Heat domes will become a more common feature now
Two so far in the UK this year.
The effects of global warming have just begun.
The effects of global warming have just begun.
We still won't get our homes retrofitted with ac though. Electric cars are more important than preventing heat related deaths.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
Having been first warned of over a hundred years ago.
Those predictions, of climate-change but not necessarily numerical, were based on contemporary world-wide consumption of coal, the universal fuel at the time, and their danger-point was estimated as fairly late in this Century.
Although oil and natural-gas largely displaced coal and its derivatives (coke and coal-gas) and these are far more efficient as fuels, the overall hydrocarbon use increased vastly since then.
The early warnings came at a time when the general belief was that all the world's problems would be solved by Science and Engineering "taming Nature" as they liked to say. Also, predicting something might happen 150 years hence is not likelt yo be taken seriously however credible it is. So perhaps it's not surprising that the effects were not examined again, and warnings did not start to be heeded, until only a few decades ago.
I think the first modern realisations of things amiss were the "Great Smog" in London in 1952; and more recently the sulphurous acid resulting from sulphur dioxide in the exhaust from coal-burning power-stations, dissolving in rain-water. Neither was about climate-change though.
The Great Smog came when not only industry was burning coal, but so were thousands of homes. Household open fireplaces were far more numerous and burn their fuels far less efficiently than the power-stations and industrial boilers, gas-works coking-ovens, railway locomotive fireboxes, etc.
{Incidentally, you sometimes hear politicians and campaigners waffling about coal being used to make steel. I do wish they'd learn the difference between iron and steel, given that Iron is the universally-used hence most valuable metallic element on Earth; and remember the basics they were taught in school science or geography lessons. Though perhaps they weren't taught!}
Those predictions, of climate-change but not necessarily numerical, were based on contemporary world-wide consumption of coal, the universal fuel at the time, and their danger-point was estimated as fairly late in this Century.
Although oil and natural-gas largely displaced coal and its derivatives (coke and coal-gas) and these are far more efficient as fuels, the overall hydrocarbon use increased vastly since then.
The early warnings came at a time when the general belief was that all the world's problems would be solved by Science and Engineering "taming Nature" as they liked to say. Also, predicting something might happen 150 years hence is not likelt yo be taken seriously however credible it is. So perhaps it's not surprising that the effects were not examined again, and warnings did not start to be heeded, until only a few decades ago.
I think the first modern realisations of things amiss were the "Great Smog" in London in 1952; and more recently the sulphurous acid resulting from sulphur dioxide in the exhaust from coal-burning power-stations, dissolving in rain-water. Neither was about climate-change though.
The Great Smog came when not only industry was burning coal, but so were thousands of homes. Household open fireplaces were far more numerous and burn their fuels far less efficiently than the power-stations and industrial boilers, gas-works coking-ovens, railway locomotive fireboxes, etc.
{Incidentally, you sometimes hear politicians and campaigners waffling about coal being used to make steel. I do wish they'd learn the difference between iron and steel, given that Iron is the universally-used hence most valuable metallic element on Earth; and remember the basics they were taught in school science or geography lessons. Though perhaps they weren't taught!}