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What happens to an economy when it's too hot to work?(bloomberg.com)
87 points by littlexsparkee 6 hours ago | 42 comments
ksymph 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://archive.ph/9I5e1

imoverclocked 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For anyone that hasn't had heat sickness, it's not a one-and-done ordeal. You become more sensitive to heat after getting sick from it. It can easily take a month of careful exposure to regain tolerance but working in the same conditions is not the same thing. In addition, heat sickness is awful.

richtersand an hour ago | parent [-]

Aka Heat stroke

jmalicki 21 minutes ago | parent [-]

Heat sickness sucks, but you pull through even if the sustained temperature does not great things.

Heat stroke is a life-threatening medical emergency (e.g. call 911) when they body has gotten so hot that organ systems that are capable of regulating temperature start malfunctioning, and things can go downhill extremely quickly from that point.

zem 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

if growing up in dubai was any indication, what happens (at least for the next little while) is you get a steady stream of desperately poor people who work until they wreck their health and then get replaced by the next desperate person.

sixtyj 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Almost half of the global population will be living with extreme heat by 2050 if the world reaches 2C of global warming above preindustrial levels, according to a University of Oxford study published in January.

joenot443 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

These metrics are hard to grapple with when "living with extreme heat" isn't something most people can conceptualize.

Findings from 2025 -

> Over the 12-month period, 4 billion people — about 49% of the global population — experienced at least 30 days of extreme heat (hotter than 90% of temperatures observed in their local area over the 1991-2020 period). [1]

[1] https://www.climatecentral.org/report/climate-change-and-the...

imoverclocked 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good thing we are working so hard to automate the kind of work where you sit in the shade at a desk. (/sarcasm)

I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated. I kinda wish we could talk about how much raw energy that is ... even if we use American units of barrels of oil, or something.

bobthepanda 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We tried talking about sea level rise and land area inundation, and more severe storms, and amongst many the collective response was to stick their fingers in their ears.

The real conversation we should have is about money talking; a huge amount of assets are facing being stranded by insurers. Insurance doesn't really care about ideology, they care about making money, and so the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence. Though right now politicians are just reframing this as "greedy insurance", which isn't exactly untrue.

derf_ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> ...the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence.

Insurance prices risk. If risk goes up, so do prices. They will not lose (much) money (or not for long) [1], your insurance will just get a lot more expensive, maybe to the point you can no longer afford it. If the government tries to control prices, then insurers will just exit the market, or the only entrants will be severely under-capitalized, merely providing the veneer of insurance (e.g., because your mortgage lender requires it). This is already happening in Florida and Louisiana [2]. These insurers will simply go bankrupt in the event of a catastrophe, and you will be stuck with the loss.

[1] Technically, in a competitive environment, many insurance companies will operate with a (small) underwriting loss, but they make up the difference by investing the float during the time between when they collect the premiums and when they pay out on claims. They will not operate with an unbounded loss.

[2] https://www.wsj.com/finance/small-insurance-company-hurrican...

warumdarum an hour ago | parent [-]

How do you price in whole mountsin regions beeing in for repeatet flooding events basically forcing continuous rebuilds and thus having way overpriced houses? How do you price insurrance on objects that shouldnt exist ?

calvinmorrison 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably cause we bailed out south Jersey and instead of packing up and heading inland Margate boasts homes over 1.5 million dollars

zzgo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Number of tanks of gas for a Ford F-150 Supercab is the American standard unit.

rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent [-]

well shit, my F150 uses 0 tanks of gas, does that complicate things?

mschuster91 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated.

The problem is that the loudest voices in the global discussion are people living in relatively cold-ish Western climates because, well, we are the rich and powerful people. And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US), even 10 °C increase of yearly average temperatures or even peak temperatures would still be perfectly fine.

The fact that 2 °C is probably enough to render the space of potentially billions of people uninhabitable is completely outside of the experienced reality in Western countries, we cannot relate from our lived reality to theirs.

And that kind of disconnect is prevalent among any kind of discourse in humanity. The fact that we can even do so, that right here on this website we have people worth billions of dollars (e.g. sama is Sam Altman!) debating with people that barely scrape by on their national poverty level, is a wonder that would have been unimaginable 200 years ago. Human biology, human society hasn't evolved mechanisms to keep up with our technological progress, and it breaks apart everywhere.

littlexsparkee 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Plants would just keep chugging at temps 10 °C hotter than they're evolved for?

Asmod4n 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

10 degrees increase would collapse any industry, it would turn Norway into Italy.

Do you drive to Norway for your beach holiday?

asdff 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US)

Actually look at median temperatures in the US. Summers in Atlanta and Chicago are remarkably similar as it is.

HerbManic an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I have seen some Climatologists who are thinking we might hit the 2C mark by mid to late 2030's simply based on the exponential heating pace we are seeing decade over decade. Part of it being some feedback loops have arisen from our increased heating.

It's wild to think that we might be only 10 years away from that line in the sand we marked. Hopefully they are wrong but I fear they are not.

inigyou 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Simple question, simple answer: just like every other time, no help is coming. Individuals either survive and reproduce or they don't.

boelboel 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've read before that a large portion of the warmest parts (Uttar Pradesh/Bihar) of India actually haven't had its temperature rise much because of coal power, farm burning and dust in general (a lot from construction) the particles block basically protect them against the sun.

