Business Insider: Dubai is the Hellscape Our World Will Become Because Climate Change

Dubai Sunset from Burj Khalifa

Dubai Sunset from Burj Khalifa. By Simon Bierwald from Dortmund, Germany – Dubai Sunset from Burj Khalifa, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to Business Insider’s Harrison Jacobs, visiting Dubai is the equivalent to experiencing what our world will be like after it has been ravaged by global warming.

If you ever wondered what life will be like when climate change makes outside unlivable, Dubai can give you a good idea

DEC 17, 2018, 10:30 AM

As I hung out in Dubai last month, it struck me that the city’s severe climate and its adaptation to that climate was a good approximation of what I imagine living with the severe effects of climate change to be.

During Dubai’s long summer, stretching from mid-April through October, temperatures make it unbearable to be outside for more than a few minutes. Temperatures are regularly around 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) and have gone as high as 119 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius), with plenty of humidity.

The city’s adaptation to that climate? A proliferation of interconnected climate-controlled spaces, including more than 65 malls, residential and office buildings with entire indoor cities attached, metros, and indoor parking lots.

Meanwhile, for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in Dubai who aren’t lucky enough to live in air-conditioned megacomplexes, Dubai can be a hellscape during the summer – just as the climate might be for the developing countries that will be hardest hit by the effects of climate change.

If I was going to take a guess at where our hyper-consumerist world is heading in the event the world can’t get its act together on climate change, I’d say it’s going to look a lot like Dubai.

Read more:

I’m not sure how the people of Dubai feel about a green journalist describing their beautiful and popular city as an unsurvivable hellscape. Last time I visited Dubai it seemed quite pleasant, amazing shops, nice beaches, polite and friendly people.

Some of the taxi drivers were a bit useless, but I wouldn’t describe my Dubai taxi experience as “unsurvivable hell” – they all tried their best. Some of the drivers had interesting stories, like the driver who used to be a Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation. But I never felt unsafe – I got the strong impression that most people relocate to Dubai to leave their old problems behind.

Dubai certainly has a warm climate – but this is not a big deal if you are used to warm climates.


139 thoughts on “Business Insider: Dubai is the Hellscape Our World Will Become Because Climate Change

  1. If the current predictions come true, the July temps in the UK will soar to match the unlivable hellhole that is… southern France.

        • You mean the Brits can start growing their own vineyards again, just like they had a few hundred years ago during the Medieval Warming period? Oh, the hell of it all .. it’s just too hellish to think about.

          • Bryan,
            Do try a nice white wine from Old Tramway vineyard, a couple of miles from me.
            Commemorates the Surrey Iron Railway – 1803.


          • The next time I find myself in the area, I certainly will.
            Since I’m not a Brit, I can certainly partake of your domestic varietals and won’t be a local drunk on domestic

          • Only Macrom voters believe the discredited warmist theory that links hyperhermia deaths to temperature. The 14,000 French who perished in 2003 must have died of hangovers , for 2003 was in he middle of the Pause climate models failed to predict and CAGW thermometers failed to register


    • I’d that the likelihood of the current predictions coming true are about equal to how many of the past prediction came true. (IE *ZERO*)

    • Southern France, Chad? Isn’t that the hellhole the Rolling Stones went to when they ran from UK taxes and whatever else they were running from?

      Good enough for Keef Richards, good enough for me.

      Regards and HAPPY HOLIDAYS


      • In this whole climate change debate, we need to keep focus on the single overriding question:
        What kind of world will our children leave for Keith Richards (and the cockroaches)?

    • Southern France, Chad? Isn’t that the Hell hole that Gérard Depardieu was running away from to get away from high taxes?
      It wasn’t very warm there when I was there in March 1988. Has it global warmed there much since then?

    • I am being forced into a corner to endure the absolutely unendurable: a moist, foggy day in a moist, so far wet (as in snow/rain) winter, and the usual greedy feathered beggers like the red-bellied woodpecker are gorging themselves on my largesse.
      I do not know how much more of this I can take. Forced to stay indoor, write chapters for a story, eat cookies, have roast beats for supper – the horror!
      It’s torture, I tell you!
      I need pie and wine.

