Extreme heat waves are already here, and they are killing tens of thousands of people. Blasting through 2 degrees Celsius of warming means they’ll happen many times more frequently.
Humanity’s superpower is sweating—but rising heat could be our kryptonite, and an average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could bring regular, fatal heat waves to large parts of the planet, says Tom Matthews, a senior lecturer in environmental geography at King’s College London.
“We have evolved to cope with the most extreme heat and humidity the planet can throw at us,” he explains. But when our core temperature gets to about 42 degrees Celsius (around 107.5 degrees Fahrenheit), people face heat stroke and probable death as the body strains to keep cool and the heart works harder, inducing heart attacks.
Matthews cites an example from his home country, the UK. In the summer of 2022, the UK broke its high temperature record, surpassing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists estimate there were roughly 3,500 heat-associated deaths that summer in the UK. Across Europe, they estimate high heat caused more than 60,000 deaths.
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“At 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the likes of Lagos, Karachi, [and] Shanghai start to experience heat waves exceeding our limit. At 2 degrees Celsius, the events increase at least 10 times more often, and if we get to 8 degrees Celsius, a large fraction of the Earth’s surface would be too hot for our physiology and would not be habitable,” he says.
Air conditioning and heat-escape rooms would help, but we might need to abandon intense outdoor work such as rice farming in hotter regions. And these solutions will need to be able to meet demand. “The infrastructure must be able to withstand the surges when everyone turns on the air conditioning, and must be able to withstand hurricanes or floods,” he says.
Our best hope in the face of inevitable rises in heat? Cooperation. “We’ve built forecasting systems that will warn us when disasters are incoming by working together at enormous scale. We must continue to do the same.”
In any post-apocalyptic world, it’s always the bullies who seem to win. You don’t need to be cooperative if you can just take it from those cooperative wimps
We haven’t exactly reached this state because of some big, singular fluke nobody could have predicted, there hasn’t been some asteroid impact or super volcano eruption that suddenly messed the planet up.
Humanity as has known about the issues of pollution and climate change for over a hundred years, known how dire the situation has been for decades, and has still done mostly nothing productive to end up here.
It would have taken a few generations of people all making massive changes willingly to fix this, but almost none of us did. I think we just can’t care enough about the future when there is now and here to experience, and it’s just finally the “find out” phase after the “fuck around”.
Yeah, just one thing though. We could have avoided it through regulating emissions better. The idea that the people all had to make the individual choice is corporate propaganda.
If it was that easy more governments would have political parties that were fighting for all of that in power, most of the world does have some sort of democracy where the people get to choose. But it’s extremely rare, because people don’t vote for them as all the things that need to be done right now are really annoying. Fewer cars, more smelly public transport, expensive green energy, higher taxes, no cheap flights to holidays?!
This climate change thing prolly isn’t such a bad thing, and if it is, we can do it later, and if we don’t who cares, we are gonna be dead anyway.
Here in Finland, the Greens lost 7 seats dropping to just 13 out of 200 in last years election, for example. Who won? The right-wing populists who are reducing the tax on petrol and trying to increase taxes on electric cars, for example. Yay…
Oh, I’m not saying the people don’t have a part. But the idea that everyone needs to reduce their personal carbon footprint is ridiculous. And part of why green parties have trouble getting votes. Corporations run commercials that insinuate they’ve solved climate change.
Full article:
Humanity’s superpower is sweating—but rising heat could be our kryptonite, and an average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could bring regular, fatal heat waves to large parts of the planet, says Tom Matthews, a senior lecturer in environmental geography at King’s College London.
“We have evolved to cope with the most extreme heat and humidity the planet can throw at us,” he explains. But when our core temperature gets to about 42 degrees Celsius (around 107.5 degrees Fahrenheit), people face heat stroke and probable death as the body strains to keep cool and the heart works harder, inducing heart attacks.
Matthews cites an example from his home country, the UK. In the summer of 2022, the UK broke its high temperature record, surpassing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists estimate there were roughly 3,500 heat-associated deaths that summer in the UK. Across Europe, they estimate high heat caused more than 60,000 deaths.
Featured Video
Meteorologist Debunks Weather Myths
“At 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the likes of Lagos, Karachi, [and] Shanghai start to experience heat waves exceeding our limit. At 2 degrees Celsius, the events increase at least 10 times more often, and if we get to 8 degrees Celsius, a large fraction of the Earth’s surface would be too hot for our physiology and would not be habitable,” he says.
Air conditioning and heat-escape rooms would help, but we might need to abandon intense outdoor work such as rice farming in hotter regions. And these solutions will need to be able to meet demand. “The infrastructure must be able to withstand the surges when everyone turns on the air conditioning, and must be able to withstand hurricanes or floods,” he says.
Our best hope in the face of inevitable rises in heat? Cooperation. “We’ve built forecasting systems that will warn us when disasters are incoming by working together at enormous scale. We must continue to do the same.”
Yeah, we’re fucked
Not true. Once we start dying in very large numbers, there will be fewer non-cooperative people around to fuck things up.
In any post-apocalyptic world, it’s always the bullies who seem to win. You don’t need to be cooperative if you can just take it from those cooperative wimps
Answered elsewhere, but my comment was gallows humor, and not a serious response.
Do you expect the heat to impact non-cooperative people more?
It’s gallows humor, not a pragmatic answer.
104?
Laughs in South West American.
But seriously. Can we just not? I’d like to actually have a retirement. Or nanobot immortality. Why can’t we live in the cool timeline?
Somewhere a monkey paw finger curls and you’re moved to the timeline where the world is in a nuclear winter …
C’mon, at least get weird with it. Nuclear winter is so cliche, why not have the planet start to slowly de-orbit the sun?
C’mon, at least get weird with it. Nuclear winter is so cliche, why not have the planet start to slowly de-orbit the sun?
At 80% humidity? That’s a big negatori, rubber duck.
What if this is the best timeline humanity could ever archive?
I don’t believe that. If this is the best timeline then we deserve everything mother nature is going to give us.
We haven’t exactly reached this state because of some big, singular fluke nobody could have predicted, there hasn’t been some asteroid impact or super volcano eruption that suddenly messed the planet up.
Humanity as has known about the issues of pollution and climate change for over a hundred years, known how dire the situation has been for decades, and has still done mostly nothing productive to end up here.
It would have taken a few generations of people all making massive changes willingly to fix this, but almost none of us did. I think we just can’t care enough about the future when there is now and here to experience, and it’s just finally the “find out” phase after the “fuck around”.
Yeah, just one thing though. We could have avoided it through regulating emissions better. The idea that the people all had to make the individual choice is corporate propaganda.
If it was that easy more governments would have political parties that were fighting for all of that in power, most of the world does have some sort of democracy where the people get to choose. But it’s extremely rare, because people don’t vote for them as all the things that need to be done right now are really annoying. Fewer cars, more smelly public transport, expensive green energy, higher taxes, no cheap flights to holidays?!
This climate change thing prolly isn’t such a bad thing, and if it is, we can do it later, and if we don’t who cares, we are gonna be dead anyway.
Here in Finland, the Greens lost 7 seats dropping to just 13 out of 200 in last years election, for example. Who won? The right-wing populists who are reducing the tax on petrol and trying to increase taxes on electric cars, for example. Yay…
Oh, I’m not saying the people don’t have a part. But the idea that everyone needs to reduce their personal carbon footprint is ridiculous. And part of why green parties have trouble getting votes. Corporations run commercials that insinuate they’ve solved climate change.