Slashdot Mirror
NOAA Report: World Labor Capacity Dropping Because of Increased Temperatures
pigrabbitbear writes with a story about some interesting possible effects of Global Warming. From the article: "It's a good thing that robots are stealing our jobs, because in about thirty-five years, nobody in their right mind is going to want to do them. Scientists from NOAA just published a report ... that details how a warming climate impacts the way we work, and the results are pretty clear — we do less of it. NOAA discovered that over the last 60 years, the hotter, wetter climate has decreased human labor capacity by 10%. And it projects that by 2050, that number will double."
NO sense at all!
So the people of the tropic or in sunny weathers do not work as much as the people of icy weathers?
I guess that the Eskimos must be a super civilization of hard working machines and achievements!
it is just too hot ... I need my siesta break!
Somebody should invent some way to cool the air down. Think of all those poor bakery workers. Oh if only there was some sort of box you could plug into the window and it would make the air colder in the room it was in. Oh wait...
An increasingly obese America is getting too warm when it works? Good God man the temperature is up a degree, have some chips and try to last the night.
Dumbest. Report. Ever. But I can't want to see what they'd say in an ice age. Presumably "oh well, that's it, we're all gonna die then".
Who pays for crap like this?
Need Mercedes parts ?
Global Warming is there anything it cannot do?
Is there anything bad in the world that is not caused by global warming?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"It's a good thing that robots are stealing our jobs, because in about thirty-five years, nobody in their right mind is going to want to do them. "
I don't want to do robots now. I mean some people in Japan might. But not me.
Talk about a study that has too many variables to conclude something so major... How did they eliminate the effect of today's technology and culture on work ethic and demand? Among the thousands of other variables...
5 degrees isn't going to reduce overall labor by 5%, let alone 10%. And the 10% is considered with far less than 5 degrees in increased temperature.
Uncertainties and caveats associated with these projections include climate sensitivity, climate warming patterns, CO2 emissions, future population distributions, and technological and societal change.
Because this is after all, just a projection based on computer models. And we know how well they work "out of sample."
The statistic mentioned by /. in their synopsis is very misleading. It implies (to me at least) that world total labor capacity has decreased by 10%, but the NOAA study is just stating that when it is hot out, people tend to be 10% less productive.
NOAA was one of the most respected organizations in my head until this BS.
Is John P. Dunne trying to keep his job or something??? How in one's sane and collected mind are they actually corroborating reduction in labor by increased temperature?
This is akin to me releasing a report, with data of my choosing that has changed since 1991, stating that the fall of the Soviet Union contributed to the increase in population in the rest of the world.
The two are completely unrelated! There is NO evidence whatsoever that they can possibly be connected. I don't care if one is a believer in climate change/global warming or not, this is complete tripe!
Oh, and let me tell you while I'm at it, my headache frequency has increased by 10% due to the EMI from electronics in the past decade. Rubbish!
then when the east river in NYC freezes during winter and the temps are so bitter cold that the hipster idiots will go crazy and blame it on global warming
and then the intelligent people can point out that this is completely normal. it used to happen in the 1800's all the time before global warming screwed things up with a warmer winter
it is just too hot ... I need my siesta break!
After reading, I see that whoever did these studies, never seen a Mexican construction crew in August here in Georgia - in 100+ heat.
And they got their work done well and on time.
" In this case of 6 degrees C (11 degrees F) global warming, heat stress in New York City [during the hottest months] would exceed that of any location in the present day."
There, fixed that for you.
Here in NYC, it's often too hot during late July and August to do outside work. And, it's often too cold during February and March to do outside work. So maybe we lose some outdoor work days during July and early September, but won't we gain some outdoor work days in February and March?
I understand that the topics won't be able to adapt to the loss of outdoor working days by time shifting them to the winter, but it seems to be a pretty even swap for the temperate climates.
Also, it seems that in cold climates like Canada and Scandinavia, they will have a net gain of outside work days.
Or am I being too optimistic?
In other news...
Resulting from average temperature and humidity growth, 98% people are 72% less inclined to indulge in sexual activities. Scientists from UN IPCC's climatodemography subcommittee agreed on 82%-91% less babies will be born in next 20 years than expected. 20 years after that, figure is a bit more fuzzy and goes from 86%-100% drop in new births.
Dig deeper, sleep cooler, ... and keep your genes in global pool :)
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
A warmer climate means more food, simpler shelters, and lower energy costs. (Or they would be, without air conditioning, which is a luxury in all but the hottest places.) Where it snows, everything is more expensive, so people have to work more than they would otherwise. From a labor perspective, global warming will bring about freedom from slavery.
