How Much Heat is Necessary to Drive us
Stark Raving Mad?
by Professor Bruce E. Johansen
So, do you think it’s hotter than it used to be?
So, what is Kuwait doing to shield itself from temperatures that are anticipated to reach the range of 125 F to 132 F in a few years? They are burning oil, of which they have plenty, to produce out-door air conditioning. You read that sentence correctly. They are ready to burn oil to vaporize mist to keep a select few cool out of doors. The rest, such as the more than 1,300 who perished on the Muslim hajj last summer can just burn up. New Delhi on June 19, 2024, had the warmest night in at least 55 years, as its Safdarjung Observatory recorded a “low” temperature of 35.2 C (95.4 F).
This is not the first time that people in the Middle East have burned shocking amounts of oil to keep some of their people cool, or even cold. I wish I had kept a news clipping that I scanned a few years ago that described a shopping center in the same area that was teasing customers to shop with a ski slope nearby.
On July 1, the dangerous and extremely powerful Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday on the Caribbean Island of Carriacou after becoming the earliest storm of Category 4, then 5 strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters. An ocean temperature of a lukewarm bath gives us a Category 5 hurricane.
On a rather regular basis, hotter weather also translates into more violent atmospheric events. For example: Delhi’s main Safdarjung weather station recorded 228.1 mm (9 inches) of rainfall in the 24 hours, its highest June 24-hour rainfall in 88 years. The city of 20 million people had faced searing heatwaves earlier. In June, 2024. Experts blamed climate change for the extreme heat followed by heavy rain that caused the collapse at the Delhi airport.
When one has walked the aisles that caved in, an event such as the collapse of Delhi’s airport roof becomes personal in a nasty way. Visiting India in 2016, I looked up at those beams, and then out a large window into a sky of what looked like dirty potato soup into a pinprick morning sun nearly hidden by dense smog. This was what the thickest smog on Earth looked like, backed up against the invisible spines of the Himalayas, a sight created totally by human beings trashing the Earth and its atmosphere.
A Steady Parade of Record Highs
Last year (2023) was the hottest on record world-wide, warmer than it has been since humankind took tenancy of the Earth tens of thousands of years ago. Unless this pattern takes a massive swerve toward coolness soon, 2024 will probably see another record high sooner rather than later, as the level of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere continue to rise.
During humanity’s presence on the Earth, the CO2 level has varied from about 180 parts per million and 280 p.p.m., in a rough cycle, with 180 signaling the onset of an ice age, and 280 p.p.m. indicating record high temperatures. In our time, 450 p.p.m. is within reach. Such a reading is signaling much higher sea levels and stronger cyclonic storms. Hurricanes blowing up to category 4 almost overnight (as we saw this year) will no longer be unusual. The ignition on this motor is heat, pumped into our atmosphere. To reestablish a stable temperature cycle will require several centuries to bring the CO2 level down. The other option offers us a steady diet, of severe heat, floods, and fire, aggravated by the use of fossil fuels.
It used to be that warmth came in cyclical waves—up, then down, undulating with slightly higher peaks. Now, the low ends of these cycles are being sawed off as temperatures rise at a steady pace.
This year is on-track to set yet another high record without pause or retreat. How hot has it been? A world-wide accounting reveals a pace, Reuters reported: 115 F in the Ganges Valley. Try 120 in Mecca, in the midst of the Hajj, with more than 1,300 people having been killed of heat-related diseases.
Global temperatures during the first half of 2024 were the highest since modern record-keeping began. That put 2024 on course to be the hottest year in recorded history, eclipsing 2023.
Heat illnesses, including deaths because heat also aggravates many other health problems, such as kidney disease and asthma; deaths due to heat sometimes end up attributed to other causes.
Heat, Drought, and Wildfires
Heat is only one example of extreme weather hazards that are affecting much of the world. Heat often comes hand-in-hand with drought. Droughts often spark wildfires. Hotter weather can spark both droughts and deluges, often back-to-back.
Backing Ourselves Into a Trap
Just how hot is it going to have to get before humankind comes to realize that we are backing ourselves into a trap? This is being written as humanity’s feeble attempts to turn back the existential threat of climate change have amounted to next to nothing in the context of how the World works. Every couple of years various diplomats, scientists, and fossil-fuel lobbyists meet and pass resolutions that have a stated intent to keep fossil-fuel emissions within certain limits. These usually go under the banner of COP (“conference of parties”) such and such. I’ve lost count, but I seem to recall that the next one will be about COP 30, give or take a few. The delegates from various countries do a great deal of talking, burn amazing amounts of jet fuel getting to the conference and home again, make a few pledges, most of which have been flouted by the next COP.
In between these conferences, most people in most countries go about their usual nationalistic business, protecting their own interests, and (as seems to be the trend lately) grubbing for position in case someone decides to start a nuclear war. Vladimir V. Putin especially loves flouting his nukes. Nationalistic political parties whip up anti-immigrant hatred – recent examples have been the National Rally in France and Alternative für Deutschland, (AfD), Alternatives for Germany, not to mention aborning fascism in the United States under the aegis of Trump’s horrid ignorance which has reached the stage of his desire to lock all of his enemies into prisons under cover of military tribunals. Whether citizens or migrants would go to prison first has not been set as of this writing. Is he joking – or just faking Josef Stalin? All we now know is that he says he wants to do it. Would the Constitution get in the way? Benjamin Franklin weeps for the scraps of freedom that remain in the kindle of his country.
Greenhouse Gases Continue Their Relentless Rise
In the meantime, as greenhouse gases continue their relentless rise, we are having humanity’s usual list of nationalistic wars, such as Ukraine and Gaza, in which various empires work to expand their land bases by finding enemies and killing them. The number of Palestinians killed is about to cross 40,000, most of them women and children, as the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere rises toward 430 ppm. What’s more, each year that level compounds like a bank account drawing compound interest – The rate of increase has risen about 100 percent in four years!
What a shame it is, as the amount of CO2 and Methane rise, seas rise, hurricanes get more intense, and everyone denies the real problems that will envelop our one and only home. Just how hot does it have to get before we come to realize that the enemy is in all of us. How much heat does it take to drive us crazy? – or stupider?
Bruce E. Johansen has written and published several books on this climate change during the past 25 years, the most recent of which will be Nationalism and Nature: War and Warming, due out in October from Springer publishers in Frankfurt, Germany.
So, do you think it’s hotter than it used to be?
So, what is Kuwait doing to shield itself from temperatures that are anticipated to reach the range of 125 F to 132 F in a few years? They are burning oil, of which they have plenty, to produce out-door air conditioning. You read that sentence correctly. They are ready to burn oil to vaporize mist to keep a select few cool out of doors. The rest, such as the more than 1,300 who perished on the Muslim hajj last summer can just burn up. New Delhi on June 19, 2024, had the warmest night in at least 55 years, as its Safdarjung Observatory recorded a “low” temperature of 35.2 C (95.4 F).
This is not the first time that people in the Middle East have burned shocking amounts of oil to keep some of their people cool, or even cold. I wish I had kept a news clipping that I scanned a few years ago that described a shopping center in the same area that was teasing customers to shop with a ski slope nearby.
On July 1, the dangerous and extremely powerful Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday on the Caribbean Island of Carriacou after becoming the earliest storm of Category 4, then 5 strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters. An ocean temperature of a lukewarm bath gives us a Category 5 hurricane.
On a rather regular basis, hotter weather also translates into more violent atmospheric events. For example: Delhi’s main Safdarjung weather station recorded 228.1 mm (9 inches) of rainfall in the 24 hours, its highest June 24-hour rainfall in 88 years. The city of 20 million people had faced searing heatwaves earlier. In June, 2024. Experts blamed climate change for the extreme heat followed by heavy rain that caused the collapse at the Delhi airport.
When one has walked the aisles that caved in, an event such as the collapse of Delhi’s airport roof becomes personal in a nasty way. Visiting India in 2016, I looked up at those beams, and then out a large window into a sky of what looked like dirty potato soup into a pinprick morning sun nearly hidden by dense smog. This was what the thickest smog on Earth looked like, backed up against the invisible spines of the Himalayas, a sight created totally by human beings trashing the Earth and its atmosphere.
A Steady Parade of Record Highs
Last year (2023) was the hottest on record world-wide, warmer than it has been since humankind took tenancy of the Earth tens of thousands of years ago. Unless this pattern takes a massive swerve toward coolness soon, 2024 will probably see another record high sooner rather than later, as the level of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere continue to rise.
