Climate change is threatening to break cricket apart, from putting players in danger to disrupting matches

When I was in the middle of treatment for cancer a few years ago, the place I’d go for comfort was my local cricket ground.

“Unless we act, extreme heat will worsen. This will result in
more games being postponed, poorer performance because
 of heat influenced cognitive deterioration and increased
 likelihood of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.”

One reason I found this place so comforting while being physically and emotionally demolished by chemotherapy were the friendships I’d made from years of playing, coaching and cooking thousands of sausages.

When confronted with a nasty tumour that seemed hellbent on trying to kill me, my cricket club helped keep me sane. The friendships made on and around the ground were the source of love and humour that made it possible for me to withstand a really crap experience.

The game is important to me because I know at its best it unites individuals who then become capable of doing great things together.

Anyone who has seen the Adam Goodes films knows sport is about much more than games. It’s a window into who we are as a community – for good or ill.

At my own community cricket club the game is a glue binding together people born in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, South Africa, England and Australia.

Climate change threatens to break cricket apart.

Read the story from The Guardian by Paul Sinclair - “Climate change is threatening to break cricket apart, from putting players in danger to disrupting matches.”

Pakistan may have just set a world heat record

High temperatures are forecast to reach the mid-80s this week in New York, and I’m dreading it. But I have a plan to stay cool: just thinking of how much hotter it is in Pakistan, which is in the middle of a blistering heat wave.

The misery index is near the top of the charts in South Asia.

Temperatures reported to have cracked 50.2 degrees Celsius (122.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday in Nawabshah, located about 127 miles northeast of Karachi. If confirmed, that could make the measurement not just the hottest ever recorded for April in Pakistan, but the hottest ever reliably recorded for April anywhere on Earth.

“There was a 51.0°C reading reported from Santa Rosa, Mexico in April 2011 but this figure is considered of dubious reliability, so yes, the 50.2° reading is likely the hottest April temperature yet reliably observed on Earth in modern records,” Chris Burt, a weather historian, told Earther in an email.

Read the story by Brian Kahn from Earther  - “Pakistan may have just set a world heat record.”

Map of the Day: Where it Will Be Too Hot To Live By 2100

Today’s map comes from scientists at MIT, who found that significant portions of Southeast Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could be uninhabitable in 73 years. 

Using climate modeling scenarios, the team of researchers let by Elfatih Eltahir found that some densely populated regions could regularly exceed what is known as a “wet bulb” threshold — this is a measure of heat and humidity, and above 35 degrees (or about 95 Fahrenheit), humans cannot survive for more than a few hours.

Read the UN Dispatch story - “Map of the Day: Where it Will Be Too Hot To Live By 2100.”

What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer.

Polynesia is gone – sunk beneath the waves. Pakistan and South India have been abandoned. And Europe is slowly turning into a desert. This is the world, 4°C warmer than it is now. 

But there is also good news: Western Antarctica is no longer icy and uninhabitable. Smart cities thrive in newly green and pleasant lands. And Northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia produce bountiful harvests to feed the hundreds of millions of climate refugees who now call those regions home.

This map, which shows some of the effects a 4°C rise in average temperature could have on the planet, is eight years old, but it seems to get more contemporary as it ages (and the planet warms).11 Antarctica is white with snow and ice, on the ground and, traditionally, on most maps. 

This map has turned the continent's western end incongruously green. And only last week did reports confirm that Antarctica is indeed turning green.

Read the Big Think story - “What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer.”

Journey to the third pole - 'Crisis on high'

The ancient Silk Road town of Dunghung of north
west China is fed by water from the melting glaciers.

Deep in the Himalayas sits a remote research station that is tracking an alarming trend in climate change, with implications that could disrupt the lives of more than 1 billion people and pitch the most populated region of the world into chaos.

The station lies in the heart of a region called the Third Pole, an area that contains the largest area of frozen water outside of the North Pole and South Pole.

Despite its relative anonymity, the Third Pole is vitally important; it is the source of Asia's 10 largest rivers including the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, the Irrawaddy and the Ganges — and their fertile deltas.

Flows from the glaciers that give the pole its name support roughly 1.3 billion people in China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — and the glaciers are melting fast.

Chinese authorities have opened up a remote research station on the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau and revealed alarming research on the pace of global warming.

Half a century of research shows the temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees in the area, more than double the global average. More than 500 glaciers have completely disappeared, and the biggest ones are retreating rapidly.

Read the ABC story by China correspondent Matthew Carney - “Crisis on high.”

54 degrees! - hottest ever beyond Death Valley

It was a historic day in the annals of meteorology on Thursday, July 21, 2016 in the Middle East, where the temperature in Mitribah, Kuwait soared to an astonishing 54°C (129.2°F).

If verified, this would be Earth's hottest temperature ever reliably measured outside of Death Valley, California, according to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt.

The temperature is likely to be verified, since Thursday's incredible heat also extended into Iraq, which set their all-time heat record: 128°F (53.4°C) at Basrah.

According to Burt and Herrera, Thursday's Basrah reading ranks as the fourth highest temperature ever reliably measured outside of Death Valley; the only higher non-Death Valley temperatures were today's 54°C (129.2°F) at Mitribah, Kuwait, a 53.6°C reading at Sulaibya, Kuwait in 2011, and a 53.5°C reading at Mohenjodaro, Pakistan on May 26, 2010. Note that there is one other competitor for hottest non-Death Valley temperature ever measured: the official all-time high temperature in Israel is a 54°C (129.2°F) reading from Tirat Tsvi, Israel on June 22, 1942.

The Israeli Met Office pursued an investigation of the record in 2012, prompted by an inquiry from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and convincing evidence from wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt and weather extremes expert Howard Rainford that the actual high temperature was a full degree lower.

The Israeli Met Office concluded that the record was valid, but refused to make public the details leading to their conclusions. Until they do so, the record remains suspect.

Read the Weather Underground story - “Eastern Hemisphere's All-Time Temperature Record: Kuwait Fries in 54°C (129.2°F) Heat.”

Heat waves and extremists appear to be bed-partners

In June, a deadly heat wave hit Karachi, Pakistan, claiming close to 1,300 lives. As bodies piled outside morgues, and cemeteries ran out of space to bury the dead, the head of the sluggish provincial government, former President Asif Ali Zardari, flew out of the country.

In a city plagued by constant power outages, a seemingly unlikely champion emerged: the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). The TTP issued a clear threat to K-Electric, the private electricity company responsible for the power outages. In Karachi, that usually means a bomb threat.

Read the Aeon opinion piece - “If governments fail on climate change, extremists will step in.”

(Those in Paris has more to think about than simply managing the impact and effects of climate change for if there response is weak, flimsy or favours any one nation ahead of others, then groups of people wait in the wings to fill those inadequacies with behaviour that could only be described as “militant or extremist” – desperate people mostly do desperate things and that mostly manifests itself as violence – Robert McLean)

Pakistan sets High Court climate change precedent

A

 high court in Pakistan has set a legal precedent – both at home and internationally – by ordering the government to enforce its own climate change policy and establishing a climate change commission to oversee the process.

An individual farmer, Asghar Leghari, brought a public interest litigation case against the government in the Lahore High Court on 31 August. Leghari, who relies on agriculture for a living, argued that the government had not taken steps to develop the required resilience to climate change as set out in the 2012 National Climate Policy and Framework.

Quoting from the policy, the farmer stated that climate change threats have led to “major survival concerns for Pakistan, particularly in relation to the country’s water security, food security and energy security.”

Read the China Dialogue story - “Pakistan court orders govt to enforce climate law”.