What’s being discovered isn’t reassuring. The India/ Pakistan heat waves are just the latest in a growing list. Heat waves have killed nearly 80,000 people since 2003 according to one recent analysis. The science is showing that prolonged heat waves build heat stress, which is the actual killer, not allowing the body to lose heat.
Heat stress, obviously, depends on the temperature. A 44C day is OK, but consecutive days in that temperature range build the effects of heat stress, affecting sleep and putting added pressure on people with health issues. Heat stress is progressive, and the health results are cumulative.
The result is a diagnostic problem for doctors and statisticians — is it the heat or the health issue that kills? The answer is “both.” The two are inseparable. In the same way that stress affects health, heat compounds health problems. Simply using up too much water in the body is quite enough to seriously affect the health of a healthy person, let alone someone with health issues. Trying to analyze major heat events like the big heat waves in Europe which killed thousands of people in developed countries is therefore not an exact science.
The resulting statistical grey areas don’t help studies of heat effects. Stats are mixed, and not necessarily accurate or helpful in actual assessment of the net effects of heat events. Some deaths are attributed to heat, some aren’t. None are likely to be directly linked to heat unless obviously heat-related factors are involved, like severe dehydration.
Dehydration is also a symptom of another planet-scale problem. The water issue, in fact, is the other, creeping danger of rising temperatures. Global water supplies are compromised by both reducing supplies, increased evaporation and in some cases contamination of water sources. Dehydration kills, quickly. Humans can go without water for at most a few days, followed by organ shutdown and death.
Matters are not helped by the fact that extended heat waves are now a feature of normal summer weather in many places round the world. In Australia, Adelaide experienced record periods of high temperatures last summer. In the U.S., a current heat wave is causing alarm and some frustration in the South, notably in Arizona, where record temperatures around 114F are part of an epic 10-day ordeal of temperatures over 110F.
Not a word about climate change
Interestingly, nobody’s even bothering to talk about climate change regarding these events. After decades of denial, the fact of climate change has arrived, with a death toll attached as predicted, and it’s not even a subject for discussion.
Maybe people have given up. After all, if you discuss anything with idiots, you’ll just have an idiotic discussion. Nearly two decades of discussion with ridiculous political prostitutes and corporate clowns has achieved nothing. Why waste breath, and water vapor? Not a damn thing of the slightest use has been done, nor is it likely to be done.
Equatorial heat issues
The other side of this very tarnished tale of failure on a global scale is that the equatorial and near equatorial regions are now routinely experiencing record heat. This global belt, which includes a lot of highly populated areas, is likely to be Ground Zero for any serious rise in global temperatures, and the prognosis for South East Asia, the Middle East and equator-neighboring regions isn’t good.
Billions of people live in these areas. That’s well beyond the capacity of global resources to support if this zone goes in to the high risk temperature bandwidths. The water supply issues alone would reach into billions of gallons per day.
The food supply, too, is likely to crash. Extreme heat destroys crops, as well as people. It’s unclear if total crop failure is a possibility, but crops like rice need water, and severe evaporation kills them. Feeding this number of people is beyond the logistic capabilities of the world.
At this stage, it’s academic at what point the final murderous crunch will come or how it can be measured. You could put a few arbitrary numbers on a crash point. 50C is a convenient, if not necessarily accurate, number. At a certain temperature, osmosis stops, which would be another meaningful number.
On the positive side, I can see a bright future for apologists and rationalists, clogging the chat shows defining the failure and writing soulful books on how they tried to stop the catastrophe. Sad songs to commemorate the deaths of millions of people will win awards. I can see “great leaders” being great leaders after the meltdown, but not during it, when they’ll all be cowering in their bunkers.
I can also see a panicked mass emigration of truly gigantic numbers of people to safer areas, starving, sick, mismanaged and abused, with huge social and economic consequences. One of the worst disasters in human history will be a big opportunity for more mismanagement on an even greater scale, and further deterioration of quality of life for a world which is now completely uninhabitable in some areas.
You’re looking extinction in the face, humanity, and you’re doing a truly lousy job of avoiding it. While I can see a few great commercial opportunities for myself selling “Save the Morons” T shirts, kidney stone collections, denial seminar DVDs and similar memorabilia to alien tourists, it’s hard to sympathize with such systemic stupidity, corruption, and total incompetence.
This problem isn’t going away. It’s getting worse, every year. The death toll is already defined, and rising. This global game changer will be the payoff for decades of ineptitude. You’re creating a desert and calling it a profit margin.
