It's more the case that values ARE absolute; that to "step out of them" is to disregard them; and that, on the other hand, our specific formulations of those values are imperfect, because ALL expressions, formulas and formulations of those values are imperfect, whether from holy writ or scientific procedure, and THAT is where the open-mindedness and tolerance comes in, because none of us is perfect in fully formulating, much less realizing, eternal and absolute values. We can each do our best to approach understanding, and enacting, of the values that are eternal and divine, and to be open to learning more about doing that. No other so-called "values" are of any value to begin with.

The arctic ice cap is looking like the arctic SLUSHY. If this keeps up Santa is going to be on ice flows by September, not solid ice cap.





This is terrifying.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's more the case that values ARE absolute; that to "step out of them" is to disregard them; and that, on the other hand, our specific formulations of those values are imperfect, because ALL expressions, formulas and formulations of those values are imperfect, whether from holy writ or scientific procedure, and THAT is where the open-mindedness and tolerance comes in, because none of us is perfect in fully formulating, much less realizing, eternal and absolute values. We can each do our best to approach understanding, and enacting, of the values that are eternal and divine, and to be open to learning more about doing that. No other so-called "values" are of any value to begin with.

I disagree with this. Values do not come from some higher godlike and absolute or perfect power. They are made by people and shaped by societal traditions. The reason values exist in the first place is because there is a societal interest in following those values. It's more of a survival mechanism than anything. For instance, the moral belief that one should treat others the way you would want to be treated exists because it promotes social harmony (provided you're not a masochist). The same goes for the value that one shouldn't murder, commit a violent act, or force someone else to do something against their will. Values surrounding marriage exist because there was a vested societal interest in men and women getting married because the traditional family unit benefitted the children, and hence, the future of the society and its survival. Values are a result of over a million years of societal evolution since the first homo sapiens evolved from apes (and arguably even before them).

This also means, that as society evolves and changes, so do the values. Yes, for the most part, the values of our ancestors suit todays society well, but as the society is forced to adjust to new realities, it's values may also have to change along with it.

Originally Posted by Gianthogweed

I disagree with this. Values do not come from some higher godlike and absolute or perfect power.

Just the essence, the truth of being that is; the onmipresent eternal divine. No supreme being decrees them, because you can't decree what is timeless and depends on no decrees. The supreme being just IS them.

They are made by people and shaped by societal traditions. The reason values exist in the first place is because there is a societal interest in following those values. It's more of a survival mechanism than anything. For instance, the moral belief that one should treat others the way you would want to be treated exists because it promotes social harmony (provided you're not a masochist). The same goes for the value that one shouldn't murder, commit a violent act, or force someone else to do something against their will. Values surrounding marriage exist because there was a vested societal interest in men and women getting married because the traditional family unit benefitted the children, and hence, the future of the society and its survival. Values are a result of over a million years of societal evolution since the first homo sapiens evolved from apes (and arguably even before them).

I would rather say that survival depends on values, than the reverse. When we follow the right values, we prosper, survive and propagate. I say rather, that values are intrinsic, because the value of life and the world is intrinsic, and values themselves are valuable. Institutions like marriage are not values, but rather a means chosen, and indeed those means and institutions DO evolve. Our formulations and statements or commandments of values evolve too. But the values of survival itself, of harmony, of life; these are eternal.

Values do not depend on any society, condition or time in history. What evolves is our ability and the means we develop to pursue and live these values. These will indeed change. Our understanding and the way we live grows and changes. To get that distinction, means that you are progressive and tolerant, without falling into the cynical, sense-based, utilitarian relativism which destroys all values in society.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I actually see values lock as an important part of turning theory and how crises work. For most to all humans, youth is a time to build a mental model of how the world works and what is important, world views and values. Once these ideas take shape, it is very very difficult for most people to see outside a given perspective or change their opinions of what is important. World view and values systems include defense mechanisms. Most humans are quite familiar with how others view their perspectives as badly flawed, and will have well ensconced ways of deflecting both criticism and attempts at enlightenment. Either criticism or improving other people's world views or values might be considered essentially futile. If it is proverbial that one should not talk about religion and politics as the result is more heat than light, the reason is values lock. The T4T forums repeatedly illustrate the sort of refusal to understand and refusal to budge typical of values lock.

This Crisis will have its unavoidable politics; it will test orthodoxies that people defend with the tenacity of religious believers. The best that we can hope for is humaneness and rationality.

I can acknowledge that JPT is very intelligent, very well read, has spent a lot of time studying the Bible, has an entirely consistent and highly defendable interpretation of the Bible, has integrated his reading of the Bible to the world, and perceives himself as having found Truth. The result of this is a very firm highly defendable perspective on the world from which he will not budge and is not likely to be budged. Yet, any conversation with him that questions his world view or suggests his interpretation and values do not represent The One True Path is apt to result in a sane rational well though out desire to wrap one's hands around his neck, squeeze and shake.

JPT seems to have a syncretic fusion of Christian fundamentalism with the godless Objectivism of Ayn Rand. The proles get rigid rules of faith and behavior that keep them from becoming beasts while elites get the 'necessary' freedom to prey upon the rest of us. Hypocritical and absurd. it offers soft rules of behavior for elites and hard ones for non-elites. That many must live in gross poverty so that a few may indulge themselves despite the ability of the capacity of the contemporary economy to provide prosperity for all appalls you. You may see such as the grounds for a revolution like that of France in 1789 or Cuba in 1958... but JPT sees nothing wrong except that many people don't want his worldview as the mandated orthodoxy and would need harsh 're-education' to accept it.

