Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Business Insider’s Harrison Jacobs, visiting Dubai is the equivalent to experiencing what our world will be like after it has been ravaged by global warming.
If you ever wondered what life will be like when climate change makes outside unlivable, Dubai can give you a good idea
HARRISON JACOBS
DEC 17, 2018, 10:30 AM…
As I hung out in Dubai last month, it struck me that the city’s severe climate and its adaptation to that climate was a good approximation of what I imagine living with the severe effects of climate change to be.
During Dubai’s long summer, stretching from mid-April through October, temperatures make it unbearable to be outside for more than a few minutes. Temperatures are regularly around 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) and have gone as high as 119 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius), with plenty of humidity.
The city’s adaptation to that climate? A proliferation of interconnected climate-controlled spaces, including more than 65 malls, residential and office buildings with entire indoor cities attached, metros, and indoor parking lots.
…
Meanwhile, for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in Dubai who aren’t lucky enough to live in air-conditioned megacomplexes, Dubai can be a hellscape during the summer – just as the climate might be for the developing countries that will be hardest hit by the effects of climate change.
…
If I was going to take a guess at where our hyper-consumerist world is heading in the event the world can’t get its act together on climate change, I’d say it’s going to look a lot like Dubai.
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Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/dubai-indoors-climate-change-future-2018-12
I’m not sure how the people of Dubai feel about a green journalist describing their beautiful and popular city as an unsurvivable hellscape. Last time I visited Dubai it seemed quite pleasant, amazing shops, nice beaches, polite and friendly people.
Some of the taxi drivers were a bit useless, but I wouldn’t describe my Dubai taxi experience as “unsurvivable hell” – they all tried their best. Some of the drivers had interesting stories, like the driver who used to be a Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation. But I never felt unsafe – I got the strong impression that most people relocate to Dubai to leave their old problems behind.
Dubai certainly has a warm climate – but this is not a big deal if you are used to warm climates.
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I lived in the Inland Empire of southern California for 28 years. The temperature extremes cited for Dubai were within the bounds I experienced, and I never considered it unlivable. Being outdoors was never really much of a problem. I don’t get the apocalyptic view of this.
‘Business Insider: Dubai is the Hellscape Our World Will Become Because Climate Change’ – ‘because climate change’?
Whatever happened to prepositions – the use of which establishes relationships between components of a sentence, and makes the meaning clear?
As an example (prepositions in capital letters), ‘Don’t walk ON the grass’, ‘ He spoke ABOUT his holiday experiences’, ‘I can run AS fast as you’ – and ‘because OF climate change’, please!
The English language is slowly being reduced to Orwellian ‘newspeak’ and ‘because climate change’ is another step in that direction.
Also often seen these days is the misuse of prepositions – ‘I’m tired AT hearing myself play’ is a grammatical horror which I saw some time ago in an advertisement by a banjoist looking for others to make music with.
I’ve lived in one of those blast furnace deserts. Massively sucked, the ante room to hell experience for a decade. And note to the old gooters on here – your heat perception fails with age, that’s why when seniors’ ac fails they cook to death. The past 20 years where I’ve lived it’s gotten overall way hotter. It’s starting to suck here in the summer too, and it shouldn’t. We barely get snow anymore. I’m out doing yardwork in late December in a tank top past few years. I should be wearing a parka. And I’m an engineer so I looked at the graphs from the 1880s to now; temps, max min average, have us in a firm range until mid 90s – 2000. Then we bust limits with a consistent uptrend. If temperature were a stock, I’d buy right in ’cause that baby’s taking off!
“The past 20 years where I’ve lived it’s gotten overall way hotter.”
Sounds like your heat perception is failing.
Not necessarily. Around my area, it’s noticeable warmer (in the winter) and cooler (in the Summer) compared to decades ago. Both anecdotally and by looking at the weather data between now and then. But there’s nothing unusual about that. weather patterns naturally change over time and if you look even further back in time (at the data) you’ll notice those patterns change again. Climate changes, it always has, it always will (and man has no say in the matter). Dismissing it with “Sounds like your heat perception is failing” won’t alter the facts.
There is a reason that seniors and retired people flock to Florida, Phoenix, Palm Desert, and Las Vegas. Cold hurts. Cold air contributes to a variety of ills. While alarmists wring their hands over the possible range expansion of tropical disease, it’s pretty clear that cold air contributes to the spread of influenza ever year. While their projections are nonsense, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a few more San Diegos in the world.
Especially in Canada
The foolish boy has never been to Houston in the summer.
I constantly feel obliged to point out that desserts are are not caused by heat. Some of the hottest places on earth (tropical rain forests) are the wettest. The driest place on Earth (Antarctic plateau) is the coldest.
That is so true. The largest desert of the world Antarctica, is also the coldest place on earth. The deserts of the world (including Antarctica) are caused by semi-permanent high-pressure systems. With the exceptions of the Arctic and Antarctic deserts, the Columbia Basin desert, (not usually considered a desert because of the extensive irrigation), and the Atacamba desert in Chile, all the deserts of the world are in the semi-permanent Sub-Tropical high. The Arctic and Antarctic are in the semi-permanent Polar Highs. The Columbia Basin and the Atacamba desert are in the rain-shadows of mountain ranges.
Very true. The idea that they are caused from heat no doubt comes from the standard image people have of deserts – as being vast fields and dunes of sand, the unrelenting hot sun beating down on the dry landscape. People generally don’t think of Antarctica when they think desert, they then to think more of the Sahara or the deserts of the American South West.
“like the driver who used to be a Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation.”
Kinda like every service person you come across says they were special forces. Riiiight.
Sounds like eastern Canada in reverse.The average temperature in the u.k would have to rise by 30 degreesC to match this.
“The city’s adaptation to that climate? A proliferation of interconnected climate-controlled spaces, including more than 65 malls, residential and office buildings with entire indoor cities attached, metros, and indoor parking lots.
The very same with Toronto, Canada.
exposed city’s have to cope with their climate.
What’s wrong?
https://www.google.com/search?q=toronto+Canada+climate+underground&oq=toronto+Canada+climate+underground&aqs=chrome.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&q=swiss+alpine+capital+Zurich+climate+efficient+underground+ring&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjbx9KG6r3fAhVJ_SoKHfI0CgQQBSgAegQIDBAC&biw=360&bih=560