnchristopher
I am not from the US though and I don't live there.

The question is still valid though: are we thinking things through and what
are our leader's intentions in case something like that happens and are they
thinking about how to prevent it in the first place ?

Ten years ago we talked about how the India/Pakistan nuclear arsenal could end
up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. What were the plans and which one was put in
motion (if any) ?

------
Xcelerate
Why aren't people more worried about these kinds of things? Is it just too
abstract and removed from day-to-day life to care?

~~~
DoreenMichele
"News" is mostly _bad news._ We've been hearing since WW2 that we are on the
verge of wiping ourselves out. We are still here.

If we are right this time, why worry about it? If we are wrong this time -- as
we have been for the past 70 years -- why worry about it?

Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19843507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19843507)

~~~
marcus_holmes
this. I've spent my entire life (over 50 years) being told by mass media that
we're all about to die at any moment. You kinda get jaded by it. And
sensationalist crap like this article doesn't help.

~~~
CaptainMarvel
Do you have any examples?

~~~
Bantros
I've been bombarded with this shit all my life.

[https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0](https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0)
> June 30, 1989

Articles in a similar vain are trotted out constantly, they just change the
timespan and a few details. See recent example from FT:

[https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-
sea-l...](https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-sea-level-
rise-what-it-means-you-and-your-business/)

~~~
eesmith
As far as I can tell, the information from the 1989 AP article is correct. I
believe we are well past the point where anthropomorphic climate change is
stoppable. All we can do is reduce the impact.

It's clear from the article's text that the statement was _not_ that the
predicted problems would occur by 2000, since "UNEP is working toward forming
a scientific plan of action by the end of 1990" would give an absurdly short
timeline.

It says "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s
temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown."

Conveniently, that was 30 years ago. I went to
[https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-
temperature/](https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/) . In
1989 the temperature anomaly was about +0.25°C. It's currently +0.82°C. A
change of 0.57°C is just over 1°F. As predicted by the most conservative
estimate.

I have been unable to find the report. The only people who talk about that
newspaper article appear to be climate change denialists, who don't link to
the actual report, and misread the article to believe that there's a
prediction of a 3 foot sea rise by 2000.

The late 1980s is when the majority of scientists - and associated people like
Isaac Asimov, at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q)
\- were convinced of the evidence of global warming and its potential
problems.

That built upon earlier work. Eg, "In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs
office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the
consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant
reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future
climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific
groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy#Early_research)

~~~
marcus_holmes
so by some dextrous fiddling with measurement scales (I believe the UN measure
temperature in Celsius, but as the article doesn't mention a measure, I'll
grant that they might have been talking fahrenheit), it literally only just
squeaks past the absolute lowest boundary of the _most conservative_ estimate.

There's no way you can claim that this is vindication of that prediction.

~~~
eesmith
Point taken, and valid. However, 1) that's literally the only prediction in
the paper that has a short time-frame, which is also well in-line with general
consensus both _then_ and _now_ , and 2) my point was not to vindicate the
prediction but to point out that it's _not_ a good example of 'shit
bombardment' as Bantros stated.

Without knowing the original article context, it's really hard to know what
the exact prediction is. It seems clear from looking around that most people
who reference the article are global-denialists as I haven't found anyone
verify that the newspaper reporter was accurate in the report.

So, I looked for the report. I believe it's "The State of the World
Environment 1989 - UNEP/GC.15/7/Add.2" dated April 1989 at
[https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/...](https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/TSE89.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)
. The prediction on p23./paragraph 68 is:

> Even then, estimates of temperature increase vary widely—from 0.7°C to
> 9.6°C. Recent studies agree, however, that doubling the carbon dioxide
> concentration from the pre-industrial level of 270 ppmv will probably
> increase global mean temperature by 1.5°C to 4.5°C (47, 48, 49)—but most
> likely by 2°C.

+0.82°C is larger than 0.7°C, so well within that predicted range - certainly
on the low-end, but not enough to be rejected as "shit" given how the report
explicitly states the uncertainty.

The 1 degree could have been 0.82°C rounded (up) to the nearest degree, or
1.476°F rounded (down) to the nearest degree.

I don't see an estimate of _when_ , but figure 5 shows an estimate of 3°C rise
by 2050, of which about 0.8°C come from CFC - CFCs weren't yet banned at that
time. Which means Brown's prediction in the news article likely included a CFC
component that didn't happen.

~~~
Bantros
The "shit bombardment" is the actual media coverage which has only gotten more
and extreme over the past 30 years.

