For anyone that hasn't had heat sickness, it's not a one-and-done ordeal. You become more sensitive to heat after getting sick from it. It can easily take a month of careful exposure to regain tolerance but working in the same conditions is not the same thing. In addition, heat sickness is awful.
Heat sickness sucks, but you pull through even if the sustained temperature does not great things.
Heat stroke is a life-threatening medical emergency (e.g. call 911) when they body has gotten so hot that organ systems that are capable of regulating temperature start malfunctioning, and things can go downhill extremely quickly from that point.
> Almost half of the global population will be living with extreme heat by 2050 if the world reaches 2C of global warming above preindustrial levels, according to a University of Oxford study published in January.
Good thing we are working so hard to automate the kind of work where you sit in the shade at a desk. (/sarcasm)
I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated. I kinda wish we could talk about how much raw energy that is ... even if we use American units of barrels of oil, or something.
We tried talking about sea level rise and land area inundation, and more severe storms, and amongst many the collective response was to stick their fingers in their ears.
The real conversation we should have is about money talking; a huge amount of assets are facing being stranded by insurers. Insurance doesn't really care about ideology, they care about making money, and so the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence. Though right now politicians are just reframing this as "greedy insurance", which isn't exactly untrue.
I read the 6 Degrees book and basically didn’t leave the house for about 3 months and stopped looking for client work. My finances took a bit of a device. Thankfully my partner helped me out of it.
So… I don’t know where that leaves us. The moment you’re aware of what’s coming to us, you shut down. It’s not a great response, but that’s a big reason why we (the people) are not talking a lot about the future of climate.
That’s my best guess. It’s a really, really shitty conversation where the few winners are those with lots of money.
> I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated.
The problem is that the loudest voices in the global discussion are people living in relatively cold-ish Western climates because, well, we are the rich and powerful people. And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US), even 10 °C increase of yearly average temperatures or even peak temperatures would still be perfectly fine.
The fact that 2 °C is probably enough to render the space of potentially billions of people uninhabitable is completely outside of the experienced reality in Western countries, we cannot relate from our lived reality to theirs.
And that kind of disconnect is prevalent among any kind of discourse in humanity. The fact that we can even do so, that right here on this website we have people worth billions of dollars (e.g. sama is Sam Altman!) debating with people that barely scrape by on their national poverty level, is a wonder that would have been unimaginable 200 years ago. Human biology, human society hasn't evolved mechanisms to keep up with our technological progress, and it breaks apart everywhere.
I have seen some Climatologists who are thinking we might hit the 2C mark by mid to late 2030's simply based on the exponential heating pace we are seeing decade over decade. Part of it being some feedback loops have arisen from our increased heating.
It's wild to think that we might be only 10 years away from that line in the sand we marked. Hopefully they are wrong but I fear they are not.
I think we've been enjoying a period of slow change as the oceans have been absorbing the extra heat energy over the last few decades, but we're now reaching the point where we're exhausting that heat sink and we're about to see dramatic climate change.
These metrics are hard to grapple with when "living with extreme heat" isn't something most people can conceptualize.
Findings from 2025 -
> Over the 12-month period, 4 billion people — about 49% of the global population — experienced at least 30 days of extreme heat (hotter than 90% of temperatures observed in their local area over the 1991-2020 period). [1]
That statement seems totally empty and could be true even if those 12 months in 2024-25 were cooler. 10% of days in 1991-2020 were hotter than 90% of days in 1991-2020, which is on average 36.5 days in a 12 month period.
You would be surprised how many people on Earth experience extreme cold and die because od it. It's much more deadly than heat. Spreading fear over heat looks like propaganda to frighten people's mind.
I bet this would happen even without climate change simply because of the extreme overpopulation und unsustainable population growth in countries that are already very hot (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, etc.)
This is cute because it ignores the part where a single American citizen has the carbon footprint of, like, 8 Nigerians.
And, of course, it’s even cuter because we ignore the part where most pollution is caused by corporations refusing to adopt more sustainable ways to do business, which would be ‘too expensive’.
We have enough models showing how we could very well survive a climate catastrophe, largely with cleaner energy, better business approaches, and the rich nations eating less meat; among many other things, of course.