Rebuttal: http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/
The answer is obvious. Let's throw more people at the probem. We just have to make up for each persons 10% cut in productivity by putting 10% more workers out there, and paying each one 10% less. Problem solved...or something.
What ever happened to "correlation does not mean causality?" I mean, I get more and more tired as the day goes on, and... I think it's because the sun is in the sky.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I thought the whole goal of inventing machines was to make jobs easier for human beings.
Even if there is some valid conjecture behind this science, since the beginning of time, man has invented tools and machines to make jobs less difficult for man to do, thus decreasing the labor. And I know that when I don't have to work as hard, I enjoy lounging on a beach chair in a bikini soaking up the warmer weather and relaxing.
There is much more to all of this I would believe. The world's population has increased tremendously and now there are more people and less work to be done, and I'd gather that a majority of the world's population is located in warmer climate areas, this conclusion would appear to me to be conjecture. ...but this is just my take on it...just an observation.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Maybe the amount of work actually done in the past 60 years has gone down because of union regulations (amount of time you are able to work a day, number of breaks required to give workers), regulations against child labor, regulation of minors in the workforce, and the possibility that a lot of jobs in the past 60 years (not all mind you) have turned from factories and physical labor to offices. Many occupations have also modernized and mechanized, increasing production and decreasing the need for physical labor.
While a 1-3 degree difference in temperatures (or even 5-10 degrees if you want to get drastic) is enough to cause global enviornmental issues, I doubt that anyone is going to say "Shoot, its 73 today whereas 60 years ago it was 70, Oh, its just too hot, I can't work today". "Oh, its summer in Phoenix, its 110 today instead of 107 it was 60 years ago on this day, oh, I just can't do anything".
Really really stupid corrolation.
That is like saying the number of viewers of the Today Show has increaded substantially over the past 60 years, so we are going to say that The Today Show has got to be the most awesome show on television, and take into no account the number of households who have bought televisions in the past 60 years, the population growth, or even comparing it to the actual percentage of total viewers now versus then.
Awesome, so there is no such thing as global climate change? I'll let you tell the turtle that holds our flat earth disk in space while the sun revolves around us. Maybe all of our humors are out of balance too.
I got here through a series of tubes
In mediterranean countries they mitigate against this by working in the early morning, sleeping for the hottest part of the day, and working until very late evening. Two four-hour sleeps suits hot climates much better than one eight hour one. I wouldn't be surprised if in a much hotter climate an 8-hour sleep in daylight and working through the night made more sense
Work slowed down quite a bit here today because there's a snow storm. So if it was 40 degrees out instead, our productivity and workload would go up. In fact, this is a landscaping company so it would go way up. So hotter places that are so hot and swampy and miserable and unbearable that nobody should be living there right now (aka Mexico, Florida, Georgia, etc) will go down in productivity but places like this will go up.
"Even IPCC head Pachauri admits [wattsupwiththat.com] no warming for 17 years."
false. That has been thoroughly debunked.
It amuses me..angers really, that someone would dispose of the work from 1000's of experts from around the globe, through out all the collected data, but trust some yahoo website.
Do you even know how to think?
At this stage in out body of knowledge about this issue, people lie you are right up there with anti-vaccers, 911 conspiracy cranks and bigfoot believers.
The worse part is that we can still do something about it pretty cheaply, all thing considered, but it gets more expensive every year.
Out of the last 10 years, 9 of them have been the warmest on record. Yes, even after homogenization of the data sets.
That's not debatable. It's a fact.
The 10th one was in 98.
17 of the top 20 warmest were in the last 20 years.
start hear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even if the study's figures themselves may somehow be "correct", there's still the continued productivity increase per person through advance of technology - even though "labor capacity" might have dropped and might continue to drop.
Seems to be a study to give bespoke rationale for those in power to further increase work time or invent new socially detrimental measures to fight the impending shortage of workforce. While, in long term reality, increasing unemployment is the only thing to be expected.
"17 years" seems like an oddly specific number.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
We're all quite glad that you discovered that you don't "catch a cold" by stepping out into the cold. At this rate you'll soon learn about the Transistor!
That said, low temperatures make many people more susceptible the viruses and bacteria that are ultimately responsible, and ironically, the low humidity caused by running our heating systems during this weather contributes greatly to that problem. At the other end, heat intolerance is a condition people in my family suffer from and it makes them quite useless at temperatures I find perfectly comfortable.
The GP's post was on topic and required no correction. These are real problems. If the average temperatures in your climate zone go up or down 5 degrees, it's not hard to imagine that workers in unairconditioned spaces (often called laborers) would end up less productive as a result.