On the Materialism thread, we have Eric's equally intelligent, well researched, sincere, defendable views on spiritualism, views that rub the materialists the wrong way. Again, attempts at communication are more apt to result in frustration and a desire to squeeze necks than enlightenment and understanding. Whether one is a materialist or spiritualist, there are firmly held core beliefs that are not allowed to be called into question. When one's values are challenged, one is apt to see the equivalent of holding one's hands over one's ears while yelling loudly enough to not hear. On other threads one might find similar red / blue or denialist / alarmist 'discussions' going nowhere loudly.

Eric sees mathematical rigor within astrology as its justification. Mathematical rigor does not prove a hack system right. One can readily model contrafactual phenomena and outright pseudoscience. But he at least poses no harm as he offers no pretense of moral supremacy over dissidents.

How does this relate to turning theory? In Jefferson's time there were those that thought taxation without representation was the natural way of the world. The king's way was how things were done and should always be done. In Lincoln's times there were those who thought slavery was the foundation of all advanced civilization, and should always be so. In FDR's time there were those who thought that hundred hour work weeks, child labor, deadly working conditions and the superiority of the Aryan master race reflected the true nature of the world. In our time these world views and values might seem to be as irrational, insupportable and just plain wrong as...

This is the Crisis Era. If a Hegelian dialectic operates in history it operates most rigorously in a Crisis. To be sure there may be some partial synthesis of the ways of the victors with the ways of the losers in a Crisis, as with Americans incorporating German rocketry into its scientific repertory, learning to appreciate Vivaldi as did turncoat poet Ezra Pound, and toying with Zen Buddhism (paradoxically a religious-philosophical stance of the kamikaze pilot). Of course we rejected the human experimentation, the slavery, and the murderous racism of the Axis powers and established that aggression was the wrong way to build empires. (There was no right way to build them anymore).

People will not rethink or withdraw from their world views and values without a blatant and emotional failure of the world views and values. How large a failure? I would look at pictures of Richmond in 1865 or Berlin in 1945 as illustrations of the magnitude of failure required to make humans consider changing their minds.

Nothing so forces change as does having the victors lording it over you in the rubble of a familiar place. This 4T portends the greatest destruction possible for America. I am reminded of the spectacular success of the movie Gone With the Wind of the year in which World War II started. An old way of life literally died, with the stunning destruction of Atlanta as the harsh reminder of what can happen in a Crisis war even if the opposing sides have some shared values. That could have been Warsaw just as easily in the war beginning in 1939. War tends to bring out the worst in human anger and avarice, with victors being tempted to play the "game" NIGYSOB (Now I've Got You, Son-Of-a-Bitch) to its logical extreme. I can say this of JPT: such a 'game' is in his future whether as an enforcer or as a victim.

]There are problems which are going to have to be solved in the current crisis period. There are people whose comfort and ease are threatened by the idea of changing the culture to address said problems. Said people will deny with intelligence, forethought, education, intensity and perverse irrationality that these problems exist.


People will close their eyes and hold their breath until turning blue in order to maintain well thought out rational seeming insanity. Rather than opening their eyes and seeing things as they are, they will let the world fall into an abyss.

Even worse -- they will present their vices as consummate virtues, their repression as liberation, their exactions as charity, and their cruelty as benevolence. At the extreme the Nazis saw themselves as benefactors to the world for 'ridding' it of the Jews.

Which is the nature of crisis. People will not act to solve problems until the problems are large and obvious enough that even the values blind cannot fail to see them. This means the problems must be really really really obvious. Until the horns blow and the walls come tumbling down, denialists will deny.

It is not that I am "uninterested in examining a line of reasoning that appears to diverge" from my own. It's that the degree and kind of divergence is meaningful in and of itself. Understanding how cultures change, how large populations of people address major problems, how they let go of past patterns that have worked well for a long time, is (expletive deleted) important.

Nothing so does that as does a Crisis that rips everything apart. People panic and accept panaceas that fit their primitive drives and free themselves to express old resentments that often must be suppressed. German gentiles would have been wise to seek wisdom from their Model Minority, a religious minority, that offered age-old answers to questions that keep resurfacing because such is the nature of humanity. They should have been heeding Martin Buber instead of Joseph Goebbels. They chose wrong.

And hopefully some might come to look in a mirror and question their own anchors and cores.

And, yes, I try to tell myself that it is better to declare values lock than to call the other guy an (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted). It's not that I haven't been tempted. I can quite understand other folk taking a more directly hostile approach. It might be that a certain degree and style of ad-hominem attack might be considered a symptom of values lock.

The demagogues, hucksters, and bigots are peddling their worthless elixirs. Some of us will be disappointed to discover that the concoction offered us is a "Yakov's Golden Elixir" (The Inspector General) is a good furniture polish but something unsuitable for human consumption.

Here's something interesting: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/20...e-falling.html

It appears that American CO2 emissions from energy (the primary source) are dropping, and that this is primarily attributable to reduction in coal use, replaced by a combination of natural gas and renewables.

Unfortunately, China's increasing emissions are more than offsetting reductions in the U.S., so we're still in the stew pot.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I actually see values lock as an important part of turning theory and how crises work. For most to all humans, youth is a time to build a mental model of how the world works and what is important, world views and values. Once these ideas take shape, it is very very difficult for most people to see outside a given perspective or change their opinions of what is important. World view and values systems include defense mechanisms.

My own thinking about the cause of turnings is closely related to this except I have no role for values. For me its just world view.

