The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance
advances.sciencemag.org
advances.sciencemag.org
When I was a teen I was sure we were headed for a bad future if we didn't act but I always thought it'd come after I am dead. Now I am scared I am going to be old and too frail to manage when life on earth will turn sour.
edit: maybe it's time we put out a a Pioneer 10 plate with messages of warning about our own failures. One we send to space, another one we leave on earth.
I can only hope so.
You could also argue that as the ownership is codified in laws and the state monopoly on violence keeps the oppressed in check, that threat of violence continues.
This is not about land ownership. Alone. You are talking about exclusive political and economic systems. In an exclusive system it's not just the ownership of land that is broken - you will find all economic activity is rigged against some segment of the society. Most well to do states are have inclusive political and and economic systems. In these societies land ownership is based on land registration and enforceable contract law - not entitlement of birth and violence.
I warmly recommend Daron Acemoglu's "Why nations fail" as it explains this topic far better than I ever could in a few sentences.
Can you propose a different model for property ownership which doesn’t require the individual to invest more resources in physical security?
On another tack, there are plenty of homeless people in the UK. Can you imagine what would happen to them if they broke into expensive uninhabited properties in London? There would be violence.
I have no idea of alternatives, I was just pointing out the origin of a lot of current land ownership.
Historically societies with private land ownership have been wealthier and more inclusive than without (the alternative has been state ownership of all land).
Do you have any grounds why you would want it abolished?
Am I correct to assume you include communist and feudal regimes ?
I'd love to hear counterexamples, but that's the general gist of it in the large scale I think.
Land ownership is not a silver bullet but in general smart parcelling policies have made nations wealthier. So basically, most wealthy states today at some point in their history have issued a parcelling policy that has distributed land ownership among farms. This has made the economic basis more vibrant and more durable. And, probably also affected the evolution of their political institutions to be more inclusive.
For example, see the parcelling in my country Finland (which was Sweden at the time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Partition_(Sweden) and earlier in British enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
Areas near large bodies of stable fresh water are likely going to be livable for the longest periods as the planet rapidly shifts away from what we humans need.
;-)
I already can't bear summer. I don't have AC, as most people don't have it here in Switzerland. Even offices tend to not have them. There are 1 to 2 months a year where my productivity sinks, enjoyment of life plummets and I just want it all to be over.
I also barely see any snow anymore, if I don't hike in the mountains. I love snow.
The change is real and I hate it. Couldn't it be global cooling instead of warming? Damn physics.
Seems like that has a much better shot at solving your problem than waiting for the world to address global climate change.
Besides, offices, shopping malls, gorvernment buildings... none of them usually have ac.
I hate walking in my town‘s Rathaus it’s always so hot and stuffy in there. I don’t know how the people working there real with it all summer long. And it’s a brand new building too.
Lots of people rent and they can't install AC.
Lots of buildings in Europe are somewhat old and have controls over what you can or can't do with them (I live in England in a property that was built in 1820 and is gradeII listed, which means we're restricted on the kind of work we can do without getting permissions). The age of the buildings also means that AC is harder to install (getting ducting installed can be really difficult) and is less efficient. I have single-pane sash windows with large gaps.
In England there are 22m households. Domestic heating is a significant source of CO2. Adding aircon on top would be pretty concerning.
There's a lot of poor quality housing built in the 1970s and 1980s that should be knocked down and rebuilt, and if we did that we could have much better insulation, and shutters over windows, and so on. But this is hard to do.
What stood out though was a few years back I remember thinking one day “where’s the winter?” because the weather was just cool but not cold, and snow amounted to just a few mm if it even stuck around.
Two years ago I finally couldn’t deal with it anymore and bought a portable AC unit. It made living in my flat bearable and was something for me to look forward to at the end of the day since my office wasn’t air conditioned.
My energy bill is higher now in the summers and I feel bad for contributing to climate change, but without the AC I just can not live, merely survive.
The moderate climate of Western Europe is changing probably due to changing jetstream (which is probably result of cooling patch in Atlantic Ocean which is probably the result of melting glaciers in Greenland). But paradoxically what makes West Europe summers hotter makes Eastern Europe cooler in summer.
Moving from London to Minsk and from Paris to Smolensk might seem like a cool idea for summer.
https://watchers.news/2019/07/07/record-cold-july-temperatur...
https://www.ft.com/content/591395fe-b761-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea...
I have been living in Sumatra and Flores where you usualy get moderate climate from 1000 meters above sea level..
If the global temperature increases enough, the melting ice in Greenland (and probably elsewhere) would dump a lot of freshwater into the Atlantic. This would likely interrupt the thermohaline circulation of the oceans, which brings warmth from the equator to western Europe.
Weird interactions like this are why activists largely switched from "global warming" to "global climate change" - both exist, but one leads to the other and they don't refer to the same thing.
>What It’s Like Living in One of the Hottest Cities on Earth—Where It May Soon Be Uninhabitable
If you just go +20C from comfortable temperature, no amount of clothing will help you survive for very long out in the open. You also have to drink copious amounts of water and salts to avoid dehydrating to death.
Secondly, heating up a closed space is a lot cheaper than cooling it down. Heating can always be done by burning fuel, but cooling greater than 5C requires heat pumps.
The economics and practicalities of heat and cold adaptions are completely different.
You are also leaving snow and ice out of it. There are economics and externalities of moving tons of solid matter around with relatively low latency (people have to work, trucks have to ship). There are also the safety implications and costs associated. Traffic and accident rates do not go up because the precipitation was unexpectedly ten degrees warmer.
So for heating, you can just max out on insulation, decrease your surface area to volume ratio, and the waste heat from interior equipment will be more then enough to provide 'free' heating.
If you outdoor temperature is high (so natural ventilation doesn't do anything), there really isn't much we can do other than try and find higher and higher efficiency heat pumps to cycle out the heat, but even then you're just dumping the heat outside which creates its own issues. We can reflect/control short/long-wave radiation, but the sensible heat from the environment is a problem. Not an impossible problem, but requires more sophistication to resolve.
The person performing the forming would essentially be cleaning up the polution of everyone else. Terraforming would require global agreement and adherence to a highly capital-intensive enterprise. This is not unlike the discussions about limiting global warming, which are not a frank success.
We currently have no means of cleaning up that is more efficient ie less costly) than the methods we gave for limiting pollution. And it is already impossible to get people to accept to pay those costs.
That is not to say that it should not be researched. But to propose it as an alternative is not helpful in the current political context. It is akin to saying "yea but we'll win the lottery anyway" when other people are trying to get the community to accept a balancing of the budget.
In fact I pointed out we already have other options. Real ones, today, that we know will work. Eat less meat. Drive less and smaller cars. Use less packaging, clothing, etc. Build smaller and better houses, that need less air-conditioning and heating. Put a price on CO2 and let the market figure it out.
But no-one likes them. So sure, if we keep sticking our heads in the sand we're heading for megadeaths. Sure, it would be nice if technology could help us get out of this mess without sacrificing our way of life.
But the technology does not exist today. And certainly not one that has a better chance of being accepted than the other measures I've already listed.
Once we are pouring resources into this project perceptions on what is acceptable energy use will also change. People will see society rowing the boat in one direction, and outliers rowing in the wrong direction (excessive emission) will be scorned.
Changing the narrative to terraforming has the potential to unite mankind, while the climate change narrative has been divisive as pollution becomes a commodity to barter for. With enough cleverness in how the idea is presented the money allotted national defense can be re-purposed for climate defense. The 'creating jobs' narrative can also be utilized. - We just need to start talking in this way that I'm prototyping here until it catches on.
Suggesting that we should keep silent about a way of solving the problem, so that other people don't get "ideas", is even less helpful in any context, as you lose your credibility in the eyes of people whom you are trying to convince.
> essentially be cleaning up the pollution of everyone else. Terraforming would require global agreement and adherence to a highly capital-intensive enterprise
That would be true if we were talking about a toxic substance, CO2 is not a pollutant, and there are ways to use it: for instance by terraforming deserts into living ecosystems that would use the extra CO2. And this includes not only deserts like sahara, but also vast areas of ocean devoid of life because of currents not lifting nutrients from the bottom of the sea.
People do not accept to pay costs for "limiting pollution" because they are not convinced that proposed solutions can work with anywhere reasonable cost. And for that we need not to simply talk everyone into accepting unviable solution out of fear, but to propose something that works and provides additional benefits. Terraforming deserts and controlling the weather is one such solution, which gets unfairly dismissed and downvoted.
