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Report: Future US Heat Waves Will Be Worse
The nation is headed for strong heat waves in coming decades that will hit cities and farmers and threaten wildlife with extinction, a new global warming report warns.
A man sits with his shirt unbuttoned and his shoes off in Bryant Park in New York, Aug. 18, the second straight day cooling centers in all five boroughs were open. New York is among cities predicted to be worst affected by climate change. (By Mario Tama, Getty Images) The report, "More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming's Wake Up Call," sponsored by medical, environmental and civil rights organizations, comes as a legislative fight over a climate change bill gets ready to resume next month in Congress. Its remedies are based on recent findings of global warming effects by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates climate research across federal agencies.
"The report highlights the current vulnerabilities from heat waves growing," says climate scientist Amanda Staudt of the National Wildlife Federation, a report sponsor. Average temperatures are expected to grow 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit nationwide over the next century, according to the federal climate research group.
The severity will vary with industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, but "heat waves will continue to get worse in the coming decades," the report warns. It lists the 30 major cities most at risk.
In June, the climate research program published a report that found average temperatures in the USA have increased more than 2 degrees in the past five decades, largely as the result of emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which are produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, which drives up temperatures in the air and oceans.
"Heat waves worsen not only direct effects like heat stroke but also heart disease, asthma and other respiratory problems," says Peter Wilk of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C., a report sponsor. The 1995 Chicago heat wave killed more than 500 people, and the 2003 European heat wave killed more than 35,000, he adds.
"People in cities, the poor and often people of color, are the most vulnerable," says Benjamin Jealous, head of the NAACP, another report sponsor. "They are most likely to live in high-rise apartments, lack air conditioning and other resources. Climate change is a civil rights issue."
Says environmental hazards expert Michael McGeehin of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was not part of the report: "This report does a nice job of laying out the risks and steps we can take in the face of changing climate. Every heat death is preventable."
33 Comments so far
Show AllTo those who will read this comment it is not a blog my work is this issue and i know that it all comes down to one issue. That is the environment versus the the economic realities that will not allow humanity to focus on its survival. This issue revolves around "consumer confidence". lets look at the words, CONSUMER CONFIDENCE! YOU HAVE ALL BEEN MADE INTO CONSUMERS. Consumption, based in use of hydrocarbons for energy is the two factors driving all environmental breakdown.
Humanity is doomed, consumerism, which the military industrial complex protect with its emphasis on the oil producing regions, like Iraq and Afghanistan for pipeline access is why America is still there after Obama made you believe this George War would end, how could it, after all Cheney shot is friend in the face, there are no friends only oil? This war assures the business interests of continued growth and investment. The Banks, Wall Street and the likes of EXXON Mobile will continue to supply the fuel for your Hummer. This species may develop once again when the Earth has purged itself of this failed attempt at humanity, "eternal reoccurrence as Nietzsche referred to it.
We look at the what will happen in the next fifty years with heat waves in the USA the threat of a 10 to 14 rise in temperature in the USA, ho hum, the environmental tragedy grinds inexorably on. However temperature rise in the USA effects older people, we have too many of those in any case. But the rising ocean levels, population explosion in the next 25 years largely taking place in the developing world, along with fresh water depletion, increasing conflict based on the forgoing, diminishing forest cover, diminishing food supplies, increases in toxicity leading to species extinction with the final extinction of the human race. The human race functions on a hot stove principal, the rhetoric, "don't bother me with the future I am living now and may not be alive tomorrow, let those alive than worry about it."
Lets understand one thing, the economy based on a world driven consumer society which as you all know is based in money greed and profit. This is the problem with token attempts to do anything about it because the steps necessary to change it would upset all the entrenched interests to do what would be necessary to change ! These reports are interesting as a bystander watching the catastrophe unfold. Obama used these utterances of hope and change, with his black skin to attract the youth vote and those of us who thought, why not there is nothing else to lose give it one more final chance.
We now know it is all hopeless so lets get along with it and finish the whole stupid construction of a democratic society based in equality and hope for future generations. "Yes we can, create an apathetic youth!
ike kay,
i try to suggest on CD that we do not "need" automobiles, some write back that automobiles are "essential" to life.
You are right we are "consumers"... we are consuming our way to hell on a very fast train, at this point a very short trip.
Enjoy the ride everyone, keep on drivin'!
OR: Do not buy anything that you do not truly need.
