What happens to an economy when it's too hot to work?

6/13/2026 at 8:11:21 PM

by ksymph

6/13/2026 at 8:45:07 PM

For anyone that hasn't had heat sickness, it's not a one-and-done ordeal. You become more sensitive to heat after getting sick from it. It can easily take a month of careful exposure to regain tolerance but working in the same conditions is not the same thing. In addition, heat sickness is awful.

by imoverclocked

6/13/2026 at 11:12:49 PM

Aka Heat stroke

by richtersand

6/14/2026 at 12:12:52 AM

Heat sickness sucks, but you pull through even if the sustained temperature does not great things.

Heat stroke is a life-threatening medical emergency (e.g. call 911) when they body has gotten so hot that organ systems that are capable of regulating temperature start malfunctioning, and things can go downhill extremely quickly from that point.

by jmalicki

6/14/2026 at 7:04:02 AM

cooking the proteins in your blood stream will put you to an end very quickly. (but not quick enough that you dont experience the horror and pain of it)

by senectus1

6/14/2026 at 12:57:31 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

6/13/2026 at 8:48:01 PM

> Almost half of the global population will be living with extreme heat by 2050 if the world reaches 2C of global warming above preindustrial levels, according to a University of Oxford study published in January.

by sixtyj

6/13/2026 at 8:53:46 PM

Good thing we are working so hard to automate the kind of work where you sit in the shade at a desk. (/sarcasm)

I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated. I kinda wish we could talk about how much raw energy that is ... even if we use American units of barrels of oil, or something.

by imoverclocked

6/13/2026 at 9:03:39 PM

We tried talking about sea level rise and land area inundation, and more severe storms, and amongst many the collective response was to stick their fingers in their ears.

The real conversation we should have is about money talking; a huge amount of assets are facing being stranded by insurers. Insurance doesn't really care about ideology, they care about making money, and so the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence. Though right now politicians are just reframing this as "greedy insurance", which isn't exactly untrue.

by bobthepanda

6/13/2026 at 9:47:04 PM

> ...the fact they are losing money to climate change is pretty irrefutable evidence.

Insurance prices risk. If risk goes up, so do prices. They will not lose (much) money (or not for long) [1], your insurance will just get a lot more expensive, maybe to the point you can no longer afford it. If the government tries to control prices, then insurers will just exit the market, or the only entrants will be severely under-capitalized, merely providing the veneer of insurance (e.g., because your mortgage lender requires it). This is already happening in Florida and Louisiana [2]. These insurers will simply go bankrupt in the event of a catastrophe, and you will be stuck with the loss.

[1] Technically, in a competitive environment, many insurance companies will operate with a (small) underwriting loss, but they make up the difference by investing the float during the time between when they collect the premiums and when they pay out on claims. They will not operate with an unbounded loss.

[2] https://www.wsj.com/finance/small-insurance-company-hurrican...

by derf_

6/13/2026 at 11:39:55 PM

How do you price in whole mountsin regions beeing in for repeatet flooding events basically forcing continuous rebuilds and thus having way overpriced houses? How do you price insurrance on objects that shouldnt exist ?

by warumdarum

6/13/2026 at 10:48:57 PM

Probably cause we bailed out south Jersey and instead of packing up and heading inland Margate boasts homes over 1.5 million dollars

by calvinmorrison

6/13/2026 at 9:15:24 PM

Number of tanks of gas for a Ford F-150 Supercab is the American standard unit.

by zzgo

6/13/2026 at 9:21:19 PM

well shit, my F150 uses 0 tanks of gas, does that complicate things?

by rootusrootus

6/14/2026 at 12:58:40 AM

It does for your resale value ;)

by Der_Einzige

6/14/2026 at 2:19:51 AM

Maybe it improves it? The truck has depreciated 7K since I bought it brand new, which works out to about 13% over 20 months. Most cars depreciate faster than that, so it seems having 0 tanks helps.

by rootusrootus

6/13/2026 at 9:42:12 PM

> I think the disconnect between many people hearing "2C of warming" and the overall effects that will have is grossly underestimated.

The problem is that the loudest voices in the global discussion are people living in relatively cold-ish Western climates because, well, we are the rich and powerful people. And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US), even 10 °C increase of yearly average temperatures or even peak temperatures would still be perfectly fine.

