A heat wave during a pandemic?
How will the public health department cope when there’s a heat wave and a pandemic at the same time? It’s likely to happen this summer, although it’s hard to believe when the temperature’s stubbornly stuck in the single digits. We’ve had night frost warnings for days and there’s another one posted for Tuesday night.
Raymond Lutz 08:23 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
“it’s hard to believe when the temperature’s stubbornly stuck in the single digits”… Kate, I understand your sentence is a stylistic device… Am I wrong?
Those current temperature anomalies are the hallmarks of arctic climate collapse… https://twitter.com/kevpluck/status/1260175035496566784
PS: Climate scientists have run out of shades of red for coloring extremely hot regions so now they’re using shades of brown for f*cking hot. A vast portion of the pole is now 11C hotter than normal.
CE 08:45 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
It’s going to be tough for people without AC who are now going to have to spend the summer working from home.
Kate 09:55 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Raymond Lutz, I write complicated sentences sometimes, and often have to make myself rewrite them before I post. But I didn’t think I was being overly stylistic there. And I’m in no sense claiming that, since it’s so cold out, climate change is not happening.
CE, I predict a run on fans.
Chris 10:53 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Personally, I find the contrast between the covid emergency and the climate emergency fascinating.
For covid, we have curtailed freedom of assembly, freedom of travel, restricted religious practices, self-inflicted mass unemployment, crashed savings, we have bread lines, we’ve expanded the surveillance state, etc. etc. etc. But barely a peep of protest, from either the streets, unions, companies, or opposition parties.
Yet for climate change, we do something like add a measly carbon tax that increases your car’s gas by 5¢/L, and half the country is up in arms!
It’s fascinating.
EmilyG 12:03 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
And heat waves have already killed many people, and made others sick.
Maybe tangential, but –
I read an article recently about a sci-fi writer (in the US?) who wrote a story about a hypothetical scenario where a heat wave killed many people not having sufficient air-conditioning/cooling methods. I thought to myself, it’s real, it already happened here.
Chris 13:31 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
And of course manufacturing and operating more air conditioners will consume more energy and thus increase carbon emissions and thus cause more heat waves. Vicious cycle. 🙁