You Think It's Hot Now? Wait for Thermogeddon

[FourScore]

Fri Jul 22, 2011 at 10:34 AM PDT
You Think It's Hot Now? Wait for Thermogeddon
by xaxnar

Odds are, if you're in the U.S. right now, you're trying to cope with the record heat wave cooking most of the country. You're probably sick of cliches like "Hot enough for you?" or "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." Well, if some informed speculation reported in New Scientist bears up, you ain't seem nothin' yet. In a century, parts of the earth may become too hot for humans to survive without air conditioning.

Titled Thermogeddon: When the Earth gets too hot for humans, the article follows up on a study by Steven Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University in Indiana. (* You may need to register for a free account to see the New Scientist article online unless you are a subscriber.) Here's the lead paragraph from the article:

IT IS the late 23rd century. Houston, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and many other once-bustling cities are ghost towns. No one lives in Louisiana or Florida anymore, and vast swathes of Africa, China, Brazil, India and Australia are no-go zones, too. That's because in all of these places it gets hot and humid enough to kill anyone who cannot find an air-conditioned shelter...

SNIP

Wetter Is NOT Better

It's not just the heat, it IS the humidity. Humans shed heat by sweating - evaporation carries away excess heat. But, climate change isn't just about higher temperatures; it's also about increasing amounts of water vapor in the air. The more humidity in the air, the less the capacity it has to absorb water from a sweating human. Think of it like being trapped in a steam bath - you can be covered with sweat, but you can't cool off because your sweat has no place to go. Stay too long, you'll overheat, pass out, and eventually die. As Hazel Muir summarizes in the article:...

MUCH MORE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/22/996826/-You-Think-Its-Hot-Now-Wait-for-Thermogeddon?via=spotlight

[BeFree]

1. Glad to be old and on the way out

Could have done more to keep this from happening but I got addicted to the stuff, oh yeah.

Have cut way back on consumption, could have cut more, will cut more. But would it make a difference? Nah. Too many people.

Even if I cut in half again, if all the people in the world lived the life I do, it would be too much.

[CaptRandom]

2. Eh, its cyclical....

The world has been hot before....



*sarcasm*

[PATRICK]

3. The implications

for food, water and air are more alarming than heat discomfort or even heat stroke epidemics. Where do you grow food for several billion disunited bumbling humans? In the greatest heat epoch the coolest places would not sustain crops six months a year. By the time Greenland lost its ice sheet and all the toxic sludge underneath(Lord knows if we can survive the methane releases globally) most of humanity would be dead by starvation. Wars would be a pitiable disgrace, most people wander around vaguely and die in place.

The Anasazi(not the correct name now, I think) had two centuries of drought as there civilization ascended ever higher to mesa tops to catch the rare rain. Wetter climates will die more messily, maybe longer. Our utilization of engineering and science to save some human bacon is presently totally wasted. There are too many people ready to divert and deny working for survival much less AC. The grids will fail before people realize they can't hope to survive without them.

I said this years ago, the simplest explanation of the future. Billions will die. Nothing else is certain. I was wrong that nuclear Armageddon, a simple human choice, was unavoidable considering past behaviors, but we actually did not have a viable enemy to use suicide weapons on. Still, it was close and crazily remains as a human choice today. Nature is something else. The choices are more drastic, wide and too long delayed. We may even have a cool spell or two to put off worries even yet a bit longer on planetary death row.

There is no appeal, no Red Phone to Mother Earth, no talented politician who could push a button. A shameful crisis for any intelligent race, mostly by our own hands or simply sitting on our them.

[iwonder2]

16. by our own hands

It amazes me when folks scoff at global warming because they don't understand it, or when they see no importance of protecting an endangered species. Our world is big and seems like it will go on forever no matter what we do. If we, as a whole, continue to ignore the delicate balances of nature, we will continue to destroy the world as we know it today.
Thank you for your words!

[Delphinus]

26. Welcome, iwonder2, to DU.

I look forward to hearing more from you. :hi:

[JDPriestly]

4. When I was very young, I had a fantasy that humans had to live

in caves and cellars under the earth -- probably because I was fascinated by the cave in which my grandmother kept fruits and vegetables.

People nowadays probably don't know what I am talking about, but people used to store carrots and apples and other fruit in a cave to keep them from spoiling. (At least I think they were trying to keep food from spoiling.) It was cool in the cave.

[BeFree]

5. I've been thinking on building cave like housing

Using the coolth of the earth to keep temps moderated. I know of that which you wrote.

[Buns_of_Fire]

30. Earth-sheltered housing. I've been dreaming of building something like that for years.

Not that I'll probably ever afford to, but that hasn't stopped me from designing them in my spare time (which is pretty much ALL my time, these days!). Earth is a FANTASTIC insulator against both heat AND cold. And it's dirt cheap, too (so to speak) -- the expense comes when you consider that you have to build walls that'll withstand the pressure of the aforementioned earth.