The fact that 2 °C is probably enough to render the space of potentially billions of people uninhabitable is completely outside of the experienced reality in Western countries, we cannot relate from our lived reality to theirs.

And that kind of disconnect is prevalent among any kind of discourse in humanity. The fact that we can even do so, that right here on this website we have people worth billions of dollars (e.g. sama is Sam Altman!) debating with people that barely scrape by on their national poverty level, is a wonder that would have been unimaginable 200 years ago. Human biology, human society hasn't evolved mechanisms to keep up with our technological progress, and it breaks apart everywhere.

by mschuster91

6/13/2026 at 10:12:01 PM

10 degrees increase would collapse any industry, it would turn Norway into Italy.

Do you drive to Norway for your beach holiday?

by Asmod4n

6/13/2026 at 10:14:01 PM

>And for many of us (maybe bar the Southern-most part of the US)

Actually look at median temperatures in the US. Summers in Atlanta and Chicago are remarkably similar as it is.

by asdff

6/14/2026 at 12:20:04 AM

Plants would just keep chugging at temps 10 °C hotter than they're evolved for?

by littlexsparkee

6/13/2026 at 11:18:14 PM

I have seen some Climatologists who are thinking we might hit the 2C mark by mid to late 2030's simply based on the exponential heating pace we are seeing decade over decade. Part of it being some feedback loops have arisen from our increased heating.

It's wild to think that we might be only 10 years away from that line in the sand we marked. Hopefully they are wrong but I fear they are not.

by HerbManic

6/14/2026 at 12:52:01 AM

Only a month ago: Scientists Rule Out a Worst-Case Climate Scenario

You’ll be allright

by nxm

6/14/2026 at 12:29:18 AM

These metrics are hard to grapple with when "living with extreme heat" isn't something most people can conceptualize.

Findings from 2025 -

> Over the 12-month period, 4 billion people — about 49% of the global population — experienced at least 30 days of extreme heat (hotter than 90% of temperatures observed in their local area over the 1991-2020 period). [1]

[1] https://www.climatecentral.org/report/climate-change-and-the...

by joenot443

6/14/2026 at 1:03:09 AM

That statement seems totally empty and could be true even if those 12 months in 2024-25 were cooler. 10% of days in 1991-2020 were hotter than 90% of days in 1991-2020, which is on average 36.5 days in a 12 month period.

by mkl

6/14/2026 at 1:13:44 AM

I can't see the methodology, but it would shock me if they did not take into account the local high based on the time of year.

Edit: In the methodology section it is not clear whether they used one average or average for the date.

by rileymat2

6/14/2026 at 1:22:32 AM

Yes, I expect the problem is in this summarisation of the research, not the research itself.

by mkl

6/14/2026 at 6:23:20 AM

You would be surprised how many people on Earth experience extreme cold and die because od it. It's much more deadly than heat. Spreading fear over heat looks like propaganda to frighten people's mind.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/pdf/10.1289/EHP9835

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01872-6

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266660652...

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20180594

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09049-4

by t0bia_s

6/13/2026 at 11:38:01 PM

[dead]

by sieabahlpark

6/13/2026 at 8:14:35 PM

Simple question, simple answer: just like every other time, no help is coming. Individuals either survive and reproduce or they don't.

by inigyou

6/14/2026 at 6:56:24 AM

Humans have gotten real good at reproducing and staying alive despite external circumstances, up until their offspring can reproduce too.

So, individuals will reproduce.

by Rygian

6/13/2026 at 9:09:52 PM

I've read before that a large portion of the warmest parts (Uttar Pradesh/Bihar) of India actually haven't had its temperature rise much because of coal power, farm burning and dust in general (a lot from construction) the particles block basically protect them against the sun.

Putting India in a spot where if it would cease relying on coal power in 30-40+ years it would cause the temperature to rise.

by boelboel

6/13/2026 at 10:48:41 PM

What a choice: heatstroke, or chronic respiratory disease?

by nxobject

6/13/2026 at 11:19:52 PM

Basically given the choice of one kills in hours and other in decades. Can we try to take option c?

by HerbManic

6/14/2026 at 4:09:18 AM

I’ve wondered about that.

Even in rural towns, the midday sun in India feels “dimmer” on a clear day. Even for the winter, this seems odd as the relatively lower latitude should make for more direct sun.