Policymakers use their understanding of how the world works to develop policy. Since policy makes are several decades older than they were when they obtained their world view, to the extent that their worldview reflects external observations, the policy they implement today that will lead to the history being created today, is influenced by the history of the past. To the extent that policy represents an attempt to deal with problems (e.g. our current weak economy) it behaves as a corrective force or negative feedback, the nature of which is affected by the past. That is, past history feeds back to create present history in a negative feedback loop with a built in lag. Such lagged feedback loops will show cyclical behavior, which is the saeculum. And that's really all there is to it.

The saeculum has been slowly lengthening since the Civil War because the age of policy makers has risen over time. The most recently completed saeculum (1929-2008) is ten years longer that the one before it (1860-1929) reflecting older policy makers because of recent increases in the healthy lifespans of elites. This, I believe, is the reason why the 4T didn't begin in 2001, when a fixed 18-year turning length consistent with the Civil War 4T up to the 1960's 2T suggests. And this suggests that the 1T is likely not going to begin until closer to 2030 than to 2020. So there is still plenty of tme for all sorts of nasty stuff to happen without even a glimmer of any solution emerging (and of course there is no guarantee of a solution in the first place--4T's don't always end positively). In any case, even if we end up with a good outcome, things can continue to go downhill as they have been doing for another decade and not violate any pattern.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My own thinking about the cause of turnings is closely related to this except I have no role for values. For me its just world view.

Policymakers use their understanding of how the world works to develop policy. Since policy makes are several decades older than they were when they obtained their world view, to the extent that their worldview reflects external observations, the policy they implement today that will lead to the history being created today, is influenced by the history of the past. To the extent that policy represents an attempt to deal with problems (e.g. our current weak economy) it behaves as a corrective force or negative feedback, the nature of which is affected by the past. That is, past history feeds back to create present history in a negative feedback loop with a built in lag. Such lagged feedback loops will show cyclical behavior, which is the saeculum. And that's really all there is to it.

The saeculum has been slowly lengthening since the Civil War because the age of policy makers has risen over time. The most recently completed saeculum (1929-2008) is ten years longer that the one before it (1860-1929) reflecting older policy makers because of recent increases in the healthy lifespans of elites. This, I believe, is the reason why the 4T didn't begin in 2001, when a fixed 18-year turning length consistent with the Civil War 4T up to the 1960's 2T suggests. And this suggests that the 1T is likely not going to begin until closer to 2030 than to 2020. So there is still plenty of tme for all sorts of nasty stuff to happen without even a glimmer of any solution emerging (and of course there is no guarantee of a solution in the first place--4T's don't always end positively). In any case, even if we end up with a good outcome, things can continue to go downhill as they have been doing for another decade and not violate any pattern.

Good. I have always suggested that the turnings ran from 1689-1773, 1773-1850, 1850-1929, 1929-2008 (I predicted here that 2008 would be the year, long beforehand). The reason the last saeculum was shorter using S&H dates was because of their "anomaly," which I don't think fully existed. To some extent it did; but their civil war turning could just as easily be dated from 1850 as 1860. Also I first suggested the double rhythm, which suggests that our 4T will be most like the one that began around 1850. That seems to be borne out by the facts. We are now in fact at a time equivalent to 1850 in what is happening and what has happened in recent years.

Turnings became faster in modern times (about 77-84 years), because the people, rather than merely the elite, were involved. Progress speeded up then, and so did turnings. The pre-modern turnings were so slow that most of these elites only consisted to two living generations. It's hard to conceive that they were really turnings and saecula at all; they could not have followed the generational explanations described in The Fourth Turning, because that depends on a cycle of 4 living generations.

But the upshot is that I don't think the seaculum has either speeded up or slowed down since modern times began in the great Revolution (American/French/Industrial/Romantic).

Global warming is the chief driver of the current crisis, although so far it appears to be driven by an economic crash.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Global warming is the chief driver of the current crisis, although so far it appears to be driven by an economic crash.

Global warming will be perceived as the cause of the Crisis -- if it manifests itself in higher food prices or outright shortages. Economic hardships will demonstrate the ethical bankruptcy of the extant elites of contemporary America.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Global warming will be perceived as the cause of the Crisis -- if it manifests itself in higher food prices or outright shortages. Economic hardships will demonstrate the ethical bankruptcy of the extant elites of contemporary America.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My own thinking about the cause of turnings is closely related to this except I have no role for values. For me its just world view.

To me world views and values are so intertwined as to be hard to separate. How does one see the world operating? What are the goals one should strive for to make the world operate well? I'd almost like a phrase that pulls in both world view and values as part of a single whole.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Policymakers use their understanding of how the world works to develop policy. Since policy makes are several decades older than they were when they obtained their world view, to the extent that their worldview reflects external observations, the policy they implement today that will lead to the history being created today, is influenced by the history of the past. To the extent that policy represents an attempt to deal with problems (e.g. our current weak economy) it behaves as a corrective force or negative feedback, the nature of which is affected by the past. That is, past history feeds back to create present history in a negative feedback loop with a built in lag. Such lagged feedback loops will show cyclical behavior, which is the saeculum. And that's really all there is to it.

The military are often accused of fighting the last war. Civilian governments have a similar problem, with politicians continuing to use approaches they learned early in their career after the world has moved on. Is that an adequate rewording? I'm not quite ready to say "that's really all there is to it," but, yes, that would be a big part of it.

FDR's New Deal and ending of isolationism seem necessary given the problems of his time, but LBJ's Great Society and Domino Theory were extensions and exaggerations of FDR's policies taken beyond rationality. Reagan's notion that government isn't the solution, government is the problem, was a rational and proper response to LBJ era excesses in tax and spend, but his heirs again extended and exaggerated what worked in Reagan's time into the present stagnation.