Drawdown goes into a lot of detail. Some of the measures are even economically positive, if not politically so.
I've read before that a large portion of the warmest parts (Uttar Pradesh/Bihar) of India actually haven't had its temperature rise much because of coal power, farm burning and dust in general (a lot from construction) the particles block basically protect them against the sun.
Putting India in a spot where if it would cease relying on coal power in 30-40+ years it would cause the temperature to rise.
Even in rural towns, the midday sun in India feels “dimmer” on a clear day. Even for the winter, this seems odd as the relatively lower latitude should make for more direct sun.
It feels
like the soft warm filters used in photography… Outdoor sun normally bothers me greatly, but there sunglasses don’t even seem needed…
Not sure what proportion is coal dust, dirt, or wood smoke but something major is definitely going on…
There is nothing stopping them from releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to have the same effect in an engineered and superior manner. Also, various surfaces can be painted white to reflect sunlight back into space. Trees also can be planted, and forests restored.
The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.
> The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive air conditioning.
The heat doesn't vanish with AC, at least not unless you use a very expensive deep-underground well as a heatsink instead of the open air.
Even if everyone has AC indoor - the air outdoor will still be too hot and, most likely, humid, with all the expelled heat from the ACs added on top of that. Animals won't stand a chance, especially wild ones, and humans that absolutely have to work outside (e.g. policemen, firefighters, EMS) will be just as impacted.
We have to face the reality: large parts of the globe, impacting billions of people, will be unable to support human and a lot of animal and plant life during the summer months if climate change continues at the current pace in a short enough time that most people reading this text will eventually witness this.
if growing up in dubai was any indication, what happens (at least for the next little while) is you get a steady stream of desperately poor people who work until they wreck their health and then get replaced by the next desperate person.
Wonder how much of a temperature difference is due to El Nino? As a kid I used to spend some time in central India during summers(temp: 40-43C). It helped that schools used to be shut around that time and expectedly, people would spend as little time outside as possible. Also, it's the hot winds that get you(usually more prevalent in the countryside).
It's hard to imagine if you have not experienced it. The air would still be hot even after the sun sets in some parts of India. Usually when wind blows over you you feel cool. With hot air it's like a blow dryer in your face. Just thermal energy being dumped on you making you feel even worse
If you are in the US then you can go to a hot place in the south west, even Eastern WA/OR or the California central valley when its >105F outside the wind blows and it feels like a hair drier or opening the oven, its not a cool breeze.
In southern california, they have santa ana winds[1], which are often hot and very dry. When I lived there it was pretty unpleasant when they were strong. A hot wind in a place that's much warmer would be a lot of heat stress for people.
in Spain they have siesta. We observed it in Valencia region - everything stops from 12-1pm until about 5-6pm. The life after that goes well into the night, shops stay open until 1-2am, etc.
In USSR/Russia during especially hot summers the team/orgs i worked at (outside on construction and in the other years inside as programmers (no ACs were yet widespread there back in the 199x)) were working at night skipping the daytime siesta-style.
In the hotter parts of summer I typically down clock/undervolt my machines to at least hold off them potentially cooking themselves a little. For most work, I don't even need a whole Ghz yet alone 3+ Ghz so it isn't a big issue.
Yes, there are safety measure built in but I just give them a helping hand.
https://archive.ph/9I5e1
For anyone that hasn't had heat sickness, it's not a one-and-done ordeal. You become more sensitive to heat after getting sick from it. It can easily take a month of careful exposure to regain tolerance but working in the same conditions is not the same thing. In addition, heat sickness is awful.
Aka Heat stroke
Heat sickness sucks, but you pull through even if the sustained temperature does not great things.
Heat stroke is a life-threatening medical emergency (e.g. call 911) when they body has gotten so hot that organ systems that are capable of regulating temperature start malfunctioning, and things can go downhill extremely quickly from that point.
1 reply →
[dead]
> Almost half of the global population will be living with extreme heat by 2050 if the world reaches 2C of global warming above preindustrial levels, according to a University of Oxford study published in January.
