Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

- The Great Dieoff near the equator. Large parts of India and the Middle East become uninhabitable. Hundreds of millions die. The countries further from the equator do not let them in. World population will be lower than it is now. Most of the dieoff will be older people.

- US loses Miami and New Orleans to sea level rise, but otherwise does OK.

- "Machines should think, people should work" - computers will be doing many management jobs, including direct supervision. Physical robots will still be niche.

- More strongmen. Types like Putin, Netanyahu, Li Keqiang, and Trump will be the new normal.

- Intense surveillance, with behavioral tracking and evaluation, is the new normal. Government and business will cooperate in this.

- Energy will not be a problem. Some materials will be more expensive, but no mined material exhaustion in the next 50 years. Except for water.

- Food will only be a problem where water is a problem.

- Many antibiotics will stop working. There will be alternatives in the developed world, but they will cost more and be more complicated and custom.

> World population will be lower than it is now.

Almost all demographic predictions say this will happen, and that's without any major catastrophe.

-Large parts of India and the Middle East become uninhabitable

Any particular data/research to support this particular assertion?

Certainly not within 50 years, but this is based on projected wet-bulb temperatures around the equator. The limit for human survivability is the equivalent of 35C at 100% humidity.

"A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature our bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it. Thus 35 °C (95 °F) is the threshold beyond which the body is no longer able to adequately cool itself. A study by NOAA from 2013 concluded that heat stress will reduce labor capacity considerably under current emissions scenarios.

A 2010 study concluded that under a worst-case scenario for global warming with temperatures 12 °C (22 °F) higher than 2007, the wet-bulb temperature limit for humans could be exceeded around much of the world in future centuries. A 2015 study concluded that parts of the globe could become uninhabitable. An example of the threshold at which the human body is no longer able to cool itself and begins to overheat is a humidity level of 50% and a high heat of 46 °C (115 °F), as this would indicate a wet-bulb temperature of 35 °C (95 °F)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_...

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