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Triple digit, "unsurvivable" heat becoming a new normal?
Record-setting, life-threatening heat waves are in the news this week, not only in India and Pakistan, but also in Texas and other southern states. And the prognosis is that extreme heat will become ever more problematic in the decades, even years, just ahead.
<<Temperatures as high as 112 degrees shattered records in Texas on Saturday, setting off a prolonged heat wave that will expand through much of the central United States.
Parts of Texas could see record-challenging heat in the next six days while record highs near 90 degrees could expand as far north as the Great Lakes by Thursday....
The heat will also intensify a critical-to-extreme fire threat that stretches from New Mexico to West Texas.>>
<<The Texas drought is the main culprit of the spring heat wave, according to the National Weather Service. More than half the state is under extreme drought conditions, with nearly one-fourth of Texas in exceptional drought as of last week.>>
When the wet-bulb temperature, or the combination of heat and humidity, exceeds the temperature of the human body — around 97 degrees Fahrenheit or 36 degrees Celsius — sweat cannot evaporate and humans can no longer cool themselves down. >>
<<Environmental sciences professor David Hondula, for example, was named Phoenix’s director of the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation in 2021, the first such publicly funded department in the US. That year the city experienced 339 heat-related deaths, a new record, according to public health data.>>
Unaware human beings, most especially science deniers, don't consider "threshholds" until confronted with their reality.
<<If there's one thing climate science is confident about, it's that today's unprecedented heat is tomorrow's normal. A Texas climate report released in October warned that the transformation of unprecedented temperatures into normal ones is a troubling but safe bet. Current heating rates in Texas "would make a typical year around 2036 warmer than all but the absolute warmest year experienced in Texas during 1895-2020," the authors concluded....
It's always useful to say, for the normal stuff, this was predicted long ago. It's the tip of the iceberg. We're going to see the impacts get a lot worse, very quickly, because we're getting out of a range, especially in Texas, where we're adapted to live.
Here’s the way I like to think about climate impacts: People have this linear view, like every 10th of a degree of warming or every 100th of a degree will make things a little bit worse. And that's not how it works. What happens is, as the warming occurs, or as anything changes—rainfall gets more intense—you don't have any impacts. And then you pass a threshold and things suddenly get a lot worse very quickly. Take people working outside. As the temperature goes up, it doesn't have any impact on them. The temperature goes up a little more, it doesn't have any impact on them. The temperature goes up a little more, maybe they get uncomfortable. The temperature goes up a little bit more, they get heatstroke, and everybody stops working. So it's not this gradual thing. It's the thresholds. As the temperature warms, you're going to pass more and more of these thresholds. We already see it happening.>>
<<A study published in May 2020 in the journal Science Advances found that heat and humidity in certain parts of the world are already testing the limits of human survivability. The research found that parts of South Asia, including India and Pakistan, coastal and southwestern North America and areas around the Persian Gulf have experienced conditions "nearing or beyond prolonged human physiological tolerance.">>
The combination of high temperatures and higher humidity is what is life threatening.
<<Indeed, if humidity is low, extreme temperatures are tolerable. “If you’re sitting in the shade with unlimited drinking water in California’s Death Valley, conditions may not be pleasant, but they’re survivable,” Raymond said. “But in humid regions, once you approach wet-bulb temperatures of 34-to-36 degrees Celsius (93-to-97 degrees Fahrenheit), it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You can’t survive for extended periods of time.”>>
A friend who owns a well-established east side insurance agency told me this week that he is receiving phone calls from former clients who moved to Florida asking him if he can help them find a home insurer (he's licensed to sell insurance in Florida). He said that many coastal properties in Florida are "uninsurable."
<<As Florida homeowners wait for a special session on property insurance reform to convene in May, more and more insurance companies are facing trouble and homeowner’s premiums are going up while policies are getting dropped by the thousands.
As of May 1, seven property insurance companies in Florida are currently in liquidation due to financial losses. Several national companies have pulled out of the state, and for some still operating, their ratings are dropping — the latest is FedNat which has 152,000 policies in Florida.>>
As experts have warned, a hurricane strike in a highly developed area that resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars of losses, could topple the Florida home insurance market completely, making home mortgages extremely problematic.
Until there is something so widespread and traumatic like 3 F-5 hurricanes hitting florida in a month killing 10,000 people and Miami gets literally turned into an island, people are still going to move to these states in droves. And so many people in these states already live a lifestyle that consists of driving from one air-conditioned place to another that I’m not sure how many people really care that it might be impossible to go outside for more than 15 minutes from April to September.
But you’d have to see electricity got knocked out for months, the water bill is 50k a year and skyscrapers collapsing before people move away en-mass/stop moving to those regions. A hurricane would have to be a lot more catastrophic than 200 or 300 people dying and a bunch of houses getting flooded to cause people to really rethink where they’d live.
New Orleans after Katrina is kinda like this however, New Orleans hasn’t ever been considered a sun-belt city in the same way Houston, Phoenix or Orlando are and it’s growth patterns more closely resembled older Great Lakes and Northeastern cities.
A friend who owns a well-established east side insurance agency told me this week that he is receiving phone calls from former clients who moved to Florida asking him if he can help them find a home insurer (he's licensed to sell insurance in Florida). He said that many coastal properties in Florida are "uninsurable."
<<As Florida homeowners wait for a special session on property insurance reform to convene in May, more and more insurance companies are facing trouble and homeowner’s premiums are going up while policies are getting dropped by the thousands.
As of May 1, seven property insurance companies in Florida are currently in liquidation due to financial losses. Several national companies have pulled out of the state, and for some still operating, their ratings are dropping — the latest is FedNat which has 152,000 policies in Florida.>>
As experts have warned, a hurricane strike in a highly developed area that resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars of losses, could topple the Florida home insurance market completely, making home mortgages extremely problematic.