Good thing we are working so hard to automate the kind of work where you sit in the shade at a desk. (/sarcasm)
I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated. I kinda wish we could talk about how much raw energy that is ... even if we use American units of barrels of oil, or something.
We tried talking about sea level rise and land area inundation, and more severe storms, and amongst many the collective response was to stick their fingers in their ears.
The real conversation we should have is about money talking; a huge amount of assets are facing being stranded by insurers. Insurance doesn't really care about ideology, they care about making money, and so the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence. Though right now politicians are just reframing this as "greedy insurance", which isn't exactly untrue.
5 replies →
I read the 6 Degrees book and basically didn’t leave the house for about 3 months and stopped looking for client work. My finances took a bit of a device. Thankfully my partner helped me out of it.
So… I don’t know where that leaves us. The moment you’re aware of what’s coming to us, you shut down. It’s not a great response, but that’s a big reason why we (the people) are not talking a lot about the future of climate.
That’s my best guess. It’s a really, really shitty conversation where the few winners are those with lots of money.
Number of tanks of gas for a Ford F-150 Supercab is the American standard unit.
3 replies →
> I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated.
The problem is that the loudest voices in the global discussion are people living in relatively cold-ish Western climates because, well, we are the rich and powerful people. And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US), even 10 °C increase of yearly average temperatures or even peak temperatures would still be perfectly fine.
The fact that 2 °C is probably enough to render the space of potentially billions of people uninhabitable is completely outside of the experienced reality in Western countries, we cannot relate from our lived reality to theirs.
And that kind of disconnect is prevalent among any kind of discourse in humanity. The fact that we can even do so, that right here on this website we have people worth billions of dollars (e.g. sama is Sam Altman!) debating with people that barely scrape by on their national poverty level, is a wonder that would have been unimaginable 200 years ago. Human biology, human society hasn't evolved mechanisms to keep up with our technological progress, and it breaks apart everywhere.
4 replies →
I have seen some Climatologists who are thinking we might hit the 2C mark by mid to late 2030's simply based on the exponential heating pace we are seeing decade over decade. Part of it being some feedback loops have arisen from our increased heating.
It's wild to think that we might be only 10 years away from that line in the sand we marked. Hopefully they are wrong but I fear they are not.
I did see a new estimate on the AMOC collapse the other day and it could be as early as 2040 (probably this article: https://futurism.com/future-society/scientists-alarming-atla...).
I think we've been enjoying a period of slow change as the oceans have been absorbing the extra heat energy over the last few decades, but we're now reaching the point where we're exhausting that heat sink and we're about to see dramatic climate change.
Only a month ago: Scientists Rule Out a Worst-Case Climate Scenario
You’ll be allright
These metrics are hard to grapple with when "living with extreme heat" isn't something most people can conceptualize.
Findings from 2025 -
> Over the 12-month period, 4 billion people — about 49% of the global population — experienced at least 30 days of extreme heat (hotter than 90% of temperatures observed in their local area over the 1991-2020 period). [1]
[1] https://www.climatecentral.org/report/climate-change-and-the...
That statement seems totally empty and could be true even if those 12 months in 2024-25 were cooler. 10% of days in 1991-2020 were hotter than 90% of days in 1991-2020, which is on average 36.5 days in a 12 month period.
2 replies →
You would be surprised how many people on Earth experience extreme cold and die because od it. It's much more deadly than heat. Spreading fear over heat looks like propaganda to frighten people's mind.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/pdf/10.1289/EHP9835
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01872-6
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266660652...
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20180594
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09049-4
1 reply →
I bet this would happen even without climate change simply because of the extreme overpopulation und unsustainable population growth in countries that are already very hot (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, etc.)
This is cute because it ignores the part where a single American citizen has the carbon footprint of, like, 8 Nigerians.
And, of course, it’s even cuter because we ignore the part where most pollution is caused by corporations refusing to adopt more sustainable ways to do business, which would be ‘too expensive’.
We have enough models showing how we could very well survive a climate catastrophe, largely with cleaner energy, better business approaches, and the rich nations eating less meat; among many other things, of course.
Drawdown goes into a lot of detail. Some of the measures are even economically positive, if not politically so.