Thanks for the link to the original paper, I've never seen it myself either

~~~
eesmith
The prediction was that the shit was going to hit the fan.

The shit is now starting to hit the fan.

The predictions are that there's going to be a lot more shit hitting the fan,
and these predictions are constantly being checked and re-checked.

The news reports first that the shit bombardment is coming, and now it's here.

And you complain about those news reports, and not those actually shitting on
the planet?

You know the metaphor "bikeshedding", yes? The idea that there can be a lot of
vigorous arguments over the materials, paint color, etc. to use for a bike
shed?

The flip side of that metaphor, which I'll coin "atomicpowerplanting", is that
few want to dig into the details to make a good decision. Going back to the
original bikeshed email:

> an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people
> cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that
> somebody else checked all the details before it got this far.

So, starting 40 years ago people started talking about the problems in
graphite atomic piles, and made vague mentions of the Wigner effect, but the
atomic power plant is important for national security and so it is built and
put into operation.

This goes on for years. People point out some of the problems, and its
knowledge is suppressed.

More years pass. And then the Windscale fire happens.

Perhaps the warnings are really important, but so complex that it's easy to
atomicpowerplant?

~~~
Bantros
Are you trying to convince me or yourself?

~~~
eesmith
I'm convinced that we are bombarded by shit by news sources. We're also
bombarded by non-shit.

I'm trying to point out that "shit bombardment" might be appropriate, if
everything is going to shit.

Do you think there is substantial global warming caused by humans?

Do you think it's serious enough that we need to take drastic measures to
reduce CO2 emissions?

Do you think the evidence was strong enough in the 1980s that they were right
to be concerned about the future?

Do you think their claims - bearing in mind the range of the predictions as in
the 1989 document I found - been shown to be substantially correct?

You haven't committed either which way, only to say that you've been bombarded
by shit by the news. The 1989 article you pointed to, however, doesn't seem
like shit. Why do you think it is?

------
Bombthecat
Yesterday, a friend reminded me about the story of the Easter islands. I
remember reading / hearing about it. But then forgot about it. They destroyed
the whole forest on the island and with it, they destroyed them self...

I bet, they were in a similar situation, people saying that we should stop.
That it changes things. And... they didn't stop until the bitter end.

I think we will be like the easter island. We won't stop.

~~~
seren
Actually, there are some researches saying that the often cited conclusion
about Easter Islands (notably in 'Collapse') might not be accurate.

See for example: [https://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-contradicts-theory-that-
eas...](https://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-contradicts-theory-that-easter-
island-soci-1828307589)

~~~
graeme
The account confuses me. Diamond's central argument was that the Islanders cut
down all their trees, and thus no more could grow.

This article suggests they got all their stone from a single quarry, and so
must have collaborated around that quarry.

....this doesn't seem to contradict the central claim of a society destroying
its resource base. Am I missing something? It's also not incompatible to have
collaboration around a central resource and conflict elsewhere. Though I
mainly think it's a sideline to the tree story.

~~~
seren
Maybe, this was not the best source, but there are articles disputing that the
population decreases happened before the first contact with European explorers
in 1722.

[http://islandheritage.org/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2010/...](http://islandheritage.org/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2010/06/RNJ_23_2_Mulrooney_Etal.pdf)

I don't think it does challenge the idea that the deforestation led to the
collapse, but maybe it was not the only cause.

~~~
graeme
Thanks, that paper is much clearer. It seems their argument is that
deforestation was not a factor in collapse, as land use didn't shift and no
big decrease in toolmaking was seen before 1800, post contact.

Certainly plausible. To know beyond that point we'd need a subject matter
expert and possible original investigation.

In other words it's possible Diamond's tree narrative is correct but not his
war narrative. I think that doesn't undermine it so much for the purposes of
discussing the possibility that we may use all of a certain resource. But it
is indeed a caveat worth noting.

------
manjana
In case this ever became a reality could one not dig a retreat in the ground
or simply start living underground? It might sound silly, but if needs are
desperate..

~~~
Cthulhu_
This is already a thing; see Coober Pedy [1] in Australia, there's houses
carved out of mountains, etc. This is also likely how people will be living on
Mars. And houses can be built to emulate living underground, with e.g.
shutters on the outside (another thing that has been around for centuries).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy)

------
coconut_crab
This is why it feels much hotter and suffocating at night than day where I
live, at 10PM the temperature is 35oC with 70% humidity (thank to urban heat
island effect). At least sweating cools my body down during the day, at night
all it does it drenching me in sweat and I still feel hot.

