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Comment by typon | Hacker News Reader

Things are going to get much, much worse than this.

Chapter 1 of Ministry for the Future tells the fictional story of a massive heatwave with power failure (nice AC you got there...) across a region of India.

Said chapter is available from the publishers here: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...

In Termination Shock, the US didn't really start paying attention until people in Texas needed to wear "Earth Suits" to go outside.

And as a fictional story, it's just the author's completely arbitrary rendering of something that hasn't yet happened anywhere in the world. It's tiresome to see people citing that piece of text as if it were in any way a scientific source or prediction of anything.

A bit like citing Paul Ehlrich's hypothetical predictions of massive famines in the world of his future.. Oh but wait, they all turned out to be completely false.

Whew! What a read, I'ma check the whole book.

Affected countries are going to start doing global albedo modification, even if other countries object.

This is not a negative thing.

Global albedo modification happens today its just not very directed (eg. pitch black tarmac next to concrete sidewalk there is significant difference in temperature on sunny days, AC bills would be probably bit cheaper we didn't have tarmac).

I think it would mean no more blue skies. The Sun would also have a sickly halo, if the Mt. Pinatubo eruption was any indication.

The halo effect has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop%27s_Ring

Yeah I'm sure it'll be great and we will think about every single potential side effects, just like with asbestos, DDT, lead in gas, freon in fridges, &c.

We're most likely utterly fucked whatever we do unless we go back to live like pre industrial revolution humans

Can't wait for the "Great Thermostat War"

Imagine if all that wealth spent on battling climate effects have been spent in the past to prevent them instead. What a world we could have. Dreamer I am, I know. Hope it is not too late and we still have some chances.

Or if the world wars never happened

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