    • Not even that much. We had 42C in France last year, I cant see the UK getting that hot even with mythical CO2 warming.

  2. So you get lots of big skyscrapers and the best theme parks in Climate Change .. I loved Ski Dubai … sign me up.

    • I could do without the big skyscrapers, but sign me up for the theme parks. Love a good theme park.

      • And the parking lot just outside of that “ski slope” looks like the back lot of “Top Gear”.

        Its a shame when you can’t easily spot your own Bugatti Veyron out in the parking lot. Or envy the owner of the car parked next to yours.

        Absolutely beautiful place is Dubai. Only place I know where you can go buy your bread and eggs, then ride up an escalator to pick up your multi-million dollar jewelry.

  3. How about Yakutsk. How long will you survive if you are caught outside in the winter?

    I prefer cold to hot but it must be admitted that cold is a lot more dangerous a lot faster. We used to have the 30-30-30 rule. At -30F, in a 30 mph wind, exposed skin will freeze in 30 sec.

    • I believe the coldest village is Oymyakon, but among large cities it is Khabarovsk.

      BUT Yakutsk has a musuem to the Coldest City on the Earth.

    • Earlier this year it was -68C in Yakutsk. That same day I was in Mongolia where it was -42 C downtown Ulaanbaatar – and windy.

      “Temperatures are regularly around 105 degrees Fahrenheit…”

      Yeah – like Illinois used to be in summer. Glad those days are gone. (Illinois is like Dubai, right?)

          • wow! I’m glad decimal time never caught on. That attempt was an “everything in the past is garbage” paroxysm. We’ve been using 24 hours a day, 60 min per hour since the Babylonians. I think the French, during the French revolution, tried 10 month years also. They succeed in convincing everyone (nearly) else to use the metric system because the rest of the world was in a jumble in measurements. However, 24hrs, 60 minutes, and 60 seconds was already an international standard. It was a bit of hubris for them to think the rest of the world would dump an international standard just because the French thought their idea was better.

  4. We have all sorts of places that have “warm” climates. Check out a globe map and focus on the Equator. Ever been to Singapore or the Amazon basin?

    They have golf tournaments in Kuala Lumpur. The players do it for the money.

    How can people survive, and actually thrive, in such places? How did they survive 100 years ago, before airconditioning?

    Warming has been demonized. I’m 74 and walk 9 holes of golf pushing my bag in a cart. This is in the summer, in southeast NC, and I’m not unusual.

    • They used to get up earlier in the morning, siesta during the warm afternoon period, and then get active again in the evening.

    • It has a lovely climate in the winter. We went for shortish walks in Sept when the temps were in the upper 30sC and into the low 40sC in the carport! We have picniced in the mountains near Hatta in 46C in middish-May! (Mad dogs and English Men/Women).
      We even survived Abu Dhabi one night in late July in 1969 when the power failed, no AC, temp of 103F. I got off the ‘plane home while in Kuwait, same temp of 103F but much drier. It felt positively cool there

  5. Harrison Jacobs fails to understand greenhouse gas theory, which indicates that most of the increase in average temperature comes from increasing minimum temperatures. Basically greenhouse gasses stop us freezing to death at night and do not cook us during the day.

    The other thing Harrison Jacobs fails to understand is the magnitude of the change. We are already a deg C above “pre-industrial” temperatures, so the 2 deg C doom being predicted is only a deg C hotter than now. Even if this was reflected in peak temperature (which it will not be) that would be barely delectable by human senses.

    • BillP … at 6:24 am


    • Even the IPCC admits that places that have a lot of humidity in the air will feel very little warming from CO2, because water vapor and CO2 overlap for most of their absorption frequencies.

    • “… increase in average temperature comes from increasing minimum temperatures.”