Sure. Terra forming works. Conceptually. If you can manage to build a rainforest in the desert, that will fix some co2. That is not the issue. The issue is: how to build a rainforest in the desert. Technically, and economically.
Have you considered the amount of water you'd need? The irrigation system required for that? Where would the water come from? For reference, there is already a lot of geopolitics over water supply in the middle east. Have you considered how poor the soil is? How much work it would be to enrich that soil? We are already raising alarm bells regarding our phosphate stock. How would you keep the ecosystem in balance? If you can't you don't need an army of people to maintain it.
Most importantly, it would only buy you time. It would fix some of the co2 in trees. But if we continue to burn oil, we'll keep adding co2 to the atmosphere. Every barrel of oil is 430 kilos of co2. That's a lot of tree for one barrel.
And you've only fixed it temporarily. If at any time your artificial forest collapses (this being your first terra forming attempt), your trees decompose and release the co2.
Again. I'm not saying that any option should be off the table. But I do not think it benefits the already complicated debates, if we present theoretical scenarios as solutions.
To do that we need to learn how to control the weather. There are multiple possible ways, like using mirrors in space, using large number of aerostats to change reflectivity, and to guide clouds to the place we need, solar updraft towers to inject dust from lower layers of the atmosphere into higher layers to form clouds, etc. Many of these are may not work, and many won't be cheap, but they will give us more control over the environment and will enable more people to live.
Future Indian geopolitics is certainly going to be interesting. Would like to see these hotspots mapped for the next 20-30 years to highlight the scope of the situation. Will certain areas become perennially uninhabitable? Is it a matter of having AC / low humidity shelters that people flock to a couple hours a day during seasonal peaks? Estimates on climate refugees and migration patterns etc. I suspect it's going to be onerous but workable. There's low energy dehumidifying HVAC solutions that might be attainable even in poorer communities. Ultimately, petro rich countries like middle East and North America is going to be fine and AC through the solution if they have to, aggravating the problem for everyone else. Regardless, it's a problem worth mitigating and acclimatizing to, 85% of the world is seeking to develop and will do so via the most cost-efficient (currently dirty) methods possible. IMO, accommodating for this is a greater moral imperative that's ultimately incompatible with aggregate reduction in emissions - that was never workable. Developed countries should still strive to improve efficient and innovate to flatten the environmental cost curve per unit of quality of improvement, and modify their life styles so that rampant consumptive culture is not the aspired endpoint. But that's even harder said then done because capitalism.
For example, in Jaipur, traditional stepwells dug under houses absorb a lot of the mid-day summer heat. With some engineering, these can be scaled up to cool entire neighborhoods with energy efficient geothermal heat pumps [1].
It's easy to be all doom and gloom about climate change. But some mitigations are staring at us in the face. Others will take a while to become usable/cheap enough to be deployed at scale.
Everyone's getting air conditioners now. For some unexplainable reasons, people still use dark colored roofs - it's time that everyone painted them white or silver, because those A/Cs will just make everything worse in the long term.
Most people seem to think it's a temporary thing. They'll believe it until it becomes the new normal I guess.
You mean, when we run out of fossil fuel?
And even then, who knows whether dumping spare electricity into oil wells instead of e.g. batteries or pumped storage hydroelectricity might remain profitable.
My point is, it's not necessarily that obvious, and we better not wait for people to stop running out of ideas to make a profit on fossil fuels.
If I may, let me make a little plea.
May I remind everyone that we are not a mere spectators of the show. We are active participants. We can influence things. We as in you and I, HN crowd. It may not seem like it, but an average HN reader has a non-trivial amount of influence. And not only in financial sense. Please, use it. I used to urge people to please go and do something about climate. I think the phrasing has to change now. Please! Go out and do everything you possibly can to fight climate change. The future of humanity is in your hands.
The thing is, I'm completely oversatured with being scared. This has lead to massive mental issues in the last few years, because everything around us is apocalyptic, even though we live in unimaginable luxury compared to 99.9999% of the rest of the time when humanity existed. I just....can't anymore.
>> The future of humanity is in your hands.
No, it isn't. At least it doesn't feel like it. Impact of my actions is zero. The only way that a "future of humanity is in my hands" is by either deciding to not have kids, or even better, just killing myself and immediately reducing all my output to zero. Still, on a global scale that amounts to nothing.
