The publication Nature Climate Change has released a study finding that 37% of heat-related deaths globally were the result of climate change warming from 1991 to 2018. The data was accumulated by 70 research scientists in 43 countries at 732 locations, and points to the ill effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere produced by burning fossil fuels.
Over the past century, the Earth's atmosphere has warmed one degree Celsius as human economies became more and more industrialized, relying on fossil fuels as the prime energy source. Fossil fuel companies have waged a decades-long war against measures to curb fossil fuel use, promoting climate change denial and false "research."
President Biden is rejoining the Paris Climate Accords after his malicious and disgraceful predecessor withdrew and pursued an Earth-damaging policy of promoting coal, oil and gas use. His climate change initiatives focus on greenhouse gas emissions, with the goal of achieving a 52% reduction in those emissions (2005 level to 2030). As the study's abstract states:
"Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change."
Now, with data supporting the intuitive proposition that climate change due to greenhouse gasses is literally killing us with heat, we have more tools to make the case for exceeding those greenhouse gas goals.
(photo: via University of Washington)
