4 ms·

Color me optimistic, but we'll learn to survive and adapt. Humans in temperate climates (Chicago, Toronto, etc.) already live in places where it's too cold to s

Color me optimistic, but we'll learn to survive and adapt. Humans in temperate climates (Chicago, Toronto, etc.) already live in places where it's too cold to survive outside for long in winter. Just replace heaters with ACs in this case.

chris1993 6y ago
For people who can afford AC and won't be able to go outside
- mirimir 6y ago
  There'll likely be refrigerated suits.
  - humanrebar 6y ago
    We'll call them "cars".
    - Izkata 6y ago
      Actual suits already exist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_cooling_and_ventilation_garment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_cooling_and_ventilati...
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
Having lived both in the extreme heat of South Asia and the extreme cold of the Canada, cold is technically a lot easier to deal with physically. Wearing the right clothes will let you survive indefinitely in temperatures as low as -10C. You are also not in danger of dehydration. Note that -10C is -30-35C away from comfortable temperature (20-25C). 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.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  Fair point, though we are very far away from people dressing for Antarctica while they sit on the couch watching Netflix. 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.
saeranv 6y ago
They aren't equally difficult problems. From a thermodynamic perspective, all processes in your environment deteriorate into either waste heat, or is moved outside your environment with work.Low-cost heating is easily available, whereas cooling can occur by moving heat to another location. 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.

chris1993 6y ago

For people who can afford AC and won't be able to go outside

mirimir 6y ago
There'll likely be refrigerated suits.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  We'll call them "cars".
  - Izkata 6y ago
    Actual suits already exist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_cooling_and_ventilation_garment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_cooling_and_ventilati...

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

Having lived both in the extreme heat of South Asia and the extreme cold of the Canada, cold is technically a lot easier to deal with physically. Wearing the right clothes will let you survive indefinitely in temperatures as low as -10C. You are also not in danger of dehydration. Note that -10C is -30-35C away from comfortable temperature (20-25C). 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.

humanrebar 6y ago
Fair point, though we are very far away from people dressing for Antarctica while they sit on the couch watching Netflix. 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.

saeranv 6y ago

They aren't equally difficult problems. From a thermodynamic perspective, all processes in your environment deteriorate into either waste heat, or is moved outside your environment with work.Low-cost heating is easily available, whereas cooling can occur by moving heat to another location. 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.