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posted by martyb on Friday June 16 2017, @06:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the hot-enough-for-you? dept.

The Washington Post reports

It's not all that common, but the hottest weather in the nation lined up along the Interstate 95 corridor from the District [of Columbia] to Boston on Tuesday afternoon [June 13]. More than 15 locations set record highs.

[...] Temperatures into the mid-90s were widespread. Factor in the humidity, and it felt more like 95 to 100.

[...] In Boston, the heat wave was the second of the year, the earliest on record that the city posted two such events.

[...] Dulles International Airport climbed to 95 degrees, breaking the previous record of 94 set in 1994.

Baltimore soared to 97 degrees, tying the record set in 1956.

The Center for American Progress reports

An early summer heat wave delivered record temperatures from Nebraska to Maine this week. On Tuesday, some parts of the Midwest and Northeast saw temperatures 20 degrees above the historical average. And this is just the beginning of what is expected to be a very hot summer.

In case you were wondering--yes, this is what climate change looks like.

[...] Globally, carbon pollution is trapping heat, shifting the entire distribution of temperatures.

[...] Temperatures at the far end of the distribution, the ones that break records, are almost invariably explained by carbon pollution. A recent study found that, globally, 85 percent of record-hot days are the product of climate change.

The shift in temperatures means less extreme cold and more extreme heat. Correspondingly, record highs are now drastically outnumbering record lows in the United States.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of California - Irvine report Small climb in mean temperatures linked to far higher chance of deadly heat waves

An increase in mean temperature of 0.5 degrees Celsius over half a century may not seem all that serious, but it's enough to have more than doubled the probability of a heat wave killing in excess of 100 people in India, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions.

This could have grim implications for the future, because mean temperatures are projected to rise by 2.2 to 5.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century in the low- and mid-latitude countries of the Asian subcontinent, the Middle East, Africa, and South America.

[...] Using data gathered by the India Meteorological Department from 1960 to 2009, the UCI-led team analyzed changes in summer temperatures; the frequency, severity and duration of heat waves; and heat-related deaths.

They found that when mean summer temperatures in the South Asia nation went from 27 to 27.5 degrees Celsius, the probability of a heat wave killing more than 100 people grew from 13 percent to 32 percent--an increase of 146 percent.

Journal reference: Omid Mazdiyasni et al. Increasing probability of mortality during Indian heat waves. Science Advances, June 2017 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700066


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 16 2017, @09:29PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 16 2017, @09:29PM (#526640) Journal

    There was no rise in frequency, they are forecasting a rise in probability

    For events that happen significantly less than once a year on average, the difference between the two is not significant.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @09:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @09:49PM (#526644)

    The article and even the research paper are not very clear, but it looks like they analyzed the heat waves for population density and income distributions. My guess is they did account for the increase in population size, but as I said they did a bad job of it.

    Regardless, the end result is the same. Climate changes are resulting in more frequent heat waves, and more frequent heat waves mean more dead people. The problem is the increase in heat waves, the increase in human deaths is simply trying to get people such as yourself to actually care.

    But no, you'd rather continue to hammer on every tiny crack you can find so you can maintain your worldview that human activity has no impact on the global climate and everything is fine, just fine. In fact, we should deregulate corporate activity!!! /s

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:04AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:04AM (#526746) Journal

      Regardless, the end result is the same. Climate changes are resulting in more frequent heat waves, and more frequent heat waves mean more dead people. The problem is the increase in heat waves, the increase in human deaths is simply trying to get people such as yourself to actually care.

      The used car salesman wants you to care as well. Just long enough to drive that clunker off the lot. Bad science and one-sided presentations of research results won't make me care more. It'll just tip me off that the effort is insincere.

      But no, you'd rather continue to hammer on every tiny crack you can find so you can maintain your worldview that human activity has no impact on the global climate and everything is fine, just fine. In fact, we should deregulate corporate activity!!! /s

      This was deeply flawed research meant to sell global warming. If they were sincere, they'd have reported the results in a way that is invariant of the population size, such as deaths per million people. For example,

      In real terms, there were only 43 and 34 heat-related fatalities in 1975 and 1976, respectively, when the mean summer temperature was about 27.4 degrees Celsius. However, at least 1,600 people died from excessive heat in 1998, when the mean summer temperature was higher than 28 degrees Celsius.

      In 1976, the population of India was 640 million (620 million in 1975). In 1998, it was 1,020 billion, more than 50% higher. So a valid comparison would be 0.07 deaths per million in 1975, 0.05 deaths per million in 1976 and 1.6 deaths per million in 1998.

      I'll note here that developed world death rates are far higher per capita than what is being reported here. The US annually has about 1 deaths per million since 1999 (when a WHO accounting change took place) with peaks above 2 deaths per million. I find it hard to believe that India's worst reported year above (1.5 deaths per million) is moderately worse than the US's average year per capita. Nor does the US have more than an order of magnitude variation between years. Maybe that means I shouldn't be caring about such a minor cause of death. Maybe it means that there's a reporting issue with Indian heat-related deaths that's being glossed over.

      This is not an isolated problem. There is plenty of credible research that indicates global warming is happening. Where things break down is the research that claims to have present proof of the harm of global warming. This invariably is exaggerated and glosses over other factors involved in the supposed harm like higher population, resource mismanagement, recurrence of the phenomena in preindustrial era, etc.