WI: Uninhabitable Middle East

So I was reading this article about potential impacts of climate change:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

One of the things it mentions is that, if climate change continues unabated, the Middle East would become unbearably hot. It suggests the Hajj could become impossible in just a few decades time.

So what if we imagine earlier industrialisation of somewhere like China - perhaps a Meiji-lite, the monarchy collapses sooner, or the nationalists win the Civil War. Presumably this needs a POD pre-1900, which is why I've put it here.

What would be the impact of much higher pollution, and thus climate change if the Middle East just becomes unsustainably hot?
 
Frankly, it would have to be a heat level that is higher than at any point in human existence to make it uninhabited. Today, Riyadh had a temperature of 47c, however, the humidity was 8%. It is not close unbearable at 47c for us now and for the ancestors, what temperature would it need to be for inhospitability?
 

ben0628

Banned
Frankly, it would have to be a heat level that is higher than at any point in human existence to make it uninhabited. Today, Riyadh had a temperature of 47c, however, the humidity was 8%. It is not close unbearable at 47c for us now and for the ancestors, what temperature would it need to be for inhospitability?

For the hajj though, wouldn't thousands of people clustered together in such a small area increase the heat, thus adding more to the recorded temperature?
 
Unless it becomes Venus-type hot, people will adapt when they have a reason to. I mean, look at Las Vegas, or on the other side of the heat scale to the oilfields of Alaska and Svalbard. So when there is oil there, people will come and extract it, heat be dammed, and as long as there is money there, people will move there with new ways for their oil-rich cousins to spend it. The biggest impact I see is with more and more of the area becoming unsuited for farming, more and more people will leave the farming towns for the big cities (and the comforts of air conditioning). And all the social upheaval this brings along. Think Dust Bowl Okies times five.... But I don't think the annual Hadj will be impacted significant other than that Mekka might need more parking spaces for air-conditioned busses.
 
For the hajj though, wouldn't thousands of people clustered together in such a small area increase the heat, thus adding more to the recorded temperature?

Perhaps, but at any given time, the cities of Makkah and Madinah, will not have enough people to compound the temperature than any other normal city. It is hot no matter what you do if you sit next to three people at the same time huddled, but also, within the Masjid, there is air condition, safety areas, etc... As well, pilgrims wear extremely light garments of white.
 
You say this as if we dont already have precautions for this. As a Kuwaiti, I've always lived in Kuwait where summers average around 40c!
 
I think people have misunderstood the argument about the Middle East becoming "uninhabitable", they don't mean people can't live there, they mean the agricultural product will fall, access to fresh water will become even more limited. But honestly the Arabic peninsula aren't able to feed itself today, so the difference there will be minor. It's Syria, Israel, Jordan and Iraq, which are in danger zone.
 
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