Webwalk,
Thank you for your attempt to have people understand they have been conditioned by Wall Street to want what really is not necessary. How many out there are aware of the fact that the Automobile and Oil industry worked to dismantle the transportation industry? We have been sold down the river by the corporate mentality and the banks which we have just been bailed out at your children's expense. You have been sold on making your future earnings tied to Wall Street. You have been made an investor in the stock market whether or not you liked the idea. This is the greatest shill game invented.
The system is rotten to the core. The congress, for the most part is rotten to their souls and in league with the secret police and the military to keep things just as they are. Most people are under the assumption that this system is just the way it should be, as the older people die the truth dies with them. A good reason to eliminate medicare and medicaid get the old folks out of the way as soon as possible.
It has been the goal of most members of congress, the old guard (re-elected too many times) to do away with social security and medicare. The way to do that without anybody noticing or yelling to loud is to make those programs too expensive to fund. How do they do that? A two trillion debt for the kids to pay is one way to do that. When we are gone the cost of healthcare and social security will have to be scrapped as well as medicare because they will be too expensive to fund. This is the way to do that without big problems like "W" - The main Con Man", experienced when he tried to tie social security to the stock market. That scam failed miserably because the old folks were having none of it they new it was a scam,
However, he did put the USA in big debt with an illegal war that filled the pockets of the Bankers, Insurance and oil companies. All this while Obama and his gang of six continue the con game. The next social program targets will be social security and medicare as I have explained above. He was put in office by the big boys who figured that a black man would not cause too many waves and people might believe him while they would not believe the CLINTONS,
Don't look for hope it can only be found in the archives of CNN and FOX in the footage of the Obama Presidential campaign, never to rear its ugly name again!! "Hope and Change"? The only change you will see is the end to social security and all other social programs designed to benefit the poor people, who have seen their 401Ks become worth less than the 1929 market ticker-tape. Truth you can believe in?!!!!! This is the most cynical bullshit that has ever been sold to the American people at least with "W" you knew it was a lie straight out and not covered with a black screen!
IKE
That was the amazing thing about NYC, for one, up to mid-1960's ...
You could go anywhere, do anything, easier than with a car --
and have a lot more fun doing it.
In NJ, I feel as though the car and I are becoming one!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
A basic principle of ecology/biology is that an organism cannot survive in its own waste. It moves on or it dies.
Humans have chosen to try to live in their own waste. Since they have poured their societal excrement over the whole planet, they have no place they can move on to.
Ergo, lots of dead humans real soon now. Lots of dead everything actually.
We will not be mourned by the planet nor by the animals and plants that manage to survive our stupidity. Nothing alive will care, or even know what happened.
It would be interesting to know what the next dominant life form thinks of the artifacts of art and architecture and other markers of civilization we leave behind. I suspect they will simply determine whether the "Mona Lisa" is good to eat and if the U.S. Capitol building offers decent shelter from the elements.
Rah rah humanity! Chittering monkeys too stupid to save themselves.
I'm not so sure you can say your final goodbye to humanity just yet. When I worked with the urban homeless I would see pregnant crack addicts, thin as human toothpicks, who nevertheless managed to deliver children into this world. Another friend worked in Cambodian refugee camps, where disease was rampant and the women starving, and still there were pregnant women delivering babies. I think it very likely that a remnant of humanity will survive whatever climate change throws at them since we are an amazingly tough species. It definitely is time to say goodbye to civilization as we know it, however. For all the reasons you and the first poster suggest, that will not survive. We definitely are too stupid to save civilization, and for that, I'm sure Mother Earth will be grateful.
Obama's environmental plan is no better than the metaphor of the crack mothers. In fact, they both carry forward the addiction to the next generation. Those who survice will be those long in recovery from Western Culture, or those who have repudiated it a long time ago.
Humans are like cats; either in heat or pregnant.
I will task you on your statement "we are an amazingly tough species". Not true. Humans are an amazingly weak species, with very low tolerance of change in both external and internal environments. I would put no money on a naked monkey surviving anywhere.
We do, however, excel in modifying our immediate environment to make life less painful. Therein lies the rub, as the environments we create are destructive to the greater environment. As we change our immediate environment, we rid it of all fauna and flora, making it increasingly sterile. Sterile environments are at risk to invasion by foreign species and as such, is increasingly fragile.
naked monkeys survive in a lot of places.
