20 is my good spot too, like 24 and I’m dying. We had a heat wave in BC, Canada last couple of yeara and it hit 38-40 most days during the 2 weeks. The amount of sweating and fatique were exhausting. 52 would have killed me.
We adapt. Whenever I have my relatives from Brazil visiting, they’re always wearing coats indoors while I’m wearing short sleeves and shorts. A few years ago, I endured 40-45 C summers.
Gotcha. Yeah, there’s a lot of concern over refugees migrating now. Wait a summer or two with these types of temperatures, and countries won’t be able to build fences high enough.
“Other people are worse”. Irrelevant to the problem unless you want to go start doing vigilante justice.
I wouldn’t say irrelevant to the problem… Most of the stuff we as individuals can do, amount to trying to put out a tire fire by clapping… Even millions of us won’t make almost any difference, specially when you have 10 assholes who, instead of clapping are actively pouring gas on the fire
I’m 100% on board with the clapping… But I’m not kidding myselft that we are going to save ourselves until we eliminate the firebugs
I have decreased my meat consumption to about a third than it used to be in recent years. I’m not qualified to do an in-depth study about all the ramifications of the CO2 emissions, but agriculture being just about 11.2% of all emissions sounds like eating less cow won’t cut it to “save ourselves”
I have a hunch that shit will hit the fan and there will be a massive reduction in CO2 emissions because of a supply chain failure. Third world countries produce the vast majority of “low manufacturing complexity” products, which will be made even more unsustainable if those regions become a scorched earth. That, coupled with a lesser incentive to travel due to an adverse climatic situation, and a trend in population decrease due to an overall quality of life degradation, will really be the reason why we will reduce emissions, simply because things stop working and become unsustainable
Either way, I don’t think it’s possible to really predict the future and even less so in such a complex society where technology might be a game changer all of the sudden, so my opinion is not really that valid. Even educated estimates using proper statistics/data cannot guess the implications of new wars, AI, new scientific breakthroughs etc
Too late. Somewhere so sunny can get a lot of solor quickly. Building nuclear power plants takes time and releases a lot of CO2. Batteries and solor now now. Cheapest power too.
Only too late because Greenpeace stopped it for decades. Hope you have a plan for your solar waste. Cheapest because you just let China throw it away for you.
Life cycle comparing isn’t as simple as your thinking: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0301421506002758 Happy to look if you have a unbiased source for life cycle emissions comparison.
You as also don’t want to be burning coal for a decade while you build a nuclear power plant. Then it’s expensive to run compared to solar too. The CO2 costs of waiting for nuclear should be included for nuclear too.
That’s part of the issue with nuclear, it’s not today. It’s a decade to do, power coal in the mean time, pouring concrete which also cause a load of CO2. When it’s finally running, it’s clean, but expensive. In the mean time you could have solar running 8 years and it is cheaper to power and install. Nuclear is going to struggle to compete. Until fusion, but even that, if it ever comes, might not be cheap enough compared. Cheap, fast and clean wins.
As I said, if you want to start today, solar is without doubt the way to go. If you are dealing in decades, and much more money, nuclear becomes an option. But in the time building it, you’re poluting and it’s not clear it’s even cleaner long run discounting that, let alone including it.
That is hilariously naive. The world is gonna keep turning either way. People aren’t just gonna suddenly all up and disappear. And the climate isn’t like a thing where you reach a certain point and you just give up. We can lessen how bad things will be. Making nuclear now is the right choice, so that in 10 years we can cut as many polluting forms of energy as we can.
I’d rather spend $10 billion on renewables that would start coming online almost immediately than lock that money up in a plant that won’t start recouping the carbon debt from its construction in a decade.
Greenpeace advocated for this back in the 1970s and that’s why we have an enormous wind and solar industry today. The Greenpeace lobby was just too damned powerful.