A human inability to shift world views and values is a key element in why course corrections are slow to come but often overshoot. If a politician has a majority willing to pursue some principle, he is more apt to push that principle beyond reason than question whether the tactics that got his party in power have been taken to an extent that makes them harmful.

Last weekend we my niece brought over a friend that wanted to learn how to water ski. Later, my sister's friend wanted to try out a flight simulator program. Both are exercises in balance and feedback. Flying involves keeping wings level (roll), keeping the nose level (pitch), and maintaing speed. In water skiing, speed is controlled by the boat driver, but again one is trying to maintain front-back balance (pitch) as well as side to side balance (roll). It's hard for a beginner as any one axis of movement is difficult enough, but handling a second or third axis just overloads the pitiful human mind if one has to consciously think about such things. There is a tendency to over react. If one is leaning too far to the right it is obvious that one wants to go left. It takes practice to stop the roll left when the wings are level, though. The beginner tendency is to keep rolling, to end up out of balance the other way. One might over react or under react. It takes practice to do just what one wants to do.

With balance problems such as water skiing or flying the over or under correction is visible in a matter of seconds. In politics, the over and under corrections seem to take decades to develop. It might take decades to start a correction going, and more decades to stop and reverse it. If the resultant pattern is cyclical, one might argue that the feedback gain is too strong. One is seeing overcorrection, excessive positive feedback, a sine pattern rather than a decaying exponential.

I don't think I'm disagreeing with you. I think I'm just rewording with different metaphors?

Glad to see you back.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's more the case that values ARE absolute; that to "step out of them" is to disregard them; and that, on the other hand, our specific formulations of those values are imperfect, because ALL expressions, formulas and formulations of those values are imperfect, whether from holy writ or scientific procedure, and THAT is where the open-mindedness and tolerance comes in, because none of us is perfect in fully formulating, much less realizing, eternal and absolute values. We can each do our best to approach understanding, and enacting, of the values that are eternal and divine, and to be open to learning more about doing that. No other so-called "values" are of any value to begin with.

What I meant by "step out of one's values" is if one wishes to communicate and work well with others with conflicting values, one must be ready to honestly strive to understand the other guy. Many with absolute values seem far more interested in defending their values, in not allowing the other guy to score points that would weaken one's position in the debate, rather than communicating with, understanding, compromising and finding common cause with the other guy. The goal is too often to prove one is right the other guy wrong rather than to find a solution to the value locked question.

I also see an assumption that one's world views and values are eternal and divine as contributing significantly to values lock. If one assumes one is homing in on being one with God, with achieving spiritual enlightenment, one's tea cup is full, one isn't listening.

I also see world views and values as evolving rapidly. I believe in the arrow of progress, that Agricultural Age societies with cost effective wars of conquest, hereditary nobility, and most of the population bound in serfdom or slavery, were very very immoral by modern standards. We have spent the last few centuries pushing human rights, quashing privilege, attempting to reign in the wealth and political influence of the ruling elites, and seeking to end the endless conflicts. Since the Black Death, most S&H crises have been incremental steps moving us away from an unacceptable pattern towards something a little bit better.

If I might reword the basic cycle...

• 4T: We're in a big mess. This is unacceptable. Can't continue as is. Use trial and error to find out what works. A new set of world view and values is implemented the hard way.
• 1T: OK. We've figured it out. Need an end to the chaos. Let's rebuild the economy and no more upheaval for a while. Lock it down. The world view and values of the Crisis shall not change. We've got it right, now, and I won't tolerate argument on that.
• 2T: We have it right? Are you kidding me? Ha! What about this, that, and don't forget the other thing.
• 3T: We have it right! No we don't! Do too! Not! Gotta make changes! No way!

It isn't a cycle. It's a spiral. Each generation is dealing with a different situation than what came before. In general I do see progress. The new world view and values proposed in the 2T might assume the problems of the prior 2T are solved and address other problems that have since come to the fore. The upheaval and failures creating the last 4T will be significantly different from those of the next.

Thus, from a turning perspective, I see world views and values as evolving. Among other mechanisms, science and technology are constantly changing. Societies need to change and adjust to incorporate new inventions. Changing weaponry is a factor. Weapons of mass destruction make wars for territory, resource and market acquisition far less cost effective. Ecology is also a factor. Prior world views and values systems assume resources are available and might be exploited freely. Increasing population and limited resources are going to have an impact on future world views and values.

From a scientific perspective, the questions are what goals are worth striving for (values) and how does one achieve them (world view). These are very difficult questions requiring much study of the world.

I have found that those with absolute value systems believe they already have all the answers, give or take some tweaking and minor uncertainty. They are locked into a limited narrow perspective. They are unwilling to learn from the world. If a field of science conflicts with an absolute value system, one following absolute values will often disregard the field of science. They will refuse to learn. If the existing social structure gives someone with absolute values monetary advantage or social privilege, they will be unable to perceive what to many is obvious immoral behavior.

Virgil Saari used to call me a Whig, meaning I believe in inevitable progress. Some truth to that. I believe mankind has been confronted with a series of crises to overcome, and has little choice but to overcome them. In recent centuries the trend has been towards human rights, democracy and equality. There is a long way to go before no movement in these directions will be required. Always, wealth and power has been concentrated in the hands of a few. Increasingly, while the semblance of rights, democracy and equality might be present, the reality is government of the elites, for the elites, by the elites.

In the future, increasingly, the ecological perspective is apt to become more important. Too many people. Too few resources. The perspective is likely going to shift from a competition to hoard resources to preventing explosion by seeking a sustainable politically stable distribution.

Again, I see world views and values as changing and evolving to meet specific problems. Absolute values systems suppose that the solutions are always the same, that one's basic way of looking at the world need never change.

