Hot and bothered: heat affects all of us, but older people face the highest health risks.

Australian summer temperatures have risen by 1.66℃ over the past 20 years. In the past century we’ve seen a significant increase in the number, intensity and duration of heatwaves during our summers. 

Older people’s bodies can’t regulate their temperature as well as younger people’s.

Heat is the natural hazard associated with the highest mortality in Australia. When heatwaves occur, the death toll routinely reaches into the hundreds. For example, the 2009 heatwave across southeast Australia resulted in close to 500 deaths. 

Heat is more likely to endanger the health of people with pre-existing conditions, people who are socially isolated, and people who have limited access to air conditioning. These are often older members of the community.

Read the story form The Conversation by a physician and cardiologist from the Canberra Hospital, who is also a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, Arnagretta Hunter -  “Hot and bothered: heat affects all of us, but older people face the highest health risks.”

New study shows the Arctic has entered an ‘unprecedented state’ that threatens the entire planet

We already know that global warming is transforming the Arctic, but a new study highlighting the intensity and speed of the changes says it’s worse than many scientists expected.

Trouble in the Arctic.

The newly released paper, “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971-2017,” is a work of scientists at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen (GUES). Published in a special issue on Arctic climate change by the journal Environmental Research letters, it is the first of its kind to combine observations of physical climate indicators with biological impacts. Previous to this study many of these indicators or measures of climate change were treated in isolation from one another.

Read the story from Nation of Change by Ruth Milka - “New study shows the Arctic has entered an ‘unprecedented state’ that threatens the entire planet.”

Harvey is a 1000-year flood event unprecedented in scale

Washington: As Harvey's rains unfolded, the intensity and scope of the disaster were so enormous that weather forecasters, first responders, the victims, everyone really, couldn't believe their eyes. Now the data are bearing out what everyone suspected: This flood event is on an entirely different scale than what we've seen before in the United States.

Beaumont firefighters rescue two horses
stranded in floodwaters from Hurricane
Harvey in Beaumont, Texas, onThursday.

A new analysis from the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Centre has determined that Harvey is a 1-in-1000-year flood event that has overwhelmed an enormous section of Southeast Texas equivalent in size to New Jersey.

There is nothing in the historical record that rivals this, according to Shane Hubbard, the Wisconsin researcher who made and mapped this calculation.

"In looking at many of these events [in the United States], I've never seen anything of this magnitude or size," he said. "This is something that hasn't happened in our modern era of observations.”

Read Jason Samenow’s story in today’s  Melbourne Age - “Harvey is a 1000-year flood event unprecedented in scale.”

Hurricanes, Climate and the Capitalist Offset

Texans will find few consolations in the wake of a hurricane as terrifying as Harvey. But here, at least, is one: A biblical storm has hit them, and the death toll —38 as of this writing — is mercifully low, given its intensity.

Nature has no respect for our status symbols.

This is not how it plays out in much of the world. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch ripped through Central America and killed anywhere between 11,000 and 19,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua. Nearly a decade later Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar and a staggering 138,000 people perished.

Nature’s furies — hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, droughts, infectious diseases, you name it — may strike unpredictably. But their effects are not distributed at random.

Rich countries tend to experience, and measure, the costs of such disasters primarily in terms of money. Poor countries experience them primarily in terms of lives. Between 1940 and 2016, a total of 3,348 people died in the United States on account of hurricanes, according to government data, for an average of 43 victims a year. That’s a tragedy, but compare it to the nearly 140,000 lives lost when a cyclone hit Bangladesh in 1991.

Why do richer countries fare so much better than poorer ones when it comes to natural disasters? It isn’t just better regulation. I grew up in Mexico City, which adopted stringent building codes following a devastating earthquake in 1957. That didn’t save the city in the 1985 earthquake, when we learned that those codes had been flouted for years by lax or corrupt building inspectors, and thousands of people were buried under the rubble of shoddy construction. Regulation is only as good, or bad, as its enforcement.

Read opinion piece in The New York Times by Bret Stephens - “Hurricanes, Climate and the Capitalist Offset.”

Queensland to spend $30M on disaster recovery centre

Q

ueensland has witnessed the costly reality of climate change and has decided to create a disaster recovery agency.

Queensland Deputy Premier,
Jackie Trad.

According to a story in The Guardian, “The Queensland government is to establish Australia’s first permanent disaster recovery agency to deal with a future of more extreme cyclones and floods brought on by climate change.”

“An ongoing series of natural disasters have cost the state billions since the 2011 floods, which killed 38 people and, according to the World Bank, cost an estimated US$15.9bn ($20bn),” the story says.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the growing number and intensity of disasters like cyclones and floods had been “made clear by key scientists in the field of climate science” and was “the lived experience of regional Queensland”.

The story can be read here - “Queensland to create permanent disaster recovery agency”.

A problematic century

This century is going to be decidedly problematic.

Resources upon which our modern life depends are being depleted at an alarming rate, technology is yet to demonstrate truly viable energy alternatives and to further worsen the difficulties, our weather will deteriorate even more.

An international team of researchers have found that what was once a one in 20 year occurrence of extreme El Nino events, will now be one in 10 years.

A story headed: “Major El Nino events likely to double nextcentury” in today’s Melbourne Age connected the change in frequency of El Nino events to human-induced climate change.

'No reason to debate the issue any more'

Beneath the Wisteria supporter and climate change advocate, Terry Court,  had a letter published in today’s (January 20) Shepparton News.

Terry wrote:

There is no reason to debate the issue any more. The intensity and frequency of periods of extreme heat events, as experienced last week, can be attributed to human-induced climate change.

Last week every Victorian was adversely effected by extreme heat – some lost their lives. The business-as-usual approach at all levels of government, the vast majority of Australian businesses and Australians in general will not address this wretched problem.

We have to act now to create tangible renewable and sustainable enterprises. Spending $300 million creating two new air conditioned tennis arenas at Melbourne Park, so the elite can play in 45°C won’t solve the problem.