To worry that the planet is heating faster than we have been led to expect and whether we can cope?

[100thingstoknowaboutspace]

I understand that extreme weather events, including spikes in temperatures and longer heatwaves, are a result of smaller incremental rises in global temperature. But the rate of heat records and large jumps in the temperatures during those spikes and heatwaves that we have experienced during the last 10 years feels off the scale for me, and I am wondering how we can actually cope if it continues at this pace? Climate experts talk about 2 degrees warming by mid century, but if we experience heatwaves that are 5 or more degrees hotter or go on longer than this one, I genuinely don't understand how we will cope. At the moment my flat is only just tolerable - with every measure of cooling I could think of. A few degrees more, and survival is literally threatened. Whereas humans may be able to cope with 5, 10 etc degrees lower, as it is easier to heat up, it seems we are reaching the edge of survivability in terms of being able to stay cool enough to maintain life. Not only here in the UK obviously.

I do believe there is still action that we as individuals and as a country (which in turn may impact other countries) can take, but I am scared that things are worse than even experts, in their carefully hedged or caveated statements and predictions, cause us to believe. I am worried I won't be able to keep my child safe as they grow up.

Grateful if anyone can talk me down from this climate anxiety - and also, grateful for insight about what might be most effective for us to do.

I am still amused by the website's claim that "Etsy is powered by 100% renewable electricity". (I thought that all electricity, being by its nature essentially ephemeral, was all of it renewable no matter how it was produced.) I expect they mean "Etsy is powered by electricity from 100% renewable sources" or some such, but that is too complicated and difficult to explain.

Across Asia these centres are also growing exponentially with heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Big tech such as Google and Amazon have all these pledges for 100% renewable but admit the impossibility of executing these targets in Asia due to a lack of green infrastructure. I admit having little knowledge of it all but find it depressing that this is the future that we are forced to go along with.

I agree data centers are a big problem when it comes to energy. Good governments are addressing it though.

I reckon what they should be doing is taxing big tech more. To pay more into renewables.

Crapto coins are the same re energy used. And many nations have banned the miners.

Why worry about it? Many, many people (myself included) cannot afford to relocate, or do not have the legal right to cross borders to get to a cooler location.

Selective perception and social reinforcement among the club of politicians who are usually from wealthy backgrounds - and both the wealth and the incidence of it is increasing. Other priorities don’t get a look in when they have endless mates hanging on their phones or in their meetings pointing out the huge amount of wealth they apparently stand to make from this.

What is wealth, in the context of a fiat currency and dying societies? Discuss.

A flat currency with a fractured society leads to a lack of public trust that drags down the economy even further. The wealth divide continues to grow. The ultra Wealthy become even more elite and prosperity for the masses unattainable. It's a horrible time all round with public trust in authority low. All the talk of increasing defence at the cost of public services is depressing. The leaders are planning for inevitable war. Climate change predictions are a way of controlling us. We the general public have no real control.

There's a difference between the regular data centres that we do need for boring stuff like cloud computing, data storage, banking etc and the absolute behemoths being planned for AI. The problem is, as a small island with limited space and expensive energy the UK has to be one of the least suited places to an AI arms race based purely on brute force of lots and lots of computing power. If we have to "do" AI it would make more sense to look at ways to do it more efficiently/cheaply (China appears to have built it's AI systems for far less money and using less advanced chips than the US. Which rather suggests the US arent doing it in the most efficient way). Or, try to leapfrog this stage by working on quantum computing (of we are being ambitious). In a few years the GPUs in the massive data centres will all be obsolete anyway.

I am not against taxing tech companies. The problem, in the case of AI, is that a tax on profits made would likely yield 0 revenue since they all seem to be losing money hand over fist.

A few hot days now and again really don't mean you need to worry about having to relocate to a cooler location.

Well I wish you were right and it was just a few hot days now and again, but unfortunately kids from the local school were fainting in the classroom and on the way home last week, and an elderly relative ill from the heat. It is a threat to life. We have never had this sustained kind of heat before, and the trends are all upward. That is beyond debate. What I was questioning was the pace of change, and whether it is ramping up even more than expected.

