NYC, LA, Paris, World’s Biggest Cities Burning Hot!
Yes, the conservative right agenda is clear: Global warming is a massive liberal hoax. Not long ago, the new president pulled out of UN Paris Climate Accord, GOP wins big for Big Oil, capitalist billionaires and climate-science deniers confirms the worst fears of environmentalists worldwide: The planet’s high-speed crash-and-burn cycle will accelerate. The message to cities across America and worldwide: Burn baby burn!
Here’s why: The GOP agenda demands more energy use. Pass Keystone XL. They gutted EPA. Export domestic oil. More deep-water fracking. Drilling in national parks. Dig more coal. Offshore drilling. Partnering with Russia in the Arctic. Curb renewable energies. Yes, our world’s getting hotter than hell. Drill baby drill. Burn baby burn!
Big Oil, the GOP and their vast army of climate-science deniers obviously see things different from the Dems. Energy giants like Exxon Mobil and the Koch Bros won big betting big on GOP governors, senators and representatives. Now they control the U.S. Senate, House and about two-thirds of the state governments in America, legislatures and executive branches. So admit it, they own the game, the “New Energy Growth Economy.”
And yet, even if America’s climate-science deniers don’t believe it, others do: Planet-Earth is on a fast-track hothouse trend that NASA, the United Nations and thousands of scientists have been warning about since the late seventies. Today that’s nowhere more obvious than in the rising temperatures that will heat and burn across major U.S. cities, making urban life intolerable.
Rapid Migration From Rural Farms To Big City High-Rises
Yes, midway this century, around 2047, urban areas globally and across America — New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington — will become so unbearably hot, uncomfortable, local economies will stagnate, and many will be unable to host the Olympics later in this century.
Midcentury, worldwide population is predicted to explode from seven billion today to 10 billion, mainly in urban areas. Today 54% live in cities. In three decades it’ll be 66%, as high as 90% in some rapid growth regions in Asia and Africa. Many nations are urbanizing even faster: China by decree, aggressively relocating 250 million farmers, building hundreds of new cities. All demanding food, water, lots of energy. All in one generation.
Yes, in less that three decades, around 2047, when babies born today are starting new families, our world will be passing a point of no return: Our global hothouse will never return to past long-term temperature averages, according to a joint study by the University of Hawaii and Japan’s University of Ryukyus, first reviewed in the Nature journal.
City Life is Burning Up, Earth is The New “Red Planet!”
Here’s Bloomberg News summary of that study: “Temperatures in New York are increasing, and after 2047 they won’t return to the historical average of the past one and half centuries,” writes Alex Morales. The study director, Camilo Mora, a geographer, said: “The tropics will experience unprecedented warming 15 years earlier than the rest of the world,” warning that “within my generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past, some as early as 2020.”
Yes, after 2047, the point-of-no-return average for all cities worldwide will go over a cliff, never returning to historical averages. Never. Earth will just keep heating up. Living in big cities like New York, Washington, San Francisco, will become unbearably hot, super uncomfortable.
I had an early tastes of all this: Living in New York City. With Morgan Stanley during a blackout some decades ago. Hot summer. No electricity. Elevators dead. I climbed 23 flights. Bad news. Later, as a consultant in Saudi Arabia during one summer, it was exhausting. I was thankful for all their air-conditioned buildings. But in 2050, high-energy demands will trigger constant high-rise blackouts in cities worldwide. In many tropical climates mid-day temperatures are already too hot for laborers outdoors.
Point-of-No-Return: 2047, Unbearably Hot! Irreversible!
Here’s the University Hawaii research team’s fascinating global timetable. Overall, the median year for all cities is 2047. Then, worldwide average temperatures will pass a point of no return, never to drop back to their historical averages, with a profound impact on the next generation … all denied in conservative politicians energy policy agenda:
- 2020-2029 decade: The first, New Guinea’s climate will “permanently enter a state never seen before, outside of the bounds of historical variability and short-term extremes. To put it simply: The coldest year in New Guinea after 2020 will be warmer than the hottest year anyone there has ever experienced.” Manokwari, Indonesia, will join them as the earliest burnouts. In 2029, Jakarta and Lagos.
- 2030-2039 decade: In the 2030s several mega-million cities pass into the permanent hot zone, never to return: Mexico City 2031, Bogota 2033, Mumbai 2034, Baghdad 2036, Cairo 2036, and Nairobi also in 2036.
- 2040-2049 decade: In the 2040s decade these major cities enter a permanent hot zone: Tokyo 2041, Pretoria 2043; Santiago 2043, Rome 2044, Beijing 2046 and Bangkok 2046. And America joins the hot 2040s decade: Orlando 2046, New York and Washington 2047, San Francisco in 2049. So our politicians can ignore the trend for a couple more decades before they wake up, too late.
- 2050 and after: Then after 2050, when U.N. demographers forecast that global population will have exploded from 7 billion today to 10 billion, several other mega-million metropolises will pass the point of no return, entering the planet’s permanent hot zone: Rio de Janeiro in 2050, London 2056, Moscow 2063, Reykjavik 2066 and Anchorage in 2073. We know Alaska is already losing a lot of its ancient permafrost. Rising temperatures are turning it into an unstable mud hole.
Will We “Adapt” in Time? Or … Is Mass Extinction Certain?
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, earlier as CEO of Exxon he was earning $40 million a year, is a climate-science denier. He dismisses all this, doesn’t trust those “climate models to predict the magnitude of the impact.” Instead, he has faith that us humans will “adapt to a sea-level rise.” After all, throughout history, he says humans “have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt.” We just need a little optimism, right?
But unfortunately, it will happen too fast to shift gears and plan ahead. America’s capitalists, conservative, climate-science deniers, and Wall Street traders are short-term thinkers, trapped into making money now, as fast as possible, they’re unlikely to ‘wake up’ in time. What about Washington lobbyists who make hundreds of millions from Big Oil? Will passing these points of no-return wake up America’s political machine that feeds off payoffs from the myopic greed of Big Oil capitalists? Hardly, their myopic vision will remain impenetrable … till it’s too late.
