Human Adaptation to Heat Can ’t Keep Up With Human-Caused Climate Change

The last time the Earth was hotter than it is today was at least 125,000 years ago, long before anything that resembled human civilization appeared. Since 1970, the Earth’s temperature has spiked faster than in any comparable forty-year period in recorded history. The eight years between 2015 and 2022 were the hottest on record. In 2022, 850 million people lived in regions that experienced all-time high temperatures. Globally, killer heat waves are becoming longer, hotter, and more frequent. One study found that a heat wave like the one that cooked the Pacific Northwest in 2021 is 150 times more likely today than it was before we began the atmosphere with CO2 at the beginning of the industrial age. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Just look at the events of this year: wildfire smoke from Canada turned the skies on the east coast an apocalyptic orange; sea ice in Antarctica hit a record low; all-time temperature records were shattered in Puerto Rico, Siberia, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Texas (I live in Austin, where, as I write this in late June, it’s 106 degrees F). In the North Atlantic ocean, sea surface temperatures in late June are the highest ever recorded. The truth is, extreme heat is remaking our planet into one in which large swaths may become inhospitable to human life. One recent study projected that over the next fifty years, one to three billion people will be left outside the climate conditions that gave rise to civilization over the las...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change Excerpt freelance Source Type: news