I have tried to reduce my carbon footprint by consuming as little as possible,
but just I myself alone is not enough. This requires a whole refactoring of
how our cities should be built, how our civilization should work and I just
don't see that happening any time soon.

~~~
perfunctory
> but just I myself alone is not enough

Sure. Start talking to your friends, family and colleagues. Join groups of
like-minded people.

------
mrhappyunhappy
I think a much overlooked topic is urban planning. Just thinking about Phoenix
and the hundreds of homes and apartment complexes blasting ac 24/7 with little
or nothing in terms of tree shade. Trees can provide and immense amount of
sunlight protection and reduce the heat in a dwelling. I get that they can
also fall on your roof, but still, almost nobody planting anything, especially
in large apt. Complexes

------
bamboozled
Terrifying, I’m starting to hope we do more with climate change so we can not
only survive, but stop talking about it.

I wonder if in human history there has been such a long running dire topic to
endlessly discuss without any solution in sight ?

Maybe the Cold War ?

------
adrianN
If this concerns you, you should consider joining the Citizen's Climate Lobby:
[https://citizensclimatelobby.org/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/)

------
emerongi
If people start migrating away from those regions en masse, is there a chance
it will trigger a war?

~~~
env123
There will be, I just woke up this early morning thinking about climate
change, and thought people will definitely want to migrate to cooler places
but some nations will object to this due to conflicting interests

In another viewpoint on climate change, do remember that the Earth rotate
around the Sun in elliptical manner, it's not perfect circle - there will be
surely a time when a new Ice Age will happen - we're just at a period when
Earth is getting closer to the Sun on it's rotational axis

~~~
arkades
I'm not sure I understood your comment about the shape of the earth's orbit.

The earth's orbit around the sun is an ellipse. But it's an ellipse that takes
one year to traverse. The closest thing that gets us in terms of an "ice age"
is winter. And, in fact, "winter" is what happens when you're closer to the
sun, due to a change in the angle of incidence of sunlight (in the northern
hemisphere).

Are you referring to something else?

------
czbond
The article mentions the "wetbulb" effect and that it stops at 95F. Is this
temperature relative to the surrounding humidity? Because much of the U.S.
South sits above that for the summer months.

~~~
ceejayoz
Yes.

> The wetbulb temperature includes the cooling effect of water evaporating
> from the thermometer, and so is normally much lower than the normal
> (“drybulb”) temperature reported in weather forecasts.

With 100% humidity, the air temp and the wetbulb temp are the same. At lower
humidity levels, they diverge.

~~~
czbond
Thank you.

------
banku_brougham
Couldn’t be more stark: we waited too long. The few that would benefit have
tamped down the interest of the exceedingly many who will pay.

Name a catastrophe that can compare with this scale — even the effects of that
city-killer asteroid hitting Brussels would be easier to deal with.

------
krupan
We discovered metal that emits more energy than we know what to do with years
ago. This energy produces zero carbon emissions. This metal seems to be the
obvious solution to carbon emission problems, yet nobody talks about it. Why?

[https://xkcd.com/2115/](https://xkcd.com/2115/)

~~~
krupan
Timely:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/07/29...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/07/29/why-
earth-overshoot-day-and-the-ecological-footprint-are-pseudoscientific-
nonsense/#11b28cb27e76)

------
obelos
Prediction: we’ll wrap an existing Earth city in an environmentally-controlled
bubble before we get a bubble to Mars.

~~~
justwalt
It’s time to invest in glass.

------
mirimir
> It is therefore hardly surprising that extreme heat drives migration. Such
> mass displacement makes extreme heat a worldwide issue.

So this is the _real_ reason for the US Border Wall, right?

That would be an ironic acknowledgement that global climate change is a
serious risk.

~~~
kossTKR
Yes almost all policy making / war efforts are created from realpolitical or
resource oriented goals.

It's the old orders of power and the conglomeration of corporate entities that
actually create the shooting script for various events including the creation
of a border wall.

The identity politics or the thin veneer of hollywoodesque narratives above
most especially foreign policy is just exactly that, fantasy, while it's the
military-industrial complex that in reality drafts the plans together with PR
companies.

Look for example at military historian Gwynne Dyers's talk here from 2010 both
foreshadowing the refugee crisis, Syrian War and the border wall all from
climate extrapolation without the identity-smokescreen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY)

The whole border issue is extremely muddy though as it's not classically
right-wing to protect the working classes from wage dumping by not letting
millions of people in but has become a left-wing issue because class
consciousness and economic policy has mostly been replaced with superficial
identity based issues because they are allowed by the status quo. This is
because they don't interfere with the increase in inequality and fall in real-
wages happening in plane sight while pop-leftwingers are busy screaming about
identity based issues (not that those aren't important).

From a resource perspective one could argue that the ever more transnationally
oriented elite couldn't give two f's about protecting the sovereignty of
yesterdays empires and nation states - but i think the US is still seen as a
very valuable asset because a somewhat stable country with a large middle
class is still important in a global system of resource extraction and
exploitation - and also as a buffer around the US military which in essence is
just a mercenary army created to protect US corporate assets and interests.

