The individual experience of heat exhaustion has a sobering message for us as societies. We can stumble on,…

The individual experience of heat exhaustion has a sobering message for us as societies. We can stumble on, thinking we’re fine. While critical life support systems are in terminal decline. This applies at the level of whole societies too. /1 https://t.co/uya2hK6oAo

Our social processes are heavily dependent upon us operating within a fairly narrow band of temperatures. Go outside of those, and societies will collapse, as surely as individuals will. We’re already seeing this. /2

Prolonged, chronic underheating and undercooling where people live kills and maims. Slower than extreme temperatures. But it’s just a slowing of the inevitable. Thermoregulation is is a critical individual *and* social process. /3 https://t.co/iNx0lJDzwY https://t.co/AhwLhXHqyU

36 million Europeans in 2020 alone were unable to warm their homes adequately in 2020. Many here in Oz are now reverting to wood burning to hide energy poverty. With terrible impacts on air quality and health. /4

Widespread scientific illiteracy doesn’t understand the distinction between temperature and heat either. Why even a fraction of a degree of change in global temperature represents enormous changes in heat flows. /5

And our cooking oceans, where these fractions of a degree of temperature change represent astronomical amounts of heat being released. Outer space is lethally cold. All life as we know it requires thermoregulation, inside a TINY band. /6 https://t.co/DeEDm3IAtj

A band we’re fucking with, with abandon. Move outside that band and you’re dead. Individually, and collectively. /end

h/t to @YouAreLobbyLud for the heat exhaustion link