Friday, July 21, 2023

A meteorologist in the USA is naming the country’s heatwaves after the oil and gas companies that have worsened the climate crisis.

The heatwave that has baked much of the US south-west in recent weeks, helping bring a record-breaking string of days over (43C) 110F to Phoenix, has been named Heatwave Chevron by Guy Walton, a veteran former Weather Channel meteorologist.

The rebadging of heatwaves as being directly the fault of companies like Chevron is “a naming and shaming thing”, according to Walton, who wants weather forecasters and the media to be more explicit between the links between extreme heat and the burning of fossil fuels that has caused the climate crisis.

3 comments:

  1. I live in AZ, the heat island effect has to be a significant contributor. In 1974 (previous record), it was 1 million people in the entire metro. Now it's near 5 million. That's a lot of extra pavement and roof.

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    1. true. Also, that's a lot of heat generated by those people, their cars, their houses, their electronics, their ac units... but greenhouse gasses, I'll leave it to you to decide if you want to learn how we humans make those, are a result of the vast amounts of coal and oil burned. It would be great to use nuclear power, or solar, or wind - but, lazy humans use the simplest path of least resistance, and a gallon of gas is mighty nice to power our cars. The govt refuses to build nuclear power plants, which do not create any gasses, last a really long time, and effectively create steam generating power plants - which would go a long way to power electric everything, like electric trains, mag lev high speed trains, electric bikes, cars, scooters, carts, and other city transportation methods that a really big number of Americans could benefit from instead of burning petrochemicals.
      Airlines will always use jetfuel, trucking will always use diesel, shipping will always use diesel.
      But people movers can certainly use electricity from nuclear power plants, as there does not seem to be another way to make electricity for the rest of the human future, as the mining and pumping from the ground is finite due to the finite amount of coal and oil.
      Either we switch to solar, wind, hydro electric, (including ocean wave moved generators) and nuclear - or decades from now the planet get a LOT warmer, and darker.

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  2. wonder if this weatherman has ever seen the pollution in china and india ?

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