A friend who owns a well-established east side insurance agency told me this week that he is receiving phone calls from former clients who moved to Florida asking him if he can help them find a home insurer (he's licensed to sell insurance in Florida). He said that many coastal properties in Florida are "uninsurable."
<<As Florida homeowners wait for a special session on property insurance reform to convene in May, more and more insurance companies are facing trouble and homeowner’s premiums are going up while policies are getting dropped by the thousands.
As of May 1, seven property insurance companies in Florida are currently in liquidation due to financial losses. Several national companies have pulled out of the state, and for some still operating, their ratings are dropping — the latest is FedNat which has 152,000 policies in Florida.>>
As experts have warned, a hurricane strike in a highly developed area that resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars of losses, could topple the Florida home insurance market completely, making home mortgages extremely problematic.
How did the property owner get a mortgage/loan? A lender requires an insurance policy.
Obviously, these individuals already owned a home, likely, knowing my friend's client base, retired individuals with no mortgages. The likely issue is that their home insurance policies either had been canceled or their premiums were soaring, and so they contacted my friend to see if he could help them deal with their insurance quandaries. We did not discuss the specific reasons for their contacting him. He just thought that it was indicative of the problem in Florida that he was being contacted by former Florida residents living in Florida whom he hadn't heard from in years.
Obviously, these individuals already owned a home, likely, knowing my friend's client base, retired individuals with no mortgages. The likely issue is that their home insurance policies either had been canceled or their premiums were soaring, and so they contacted my friend to see if he could help them deal with their insurance quandaries. We did not discuss the specific reasons for their contacting him. He just thought that it was indicative of the problem in Florida that he was being contacted by former Florida residents living in Florida whom he hadn't heard from in years.
Until there is something so widespread and traumatic like 3 F-5 hurricanes hitting florida in a month killing 10,000 people and Miami gets literally turned into an island, people are still going to move to these states in droves. And so many people in these states already live a lifestyle that consists of driving from one air-conditioned place to another that I’m not sure how many people really care that it might be impossible to go outside for more than 15 minutes from April to September.
But you’d have to see electricity got knocked out for months, the water bill is 50k a year and skyscrapers collapsing before people move away en-mass/stop moving to those regions. A hurricane would have to be a lot more catastrophic than 200 or 300 people dying and a bunch of houses getting flooded to cause people to really rethink where they’d live.
New Orleans after Katrina is kinda like this however, New Orleans hasn’t ever been considered a sun-belt city in the same way Houston, Phoenix or Orlando are and it’s growth patterns more closely resembled older Great Lakes and Northeastern cities.
Read through this thread. E.g., Florida already is suffering the impacts of climate change. With sea level rise accelerating, coastal areas will see increased sunny day flooding. As documented elsewhere in this thread, NOAA/NASA expect about 20 inches of sea level rise along Florida coasts by 2050, and other experts expect much more. Beaches will be greatly impaired. Storm surges will be more devastating. Sunny day flooding will become much more pronounced. Due to porous limestone bedrock, water tables will rise, rendering septic tanks useless and threatening fresh water supplies.
I don't think it will take 10,000 persons killed in order to collapse the Florida real estate market. The warnings of Spencer Glendon, arguably the nation's foremost financial expert on climate change impacts, are repeatedly discussed in this thread -- no home insurance, no mortgages, collapsing real estate sales.
The likelihood is that the population growth to Florida will slow and then reverse as the climate change impacts become more pronounced, more especially when Florida must raise taxes to deal with the problems encountered.
Can you imagine Florida without beaches? This is a certainty in the next several decades, and the beaches will be increasingly impaired every passing year.
A major hurricane strike that causes hundreds of billions of dollars of losses and cripples the Florida insurance market, as anticipated by Glendon, may trigger a change in the Florida migration patterns overnight.
I follow Ohio State football recruiting and it's interesting to read the comments of players from the Southwest who even now select the Buckeyes to escape southern heat. Extreme heat onditions will continue to worsen, as discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Read through this thread. E.g., Florida already is suffering the impacts of climate change. With sea level rise accelerating, coastal areas will see increased sunny day flooding. As documented elsewhere in this thread, NOAA/NASA expect about 20 inches of sea level rise along Florida coasts by 2050, and other experts expect much more. Beaches will be greatly impaired. Storm surges will be more devastating. Sunny day flooding will become much more pronounced. Due to porous limestone bedrock, water tables will rise, rendering septic tanks useless and threatening fresh water supplies.
I don't think it will take 10,000 persons killed in order to collapse the Florida real estate market. The warnings of Spencer Glendon, arguably the nation's foremost financial expert on climate change impacts, are repeatedly discussed in this thread -- no home insurance, no mortgages, collapsing real estate sales.
The likelihood is that the population growth to Florida will slow and then reverse as the climate change impacts become more pronounced, more especially when Florida must raise taxes to deal with the problems encountered.
Can you imagine Florida without beaches? This is a certainty in the next several decades, and the beaches will be increasingly impaired every passing year.
A major hurricane strike that causes hundreds of billions of dollars of losses and cripples the Florida insurance market, as anticipated by Glendon, may trigger a change in the Florida migration patterns overnight.
I follow Ohio State football recruiting and it's interesting to read the comments of players from the Southwest who even now select the Buckeyes to escape southern heat. Extreme heat onditions will continue to worsen, as discussed elsewhere in this thread.
I’m not denying all of this is happening but the reality is is that people are still moving in giant numbers to florida despite all of these problems.
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Triple digit, "unsurvivable" heat becoming a new normal?