I imagine I'll have to eventually go with Plan B -- running around naykee all the time. Disadvantage: Sunburns in some AWFULLY painful places. Advantage: It'll scare away those damned kids in what's left of the yard.

[BeFree]

31. Two piles of dirt with house in between

^-^ is the design.

The ^ are piles of self-supporting dirt and in between is the house. Then build an overhanging roof that stretches past the edges of the dirt. That way there is airflow between the house and the dirt. The walls hold up just themselves and the dirt the same. Have doors/windows to close off the airspace then open to allow venting for humidity and fresh air.

ETA: Think of under floor and sides as a plenum.

[Lorien]

8. Root cellars. My grandparents had one too. nt

[TwilightGardener]

9. Yep--fruit cellar, is what we called it.

It came with our old Victorian era house. Heavy wooden trap door. It was indeed always about 60 degrees in there in summer. Not that I liked being in there, several feet under the earth with a dome of limestone block overhead that was engineered and built by some guy and his mule. Well, the mule probably didn't have any engineering input, but you get my drift. Crypt-like.

[JDPriestly]

10. My grandmother's cellar was small. There was always a natural

light coming in the door because we didn't close the heavy cover when we went in. It would have been terrifying to be in it with the heavy cover closed.

My memory was positive because it was cool on a hot summer day.

[Fumesucker]

19. Root Cellar is the commonly used term..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar

[Lugnut]

6. I live in the Pocono Mtns of NE PA.

When I was a child it was possible to live without air conditioning and we did. It's not possible anymore and hasn't been for a few years.

[NutmegYankee]

22. I'm still doing so in Connecticut.

But it is getting slowly worse each summer. Yesterday was just awful as my kitchen hit the mid 90s and it hit 100 outside. Needless to say, I didn't feel like cooking.

[KittyWampus]

24. Yeah, I'm on eastern Long Island by the ocean & it's getting harder here too. Three years ago

I finally cracked and got an air conditioner to use on nights when it's really bad. Peri-menopause was a factor.

[kenny blankenship]

7. On the bright side, these hot humid conditions resemble the Carboniferous & Cretaceous periods

when most of the world's coal and petroleum deposits were laid down as decomposing organic matter.

So, although we may be making the Earth marginally inhabitable for human life (as we currently know it), on the other hand we are simultaneously converting it into a warm and cozy greenhouse for plant life. Meaning millions of years hence, there could well be a shitload more oil and coal for our descendants to burn!

And that's what our government likes to call a renewable resource.

[Odin2005]

12. Actually, the Earth was in an ice age during the Carboniferous.

All that coal came from coastal tropical forests that were submerged and covered with mud and silt when an interglacial happened and sea levels rose.

The image of the Carboniferous as a global coal swamp is an illusion stemming from most of the best fossil sites of that period being in areas that were in the tropics.

[KittyWampus]

25. We many be nearing a mini-Ice Age. Linked to sunspots? The thing about Climate Change

is that right now we can tell it's volatile but we don't know the exact direction things will go.

[misanthrope]

11. In the long term, there might be hope...

...Once there are far fewer humans, when our carbon spewing lifestyles are gone, plant life will proliferate. Over a substantial period of time, it's possible that increase in greenery will once again moderate the climate.

The bad part is that the humans who may survive will not have any knowledge of what caused the calamity, thereby leaving the door open to repeat it all again.

[anarch]

14. sometimes I wonder if that's not how it sorta works

over the aeons and all.

[Odin2005]

13. Yikes!

[wingzeroday]

15. mmmmmmmmmmm

in the end...

all things in time.

[AverageJoe90]

17. As much as I AM afraid of global warming.........

It's not going to hit the point where half of the world will become LITERALLY uninhabitable, or where Earth will die thru methane bombs.

[FourScore]

18. And your credentials on the matter are...??? n/t

[BNJMN]

21. Cre-DEN-tials? We don't need no steenkin credentials...

http://www.allmystery.de/dateien/uh43048,1237850911,noah-dino.jpg

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[BNJMN]

20. Um, parts of the Earth are too hot for humans to survive without a/c...already?

'In a century, parts of the earth may become too hot for humans to survive without air conditioning.'
Guess that NW Passage needs a little more opening, so...yep, it's all 'cyclical'.

[FLPanhandle]

23. On the upside, there will be far less humans on the planet.

And the ones that remain might actually be thinking about taking care of the environment.

[Delphinus]

28. Hmm ...

good point.

[AsahinaKimi]

27. I have a new Theory....

That most of the Hot Air comes from FOX NEWS...just sayin!

[Fumesucker]

29. If it gets that hot the super-hurricanes will wipe the continents clean..

Right down to the bedrock..

So we really don't have to worry about it, we won't be around anyway.