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Discussion (49 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Air has a specific heat (~1) less than a quarter per unit mass than water (~4.1). The atmosphere has a mass of ~5 billion kgs and the ocean has a mass of ~1.4*10^21 kgs.
It requires a lot less trapped energy to warm the atmosphere by 1 C than the ocean. We're well on track for 2.5 C increase since preindustrial levels.
The death toll from Hiroshima was between 90-160 thousand people. The amount of excess deaths due to heat waves in 2023 was around 178,000. There are projections that the El Nino related heat waves could cause up to half a million, and longer term projections grow to 300,000 a year just from heat in the next few years. Just from heat.
Add in crop failure, ecosystem collapses, and other unexpected disasters, and it's easy to see why.
It might be crass, but it's mostly poor people and poor countries that are going to be affected.
Scary.
On a related note, annual deaths from extreme cold are estimated at over 4 million per year.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
(Note: I picked this article specifically because it’s written by people who are desperately trying to find a way to make the heat story sound worse, but still have to admit that the facts are the facts.)
"Due to data limitations, adaptation indicators such as access to air conditioning and healthcare resources were not included, and GDP per capita was used as a proxy."
I'm sure this analysis is directionally right, but it's not defensible to use the 178,000 number. Moreover extrapolating out into the future based on such an analysis seem fraught at best.
[1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7618246/
The comment I responded to was tone policing for crassness instead of actually contributing to the discussion.
Would it have been better to point out there has been a Russo-Ukraine wars worth of deaths from heat waves each year since 2022?
Or a Rwandan Civil Wars worth of deaths projected in the next year?
Or a Holocaust worth of deaths over the next decade?
What does it take to get people to listen and take it seriously?
Not for nothing but I am growing lemons and coffee beans in Vancouver, BC, and I only need to bring them in for about 2 months a year. What that actually means is that people are already evaluating how we will relocate crops (luxury and essential) to other climates.
What about when major crops like wheat, corn, rice, and beans fail around the world?
If I am wrong, I apologize, but politeness and tone policing to shut down discussion of crises is a recurring problem in society.
To be completely blunt, fuck your bluntness. You clearly don't care about climate change all that much if you aren't willing to even attempt effective messaging. Go do your revolutionary cosplay with some lesser topic
The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away!
In case you have not noticed, we are currently in the sixth great extinction of this planet, which is driven by human activity. I consider it beyond tragic and existential to know that many of the wonders of this planet are going away and never coming back. Humans can live with air conditioning or under ground, but that doesn’t help other animals. You can still view this under a human lens if you wish, but for many of us, those other kinds of life are worth something, and bundling up that value by saying “we must protect the Earth” seems quite natural and defendable to me.
This attitude of humanity first is exactly what got us here and what will wipe us off the planet.
The earth is the only place in the universe right now where humans can survive at our current technology level, and we are destroying that ecosystem at an alarming rate. We depend on the entire planets ecosystem for our survival, and even if technology somehow could let us survive ecological collapse, a humanist approach to the environment is tantamount to burning the boat we are sailing on to keep warm.
If you want an example from our field: AI doomers and AI maximalists get a lot more air time on the mainstream media and on HN than those who think it's a normal technology with some benefits and some downsides.
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co...
This year it feels like the ocean is losing its ability to breathe in a sense https://scienceblog.com/the-ocean-stopped-breathing-off-pana...
When do we get to full stop on the combustion of fossil fuels to protect humanity’s future?
Solar has been making incredible progress, and works in sunny locations, but it's not a general purpose solution. Nuclear is getting there, but it's still too expensive and over regulated. I can't say much about wind as I haven't looked into it enough to say. Both thermal and hydro are location dependent, so good when it works but not a general purpose solution.
So that leaves coal and natural gas. We have a lot of both, but switching over to natural gas to coal by retrofitting existing power generation would make a massive difference imo.
At the end of the day, we want diversity in the power grid, not just one thing for every place, since every place is different/has its own history.
The most likely answer seems to be "when the last human dies".
Why not two volcano eruptions? Or half a solar flare? Oh I see, fear is the point. What do we need to vote for now? Who should we hate? What tax are you going to ram down our throats? Sheez
With that said, this measurement system is very stupid. But do you know what is even stupider? Climate denialism.