To be completely blunt, the humanitarian crisis being caused by runaway fossil fuel use is tantamount to massacre of civilians.
The death toll from Hiroshima was between 90-160 thousand people. The amount of excess deaths due to heat waves in 2023 was around 178,000. There are projections that the El Nino related heat waves could cause up to half a million, and longer term projections grow to 300,000 a year just from heat in the next few years. Just from heat.
Add in crop failure, ecosystem collapses, and other unexpected disasters, and it's easy to see why.
It might be crass, but it's mostly poor people and poor countries that are going to be affected.
> The amount of excess deaths due to heat waves in 2023 was around 178,000. There are projections that the El Nino related heat waves could cause up to half a million, and longer term projections grow to 300,000 a year just from heat in the next few years. Just from heat.
Scary.
On a related note, annual deaths from extreme cold are estimated at over 4 million per year.
(Note: I picked this article specifically because it’s written by people who are desperately trying to find a way to make the heat story sound worse, but still have to admit that the facts are the facts.)
and due to climate change the phenomenon called "meandering jetstreams" will only amplify.
this will destabilize the jetstreams and allow for sudden breakouts of extremely cold polar air even in times when this should not happen. like snow in May...
Yeah but opponents of green measures want us to treat climate change related deaths like car deaths, just background noise which can somehow be boiled down to some tragic responsibility failure which is worth the price.
The comment I responded to was tone policing for crassness instead of actually contributing to the discussion.
Would it have been better to point out there has been a Russo-Ukraine wars worth of deaths from heat waves each year since 2022?
Or a Rwandan Civil Wars worth of deaths projected in the next year?
Or a Holocaust worth of deaths over the next decade?
What does it take to get people to listen and take it seriously?
Not for nothing but I am growing lemons and coffee beans in Vancouver, BC, and I only need to bring them in for about 2 months a year. What that actually means is that people are already evaluating how we will relocate crops (luxury and essential) to other climates.
What about when major crops like wheat, corn, rice, and beans fail around the world?
No, it isn't. It's a number, and implying that Japanese people would be more offended by this comparison that to they would be about the long term impacts of climate change on an island nation where up to 65% of the population lives in at risk coastal regions is basically a form of cultural white knighting.
If I am wrong, I apologize, but politeness and tone policing to shut down discussion of crises is a recurring problem in society.
To heat all the water in all the Earth's oceans by 1 degree Celsius it would require the energy equivalent of the detonation of roughly 87 billion Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.
On the front page the counter is up to nearly 4 billion since 1998. The real problem is that we continue to do things to accelerate this, and as we all know, humans are terrible with exponentials.
This is a dishonest comparison. The atmosphere warming has a much more immediate impact and the ocean isn't a perfect heat sink.
Air has a specific heat (~1) less than a quarter per unit mass than water (~4.1). The atmosphere has a mass of ~5 billion kgs and the ocean has a mass of ~1.4*10^21 kgs.
It requires a lot less trapped energy to warm the atmosphere by 1 C than the ocean. We're well on track for 2.5 C increase since preindustrial levels.
Why not two volcano eruptions? Or half a solar flare? Oh I see, fear is the point. What do we need to vote for now? Who should we hate? What tax are you going to ram down our throats? Sheez
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, the planet is fine… the people are fucked! Compared to the people, the planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years, and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away!
The planet has not been through anything, it doesn't experience things or has memories. It literally cannot care if we survive or go extinct. This is why environmentalism focusig on "mother earth" or "the earth is suffering" is so annoying. Focus on humans and what we will face in the future, what our kids will face. Environmentalism should be a humanism and focus on them instead of having broad goals like fixing the whole planet.
That argument can lead to the assumption that it's ok if we completely wiped out life on earth as long as humanity survives by leaving for the stars.
The earth is the only place in the universe right now where humans can survive at our current technology level, and we are destroying that ecosystem at an alarming rate. We depend on the entire planets ecosystem for our survival, and even if technology somehow could let us survive ecological collapse, a humanist approach to the environment is tantamount to burning the boat we are sailing on to keep warm.
Environmentalism is this way on purpose. It's a lot easier to get people riled up about the plights of majestic creatures than about some abstract metrics. Also, the movement has strong anti-capitalism / "degrowth" roots, and you need this kind of stuff to stay in the headlines. Movements that don't take controversial positions and don't attract radical activists tend to fade from view.
If you want an example from our field: AI doomers and AI maximalists get a lot more air time on the mainstream media and on HN than those who think it's a normal technology with some benefits and some downsides.
It feels like the Earth’s oceans are at a tipping point and can no longer continue to absorb this amount of heat and acidification from the carbonic acid levels increasing when CO2 breaks down.
Politically, fossil fuels are in vogue. New pipelines, new capacity, lower prices -- all of these are being accelerated right now. There's no #$#$% hope that we'll stop extracting carbon from the ground. It's just not going to happen.
I guess that demonstrates the concept of “a drop in the ocean”, but turning a massacre of civilians into a unit of energy feels crass at best.
To be completely blunt, the humanitarian crisis being caused by runaway fossil fuel use is tantamount to massacre of civilians.
The death toll from Hiroshima was between 90-160 thousand people. The amount of excess deaths due to heat waves in 2023 was around 178,000. There are projections that the El Nino related heat waves could cause up to half a million, and longer term projections grow to 300,000 a year just from heat in the next few years. Just from heat.