It feels like the soft warm filters used in photography… Outdoor sun normally bothers me greatly, but there sunglasses don’t even seem needed…

Not sure what proportion is coal dust, dirt, or wood smoke but something major is definitely going on…

by BobbyTables2

6/13/2026 at 9:21:42 PM

There is nothing stopping them from releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to have the same effect in an engineered and superior manner. Also, various surfaces can be painted white to reflect sunlight back into space. Trees also can be planted, and forests restored.

The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.

by OutOfHere

6/13/2026 at 9:38:20 PM

> The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive air conditioning.

The heat doesn't vanish with AC, at least not unless you use a very expensive deep-underground well as a heatsink instead of the open air.

Even if everyone has AC indoor - the air outdoor will still be too hot and, most likely, humid, with all the expelled heat from the ACs added on top of that. Animals won't stand a chance, especially wild ones, and humans that absolutely have to work outside (e.g. policemen, firefighters, EMS) will be just as impacted.

We have to face the reality: large parts of the globe, impacting billions of people, will be unable to support human and a lot of animal and plant life during the summer months if climate change continues at the current pace in a short enough time that most people reading this text will eventually witness this.

by mschuster91

6/14/2026 at 1:42:54 AM

There's much more air outside than inside, so 15C colder inside does not mean that the entire city gets 15C hotter outside. And in a heat event, most people are inside, not outside. 1C hotter outside to make it livable for 99% of humans sounds fine. And this is only about cities, anything living outside cities will be fully unaffected.

For the people that have to work outside: air conditioning in the vehicle, frequent breaks in air conditioned areas, and I wonder if we could get proper air conditioned clothing at some point (currently vests with fans embedded are quite frequent in Japan, but that's the best there is as of today).

But I agree with the last paragraph. Air conditioning is the only countermeasure we have but in the end the fact remains that many cities will eventually become incompatible with human life in summer.

by Krssst

6/14/2026 at 7:41:11 AM

Tell this to the politicians that make jokes about not putting AC units on schools. This happened on Spain a few days ago.

by Zardoz84

6/14/2026 at 2:58:23 AM

In a dense residential community, when 70% of the units are running ACs and a minority are not, it's going to get substantially hotter than 1C for the ones that are not. It will be upward of 5C hotter in the non-AC units in my experience when the wind is minimal. The 1C you came up with does not apply in the close proximity of the dense urban air conditioning.

Reflective clothing using PDRC materials will be a lot more feasible than personal air conditioning. The latter would require a powered spacesuit anyway which makes it awkward to work. See https://youtu.be/NVAcSgLZues although it's not about clothing, but the idea is the same.

by OutOfHere

6/13/2026 at 11:55:39 PM

There's PDRC, but we can't mass produce the "photonic metamaterials" that make it good.

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

It ought to be great. Takes no energy, sends heat through the infrared window back out into space where it came from.

by card_zero

6/14/2026 at 3:05:39 AM

I researched the topic and produced a short video on it: https://youtu.be/NVAcSgLZues

Purdue University produced a barium sulfate nanocomposite paint that has 98% reflectance in the desired band using a 150μm layer, cooling surfaces by 4.5C.

by OutOfHere

6/13/2026 at 10:57:24 PM

Bollocks. This is more eco-communist propaganda cope from German greens, to justify why their people should keep suffering hot summers living without AC while the other parts of the world and Europe do it just fine.

AC is heat pump like your fridge, it moves the heat from inside to outside, meaning the average between the two sides stays in equilibrium, it doesn't create new heat for the outside to be a measurable impact on the planet's heating. Everyone running refrigerators in their homes to keep the food cold, and transferring that heat to their kitchen, doesn't heat up the cities and planet.

You're also contradicting yourself. If the world is indeed getting fucked heating wise like you say, then at least it will be less fucked if you have AC where you live than trying to live without AC and being more fucked. The planet will not be saved if you give up on having residential AC, you'll just suffer more versus those with AC. So it makes sense form an individaul self preservation perspective.

by joe_mamba

6/13/2026 at 11:11:00 PM

During the day once the room is cold my minisplit spends around 800w keeping the room cold. Say, what happened to those 800w? Where does that go?

by rnewme

6/14/2026 at 1:49:18 AM

The second law of thermodynamics implies that one must spend energy as work to move thermal energy up a temperature difference. So the net effect of an air conditioner is to increase the total amount of thermal energy.

