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Comment by Shekelphile | Hacker News Reader

2023 and 2024 have been massive outliers for climate data. If this is the new norm then it pretty much solidifies that even the most extremist predictions about climate change were too optimistic. We will reach runaway greenhouse within a century if we continue seeing temperature raises this quickly year-over-year.

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The consequences to younger peoples mental health must be considerable. Feeling 'disaster' is inevitable, and caused in part by only few of the previous generations, must skew a view towards nihilism.

Its the environmentalists that are causing the mental health catastrophe. Humanity survived much more extreme temperature changes in the past with much less technology than we have today.

Even today more humans die of cold than heat so perhaps younger people should be in high spirits since this temp increase will likely save lives in the short term. And in the long term, it looks quite likely we will solve this with technology given the cost curves of EVs, solar, and nuclear fission.

That 'humanity survived much more extreme temperature changes' is the antithesis of global warming.

Not sure where 'die of cold not heat' is from.

It's pretty well accepted, like the numbers are not even close.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/temp-deaths-zhao

I've see those figures many times. They represent what they say, literally. No one is suggesting rising temperatures per se are going so high we will all frazzle and not freeze. But the global consequences of said rise means vast displacement of whole peoples, water shortages, energy consumption, failing crops.

Why would it result in net water shortages? Is lots of additional rainfall not a potential consequence?

The IPCC projects 3-6 degrees or warming through the end of the century.

Environmentalists and scaremongering--is there a more iconic couple?

That's average surface-level temperature increase. 70% of the Earth's surface is ocean, which can absorb more thermal energy. It's worse than 3-6 degrees in the areas where people live. It's not scaremongering. People talk about Miami and Dubai as if those cities will be populated in a century. Look up "wet-bulb temperature", and then look at a global population density map.

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