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118 All-Time Heat Records Set Around the Globe (miamiherald.com)

"It's so hot, even parts of the Arctic are on fire," reports Vox, citing wildfires in Sweden, while Greece "has declared a state of emergency as raging forest fires have killed at least 81 people and injured more than 190."

But heat-related disasters are happening around the world. In Japan 86 people have been killed by heatstroke, while another 23,000 people have been hospitalized -- about half of them over the age of 65 -- in a heat wave forecast to continue for another two weeks. "Japan hit 106 degrees on Monday, its hottest temperature ever," reports the Associated Press, adding that "So far this month, at least 118 of these all-time heat records have been set or tied across the globe." An anonymous reader quotes their report. "We now have very strong evidence that global warming has already put a thumb on the scales, upping the odds of extremes like severe heat and heavy rainfall," Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh said. "We find that global warming has increased the odds of record-setting hot events over more than 80 percent of the planet, and has increased the odds of record-setting wet events at around half of the planet..."

"The world is becoming warmer and so heat waves like this are becoming more common," said Friederike Otto, deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.

"Death Valley, California, has set three consecutive daily record-high temperatures of 127 degrees," reports the Washington Post, adding that "Sometimes, like right now in the Western U.S., it's too hot for airplanes to fly" because of heat-related changes in air density at high-altitude airports. In Europe, nuclear power plants in Finland, Sweden, and German were forced to cut electricity production because high temperatures heated the seawater needed to cool reactors.

In northern California 38,000 people fled their homes as an 80,900-acre wildfire spread through the Shasta-Trinity area. Reuters reports the wildfire was caused "by hot, dry weather and high winds" -- and that it's one of 89 large wildfires currently burning in 14 U.S. states.

8 of 503 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As we watch the world burn by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Informative

    Are greenhouse gas emissions the cause of climate change?

    They are a cause, and whether they are the primary cause or not, physics says they are a significant cause.

    How do we make massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions?

    Duh. If you cared you'd already know. Ask google if you want to pretend to care, there's no shortage of material.

    What impact will it have on our society?

    It gets to continue to exist.

    What impact will it have on developing countries?

    They get to continue to exist.

    Who's going to benefit the most, and who is going to lose the most when these reductions take place?

    The masses will benefit the most, and the wealthy who are profiting from raping the biosphere will lose the most.

    What if it doesn't work?

    We rewrite physics.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Re:And we still hear how global warming is a hoax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Luckily, we have that data, and it shows that not only is this year setting records for high temperatures, so did the previous three years in a row. And the longer term data shows a clear trend.

  3. Re:And we still hear how global warming is a hoax by Namarrgon · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the system was static, with constant average temperatures, then random events would produce an ever-decreasing number of new records each year, both high and low. The regular smashing of numerous high records (with the occasional low as well) is characteristic of a system with increased variability on top of a rising trend.

    But we already know that, not through statistics but because the science has been hammering it home since the 80s, with analysis of not only new measurements but 200 years of temperature records from all over the globe, and proxy records for the last few millennia.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  4. Re:And we still hear how global warming is a hoax by sjames · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the average is constant, you will record fewer new extremes as time goes on. We are recording more extremes suggesting that we have a real problem here.

    In other words, you should expect regression to the mean, not divergence.

  5. Re:And we still hear how global warming is a hoax by sjames · · Score: 4, Informative

    To be fair, most of those predictions "use by" date are still in the future. You can't really complain that they haven't yet come to pass when they weren't expected to yet.

  6. Re:And we still hear how global warming is a hoax by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1, Informative

    But the longer you measure, and we haven't been measuring that long, you statistically expect new highs. That's just how the math works. You need wide-spread and decades-long measurements to make a conclusion.

    You know jack shit about "how the math works". The easiest way to tell is that you obviously don't also expect new lows - funny, because the only new lows come from the likes of you, not from temperature.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  7. Re:And we still hear how global warming is a hoax by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Informative

    Additionally, back in the 70's it was Global Cooling too

    Not in the peer reviewed journals. But in pop-sci media.

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  8. Re:and yet.... by Uecker · · Score: 3, Informative

    That Germany is adding coal plants is a myth.

    This is power generation from coal and lignite in Germany from 1990-2017 in TWh.
    coal 140,8 147,1 143,1 138,4 134,6 146,5 140,8 134,1 137,9 142,0 124,6 107,9 117,0 112,4 116,4 127,3 118,6 117,7 112,2 92,6
    lignite 170,9 142,6 148,3 154,8 158,0 158,2 158,0 154,1 151,1 155,1 150,6 145,6 145,9 150,1 160,7 160,9 155,8 154,5 149,5 147,5

    Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...