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Comment by sixtyj | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

> ...the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence.

Insurance prices risk. If risk goes up, so do prices. They will not lose (much) money (or not for long) [1], your insurance will just get a lot more expensive, maybe to the point you can no longer afford it. If the government tries to control prices, then insurers will just exit the market, or the only entrants will be severely under-capitalized, merely providing the veneer of insurance (e.g., because your mortgage lender requires it). This is already happening in Florida and Louisiana [2]. These insurers will simply go bankrupt in the event of a catastrophe, and you will be stuck with the loss.

[1] Technically, in a competitive environment, many insurance companies will operate with a (small) underwriting loss, but they make up the difference by investing the float during the time between when they collect the premiums and when they pay out on claims. They will not operate with an unbounded loss.

[2] https://www.wsj.com/finance/small-insurance-company-hurrican...

How do you price in whole mountsin regions beeing in for repeatet flooding events basically forcing continuous rebuilds and thus having way overpriced houses? How do you price insurrance on objects that shouldnt exist ?

I think interpreting the rejection of broad, impersonal, policy based remediation to climate response is a way or expressing a preference for a more personal response, sharing their homes with climate refugees. Does anyone have something catchier than these?

"Climate denialism: A personal guarantee to host the displaced."

"Denying the crisis? Congratulations, you've just RSVP'd to house the refugees."

Probably cause we bailed out south Jersey and instead of packing up and heading inland Margate boasts homes over 1.5 million dollars

Number of tanks of gas for a Ford F-150 Supercab is the American standard unit.

well shit, my F150 uses 0 tanks of gas, does that complicate things?

It does for your resale value ;)

Maybe it improves it? The truck has depreciated 7K since I bought it brand new, which works out to about 13% over 20 months. Most cars depreciate faster than that, so it seems having 0 tanks helps.

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.

Instead governments will stop measuring altogether and that will stop the problem.

> 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.

10 degrees increase would collapse any industry, it would turn Norway into Italy.

Do you drive to Norway for your beach holiday?

> 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.

Surely they'll reconsider once potentially billions of climate refugees flood countries up north.

Also I think the impact of weather extremes is underestimated. You can reinforce buildings against stronger winds. You can move people into climate-controlled buildings. Desalinate seawater when the rains stop.

But that's impossible for the bulk of agriculture. Now imagine extreme winds, droughts and/or wildfires decimate 1 or more staple crops - worldwide, in a single season. Economic chaos, wars & famine will ensue.

Compound effects are a thing. And there's an ever-growing list of candidates.

>3°C global warming is nuclear-WW3 level.

>And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US)

Actually look at median temperatures in the US. Summers in Atlanta and Chicago are remarkably similar as it is.

Plants would just keep chugging at temps 10 °C hotter than they're evolved for?

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.

I can't see the methodology, but it would shock me if they did not take into account the local high based on the time of year.

Edit: In the methodology section it is not clear whether they used one average or average for the date.

Yes, I expect the problem is in this summarisation of the research, not the research itself.

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

A couple of years ago I was read news articles about heat waves so severe that birds were falling down the sky. Pretty apocalyptic.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...

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.

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