A Third Of the Planet's Population Is Exposed To Deadly Heatwaves (motherjones.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nearly a third of the world's population is now exposed to climatic conditions that produce deadly heatwaves, as the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere makes it "almost inevitable" that vast areas of the planet will face rising fatalities from high temperatures, new research has found. Climate change has escalated the heatwave risk across the globe, the study states, with nearly half of the world's population set to suffer periods of deadly heat by the end of the century even if greenhouse gases are radically cut. "For heatwaves, our options are now between bad or terrible," said Camilo Mora, an academic at the University of Hawaii and lead author of the study. High temperatures are currently baking large swaths of the south-western US, with the National Weather Service (NWS) issuing an excessive heat warning for Phoenix, Arizona, which is set to reach 119F (48.3C) on Monday. The heat warning extends across much of Arizona and up through the heart of California, with Palm Springs forecast a toasty 116F (46.6C) on Monday and Sacramento set to reach 107F (41.6C).

Comments

Real, but

[XXongo]

Human-induced climate change is real... but this article is alarmism.

A hint: please don't use Mother Jones as a source for science information.

Re:Real, but

[XXongo]

Human-induced climate change is real... but this article is alarmism.

Climate change is real, but how much of a role humans play in it is something we will not fully understand for a long time.

Sorry, but no. Although there is a well-paid effort to make people believe otherwise, in fact, scientists are not actually stupid .

We've understood the basics of the greenhouse effect for over a century; we've had good measurements of infrared absorption spectra for sixty years; we've had good overall models of how it affects temperature for fifty years now; and we've been making detailed measurements of atmospheric profiles and the incident solar forcing factor for thirty years. The overall picture of how human-emitted greenhouse gasses play in climate is understood.

There is still a lot of science being done, but this is is filling in the fine details. The overall picture is not controversial (at least, not by scientists).

That said, this is definitely alarmism.

We agree, however, on that point.

Re:Real, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you will be happy to know that scientists are now studying why the models for global temperature are greatly overestimating the amount of warming that is expected to occur. Models for temperature increase are as much as 9% higher when compared to actual temperatures measured from satellite measurements over the last 15 years.

The study implies that models of historical temperature are undervaluing historical warmth, and the models over-estimate recent years' warmth, in order to create a linearly increasing warming trend; when in reality, historical temperatures are showing that the actual warming trends over the last decades are not significantly higher.

This is the root of the political debate -- how much is it actually warming given sparse historical data, how much has the source data been manipulated to show warming, how much time is there to correct the "problem", and how much money has to be redistributed to politically connected parties to correct the "problem".

Re:Real, but

[mpercy]

Even if warming is part of a natural cycle, it does seem quite likely that man is exacerbating the situation. If nothing else, if we could run our societies without belching pollution into the atmosphere, it'd be the better alternative. I look forward to clean fusion plants (now supposedly only 20 years in the future!).

So please don't call me a "denier". My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort of thing, but far more often the "solution" is just a cloak hiding the proposer's socialist SJW motives.

Even the IPCC report seems to be about poverty and income inequality and funding needed to address it. The report said climate change had the largest impact on people who are socially and economically marginalized. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low and lower-middle income countries, including high mountain states, countries at risk from sea-level rise, and countries with indigenous peoples, and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries in which inequality is increasing," [the report] said. But funding needed to offset the impact of climate change is lacking, the report warned, saying developing countries would need between $70 billion to $100 billion a year to implement needed measures. And efforts to reduce the effects of climate change would only have a marginal effect on reducing poverty unless "structural inequalities are addressed and needs for equity among poor and nonpoor people are met."

It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.

(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”

Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Daphne Muller, green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon: "This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet."

Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."

David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."

Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalizatio

We live in the tropics or subtropics

[xanthines-R-yummy]

Considering most of the globe lives either the tropics or the subtropics, this is probably only going to get worse, especially as the temperate zones become more and more tropical.

the desert is hot

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise, the desert is hot and such high heat is deadly if exposed to it too long. Here is an idea, don't live in the desert.

Millions will perish.

[Gravis Zero]

I find it strange that some people call this alarmism when the truth is that extreme weather conditions were predicted to occur decades ago. It's been going on for a while and we're now getting a taste of its brutal heat. The point is that this brutality is going to spread to much of the planet. In the developed world we have electricity to help cool us and sufficient water to keep our crops alive. However, in the underdeveloped world people will try to survive just like they always have but it won't be enough. Either they will migrate to a cooler climate and/or they will die from the heat. If you don't want mass immigration to devastate your nation, you need to be working on a way to reverse the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Considering how lightly most countries are taking this threat, million of people are going to die and millions more will migrate and it will reshape our societies. You can call it alarmism but it's really happening and it's happening right now.

a third has ALWAYS been exposed to deadly heat

[iggymanz]

in 1990 it was 122 deg F in Phoenix.

this is alarmist trash, study the history of heat waves and find out when the massive deaths were. Hint, not recently. 5,000 dead in the 1936 north american heat wave, for example

kids. imagining any and every bad thing that happens in their lifetime is the world's greatest tragedy. pffft, this is alarmist nonsense.

Re:a third has ALWAYS been exposed to deadly heat

[djinn6]

Weather is not climate. One heat wave 80 years ago doesn't prove anything, especially not if you're comparing the two by the number of deaths. People didn't have AC back then, so of course more died.

Last year was already the warmest year on record, 0.94 C above mid-20th century mean, and we've been having very warm years for the last 2 decades. If your point was that temperatures aren't rising, then I'm going to want to see some data to back up your claims. Even if it's just where you live, can you show temperatures have been flat or falling in the past 4 decades? Or do you just have worse and worse memory and can't remember how cold it was back then?