Since then when the lah-di-dahs start defining denial of climate science down (more on that later after everybunny else has chewed it to death), Eli points out that there is a real end game out there, that humans cannot survive when wet bulb temperatures go over 37 C because the heat engine that they am (Eli is a bunny) gets stuffed. Moreover if this starts happening a few days a year, why by gosh and golly, folk will pick up and move and some of those folk have nuclear weapons, so it will not be all peaches and cream.
Now comes a report looking at this issue in the US of A and reported on by Tom Randall at Bloomberg News. "Risky Business" looks at the effects of business as usual and points out that large areas of the US will have a few such days each year by 2100 and by 2200, the Midwest will have to move elsewhere to survive more than a month of hell. That or die.
It is interesting to compare the map from Risky Business to that from Sherwood and Huber for a high CO2 world.
We conclude that a global-mean warming of roughly 7 °C would create small zones where metabolic heat dissipation would for the first time become impossible, calling into question their suitability for human habitation. A warming of 11–12 °C would expand these zones to encompass most of today’s human population. This likely overestimates what could practically be tolerated:
What's going on with western Washington in that projection? How does the Puget Sound region wind up worse than So Cal and Texas?
ReplyDeletePresumably humidity. Likely West Texas and So Cal will be very dry and hot.
ReplyDeleteWe don't need to have days when we shouldn't be going out for things to be extremely bad for us. We aren't the only living things on the planet. At 112F corn dies on the stalk. It doesn't wither. It isn't stunted. It's dead. And it doesn't need to be at that temperature long.
ReplyDeleteWe don't need to die of heat stroke to be hurt by high temps.
The only person I've seen actually perish of hyperthermia was a Czech journalist who wore a woolen three piece suit to the Apollo Xi launch.
ReplyDeleteIt was indeed >92F. and swampy.
I know Rabbets hide underground a lot of the time but you should try to get in front of the computer more often to get with the times! (fix the twitter button)
ReplyDelete"The South still attracts the most domestic migrants of any U.S. region. Last year, it boasted six of the top eight states in terms of net domestic migration — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. Texas and Florida alone gained 250,000 net migrants. The top four losers were deep blue New York, Illinois, New Jersey and California."
ReplyDeleteAir conditioning covers a multitude of sins.