[dead]
Simple question, simple answer: just like every other time, no help is coming. Individuals either survive and reproduce or they don't.
Humans have gotten real good at reproducing and staying alive despite external circumstances, up until their offspring can reproduce too.
So, individuals will reproduce.
Oh, ok. All good then.
I've read before that a large portion of the warmest parts (Uttar Pradesh/Bihar) of India actually haven't had its temperature rise much because of coal power, farm burning and dust in general (a lot from construction) the particles block basically protect them against the sun.
Putting India in a spot where if it would cease relying on coal power in 30-40+ years it would cause the temperature to rise.
What a choice: heatstroke, or chronic respiratory disease?
Basically given the choice of one kills in hours and other in decades. Can we try to take option c?
I’ve wondered about that.
Even in rural towns, the midday sun in India feels “dimmer” on a clear day. Even for the winter, this seems odd as the relatively lower latitude should make for more direct sun.
It feels like the soft warm filters used in photography… Outdoor sun normally bothers me greatly, but there sunglasses don’t even seem needed…
Not sure what proportion is coal dust, dirt, or wood smoke but something major is definitely going on…
There is nothing stopping them from releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to have the same effect in an engineered and superior manner. Also, various surfaces can be painted white to reflect sunlight back into space. Trees also can be planted, and forests restored.
The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.
> The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive air conditioning.
The heat doesn't vanish with AC, at least not unless you use a very expensive deep-underground well as a heatsink instead of the open air.
Even if everyone has AC indoor - the air outdoor will still be too hot and, most likely, humid, with all the expelled heat from the ACs added on top of that. Animals won't stand a chance, especially wild ones, and humans that absolutely have to work outside (e.g. policemen, firefighters, EMS) will be just as impacted.
We have to face the reality: large parts of the globe, impacting billions of people, will be unable to support human and a lot of animal and plant life during the summer months if climate change continues at the current pace in a short enough time that most people reading this text will eventually witness this.
13 replies →
if growing up in dubai was any indication, what happens (at least for the next little while) is you get a steady stream of desperately poor people who work until they wreck their health and then get replaced by the next desperate person.
This is coming to an end now that almost every country is below replacement fertility.
Wonder how much of a temperature difference is due to El Nino? As a kid I used to spend some time in central India during summers(temp: 40-43C). It helped that schools used to be shut around that time and expectedly, people would spend as little time outside as possible. Also, it's the hot winds that get you(usually more prevalent in the countryside).
> it's the hot winds that get you
The difference between sun and shade is pretty big too.
What are the hot winds and how bad are they? I can only imagine but but it’s the first time im hearing of hot winds.
It's hard to imagine if you have not experienced it. The air would still be hot even after the sun sets in some parts of India. Usually when wind blows over you you feel cool. With hot air it's like a blow dryer in your face. Just thermal energy being dumped on you making you feel even worse
1 reply →
If you are in the US then you can go to a hot place in the south west, even Eastern WA/OR or the California central valley when its >105F outside the wind blows and it feels like a hair drier or opening the oven, its not a cool breeze.
1 reply →
Here you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loo_(wind)
In southern california, they have santa ana winds[1], which are often hot and very dry. When I lived there it was pretty unpleasant when they were strong. A hot wind in a place that's much warmer would be a lot of heat stress for people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_winds
I always found those japanese van vests supercool. I guess work AC will become more normal
in Spain they have siesta. We observed it in Valencia region - everything stops from 12-1pm until about 5-6pm. The life after that goes well into the night, shops stay open until 1-2am, etc.
In USSR/Russia during especially hot summers the team/orgs i worked at (outside on construction and in the other years inside as programmers (no ACs were yet widespread there back in the 199x)) were working at night skipping the daytime siesta-style.
If you don't have air conditioning, your laptop is going to have problems.
In the hotter parts of summer I typically down clock/undervolt my machines to at least hold off them potentially cooking themselves a little. For most work, I don't even need a whole Ghz yet alone 3+ Ghz so it isn't a big issue.
Yes, there are safety measure built in but I just give them a helping hand.
Only the shitty ones. People in places with 40+ heat do in fact use laptops like everyone else
siesta for you, siesta for you, siesta for everybody!