I have often thought about the world becoming too hot for human survival. How would this likely play out? Is it possible the population would simply plunge over a period of decades and the atmosphere would repair itself?
Would it start off with massive heat waves in various parts of the globe? Mass exodus to cooler countries? Would it play out over many decades or a relatively short span? However it plays out it seems to be almost too ugly to imagine.
The recent storm in Houston caused by a super heated gulf might be dwarfed in comparison to storms that might occur with even warmer temps. It seems the temps in the gulf are right at that threshold for catastrophic storms to become a regular thing.
things will get bad, but not intolerable. triple digits nights will be tough and perhaps some areas of the world will be become too hot for people to live in full-time, but the planet as a whole will remain habitable (according to the few models I have glanced at). There won’t be significantly more storms but they will be stronger.
Looking at the bright side, perhaps the superstorms will drive people away from the coasts before the melting of Greenland raises the sea level and swamps the coastline.
All these things will happen in a time frame of decades. The models seem to say by 2100. I suspect before then.
The industrialized countries have air-conditioning so they should be OK. I expects massive numbers of deaths of the very poor in areas close to the equator.
My first thought is as ocean temps and air temps increase water evaporation will also increase. Wouldn’t this lead to extreme rain and extreme draughts?
Even the most extreme extrapolations for global warming don’t predict the entire world will become too hot for human survival. And even in the extreme greenhouse Earth in the late Cretaceous humans could have survived at higher latitudes.
People were able to survive even in extremely hot climates like the Sahara before air conditioning. It may get very unpleasant, and in some areas people might die especially during heat waves. But humanity will survive.
What may happen is those humans who happen to have genetically high tolerance for hot weather will survive, and those who don’t, won’t. The genes for higher heat tolerance will become increasingly present in the overall population. Evolution in action.
There may also be mass migrations away from the hotter climates toward the cooler climates. This could result in the concentration of more people over smaller areas of the earth, possibly leading to massive wars.
The area where I live has had 115-degree temperatures lately, and my choice of recreational activities (sailplane lessons) has been canceled or greatly curtailed in recent weeks. I also spent a weekend taking lessons at a site near Reno, which was utterly ghastly hot. I had to cut short my flying there because I got too damn exhausted.
I fear that this kind of volcanic summer weather will become “the new normal” in these parts. People may have to start leaving.
Unlikely. Despite being older than humanity it’s our present “icehouse” climate that is the unusual climate; a greenhouse Earth has been the norm for most of its history. If we cause the climate to shift to a greenhouse state it’ll probably stay that way indefinitely no matter what happens to humanity.
New York Magazine had recent issue on climate change. One of the big “Oh, no.” pieces covered some areas becoming to hot to live in and the problems that ensue. Of course these areas typically are so poor that solutions like sleeping with AC during the day and working outside only at night are not going to happen.
These areas are also not contributing green house gases per capita like first world countries. So any population reduction there is just statistical noise.
Oddly enough we in Montreal just had the shortest wettest coolest summer in the 49 years I have lived here. The climate change could well leave some cool spots. Of course, it was quite different in the west.
Don’t count on air conditioning. With real disruption there could well be severe shortage of power.
But if the permafrost melts, it will lead to a mother-lode of methane released. A very powerful greenhouse gas.
The disruptions that have the great population impacting potential are not these direct ones, it is the climate impact on the human crops for food potential and perhaps as well the expansion of the tropical diseases from their present endemic zones.
We build our homes in the bayou bottom-lands knowing they will flood every hundred years (on average) … with global warming these flood events will happen more often … so, do we rebuild these flooded homes in Houston knowing they will flood again? …
We all know we will … so let’s make it a point to not be surprised when Houston floods again …
Re-build your bayou homes on taller stilts next time?
Then the woman wakes up from her fever dream, and it turns out the Earth is moving away from the sun…
I would send in the civilian conservation corps and build a super storm drain system that would be a model for all cities in a similar situation. In this case I think prevention would have been cheaper. But a massive storm like Harvey is really hard to prepare for.
Temperatures themselves don’t really kill people that are used to it. Houston and New Orleans have always been hotter than hell during the summer and I don’t mean that in a casual way. It doesn’t mean that it is uncomfortable - it means you can’t get into your car or go into your house until it cools down. You can also get burned badly just by touching metal surfaces.
People can live just fine in high heat conditions and billions of people have throughout history. We are a tropical species after all and it is much more unnatural to try to imitate a snow monkey or a Yeti when the cold will kill you much more easily without proper preparation.
I don’t want to downplay the effects of global warming but I think places like Montreal and even Boston could use a little more heat. Minor heat waves sometimes kill people from Chicago to Paris but it doesn’t have to be that way. It is simply because their buildings aren’t designed to support anything that would require more than a handkerchief in parts of India.
The human body is designed extremely well to survive in extreme heat. The more odd thing is that a tropical species found a way to live in places like Canada or Scandinavia. Flooding is a completely separate issue. Yes, it is bad and may be related to global warming but you can always move inland to higher ground. It isn’t like the entire U.S. is going to flood permanently.
But we can only cope with temps about up to the 120s. We are going to have some populated areas getting past that on a regular basis. Especially if you consider the heat index.
This will be a situation we have not evolved to cope with.
It was 106°F in San Francisco for several days last week!!
Millions living underground.
Millions living in air-conditioned towns with a big bubble enclosure.
A nocturnal lifestyle, coming out at cool night and avoidance of hot day.
Billions moving up into Canada and Russia.