During humanity’s presence on the Earth, the CO2 level has varied from about 180 parts per million and 280 p.p.m., in a rough cycle, with 180 signaling the onset of an ice age, and 280 p.p.m. indicating record high temperatures. In our time, 450 p.p.m. is within reach. Such a reading is signaling much higher sea levels and stronger cyclonic storms. Hurricanes blowing up to category 4 almost overnight (as we saw this year) will no longer be unusual. The ignition on this motor is heat, pumped into our atmosphere. To reestablish a stable temperature cycle will require several centuries to bring the CO2 level down. The other option offers us a steady diet, of severe heat, floods, and fire, aggravated by the use of fossil fuels.
It used to be that warmth came in cyclical waves—up, then down, undulating with slightly higher peaks. Now, the low ends of these cycles are being sawed off as temperatures rise at a steady pace.
This year is on-track to set yet another high record without pause or retreat. How hot has it been? A world-wide accounting reveals a pace, Reuters reported: 115 F in the Ganges Valley. Try 120 in Mecca, in the midst of the Hajj, with more than 1,300 people having been killed of heat-related diseases.
Global temperatures during the first half of 2024 were the highest since modern record-keeping began. That put 2024 on course to be the hottest year in recorded history, eclipsing 2023.
Heat illnesses, including deaths because heat also aggravates many other health problems, such as kidney disease and asthma; deaths due to heat sometimes end up attributed to other causes.
Heat, Drought, and Wildfires
Heat is only one example of extreme weather hazards that are affecting much of the world. Heat often comes hand-in-hand with drought. Droughts often spark wildfires. Hotter weather can spark both droughts and deluges, often back-to-back.
Backing Ourselves Into a Trap
Just how hot is it going to have to get before humankind comes to realize that we are backing ourselves into a trap? This is being written as humanity’s feeble attempts to turn back the existential threat of climate change have amounted to next to nothing in the context of how the World works. Every couple of years various diplomats, scientists, and fossil-fuel lobbyists meet and pass resolutions that have a stated intent to keep fossil-fuel emissions within certain limits. These usually go under the banner of COP (“conference of parties”) such and such. I’ve lost count, but I seem to recall that the next one will be about COP 30, give or take a few. The delegates from various countries do a great deal of talking, burn amazing amounts of jet fuel getting to the conference and home again, make a few pledges, most of which have been flouted by the next COP.
In between these conferences, most people in most countries go about their usual nationalistic business, protecting their own interests, and (as seems to be the trend lately) grubbing for position in case someone decides to start a nuclear war. Vladimir V. Putin especially loves flouting his nukes. Nationalistic political parties whip up anti-immigrant hatred – recent examples have been the National Rally in France and Alternative für Deutschland, (AfD), Alternatives for Germany, not to mention aborning fascism in the United States under the aegis of Trump’s horrid ignorance which has reached the stage of his desire to lock all of his enemies into prisons under cover of military tribunals. Whether citizens or migrants would go to prison first has not been set as of this writing. Is he joking – or just faking Josef Stalin? All we now know is that he says he wants to do it. Would the Constitution get in the way? Benjamin Franklin weeps for the scraps of freedom that remain in the kindle of his country.
Greenhouse Gases Continue Their Relentless Rise
In the meantime, as greenhouse gases continue their relentless rise, we are having humanity’s usual list of nationalistic wars, such as Ukraine and Gaza, in which various empires work to expand their land bases by finding enemies and killing them. The number of Palestinians killed is about to cross 40,000, most of them women and children, as the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere rises toward 430 ppm. What’s more, each year that level compounds like a bank account drawing compound interest – The rate of increase has risen about 100 percent in four years!
What a shame it is, as the amount of CO2 and Methane rise, seas rise, hurricanes get more intense, and everyone denies the real problems that will envelop our one and only home. Just how hot does it have to get before we come to realize that the enemy is in all of us. How much heat does it take to drive us crazy? – or stupider?
Bruce E. Johansen has written and published several books on this climate change during the past 25 years, the most recent of which will be Nationalism and Nature: War and Warming, due out in October from Springer publishers in Frankfurt, Germany.
