It's Gettin' Hot In Here
Enjoy this mornings mild weather while you can. A report released yesterday says that New Yorkers can look forward to many more 90-degree days like those we experienced earlier in the week, unless we reduce our carbon footprint. The [Union of Concerned Scientists] says that by 2100, between 30 and 70 days of the year will be 90 degrees or hotter and some 25 of those days will be upward of 100 degrees. In addition to a constant state of sweat, we can expect worsening asthma and heart disease conditions thanks to bad-air-quality days. But not to worry, regular flooding will cool us off. Those that typically occur once every hundred years would happen once a decade, says Dr. Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University, or maybe even once every other year.
In addition to health, The Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment report predicts that climate changes will drastically affect the economy and quality of life in the Northeast if we continue our current reliance on fossil fuel. Cows upstate will produce up to 15 percent less milk, lobsters would migrate from the Long Island Sound to cooler points further north and fruit and vegetable crops would suffer.
A critic of the report, Myron Ebell, the director of energy and global warming policy at the [Competitive Enterprise Institute], told the [New York Sun](http://www.nysun.com/article/58318), If you rely on historical trends, were in the midst of a very modest warming trend. If they base their predictions on that, then it would be a much smaller change in temperature with much smaller impacts than they are predicting. What theyre relying on is highly dubious computer models. Somehow thats less comforting than it is alarming.
Perhaps the scariest part of these predictions? Ironworker Chris Nuara, 28, who told the [Daily News] that he actually likes the ideabecause employees can opt out of working on such severe days.
Photo courtesy of [Lady Macabea on Flickr]