by fraserphysics

6/13/2026 at 11:50:52 PM

It's already silly coming from the US, but jumping to the conclusion that a random comment, on a US-based forum, is propaganda specifically for a German political slapfight, is a very funny form of political egocentrism.

by andrewflnr

6/14/2026 at 12:14:13 AM

it's the Prisoner's Dilemma - AC helps the individual at the expense of those outside, for whom it is now hotter (can raise ambient air temp by 2-4C). It worsens global warming in how it is powered (on hot days might have to fire up peaker plants using gas) and leaks of refrigerants.

by littlexsparkee

6/14/2026 at 8:51:27 AM

> This is more eco-communist propaganda cope from German greens

Strong words coming from someone who's Austrian.

> to justify why their people should keep suffering hot summers living without AC while the other parts of the world and Europe do it just fine.

That was not my point. My point is, ACs aren't a panacea. We cannot let the planet heat up indefinitely because AC has fundamental limits.

by mschuster91

6/14/2026 at 12:30:56 AM

if growing up in dubai was any indication, what happens (at least for the next little while) is you get a steady stream of desperately poor people who work until they wreck their health and then get replaced by the next desperate person.

by zem

6/13/2026 at 11:36:53 PM

I always found those japanese van vests supercool. I guess work AC will become more normal

by warumdarum

6/13/2026 at 8:40:06 PM

Wonder how much of a temperature difference is due to El Nino? As a kid I used to spend some time in central India during summers(temp: 40-43C). It helped that schools used to be shut around that time and expectedly, people would spend as little time outside as possible. Also, it's the hot winds that get you(usually more prevalent in the countryside).

by sbmthakur

6/13/2026 at 8:48:03 PM

> it's the hot winds that get you

The difference between sun and shade is pretty big too.

by imoverclocked

6/13/2026 at 8:46:51 PM

What are the hot winds and how bad are they? I can only imagine but but it’s the first time im hearing of hot winds.

by tartoran

6/13/2026 at 8:58:37 PM

It's hard to imagine if you have not experienced it. The air would still be hot even after the sun sets in some parts of India. Usually when wind blows over you you feel cool. With hot air it's like a blow dryer in your face. Just thermal energy being dumped on you making you feel even worse

by rdedev

6/13/2026 at 9:49:57 PM

That sounds absolutely awful

by altern8

6/13/2026 at 9:03:12 PM

If you are in the US then you can go to a hot place in the south west, even Eastern WA/OR or the California central valley when its >105F outside the wind blows and it feels like a hair drier or opening the oven, its not a cool breeze.

by s0rce

6/13/2026 at 9:46:33 PM

I live in the desert SW after living in far more humid climates. Two weird experiences:

Standing outside talking to friends after the sun set, where it's still over 100F outside: I could feel brief (minor) chills pass over me as I'd sweat in bursts and it'd instantly evaporate.

And back when I was cycling, I'd start summer rides about an hour before dawn, when it'd be at its coldest (sometimes 90F for the low). I learned to not rub my face because I'd have salt crystals from dried sweat, and they would abrade skin near the corners of my eyes.

by NegativeK

6/14/2026 at 2:34:17 AM

In southern california, they have santa ana winds[1], which are often hot and very dry. When I lived there it was pretty unpleasant when they were strong. A hot wind in a place that's much warmer would be a lot of heat stress for people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_winds

by toast0

6/13/2026 at 11:28:29 PM

in Spain they have siesta. We observed it in Valencia region - everything stops from 12-1pm until about 5-6pm. The life after that goes well into the night, shops stay open until 1-2am, etc.

In USSR/Russia during especially hot summers the team/orgs i worked at (outside on construction and in the other years inside as programmers (no ACs were yet widespread there back in the 199x)) were working at night skipping the daytime siesta-style.

by trhway

6/13/2026 at 8:49:51 PM

siesta for you, siesta for you, siesta for everybody!

by ares623

6/13/2026 at 9:40:42 PM

If you don't have air conditioning, your laptop is going to have problems.

by FrustratedMonky

6/13/2026 at 11:25:46 PM

In the hotter parts of summer I typically down clock/undervolt my machines to at least hold off them potentially cooking themselves a little. For most work, I don't even need a whole Ghz yet alone 3+ Ghz so it isn't a big issue.

Yes, there are safety measure built in but I just give them a helping hand.

by HerbManic