The reason we didn’t build any reactors after the 1970s is a combination of nuclear disarmament and slow return on investment, not Greenpeace. If Greenpeace had that much power they would have been able to shut down the oil and gas industry, too.
Hm. I would be interested to learn why, exactly. If it has terrible methodology, why is it constantly referenced and why hasn’t a better one been done since then?
Or is there a better one that nobody just uses?
And how should the data look, because most of every other source I can find also agrees that beef is the worst (or possibly on the second spot after lamb) as it comes to CO2 per kg.
the sources on that paper are labyrinthine, but i recall pulling up the water use for cattle out of it, and they attributed all of the water used in the production of all the food given to cattle to the production of the cattle, which might make sense if you don’t think about it for even a few seconds more. we know that there are things that we grow that we use, and then discard other parts. maybe crop “seconds”; that is things that we grew thinking we would eat it but we pulled it to early or too late or mashed it up pretty bad during harvest or whatever. we are actually conserving water use by feeding these things to cattle, but it isn’t credited to cattle, it’s counted against their total water use.
that was just the water use for california dairy cattle. if even 10% of the study is done this sloppily, how much do you trust that study?
Hey look, that FO stage of FAFO is well underway. Hold onto your butts people, there’s going to be some serious self punishment for our generations of polluting the world for personal convenience and money.
Very much so. It’s completely unjust and we (me included) have been beyond wasteful in spending the Co2 (and other climate altering materials) irresponsibly for far too long.
So very true. The vast majority of the climate damage has come from the US, China, and Europe, but more equatorial regions are going to be crushed by the heat for an unknown time. The cost to humanity is likely going to be beyond anything our models have projected.
Percentage wise, Pakistanis and other peoples living in equatorial regions definitely aren’t the major contributors to this catastrophe, but they’re going to be the spearhead of the FA phase. It’s going to be one of the most unjust repercussions of the actions by the most industrialized and wealthy nations upon the less wealthy ever in the history of mankind (and maybe the end of mankind in the process).
Remember this the next time you get the chance to punch a racist in the face who thinks brown Islamic people are poor because they have “backwards tribal beliefs” or that the Middle East is always a hopeless mess because people there are dumb and can’t work together.
Life is short, you could die in a car accident tomorrow, who knows? Don’t miss your chance while you have it.
And the disgusting irony that the ones being punished are the younger generation. I’m GenX. I apologize to my kids profusely for the mess I had a hand in making. It’s not getting fixed until it gets a lot worse. I’m scared for the future.
I start to wonder if corporate executives themselves arent responsible for this myth that the meaningful bulk of emissions comes from them. So consumers can feel guilt free about buying these gas guzzling chunkers, after all their choices dont have any meaningful effect on emissions.
But no, corporate headquarters doesnt have a giant smokestack spewing out those corporate emissions you hear about. Those emissions are coming from…SUV tailpipes! Transportation is the highest emissions sector in the US, and personal vehicles make up the bulk of those emissions, especially trucks and SUVs.
Definite agree with the core of what you’re saying, though for US and EU (and to a lesser degree “High income countries”), the numbers are quite close, as clean grid energy is significantly outpacing electric vehicle adoption (and EVs rely on a clean grid to be clean).
I find it fascinated… one side of their mouth, they’re hating corporations. Other side, they’re praising the product(s) they buy from said corporations. If any of these so called, “combatants of climate change” were true to their beliefs, they’d go find a piece of wilderness and live in it.
It’s not just “they make products and services that people buy”, it’s that “they maximize their personal profit at the expense of people and the environment”.
It’s easy but reductive to blame consumers for consuming, when it’s worth noting that biodegradable packaging costs more than plastics that will never break down, so corporations will choose cheap plastic over environmentally friendly packaging 99.9% of the time.
The incentives are wrong. Instead of maximizing profit we need to ensure that profit is not maximized at the expense of sustainability, at the expense of pollution, and at the expense of the entire future of our planet.