Can't agree with that. Whether one wants to understand human behavior, pursue scientific advancement, or achieve spiritual enlightenment, that's a dangerous assumption. Crises seem to bring with them a major upheaval in world views and values. A stubborn refusal to budge would be counter indicated.

Global warming up 12°C – half the world will be uninhabitable

Global warming up 12°C – half the world will be uninhabitable

22/10/2010 New Scientist Thermogeddon: When the Earth gets too hot for humans. (Long article).According to a recent study, parts of the Earth could start to become uninhabitable within a century. Surely it cannot be true?

IT IS the late 23rd century. Houston, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and many other once-bustling cities are ghost towns. No one lives in Louisiana or Florida anymore, and vast swathes of Africa, China, Brazil, India and Australia are no-go zones, too. That’s because in all of these places it gets hot and humid enough to kill anyone who cannot find an air-conditioned shelter.

This is the nightmare scenario outlined in a study published earlier this year. If we carry on as we are, it claimed, in as little as a century a few small areas might start to get so hot in summer that no one could survive without air conditioning. Three centuries from now, up to half of the land where people live today would regularly exceed this limit.

“I knew just from basic physics that there would be a point at which heat and humidity would become intolerable, and it didn’t seem that anyone had looked at that from a climate change perspective,” says Steven Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “When you look at the data, it becomes pretty clear that it wouldn’t take as much climate change as people seem to think to hit this.”

This is an astounding claim. Scientists have long warned that climate change will have serious consequences: big sea-level rises, floods, droughts, more extreme weather, extinctions and so on. But if Sherwood and co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University in Indiana are right, huge parts of the planet could effectively become uninhabitable.

So New Scientist set out to discover if their claim really is plausible. What is the limit of human survival, and could global warming really lead to this limit being exceeded in some areas?

Even today, heatwaves can kill tens of thousands of people. In France alone, more than 14,800 people died of heat stroke in 2003. Hurricanes, tornadoes and floods might get all the headlines, but in the US heatwaves claim more lives each year than all of these phenomena combined.

The victims of heatwaves are usually the most vulnerable: the sick, the elderly and the very young. As heatwaves become more severe, though, the proportion of the population dying will rise. Even healthy adults acclimatised to heat will succumb if it stays too hot and too humid for too long. To function normally, we have to maintain a core body temperature of around 37 °C. If it rises above about 42 °C, we die.

Exactly why is still not understood. The body diverts blood to the skin to try to cool off, which cuts the blood supply to the gut. One theory is that bacterial toxins from damaged guts start leaking into the bloodstream, eventually causing multiple organ failure.

What is clear is that to prevent our core temperature rising too high, our skin temperature must not exceed 35 °C for more than a few hours. In dry climates sweating will cool the skin sufficiently even in temperatures of 45 °C or more. But in humid climates where the air is nearly saturated with moisture, sweating makes little difference.

So temperature alone is a very poor guide to what people can survive. A better indicator is the “wet-bulb temperature”. This is the temperature that a mercury thermometer wrapped in a wet cloth would record. It is a measure of both heat and humidity, and reflects the temperature you could lower your skin to by sweating.

Even fit and healthy people couldn’t survive sustained wet-bulb temperatures above 35 °C, say Sherwood and Huber. This heat-stress limit applies even to people sitting naked in the shade next to a fan. Without air conditioning or access to cooler or less humid places, they will die.

The claim that people cannot survive a wet-bulb temperature of 35 °C or more for long is reasonable, says Chris Byrne, an exercise physiologist who specialises in human thermoregulation at the University of Exeter, UK. “At any temperature above that, we switch from a state where we’re losing heat from the skin to the environment to one where the environment imposes a heat load through the skin,” he says. “There’s no doubt that if those conditions arise, you’re probably looking at a lethal situation for the vast majority of the population.”

You’re looking at a lethal situation for the vast majority of the population
To find out whether this heat-stress limit is ever exceeded today, Sherwood and Huber looked at patterns of temperature and humidity around the world during the past decade. In a few places, such as Death Valley in California, temperatures can hit 50 °C or more.

There is far less variability in wet-bulb temperatures, though, as the highest temperatures tend to occur in deserts with low humidity. At present, annual maximum wet-bulb temperatures almost never exceed 31 °C (see graphs).

There is a reason for this, a kind of natural thermostat: the hotter and more humid air becomes, the more likely it is to rise and be replaced by cooler air. That’s because humid air is less dense than dry air of the same temperature and pressure, as water molecules weigh less than those of oxygen and nitrogen. What’s more, when humid air starts to rise, the water vapour begins to condense and release latent heat, warming the air and making it rise even higher.

In weather jargon, hot and humid air is likely to be unstable, often leading to thunderstorms that cool things down. “That means that no matter where you go around the world, the wet bulbs top out at around 30 or 31 °C,” says Sherwood.

But instability is relative: air rises only if it is less dense than surrounding air. So if the entire tropics get warmer and more humid, air will have to be somewhat hotter and more humid before it starts to rise. Global warming, in other words, will crank up the thermostat.

To work out how wet-bulb temperatures will change as the world warms, Sherwood and Huber turned to a computer model. The take-home figures: for every 1 °C that the global average temperature rises, maximum wet-bulb temperatures will rise by about 0.75 °C (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 107, p 9552).

Survival barrier
Other researchers see no problem with this prediction. “The climate modelling here is very solid,” says Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, which researches climate change. “Having chatted to a couple of colleagues about this, we think what they are saying seems entirely reasonable and consistent with what we would expect.”