That too many people have become lazy, narcissistic and generally so full of themselves that they think they're worth more than they really are. Add to that a group of people who blow smoke up the collective asses of these self-absorbed folk by promising them anything and everything in order to obtain and maintain power and influence.
Attention: Ship B is leaving and you need to get on board now before the Earth blows up.
World temperature gradient vs latitude is ~ +1 degree C per 145 km latitude toward the equator. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Temperature_versus_Latitude_png
World temperature change since 1910 is ~ .7 degree C. http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/Climate-change-is-real.aspx'
Ohio is ~370km north-to-south, so that's about 3.6 times the temperature difference from 1910 to now.
Are people in southern Ohio 30-40% less productive than people in northern Ohio?
Are we looking at the same article? The one I'm looking at has graphs - including NOAA graphs - that support the GP's point that mean temperatures peaked about 2003 and even dropped a bit in the past couple of years.
I was ready to agree with you, but you've actually given me pause for thought.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Apparently Watts is an authoritarian if he's willing to ignore what the scientists actually say in favour of a poorly-worded comment by the head of their organisation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I've never actually met or read anyone who argues that climate doesn't change. In fact, that was one of the original criticisms of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming as a hypothesis: climate changes, and the current/recent climate differences do not appear to be outside of normal ranges. But, you know, nice straw man and mockery and all.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Time to play "Dog Pile on the Rabbit" with the mockery.
After all, one can never let the topic of Global Warming go un-mocked - that would be a dereliction of duty!
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You're missing the fact that Portugal is 38 degrees north of the equator, and it's February/March.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If you've never encountered a person who believes the climate simply isn't warming, then you should probably read some of the comments here.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I've encountered people who doubt that the climate is warming. I said that I hadn't encountered people who claim that climate does not change.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Open a jar of pickles? Nope..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I derped.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
So... over the next 60 years its going to continue to get hotter and hotter and .....hmmmmm.... wetter? I thought it was supposed to get hotter and drier?
This warming https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7mjteSF7FW4/UQE4QTzUVtI/AAAAAAABMNQ/rBg-y7QjGv8/s821/climate_365_temperature_graph_final+(2).jpg
You know, the setting the top 9 global record temps in the past 10 years type stuff
No warming for the past 17 years? Every year has been warmer than the last for the past 30 years in a row. We really don't have enough long term data to tell if this is a normal cycle, but why chance it? There are small simple things that can be easily done to help reduce green house gas emission and general pollution.
Paraphrasing someone sarcastically talking about anti-global warming people: "We have strong evidence that what we're doing is killing the planet, but no absolute proof, so why stop?"
My outlook has always been hard work may pay off in the future, but laziness pays off now. I'm the V.P. of Lazy despite what the weather is!
Yes, but it's snowing like hell in the North of Portugal, and it is forecasted to snow in the South tonight. What was your comment about, again?
Three groups of people who dismiss the overwhelming concensus of evidence amoungst experts on the subject and attribute the existence of that evidence to a sophisticated cabal out to further its own interests? Yeah, I can see why people who dismiss global warming don't belong with those.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm not going to give cites, look it up yourselves, but I think it goes like this:
AGW big wig, upon seeing the the mean temp did not rise in the past X years says that you can't make a judgement based on X years. It has to be X+Y some number.
Y has been steadily increasing and I guess the sum of X+Y is 17 years at the moment.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Three groups of people who dismiss the overwhelming concensus of evidence amoungst experts on the subject
Wrong. There is no evidence in the question of whether there was a controlled demolition, because all the evidence was swept up and destroyed immediately. That doesn't prove anything! And I will never say it does! It only prohibits proving the negative.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, it was really hot in the summer, but no one died or made a big deal of it. You just work. The upside is that we got a lot more done in the winter.
Guys, it would have to get *really* hot, really fast to make a difference. My experience is that you get used to whatever you need to. I moved to MN a while back and was shocked by the cold, but yesterday as I went off to my programming job, I told the wife, "Hey 18(Fahrenheit) above this morning, summer is almost here!". I wasn't kidding.
I built my house a few years ago and worked though the winter nights and weekends. I worked in temperatures I wouldn't have believed could be survived, much less been productive in.
If the temperature goes up, we'll all be OK.
Side note: Space heating is a huge user of energy. Real warming will reduce that.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
(Actual report conveniently behind a paywall)
My guess is that they used the 'labor guidelines' from the comfortably indolent Western societies to claim that 'based on standard X, people cannot work more than Y hours when the temp goes over Z'.