But only with the help of a credit card, clothing, microwave ovens, guns, TV, a Ford Explorer and a nearby McDonalds.
Exactly.
And when the daytime temp is 150 degrees in the shade, if the sedimentary fossil record is any guide, 99 percent of the species remaining now, will be unable to adapt, and will go extinct. This means us. There is a small chance of the species surviving, in a familiar now, scenario where the one percent elite will live in air conditioned splendor and be able to live like astronauts in bubble city.... But more likely they will use the crisis to declare world war and nuke themselves in the process....
Glaciers move, and carve valleys in the timeframe of thousands of years. I still find it shocking to realize that just in my short lifetime, 20 percent of them have disappeared. Something is wrong. The timeframe from which this is supposed to happen has accelerated beyond all belief. And despite what the "climate deniers" tell you, it directly mirrors the CO2 PPM curve. Greenland's melt runoff has mullions everywhere that are running on the scale of Niagara Falls. If this Ice cap breaks up all the way, the sea will rise by 20 feet.
Not good.
Meanwhile, on Faux News and Rush-the-druggie's AM radio show for the gifted, this is all a vast left-wing liberal conspiracy fueled by the "liberal media". Despite the fact that every scientific body ever formed (non corporate) agrees the poles are melting.
Because they own the airwaves, and most citizens can't read at the college level anyway (and rely on TV for info), these Fortune 500 Crime Families are going to take all of us over the falls in a barrel. Let's hope we are luckier than hell.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
The picture suggests that we in the west are going to have to continue dealing with fat in the future.
Science has the capacity to solve all these problems. You would think science would be working on them right? Wrong.
Instead science is working on weapons, putting beta carotene in rice, and starving anyone who refuses to buy corporate seed.
Can't we spend our money at home? Let's let the government employ all scientists to solve our problems at home instead of having them work for multinational corporations intent on getting richer.
This capitalistic system is insane. It's going to kill us all, just like the drug companies are already at war against the sick.
Science is not a person. Science doesn't work at anything.
Science is a tool that people use to investigate and test the world, as well as to invent things.
People use science in the way they do everything, sometimes for good ends,
sometimes for bad.
Morticia, you sweet little thinker you! Now if you could only convince the idiots who believe dinosaurs wore saddles for us and that some god or other will take care of the world. To them science is an evil 'thing'. And truth is an alien concept.
Why are you picking on Morticia? She made the same point I was trying to make. Science can't help us unless we apply it to problems that threaten us instead of trying to use it to making money even as the whole world is ending.
I wasn't picking on her. I was indicating that I like the way she was thinking in the post.
It's humans doing that crap, N. And it's not the system that's insane, it's the damn fools gaming the system who are insane. Aside from anthropomorphizing science, good points.
To quote someone from somewhere (possibly a religious book)- if someone is coming to kill you, get up early and kill them first. Well, look who's trying to kill us all...
YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW !!!!
How hot do things have to get before all solutions are considered?
Reintroduce hemp agriculture, manufacture and trade into the equation of survival, and the limiting factor becomes 'time.' Every spring that passes without recognizing the true value of Cannabis is an opportunity that's lost forever. Time is the only thing we can't make more of.
Cannabis is the only crop that makes food and fuel from the same harvest. Cannabis produces more protein per acre, organically, sustainably in more soil and climate conditions than any other crop. Same goes for Cannabis biofuels production.
Rotational agriculture is a "tool" that employs the most ancient science there is. Radiative forcing of the atmosphere with Cannabis monoterpenes is a huge part of the equation that is currently not even being discussed.
Cannabis agriculture vs. climate change
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/projectpeace
First, our species needs to decide that it really wants to survive. At that point, all potential remedies will be objectively, rationally reviewed, irrespective of the dominant chemical-industrial paradigm that has mis-led us to the brink of synergistic collapse.
I challenge anyone to find a flaw in the rationale posited at
http://californiacannabisministry.blogspot.com/2007/09/cannabis-agriculture-vs-global-broiling.html
I have been hearing alot lately about trying to use science to stop the earth warming, in other words,climate control. For instance, on NPR the other day, the Earth and Sky minutes that come on in the morning, a scientist discussed putting dust in the atmosphere to act the way that volcanic ash does- to block out the sun and cause...
the next ice age if you ask me. This is the crap they are coming up with. Let's play God and try to control weather now. I've heard other things like this.
