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"Uninhabitable" could take many forms. Imagine that by 2050, summer temps in Europe and N America sometimes hit 50C, and in the likes of Middle East, N Africa,

by nickd2001 4y ago

"Uninhabitable" could take many forms. Imagine that by 2050, summer temps in Europe and N America sometimes hit 50C, and in the likes of Middle East, N Africa, Pakistan/India etc they hit 60C. This doesn't seem far-fetched given that Seattle had 42C last year, UK 40C this year, Pakistan has had 50C, and the trend appears to be accelerating. So in the 60C places there'd be complete wipe-outs of population if people tried to stay living there, in the 50C places there'd still be mass deaths. But also, there'd be extremely severe crops failures leading to mass starvation even in places not as hot. Unless humankind develops very fast, some carbon capture tech that immediately rids us off this excess CO2, and/or some major advances are made in agriculture to respond to the change in temperature, it seems to me that much of the earth could become effectively uninhabitable.

eru 4y ago
You know that airconditioning is already a thing in hot places, do you? There's also other lower-tech means for dealing with temporary extreme temperatures. > But also, there'd be extremely severe crops failures leading to mass starvation even in places not as hot. [...] We'd expect all of these to show up as a drop in GDP, wouldn't we? Eg you can clearly see the wars in Syria or Ukraine show up in their GDP figures. Please correct the Wikipedia article I linked to, if you have better impact-of-climate-change on GDP forecasts than what's currently on there.
- nickd2001 4y ago
  Air-conditioning is a thing in well-off hot places and for well-off people in poorer countries. But not for poorer people in poorer countries. Given how many in the world don't even have enough to eat, right now, I struggle to see how they'd acquire air-conditioning in the foreseeable future. And if they did, that'd need a massive increase in electricity generation and supply infrastructure. I don't see how that would easily happen. There are indeed some low tech means to deal with high temps, but its not enough, is it? We're literally playing with fire here. Just my 2p ...... (as for GDP I don't know much about the effect of climate change on that, but would imagine GDP is gonna be the least of people's worries if the temp is 50-60C )

eru 4y ago

You know that airconditioning is already a thing in hot places, do you? There's also other lower-tech means for dealing with temporary extreme temperatures. > But also, there'd be extremely severe crops failures leading to mass starvation even in places not as hot. [...] We'd expect all of these to show up as a drop in GDP, wouldn't we? Eg you can clearly see the wars in Syria or Ukraine show up in their GDP figures. Please correct the Wikipedia article I linked to, if you have better impact-of-climate-change on GDP forecasts than what's currently on there.

nickd2001 4y ago
Air-conditioning is a thing in well-off hot places and for well-off people in poorer countries. But not for poorer people in poorer countries. Given how many in the world don't even have enough to eat, right now, I struggle to see how they'd acquire air-conditioning in the foreseeable future. And if they did, that'd need a massive increase in electricity generation and supply infrastructure. I don't see how that would easily happen. There are indeed some low tech means to deal with high temps, but its not enough, is it? We're literally playing with fire here. Just my 2p ...... (as for GDP I don't know much about the effect of climate change on that, but would imagine GDP is gonna be the least of people's worries if the temp is 50-60C )