
Super-heatwaves of 55°C (131°F) to emerge if global warming continues - mimsee
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/super-heatwaves-55-c-emerge-if-global-warming-continues
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Hasknewbie
It should be noted that heatwaves exceeding 50°C have been recorded outside of
Europe in recent years, with 51°C in India [1] and 54°C in Kuwait [2], so
other parts of the world are already only 1 degree below "super-heatwave"
status.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/20/india-
records-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/20/india-records-its-
hottest-day-ever-as-temperature-hits-51c-thats-1238f)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves)

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0xbear
It would be good if there was some website that would aggregate and preserve
these predictions along with the names of people who have made them, and then
compared them against what actually happened years or decades down the road.

Right now climate science seems to suffer from confirmation bias, that is,
people only remember the few predictions that have come true, and forget
everything else, such as "Florida will be underwater" from the 00s or "we're
all gonna freeze to death" from the 70s.

There is perverse incentive to come out with these outlandish claims, which on
the one hand make it easier to get funding, and on the other imply no
responsibility whatsoever, since the timeline is often decades in the future,
and people's attention spans are short.

~~~
transverse
Is it really outlandish, for example, to have claimed the Arctic ice would
disappear? It has been happening and the disappearance is almost complete. I
have seen glaciers break and fall into the see in my front of my very eyes.

Also, need I remind you of the planet Venus. It once had liquid water. It
later became a victim of runaway climate change.

~~~
0xbear
And Earth once was frozen all over, and there were times when concentration of
greenhouse gases was much higher than it is today, with no "runaway" effects.

~~~
stouset
Nobody's saying the runaway effects are going to boil the oceans, for fuck's
sake.

Do you seriously not realize that the people who've been doing climate
research for decades are aware that there were previous eras with more CO2 in
them?

If you weren't just out to validate your own political goals, you might stop
for a moment and reflect on how poorly-suited _current_ life on the planet is
for those previous eras with drastically more carbon in the air.

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slackingoff2017
I think it's time to shift to damage control mode with global warming. If we
were gonna stop polluting and filling the atmosphere with CO2 it would have
happened 20 years ago.

The economic incentives are too strong to follow the rules. It's like OPEC,
whenever there's a "production cut" everybody just lowers their numbers and
shifts product to the black market.

It's easy enough to throw some dust into the upper atmosphere to cool the
planet a bit. Volcanoes do it all the time so we know it's safe and it works.
I don't know why were still talking about the nearly impossible idea of
getting everyone to abandon fuel when we could spend a miniscule fraction of
the time and human effort to just launch some crap into the atmosphere.

Frankly, I don't think warming the planet a bit is a bad idea at all. The
Earth is in an interglacial and without human interference most of our major
cities are due to be covered in half a mile of ice in the next 2-100 thousand
years. This sounds like a long time but besides nuclear war it's probably the
biggest "near term" threat to our species.

Global warming is being conflated with people who don't want the environment
being messed with. That's why all the proposed solution involve not using
fossil fuels when its pretty easy to cool the Earth with other means if we
really wanted to.

~~~
tarr11
Damage control mode has already been happening for a while in vulnerable
areas. [1] I suspect people will need solutions to extreme heat that are less
dependent on the electrical grid (which will likely fail) in order to survive
these "super-heatwaves"

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170403-miamis-fight-
agains...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170403-miamis-fight-against-sea-
level-rise)

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rc_bhg
It will and they will.

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transverse
In another universe, I propose an AI virus that selectively destroys computers
of those who are the biggest polluters. As an example, those who fly a lot
definitely qualify as being big polluters. The AI virus will monitor your
files and network activity, and will cast destruction upon you if it
classifies you as a big contributor to global warming. Phase 2 of this AI will
be adaptive in that it will use reinforcement learning to target just enough
people to bring the climate to stability. If this is insufficient, phase 3
will use preemptive destruction based on forecasts of your pollution many
years ahead even if you are not a big polluter to begin with.

Also in that universe, there will also be a parallel project that will be
executed on cloud instances. Rowhammer and other attacks, e.g. those based on
undocumented CPU instructions, will be used.

One way or another, the AI virus will defend the planet. Of course there will
be some collateral damage based on misclassifications, but that's the cost of
humans not taking responsibility for the planet. However bad this virus may
be, it will be heaven when compared to heatwaves of 55C.

Legal Disclaimer: These ideas are fictional and are not for this universe. I
don't want idiot lawyers chasing me down for having an idea.

