Have you heard from India lately? In a sense, they are about to put the lie to the recent IPCC report on the climate crisis. The assembly of scientists brought together by the UN is trying to make us believe that we will only experience the truly catastrophic effects of global warming during the decade 2030-2040. Forest fires, floods, current heat domes are just appetizers. “The window is closing” on our ability to reduce global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by 2030.
This is bullshit. These scientists know very well that the window has not existed for at least a decade. Despite the global acceleration of investments in clean energy, there is no realistic scenario to speak of the existence of a window. We’re cooked, that’s for sure. The only question still unanswered is whether we will be, depending on the extent of the efforts to be made, bleeding mediums, mediums, ready or charred. And in which region of the planet will we be least affected, or affected later.
India is bracing for the worst heat wave in its history. And the Indians wonder if they will be the first to cross the threshold of heat from which human life is no longer possible, at least in the open air. Scientific minute: the human body has a precise way of evacuating excessive heat, sweat. If the ambient humidity is less than 100%, the air absorbs the heat emitted by the body. But if the humidity is 100%, the body cannot cool itself. If the internal body temperature of a healthy person exceeds 42 degrees for a period of more than a few minutes, death occurs. Vulnerable people are affected at lower temperatures. It is this murderous cocktail that awaits India, especially the north, this month.
Shade, fans are of no use. In closed spaces, real air conditioning and real dehumidification are needed. However, only 12% of the Indian population has access to it, which excludes more than 1.2 billion people. The world’s most populous country could experience the first climate lockdowns in history, with heat refugees called to congregate in air-conditioned places, preferably underground.
Latest news from the warm front, dated last Friday: “New Delhi feels like it’s on fire. The heat comes off the road in searing waves, and the water flowing from the cold water tap is too hot to touch. Daytime temperatures reached 44 degrees Celsius and often do not drop below 30 at night. A giant landfill on the outskirts of the capital spontaneously caught fire […], aggravating the city’s already dangerously polluted air. »
According to a study by Nature Climate Change, since at least 2019, warming has been responsible for 100,000 deaths per year attributable to the heat/humidity combination. This number is distributed in about forty countries affected by heat waves more important than usual. Along with India, experts predict that the first countries affected will be those in the Middle East, where the temperature is rising twice as fast as elsewhere, Afghanistan, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, North Korea, Nicaragua and Pakistan. But coastal regions, including the US east coast, are at risk.
Another clue that we won’t wait until the next decade to live in the new era of deadly heat: climatologists fear a super El Nino for the end of this year, which would increase the global heat in 2024. Previously, climate models predicted that these lethal heat/humidity episodes would not occur until the end of the century. They are already there.
According to Dr. Tim Andersen of Georgia Tech, the deadly weather episodes have mostly hit sparsely populated areas so far. In areas that are both arid and poor, and therefore without air conditioning, “several weeks of high and humid temperatures would be enough to kill most people and animals”. And when this phenomenon affects a very densely populated region for more than a few days, “it will be as devastating as a major earthquake or an epidemic, with thousands of deaths a day”.
Too late, was the title of the book published in 2017 (Ecosociety) by one of our greatest ecologists, Harvey Mead, who passed away earlier this year. “When I was writing this book which announces one or more possible collapses in the more or less short term, he says, I had the curious feeling of coming directly from the Moon, because absolutely nothing in our daily lives seems agree with my words. He felt that the essential action within extremely short deadlines to avoid the worst would not be forthcoming because, he wrote, “the inertia of 70 years of growth under the aegis of a socio-economic system which has greatly benefited the populations of rich countries is very strong”.
Its reference document was Stop at the crossing ?, a premonitory text published in 1972 by the Club of Rome, which predicted that excess consumption would cause the first phase of a global economic collapse by 2025. Mead was very attentive to the updates made since and which seemed to him to confirm this prediction. He reiterated in Too late that in 2025 we would experience a dramatic increase in the price of non-renewable resources, including oil, to economically unsustainable levels. The rest would fall apart in stride. Long before then, as the IPCC politely puts it, the window closes. We will know in two years who was right.
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