Habitability check

A while back, I was excoriated for stating that a four degree centigrade rise in average temperature could render much of North America uninhabitable.

Part of that reaction, I suspect, has to do with the nuclear-devastation image that the word "uninhabitable" brings to many minds, perhaps combined with the idea that things would be just as they are except a bit warmer. That's not the way the climate system deals with massive energy inputs (global warming, by a different name).

What I was envisioning was more like what's already happening in parts of Australia. Or Pakistan. Or Iowa.

Who knows, maybe four degrees centigrade is an overestimate.