Tags
- climate_change (11)
- resilience (9)
- invasive species (5)
- CO2 (4)
- water (4)
- Africa (3)
- agriculture (3)
- climate change (3)
- community (3)
- development (3)
- View all 181 tags
- food_security (3)
- institutions (3)
- invasives (3)
- vines (3)
- Cook Islands (2)
- ICT4D (2)
- Rarotonga (2)
- collapse (2)
- communities (2)
- disaster (2)
- disease (2)
- drought (2)
- future (2)
- oceans (2)
- pests (2)
- phosphorus (2)
- pollution (2)
- security (2)
- systems (2)
- trees (2)
- urban (2)
- Ailanthus (1)
- Arab Spring (1)
- China (1)
- Congress (1)
- Education (1)
- Endangered Species Act (1)
- Fish and Wildlife Service (1)
- GMOs (1)
- God (1)
- Lester Brown (1)
- Liberia (1)
- Minnesota (1)
- National_Forests (1)
- National_Parks (1)
- Pentagon (1)
- Twitter (1)
- USA (1)
- USAID (1)
- access (1)
- adaptation (1)
- anarchism (1)
- appropriations (1)
- architecture (1)
- bacteria (1)
- biotechnology (1)
- blight (1)
- budget (1)
- chaos (1)
- chestnut (1)
- cities (1)
- climate (1)
- coal (1)
- coasts (1)
- comanagement (1)
- communications (1)
- community planning (1)
- complexity (1)
- conflict (1)
- conservation_finance (1)
- contingency (1)
- control point (1)
- cooperation (1)
- coral (1)
- coral reefs (1)
- culture (1)
- decision support (1)
- decline (1)
- defense (1)
- deficit (1)
- derivatives (1)
- diplomacy (1)
- disruption (1)
- dollar (1)
- economic growth (1)
- economic sustainability (1)
- economy (1)
- effective (1)
- effective decision support (1)
- emergency (1)
- empire (1)
- empiricism (1)
- energy (1)
- engineering (1)
- environment (1)
- environmental refugee (1)
- epidemic (1)
- explicit (1)
- faith (1)
- family (1)
April 3rd, 4:07am
0 comments
Heat Stress Could Make Parts of the Planet Uninhabitable
I learned this week that according to some plausible scenarios, that half the inhabitable Earth could become uninhabitable in 300 years. A sometimes overlooked aspect of climate change is the potential for heat stress on humans and other living things. According to a new report*, heat stress imposes an "upper limit to adaptation", one that we will reach under some scenarios. Temperatures in excess of 35 degrees Celsius induce hyperthermia in mammals. "While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed....a global-mean warming of roughly 7 °C would create small zones where metabolic heat dissipation would for the first time become impossible, calling into question their suitability for human habitation. A warming of 11–12 °C would expand these zones to encompass most of today’s human population.'
Of course when we all run to the other side of the boat we will encounter another tipping point.
A number of questions arise relating to freedom and responsibility that will need to be addressed soon. Left unchecked, could climate change mark the end of the American experiment with liberty? At a minimum humanity may be challenged to reframe ideas about liberty and progress.
*Stephen Sherwood and Matthew Huber, writing in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.full?sid=d38fdf62-80df-4419-9ca7-01773e9a0827)
Filed under
adaptation
climate change
