EP 704 Heat is a Silent, Invisible Killer

Heat has a pretty ‘cool’ connotation–that song is hot, let’s getaway to a warm destination and that car is smokin’–but in the modern parlance of climate change– heat is anything but.  In fact, it lies at the root of virtually all of the climate related calamities–wildfires, hurricanes and just suffocating heatwaves that may not show up as the cause on a death certificate, but often is.  It not only kills more people directly than the storms and events emanating from it, but it is stealth.  Looking out the window on a nice day, it is impossible to tell whether it’s 70 degrees or 105.  And heat does unimaginable things to the body.  When our internal temperatures hit 102 or 103, we can pass out.  In that process our body is sending blood to the skin, abandoning internal organs, including the brain.  According to Jeff Goodell, a prolific writer on climate issues and author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” the old, sick and poor are more vulnerable to extreme heat, but the rest of us should not be complacent.  The summer of 2023, the warmest on record, is a harbinger of what’s to come.  And the heat is coming for all of us and will affect migration patterns, our food supply and all life on earth.

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