Putting India in a spot where if it would cease relying on coal power in 30-40+ years it would cause the temperature to rise.

nxobject 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What a choice: heatstroke, or chronic respiratory disease?

HerbManic an hour ago | parent [-]

Basically given the choice of one kills in hours and other in decades. Can we try to take option c?

OutOfHere 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is nothing stopping them from releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to have the same effect in an engineered and superior manner. Also, various surfaces can be painted white to reflect sunlight back into space. Trees also can be planted, and forests restored.

The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.

mschuster91 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive air conditioning.

The heat doesn't vanish with AC, at least not unless you use a very expensive deep-underground well as a heatsink instead of the open air.

Even if everyone has AC indoor - the air outdoor will still be too hot and, most likely, humid, with all the expelled heat from the ACs added on top of that. Animals won't stand a chance, especially wild ones, and humans that absolutely have to work outside (e.g. policemen, firefighters, EMS) will be just as impacted.

We have to face the reality: large parts of the globe, impacting billions of people, will be unable to support human and a lot of animal and plant life during the summer months if climate change continues at the current pace in a short enough time that most people reading this text will eventually witness this.

card_zero 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There's PDRC, but we can't mass produce the "photonic metamaterials" that make it good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cool...

It ought to be great. Takes no energy, sends heat through the infrared window back out into space where it came from.

joe_mamba 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Bollocks. This is more eco-communist propaganda cope from German greens, to justify why their people should keep suffering hot summers living without AC while the other parts of the world and Europe do it just fine.

AC is heat pump like your fridge, it moves the heat from inside to outside, meaning the average between the two sides stays in equilibrium, it doesn't create new heat for the outside to be a measurable impact on the planet's heating. Everyone running refrigerators in their homes to keep the food cold, and transferring that heat to their kitchen, doesn't heat up the cities and planet.

You're also contradicting yourself. If the world is indeed getting fucked heating wise like you say, then at least it will be less fucked if you have AC where you live than trying to live without AC and being more fucked. The planet will not be saved if you give up on having residential AC, you'll just suffer more versus those with AC. So it makes sense form an individaul self preservation perspective.

rnewme an hour ago | parent | next [-]

During the day once the room is cold my minisplit spends around 800w keeping the room cold. Say, what happened to those 800w? Where does that go?

littlexsparkee 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's the Prisoner's Dilemma - AC helps the individual at the expense of those outside, for whom it is now hotter (can raise ambient air temp by 2-4C). It worsens global warming in how it is powered (on hot days might have to fire up peaker plants using gas) and leaks of refrigerants.

andrewflnr 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It's already silly coming from the US, but jumping to the conclusion that a random comment, on a US-based forum, is propaganda specifically for a German political slapfight, is a very funny form of political egocentrism.

warumdarum an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I always found those japanese van vests supercool. I guess work AC will become more normal

sbmthakur 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wonder how much of a temperature difference is due to El Nino? As a kid I used to spend some time in central India during summers(temp: 40-43C). It helped that schools used to be shut around that time and expectedly, people would spend as little time outside as possible. Also, it's the hot winds that get you(usually more prevalent in the countryside).

imoverclocked 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> it's the hot winds that get you

The difference between sun and shade is pretty big too.

tartoran 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What are the hot winds and how bad are they? I can only imagine but but it’s the first time im hearing of hot winds.

rdedev 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's hard to imagine if you have not experienced it. The air would still be hot even after the sun sets in some parts of India. Usually when wind blows over you you feel cool. With hot air it's like a blow dryer in your face. Just thermal energy being dumped on you making you feel even worse

altern8 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That sounds absolutely awful

s0rce 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you are in the US then you can go to a hot place in the south west, even Eastern WA/OR or the California central valley when its >105F outside the wind blows and it feels like a hair drier or opening the oven, its not a cool breeze.

NegativeK 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I live in the desert SW after living in far more humid climates. Two weird experiences:

Standing outside talking to friends after the sun set, where it's still over 100F outside: I could feel brief (minor) chills pass over me as I'd sweat in bursts and it'd instantly evaporate.

And back when I was cycling, I'd start summer rides about an hour before dawn, when it'd be at its coldest (sometimes 90F for the low). I learned to not rub my face because I'd have salt crystals from dried sweat, and they would abrade skin near the corners of my eyes.

trhway an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

in Spain they have siesta. We observed it in Valencia region - everything stops from 12-1pm until about 5-6pm. The life after that goes well into the night, shops stay open until 1-2am, etc.

In USSR/Russia during especially hot summers the team/orgs i worked at (outside on construction and in the other years inside as programmers (no ACs were yet widespread there back in the 199x)) were working at night skipping the daytime siesta-style.

FrustratedMonky 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you don't have air conditioning, your laptop is going to have problems.

HerbManic an hour ago | parent [-]

In the hotter parts of summer I typically down clock/undervolt my machines to at least hold off them potentially cooking themselves a little. For most work, I don't even need a whole Ghz yet alone 3+ Ghz so it isn't a big issue.

Yes, there are safety measure built in but I just give them a helping hand.

ares623 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

siesta for you, siesta for you, siesta for everybody!