Global warming will cause massive heating

Mar 26, 2009 13:51 GMT  ·  By
Temperatures on Sydney's beaches will increase drastically by 2060, experts warn
   Temperatures on Sydney's beaches will increase drastically by 2060, experts warn

On Wednesday, a famed Australian scientist told at a major international climate change conference that summers over the city of Sydney might literally become deadly-hot by 2060, on account of the massive changes that global warming and climate change would cause in the atmosphere, if left unchecked. He warned that, unless measures were taken to tackle this problem at this December's UN summit in Copenhagen, the situation could very soon become catastrophic to people, animals and structures.

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization scientist Martin Cope revealed at the meeting that everyone with a heart condition or respiratory disease would be very likely to experience severe complications to their conditions. He also added that the elderly and the children were most at risk, on account of their less powerful immune system. The expert furthermore cited drier weather as one of the reasons why temperatures would become unbearable in one of Australia's largest cities.

In addition to climate change, out-of-control bushfires will also wreak havoc around the city, causing the atmosphere to become clogged with smoke. When combined with smoke and other greenhouse gases coming from more cars and from the industrial sector, the layer of pollution will become very dangerous even to completely healthy individuals, who will soon feel the after-effects. This scenario is not an apocalyptic one, rather, it sticks to extrapolating the current development models, without adding too many variables of its own.

“We're talking about tripling the number of hospital admissions due to respiratory conditions. From the modeling, we were looking at a 20 percent increase in the number of days above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) (...) You can be looking at a 100 percent increase of the small number of extreme temperature days. That has the biggest effect on the changes in mortality from heat stress. We are talking about roughly a doubling of heat-stress related deaths. If you then factor in a change in the demographic, you could be talking about a doubling again,” he explained for Reuters in an interview.