Really? Do we REALLY see that tropical societies are furloughing people, and stopping labor when the temp reaches over a certain level? Because in Iraq, equatorial African, South American, and SE South Asian states I've served in some pretty rough conditions, I don't see anybody giving the slightest shit that "it's bloody hot"*.
*except for the pasty fat Americans, Europeans, and increasingly, Chinese and Japanese....
Really this report has a lot of fancy graphs and tables, but the core of it is this root guess that people don't adapt which is complete folderol.
In short, more FUD from the Global Warming Industry.
-Styopa
Predicted warming did not occur
It did occur and it is still happening. You living under a rock? Next thing we'll hear is that 640KB of memory is enough and we still don't use more than 640KB.
So the evidence which conveniently doesn't exist proves your case? And you're going to ignore all the evidence for the other, concensus hypothesis? Fantastic.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Hey buddy that's not just some yahoo's website. Anthony Watts is a professional shill for a right-wing think tank.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"despite the bad economy there is work available"
There might be work available in Texas but that doesn't mean there is work available everywhere.
I had to make an emergency still unemployed relocation across the country from FL to NM because it took a year to get a crappy Job in FL (bottom level retail crappy) and despite having no kids and relocating to the cheapest apartment I could find and cutting all possible costs that job didn't pay enough to keep afloat. After the move I was amazed when applying for positions actually resulted in responses again and had no problem getting not just a crappy job but an excellent position in my chosen profession.
Except for the massive uptick in diseases (North American Malaria is back, btw) and a dearth of potable water from no snow melt....
But you keep preachin', Pollyanna!
And unemployment is running at about 10%.
What's that Baldrick? You have a cunning plan?
Well, as you found, often you have to move to where the jobs are...inconvenient, but that's life these days.
The days of having a job in one place for life has been LONG gone, even before the recession hit. If you want to progress in the W2 world, you have to quit and seek out new jobs every 3 years or so, and be prepared to move where they are.
In tech, however, telecommuting is easing the pain of this somewhat though.
Glad to hear your story had a happy ending.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yep, wages in retail establishments suck. Just a clue though: since an apartment is a major expense, an effective way to cut expenses is to share an apartment.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The real reason that there is less work being done is because people are being layed off or working reduced hours due to 'austerity measures'
What is the global unemployment rate?
In fact, it is highly likely (read CIA analyses and various scientific studies) that much of the world will more resemble 50 C areas of Australia, but without access to clean water and power.
In the US, this will hit most regions of the country, with the marked exception of the Pacific NW (BC, WA, ID, part of MT, OR).
Adapt. Or die.
Or maybe stop using coal and oil and stop whining about it. But changing that won't affect things before 2040, by which time it will be much worse.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is it just me, or does anyone else immediately think of that one episode of Star Trek (The Inner Light) every time we start talking about global warming. We should just start work on our space probe and brush up on our Ressikan flute skills; There's nothing we can do about the sun going nova.
-1 Offtopic. Although they have things in common a weather model is not a climate model. In fact TFP you refer to complains that some of the computer resources used for climate modeling would be better spent to improve the US's numerical weather modeling.
These report writers need to get out of their air conditioned office and experience the real world where the temperatures vary from -45ÂF to over 100ÂF and I'm not even in an extreme climate. The real world is not a climate controlled 72ÂF 24/7. We have seasons.
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC’s climate science panel has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain's Met Office, 'Nothing off-limits' in climate debate
For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.127 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH, the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut3, the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut4, the warming is not significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.095 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS, the warming is not significant for over 17 years.
For GISS: 0.116 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
Has Global Warming Stalled?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Whether the report itself is dumb I won't speculate about. But it does not say what OP claims it says.
TFA does NOT say that "global warming" has reduced labor by 10%. What is says is that summers -- summers in general -- reduce labor by 10% compared to the rest of the year. There is no mention at all about current levels being caused by global warming.
TFA then goes on to explain that *IF* Global Warming continues at the rate some people predict, those summer reductions will THEN increase and cause reduced production.
Even the head of the IPCC, Pachauri, admits there has been "a 17-year pause" in Global Warming. Some people need to catch up and get with the program. The draft report of the IPCC's upcoming Assessment Report has toned things down a lot too. Like admissions that there is little to no evidence after all that cyclonic energy (hurricanes, etc.) will increase, and more.
There are vilified becasue of the accuracy and effectiveness.
They are vilified because of this little thing called sovereignty. And aside from that, we don't know they are effective, just that the military industrial complex tells us so. Just what is the collateral damage? How many terrorists are we making through collateral damage? For example, someone with a vested interested may think that 80% collateral damage is accurate and effective.
The program is vilified because it violates sovereignty, and we don't really know what is going on.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right