Comment by baq
16 hours ago
> major dieoffs in warm latitudes, even for humans, due to exceeding wet bulb limits
my extremely pessimistic position is nothing will happen systemically even after the first few such events, and they'll take tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives.
I hope writing this out jinxes it.
You saw our reaction to covid. Millions. It will take millions of deaths in a nuclear armed country. See 'The ministry for the future'
I generally endorse that book but I am not sure we are quite so short-sighted. What's necessary is for the people who have power (not just billionaires and politicians, but even the middle class in democracies) to feel that they are in danger. A heat wave with a million casualties might do it, but I'm not sure it's the only way.
The ingredients for the Syrian conflict came about because of climate change (dried up farms - farmers moving to cities to find jobs - social tension). The last 10+ years has shown that the relatively well-off Europeans would rather watch the Syrians drown rather than "pollute" their luxury enclaves...
We'd rather kill everyone else rather than give up our luxuries...
Are you kidding? It will be Millions easily. It will just take 1 or two blackouts in wet bulb conditions to cause that
We are already far past the point of mere thousands of lives. Entire cities have been wiped off the map by floods.
It will take millions, if not close to a billion lives before we get serious
> Entire cities have been wiped off the map by floods.
Could you name some?
I wish it were different but I would not be surprised if it’s billions before anything changes. And even then there will be a major proportion of people that celebrate it as the second coming.
Billions? Sounds optimistic. Try trillions or quadrillions before anything really changes. Orders of magnitude are just a dime a dozen after all.
Are we still taking about human deaths here? Confusing…