Comparada com esta imagem apocaliptíca futura, a presente crise dos refugiados é uma brincadeira.
A pura, nua e crua questão da sobrevivência, vai levar inevitávelemente a tensões inimagináveis e a um endurecimento de posições, em relaçào às quais, já sentimos as tendências e reconhecemos os sinais.
Al Gore avisou ...
OVOODOCORVO
Extreme
heatwaves could push Gulf climate beyond human endurance, study shows
Oil
heartlands of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and Iran’s coast will
experience higher temperatures and humidity than ever before on Earth
if the world fails to cut carbon emissions
Damian
Carrington
Monday
26 October 2015 16.00 GMT
The Gulf in the
Middle East, the heartland of the global oil industry, will suffer
heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival if climate change is
unchecked, according to a new scientific study.
The extreme
heatwaves will affect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in
Iran as well as posing a deadly threat to millions of Hajj pilgrims
in Saudi Arabia, when the religious festival falls in the summer. The
study shows the extreme heatwaves, more intense than anything ever
experienced on Earth, would kick in after 2070 and that the hottest
days of today would by then be a near-daily occurrence.
“Our results
expose a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in the
absence of significant [carbon cuts], is likely to severely impact
human habitability in the future,” said Prof Jeremy Pal and Prof
Elfatih Eltahir, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
writing in the journal Nature Climate Change.
They said the future
climate for many locations in the Gulf would be like today’s
extreme climate in the desert of Northern Afar, on the African side
of the Red Sea, where there are no permanent human settlements at
all. But the research also showed that cutting greenhouse gas
emissions now could avoid this fate.
Oil and gas rich
nations in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, have frequently
tried to frustrate international climate change negotiations. The
Gulf, where populations are rising quickly, was hit in 2015 by one of
its worst-ever heatwaves, where temperatures topped 50C (122F) and
led to a significant number of deaths.
Prof Eltahir said:
“We would hope that information like this would be helpful in
making sure there is interest [in cutting carbon emissions] for the
countries in the region. They have a vital interest in supporting
measures that would help reduce the concentration of CO2 in the
future.”
The new research
examined how a combined measure of temperature and humidity, called
wet bulb temperature (WBT), would increase if carbon emissions
continue on current trends and the world warms by 4C this century.
At WBTs above 35C,
the high heat and humidity make it physically impossible for even the
fittest human body to cool itself by sweating, with fatal
consequences after six hours. For less fit people, the fatal WBT is
below 35C. A WBT temperature of 35C – the combination of 46C heat
and 50% humidity – was almost reached in Bandar Mahshahr in Iran in
July 2015.
The scientists used
standard climate computer models to show that the fatal WBT extremes
would occur every decade or two after 2070 along most of the Gulf
coast, if global warming is not curbed. Using the normal measure of
temperature, the study shows 45C would become the usual summer
maximum in Gulf cities, with 60C being seen in places like Kuwait
City in some years.
Near the Red Sea
coast of Saudi Arabia, where Mecca and Jeddah lie, the WBT is not
projected to pass the fatal 35C level, but would be 32C or 33C. This
would make the Hajj extremely hazardous, said the scientists. “One
of the rituals of Hajj – the day of Arafah – involves worshipping
at the site outside Mecca from sunrise to sunset. In these kind of
conditions, it would be very hard to have outside rituals,” said
Eltahir.
Air conditioning
might be able to protect people indoors and those in wealthy Gulf oil
states might be able to afford it, said the scientists, but less
wealthy nations would suffer. In Yemen, for example, the WBT would
reach 33C. “Under such conditions, climate change would possibly
lead to premature death of the weakest – namely children and the
elderly,” they said.
However, global
action to cut carbon emissions would mean the fatal WBT would not be
passed and that temperatures in Saudi Arabia would experience much
smaller rises. “The [Gulf] countries stand to gain considerable
benefits by supporting the global efforts” to cut emissions, said
the scientists.
“The consequences
of major heatwaves for human health has become apparent from the
death toll of recent events such as those in Chicago in 1995, Europe
in 2003 [30,000 deaths] and Russia in 2010 [50,000 deaths],” said
climate scientist Prof Christoph Schär, at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
and who was not involved in the study. But he said the new study
“concerns another category of heat waves – one that may be fatal
to everybody affected, even young and fit individuals under shaded
and well-ventilated outdoor conditions.”
Schär said the work
showed the threat to human health from climate change may be much
more severe, and occur much earlier, than previously thought. “It
also indicates that reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and
adaptation efforts are essential for the inhabitants of the Gulf and
Red Sea regions.”
The Gulf is
vulnerable to very high WBT because regional weather patterns mean it
has clear summer skies, allowing the sun to strongly warm the waters
of the Gulf, which are shallow and therefore heat up more than deeper
oceans. This heating of the sea also produces high humidity, meaning
cities near the coast are most affected.
What’s it like
living in today’s Gulf heatwaves
Growing up in Dubai
in the Gulf, the thing I looked forward to the most every summer was
leaving.
Summer meant going
back to my birthplace in Alexandria in Egypt, but it also meant
getting away from temperatures that could hit a hellish 50C, when
going to the beach wasn’t an option, unless you enjoyed scorching
your soles in the sand to swim in tepid seawater while burning your
skin in the blazing sun.
Summer is something
you work around in the Gulf. You try to ensure your time spent
outside is kept to a minimum because the high humidity of seaside
cities, such as Dubai, will leave your clothes soaking wet within
minutes. It means an intricate hop from air-conditioned site to
air-conditioned site – your apartment to your car to the
supermarket or the shopping mall or a friend’s similarly
temperature-controlled abode. It means never having to use a water
heater because your shower will always be hot – even scaldingly so
if you dare to take one at midday.
Now that the holy
month of Ramadan falls in the summer, whenever I’m back visiting
family I try to keep daytime waking hours, when I have to abstain
from drinking water, to a bare minimum. I’ve completed the hajj and
the lesser pilgrimage, the umra – the former in the cool February
climate and the latter in the heat of summer. I cannot imagine
handling the crush of millions of pilgrims marching around the ka’aba
in the Grand Mosque during a heatwave.
The summer can be
insufferable in other places in the region for different reasons.
While this year it was relatively mild in Beirut, where I live now,
for example, it is always accompanied by water shortages and extended
power cuts for days on end, leaving you with little choice but to pay
for an expensive generator subscription to preserve perishables such
as meat or dairy for more than a day, or sleeping on the ceramic
tiles to cool off. This year it was also accompanied by piles of
rotting trash baking in the sun after the government’s chronic
failures were extended to garbage collection.
This isn’t a
problem in the Gulf, where save for a freak power cut the constant
electricity supply maintains a climate-controlled habitat. I was a
bit incredulous when Qatar was awarded the World Cup hosting rights –
I hadn’t been able to play football outside of an air-conditioned
indoor pitch in the summer since God knows how long.
Kareem Shaheen in
Beirut
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário