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Persian Gulf Temperatures May Be At the Edge of Human Tolerance In 30 Years (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new climate study the Persian Gulf may become so hot and humid in the next 30 years that it will reach the threshold of human survivability. Ars reports: "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future. However, a new paper published by Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir in Nature Climate Change presents evidence that this deadly combination of heat and humidity increases could occur in the Persian Gulf much earlier than previously anticipated."
That.
The human body needs periods of cool temperatures to recover from being in the heat. The effects are also more severe as the heat increases and the humidity reduces the ability of the body to cool itself. When it's very humid, temperatures don't fall as much as night, which prevents the body from recovering during that period. Humans can tolerate periods of hot and even humid conditions, provided they also get time to cool off and recover. The excessive heat and warm nights due to the humidity are a bad combination. While you can tolerate a really hot bathtub, you certainly wouldn't survive being in one all the time.
...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Science is INTERESTING, chaos theory even more so, and it's easy to see the changes if you know what to look for. The increased energy in the system is already turning all of weather to a parade of freak outliers and unpredictable quirky events that occasionally spike off the charts, and that's exactly in line with the 'chaotic system' model.
I wouldn't have called the 'Earth turning to an alien planet that doesn't support life' thing in thirty years, but if you specify it's to happen in particular (unusual areas) then I'll believe that. Some areas of the planet are already close to uninhabitable and it doesn't take that much to push 'em over the brink. The thing to watch for is not places being rendered uninhabitable by weather extremes, it's more about masses of people/animals displaced because the change is a new thing that nobody's prepared for.
You can probably, right now, buy a 40-year lease on land that might as well be the Moon in 40 years. If you want a real picture of the plausibility of man-made global climate change, don't check scientists or Al Gore, consult actuaries and insurance companies. Pretty sure you'll find they're believers, because they have to actually pay for it if they choose wrong.
It doesn't matter. By this time the entire population of the middle east will have "moved" to Europe.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Make sh*tloads of money selling fossil fuels to the rest of the world...
Parlay that money, and valuable commodity, into unwarranted global influence...
Have homeland rendered uninhabitable by the consequence of burning said fossil fuels...
Nrrgghh... Arrrgh... Sorry, can't resist, I'll bite....
If the climate science models predict an ice age, you should be worried. You might even plan with how to avoid such a scenario; such as research ways you might pump a gas into the atmosphere to warm the earth...
If the science changes and it might; particularly if evidence from new measurements comes to light, you should adjust your behaviour accordingly. Its the rational thing to do. Not acting with the consensus of experts puts you, your descendants and everybody else's at risks.
I agree that having a cap on carbon and trade on carbon production is ripe for exploitation. But something should be done to reflect the true cost of carbon production. We've done it with cigarettes; found against initial opinion to be an existential threat to you and others; taxed sky high. We have to do it with carbon.
A couple more points.
Going against the advice of experts. Say you go to the doctors with slight headaches, doctor diagnoses cancer... Then other doctors take more measurements, using a new technology of M.R.I. and diagnose a progressive build up of fluid. Radically different treatment, but you should do something. Saying 'laalaa la. What do you experts know, you always change your mind, I'm going to carry on till it gets bad.' is not a rational response. Say exactly same scenario; but its somebody else with the symptoms; and *you* making the decision. People would be quite correct to question your morality in such a situation.
On existential threat. If I said to you, I've discovered secret evidence that says a meteor will hit the earth in 50 years; killing maybe a billion people and wrecking the earths economy. If I showed you evidence of tables of numbers, and the result of orbital simulations, making nice graphics of the impact. Would you listen?
Because the only difference is it isn't a meteor, and the evidence isn't secret.
..thats one way of solving conflict in the Middle East
You mean one way of causing the conflict in the middle east to escalate and start spreading outward.
Right... and if anybody thinks the Middle-East->Balkans->Europe or S-America->Mexico->USA migration is a problem now try to imagine what it will be like when large of South America become deforested and the Middle East becomes an uninhabitable dustbowl. Everytime I hear somebody make that: "It's not our problem, let them kill themselves down there, the best thing we can do is not interfere" like the OP I'm tempted to bring up the mess that is Syria which to a large extent became the mess it is because we listened to people who recommend apathy. Interfering is bad but at least you have some influence on the course of events, not interfering is worse because by not interfering you let the situation spin completely out of control.
All of Syria is already moving to Europe because of political instability. As more muslims arrive, their influence grows in countries like France and England. That will affect the USA as well.
