Canada is a warning: more and more of the world will soon be too hot for humans

Wed, 7 Jul 2021 05:46:52 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/30/canada-temperatures-limits-human-climate-emergency-earth>

"The climate crisis means that summer is a time of increasingly dangerous heat.
This week in the Pacific north-west, temperature records are not just being
broken, they are being obliterated. Temperatures reached a shocking 47.9C in
British Columbia, Canada. Amid temperatures more typically found in the Sahara
desert, dozens have died of heat stress, with “roads buckling and power cables
melting”.

Another heatwave earlier in June saw five Middle East countries top 50°C. The
extreme heat reached Pakistan, where 20 children in one class were reported to
have fallen unconscious and needed hospital treatment for heat stress.
Thankfully, they all survived.

Additional warming from greenhouse gas emissions means that such extreme
heatwaves are more likely and scientists can now calculate the increase in
their probability. For example, the 2019 European heatwave that killed 2,500
people was five times more likely than it would have been without global
warming.

In most places, extreme heatwaves outside the usual range for a region will
cause problems, from disrupting the economy to widespread mortality,
particularly among the young and old. Yet in places in the Middle East and Asia
something truly terrifying is emerging: the creation of unliveable heat."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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