Living With Temps Over 120º For Months With No AC
by John Lawrence, September23, 2019
That's what it's like in Jacobabad, Pakistan. And then there are the electricity blackouts lasting as long as 12 hours. In Turbat, Pakistan the temperature reached 128.7º on May 28, 2017. Most people in these poor cities cannot afford air conditioners. Probably the rich can. Resting under a shade tree is an option, but most of the shade trees have been chopped down for firewood. You can't work in these conditions. When the air temperature exceeds the human body temperature of 98.6º, the only way to keep from overheating (heatstroke) is to sweat. But when the humidity is also high, the air is already saturated with moisture so sweating is less effective.
To add injury to injury in many cities in the world's heat belt, there is little or no water, certainly no effective system to deliver it. A flushed toilet uses up precious water so people urinate and defecate outside rather than flush into a nonexistent sewage system. Of course none of this reaches the mass media here in the US which is focused not on the world but on tweets here at home especially those of the tweeter-in-chief. His constituents could care less what happens in Pakistan. Their only concern is that ISIS, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram don't start up again, and, if they do, we will send American troops, planes and drones to strike them down.
The US, as the biggest industrialized mass consumer nation, is largely responsible for the century long spewing of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which has caused these abnormal and extreme weather situations which so far have mainly affected the poor in other parts of the world. Of course, the US as a nation takes no responsibility for this. The mass migration of climate change refugees has already begun. Hot and dry weather in the Middle East has dried up the Tigris-Euphrates river basin so that subsistence level farmers migrate to the already overpopulated cities causing regional instability. The old adage that it's not the heat that kills you, it's the humidity, turns out to be true. You can survive 100º temps for days at a time as long as the humidity stays below 50%. By 2100 74% of the population will experience that deadly combination according to some studies. The combination of heat and humidity has reduced the number of days that workers can work outside, thus diminishing their livelihoods.
These excessive temperatures can be mitigated by planting more trees. The micro climate created by a few shade trees can reduce ambient temperatures under them by as much as 9º F. Trees also draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere thus mitigating climate change. There are other ways too. Creating an infrastructure where piped water and adequate sewage systems are universal, where air conditioning is universal, where reliable electric grids are universal could alleviate much of the human suffering which is otherwise in store for the human race mostly in poor countries which will then send their refugees streaming into more advanced nations.
In Houston this year massive flooding precipitated by as much as 40 inches of rain in a couple of days destroyed much of the city 2 years after Hurricane Harvey destroyed much of the city. Harvey caused $125 billion in damage. How much will this tropical storm Imelda (not even a hurricane) cost? Will people have to rebuild every couple of years or so? Imelda has dropped 60 inches of rain in a couple of days. Imelda dropped 4 inches of rain in an hour in some areas, double what Harvey dropped in an hour. Yet when people are interviewed for TV news they will never attribute their misfortunes to climate change. They will just say things like "I've never seen anything like it" except that they have - two years ago.
Some areas of the world are simply a lost cause already. That's why so many people are leaving those areas and migrating. The situation will only get worse in years to come. The Caribbean is a disaster zone, and rather than rebuilding, smart people are only getting out and moving elsewhere. After Harvey, more than 91,000 Texans filed flood insurance claims, and FEMA has paid an estimated $8.8 billion for those claims. But FEMA's budget is limited. In fact it's a political football. According to statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, over the past several decades, the government responded to roughly six disasters a year that caused $1 billion each in damages. Between 2014-2018, however, that number spiked to 13 disasters a year. Now Trump doesn't want any more funds allocated to help Puerto Rico.
It's obvious that people shouldn't rebuild in flood plains. Those optimistic people who think that just because they've experienced a 1000 year flood, there won't be another one for another 1000 years are just wrong. They will probably get a 10,000 year flood next year. Every one of these calamities is the result of climate change, but many don't want to admit it when even the President of the US is a climate change denier. Will it come down to whichever congressional districts have the most influential legislators as to who gets help and who doesn't?
The US needs to start remedying the effects of climate change in other parts of the world rather than trying to control them with its military. That policy will only make it seem more attractive to local residents there to support indigenous groups opposed to the US, so-called terrorist groups. Lately, the definition of a terrorist has change. A terrorist is any group who doesn't agree with the policies of the US and is fighting back. Anyone on the other side of the line dividing the US and its allies with Russia, China, Iran and their allies is a terrorist by definition. A terrorist no longer is someone that wants to blow up buildings in the US, but anyone who objects to US policies with regard to the rest of the world.
However, when it comes to climate change, we are all in this together so we better make peace and common cause with the rest of the world's peoples. The vengeance Mother Nature is taking out shows no preference to any nation so the nations of the world better band together instead of squabbling among themselves over small potatoes.
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