The leap in temperatures over the past 13 months has exceeded the global heating forecasts – is this just a blip or a systemic shift?
Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.
In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.
Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.
If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost?
There are also some comments about aircon not being a good answer if solely relied on, including:
One of the key effects of heatwaves, which send demand for electricity soaring and cause extreme storms that stress electrical grids, is to cause blackouts. Blackouts mean no more air-con. A recent study suggested a blackout lasting just two days could hospitalise more than half of Phoenix residents and kill 12,000, mostly in their own homes. This is why the author Jeff Goodell warns of a “heat Katrina”: you thought the hurricane in New Orleans was bad?
The reason nothing will be done is because the only realistic option we have to save our planets ability to sustain life is economic degrowth.
We don't have enough of the minerals we need to go fully nuclear or renewable and even getting close would use up vast amounts of the very same energy were looking to save in the first place.
As the record levels of equality directly after ww2 showed, economic degrowth due to nearly all the men being at war, only results in the loss of the super rich which is why they'll never allow economic degrowth.
We all work too much, produce too much and pollute too much. Worse, we're all forced to produce the very wealth thats used to force us into wage-slavery and kill our planet.
The answer is and will always be the strategic refusal of labour, above what we need to survive and have a good quality of life. This, by default, will result in economic degrowth.
Want to sit around and do nothing to save the planet? Well, now you can.
Late or not, we have to do all we can to stop runaway warming and ecological collapse. We know corporations and populations won't do anything voluntarily. That is why legislation is the only way. EU is taking the lead on this. I'm hoping world countries will follow.
The new evidence that Greenland lived up to its verdant name in the not-so-distant past may represent an exciting scientific breakthrough, but it also heralds ominous possibilities for the future of humanity. Present-day atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than they’ve been in millions of years; evidence of an ice-free Greenland in the more recent past means that it could take even less warming than once expected to deplete the continent’s all-important ice sheet. The frozen stronghold that covers Greenland contains enough fresh water to raise sea levels by 23 feet — a staggering volume that would reshape coastlines around the world.
Impossible. Michael Crichton and the experts in Superfreakonomics assured us that scientists would be able to quickly implement geoengineering projects to reduce CO2 and cool the earth. /s
Its cause none of these systems are static or by themselves in a vacuum. There are feedback loops in all parts of our environment. Its not a coincidence that the temperature started to accelerate after the recent series of MAJOR volcanic eruptions in the many parts of the worlds oceans. Throw in the absolute monstrosity that is human industry and well the feedback there is more heat from industry combined with greenhouse gases means the the heat in those areas rises. What does heat do? It rises and moves outwards until it reaches equilibrium. Where is it cold? The arctic and antarctic. What's happening in those places recently? Oh yeah huge spikes in temperature that are causing shifts by over 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit or about 8-10 degrees celsius. Sure it's technically still freezing over the arctic and antarctic for portions of the year. However the arctic has, for the last several years during summer, been almost entirely ice free. The North fucking Pole is ice free during the summer time. That's fucking insane. Everything feeds into everything else with our environment and climate.
Until more people in power actually understand these facts, we are all going to suffer needlessly.
I see a lot of doom and gloom in the comments here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is not the main concern being that sea levels will rise and flood costal cities? Plus some parts of the world will be too hot to comfortably live? Human beings are remarkably creative when they need to be. Right now most are overweight watching TV and worried about stupid unimportant things. But if the need arose to build new towns/cities in higher and cooler locations, we have the man power. Literally BILLIONS of humans, some smart ones to plan it all, and the rest to build it. I don't see an "end of humanity" or "don't have kids" as being reasonable. Humanity will adapt.
Please correct me if I'm missing something here.
The answer is aluminum roofing! I was a the beach a couple of weeks ago and you just couldn't step on the hot magma for any amount of time. But if you sat down on the shadeless aluminum benches provided by the idiots at the government, you were welcome to the best feeling of freezing your ass off while searing your nuts off. It's aluminum, we know it can reflect like 90% of all incoming light including heat and UV....and Wi-Fi. But I much rather have antennas that allow phone communications than to have to run the AC non stop even when the house has more insulation than my fridge.
Maybe, just maybe, if things are not behaving as expected, then maybe the cause isn't what theory says. Look at that list of countries. All contain deserts. All of whom I was taught experience these temperatures when I was in school in the eighties. I'm fucking old with a long memory.