Add in crop failure, ecosystem collapses, and other unexpected disasters, and it's easy to see why.
It might be crass, but it's mostly poor people and poor countries that are going to be affected.
> The amount of excess deaths due to heat waves in 2023 was around 178,000. There are projections that the El Nino related heat waves could cause up to half a million, and longer term projections grow to 300,000 a year just from heat in the next few years. Just from heat.
Scary.
On a related note, annual deaths from extreme cold are estimated at over 4 million per year.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
(Note: I picked this article specifically because it’s written by people who are desperately trying to find a way to make the heat story sound worse, but still have to admit that the facts are the facts.)
and due to climate change the phenomenon called "meandering jetstreams" will only amplify. this will destabilize the jetstreams and allow for sudden breakouts of extremely cold polar air even in times when this should not happen. like snow in May...
Yeah but opponents of green measures want us to treat climate change related deaths like car deaths, just background noise which can somehow be boiled down to some tragic responsibility failure which is worth the price.
That's the point of crass comparisons.
The comment I responded to was tone policing for crassness instead of actually contributing to the discussion.
Would it have been better to point out there has been a Russo-Ukraine wars worth of deaths from heat waves each year since 2022?
Or a Rwandan Civil Wars worth of deaths projected in the next year?
Or a Holocaust worth of deaths over the next decade?
What does it take to get people to listen and take it seriously?
Not for nothing but I am growing lemons and coffee beans in Vancouver, BC, and I only need to bring them in for about 2 months a year. What that actually means is that people are already evaluating how we will relocate crops (luxury and essential) to other climates.
What about when major crops like wheat, corn, rice, and beans fail around the world?
This is disrespectful to the people of hiroshima who had to walk ankle deep through blood and bone just to find their family
No, it isn't. It's a number, and implying that Japanese people would be more offended by this comparison that to they would be about the long term impacts of climate change on an island nation where up to 65% of the population lives in at risk coastal regions is basically a form of cultural white knighting.
If I am wrong, I apologize, but politeness and tone policing to shut down discussion of crises is a recurring problem in society.
To heat all the water in all the Earth's oceans by 1 degree Celsius it would require the energy equivalent of the detonation of roughly 87 billion Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.
On the front page the counter is up to nearly 4 billion since 1998. The real problem is that we continue to do things to accelerate this, and as we all know, humans are terrible with exponentials.
Just ~250000 years ( in atmospheric absorption rate )
This is a dishonest comparison. The atmosphere warming has a much more immediate impact and the ocean isn't a perfect heat sink.
Air has a specific heat (~1) less than a quarter per unit mass than water (~4.1). The atmosphere has a mass of ~5 billion kgs and the ocean has a mass of ~1.4*10^21 kgs.
It requires a lot less trapped energy to warm the atmosphere by 1 C than the ocean. We're well on track for 2.5 C increase since preindustrial levels.
I don't know about you guys but I'm feeling it
Oh no, atomic bombs, we all gonna diiiie!
Why not two volcano eruptions? Or half a solar flare? Oh I see, fear is the point. What do we need to vote for now? Who should we hate? What tax are you going to ram down our throats? Sheez
i think hiroshima eqivalents is a somewhat informal energy unit -.-
What is the conversion to Nagasakis
About 3/s
No I don't get it, can you please provide the measurement in either beaver pelts or football fields.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, the planet is fine… the people are fucked! Compared to the people, the planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years, and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat? That we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun? The planet has been through a lot worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?
The planet isn’t going anywhere… we are! We’re going away!
The planet has not been through anything, it doesn't experience things or has memories. It literally cannot care if we survive or go extinct. This is why environmentalism focusig on "mother earth" or "the earth is suffering" is so annoying. Focus on humans and what we will face in the future, what our kids will face. Environmentalism should be a humanism and focus on them instead of having broad goals like fixing the whole planet.
What an insanely selfish take.
This attitude of humanity first is exactly what got us here and what will wipe us off the planet.
That argument can lead to the assumption that it's ok if we completely wiped out life on earth as long as humanity survives by leaving for the stars.
The earth is the only place in the universe right now where humans can survive at our current technology level, and we are destroying that ecosystem at an alarming rate. We depend on the entire planets ecosystem for our survival, and even if technology somehow could let us survive ecological collapse, a humanist approach to the environment is tantamount to burning the boat we are sailing on to keep warm.
Environmentalism is this way on purpose. It's a lot easier to get people riled up about the plights of majestic creatures than about some abstract metrics. Also, the movement has strong anti-capitalism / "degrowth" roots, and you need this kind of stuff to stay in the headlines. Movements that don't take controversial positions and don't attract radical activists tend to fade from view.
If you want an example from our field: AI doomers and AI maximalists get a lot more air time on the mainstream media and on HN than those who think it's a normal technology with some benefits and some downsides.
It feels like the Earth’s oceans are at a tipping point and can no longer continue to absorb this amount of heat and acidification from the carbonic acid levels increasing when CO2 breaks down.
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co...
This year it feels like the ocean is losing its ability to breathe in a sense https://scienceblog.com/the-ocean-stopped-breathing-off-pana...
When do we get to full stop on the combustion of fossil fuels to protect humanity’s future?
Politically, fossil fuels are in vogue. New pipelines, new capacity, lower prices -- all of these are being accelerated right now. There's no #$#$% hope that we'll stop extracting carbon from the ground. It's just not going to happen.