Warming weather could make summer in the city deadly (click here) in the next few decades, according to a study published this week in Nature Climate Change. By the 2020s, New York City will see 22 percent more heat-related deaths per year compared with 1980s, the researchers predicted.
Urban centers like New York City are especially sensitive to extreme temperatures because of the heat island effect. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the annual mean temperature of a city with a million or more people can be up to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than its more rural surroundings. (NYC currently clocks in with more than 8 million.)
Using 16 computer models of present and future climate change, scientists at Columbia University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that while warmer temperatures would reduce the number of deaths due to cold in the winter, the increase in heat-related deaths in summer months would cause a net 6.2 percent spike in weather-related mortality per year in the city by the 2020s....
Is your infrastructure ready for this? Are your electric transmission lines underground, because, all the air conditioners in the world won't matter if there is no electricity to run them.
The poor will be hit the hardest. They won't have options. Are they allowed to live in the calculations regarding Human Induced Global Warming? Or are they calculated losses? Just curious, because, no one is doing anything to accelerate the use of alternative energies in the USA or providing mass transit.
Hint: When the temperatures in Traverse City, Michigan hit 100, the State Theater opens their doors to those that can't find relief from the heat.
