If so, how soon? Where?
Do Scientists Anticipate Certain Areas Becoming Too Hot For Life?
I think this is a point that gets lost so much, especially among skeptics/deniers. "The planet has been warmer before and life thrived."
Yeah, no shit, because it evolved to thrive in those conditions. Almost all the life on Earth today evolved to live in an ice age. We've been in an ice age for over 2 million years, this is what life has adapted to.
If you make dramatic changes to that in a short period of time, things don't die because the temperature is higher than it's ever been with life before. They die because the life that's here on Earth today isn't adapted to those temperatures, and they couldn't adapt in the short period of time over which the change occurred.
I also agree with @ialsoagree
sleep wipe bright snow crowd edge normal plate oatmeal growth
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
There will also be a shit ton of human suffering while "life is finding a way"
What changes can people make to prevent that happening?
Reduced unnecessary consumption. Those living in developed countries can cut out HUGE amounts of unnecessary consumption. Either we make the change now and ensure that future generations are able to survive. Or we don't make the changes and have those changes forced on us as nature wipes us out.
Take a look at your own life and start cutting out the things that are not necessary. The vast majority of people who shower every day do not need to. Once or twice a week is more than enough for most. Get rid of your lawn, no one needs a fucking lawn or garden. All these things do is replace the natural species that are required to maintain the local ecosystem. Stop buying clothes before your previous clothes are worn out. Start walking and biking more whenever you can.
There are a LOT of changes people can make to prevent these things.
I'll push back on one thing you said, gardens. People should absolutely have a small garden. Nothing crazy. It can even be simple things grown in pots inside. But, if you can grow commonly used vegetables, or at the very least some herbs. Cutting down on the amount of energy and resources required to commercially grow, ship, refrigerate, and package herbs and vegetables that are extremely easy to grow yourself is a good thing.
Otherwise, spot on. We're taking comfort now and causing suffering later.
I wish I could say you are correct. But unless you're living in a small village or rural town that does not have the collective means to have centralized services and production. Then, growing your own is horrible.
If you live in a decently populated area that has the means for a public water system and large local farms. Then, it is far more efficient and less resource intensive to buy food grown locally on farms. With the size and population of most cities and towns, individual gardening is fucking horrible for the environment.
If you have open space enable appropriate local plant life to grow there is beneficial - that, imo is a garden. It’s also beautiful, trees keep neighborhoods cooler, and garden helps people appreciate nature.
Growing your own is horrible how?
Citation needed on that claim.
2023 study on home garden effects to climate change, sustainability, and well-being.
Royal Horticultural Society guide to environmentally beneficial gardening
While there is certainly a case to be made that urban agriculture can have a negative environmental impact if done haphazardly. Growing diverse plant varieties and companion plants, composting, sustainable water collection system, and including plants that are utilized by pollinators are in no way "fucking horrible for the environment.". These aren't complicated or expensive steps to take. If you have actual research to support your claim, I'd like to read it, I'm not opposed to changing my mind. Otherwise, that's just like, your opinion man.
If you think one or two showers a week is enough, you probably don’t already live in a hot and humid place like I do. And it’s getting hotter every year, pushing the wet bulb temperature to close to what humans can survive at, without AC.
Houston and Miami are two cities already pushing that wet bulb in the summer.
Good job about making assumptions about strangers on the internet. We are hitting temperatures of 50°C (122°F) where I live. I have family who live in Houston, and they couldn't stand being here for a week during the summer. Let me know when Houston or Miami start hitting 122°F and 46 million acres of forest burn in a single year. Then you can start complaining about temperatures.
Again, the vast majority of people do not need to take a shower more than one or two times a week. That includes you in Houston and Miami. But if you are determined to feel what 122°F feels like, then keep taking those showers every day. You're doing good at helping us speed run our extinction.
I would hate to smell you or sit next to you on a plane or bus showering that infrequently . Unless you literally stay inside all day, or only spend the time outside walking from your car to AC. But for people like me that have to work outside all day in the heat, we must shower.
Even the ancient Roman’s bathed near everyday, and we have enough water in Florida. You’re killing the planet far faster everytime you take a car, or hell even post on Reddit. You know how much manufacturing adds to our CO2 limit? If you really want to put your money where your mouth is, give up your phone, your car, your electricity and internet. Taking less showers a day isn’t going to do shit when we use all of this technology.
Even if you give all those things up, it won’t matter because Taylor Swift will still use her jet every day.
The species will go extinct no matter what we do and there’s not a damn thing we can really do.
I just find it incredibly stupid that people advocate for miniscule changes in their routine, thinking it will have any effect, when they won’t even give up their phones or cars.
If we’re all going to die, I’m not going out smelling homeless everyday until then.
LMFAO. All of that, and you couldn't figure out that there are other ways to clean yourself besides taking a shower? Despite even listing a more sustainable alternative to showering! Wow... just wow...
Also, FYI, collective action has far more impact than any individual action. That includes the individual actions of Taylor Swift. By having the mentality that the world has enough water to indulge in showering every day. Or thinking making any changes in your life will have an effect. You are just as bad and self-centered as Taylor Swift. YOU are a part of the problem, and you're dragging the rest of the world down with you. I have no respect for self-centered individuals like yourself.
Yeah . Life will continue. But humans? Who knows . Sadly alot of species will also die off.
Also, within 15 degrees of the equator had large expanses with minimal complex life.
They skip over the bit where most populations collapse and ecosystems get occupied by different species.
"Too hot for life?". No. Plants and bacteria will thrive.
"Too hot for human life?" Still no. We have AC.
"Too hot for human life without technology?" Assuredly.
But also keep in mind how many places on the planet are "Too cold for human life without technology." Not making any excuse for being OK with climate change, just pointing out that humanity will adapt. It's the wildlife and local ecosystems to worry about.
I agree partly, but I'd like to add, that these places "too cold for life without technology" have always been populated very scarcely, exactly because living in extreme conditions isn't easy. Also, peoples of the North have been adapting to northern conditions for thousands of years. And tropical regions that start to get overheated are very densely populated, and most people don't have and wont have any AC's, and this time we don't have thousands of years to change our way of life. So I sincerely doubt that "humanity will adapt" if the system doesnt get changed on a planetary level and the destructive processes don't get slowed down or stopped. Some part of humanity maybe, but definitely not all of it
Yes, there will be displacement, and yes there will be casualties. I'm not denying that at all.
I live in Chicago. Every year people die in the winter from the cold. It is an "unlivable" climate for about half the year. Yet is a giant bustling city thanks to technology.
I am certain society can and will adapt to the changes, though there will be tremendous costs. I guess my main point is I am far less concerned about humans than I am all of the other lifeforms on this planet that will actually face extiction. And this is due to more than just climate change, though its all linked. Chemical pollution, disease, ecosystem degradation, hunting/fishing etc. The natural world will soon become a zoo - select species will only exist in the small zones we have set aside for them. The rest will disappear.
The inuits have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years. I guess their highly refined gear can be thought of as technology.
For sure. But that's a good point that technology to produce/trap heat is simpler than tech to produce cold...
I think he’s talking about Antarctica, which has never had a permanent human settlement. We still haven’t figured out how to build a true city there, and it’s mainly research bases.
The interior there is truly not survivable without technology though. There’s really no animal life at all at the South Pole, other than the errant bird that flies overhead. All the life on that continent lives by the coast.
Maybe and could. I think spending big money on research should be able to state will happen. All this article does is plant a seed. Maybe not or will not carries the same weight
It’s hard to say what will happen when we’ve never existed on a planet with these conditions before and we don’t fully understand the feedback loops.
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27d
I worked with a remote worker from Pakistan. He said summers are absolutely unbearable now and that it’s happened in the last 10 years.
When I spoke to him it was 40c outside and it was 6pm in the evening.
I don’t know how so many people can still deny climate change.
The people denying it live in cooler places.
"Global warming is fake because it snowed at my house."
I live on the east coast of Canada and this past winter we had less than half our normal snow fall (~75cm vs 205cm) followed in April with the coldest April morning (-6.5) since the 1940s… I guess that one day means climate change isn’t happening /s
Edit: Spelling
Regions that rely on snow to recharge their aquifers are in serious trouble.
So far they’ve bounced back. So far.
My girlfriend was in Alberta for a few weeks in April and she said some of the locals were worried about how little snow they got
California bounced back nicely. I don’t know if that will happen in the future. But it’s being used as an ‘everything is fine’ message.
Live in Minnesota and we had a record amount of snow 2 winters ago and last winter hardly any…
If climate change pushes a lot of us Americans up into Canada in the near future, especially us here in Florida will you all let us in with open arms?
What’s strange though is right now the hottest state in the lower 48 has had massive net positive migration since Covid.
Absolutely. I live in Alberta Canada, where we still get lots of cold weather and snow and we have a ton of people who got rich of our oil economy. Even though we are seeing the effects of climate change here too, such as warmer temperatures, less precipitation, and raging wild fires all summer every summer, there a tons of people here who refuse to accept climate change. Their opinions range from "it's totally a hoax" to "it's not that bad, the media is just fear mongering" and "okay, it's real but it's mother nature, not people who are causing it and there is nothing we can do about it".
Somehow science has become political.
Central AB here. My working hypothesis is that oil money made people entitled/stupid and lobbying for govt inaction became highly lucrative. Our complete failure to diversify as well as absolute regulatory capture means that we're heading in the exact same direction as post-coal Appalachia.
Hopefully the smoke isn't too bad this summer, and that this rain soaks in?
What's the saying?
"You can't make someone understand something when their livelihood depends on not understanding it."
Its not somehow. It was an orchestrated plan by the same lobbying groups that cast doubt about the link between smoking and cancer, CFCs and the ozone layer, sulfur and nitrogen oxides and acid rain, DDT and the death of birds, etc.
The people who say that didn't pay attention in H.S. or go to college.
Snow means there is moisture in the air caused by warmth. It doesn't snow when it is truly cold because it's too cold and there is no moisture in the air. More snow = more moisture = more warmth = snowing is not a good factor in which to judge climate change.
Our current political climate has been shaped decently in part by people who will never be able to grasp even remotely counterintuitive things
So the people in hot areas are using weather to substantiate belief in climate change, while the people in cold areas are doing the same to deny it? Both guilty of conflating climate and weather.
I don't claim to know what people in Lahore are thinking, I just know up here denialism runs thick every winter.
It's more an issue of drawing global assumptions from a local dataset than conflating climate and weather per se (they are not entirely unrelated after all).
I’m here in Miami and it’s definitely unbearable in the summers with the humidity. With the heat index in July, it can get to 40C on occasion. I remember last year having a couple weeks with the heat index sitting at a balmy 115.
This guy was not in Phoenix last summer.
Close to 40c at 6pm in August is pretty normal for where I live in Texas.
wet bulb temps is what they are referring to, much more dangerous.
There is natural climate variance (climate change), but I believe you meant to say "deny anthropogenic climate change", correct? Yes, I emphatically deny it for dozens of valid reasons, most notably because
- Earth's vegetation has increased by 15% in the past 15 years, which is the opposite of what most alarmist climate scientists predicted. [link: https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/\] Natural climate change ain't so bad *overall*.
- Temperature lags CO2 by ~800 years in the geologic record, most likely due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun which happen on 21,000-year timescales which cause the Antarctic to warm and cool cyclically. Hence, ice ages and warming periods. FYI, we are exiting a minor ice age. [link: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/\] Yes, CO2 can amplify warming, but human CO2 production is by all reasonable accounts mice nuts compared to overall CO2.
- Climate alarmists' predictions are literally always proven wrong by... time. They are 0 for 54 and counting. [link: https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions/ and https://euanmearns.com/the-temperature-forecasting-record-of-the-ipcc/ ]. If they are always wrong, why do you listen to them???
- Most pundits practice what Plato called the “noble lie” being so obsessed with his holiness and righteous mission that he feels justified in purposefully lying to achieve what he deems to be the greater good. With all the model tweaking, backward revisions to IPCC and other data, that anthropomorphic climate change is one big great noble lie should be clear to any sentient being. A noble lie is just a lie, no matter how much you want it to be true.
- There are dozens of periods in recent geologic history that were global, warmer than the present, not accompanied by increase in greenhouse gases (and peer-reviewed for you alarmists). One of them was the Medieval Warm Period which lasted from c. 950 to c. 1250, and another was the Roman Warm Period from 250 BC to AD 400. [link: https://climatism.blog/2018/12/03/peer-reviewed-science-the-medieval-warm-period-was-indeed-global-and-warmer-than-today/ and http://www.co2science.org/subject/r/summaries/rwpeurope.php ]
I could go on and on and on with valid, eminently defensible critiques of the theory of anthropogenic climate change, but I'll stop here.
Yeah I wasn’t referring to the underlying mechanism but rather it’s existence generally .
I do feel that we don’t have all the answers to climate change, it’s causes, remedies and outcomes. So unlike many others, I’m always willing to hear other perspectives.
With that said, why is there almost a unanimous consensus among scientists that it is man-made. Truthfully I am always going to side with those who dedicate their lives to this research as opposed to finding and connecting dots from abstract articles. Unless the evidence proving it as false is overwhelming, which I don’t think it is.
I would think the answer is somewhat lying in the grey area and it’s a mix of both.
But I do agree there are several reasons for natural climate change from solar flares to the cyclical change in earths axis. And dramatic changes have been seen before such as the periods you mention (and also little ice age).
Unfortunately this link is giving me a 404. Can you repost? I’d be interested to see this. Because from what I see we have practically devoured our forests.
This is a really interesting point that I think a lot of people overlook. The relationship between CO2 is quite complex and not as simple as cause and effect. And some view this as a chicken/egg situation. With that said, again, most leading scientists oppose your view here.. why?
Predictions at such time scales are almost always inaccurate and I don’t pay attention to them. Flying cars by year 2000?
Have you see south east Asia lately? If they had a power failure people would die en masse.
France lost 30k people a few years ago.
Middle of the century, so that is about 5 years from now.
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26d
The point is that everything appears to be happening much faster than previous estimates. So "in fifty years" becomes "in five years".
Original estimates for wet bulb temps exceeding human tolerance were mid century but we're already starting to see brief wet bulb events in Pakistan, India, and the ME.
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26d
Check who you're responding to.
Apologies, saying "the point is" implied you were the original commentor. You wouldn't know what their point was unless you were them. Especially since you replied so soon after I commented, it was safe to assume you were the same person and had received a notification about my reply.
I know what their point is because I understand the joke that they were making. You missed the joke but there's no shame in that.
The fact is that all the estimates on when bad things were going to start happening have been wildly optimistic and we're seeing events originally estimated for mid century already starting to occur. It's not a good situation to be in by any stretch of the imagination hence the dark humor.
you could also have checked the commenter you were responding to. I make that mistake all the time but it's on me, not them. this explanation afterwards is weird.
For sure I could've checked that. "Check who you're replying to" was snarkier than it needed to be for a simple mistake, especially with the extra conditions leading to the mistake, hence the explanation.
I started the comment by apologizing, so why the hell does it matter that I explained my mistake after? Your comment is weird.
Man this is one of the locations in the current grey man book I'm reading. Lahore Pakistan and Mumbai India.
Laos doesn't get much airplay but some parts have had heat index hitting 62 C/144 F this past April. Max heat index stayed over 50 C for almost 3 weeks.
No fucking way. Those are crazy temps
Nowhere on the planet gets much play on the US media besides US news & foreign wars…
Well thank goodness by the time those temperatures were reached they were almost half-way through spring and winter was just seven or so months away, bringing with it some much-needed cooling. I can't imagine how it would have felt to have conditions like that and no relief in sight!
Seriously how is the country not dead? Air conditioning?
That has to be a HEAT INDEX of the temp and humidity COMBINED. Very, very dangerous. But the thermometer did NOT read 62C/144 F
Heat + Humidity is what's relevant though.
A dry heat is survivable by drinking lots of water and sweating it out and the heat evaporates away. When its very hot + very humid you're no longer able to sweat (or it just pools on your skin instead of evaporating since the air is saturated) and any outdoor time becomes deadly.
So I assume everyone in Laos is dead?
Yeah I mean it is an ongoing mass casualty event.
The deaths that have been reported are likely an undercount as the most at risk for having to be outdoors are the homeless and western media barely knows Laos exists.
So by this time next year all of south east Asia will be dead? Got it.
It's survivable indoors or with running water, but a lot of people will be dead.
What's your deal? You don't believe people are dying?
No, people are dying, I know that. Will the entire country cease to exist in a few years? Do you have any up-to-date death toll counts? I read an article that said little less than 3000 people died last year due to heat.
It only has to be too hot for life for a number of hours, so yeah, certain areas are going to become too hot for life. As others have menti9ned the middle and near east have a jump on it but other places like Australia and the Mediterranean aren’t far behind.
38 degrees or 100 degrees Fahrenheit is what people shouldn’t be expected to just survive, after 8 hours or not even one day at this temperature heat stroke or exhaustion is certain.
Not unless there is high humidity. 100 degrees is totally bearable out in the desert.
As someone who lives in a suburb of Phoenix, AZ, I can concur. 100° in dry heat is absolutely tolerable. Even at 115°. Definitely hot, but totally doable, if you're not over exerting yourself, and have water. Especially in the shade.
Now when I go to Florida, at 85° with 60% humidity, I look like a wet dog and I'm absolutely miserable.
The Lisan Al Ghaib?
As written
You can check out the 2023 annual report for Maricopa county (Phoenix, AZ) linked here: https://www.maricopa.gov/1858/Heat-Surveillance
There were 645 heat related deaths in 2023 up from 425 in 2022, making a 50% increase. Scientists or not, we can observe places like Phoenix Arizona becoming increasingly too hot to live.
That's not to mention the heat waves in Europe, India, Southeast Asia. There's no realistic scenario where those events become less common and less extreme.
Seems to me there’s two types of heat deaths- one that happens to susceptible people like the young, elderly, and people in ill health.
The other would be a high temp no one can survive. The problem with trying to measure this is there is a time factor depending on the temp and the health of the individual and any steps taken to mitigate. We can live indefinitely at 80 degrees fahrenheit and 50% humidity. At 100 degrees some people would start to die. At 120 more would die, but at 150 I suspect everyone would die within an hour, while at 120 it may take a few hours. I’m curious what temp is too hot for anyone to survive.
Max surviable Wet bulb temps are around 96f. Length of exposure is a factor. The longer the exposure, the lower the max temp.
One weird complication is if temps dip at night, there's a lot less deaths.
Need more details to attribute this to human induced climate change making Phoenix 50% more deadly due to rising temps over the course of one year as suggested.
Reading further on one of the articles in the link it's stated: "We found no evidence that the unusually high number of heat-associated deaths observed in Maricopa County in 2016 was related to observed meteorological conditions. If the conventional methods for estimating the temperature–mortality association are reasonably approximating a causal relationship, factors other than the weather were mostly responsible for the surge in deaths in 2016. These findings highlight the importance of nonmeteorological factors as drivers of temporal variability in the health burden associated with heat, which have generally not been included in quantitative retrospective or prospective studies."
As others have said: India and Pakistan will almost certainly get there. Of course you would be fine with air conditioning… but when the power grid fails on an especially hot day due to the AC load, millions of people could die.
The first chapter of the book “The Ministry For The Future” goes into graphic detail of how it could play out… it’s very depressing.
Even with AC if all your livestock and crops are dead, you soon will be as well.
The disaster in Cormac McCarthy's The Road is just a Phoenix summer in 2045.
There might be Wetbulb death traps where everyone evacuates, when the death season approaches, except some with a death wish, and other essential workers with cooled suits who stay in shelters as exotic as you might see on Mars, with backup power and AC.
I also anticipate that places like New Orleans will be vacated by all except the desperate.
New Orleans is already on the borrowed time, due to its vulnerability to flooding and hurricanes.
Good point
Upvoted for the mention of The Ministry for the Future.
119 people have died from heat stress just in the last week in this current heat wave in India:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heat-wave-asia-2024-deaths-india-severe-weather-climate-change/
How many people die in India in a week on average in India? Quick search indicates about 180,000 per week. So a .00066 percent increase from heat stress is evidence that India is becoming too hot to live due to climate change?
Cool, anyone can manipulate numbers to try and tell a story I guess. Fact is that yes, it is currently too hot to live in India for some as they are dying. Expected to get worse.
Now get lost...
I never finished "The Ministry for the Future" because that opening sequence was so horrifying I had to stop. Mass death in a crowded city from a heat wave + power failures is my new worst nightmare.
Unsurprisingly the TLDR is that it was extremely traumatic for the character in the book as well
The Ministry For The Future
Indeed, here's the first chapter: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/
Asians heat wave is making all sorts of placed living hells. It is raising the specter of death by heat. Heat stroke in some of these places are also more likely because of the lack of cooling infrastructure.
Parts of India and South East Asia like Bangladesh are experiencing crazy humidity as well which exacerbates the higher temps. Humidity has caused temperatures to spike in some places to over 60 degrees.
The humidity is really problematic. I have been wondering about SE Asia because of wet bulb temperatures and their infrastructure for even keeping their public spaces/homes in a livable condition. I don’t know a ton about wet bulb but from what I have read/understood that completely exacerbates the heat issue
Temperatures or heat index?
I don’t know if scientists do, but I do for sure. I was living in Texas the summer of 2011. 100 days of triple digits, often 108. I realized then I would have to move.
In 2020 we moved to costal (still 50 meters above sea level) PNW, into our forever home. This area was chosen with long term climate change in mind.
Less than a year later, we got this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave
114F in the shade next to our house, no central air, but we did have a couple of portable units. I didn't expect this kind of heat to arrive in the PNW for at least 10-15 more years.
Fortunately it didn't last too long.
Very scary stuff.
I'm on the OR coast and the last few winters have been brutal on the beach - pounding storms and high tides are eroding the beach - many winter days there's just no beach to walk or you can't get down there on the normal pathways which become vertical drops of 10-20 feet. The houses on the waterfront seem far from the water but they will be in danger.
Yeah we're nowhere near the ocean, about a mile from the sound, at the top of a rise. By design, there's literally no chance for either ocean, storm or surface flooding where we are.
Yeah, that summer was an insane wake-up call. All the pundits had predicted the pnw would be a safe zone. I was next door in Idaho and shocked by what was happening.
Yup. Nothing in the PNW is built for extreme heat.
So glad moved from a hundred year old bungalo to something with insulation and central air. Rare find in PNW.
Some regions most at risk include parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. These areas could experience many days each year with wet-bulb temperatures. The exact timeline depends on how much global warming occurs. It could happen with just a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures.
So we’re getting close.
Yeah
Too hot for life is vague, life can survive really at any global temp. The big question is too hot for humans.
And our crops.
Heat problems for crops isn't just being directly lethal for them. It can be indirectly lethal for the crops by driving water demand elsewhere and drought killing the crops. Also, a lot of crops just stop growing when it is too hot. This isn't really bad for the plant. But it will increase the number of growing days needed. This can push harvest out into the cold months and a killing frost might take the plants before harvest (or the rainy season, etc). It reduces turn over in fields, reducing efficiency (fewer crops per year in 1 field). The long period can make the plants weird, reducing the yield or making them inedible (so, field loss even though the plants didn't die). And with indeterminate crops the shut down means a non productive period which also means lower yield.
The places most currently at risk, such as India, probably aren't growing a lot of crops with low heat tolerance. But lots of prime growing locations on earth will experience temperature rises that result in yield loss with out the temperatures being especially deadly for humans.
That's just heat, that doesn't factor in other weather weirdening.
All mammals have a narrow range of max wet bulb temps.
correct, but mammals are not all life
Sure. Those chemosynthesis at the vents' way, way, down vents will likely survive us.
Though they'll be hit pretty hard by the end of bio mass floating down
We're exceeding the rates of petm... when (most likely) a comet shattered the mantle lighting the massive coal fields on fire worldwide..
So we're far, far, more fatal than the worst extinction we can find in the geological record.
And your hope is what that some soil bacteria might survive?
Have you never heard about reptiles? Assuming we stop before Siberian traps levels of CO2 Snakes and lizards will reign supreme.
Yeah, they can't live when it's too hot, either.
Even plants have a limited wet bulb temp range, which we'll easily exceed over much of the world.
The Future of the Human Climate Niche discusses this. They estimate that c.1-3 billion people will need to migrate by 2070 due to unlivable conditions. The affected regions are basically the areas from the Tropic of Cancer to Capricorn, although there's some geographical variation. The southern Med, to the surprise of nobody, would be impacted according to their research, as would the southern US states, central America, etc.
Even last summer there were parts of the south in the US where the wet-bulb temperature spent some time too high for survival.
Yes. When wet bulb temperature rises above 32 °C and certainly before 35 °C, mammals no longer have means of disposing of metabolic heat, and several hours exposure is lethal. Mass casualty wet bulb events will be common later this century.
Maps of the most affected areas are available as Fig 2 in:
Vecellio et al, 2023. Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically determined lower moist heat stress tolerance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(42), p.e2305427120.
The most severely affected areas are the shores of the Persian Gulf. The largest populations affected will be those of the Ganges and Indus basins of South Asia. But beyond +3 °C above pre-industrial (we're at +1.6 °C now), exposure to high wet bulb temperatures becomes severe in China, SE Asia, and the Sahel of Africa as well. Given I've got another 30 years to go, I'm unlikely to see it, but I expect readers will live to see news of heat-waves that kill millions.
Thanks for the info!
If you're in India, you're most likely screwed. Unless there is some technological revolution or some massive global geoengineering project.
Or there's a dramatic reduction in India and Bangladesh's population.
It may sound gruesome. Honestly, though, reduction in population in those regions isn’t the worst thing that can happen.
That does sound gruesome, wtf
Yes, I realize that. I’m a citizen of one of those regions. I don’t live there anymore, but I do visit. Whenever I do that, that’s the one thing that gets stuck in my head - what if we had less people here. You can call me names. I understand that. I speak entirely from a scientific viewpoint. The higher population isn’t serving either the rich or the poor.
In fact, to add - I would still hold the same view had I been counted within that reduction myself. I maintain my view.
A natural population decline with development would be preferable to a global heat wave that will kill scores of people and then continue on till all of civilization collapses though.
Yep, I agree with you. Reduction is population is what I’m seeking here. If that can be done in a more sustainable manner, I’m all for it.
This sample from the book “Ministry For The Future” paints a terrifying picture of what may lie ahead.
https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/
I have a follow up question. Do animals with much shorter lifespans, evolve faster? For example, rabbits. With how many generations of rabbits there are, would they not evolve to handle these conditions faster? And some insects as well? Any smart people know the answer?
We’re doing millennia of warming over decades, nothing can evolve that fast.
microbes can
Can you eat microbes?
Yes; yoghurt, cheese, kimchi, and many others.
Yeah you also need cows, grass, and vegetables to make that stuff. That relies on a stable climate. If there are ONLY microbes we’re not going to do well.
Your arguments are kinda all over the road.
No? The things that can’t evolve fast enough won’t survive dramatic climate transition. We’re not magical animals that can live on a barren planet if we pollute and burn it all. They said microbes could evolve fast enough, but we can’t live on microbes, can we?
I would like to retract my "kinda".
Sorry you’re not able to follow? I feel I summarized my 3 comments pretty well. Human beings can’t survive on only microbes, so we should take care not to destroy the things we rely on to survive.
Imho, Evolution is also a function of organisms biological complexity. Simply put, more the number of 'parts', more are the mutations possible. The average lifespan is also a factor that affects rate of evolution. So the answer isn't as straightforward.
Hmmm. I would need to see some research. More complex organisms are, yeah, more likely to mutate. But with out data I'd be inclined to suspect that mutations for more complex organisms are on average much much less likely to be beneficial. Furthermore, more complex organisms may be less likely to pas on their mutations. Sexual organs protect the genetic line from mutations that happen elsewhere in the organism. Also, there may be a correlation between complexity and average generation length.
I remember when “hot or not” was about attractiveness, not long-term habitability!
For sure
For the umpteenth time yes. Global warming puts human civilization at risk because it makes places too hot to live.
Okay. But most of the conversation you see about it concerns ecosystem collapse, sea level rise and ocean acidification, not temperatures that literally cook all humans alive.
Yep. Death Valley CA, nothing can survive there today, it’s a pretty clear example of what’s to come in a few years after climate change hits us hard in 2040
The most useful term for researching this is probably the "climate niche", which is the climate conditions that human life can thrive in. Among many other scientific articles about the climate niche, "Quantifying the human cost of global warming" (Lenton et al., 2023) is a good starting point!
Somewhere around 120F your body is no longer able to cool itself with sweat. You need AC/other external cooling, or you die.
Parts of Arizona have been reaching temps of 120F for hours a day for a few years now, and I'm pretty sure at least one homeless person has been found slow-cooked on the street by now.
And it takes more energy to cool people down so if we don’t switch soon it will spiral quick I think… oil is not sustainable… things look bleak and I’m hoping the human race can wake up as a whole to solve this
Well we humans had a good run… I wonder when things are going to collapse though
give it another decade or so, i don't think humanity is going to dissappear, but really tough times are ahead of us
I suspect not in my lifetime. Depends on how quickly we blow through various thresholds. Late 2,000’s will probably be a wild ride.
For the Americans: at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will be a catastrophic storm followed immediately by a lengthy heat dome in a heavily populated area in the south or perhaps the desert southwest. With power out for several days, a lot of people will die. It will probably be worse than Katrina, but a lot will depend on who's running FEMA and Interior, who's in charge in the affected state, and how well the feds and state folks are able to collaborate. About all we can hope is that, unlike COVID, the plans that are currently on the shelf don't stay there, but even if all goes as well as can be, likely hundreds of deaths.
Sou ds like a prophecy
No. It is a prediction.
Ive read about the possibility of Dubai having a heat index of over 150 in the not too distant future.
Most areas on Earth are too cold for life. Nature is 99.9% hostile to human life. But hey, we have a brain and we managed to adapt to it :-)
I think that Climate Change is a real threat and doesnt get much real political action. But I think that there is another threat that doesnt get any political attention.
And that is our ability to cope with huge increases in stress, whether from work expectations, money problems, technology, safety etc. I would love to see a study on this, but I think that it is debilitating and the primary cause of manyu other flow-on problems such as violence etc.
Yes. Everyone moving to South Florida must have space-suits. If you do not own a space-suit do not come. 😜
Ya like the whole planet
Generally speaking, global south will be hit the hardest.
Too hot for 'life', not likely since you have living things surviving in temperatures most living things cannot survive in such as bacteria in thermal vents but for humans and many species in their current habitats the climate is changing to make it no longer possible for them to survive in their current habitats. As has been said, that is happening as I type this. We can of course start building underground and using ancient venting techniques to lower temperatures in human habitats but that is not going to help the plants and animals that simply do not have the time to adapt or to move to ranges where they can survive. We have a mass extinction going on right now and it is going to get worse for some time. We have over 8 billion people on this planet that are dependent on our agriculture and our current climates. Millions are going to die and suffer. Oil execs are perfectly ok with that and have known it for some time.
If all human civilization is destroyed I don’t think we’ll concern ourselves with the fate of extremophile bacteria. I guess you have to be extremely specific when asking these questions. My question is could we get temperatures that would wipe out all human life in the affected area?
Hundreds of people live in Death Valley and that has several months a year when it gets over 50C.
Licks finger, touches butt, sizzle
YES
Lol
There are and have been places like that now, the Area's of them are changing and some are enlarging, Regional Weather Displacements, what falls or happens in one place now happens somewhere else, did you know that in the higher elevations of the Rockies they used to get 30 to 50 feet of snow?
That is an awful lot of rainwater displacement falling somewhere else say in the Southwest or missing falling on land completely and falling in the oceans, doesn't help with that salinity problem either.
N. S
Like others said it depends on the kind of life you want to define, and in a way it's already happening, you just need to look at the places where animals and people are most vulnerable are dying from disproportionate and unusual heat or cold exposure as the leading indicator.
For animals the flag bearing species is like the Polar Bear which relies on glacial ice floes for hunting plus the seals that need the icebergs to breed and raise pups on them at specific times of year.
But even with humans it's especially the elderly, asthmatics, etc. to watch for in places that are getting very hot and/or extreme bouts of cold.
Plus certain crops (maple syrup for example may no longer happen or sugar maples may even start to go extinct in some areas within the next 50 years depending on how temperatures and the seasons change). Then there's stuff like ocean life that relies on a certain level of oxygen to carbon which may disappear if there's too much CO2 which can weaken or halt the creation of shells for shellfish etc. which a lot of animals depend on too.
Granted you'll have some conflating stuff from urban heat island effect in major cities which is a kinda localized climate change issue, but in general there are regions that are already mapped and estimated as zones where things won't be good for a lot of life.
Most of them, yes.
Far more of the planet currently is, and always will be, far too COLD for life. It's incredible to me how often this is glossed over.
Kids are becoming mentally ill because they're worried about tiny slices of the planet becoming too hot, even as most of our planet will kill you if you had to sleep outside at night.
Tiny?
We're on track to ensure nearly everywhere within 15 degrees of the equator will experience wet bulb temps too high for mammals to survive...
K gramps
The positive impact of warmer temperatures in cold areas will offset the negative impact of hotter temps in localized areas.
No it won’t
Yes, it will. Much of the earth's landmass is in Russia, North America, both of which stand to benefit from higher temperatures resulting in longer growing seasons and lower cold-related mortality rates. You undermine your credibility when you only mention the negative effects of warmer temps without acknowledging the positive effects.
The problem is much of Earth's sunlight is in the south. Warmer temperatures don't mean much in a darkness season. It was already hot enough in summer. And what about soil? Much of the northern topsoil was pushed south by the glaciers during the ice age. Can't grow crops on the Canadian shield.
Some published evidence from a source not noted for a Denialist bias:
THE LANCET Planetary Health
VOLUME 5, ISSUE 7, E415-E425, JULY 2021
Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study
“Discussion This study estimated the global burden of mortality associated with non-optimal temperatures at a spatial resolution of 0·5° × 0·5°, and explored the temporal change from 2000 to 2019. We found that there were 5 083 173 deaths per year associated with non-optimal temperatures, accounting for 9·43% of global deaths and equating to 74 temperature-related excess deaths per 100 000 residents.
Most excess deaths were linked to cold temperatures (8·52%), whereas fewer were linked to hot temperatures (0·91%). Globally, from 2000–03 to 2016–19, the cold-related excess death ratio changed by −0·51 percentage points and the heat-related excess death ratio increased by 0·21 percentage points, leading to a net decline of −0·30 percentage points. The temperature-related mortality burden and its temporal changes showed disparate geographical variations.”
There are sauna competitions where people tolerate 110 C or 230 F. So climate change probably won’t get nearly hot enough to kill a healthy human in a short period of time. But the normal climate today with normal heat waves is already hot enough to kill less healthy people over time. So that would be expected to get more frequent, if we don’t expand and maintain reliable air conditioning for people.
Google Wet Bulb Effect.
Sauna is dry, the problem is the inabiliy to sweat in a hot and humid environment. That problem occurs at a much lowe temp.
It’s more about the duration of heat. A healthy person can survive very hot temps for awhile but need to cool down. Maintaining high temps for days will kill even the healthiest without cooling
That's great except a sauna isn't humid. That's kind of the whole thing with them.
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Well before "too hot for life" you get "too hot for what's currently living there".
That's already happening all around the world.
Recent headline: Bumblebee Nests May Be Overheating With Rising Global Temperatures, Study Finds