What Happens If the World Gets Too Hot for Animals to Survive?

[turbinetree]

POLITICS
17 HOURS AGO

The last time climate was as warm as it will be in the next 50 to 100 years was 3 million years ago.
MATTHEW HUBER

This story was originally published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last month, during a slow-moving heat wave that smothered much of the United States, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported at least 2,000 cattle had died from heat stress. In 2021, as the Pacific Northwest sweltered under a heat dome, more than 650,000 farm animals perished in British Columbia alone. And in 2015, a deadly heat wave in India killed more than 17 million chickens.

Hot, humid conditions can lead to massive heat casualties in animals—in livestock as well as wild animals. These events will become more extensive, longer lasting and more damaging as the world warms, potentially threatening economies and ecosystems. While many studies have demonstrated the impact of individual events or gradual trends in heat stress on livestock, there is a Panglossian tendency among many working in livestock agriculture to believe in a nearly infinite capacity for modern agricultural practices and breeding to overcome heat-stress induced challenges.

Much of the warming that has occurred in places like the United States or Europe can be dealt with through breeding in key traits from variants from warm countries like India or North Africa. But as high heat conditions travel beyond the upper ranges of temperatures recently experienced (over the past few thousand years) in North Africa, India, or South America, there will limited genetic diversity to draw upon to prepare for these conditions. There are temperature ceilings that humans and mammals (and many other animals) cannot survive, if breached. What those limits are, and what happens when they are crossed, will have profound implications for agriculture and biodiversity in a warming world.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/what-happens-if-the-world-gets-too-hot-for-animals-to-survive/

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[TheBlackAdder]

42. Game over, man!

.







.

[Beringia]

2. Yikes

[Marcus IM]

3. Once the oceans get too hot it's all over at that point.

Meanwhile, people seem to think that corporate scavenging of the oceans of the last remaining oceanic life and eating as much fish as they can will lead to good health and a long life.

[MiniMe]

4. Humans are animals too

[FoxNewsSucks]

5. We die.

That's the simple answer. We die too.

[BigmanPigman]

6. In a fair world the innocent animals would survive

and the murderous humans would die out for good.

[2naSalit]

7. Game over.

[Kaleva]

8. As the article stated, this will happen in zones

The frequency of dangerous wet bulb temps occuring and the zones this happens will increase in size but it won't be world wide.

[PlanetBev]

9. I have no interest in living on a planet with no animals

To never again look into a dog’s loving eyes? Life ain’t that sweet.

[Rhiannon12866]

12. +1000

[Kaleva]

15. Animals will survive. Just not in certain zones.

[dalton99a]

10. At some point animal protein will be replaced by human protein

from real humans, a la "Tender Is the Flesh"

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

[madinmaryland]

44. Soylent Green!!

[roamer65]

11. As the human death toll rises, less CO2 is emitted.

There is a balance point in there…somewhere…but where?

[Brenda]

13. Cascading food chain collapse is here now

Hot, acidic oceans are become slimy with toxic algae which is contaminating the bottom of the food chain. Bigger fish, birds, seals, etc populations are dropping like rocks from lack of food. And that doesn't even include all of those dropping dead on land from heat...India has cats, dogs, cattle and birds lying dead in the streets either heat stroked or dehydrated.

This is happening NOW.

[Kaleva]

17. Yet people go about their lives like everything is fine

You don't see an exodus of DUers leaving regions expected to be hard hit like Florida, coastal areas, the southwest and parts of the south.

[Brenda]

21. I know. It's surreal.

The MSM is actually covering these things, of course not enough and sometimes with a joke like "take a cold shower!" People are in total denial about the southwest and coastal areas. They think since we're in America the taps won't go dry and the waves won't hit their house.

Think again.

[Kaleva]

22. There's a small handful of people here doing things

One member said they bought property in the Alleghenies for their family to move to.

[Elessar Zappa]

24. The sea level rise at the coast

will be slow enough for people to gradually vacate current coastal regions.

[Brenda]

25. The sea level is already rising at the coasts.

"Sunny day flooding" has been a thing for a few years now in Miami and many other coastal places. Barrier islands are submerging everywhere and I forget how many acres Louisiana is losing every single day. If you follow the climate news the feedback loops are happening far faster and more pronounced than all previous predictions.

People need to be selling and moving away now. You're playing russian roulette with your property if you think you can just keep waiting until you get more money. The crazy housing bubble has people risking their life savings.

And what's the plan when millions of Americans decide to "vacate?" If they don't start now they will be climate refugees, just like the Guatemalan caravan refugees moving inland en masse causing chaos.

We don't have 50 or 100 years. Lucky if we have 20.

[Kaleva]

27. By then their property may not be worth much

and the property where they vacate to may be quite costly.

[Elessar Zappa]

28. True.

I’m just saying they won’t wake up one day with their land under water.

[Kaleva]

30. I agree with you. I'm just suggesting people be more foresighted

[NickB79]

31. You sure about that? Remember Hurricane Katrina?

Or Superstorm Sandy?

A few inches of sea rise can mean feet of extra storm surge.

[Elessar Zappa]

32. I'm not talking about storm events.

Yes, there will be more frequent and severe hurricanes. I’m talking about general sea rise.

[NickB79]

35. You can't separate the two

Because climate change causes more severe storms that cause massive flooding.

It's like saying the climate has "only" warmed 1C so far, while record-breaking heatwaves cook entire countries 5C above normal. If you only focus on what will happen in general, you'll get hammered by the new extremes.