The problem is we, most of us any how, have lost our connection to the earth. So much so, that for some, to have to live like the average person did say for hundreds or thousands of years ago, with out modern conveniences, would be death itself. Soil is dirt to them. They are so disconnected, it's as if they themselves have become-plastic....
"We are the hollow men..." W.B. Yeats saw it coming: progress toward the shining city on a hill created by the ingenuity of man.
We have arrived and found everything made of plastic, including ourselves. We have arrived and reached our destination, the wasteland.
"We have given our hearts away---a sordid boon"---James Russell Lowell
It need not have been this way. We should have respected our origins, Mother Earth and our Father, even if we knew nothing about him.
Now it is time for us to be punished for our sins. Our sins were all against ourselves, and as everyone knows, they were many.
T. S. Eliot
The US & British governments and military have been manipulating weather for at least forty years...
HAARP and ELF technologies, coupled with Chemtrails (not contrails that disappear) aerially sprayed over urban centers, rural towns, and food growing regions around the world... have been affecting weather, temperature, crops, animals, and human health... The aluminum and berium salts in the chemtrails act as greenhouse gasses, as well as reflecting the ELF's back to the earth... This Tesla technology is capable of creating megastorms, super tornadoes, and massive hurricanes, as well as earthquakes and tsunamis...
They have been associated with respiratory issues, flu symptoms, cancer, dementia and even death... The particulates spread out and form a hazy fog over the targeted areas, eventually falling to the ground and contaminating soil & water...
Google the video "Dont talk about the weather" for the how's and why's...
It will blow your mind...
Of course, the gov't will deny it...
And the cynics will dismiss it as a conspiracy theory...
The evidence is startling...
As a follow up to that I seem to remember reading somewhere that all the wind farms that popped up in the last few year are actually phased transmitter arrays for weather control.
Did anyone else read hat? I googled it but was unable to find it again. I'm not surprised actually.
Yes, and anything else healthy like solar causes mind waves that cause alien abductions and.....
Only a Pentagram nut could come up with something so bizarre. Wind farms do not control weather! The only thing strong enough to affect global weather is the Sun. Seeding clouds with small particles that accumulate moisture only causes precipitation, it does not make the hot uplift necessary for big storms. Huge Oceans (heatsinks) do that. When the water is 90 degrees like it was in Florida in 2005, you're in big trouble because a literal conveyor belt from the ITCZZ (Inter tropical convergence zone) will set up record numbers of hurricane like the ones that nailed New Orleans.
This is not to say that cloud-seeding is safe. Most spaying is not. Putting dust in the atmosphere is like playing Russian roulette in my opinion. Of course it could mean billions to the aerospace industry, so I'm sure they've got the spin machine cranking up as we speak. But a better, safer thing to do is:
Outlaw the private automobile. Tax babies. It is the only way.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
These heat waves, are they gonna come before or after the Gulfstream shuts down and North America freezes over?
Huh, what? That's another scenario? I thought the science on this was solid. Oh, not really then. I get you.
By the way they've been predicting thunderstorms in my area for the past two days. We had the niceset weather instead.
I guess them computer models might not be all they are supposed to be.
Science is never solid. Microbe mutations, Global temperature changes, even the odd asteroid close call. Everything changes.
Your last paragraph betrays your ignorance of scientific progress. Computer models are far more accurate than they were only a year ago.
No computer model can predict long term--or even short term--climate changes.
There you go. Nice work. I knew there was a reason I read your books.
It's not just in the US. Other countries are experiencing rain and floods when it's not the wet season.
+++
http://virtualhires.com
This discussion is completely absurd.
Some valid points are being made and hemp cultivation is always welcome in my world.
I wonder how many kilowatthours are being used to perpetuate the "State phobic" ravings of those whose supposedly radical renunciation of the dominant paradigm afford them these "insights".
The endless popular refrain of apocalypse is ridiculous. This has been a deep tradition of American provincialism for several centuries, and I doubt the instinct to catastrophe will change. Nevertheless I find it a vapid waste of electricity.
Actually the popular refrain of apocalypse in provinces all over the world has been pretty much all religious, with no foundation in fact or evidence.
The climate 'apocalpyse', if you will, is grounded in reality, in evidence and fact. It is more likely than not that it will happen - in fact, it already is happening. The question at this point is really a matter of degree, and degrees.
OBLIU 222
THE ONLY THING ABSURD IS YOUR COMMENT. YOU ARE A PERSON IN COMPLETE DENIAL.