Global warming: Regional climate change impacts

[jennypenny]

Hit by drought and seawater, Bangkok tap water may run out in a month

This part caught my attention ...

"The waterworks authority has asked Bangkok residents to store a reserve of 60 liters of drinking water in the event of a shortage. It has also urged people to use less water, but has had little success on this front in part, said Thanasak, because water customers pay only 8.50 baht ($0.25) per 1,000 liters.

"It's too cheap, so people don't feel the need to conserve. It has been this price since July 1999. It's probably the big city with the cheapest water in the world," he said." (emphasis mine)

I understand his point, but raising the price might lead to the same problem as in California, where richer neighborhoods are still watering their lawns because they can afford the water/fines. OTOH, I also wonder if the #droughtshaming going on in Cali helps or hurts the situation wrt to class warfare. I'm not sure of the best way to equitably distribute resources when they're severely limited.

[fiby41]

Water here is free (unbilled; big metro.)

[bryan]

This reminds me of the other thread where I was thinking of ways to arbitrage cheap electricity (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6577&p=96413#p96413). What arbitrage opportunities are there for cheap/free water?

Energy storage (see dams)? Not really feasible unless maybe you own a dammed lake/pond.. Relevant: https://what-if.xkcd.com/91/

I'm guessing best use would be hoarding your own supply and selling off the excess in the event of severe shortage..

[jacob]

I'm guessing best use would be hoarding your own supply and selling off the excess in the event of severe shortage..

The thirsty mob likely would not take kindly to profiteering from essential goods.

Recently some companies have moved or are moving their bottling operations out of California due to the drought because of bad PR.

[IlliniDave]

This is slightly off topic, but maybe Minnesota was not such a great choice after all. Should bode well for lake trout fishing though.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/ ... 436649025/

[black_son_of_gray]

This is slightly off topic, but maybe Minnesota was not such a great choice after all. Should bode well for lake trout fishing though.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/ ... 436649025/

Interesting counterpoint: No, The Earth Is Not Heading For A "Mini Ice Age"

I've learned about 1000% more about the sun and solar weather today! Some of it may even be true

[jacob]

Ha! Indeed ... those "mini-ice age" newspaper reports occur every 5 years or so(*). I still remember last time. Nothing new here.

Best always to check first:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/headin ... ediate.htm

(*) From a pure data science perspective, this might be related to the fact that the sunspot cycle is 11 years. The half period (from top to bottom) coincides with new fits to the predicted cycle thus resulting in new sunspot papers. Variation in solar output due to sunspots is the second-most popular climate change myth. Hence, if this holds, I predict that a new ice age will be predicted again in 2021 ;-P

[IlliniDave]

I predict that a new ice age will be predicted again in 2021 ;-P

I'll be far off the grid by then, so I'll either be cold, or I won't No need to stress about it.

[jacob]

For future reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature our bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it. Thus 35 °C is the threshold beyond which the body is no longer able to adequately cool itself.

[bryan]

For future reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature our bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it. Thus 35 °C is the threshold beyond which the body is no longer able to adequately cool itself.

In principle humans can devise protections against the unprecedented heat such as much wider adoption of air conditioning, so one cannot be certain that TW(Max) = 35 °C would be uninhabitable. But the power requirements of air conditioning would soar; it would surely remain unaffordable for billions in the third world and for protection of most livestock; it would not help the biosphere or protect outside workers; it would regularly imprison people in their homes; and power failures would become life-threatening. Thus it seems improbable that such protections would be satisfying, affordable, and effective for most of humanity.
We conclude that a global-mean warming of roughly 7 °C would create small zones where metabolic heat dissipation would for the first time become impossible, calling into question their suitability for human habitation. A warming of 11–12 °C would expand these zones to encompass most of today’s human population. This likely overestimates what could practically be tolerated: Our limit applies to a person out of the sun, in gale-force winds, doused with water, wearing no clothing, and not working. A global-mean warming of only 3–4 °C would in some locations halve the margin of safety (difference between TW max and 35 °C) that now leaves room for additional burdens or limitations to cooling.

So capital to be made for people who can help populated, rich areas avoid any big changes? Or generally increasing migrations from areas on the cusp. Or the species will evolve and adapt biologically (lol).

[jacob]

https://barringtonstewart.wordpress.com ... or-humans/

More detail.

Today, wet bulb temperatures don't/never exceed 31C anywhere on the planet... but global max WBT will rise 0.75C for every 1C of rise in T so a global rise of 5+C will make parts of the planet lethal even for fit people to be outdoors more than 6 hours---most likely the parts of the planet where it's already occasionally lethal for weak (old, young) people w/o A/C e.g. Amazon area, Mid/Northern Africa, Australia, Southern Europe, SE-Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India) and the SE-US. It's just a matter of heat waves getting worse and worse.

Living---meaning humans, human food supply, and the parts of nature we'd want to preserve---would have to be underground (or domes?) in cooled facilities. This will be expensive to build and to run. If not built or not affordable, humans will move or die. Thousands already die from heatwaves. It will just happen more often and over wider areas.

Under a business as usual scenario, 7C heating will be reached around 2150 (great-grandchildren+) with a 50% probability although with nonlinear feedbacks and runaways it could be occur around year 2100 (children and grandchildren). Of course 6C will be pretty bad too. (We're currently at 0.8C if you want a reference point.)

Different animals have different core temperatures. The higher the more resistant. Unfortunately, humans are in the low end as far as mammals go. And we evolve slowly needing many years for each generation. On the plus side as far as the species goes, we do cover practically all of the planet already.

