The Air Quality Index in my town is currently 260 (very unhealthy) due to a surge in wildfires in western Canada and the northwest US. There are additional smaller fires not shown on this map at this zoom level.

From the interactive map it looks like the worst air in the world right now.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I think that’s too pessimistic. There’s no way it’d wipe us all out even if fossil fuels had continued being the only practical tech. Even at double-digit temperature increase Antarctica is quite cool, and we’ve passed through bottlenecks of only a few tens of thousands of people before. Some wartorn agrarian Antarctic civilisation would continue on.

    What the shift to renewables means is that we might put the Earth into a new persistent state, but then it will stop and we have an opportunity to either just adapt or try and push it back.

    • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s already predicted that we would live as species in the artic circles as that’s the only area still inhabitable with the prospected 3-4C temp rise. (as long as it’s high enough) I’m not sure if I’d want to live to see that happen.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Do you have a link for that, by chance? The 2 C predictions have us living in a wrecked world with almost no coral reefs but with about the same agricultural output, IIRC.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            Thanks! A machine translation.

            That’s very interesting, humans have a measurable preferred average temperature. It doesn’t suggest that it will be impossible to live in India in this scenario, just much less appealing. I already live well outside of our preferred niche towards the cold end, for example.

            That’s not to say that it’s a good situation, though. I hope I haven’t come across as suggesting that, but we’re very hard to kill. I think humans are on the same tier of adaptability as small terrestrial invertebrates at this point; if they can survive probably so can we.

            Here’s a current temperature map so you can see where 11-15C is. India and Egypt seem to be hot-side outliers to start with, having been extensively populated for a long time, as does West Africa. South Africa and Argentina are noticeable areas that are climatically perfect without having too much going on.

            I wonder if we might see agriculture confined to cold seasons in some areas of a hotter Earth.