alt Hacker NewsIf I go to your house, and start messing with your thermostat, as well as the internal temperature sensors for your fridge and freezer, would you say that's fine, because some of the changes are not bad?
Surely, you wouldn't mind your freezer warming to above freezing every other Tuesday? That change may be bad, but some of the other changes I'll make might be good...
Our societies optimize around climate bands, be it in agriculture, housing, transportation, etc. The benefit of having temperatures and weather swinging in a 'good' direction half the time will be more than offset by them swinging in a 'bad' direction even a fraction of the time.
The PNW might not mind a 60 degree winter (it's better than a 50 degree one, except for the pine beetle eating all of its lumber because the winters aren't cold enough to kill it, but that ship has sailed years ago), but it sure as hell will mind 100 degree highs in the summer (which are much worse than 90 degree ones). The last time one happened in 2021, over a thousand people died.
And on the agricultural front: It takes three months to grow our food crops, but it only takes one bad weekend to ruin a harvest.
Luckily, I'll probably be dead before the worst of this will existentially affect me. Your kids will be the ones who will have to sort out the mess that people currently upset over $4 eggs are making. Bon appetit!
I was (un)fortunate to be in the PNW during the second week of July this year when temperatures in White Salmon, WA on the Columbia River Gorge hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit. The infrastructure architect in me saw nothing but HVAC deployments going in everywhere all the while the energy grid was doing rolling blackouts from the spike in cooling demand for those that had it. Most importantly was the immediate commercial reaction as NEARLY ALL BUSINESSES WERE CLOSED in the region because the locals could not deal with the abnormally high temperature delta as few places had cooling. That last line is critical to those that are cognizant of economics and where "speculated" climate change will lead the human population. We all will certainly be dead at some point in our futures however the verdict remains out on "weather" Mother Nature will continue to freeze, drown, burn, and roast us away. What you cannot see matters most!
Stay Healthy!