It's still only a few days now and again, you are overreacting massively. Lots of countries have hot weather for much longer every year. You need to learn to deal with it and live with it, there is no need to start thinking about moving.

https://share.google/fsmHcJNJimEmPPWiG

Read this paper which was significantly delayed by the content.

At the rate we are going to see enormous changes in the next 20 years.

I would say read with caution

It is not "a few hot days now and again". The average global temperature is rising, and doing so faster than we'd optimistically hoped that it might. We are likely to get a few MORE days every summer which are too hot for people to cope with who are used to the weather here of twenty or thirty years ago and have houses designed for that weather. And a few more more the following year, and so on, incrementally.

Good luck with moving, though; I expect the "cooler countries" will be closing their borders as much as they are able to, just as we are already doing. However, we can look forward to the Gulf Stream collapsing and colder winters coming here; won't that be jolly fun!

Indeed. Given that 40% of the worlds population live in the tropics, Iceland might get a bit crowded if everyone moves there.

Exactly. Fortress Europe will appear ( has it started already?), if we survive war.

Well I won't be moving, I don't live in the UK. You will have to get used to it however and make plans to cope. You can't just say "oh we aren't used to this sort of weather" and throw your hands in the air, that won't solve anything. The UK isn't the only place where the weather is getting hotter and yet other people manage to deal with it.

An English friend recently told me that the English don't like things being anything but the way they have always been, and I can see that she was right! However, that attitude only holds you back.

During the recent heatwave pavement temps in Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus were recorded at 57 degrees Celsius. London with it's high rises was unbearable and dangerous to vulnerable. Absolutely right to consider relocating in the future if possible. Unfortunately many people have no option to move presently. It's unfair to say people have to adapt when infrastructure decisions is taken out of our hands. New builds have focussed on retaining heat and are the least suitable to extreme heat. Scotland is looking very attractive right now!

This might be one of the times and places to remind people that it can be cruelty to animals to take your dog for a walk in this weather, unless you can avoid him or her having to set foot on the pavement. Vets get dogs brought to them with burnt feet that they can't walk on without pain. If you wouldn't want to walk on the pavement in bare feet yourself, don't make your dog do it.

This is (almost) as important a message as "don't leave your dog in a car with the windows closed", but it seems not to be said quite as often.

Yes, I was stopped and questioned by a well meaning woman last weekend about whether my dog was too hot to be out. I was walking her from her dogsitter's cool shady paddling-pool-ed garden to my car parked about three houses away, but didn't resent the question!

My son (who lives in Scandinavia) has repurposed his dog's snow-boots for the summer just in case.

I did once manage to get sunstroke in Finland; just being further north doesn't in fact reduce the heat of the sun much.

It doesn't at all. The suns power is the same all over earth. About 100 watt per square meter, perpendicular to the sun.

I have a bit of a wee theory on sunburn about that. Cos I live in the tropics and don't burn like I did in the north. And I think it is because in the tropics the sun is direct overhead, so more of your body is shaded. But up north, the sun is lower in the sky, so it hits more of your body.

Of course, it does not help that when I lived in Scotland I would emerge from the winter a sort of pale blue, and by the time summer came I was almost a brilliant white. So no tan at all to protect a bit.

And now someone will tell me a tan does not protect from the sun ?

Sunstroke is a little more serious than sunburn, I am told; I tend not to get sunburn because I have the Scots freckly-fair skin and never take it out into the sun unprotected. On that occasion I was wearing long sleeves and a hat, dashitall.

And yes, I was indulging in that very English thing, a litotes: "doesn't reduce the heat of the sun much" is along the lines of saying "the Gettys weren't hurting for a bob or two"; the earliest I have found of those is in a Middle English poem in which a noblewoman had been married off to forge an alliance, all her family came to the other country to the wedding, and on the way home a couple of nights later got shut in a building which was set on fire so they had a choice of coming out unarmed to be slaughtered, or being burned alive. The following day her new husband's family required her to identify the bodies: father, mother, siblings.... And the poet says "she was not a happy woman that morning".