Let’s just hope the inhabitants of the two large areas don’t all turn into Mel Gibson
Here we are, finding ourselves talking about climate change once more. And why wouldn’t we? The topic is still as hot as ever (pun definitely intended), if not more so. Climate change deniers are still at it, even launching a movie a couple of days ago and still being heavily sponsored by fossil fuel companies.
But we’re about to reap what we sowed soon enough, as according to a new study from Germany and Cyprus, extreme temperatures will soon cause North Africa and Middle East to become uninhabitable. This is apparently already unavoidable, but we can help with how long it will last by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
The study comes from a team of researchers from the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. According to the scientists’ predictions, North Africa and the Middle East will become uninhabitable due to prolonged extreme heat waves, desert dust storms, and drought.
For better accuracy, the team analyzed the data with two theories in mind – either we start reducing our greenhouse emissions right now, or we keep going at the current pace. The future for the people in those regions doesn’t look good at all regardless of how we keep going. The bulk of the harm has already been done.
Currently, temperatures in those areas can reach a maximum of around 109 degrees Fahrenheit. However, if we reduce our carbon emissions right now, these temperatures could reach 114 degrees by the middle of the century and 122 degrees by 2100. But it gets a lot worse when we also look at other sets of data.
While they currently last for a maximum of 20 days, these extreme heat waves, if we stop our greenhouse gas emission, will reach 80 days by 2050 and as much as 118 days by the end of the century. If nothing is done about our carbon emissions, it is predicted that these heat waves will last for as much as 200 days at the end of the century, rendering the areas completely uninhabitable.
According to Michael Mann, a climate scientist from the Pennsylvania State University which wasn’t involved at all with the study,
This study is just part of a slew of recent studies that have shown that warmth will literally exceed the range of human habitability over an increasingly large swath of Earth’s land regions if we fail to curtail our burning of fossil fuels. Yet another clarion call for climate action as if we needed it.
And the changes have already begun. Heat waves are lasting longer, temperatures are getting hotter, water is getting sparser, and the entire are areas are becoming more and more uninhabitable. We are in fact experiencing the beginning of the first Mad Max movie, only not in Australia.
Image source: YouTube