They will have to attack neighboring states to "make a hole" and most of the neighboring states are quite strong, militarily. Getting them to commit suicide
...will have substantial fallout, both economic and political, to say nothing of the cost in human lives. It also does not detract from the point.
They all die in a war they start that when they could have just shown up at the border, hat in hand, begging for asylum that would most assuredly be granted,
You haven't been paying attention to world politics, have you? That would most assuredly be granted? What are you smoking, what is it called, how much does it cost, and where can it be purchased?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its difficult to explain anything to people that can't be summed up into one sentence or a short five sentence anectdotal story.
That said the basic thermodynamics of added CO2 and other heat trapping gasses is simple, well understood, and was settled long ago academically. The real cutting edge research today is determining what will happen on a regional scale. In the above study published in Nature, it's not an increase in temperature so much as its an increase in regional moisture brought on by a slight warming and a shift in climate.
It's not a dust bowl effect, think of how bad that dry heat is going to be if it turns high humidity.
While results like these could be more accurately modeled, say by having better satellites, far more money is spent arguing than buying hardware and funding research. The possible doomsday scenerio isn't a whole planet that's too hot - its far more likely a slightly insane nuclear arms bearing nation essentially being locked inside a car with the windows rolled up in a Flordia kmart parking lot in July.
You really only have one choice for "interfering", and that's gearing up for a massive ground invasion with the troops and manpower to militarily occupy the region at a troop scale similar to the European theater of WWII.
And you have to do it with a mindset that we're not there to build schools or make friendly with the locals, but to suppress resistance with maximum force and minimal-to-no concern for civilian casualties and collateral damage. This isn't a "police action" or "counter-insurgency" it's more Caesar's Conquest of Gaul.
You have to break the culture's will to resist. You move forward and obliterate anything that offers resistance. Use every tool in the toolkit -- carpet bombing, firebombing, internment camps. You don't avoid hospitals, power plants, water plants, food warehouses -- you hit those FIRST. You advance systematically in this manner, willing to inflict total destruction and maximum death until the people and culture recognize that further resistance is futile.
Then you occupy the territory for at least a generation, gradually, over 20 or 30 years, returning them to some kind of self rule, but all the while willing to demonstrate that resistance will not be tolerated.
Anything else is totally ineffective and produces no lasting change, at huge cost.
Oh, and 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere is EXTREMELY LOW by geologic measure [hugovandermolen.nl].
Let the rocks worry about what level of CO2 they're comfortable with, the levels that human beings can stand is another story.
your misusing and abusing information to make a flawed point.
"geological global average was higher than today" .... when you use a 600 million year time period.
hint: 600 million years ago complex multicellular life (things above bacterial mats and algae) didn't even exist yet.
And why just 600 million years? If we're going to geological time scales, why stop there? Why not go back further? to the cooling earth after its molten formation? Or was it just to conveniently leave out the 200 million year long glaciation period that occurred just before the arbitrary 600my cut off?
same for CO2 levels. yes, it was warmer and higher CO2 millions of years ago....and life that evolved for those conditions existed. the problem is the current situation is in not operating on evolutionary time scales. its not just the existence of the conditions, but the speed. those prior conditions occurred over hundreds of millions of years, which is actually a point supported by the very things you mention, and unlike the current conditions and trends.
and further: you're using geological time scale global averages, when the article in question is talking about a specific point in time at a specific place...the total opposite. The fact that the global average is ok for humans doesn't contradict or prevent the existence of locations not habitable by humans, places like Antarctica or the Middle East.
in short: just more unscientific denier BS.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's pretty easy for you to condemn him when the most angst you have in your life is not hearing your name called in Starbucks... You have no idea what he had to go through, yet you think you can judge a guy's actions and motives because of a snippet on the TV? That speaks more to your willingness to condemn than it does the honour (or lack thereof) of the guy being condemned.
