gregory rush
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

See the latest edition of New York Magazine for the well-sourced article: “The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition”; providing an interesting compilation of the many extra affects that we’re seeing now, can expect in the future, other than simply getting our knees wet at Mar-A-Lago.

II. Heat Death

“Humans, like all mammals, are heat engines; surviving means having to continually cool off, like panting dogs. For that, the temperature needs to be low enough for the air to act as a kind of refrigerant, drawing heat off the skin so the engine can keep pumping. At seven degrees of warming, that would become impossible for large portions of the planet’s equatorial band, and especially the tropics, where humidity adds to the problem.

This is from the landmark paper on the subject, by Steven C. Sherwood and Matthew Huber.; in the jungles of Costa Rica, for instance, where humidity routinely tops 90 percent, simply moving around outside when it’s over 105 degrees Fahrenheit would be lethal.

You can use this rough wet-bulb-temperature calculator to explore other circumstances. And the effect would be fast: Within a few hours, a human body would be cooked to death from both inside and out.This is based on research by Sherwood, which can be found here. (…)

(…) “ By the end of the century, the World Bank has estimated, the coolest months in tropical South America, Africa, and the Pacific are likely to be warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century.See Turn Down the Heat. Air-conditioning can help but will ultimately only add to the carbon problem; plus, the climate-controlled malls of the Arab emirates aside, it is not remotely plausible to wholesale air-condition all the hottest parts of the world, many of them also the poorest.The air-conditioning/carbon trade-off is especially acute in developing countries.”

Other fun topics…

III. The End of Food

IV. Climate Plagues

V. Unbreathable Air

VI. Perpetual War

VII. Permanent Economic Collapse

VIII. Poisoned Oceans

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gregory rush

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