4 ms·

1 degree isn't really going to do very much is it? That's the current best estimate for warming in the time period you are suggesting. India has a bigger prob

• viraptor 4y ago
  The estimate is for climate and is a world average. The actual weather is expected to get more extreme on both ends, so that means India is looking at higher temperature swings up in the summer. No citations because I'm on a phone but they're not hard to find.
• hikingsimulator 4y ago
  Thinking about climate change as an increase of mean temperature is misleading. And this is such a case. While the mean temperature rises, e.g. by 1 centigrade, you have to account for variance increasing too. India might become unlivable not because the mean temperature rises, but because extreme, deadly events will become standard during certain periods of the year.
  • kortilla 4y ago
    People live in Phoenix. It has extreme deadly events every summer. Boston has extreme deadly events in the winter. Get a heat pump or an air conditioner and move on.
    • viraptor 4y ago
      The context here is India. It's got half the under-3yo-s underweight, dealing with a significant number of malnutrition deaths, and with a quarter of the population surviving on <$1.5 a day. Even if the cost wasn't an issue, lots of homes are still not electrified. (they're close to 100% of people with access to electricity) Get a heatpump and move on, you say?
      • kortilla 4y ago
        > electrified. (they're close to 100% of people with access to electricity) Get a heatpump and move on, you say? Yes, electrification is a solved problem. Look how quickly the US electrified rural America, and that’s when it was a new concept. For a more recent example of using known technology, look at how quickly China electrified from the 80s-00s.
        • viraptor 4y ago
          Ok, so that's one issue, which will be hopefully solved sometime in the next decade or two. What about everything else making this solution unaffordable to both buy and run for a significant part of the population? And what people while the electrification is happening?
    • ehnto 4y ago
      Oh my god you solved it, can't believe we didn't think of air conditioners! So silly, alright pack it up everyone crisis averted. We can't air condition the crops and our animal stock. We probably can't even air condition all the humans in every location. Texas can barely keep it's grid going right now.
      • bawolff 4y ago
        Do crops need air conditioning (honest question)? I appreciate not everything grows in hot conditions, and there is a point where nothing will grow, but i would assume india would still be in the range where some things will grow, even if it sucks for humans.
        • ehnto 4y ago
          There are already places where humans live that crops won't grow, so humans will likely endure more than our crops will. At least for the crops we currently grow. But it's more nuanced than just temperature. With increasingly extreme weather events that last longer, even in places where crops can grow, they will get wiped out more frequently. Think of increased instances of drought, flooding, wildfire etc. Even just too high winds, heavier rains, hail and increased instances of icing/wind chill will be impactful for food supply. We already see this too, depending on whether or not we choose to blame climate change there have been a number of weather events impacting the supply and price of various farmed goods. Lettuce became somewhat of a luxury commodity in Australia due to recent flooding, for just one example. That sort of thing will become more frequent.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        The Texas grid is running fine. Rolling brownouts a few days a year is completely livable and is only an inconvenience if you’re already used to a super stable grid. Anyway, my two examples were Boston and Phoenix, which are on more stable major grids.
    • EdwardDiego 4y ago
      Ineffectual handwaving at it's best! I'm impressed.
    • dsr_ 4y ago
      On average, a human is a 100W heat source. It is much easier to insulate against excess loss to a cold environment than to refrigerate it in a hot environment.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        This is true, but the meta point is wrong. It’s far less energy to air condition 110F down to 80F than to go from 0F up to 65F. The energy required in cold climates for heating is far far greater than what it takes to air condition in our hot environments.
        • dsr_ 4y ago
          If you were in the vacuum of space, you would be correct. You are not trying to bring an insulated apartment-sized block of space on the ISS up from 0 to 65 or down from 110 to 80. You are trying to change the temperature in an insulated apartment-sized block of space in an effectively infinite ambient environment which is either 0 or 110, while one or more 100W heaters is moving around in it. There's conduction and radiation and convection, all helping out or hindering.
          • kortilla 4y ago
            I’m talking about real world energy usage. It takes far more energy to heat Minneapolis, Boston, New York, etc than it does to air condition Southern California cities, Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, etc. The only reason the grid doesn’t struggle in the winter is because many of those heat sources are not electric (wood pellets, gas furnaces, boilers, heating oil, etc). People don’t live in perfectly insulated boxes and even the best insulation that is actually livable (doesn’t suffocate you) will let through more than the 10MJ a person gives off through the course of the day. For context, a plug-in space heater is 1500 watts and that struggles to maintain the heat in a well-insulated 300 sq ft shop when it’s under 40F. Humans shouldn’t be living in the cold if you care about energy consumption. It’s just so normalized and we figured out how to burn wood so long ago that nobody thinks twice about it.
  • godmode2019 4y ago
    You are changing the goalpost making a hyperbolic statement seem reasonable. Read what they said, its borderline hysteric. You are agreeing with it not on the merits but on the premises.
• hackerlight 4y ago
  People die from 99th percentile heatwaves, not mean changes.