All in all, the border will be created no matter who is president because the
plan has been laid out in military circles for decades , because climate
change has never actually been tabu in the corporate intelligentsia as we also
see in the Exxon papers from 50 years ago. It's all part of a plan to squeeze
as much value out of the global capitalist ponzi scheme and protect US assets
just up until everything turns into chaos. Exxon has known this together with
most other elite wealth management entities - that is why the next step is
border walls with machine guns and watchtowers, then a short balkanisation
with feudal rule and mercenary armies protecting the elite before everything
collapses and the private jets are pointed towards a new Antarctica or new
Zealand bunkers.

If this sounds conspiratorial look no further than to Jeff Bezos statement
this week that his space travel efforts are very much because he knows we are
headed for total collapse of earth ecosystems. Thiel, Bezos, Musk, the
Rothhcild family, Saudi Aramco or whoever are all very much aware of the
coming collapse and fragmentation - this is why they all invest heavily in
"let's get of earth or into the ground" tech.

~~~
mirimir
True enough. And a nice analysis.

I don't have any insight into "military circles", but I do recall an action
film (maybe from the 80s) that featured (among other stuff) a militarized wall
and prison complex along the US-Mexico border. Some action/horror films
(especially zombie ones) are loaded with ~prophetic social commentary.

Edit: And damn! Gwynne Dyer's talk looks amazing. And there's a transcript at
[https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-
geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-
in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

------
EGreg
What happens if the permafrost melts?

Can we have a runaway greenhouse effect and reach a hothouse state like
millions of years ago, or even worse due to the amount released all at once?

What do the models say in the worst case?

Will humanity barely survive at the poles, in that case?

~~~
zaarn
Worst case is a second venus if the process truly runs away and no longer
relies on biochemical greenhouse gases but purely chemical processes that work
beyond 100C.

If the permafrost melts it'll release a lot of methane and CO2, in part
captured and in part from material beginning to rot a few thousand years too
late.

Humanity might survive at the south pole, but we'll more likely go extinct in
a worst case. Unless it's a venus scenario, life itself will go on.

~~~
adrianN
CO2 concentration has been _a lot_ higher in the past (e.g. before all the
coal deposits formed) without turning Earth into Venus. I think we can safely
say that we'll never turn into another Venus.

At the absolute worst we'll reach a moist hothouse scenario:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Eart...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Earth)

The more likely worst case is climate similar to this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)

~~~
zaarn
Venus is the worst case, I never said this would happen at current CO2 levels
but it could happen if they continue to elevate and chemical processes put out
more CO2 while biochemical processes stop using up CO2 due to high heat. There
is a true absolute runaway that could theoretically be achieved in an absolute
worst case scenario.

~~~
pojzon
We, humans, will be long gone before we reach pollution levels required to
change Earth to Venus.

~~~
zaarn
We, humans, can jump start a runaway process to reach these pollution levels
in a worst case.

~~~
adrianN
The IPCC is fairly sure we can't (see the Wikipedia link I posted)

~~~
zaarn
And in the same link, some scientists disagree with the IPCC.

------
hi5eyes
simple engineering problem, improve the ways humans cool/develop some water
cooling system for our bodies and scale it

------
papito
Until the AC units stop being effective, nothing will change.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://phys.org/news/2019-07-heatwave-human-body-thermal-
li...](https://phys.org/news/2019-07-heatwave-human-body-thermal-limits.html),
which points to this.

------
cerealbad
a lot of people would lose income if the climate stopped changing.

------
viach
Not a problem IMHO - all the shopping centers have good climate control
systems /s

------
Kiro
I'm amazed how conservative HN comments are when it comes to climate action.
You really love your flying and driving here. Personally, I've stopped doing
both.

~~~
nabnob
Yup, no one wants to consider actual radical change because it might require a
lower standard of living.

------
runeks
A person attempting to emit less CO2 because people somewhere are dying from
heat stroke seems as sensible to me as attempting to increase ones CO2
emissions because people somewhere are freezing to death.

------
dennisgorelik
Greenhouse effect increases temperatures mostly in cooler areas of the Earth
(which is, mostly, beneficial for people, because it allows to grow more food)
and does not affect temperature in already hot areas (close to the equator).

If you want to live in a colder climate -- just move North: Canada (almost
empty), Northern United States (Alaska is almost empty), Northern Europe,
Russia (almost empty).

I moved to Florida, because I like warmer temperatures. A lot of other people
are moving to warmer South too (from colder North).

I will vote against laws that may bring temperature down.