The upshot is that if global average temperatures rise by 7 °C, the maximum wet-bulb temperatures in a few places will start to exceed the 35 °C survival barrier for periods of hours or days. Of course, heat stress won’t suddenly start to be a problem only at this point. Rather, as heat and humidity slowly rise from today’s levels, heatwaves will kill more and more people. Their economic impact will also climb as physical labour outdoors or in buildings with poor air-conditioning becomes increasingly difficult.

With global warming of 7 °C, however, the heat and humidity would start to become intolerable in some places. “We’ll be seeing migrations out of hot and humid countries where people can’t survive the heatwaves,” says Sherwood.

There will be migrations out of countries where people cannot survive the heatwaves
If the global average temperature rises by 12 °C, half of the land inhabited today would become too hot to live in (see map). The uninhabitable regions are likely be those with the highest heat stress today, including the Amazon basin, India, parts of Africa, China, Australia and the south-eastern US.

That would have a nightmarish outcome. In theory, people in affected regions could adapt, living in underground shelters during the summer months, for instance, or not leaving air-conditioned houses or cars for long without cooling suits.

But the cost of running air conditioning constantly could be unaffordable for many individuals and businesses. Most livestock, for instance, would perish unless kept in air-conditioned barns at times. Even worse, a prolonged power cut could cause mass fatalities. “That’s a scary scenario,” says Sherwood. It seems likely that most people would move to cooler climes – leading to conflict over land and resources.

“The scenario they’ve laid out is pretty devastating. It’s a much more serious and catastrophic outcome than people have identified before in the context of heat-related mortality,” says Patrick Kinney, director of the climate and health programme at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York. “It seems to be based on sound reasoning, and good models and data. People have already thought about ill-health effects of climate change, but nobody that I know of has considered there being a threshold above which it basically becomes impossible for people to live.”

Kinney says we should be cautious about quantitative statements, such as “half the inhabited land”. “But the fact that any amount of the world would become uninhabitable, and we don’t know the exact proportion – that to me is alarming,” he says.

So there seems little reason to doubt that if the world gets warm enough, parts of it will start to exceed the heat-stress limit. The big question, then, is whether the planet will get warm enough. Could there really be a global temperature rise of 7 °C or more? The short answer is yes, in the long term.

How much the world will warm depends on two things: how much more carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere and how much warming that CO2 produces, also known as climate sensitivity. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), every doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the temperature by between 1.9 and 4.5 °C, with 3 °C being the most likely value.

If climate sensitivity is as low as 1.9 °C, then it would take centuries for the planet to warm by 7 °C even if we continue pumping out lots of CO2. On the other hand, if climate sensitivity is as high as 4.5 °C, we could hit the 7 °C point within a century if we carry on as we are, although this could still be avoided as long as we slash emissions soon enough.

Heroic efforts
The catch is that the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are based only on fast feedback processes that are relatively easy to model on computers. They exclude slower processes such as the oceans switching from absorbing CO2 to emitting it, or the release of methane from thawing permafrost. Studies of Earth’s past suggest that actual sensitivity could be higher than computer models predict, with a few suggesting it could be as high as 7 °C (New Scientist, 30 June, p 38). If long-term sensitivity is high, it will be much harder to avoid big temperature rises over the next few centuries.

“Most of the discussion has been about the 21st century, but warming isn’t going to stop in 2100 unless our emissions have fallen almost to zero by then, and that would require heroic efforts,” says Sherwood. “If you consider that carbon releases might be a little higher than the most likely value and that the climate might be quite sensitive to inputs of energy, it’s not too hard to get up to 10, 12 or even 15 °C by the 23rd century.”

The danger is that if we pump too much CO2 into the atmosphere, large temperature rises might become inevitable even if all human greenhouse gas emissions cease. “We need to think about how to ensure that a large fraction of the fossil fuels are simply left in the ground,” says Sherwood. “That’s going to take a change in direction that many people are not yet seriously taking on board.”

Even fewer are taking on board the idea that parts of the planet could become too hot for humans to survive. If there is a fault in Sherwood and Huber’s reasoning, however, none of the researchers contacted by New Scientist could identify it.

“Scientists tend to be conservative – we stick to what we know and avoid speculating about things that are hard to pin down,” says Sherwood. “I think heat stress is an important impact of climate change that we’ve missed and there may be others, particularly with large, but possible, warmings.”

How did mammals survive?
IN A warmer world, will some areas really get too hot for humans to survive? One way to try to answer this question is to look at past warm periods, such as the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum 56 million years ago. Before the PETM, Earth was already as much as 10 °C warmer than it is now. Then, over 20,000 years, the temperature shot up by a further 5 to 9 °C.

There were no humans around then, of course, but there were plenty of other mammals. Is there any evidence that heat stress was a major problem for them?

Some mammals have core body temperatures as high as 40 °C, so in theory they should be able to survive levels of heat and humidity that would kill humans. Even so, if calculations by Steven Sherwood at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and Matthew Huber at Purdue University in Indiana are right (see main story), in some tropical regions during the PETM, heat stress should have become a problem even for mammals well adapted to hot, humid conditions.

Fossil records are very patchy, so it is unclear if heat stress drove any mammals from the hottest and most humid areas. It does appear, however, that many mammals became smaller during this time, with some halving in mass.

One proposed explanation for this is that foliage became less nutritious and digestible because of high CO2 levels. But a study published earlier this year concluded that other factors must have played a role, as some carnivores shrank too (Journal of Mammalian Evolution, DOI: 10.1007/s10914-010-9141-y).