Watched a good video about this recently - even if all of United Kingdom was wiped off the map and just disappeared overnight, China and US would make up for the reduced polution in about 8 weeks, as both countries emit more and more by the day. And you're telling me the future is in my hands? Right.
But the lockdown also shows the problems of shutting down the economy; in developing nations day wagers are starving and dying. In developed nations frothing-in-the-mouth idiots are protesting with their semi-auto weapons.
The figure I saw quoted is an estimated yearly reduction due to global lockdown of around 5% for CO2 emissions where about 7.5% yearly reduction is needed.
This isn't necessarily a cause for doom and gloom but it does show we need to move the focus back to transport, energy generation, etc and away from personal responsibility which on its own has minor benefits.
May be from reading too many scare-mongering alarmist articles like the one in OP where the usual quantitative terms that are supposed to be present in the abstract are replaced with "much lower", "serious health and productivity impacts", "dangerously high", "serious challenge", etc.
This is a statement about your mental health, not one about reality. Barring a badly-timed war, the global standard of living in 2100 will be much better than today’s. Even if global warming causes 10% less increase in GDP, as some modeling conservatively predicts.
If you want something to freak out about, I’d recommend nuclear war, the next AIDS-like virus, drone terrorism, and the casual destruction of human prosperity caused by housing policies.
Edit: Also, you can easily tell without looking that the idea billions would have to relocate is a complete joke. The reason is, let’s suppose global warming makes a region unfarmable. Well, even if it were farmable, automation in the 3rd world will move people out of farming anyway. So they’d have to be doing other work, trading for food, no matter what happens.
The cost of gene synthesis is roughly 20 years behind gene sequencing [0]. Extrapolated, by 2040, arbitrarily modifying your offspring will represent a trivial fraction (~0.5%) of the total cost of starting a family.
Follow Moore’s law (considering lower costs rather than boosted performance) and assuming the Kurzweil estimate for full brain emulation, then by 2047, uploaded minds would be cheaper than the food eaten by subsistence farmers. [1]
The first thing most people suggest when they hear about 3D printers is printing another 3D printer. It is definitely possible because that’s what every living cell does; while nobody knows how to do this now, if we can make it happen with the rocks of Mercury, it only takes four decades to build a Dyson swarm. [2]
The questions are, what happens first, and how does humanity collectively react to that?
[0] https://image.slidesharecdn.com/gblocks-webinar2014-14012312...
What do you mean by a 'non-trivial amount of influence'? Sure, we can ask our employers to enforce climate-friendly practices and talk to friends and family, but even protesting companies that contribute the most to pollution doesn't provide much relief as they either ignore the protests or make small changes that give them positive PR and make the less active people happy to stop trying.
What steps can a random person take to actually help the planet? I'm asking this without a shred of irony or doom and gloom, I legitimately would be happy to help stop the crisis but the only thing I can think of is planting dozens of trees every year.
Also, if you're in tech and you have the luxury of changing jobs, there are companies doing good work on climate change. Electric vehicles, solar power, making production and supply chains more efficient, etc. We can make it easy/cheaper/more pleasant for people/corporations/governments to make the right choices.
No, but only in the sense that they've tended to be too conservative and to understate the degree and pace of change.
And just to be clear, the paper linked to is a review of weather station data which finds that extreme heat & humidity conditions are occurring sooner and more frequently than models predicted.
It’s perfectly natural for the weather to be extremely hot and humid sometimes.
Unless you believe that NASA are in on the whole conspiracy because of, um, some reason I can't even fathom...
The troll may see it as validation when their posts are struck down, but that only matters to them, and since they're struck down and banned, it doesn't matter to anyone else.
For some cases, I agree that a well-pointed rebuttal can be effective, not to convince the troll, but rather to inform the audience. You cannot convince the troll, but you can show the audience how his arguments are flawed and false.
There is a balance, because you also risk giving his posts more attention, which is counterproductive. If possible, take the arguments to a place where the people who are already sympathetic to your arguments are in the majority. Have the discussion on your home turf, don't discuss in forums where the troll has the majority.
And obviously know when to disengage. Arguing with a pure bad faith troll is utterly pointless, they'll just keeping spinning bullshit while you try to seat down their nonsense. The takes a lot of effort on your part and absolutely none on theirs. In the process, they get to air even more of their nonsense to an audience.
Facts are precise and specific, lies are random, unlimited and don't have to have any connection to truth or reality.
I think your point regarding showing the audience is the salient one here.