About the heat wave in Canada and the rapid climate model attribution. We are desert adapted animals. It's in our DNA, and what we need to change for heat waves is behaviour. Even elderly and babies have the biology to live in hot deserts so long as it's dry.
What we need for heat waves is to adapt our behaviour.
This is not instinctive. Desert people will learn from their community.
- drink lots of water!
- ventilation
- blinds or window reflectors
- stay in shade
- go somewhere cool
- air conditioning
redcross.org/get-help/how-t…
Although Lytton had record heat, it was also very dry, 15% humidity. Also though it was record heat in Lytton, temperatures above 40 C are not unusual. In dry summer conditions with Canadian long summer days and short nights, heat builds up in a heat trap far from the sea.
This is about local temperature not global temperature. When it was 20 C hotter than normal for that day in Lytton it was 15 C colder than normal in parts of central US. Can't find map for the actual day only day after sorry.
Although rare, places in southern California and nearby have been warmer than this in the past. The long summers in Canada make heat waves there more likely than you expect.
At 2 C warming the climate of Seattle will be similar to that of San Francisco today (sorry doesn't have Vancouver on this map)
(cites to all these graphics in blog post debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Heat-waves-in-… )
Humans need to be able to keep our body at 37 C for optimal health. To do this we need to cool our skin to 35 C as we need 2 C difference to avoid over heating. Minimum temperature our skin can achieve by sweating is the "wet bulb" temperature and depends on temp. and humidity.
Most places have maximum wet bulb temperature well below 35 C. That includes most deserts as they are very dry. But a few small hot spots already go above 35 C regularly.
This is one of them. Each dot is a day. It's been occasionally "too hot" for humans for a couple of hours at a time back to 1987.
However this is not literally too hot for most humans. If you don't have a fever already, then a wet bulb of 36.6 would mean you can't cool down to below 38.6 equivalent to a high fever. You won't die of a couple of hours wet bulb even well above 35 C but will feel unwell.
The highest body temperature anyone has had and survived according to the Guiness World Records is a remarkable 115.7° F or or 46.5°C! Discharged at "prior baseline status" after 24 days in hospital.
At 4.9 C then parts of the hottest paddy fields in China get "too hot for humans" in this sense. Workers would experience a fever for a few hours during the occasional hottest heat waves.
At 3 C then the world doesn't get to these 35 C wet bulb temperatures (apart from the rare hot spots mentioned). At 4.9 C (now unrealistic) potentially over a million person days could be over 35 C. Out of our 7.8 billion people.
Researchers found the heat waves were a 1 in 1000 year event according to their models even at current warming levels.
1933 record of 45 C is not surprising for Canada but the 49.6 C record is far higher than you'd expect without global warming, only once every 150,000 years.
Two possibilities.
1. a 1 in 1000 year event, more common as we warm up..
2. not modelling details of climate properly.
It is not so easy to model such details in the climate models.
1 in 1000 may seem impressive but statistically not very significant. There may be hundreds, or thousands of records of different climate variables that we measure every year. It wouldn't be surprising to have a "1 in 1000 year event" somewhere, of some variable, every year.
Strongest hurricane. Strongest tornado. Coldest cold snap in winter. Temperature record in Siberia. Temperature record in Australia, etc etc.
It's certainly reason to look closely at their models, but it is not at the level really of "evidence" that they are missing something.
In any case for human habitability it's not the temperature record we look at. It's the wet bulb temperature. Canada is an unlikely place to set a record there. Highest wet bulb temperatures so far < 27 C.
Hot but dry heat. Humans can easily cope - with adaptations of behaviour.
Climate action tracker make our pledges 2. C with optimistic targets, and "well below 2 C" is well within reach now with future commitments in COP26 and then in 2025 and 2030 as our technology and experience improves and pressure to act continues to mount. debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/With-statement…
Technology is helping. Solar panel prices dropped 10-fold in 10 years and continue to fall fast. They are now cost competitive with the lowest cost fossil fuels.
Gas fired electricity expected to cost twice as much as onshore wind or solar by 2025. Perovskite solar panels could halve the cost of solar before then. debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Perovskite-cou…
Debra Roberts for IPCC talking about 2018 report said each of us as individuals can help shape the future by our choices, such as energy, diets, transport we use, and choices as consumes directing where industry goes and goods are manufactured. debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/What-the-IPCC-…
There are many simple things you can do yourself to help with climate change. I go into some of them here debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/12-Simple-life…
My blog post about the Canada heat waves is here for sources and more details: debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Heat-waves-in-…
I forgot to cover the fires, will add more tweets soon. The forest fires are normal in the Arctic region. Trees adapted to them. Most Canadian trees have a huge range e.g. Douglas Fir south to Mexico and Sugar Maple south to Missouri. It won't get too hot for them.
Mussel beds often have die offs in heat waves and will recover within a few years. I'll expand on all this soon.
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