Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is admittedly summer in Australia, but this is ridiculous. SBS News reports, “Australia . . . claimed all of the top 15 hottest spots in the world over the 24 hours to 8am on Thursday.”
Unsurprisingly, wildfires broke out over a wide area.
Parts of Australia are already experiencing temperatures that on average are 1.5º C. (2.7º F.) hotter than the nineteenth century average.
That is a temperature rise that scientists hope the earth as a whole can avoid, and they are worried that if we go to 3º C. (5.4º F.), it will create large no-go zones where humans cannot live because it is too hot or too hot and humid.
Scientists predict that if we heat up the earth by 2.7º C. (4.86º F.) over pre-industrial times northern Australian areas such as Darwin, Broome and Port Hedland will become uninhabitable by the end of the century, in only 75 years.
Shaded areas uninhabitable by end of this century at 2.7º increase. Courtesy Nature Sustainability
The UN estimates that we are on track for 2.8º C. increased heating by 2100 if current trends continue. They don’t have to continue, but the right wing parties of the world, funded by Big Oil, are intent on making it happen. They really hate Darwin, Australia. The 2.8º C. outcome could even be outstripped if the Donald Trumps of the world succeed in ramping up carbon dioxide emissions and if new phenomena such as energy-hog Data Centers to support Large Language Models (“AI”) proliferate.
Global heating will cause heat waves to be more frequent and to last longer. At 3º C., Queensland would get 7 heatwaves a year, each lasting 16 days, which is almost a third of the year.
And even at a slightly lower 2.9º C. (5.22º F.) increase, one-fifth of Australians would just have to move away from the areas where they now live. That is the threshold at which “well-being scientifically declines, labour productivity and cognitive ability shrinks, negative pregnancy outcomes are produced, and mortality rates soar” according to the scientists quoted by ABC 7’s Hailey Taylor.
Globally, at that temperature increase, fully one third of humankind would have to move house away from where they are now living. If the global population then is 10 to 11 billion, that is 3.3 billion or more people on the move. If you don’t think that means wars and turmoil, you aren’t paying attention to today’s migration hot spots.
Of Thursday, SBS added, “Some of the hottest temperatures included the South Australian outback town of Marree, where the mercury nudged 49.8C (121.64 F.).” In South Australia, Roxby Downscame close to the same temperature. Woomera, which may be the most Australian small town ever, reached 48.5 C. (121.1 F.).
None of these places had ever recorded such high temperatures since the invention of the mercury thermostat in the mid-nineteenth century. Since the average surface temperature of the earth is now hotter than any time in the past 122,000 years, Australia is also experiencing heat extremes not seen since the late Pleistocene, when woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed cats roamed the earth.
Maree was the hottest place on earth on Thursday. It is just a truck stop (or livestock stop) in South Australia, population 65, though it has the distinction of being the site of the first mosque in Australia, built by Afghan cameleers brought in by the British.
A heat dome sat over southern Australia this week, so not only did record after record fall regarding the hottest temperature ever recorded but it happened day after day.
Although it is summer, we are also in a La Niña year, which is cool. This Australian heat wave is Frankenweather.
Photo of Finke, Australia, by Henrique Felix on Unsplash
SBS quotes senior meteorologist Dean Narramore, who said that human-caused climate change contributed to these temperature extremes: “Obviously there is background warming so there’s more energy and more heat in the atmosphere. So when the systems align for these extreme scenarios, they are just a little bit warmer and last that little bit longer.”
What he means is that our burning masses of gasoline, coal and fossil gas is like exploding gazillions of atomic bombs in the atmosphere, so naturally there is extra heat around. A lot of extra heat.
But we don’t need to go toward the worst case scenarios. We can bring down the anticipated heating to 1.5º C. if we want to. We’ve already brought down scenarios from 3.5º and even 4º C. down to 2.8º C. We can bring them down further if we swing into action. Vote green, put up solar panels (balcony or rooftop), use public transport and vote for more of it; if you must drive, drive an EV. Above all vote green, i.e., the opposite of how most of you voted in 2024. Otherwise your children or, if you are young, you yourself might be in that 1/3 of humankind destined to be made homeless by temperature extremes. Australia is sending a signal. Are we smart enough as a species to catch it?
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