Burn This Mother Down!
by Tony Chavira
I've been reading a lot of science journalism lately focused on evaluating how the Earth's going to change by 2100 (since it's the nearest new century mark). Predictions show that the world's population could go hungry by 2100 from a mix of global warming killing crops, expanding deserts, dramatically-increased temperatures, and wider climate swings with more and more dramatic weather anomalies. Things like air travel will be restricted, certain green-spaces will be very highly protected and the types and amounts of food we will eat will be greatly limited... all because things will fall apart in case we don't start turning around global warming today.
Clearly today isn't the right day to begin work on climate change. So says Senator Lindsay Graham anyway:
“In addition to immigration, we now have to deal with a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which creates new policy and political challenges not envisioned in our original discussions. In light of this, I believe it would be wise to pause the process and reassess where we stand.”
...he says. Green Law Blog's Shari Shapiro was right to say, "Let me see if I understand this correctly--we have a huge environmental problem, so we cannot deal with our...huge environmental problem? Does anyone see this as a cynical pretext for actually having to participate in putting forward a bipartisan effort towards getting a climate bill passed?" Well, we definitely do here at FourStory. Why bother putting Graham's name on the "Kerry-Lieberman-Graham effort" when Graham clearly doesn't not want to put any effort into it?
But this article in NewScientist tells an interesting story under a wilder context: what's Earth going to be like in 2300?
The problem is that we cannot survive if our skin temperature exceeds 35 °C for more than a few hours. Although many people live and even work in temperatures of 45 °C or more, sweating keeps their skin cool as long as it's not too humid.
Put in technical terms, human survival depends on a wet-bulb temperature of less than 35 °C. This is the temperature recorded by a thermometer covered in a wet cloth and kept well ventilated.
"The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan," Sherwood told USA Today.
At the moment, virtually nowhere on Earth has a wet-bulb temperature of more than 30 °C. But with a global rise of 11 °C, huge areas would have wet-bulb temperatures of more than 35 °C for part of the year. According to the climate model used by the team, these regions would include much of the eastern US, the entire Indian subcontinent, most of Australia and part of China.
So there you have it, a world so sizzling hot that we can't even survive without air conditioning. And will there be enough for the whole human population? Probably not. But hey, we can't say that we didn't have 300 or so years heads up!
Comments
No comments.