Safest place in the US under such conditions will be the rocky mountain states ... which unfortunately will also be part of the worst areas from a water perspective. But there's always Alaska.

In the farther future, 3-12C heating is projected for RCP8.5 around year 2300. The upper T range of business as usual would render half the planet (including ALL of the lower 48) uninhabitable for humans 300 years from now.

[SkyOnFire]

I feel like any discussion about global warming and it's impact is incomplete without giving mention to the issue of geoengineering, aka weather modification programs that have been ongoing since the early 1900's. This is probably one of the most insidious thing happening to this planet today, and it largely goes unnoticed by the general public. Thousands of tons of toxic chemical soup is being dumped into our skies every year, with absolutely no mention of it in the mainstream media. The impacts to the planet, the people, the water and the air we breathe are unquantifiable.

Researchers indicate we haven't had natural weather patterns for a long, long time. Some people on the planet have never experienced natural weather patterns because they've lived in heavily altered climates for their entire lives. Its disrupting peoples ability to grow food naturally and live off the land. Artificial droughts/floods and toxic soils are the result.

If you think I'm full of s**t, check out this long list of patents dating back to the 1920's:

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/an-e ... f-patents/

When I try to tell people about it, many are not interested because the implications of a human rights violation of this magnitude is difficult to confront. Your government owns the weather, and it is a huge market.

If you are interested, this website has a lot of information on the topic:

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

[jacob]

@SkyOnFire - Research into how to modify the weather has been going on for a long long time (e.g. google cloud seeding or weather modification) but it's a big jump from saying that commercial jet planes pollute the stratosphere to claiming that jet travel comprise a bona fide conspiracy. In any case, because it's all too easy, the technology already exists for large scale modification of the atmosphere(*) and changing the radiative balance although it's hard to say exactly what kind of side effects this will have (which is why most scientists are still against geo-engineering). Furthermore, it would be easy for any rogue nation or group to implement geoengineering on their own. File this outcome under black swans.

(*) Although once started, it will have to be continued since the most obvious solution, adding sulfites to the straosphere, has a halflife of just a couple a years. Think of it as an ongoing expense that requires the bureaucracy to persist for very many hundreds of years...something previously only achieved by major religions. It's similar to nuclear waste storage but way more intense. You can't neglect it for 5 years and proceed to return to it.

Otherwise, as a reminder, this thread is about regional impacts as predicted by physics. For discussions about the sociology of acceptance of disagreeable scientific conclusions, objections that are NOT supported by science, political opinions, or the whole FUD engine, please start another thread. I'm going to delete any further ones from this one.

The purpose of this thread is to use physics to predict the best course of _personal action_ for the next 100 or so years, e.g. where to live, what to do about housing, water, cooling, heating, food, etc. For anyone who cares about their grandchildren or beyond, I'm going to allow scientific predictions for the next 150-200 years. But basically, the theme of this thread is "what to do given the science is true". Anything else? Start another thread!!!

[jennypenny]

I've tried searching the interwebs for this, but I haven't found anything useful. I'm probably not using the right search terms. Anyway ...

Has anyone ever plotted out the best places to live depending on macro weather patterns? I mean like it's best to live in A during El Nino years, and it's best to live in B during La Nina years, etc. Permanently changing conditions would also need to be factored in. I was trying to figure out how many residences a person would need to own around the globe to guarantee access to favorable conditions. Almost like a permanent portfolio for housing.

[jacob]

@jennypenny - Seasonal impact is much larger than weather; local weather impacts are much larger than El Nino; and El Nino impacts are somewhat larger than climate impacts.

IOW, for "best conditions", traditional snowbirding is the first-order solution. ENSO is hard to predict and events don't tend to persist for that long, but if you must own 3-4 different houses and are able and willing to leave with a couple of months' notice, here are the effects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3% ... th_America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_o ... ted_States

[jacob]

Puerto Rico. Water-rationing in effect.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/nyt/ ... =315307921

[Molly]

I am curious if anyone here has put thought into how they will stay cool during the hot summer months? Since I'm asking I'll subject my ideas to public ridicule first. In my imagination I see future summers where rolling brown outs are possible due in part to excessive use of air conditioners. So, the challenge becomes, how could you passively cool you and the family with no power? I've had a few ideas. One: build my own passive energy type home, but this is more of a long term solution. Two: buy a small solar panel that will run a couple of fans and the freezer. That way I could at least get a breeze going. Three: temporarily move to the basement Move over camel crickets! Bill Mollison talks about using vines to shade the house (among lots of other things). He doesn't just let them take over a wall, he's made roofs over patios and shade gardens from them. Has anyone here done something like that? And if so, what was your experience?

[fiby41]

I am curious if anyone here has put thought into how they will stay cool during the hot summer months?

Cooling without power: Damp cloth over neck/back and siesta.

[IlliniDave]

I am curious if anyone here has put thought into how they will stay cool during the hot summer months? ...

I intend to change my latitude several degrees to the north during the summer.

[jacob]

Moving towards the poles is my preference.

The difference between dry bulb (referring to the bulb at the end of the thermometer) and wet bulb is that WB allows for evaporation which is cooling and therefore the WBT is colder than the DBT. However, since the WBT is the minimum temperature achievable with water/sweat and fans, WBT is deadly within a day if it exceeds 35C (less for weaker individuals). Under such circumstances, only working A/C works.

Hence, my preference is to move north ... just in case electricity doesn't work.---Which is actually likely since turbines require a certain cooling differential to run. For example, during the great heat wave in Europe in 2003, some of the French nuclear reactors were switched off.

(The alternative would be to move well underground. Having your ceiling about 5 feet underground should do it.)