I noticed this Summer I started transitioning my morning walks to pre-sunrise hours to try to escape the heat (since even mornings in Ohio are getting to be hot). Since global warming (or climate change in general) is happening and there’s apparently nothing to be done to fix it in our lifetimes, it made me wonder if our overall society might move towards more nocturnal working hours instead of the standard 9–5, just to escape overheating during the day?
There’s probably no incentive currently, since workers aren’t dropping like flies yet, but I could see it coming into play as global warming gets worse over time and it causes legitimate production issues. Probably some jobs wouldn’t have the option, but most I think would be able to benefit from it. Does this sound like something realistic, or are we cursed to have to endure extreme temperatures because we’ve always worked in the daytime and we can’t/won’t change now?
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I heard recently that about 8x more people die from excess cold than from excess heat.
No human society in any climate has ever been nocturnal: https://web.archive.org/web/20030318032208/http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm
No, but a lot of communities in hotter climates have integrated habits like siestas, where breaks including are taken in the hottest part of the day. I can see that being adopted more, especially in cases when wet bulb temperatures exceed the human body’s capacity to cool itself.
I also know that a lot of construction activities in Phoenix and Las Vegas in the summer months are scheduled towards early morning due to the heat. They might work an hour or two in twilight and then finish work by early afternoon.
I expect schedules to change, but I don’t see going full nocturnal.
And the world will run on Bank hours until the world collapses. If the banks change to being open at night then maybe but I don’t see that happening
and there’s apparently nothing to be done to fix it in our lifetimes,
This really isn’t true, and treating it as true will lead to a much nastier future than “it feels really hot out most of the time”. It has implications for agriculture and ecological collapse, with entire societies being destroyed and some of the more privileged ones turning to eco-fascism. It’s a much darker future than you give it credit for, but also much less inevitable.
Sure, there’s plenty that could be done, but chances are nobody that has the power to affect change is going to start taking substantial action on it until things get absolutely catastrophic. I imagine we’ll some sort of environmental 9/11 moment, something like a major American city gets flooded and rendered permanently uninhabitable, and then suddenly everyone will be like, “Holy shit, this is bad, like bad-bad.” And then we’ll start seeing actual serious action on it. Before that though, it’s something that will see half-hearted action or non-binding resolutions or platitudes or wishy-washy carbon offset schemes, but little that actually forces companies to stop polluting. We see more forceful action taken against environmental protesters than against corporate polluters.
It’s certainly true that politicians and the owning class oppose environmental action very strongly, but that doesn’t make it hopeless. We, the working class, are the basis of their power and wealth; we concretely have the power to force them to cooperate or topple them entirely. Clearly, the enviromental movements aren’t that strong yet, but they are getting stronger and the decaying environment will provide a basis for accelerating their growth as more people like you and I begin to take these issues seriously.
Plants don’t grow without light. Plants can’t survive extreme heat and drought.
Once it gets too hot or too dry to grow crops, it won’t matter anymore. Call me a doomer, but we aren’t doing enough to stop that future from happening.
Idk, our crops can’t survive extreme heat and drought but certainly there is life in a desert. The ol’ Carlin bit of the world will be just fine and all. But, you have to consider the fact that we have always migrated in the past during extreme climate changes and will have to do so in the future if it continues. There is plenty of places like Canada where the climate change will boost some sectors. Same with the fact Antarctica used to be tropical, we’ll just huddle around the proverbial fires of our community wherever they need to go to survive.
We don’t grow our crops in a desert. They grow in very specific regions of the world, often in areas that are suitable due to natural formations and easily obtainable water. Most of Canada is forested land that is uninhabited with no infrastructure such as roads, running water, or electricity - not to mention there has never been a large agricultural presence in those areas, so it would have to be started from scratch, if it is possible at all.
When you say we’ll huddle around the proverbial fires, it might be a very small human population. Our civilization (likely including both of us) probably won’t be around at that point.
The thing is also, the models work reasonably well on the global scale, but the local scale is something different. Whoever did work in climate change impacts knows that we still work mostly in darkness and just try to prepare for the worst.
The climate is no simple thing. Who knows, maybe some weird shit with the ocean will happen and increase the rainfalls over northern africa by 500% and the Sahara becomes a jungle. Probably unlikely, but we don’t really know.
Finally all you fucks will work on my schedule! Night owls unite!
I think the key is just avoiding the heat of the day. A lot of Mediterranean societies already have slow hours during the hottest times (the clearest example being the Spanish Siesta) and it makes a lot of fucking sense.
I doubt we’d move fully nocturnal but normalizing long midday breaks would be excellent - the main impediment is probably our shitty commute oriented society… if it takes you 15 minutes to get home it’s quite reasonable to head home at lunch - if it takes you an hour and a half it’s impossible.
I used to work exclusively night shift and it was such a pain getting anything done that required me to go into a government office or a bank or any of those “respectable” businesses that only operate during the day time, since I was typically sleeping til 4pm usually right before I needed to go to work. It was literally night and day switching to 1st shift.
What were your hours? i love night shift because it allows me to take care of whatever i need to during the day when everything is open.
i work 20-6
There was only two shifts there, it was a welding job for a Honda supplier. It was like 5pm to 1 or 2am most nights, but depending on what the workload was like we would have to work all the way til the next morning when 1st shift came in. I do not miss that life.
Our time has come! night owls rise up!
But… I like the solitude of night time. :(
Yeah I was gonna say, I’m a night owl and I love it because it’s the only time of the day when people aren’t bothering me with nonsense lol. They’d better not all go nocturnal!
The early risers rule the world… the work hours would become like 4am-12pm
I would be happy to see morning people get the shit end of the stick, finally.
No, because humans are hardwired to be diurnal and there is very little we can do to change that. We have a prominant window of circadian low, and it’s one of the biggest threats to pilots that fly at night (among other safety critical jobs) even they we have slept for 8+ hours right before their shift.
You might think you can function just fine at night, you might even think you function better at night, but science says otherwise.
That article you linked was a really interesting read. Thanks!
