An article that I had missed when it first appeared in The Guardian newspaper in August 2018 popped up in my Facebook feed this week. It’s a truly frightening read.
“Halfway to boiling: the city at 50C.”
The teaser sets the stage.
It is the temperature at which human cells start to cook, animals suffer and air conditioners overload power grids. Once an urban anomaly, 50C is fast becoming reality
That 50 degrees celsius is equivalent to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. No, Hawaii hasn’t gotten there yet, although there appeared to be a relentless movement of higher temperatures across the state this year, making this story relevant not only in the global perspective but also in a very personal, local sense.
It suggests that while local planners are now taking sea level rise caused by climate change seriously, now is the time to start requiring measures to mitigate the impact of increasing heat.
Here’s the lead of the Guardian story.
Imagine a city at 50C (122F). The pavements are empty, the parks quiet, entire neighbourhoods appear uninhabited. Nobody with a choice ventures outside during daylight hours. Only at night do the denizens emerge, HG Wells-style, into the streets – though, in temperatures that high, even darkness no longer provides relief. Uncooled air is treated like effluent: to be flushed as quickly as possible.
School playgrounds are silent as pupils shelter inside. In the hottest hours of the day, working outdoors is banned. The only people in sight are those who do not have access to air conditioning, who have no escape from the blanket of heat: the poor, the homeless, undocumented labourers. Society is divided into the cool haves and the hot have-nots.
Humidity amplifies the effects of heat. Think August to October in Hawaii.
While temperatures of 122F can seem unreal, the Guardian chants through the areas of the globe, and the cities in different regions, which have experienced this level of extreme heat, and climate change threatens to make such heat more common by mid-century.
The article suggests things that can be done.
The city at 50C could be more tolerable with lush green spaces on and around buildings; towers with smart shades that follow the movement of the sun; roofs and pavements painted with high-albedo surfaces; fog capture and renewable energy fields to provide cooling power without adding to the greenhouse effect.
But it also notes that increasing heat is different because it tends to increase gradually rather than all at once. That becomes a political problem because it takes more political will to recognize the problem, unlike the way hurricanes or other natural disasters force themselves into our consciousness.
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Our bodies will evolve to handle the heat. I am sure of it. Maybe our genes will mutate in order to preserve the human race.
Would not count on that!
If people don’t acclimate selves, they don’t adapt.
Hanging out in a/c is not adapting.
Also think it’s physically impossible. Google it.
It’s amazing how many people fail to see this as a serious problem.
It’s not just being able to physically tolerate such temperatures. It’s about human’s ability to grow food and harvest from the sea. Both would be reduced significantly, leaving us to starve in the heat.
exactly on target!!
SOS…yesterday’s cars had fly windows for cooling, with a /c uncommon. School classrooms sweating was called cooling. Nothing has changed except inability for humans to work hard preferring the easy a/c breezes!
The plants still grow relentlessly! Ask your yardman!
Starve without the many fast food groups, ha, ha!
“Nothing has changed….” No, that is absolutely wrong. Temperatures are rising, and the article identifies regions and cities leading the way. Soon we pass from the simply uncomfortable zone into the danger zone where general public health is affected.
Ian, It’s hot, but my tolerance has been reduced by six decades of aging. When I can see , Trump’s hair on fire than perhaps a national trend. In California relatives in Santa Rosa mentioned that they had no Diablo winds since the early 1970’s, followed by two years in a row combined with over population.
Historical abnormalities or catastrophic failure?
Like Hurricane trends, perhaps two consecutive years, that sometime occur, like the old Glenn Campbell song “Galveston ,Oh Galveston”.
Recorded history from Hilo, Hawaii circa 1800, of heavy snowfall at Hilo Bay coastline.
Three is bad, four is hell and five is the conclusive end or last call. Besides A/C sales are gangbusters, the hottest thing since ice makers and microwaves.
we pu a new coat of Cool Roof on our house, and man, it IS now cool inside!
Thanks, Ian, you are correct.
It’s not broadly known that more carbon in the atmosphere triggers a lot of events that aren’t understood by the general public .
One of them is the increased acidity of the oceans. Most of the bottom of the food chain in the seas consists of tiny invertebrates that rely on an outer shell that’s made of calcium. If the acidity goes up, those shells start to go away. Without plankton, a lot of other creatures start to go away. Everything from clams and mussels to the great whales.
. . . and everything in-between.
Ocean temperatures also determines habitat. There are many fish, and other seafood that humans depend upon, that will thrive in certain temperatures. And often those temperatures are cooler. As the oceans warm, fish and other animals will migrate. That makes them harder to find and maybe a lot more expensive to catch.
Before you say “who cares about seafood?” read material written by Dr. Ray Hilborn from the University of Washington. This planet can’t support the current human population with only land-based food production, he said. Much of it depends upon what’s harvested from the sea.
He calculated that if seafood goes away, then every remaining rainforest on Earth would have to be plowed for farming to make up for that loss. And even then it might not be enough.
Farmers here are already seeing the effects of increased temperatures. Kamiya Papaya notes that their trees are adversely affected well when it gets too hot. Other parts of the country is beginning to see it, too, with food production reduced due to drought, heat, and other related factors.
And certainly other countries have been hit, not just by the heat, but by destructive storms that get their energy from heat and the increased moisture content in the air.
A good friend grew up in a farming family in Central Washington. He saw the ups and downs directly. He said it doesn’t take much to wipe out a crop. Just one bad season can make a farm go broke. In his case, it was thousands of acres of wheat and orchards of fruit trees. Overall, they did well. But there were years when they ended up in the red.
Thank you taking on climate change. The Guardian is an excellent newspaper and has a strong focus on climate change–new articles almost daily
Dean made many good points in his comment.