[HN Gopher] Global Risk of Deadly Heat
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Global Risk of Deadly Heat
Author : tcfhgj
Score : 30 points
Date : 2022-11-27 20:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| gmuslera wrote:
| The first chapter of The Ministry for the Future
| (https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...)
| should be required reading, even if it is a work of science-
| fiction.
|
| Also, never cross a river that is 4-feet deep on average. Lethal
| heat for enough time could be the end of it for too many people
| in a region, whatever the long term trends are. And we already
| hit nearly 50oC at latitude 50 in Canada last year, even it being
| a La Nina year.
| guillem_lefait wrote:
| I found several interesting ideas in the book:
|
| - coloring the sea to increase albedo
|
| - pumping the water below ice layer to reduce the ice melt
| speed
|
| - the incentives to reward carbon capture
|
| Some actions (terrorism) introduce society changes:
|
| - drone attacks on plane/ship using fuel to limit carbon
| transportation
|
| - announcements of the contamination of animals with
| Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to reduce the meat consumption
| AstralStorm wrote:
| - danger of ultimate destruction of ecosystem that keeps us
| alive (same problem with algae seeding to enhance CO2 intake)
|
| - you mean heating up ice faster?
|
| - the main incentive is to fake savings while emitting more,
| how do you beat that?
|
| - better do these with empty ships and do not believe for one
| moment that more will not be spent to track you down, making
| it counterproductive
|
| - didn't work then, won't work now
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The cryptocurrency ideas did not age well if I understood
| them correctly. Though I did appreciate that he does state
| the national banking systems only had legal ability to do
| things that really can't change anything in the status quo -
| it's quite similar to what Piketty talks about in Capital and
| Ideology.
| gravitate wrote:
| Us humans are very adaptable. Maybe this is our next evolutionary
| step? (Apart from the obvious other step of symbiosis with
| technology). Maybe we'll become thermophiles?[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophile
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I'll take on this ... incredibly ... dumb take.
|
| It doesn't matter if we are "adaptable". We are directly
| reliant on a functioning global biosphere. This ain't changing.
|
| One of the scariest aspects of the current mass extinction is
| that other mass extinctions occurred on the timescale of tens
| to hundreds of thousands of years. That can be viewed as a
| proper timescale for overall evolutionary adaptation to occur
| in the global biosphere.
|
| Our current mass extinction is really on the scale of a couple
| hundred years.
|
| Previous temperature shifts likewise occurred on the scale of
| 10,000s of years. That provides time for adaptation, migration
| of entire biomes to shifting locations. See:
| https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
|
| Our current one is ridiculously fast. Even if the biomes /
| ecosystems could migrate, humanity is industrializing all the
| possible locations for the biomes to migrate too with farming.
|
| Unless you are a colonist from mars with experience in
| surviving in a world without a functioning biosphere, kindly
| never repeat this sentiment again.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Probably not with our current set of enzymes fine-tuned for 37
| C degrees. Most probably our metabolism would stop working
| accurately into a waterfall of malfunctions.
|
| Would be more realistic to expect evolving a pair of feathered
| wings than to reset our blood temperature to several degrees
| higher.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Evolution may not save us though! I think symbiosis with
| technology is the key: air conditioning is expensive and energy
| intensive. However there are devices that attach to your arm
| and can cool you down quickly.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| You're trying to beat evaporative cooling... Good luck with
| that.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Evaporative cooling ceases to work if water is almost
| condensing on your body!
|
| I imagine a dry ice pack and associated tech to slow
| release that coolness to exposed veins would work well.
| wesleywt wrote:
| This is an emphatic no. Thermophiles are bacteria and archea.
| We are not that. We evolved during period of mild geological
| climate. We move out of this period we will cease to exist as a
| species. Which I am not against.
| hirundo wrote:
| To make policy we should measure lethal heat events against
| lethal cold events. Cold events seem to be more dangerous on the
| whole. Do they decrease as the globe warms?
| "Researchers analyzed data on heat- and cold-related injuries
| that required a hospital visit in [Illinois] between 2011 and
| 2018. They identified around 24,000 cases each related to the
| cold and to heat. "Of those, there were 1,935 cold-
| related deaths and 70 heat-related ones. The cold caused 94% of
| temperature-related deaths, even though hypothermia (a drop in
| the body's core temperature) was responsible for only 27% of
| temperature-related hospital visits."
|
| -- https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20200827/what-is-
| mor...
| defrost wrote:
| > Do they decrease as the globe warms?
|
| In the near term (next century) they may well increase in
| ferocity and intensity.
|
| The physics is straightforward, "mean temp rising" across the
| entire Earth surface translates to more free energy trapped at
| the near earth land and water layers, that's more enery for
| winds (storm) and driving heat pumps (freezing cells).
|
| A relevant overly simplified high physics question is:
|
| There is a freezer with its door open in a sealed room .. over
| time does the room get hotter or colder?
|
| AGW is projected to have many knock on effects about the globe,
| pinning down which of these will happen where and to what
| degree is harder than the simple conclusion that such things
| _will_ happen - and they are all disruptive to life as we
| humans know it.
| kbutler wrote:
| Yes, cold deaths vastly outnumber heat deaths (600k from heat
| but 4.5m from cold annually worldwide).
|
| And yes, increased warmth decreases cold deaths - about 2x
| (283k avoided cold deaths vs 116k increased heat deaths per
| year).
|
| https://www.lomborg.com/the-heresy-of-heat-and-cold-deaths
|
| This effect is probably magnified by the fact that more warming
| occurs in nighttime temperatures, winter temperatures, and
| polar areas.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Ever been to a desert? They get very cold at night...
|
| So heating might well enhance the cold fatalities, much like
| ones due to other disasters like floods, dust, droughts, crop
| failures etc.
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(page generated 2022-11-28 05:01 UTC)