122 Coming Soon? - 309

My girlfriend and I cruised along on our bikes riding the Iron Belle Trail last week.  We passed a man walking his bike. Wondering if he had mechanical problems, I slowed down and asked if everything was OK. He said he was a little hot and decided to walk in the shade.

We rode on but, knowing the insidious nature of heat disorders, we turned around and offered him some water. He had his own and thanked us. We checked our smartphones for the temperature. It was 75F.

I watched a touching program on Sunday morning TV. One of the grocery baggers for a woman in a Texas grocery store was an elderly veteran. He was 90 and working in 90-degree heat. The good Samaritan woman felt the bagger, at 90 years old (or maybe in this case,90 years young) and working in 90-degree heat, was serving beyond the call of duty. She raised a considerable sum of money for him via GoFundMe. Now, if he wishes, he can retire. I wonder if he will. He seemed like an old workhorse content with the noble principle of dying "in harness."

He may meet his end this summer as the heat domes are sliding across Arizona towards Texas. Over the next few days, Arizona temps are projected to be 103 to 113, setting new records for this time of year.

 A Phoenix first responder on Fox News demonstrated on video what his team must do to treat people suffering from heat disorders. Most of us think of ice and igloo coolers when we worry about our beer warming. But in Phoenix, it's different. In Phoenix, ice and coolers are the vital ingredients in a recipe used by first responders to save lives. The ingredient list includes a large igloo cooler full of ice, a blue body bag, and a strong back. To complete the recipe, you add a heat stroke victim, of which there seems to be plenty.

To finish the rescue, you slide the victim into the blue body bag with the ice and then lift and load all into the ambulance. You then speed to the hospital with hopes of serving the victim to the ER, well-chilled but alive.

In 2022, fifteen people died of the heat in Phoenix. In 2023, 54. In 2023, the temperatures in Arizona exceeded 100F for 133 days. In all of Maricopa County, there were 645 heat-related deaths. The first responders said they had delivered one heat victim on average per day last year to the hospital. They are expecting more this year. They are, as you might expect, stocking up on ice.

I wonder how the East Indians are doing with their record-setting heat.  They just completed their national elections. Voter turnout was light. Could it be the temperatures? There are 33 million people in the National Capital Territory of Delhi who experienced an average high temperature of 115 F. One temperature reporting station reached 49.9C or 121.8 F., setting a new record.

I hope you are counting yourself lucky. We live in the North. We are warming, and the natural world, primarily fish, plants, insects, and animals, feel the consequences. We and much of non-human life are protected from the vast swings in temperature by the Big Igloo Cooler called Lake Superior.  

Unfortunately, NASA tells us lakes are, on average, warming faster than the air or the oceans. According to the Large Lakes Observatory, part of the University of Minnesota Duluth, Lake Superior has warmed 2 degrees F per decade since the 1980s, making it one of the fastest-warming lakes in the world. While we have a time and temperature cushion by virtue of where we live, at this rate of warming, it is a very thin cushion, allowing us little time to act.

Lake Superior's current ecosystem depends on being cold. If it warms, many invasive species will find comfortable quarters, while native species will suffer. At its current rate of warming, winter ice on the lake may only be an ice-fishing memory as soon as 2060.

 At some point, our protective igloo of ice water will morph from a refreshing cooler to a source of humidity.  Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, so Lake Superior's evaporation has the potential to warm us faster if we do not reign in our greenhouse gas emissions. The burning of coal, oil, and gas being the primary source of our lethal predicament. Our addiction to this energy being man’s greatest challenge to cure.

This humidity problem is already challenging our ski hills. To make snow efficiently, the nighttime air must be cold and dry. Water vapor at night not only holds and emits warmth, but humid air slows the evaporation of water being shot out of snow-making machines, making snow-making difficult.

A warming Lake Superior is already adversely affecting us, with more unknowns to come.

To learn more about the world's current climate, visit the World Meteorological Organization and read "State of the Global Climate."

I discovered Lake Superior's best climate coverage in an interview with Paul Huttner, MPR's Chief Meteorologist, and Professor Jay Austin, Director of the Large Lake Observatory, UMD. Search: "Lake Superior is one of the fastest-warming lakes in the world, MPR News."