The Long Emergency: It is upon us

Obviously it ' s been hard to get people worried about consequences that may ensue in the year 2100. Unfortunately much of the public communication about climate change has been about the considerably distant future. When people build their houses in places they know are prone to wildfires, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions they probably aren ' t thinking about heatwaves and droughts 30 years from now.Scientists were reluctant to talk about the possibility of very near-term effects of climate change because they didn ' t have a high degree of certainty about them, and in fact they have been somewhat taken by surprise. But it ' s time to get real folks. We aren ' t just worried about 2100, or 2050, or even 2030. We ' re worried about now.The European heat wave has gotten surprisingly little attention here, and in fact I ' ve been surprised how little it seems to interest the editors of The Guardian. England was spared the worst of it, but the continent got oven roasted.The highest temperature ever measured across France in the entirety of record keeping was set on Friday afternoon. Temperaturessoared to 45.9 C (114.6 F) at Gallargues-le-Montueux in southeastern France, exceeding the nation ' s previous all-time record high of 44.1 C (111.4 F) at Conqueyrac on 12 August 2003.Note that the previous record was set in August. This was June.A total of 137 stations out of 150 with at least 30 years of data set daily record highs on Wednesday in the Czech Republic. Out of those stat...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs