Climate Scientists’ Heatwave Warning 20 Years Ago Was Tragically Prescient: The mass casualty heatwave that broiled the Pacific Northwest and western Canada last month is precisely the kind of catastrophe predicted by climate scientists two decades ago, Yale Climate Connections reports. In 2001, the IPCC’s Third Assessment warned the greatest increases in heat stress were expected in “mid- to high-latitude (temperate) cities, especially in populations with non-adapted architecture and limited air conditioning,” the scientists wrote at the time. “A number of U.S. cities would experience, on average, several hundred extra deaths each summer.” This year’s June heatwave killed nearly 800 people in the usually-temperate region where few live in homes with air conditioning. That heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. (Yale Climate Connections; The Guardian; Climate Signals background: June 2021 PNW heatwave)
https://bit.ly/COdustbowlification – the risks of the current path in CO are bad and getting worse, and we’ve known for a while. https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-the-climate-warms-could-the-u.s.-face-another-dust-bowl. The Boston Globe reports that “ninety-degree days are occurring earlier and now number twice the historical average”. Some western slope farms are getting just 5-10% of the water they are used to. “Over Half of the People Who Used to Grow Crops Here Can’t ..
