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> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of
by gottorf 2mo ago
> People dying from extreme heatwaves, weather, and famines due to climate change has been predicted for decades at this point; and this is exactly the sort of climatic setup that will enable this to happen.
The rhetoric is all well and good, but if you look at the numbers according to the WMO[0], deaths from climate-related hazards have been dropping steadily in the 50-year period from 1970 to 2019, even as atmospheric CO2 went from ~326ppm to ~410ppm and the world population more than doubled. That's not a per capita decrease; it's an absolute decrease, from over 50k deaths worldwide the 70s to fewer than 20k in the 2010s.
All of this is due to the increased ability of humans to deal with what the climate might throw at them, mostly due to cheap energy unlocked by fossil fuels during that time. Remember, there are no countries that are both rich and have a low per capita energy usage. Surplus energy allows humans to build the infrastructure that makes them more resilient to disasters.
If I had to wager, more people will suffer and die in the coming decades from efforts to combat climate change (i.e. hamstring energy production and usage) than from climate change itself. You can already see this in the anti-air conditioning sentiment in parts of Europe.
[0]: https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564 https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564
- none2585 2mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- anon7000 2mo agoLook, I think you made some good points, but at the same time, humans have become better at handling the climate because we’ve been able to predict it and have found solutions to certain known issues. What happens when it gets less predictable, like when certain regions get much less water for an extended period, is very much unknown. Your last claim makes no sense. Is there actually a widespread political effort to ban air conditioning or make it hard to get in Europe? That certainly isn’t the case in the US. And yet hot summers are still killer in cities which aren’t accustomed to them: that’s climate change doing the killing. Solar is just about the most abundant source of energy on the planet, and easily decentralized. Plugin solar is becoming increasingly popular and cheap, for example. I think energy production would be much more abundant and directly in control of the people if governments stopped subsidizing energy sources that need massive amounts of resources just to keep running. Why not give solar an advantage when every watt installed can just… work by itself for the next three decades? Every watt of a gas plant needs you to figure out who to buy gas from forever.
- throwaway473825 2mo agoRegarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars. Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.
- danw1979 2mo agoAt least here in the UK, recent revisions to the default planning rules around heat pumps (“Permitted Development” legislation) removed the restriction that an install be “used solely for heating purposes” and revised this to “not be used solely for the purpose of cooling”. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant also permits cooling - it’s based on the heating credentials of a unit only. So in Britain at least, installing cooling systems in private residences seems to be getting easier.
- watwut 2mo ago[flagged]
- tonfa 2mo ago> Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating. Not sure it makes sense, most of those countries are already phasing out fuel/gas boilers. IMO it's just cultural shift is slow to adjust (in those countries, a few decades ago AC would have been a wasteful luxury, summer temperature would be well below 30 except for a few days).
- youngtaff 2mo agoReality is much of Europe hasn’t needed air con until recently mMy phone tells me that the temperature this week has been 15°C above the long term average for this time of year. Don’t really need air con when the peak temperature in the past has been 20–25°C
- 2mo ago
- wat10000 2mo agoThe two are racing each other. So far, human adaptation is winning. But climate change is just getting started. The change that happened over the last 50 years is tiny compare to what will happen over the next 50. It may well start winning that race.
- anonzzzies 2mo agoall airconditioning brands had massive uptick in sales in Europe; Spain and other southern countries over 100%. what anti air conditioning sentiment?
- watwut 2mo ago[flagged]