> I don't know why it is not done. Maybe because you are complete ignorant in political relation.Going to war in direct war with ISIS would destroy region again toward USA (what the fuck I am saying ? region is destroyed already , I mean in toward USA , there will be new generation of warriors who hate USA and west ) . How do I know ? apart from I am from middle east (Iran, BTW I am atheist).I studied religion very carefully because my life tied to that , because I lived whole my life where a mullah's fatwa can change people's destiny. Do you know what policy is effective in middle east ? Obama's policy , let alone middle east , let them kill each other, what the fuck are you doing there ? Do you know how much obama's policy was effective in Iran ? the famous chanting "death to america " is dead, despite regime propaganda people in recent 4 5 year understood usa is not their enemy . do you know what policy was best for mullahs and mojahedins ? fucking idiots like G.W Bush or this idiot O'Reilly who does not understand whats going on in middle east. I am 100% sure mullahs and ISIS and Al-Quaida wishes some stupid like bush ro oreilly . They are other side of coin. Do you know who fights in iran against regime ? not fucking mojahedin khalgh (which all of them was killer and murderers ) . liberal fighting there. academia fights against regime . not stupid likes you who thinks we should destroy and bomb because we are stronger . fuck off. I have seen enough of people like you. And as middle eastin atheist I blame you and only people like you . your policy introduced khomeini to region, ISIS and others.
So basically, you want the Americans to channel the shittiest of all dictators and along with their bombings, occupy and terrorize a population. And this is marked insightful? Disgusting.
I get it. That barbaric culture is scary. You're afraid of them breeding like rabbits and establishing sharia law after immigrating to your country. If you react in this way, there is literally nothing separating you from the terrorists. Their ideas are your ideas. You literally WANT TO TERRORIZE THEM INTO SUBMISSION.
How the fuck is this insightful? Consider if someone was saying this about the US. You just know that even though you'll subjugate the majority, you will always have an armed rebellion for as long as you're there. Legitimately fighting their brutal occupiers. If The US saw Russia doing that, they'd call them brutal aggressive occupiers and that's what you'd be.
There are better options. They are harder, complex and don't give you the satisfaction of the genocide you crave. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It may be from a movie but it's the goddamn truth. Real solutions are harder than that but maybe we humans haven't reached a level of emotional or intellectual maturity to use them yet.
But it won't kill everyone as you suggest.
You missed his point - If you can't survive for more than a few hours at a time outside, what happens when you lose power for a week?
Answer: Everyone dies. Or at least, a high enough percentage of the population to make the distinction irrelevant.
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
In reality, it was being discussed in Los Alamos during the 1940's. Early climate models suggested that we hadn't even begun to notice the effects [of all the deforestation during the Industrial Revolution over a century earlier]... but that we certainly would. It should be noted that this "braintrust of brilliance" (the world's top physcists were of course gathered there) was also discussing what we might be able to do to offset the effects...
How about when A SINGLE ONE of the predictions made by the priests of the AGW comes true?
We were supposed to have an ice-free northwest passage, record-breaking hurricane seasons, and low lying islands were supposed to slip beneath the waves. NONE of it has happened.
Scientists make predictions based on theory. When observations don't match predictions, the theory is modified. This does not happen in climate "science", therefore it is not science.
africans are not like us. We have the only civilization that is worthy of the name, nobody else on Earth ever came close to it. That is a fact: Europeans >>> anybody else. Europeans are Herrenvolk, and are therefore the only culture that should legitimately rule the world.
That ended so well for you the first two times you tried that shit, Going for a third?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Your exact argument has been made before. Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority, lest your argument look like this:
No one is asking for theological debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants priests to stop investigating the scriptures in order to better interpret them. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating religion they know nothing about.
Theology is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon theological understanding because it might someday change. When determining which theology to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is basically the only important thing. Average citizens and even policy makers could never be expected to understand religion enough to join either side of the debate. Accepting the consensus is the only sane choice in these instances.
That argument would be similar to mine if only 97% of people agreed upon the basic tenants of their religion. Since there is no where near consensus on whether there even is a creator god, how many gods there are, and what the most important commandments of these gods are, this is a red herring. And don't go saying that all major religions agree upon the important stuff either, because many religions such as Buddhism have very little to do with religions such as the Abrahamic ones.
This isn't a situation where there are 3-4 different factions of scientists who agree with 97% of other members in their faction, but only agree on 80% with members of other factions. Then it would be similar to the major religions of the world. Here we have a situation where there is no sizable disagreement among qualified individuals.
Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority
Science does its best to do away with appeals to authority when actually doing cutting edge scientific research. But research would grind to a halt if no one ever treated agreed upon knowledge as fact (even if it isn't 100% proven) when building upon that research. Engineers would never have the time to apply scientific knowledge if they never trusted the consensus of scientists who made the breakthroughs.
Most knowledge is still gained by trusting authority, even by scientists. Trusting authority is not the same thing as never questioning authority.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
As of this writing, only 6 of 210 postings were at level 5 which just goes to show how pointlessly contentious this topic is. Maybe the Slashdot editors should think about a moratorium on climate topics for a while.