[NickB79]

33. What happens to the property?

If they sell it, we'll still have fools next to the coast waiting to be washed out.

If they just abandon it, we'll have millions of homeless climate refugees, since most people's wealth is based on their home values. A 21st century repeat of the Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl with whatever they could strap to their truck.

[H2O Man]

34. Exactly right.

This isn't some future event. It is now. It is now, no matter if we refuse to accept it.

I hope you make an OP of this.

And thank you, Brenda.

[Brenda]

38. You're welcome

H20 Man. It saddens me so to see how many people do not take this seriously. Thinking there's plenty of time for people to move!

Once the panic hits and it will - and all it will take is one major metropolitan area to have their faucets run dry or one coastal city totally inundated with infrastructure ruined - there will be hysteria. TV people will still be downplaying it, HGTV will still be playing reruns of Big Beach Builds and the radio will continue broadcasting sports and oldies.

I'd like to start an OP to raise awareness but from the responses here and in so many other threads...nope. Would sink into oblivion.

[H2O Man]

39. I hear you.

I recently posted one about water that disappeared. I can remember when the majority on this forum were conscious of the connections between politics, the environment, and their daily lives. Today, I saw members of Congress who advocate for our immediate attention to the issues involved being described as out of the mainstream.

With conditions at Lake Mead and Lake Powell getting worse -- and rapidly so -- it would seem that people would pay attention.

[Brenda]

41. You post excellent threads

and have for a long time. Yeah, I've been around DU a long time.

The lake conditions you mention are pretty freaking horrible and photogenic as it were. But the real problem is the aquifer depletions and the arboreal glaciers retreating and disappearing.

Maybe I should start a thread with a climate change reading list.

It would still probably sink unless it had the word Trump in one of the titles.

[H2O Man]

43. I'm looking through

some videos of my old friend Oren Lyons talking about the environment. There is one -- somewhere -- of him addressing executives. He points out that most of them are grandparents, and at some level recognize they are handing down a very damaged world. He notes that some of them have said to him that they want to "do something," but don't dare risk losing their jobs. Oren said that suggests that in a year or two, they'll have him back again to give the same presentation, but that nothing will have changed except for further environmental damage.

It's funny -- I just got off the phone with my brother, who lives on the west coast. We had been e-mailing about the global environmental crises taking place now. I mentioned our conversation here. We discussed the psychological factors that result in good people that are seemingly unable to focus on this threat.

I like the idea of a good reading list. I do question how many people actually read these days, and instead go for memes and other such things. If you do the reading list, I'll try to find some good videos for an OP or two. We might just end up talking to each other and a few others, but I enjoy that.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. asked and answered ...

[scarletlib]

16. We all die in droves.

[Kaleva]

18. I'd that your plan?

I intend to survive.

[scarletlib]

19. I am not in charge of anything

I am one of millions if not billions who cannot change anything. We have been shouting for more than 20+ years that we needed to take steps to decrease carbon, methane etc. The powers that be, the fucking politicians, billionaires, oligarchs don’t and won’t give a damn.

Don’t blame the “little people” because we don’t have a plan.

Why would I want to survive in an unlivable world?

[Kaleva]

20. You are in charge of yourself

How much effort you put into adapting is entirely up to you.

The effects of climate change will not be uniform around the world. Some regions will be devastated, others not so bad and yet others will become more habitable for for humans.

I love and care for my family so I've put much time and effort into making transitioning to the new reality more likely of success for them.

[Dave says]

26. So when the famished Christo-fascists

Come gunning for you in their search for a meal, you and your family will be prepared to ward them off? “Them” numbering in the thousands? And what, precisely, will you grow and eat in 120 degree heat and parched land? Maybe a few downed Christo-fascists? No, we are all in this together.

https://eand.co/why-the-world-feels-like-its-going-crazy-c264240b2d3

I exaggerate, of course. But not too much. However, given the pessimism of the article above, I don’t know what powerless peon me can do. So we do what we can. Even, if in the end, it’s fruitless. We still do what we can.

[Elessar Zappa]

29. Not everywhere will be parched.

Some areas will be more habitable, some less. That’s not to say it won’t be a huge challenge dealing with this.

[Torchlight]

23. If we are to succeed, it's something humanity has to do in unison.

Or as Jane Goodall wrote, “I believe honestly and truly that it’s only when we learn together to operate with head and heart in harmony that we can achieve our true human potential.”

[NickB79]

36. Evolution kicks in eventually, and the survivors repopulate

We're in a mass extinction event. It will likely be the worse in 65 million years. Then, nothing bigger than a dog survived, because they needed to make due on low food supplies and hibernation in burrows after the asteroid impact. Over 25 lb? Your odds were poor.

In the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, another period of global warming, species also saw a marked decline in body size. Smaller bodies allow better heat transfer by increasing surface area relative to body mass. Birds are also better able to survive heat, due to their dinosaur ancestry, so they proliferated.

So basically, what we'll see is the larger bodied species in temperate areas will move poleward, and the ones near the equator die. Smaller creatures will become common, especially nocturnal and burrowing ones that can escape the heat.

[Brenda]

40. I agree with most of that

except the birds part. Birds are dying in large numbers across the globe. Many from heat in places like India and Pakistan. Many are starving that rely on the fish chain of food.

Maybe in the long term some of them will proliferate. But I saw an article just today about the puffins and other north atlantic birds dying from bird flu.

There are just too many stressors in play right now on ALL animal life.

[jalan48]

37. Cannibalism becomes acceptable for some