Updates 7/18: The high temperature in Phoenix equaled or exceeded 110 degrees F for the 19th straight day, and for the eighth consecutive night did not dip below 90. On Monday, a huge dust storm blew over the city. Death Valley CA reached 128F daytime and 120 between midnight and 1 a.m. on July 17. These are air temperatures--it was estimated that the sidewalks were 200F. Parts of Nevada struggled to go below 100F at night. Parts of Texas continue to be gripped by a heatwave that is challenging power reserves for air conditioning.
But the most dangerous place on Earth seemed to be Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, where the heat index reached 152F. Iran is suffering from water shortages as well. All of these are getting close to fatal combinations of heat and humidity, called wet bulb temperatures. Even in Europe, where parts of Spain topped out at nearly 115F, and Italy at 113. The hot temperatures in Greece are accompanied by fires raging around Athens. Triple digit heat continued in China and Japan. One town in China recorded a Death Valley-like 126F.
Meanwhile the smoke from Canadian fires is again pouring down over Chicago, New York and other US locations. Intense rain in eastern PA caused a sudden flash flood--4 feet of water suddenly washed over cars on a rural road. Only two members of one family survived.
So for the first time I can recall, heat has been consistently in the headlines for days at a time, linked to climate disruption caused by greenhouse gases.
On July 3, Earth as a planet had the highest temperature ever recorded. Scientists estimate that the world was hotter than it has been for something like 125,000 years. That's about 90,000 years before the first known human cave paintings.
The next day, July 4, it was hotter. Two days later, hotter still.
The temperature rise was worst in the worst places for future prospects, like the oceans and the Antarctic, but there are days and weeks already this summer of record-breaking heat in China, India, and Africa where drought persists and spreads, and far northern Canada, where forests continue to burn, week after week. Texas is still in the midst of a crippling heat wave, while its governor signed legislation prohibiting local governments from giving outdoor workers a fifteen-minute water break.
Parts of Arizona were also breaking heat records, and more heat is forecast for much of the Southwest and interior California this week and perhaps for longer. Meanwhile, sudden and intense rain storms—other manifestations of climate distortion-- flooded parts of the northeastern US and southern California. This was after dense smoke from Canadian fires choked areas of the northeast and Midwest—smoke that is very likely to return.
This is all happening even before the Pacific ocean phenomenon known as El Nino was predicted to start bumping up temperatures; scientists forecast it would be doing that six months from now. Global heating, augmented by other atmospheric and ocean factors, is likely to make this the hottest year on Earth. Until maybe next year.
The phenomenon of global heating is a condition of the atmosphere that surrounds every inch of the Earth's surface. Its basically distorts the climate systems that have harbored life as we know it for, say, 125,000 years. Hotter weather is one of its manifestations, at different places and times. But where heat and its other expressions occur, their effects are global: everything is affected.
Here’s the basic fact to consider about these current manifestations of climate distortion-- the fiery winds, the relentless floodwaters, the smothering smoke, the rising tides, collapsing land, deathly drought, titanic storms, and the implacable blankets of heat: they don’t notice if your house is worth fifty thousand dollars or five million. They don’t care about your stock portfolio or your credit score. They don't read your bumper stickers or yard signs. They don’t take into account your race, political party or religious affiliation.
You can’t threaten heat with your AK-47, and you can’t shoot it dead. You’ll sicken even quicker in your body armor. You can't stop it with a gene-splice or an AI program. There isn't an ap or a hack that makes it go away. Congressional hearings just add more hot air.
Heat doesn’t care if you live off the grid or in a metropolitan tower. It doesn’t care where you get your news, or whether your smartphone is the latest. It doesn’t know if you are a banker or an influencer, a feminist or a Proud Boy, or if you hate liberals or hate baby boomers. It doesn’t care what your pronouns are. It doesn’t notice how many likes you’ve collected.
It doesn’t care that you resent the rich or fear the poor. When the tarmac melts at the airport, neither the airbuses nor the private jets can take off. When the asphalt sinks, the Mercedes and the Volt alike can’t get very far. When the grid goes down from too much demand, and there’s no more fuel for the home generators, not much about you matters except where you are and who will help you.
It took an entire year to gather and interpret the data, but it turns out that last summer in Europe—the hottest in its history so far—more than 61,000 people were killed by the heat. Some died from heatstroke, but in more cases, heat killed people with serious conditions that otherwise would have lived.
How many strokes and heart attacks are caused by the inability to breathe caused by intense heat? How many accidents are caused by overheated brains? How many more diseases carried by insects that thrive on heat are spreading? How many infections and chronic conditions are related? These things may not get counted quickly or at all, or widely reported (especially if they involve so-called migrants, the poor generally, the old) or even noticed, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening.
The current and upcoming heat wave in the southwestern US is at least happening at a time of the year when the air is dry. If it recurs later in the summer, with higher humidity, it could conceivably reach the most dangerous condition in which (if the AC goes) thousands and even millions could die in a few days. Poorer places in Asia are even more vulnerable to this outcome, but parts of Texas and the Midwest are likely to see both triple digit temperatures and high humidity in the coming days, and the Southeast is always prone to that potentially lethal combination. The Pacific Northwest may be in for its second once-in-a-thousand-years heat dome of this year.
Heat affects the body and the mind, mood and emotions, and the ability to think clearly. The heat debilitates, and it can kill you even if you don’t believe in it, and all your cyberspace friends agree. It doesn’t weaken if it polls badly. You can’t shout it down or argue it away.
Of course, it doesn’t hit everyone equally—not at first. But the effects spread and cascade, so eventually it doesn’t matter if you are a billionaire or homeless, a buffed-up model or a helpless elder. It still happens. Even if it isn't hot now where you are, you will still feel its effects eventually.
The heat beats down on the animals crowded into mechanical meat factories, and in the fields and forests. It bakes the soil and kills the roots of once-future food. It boils the water and the fish in it. It scalds the oceans and the tiny organisms that provide us with most of our oxygen. It kills the bees that keep plants growing, the insects that feed the birds (though it’s relatively kind to mosquitoes) and on up the chain. Heat doesn’t care if you’re a vegan or a vegetable. It just is.
There's a lot that can be done to address the effects of climate distortion, and to address its causes so it doesn't get hopelessly worse in the far future. It’s a complex crisis but with a fundamental choice. Either society works together for all, so that chances increase that many survive, with life on the planet relatively intact and the future is better, or it ultimately becomes every being for itself, with misery and violence for most, when at best only few survive, in conditions no one wants to contemplate.
Not everybody has to buy in, but the appropriate institutions on every level must be strong and courageous, and focused. As time goes on it will take many more capable and dedicated people to do this work. This is a planetary emergency that is also many national and local emergencies. All other distinctions among citizens ultimately become fatal distractions. Until there is nothing but confusion, anger, desperation and then just dull heat in anyone's head.
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