One explanation is that heat stress drove the evolution of smaller mammals. Small animals have a higher surface area relative to their internal volume, so they can cool themselves more efficiently. “We think this provides a nice way of explaining what has long been known to palaeontologists, which is that mammals get smaller in warmer climates,” says Sherwood.

I think we will be able to keep the temp increase below the 7 degrees C threshold stated in the article (even in "hot-house" phases the global average temperature rarely exceeds 24C, it is 16C right now), but still, this is quite scary and could happen if we don't get our act in gear.

Originally Posted by Odin

Global warming up 12°C – half the world will be uninhabitable



I think we will be able to keep the temp increase below the 7 degrees C threshold stated in the article (even in "hot-house" phases the global average temperature rarely exceeds 24C, it is 16C right now), but still, this is quite scary and could happen if we don't get our act in gear.

The worst combinations of heat and humidity are to be found, perhaps ironically, in a desert area -- the Persian Gulf.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Dhahran’s climate is characterized by extremely hot, humid summers, and cool winters. Temperatures can rise to more than 50 °C (120 °F) in the summer, coupled with extreme humidity (85-100 per cent), given the city’s proximity to the Persian Gulf. In winter, the temperature rarely falls below 2 °C (35.6 °F) or 3 °C (37.4 °F), being the lowest ever recorded -0.5 °C in January 1964, with rain falling mostly between the months of November and May. The Shamal winds usually blow across the city in the early months of the summer, bringing dust storms that can reduce visibility to a few metres. These winds can last for up to six months.

On July 8, 2003, the dewpoint was 35 °C (95 °F) while the temperature was 42 °C (108 °F), resulting in a heat index of 78 °C (172 °F).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhahran

That's Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, headquarters of Aramco. Hell even without an infernal political system.

In practice there may be a point at which a juiced atmosphere cannot be stable, which explains why daily convective storms are the usual weather in almost all locations on the equator (the exception being Somalia).

The map on the left shows how Africa probably looked in the time of the hottest summers in the Northern Hemisphere after the great glacial retreat began. On the right is a map of potential vegetation today. Current deserts are larger and more severe.




The Earth reached its perihelion in its elliptical orbit during northern summer months about 7500 years ago instead of the northern winter months as it is now, heating was more intense on the northern side of the equator. Fairly-large human populations thrived in what is now some of the world's most forbidding hot desert. as is shown in human activity. Hunter-gatherers could live well on the wildlife in much moister habitats... as shown in rock art that attests to such water-dwelling creatures as ducks, hippos, and crocodiles. Since then the Sahara has taken over about half of Africa north of the equator. Hunter-gatherers either had to go elsewhere or find new ways of living (like agriculture in the Nile Valley, which is the source of all subsequent civilization west of Iraq).

This was not the result of global warming. If anything, winters were probably cooler, with rain-bearing mid-latitude cyclones that go through the North and Baltic seas in the summer and the Mediterranean basin in the winter reached farther south in the winters. The winter rains reached northern Egypt 7500 years ago but almost completely miss Egypt now. Global warming might cause the winter rains that make the southern Europe livable to take a more northerly course and give places like Seville, Palermo, and Athens conditions more like... Dhahran. (That is my conjecture).

The general source of the maps. Much more is available on the Pleistocene era at that source, and global cooling is no bargain, either..



There may have been more dry land in the warmer parts of the earth, but as a rule almost everything was drier -- much drier.

You have to put up the usual disclaimer. You can't pin any single event on global warming. Still, the monsoons are late in India. Use of electricity is up, both from agriculture and air conditioning. CNN reports India hit by second, even larger power outage.

This thought has occurred to me before. It might be that global warming will end up, long-term, being a net plus, in that it may (if current theories about how glaciations happened) mean we don't have any more Ice Ages. http://geography.howstuffworks.com/t...s/ice-age2.htm

It's not necessarily a matter of the world suddenly getting really cold, though. It's more that it doesn't get warm enough in the summer. In the 1920s, a mathematician named Milutin Milankovitch worked out why summers would be cooler by looking at the factors that limit sunlight's reach to Earth. He identified three factors: the tilt in the Earth's axis, the way the Earth wobbles on its axis and how close the Earth gets to the sun. By combining these factors in a mathematical formula, he was able to predict that ice ages would occur every 22,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years [source: Gosnell]. These rhythms became known as Milankovitch cycles.


It seems that once it's cold, then it's likely to stay cold. Ice has albedo, or reflectivity. A higher albedo results in less absorbed sunlight because it's reflected back. This causes temperatures to drop more, so that the growth of one glacier will likely trigger more glaciers [source: Gosnell]. With cooler summers, only a little snow in the winter would be needed to offset the minimal melting.

If these factors continue to oscillate temperatures but around a higher midpoint, the planet might never get cool enough to start a glaciation feedback cycle. This could explain (or party explain) why we never had ice ages until geologically modern times; the sequestration of carbon over prior epochs might have cooled the planet sufficiently to allow glaciation to happen (along with other factors), and the return of all that carbon to the atmosphere by human activity might put us in a future epoch resembling the Jurassic temperature-wise. Life did well during that time and as long as life does well humans can probably adapt, provided the warming isn't too radical or too fast. That doesn't change what we need to do in the short term, but it may mean that the cumulative and probably irreversible re-carbonization may not be a bad thing.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

If these factors continue to oscillate temperatures but around a higher midpoint, the planet might never get cool enough to start a glaciation feedback cycle. This could explain (or party explain) why we never had ice ages until geologically modern times; the sequestration of carbon over prior epochs might have cooled the planet sufficiently to allow glaciation to happen (along with other factors), and the return of all that carbon to the atmosphere by human activity might put us in a future epoch resembling the Jurassic temperature-wise.