E.g. a carbon tax will solve a lot of problems, or a tax on waste like plastic. It is very very unpopular with the public though so the government can’t put it in place for fear of being voted out.
Nothing is stopping corporations from doing The Right Thing right now except their own desire not for profit, but for maximized profit at all costs. Dare I say it, but if a company can’t make a profit without creating harm, it doesn’t deserve to make a profit.
The degree to which businesses prioritize political patronage over economic efficiency can’t be overstated. From Shitcoins to Big Box Retailers, we expend enormous amounts of carbon in pursuit of flights of fancy.
And all those private jets and helicopters out to remote ecologically preserved vacation spots could definitely be defined as “burning fossil fuels for fun”.
it’s not the SUVs that are causing the problem, it’s the fucking corporations
The corporations are the ones that block mass transit infrastructure and extract subsidies for increasingly oversized vehicles. American car companies basically don’t bother making sedans anymore.
I don’t think there’s a bright line between the two problems. More SUVs = Corporate profit $$$ = More lobbying = No Mass Transit = More SUVs
Hottest I’ve ever been in is 114f iirc in a dry heat. It was brutal like “you can feel moisture evaporating out of your eyes”, I felt like just sitting around I couldn’t drink water as fast as I was losing it. 125 is bonkers
50C is near OSHA’s max limit to touch safe zones which is 60C. At 60C, no matter how many seconds, you will get burnt. At 50C you can hold an object for a few seconds safely.
You know how 0C is far from 60C but you can easily experience 0C in a winter? Well check it out, 50C is closer to 60C by about 50C difference from 0C. This 50C tends to be near 60C when compared to 0C and really 49 other whole numbers of degrees Celsius! An infinity of numbers if you add decimal places.
Shifted jetstream will do that. But while the UK gets an unseasonably cold summer, Alaska is under a historic heat wave. Not enough cold air to go around.
Oh… if only the scientists had warned us something like this could happen…
Oh… wait…
Well, if only the scientists had done something bigger and been louder to get everyone’s attention, like saying global warming is bad and self-immolating in a public place to try to warn people we’re all about to die…
Oh… wait…
Well, don’t worry, the magic sky gods will all take us to paradise once it gets too hot, and they lived happily ever after, the end, Yay! 🎈 🎉
Depends on the country. A few years ago, there was a heat wave that provoked over 10 deaths in France, while Spain barely registered any despite suffering even harsher temperatures. This is because most homes in Spain have AC, but French ones usually don’t. I would expect this to change in the following decade.
I lived in Paris and no one had it besides commercial buildings. But with climate change causing higher temperatures across the region, I think AC modifications of some sort will become the norm. My friend in Spain recently got AC after one summer he had to stay with his friend in Denmark because his house became unlivable. Like it would’ve killed his cat it was so hot inside.
Ahhh yeah good point. So somewhere like Pakistan probably has low humidity I’m guessing. Otherwise I feel like being outside at all could be extremely dangerous.
I lived in Phoenix Arizona where 52 C was the peak of the summer heat. I’m not sure how one would have a regular life without AC. Sleeping in that type of heat is very hard.
I had a truck with no AC and driving around with the windows open was like opening a convection oven door and letting the fan blow on you.
Which doesn’t work if the air is already saturated. Water cools by evaporating. If the air can’t hold any more water, it can’t evaporate and cool. I mean, external cold water I suppose, but if you have actively cooled water, we’re probably not in a heat crisis situation.
So 125° F is like saying it’s WAY TOO HOT! Thank you, I think I’m beginning to understand Flaffenfeit better now.
It’s a bit like measuring in yards, but they never say whether it’s front yards or back yards, which is quite significant IMO. But even a hundred yards isn’t very far, so I guess they must have some pretty funny small yards over there.
And that means that using nail polish remover in weather like that is going to be annoying. That stuff evaporates very easily as it is, but in weather like that it’s all gone as soon as you open the bottle.
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