The placement of continents is another major factor necessary for ice ages. Full scale ice ages do not occur without both poles freezing over. This doesn't happen when the poles are part of a big open ocean. Currently, there is a big land mass sitting on top of Antarctica, while the north pole is more or less surrounded by assorted land masses. No Gulf Stream type currents can reach far enough north carrying equatorial heat.

For most of Earth's history, one pole or the other has been in open water and the CO2 concentration has been higher.

Bob, when I looked into the question the prevailing theory is that glacial periods began not at the poles but at lower latitudes, especially in high elevations. It also wasn't so much due to cold winters as to cool summers that failed to melt back the winter ice completely. Ice has a high albedo, which acts as a positive feedback loop cooling things further, and so on. As for continent positions, the last Ice Age ended less than 15,000 years ago and the continents were in their current positions for all intents and purposes.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Bob, when I looked into the question the prevailing theory is that glacial periods began not at the poles but at lower latitudes, especially in high elevations. It also wasn't so much due to cold winters as to cool summers that failed to melt back the winter ice completely. Ice has a high albedo, which acts as a positive feedback loop cooling things further, and so on. As for continent positions, the last Ice Age ended less than 15,000 years ago and the continents were in their current positions for all intents and purposes.

Take a look at the 65 Million Years Climate Change chart. If you look at the associated text, the rapid series of glaciation and release starts after Antarctica freezes about 34M years ago, and especially after the isthmus of Panama between North and South America forms about 3M years ago. Once the continents reached their more or less current positions, the fairly small changes provided by the Milankovitch Cycles became sufficient to make ice ages come and go.

Ice Ages have come and gone many times since the continents took up their more or less current configuration, but the Milankovitch Cycles run much quicker than continental drift.

There is a more controversial theory saying cosmic rays cause cloud formation, and there are more cosmic rays when the sun is in a galactic arm rather than in the more empty space between galactic arms. If you look at the very long term charts (not short term recent history like the 65 million year chart above) one might make a case for very long term heating and cooling trends as the sun orbits the center of the Milky Way. There are advocates of both continental drift and galactic orbit theories. I sympathize more with the continental drift people.

But all of the above - galactic orbit, continental drift and Milankovitch Cycles - happen much too slowly to be a factor in the warming over the past century or so.

If I'm going to post the 65 M year temperature history, I might as well show the 5 M year chart as well, and the 542 M year chart.

In the 542 M year chart, you can see several glacial periods coming and going with enough regularity that people want to look for a cyclical mechanism. Galactic scale orbits? Continents shifting positions? That's open to discussion. See the "Long-term evolution" section on the 542 M year page.

In some recent years, crop failures in the US has resulted in hunger in the Third World, which might have contributed to political unrest such as the Arab Spring. CNN suggests that this year's threatened crop failures in US corn and soybeans might not cause hunger, though it may result in meat shortfalls.

Drought may cost billions in U.S. food exports

Originally Posted by B Butler

In some recent years, crop failures in the US has resulted in hunger in the Third World, which might have contributed to political unrest such as the Arab Spring. CNN suggests that this year's threatened crop failures in US corn and soybeans might not cause hunger, though it may result in meat shortfalls.

Drought may cost billions in U.S. food exports

It's already causing the price of food to go up.

Originally Posted by Odin

It's already causing the price of food to go up.

Yep. I was mildly surprised by CNN's conclusions. To hear them tell it, things are bad in North America, but good corn and soy crops elsewhere mean no world wide shortage in the two badly burned US crops. They didn't say prices wouldn't go up here.

But who knows if CNN has an agenda, or if their analysis is wrong? I would have guessed US crop failures would cause some price pressure in Africa and the Middle East with resulting economic and political stress.

Still, over all, I suspect I might very well be erring on the alarmist side. At some point I anticipate climate change and over population leading to depleted aquifers, crop growing regions shifting north, economic and political rest. Fear! Panic! Revolution! Migration!

Someday. Eventually. It might be decades downstream before things get ugly beyond the ability to deny.

Which means I should post reasonable articles suggesting it isn't doomsday quite yet. I shouldn't cherry pick only the most alarmist articles.

Originally Posted by Odin

It's already causing the price of food to go up.

...And if anyone says "Go fishing" to supplement the food that you get -- I have walked over two bridges over a small river that usually is higher. The fish are dying, and the river stinks for it. It may be that the river is shrunken or that the water is hotter... either way it is bad for the fish.

This is Michigan, usually far from any regular zone of drought.

NASA scientist links climate change, extreme weather

Another government scientist says the old caveat that no single event can be blamed on climate change is dated. Stuff is happening that cannot be reasonably attributed to other factors.

Sorry, couldn't find a link back to the science paper. I've only found main stream media pieces.

RealClimate also has an article up disparaging a study coming out of Berkely. A while back, shortly after the climate gate scam, some skeptics funded another skeptic to produce another entirely new from scratch review of the instrumental temperature records. They believed their own propaganda, thinking that the main stream science had to be wrong. Unfortunately for the skeptics, the start from scratch do it over study essentially confirmed the main stream science. Recently, the Berkeley group released another paper which says, yes, there is climate change.

Which is no news at all to the establishment climate scientists, though another round of spin and counter spin is in progress.

There might be more global warming spin than usual for the next week or so. The IPCC AR5 report is in the final stages of being written, and any paper to be referenced in the report has to be submitted real soon now. Given that this is the second time in recent weeks we've heard the 'no single event can be blamed on global warming' meme denied, I'd guess that is apt to be a theme of IPCC AR5.

Of course if someone tries to spin things one way, you can be someone else will be spinning the other way.