      This effect is not limited to the equivalent forcing from changing GHG concentrations. Owing to the immutable T^4 dependency between W/m^2 and degrees K which leads to an equally immutable 1/T^3 dependency of the sensitivity on temperature, 1 W/m^2 at the poles has a far bigger effect on the temperature than 1 W/m^2 at the equator.

      It’s the temperature dependence of the sensitivity that the IPCC’s self serving consensus ignores by improperly linearizing the relationship between W/m^2 and degrees K, while the actual linear relationship is between forcing and emissions.

      From first principles physics, the steady state sensitivity of the temperature of arbitrary matter to incremental forcing is EXACTLY 1/(4eoT^3), where e is the emissivity, o is the SB constant and T is the temperature in degrees K. The linear sensitivity of the SB emissions at T to a change in forcing is EXACTLY 1/e, which for Earth is about 1.62 where e is about 0.62.

      All the physics can support is a varying emissivity. The IPCC can’t connect the dots between a quantifiable black/gray body emitter and their pseudo-science in support of their absurdly high ECS which requires either the T^3 factor to be replaced with an unrelated constant or a value of e that’s far too small. They may try to claim that Stefan-Boltzmann LAW doesn’t apply, but they couldn’t be more wrong if they tried and they’re certainly trying hard. So hard in fact, that even many skeptics are misled by the multifarious layers of obfuscation.

    • Nor does he understand subjunctive mood.

      ‘If I was going to take a guess at where our hyper-consumerist world is heading’

      Where are the editors ?!?!

    • The thing that Harrison Jacobs does understand is that:

      If I go on vacation to Dubai, and I write a ridicules story with a Dubai tie-in, I can take a big ass undeserved (but legal), tax deduction …

  6. I guess that for most of those migrant workers Dubai is a climate paradise, being that they are used to even higher temperatures. Everything is relative.

    • Too true –

      Last time I went to Laos I departed a mild Perth day and landed in Vientienne where it was 32C that morning. Catching up with Lao friends I found them all rugged up in jumpers and heavy coats and all complaining how bitterly cold it was.


    DEC 17, 2018, 10:30 AM

    duh ….

    If you ever wondered what life will be like when climate change makes outside unlivable, Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station can give you a good idea

    DEC 20, 2018, 09:22 AM

  8. Sounds like we have precisely nothing to worry about.

    If Dubai is the worst case scenario, I can live with that.

    With sufficient access to low cost energy, we can desalinate our water, grow crops in giant greenhouses, maybe make synthetic meat if the kinks get worked out, or ramp up open ocean aquaculture and eat more fish.

    Actually sounds more like Israel. They’re already doing all of that stuff. Beautiful country.

  9. Maracaibo comes to mind here. 50% humidity and temps above 105 common. Not as wealthy, and the poor get by with no AC and infrequent water supplies. Even so Maracouchos are quite proud of their city and their resilient independance. Tough place to love. But now after 20 years have passed since I lived there I still miss it and dream about it in Spanish

  10. Another one to add to my list if what climate change can do for you.
    It will move all of Earth’s inhabitants to Dubai, we didn’t see that one coming did we? 🙂

  11. I spent 4 years in Dubai, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It exuded a sense of dynamism and economic optimism among all the expats who worked there that I knew. I was once invited to meet with a parliamentary delegation from the UK, and one Labour MP asked me about the awful conditions of the workers in the construction industry. When I told her that workers in Dubai were not brought to Dubai against their will but in fact paid brokers to have a chance to work in Dubai in order to actually escape their stricken conditions in the slums or villages of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the MP immediately “switched off” and was no more interested since this did not meet her presumed narrative.

  12. Cities in North Dakota have have massive climate change yearly with summertime high temperatures above 105F amd winter lows of -40. This didn’t prevent Bismark, North Dakota making Forbes magazine’s list of 25 top places to retire.

    • While I am sure the Chamber of Commerce was thrilled with the designation, I doubt the inhabitants were equally enthused.

    • As Garrison Keilor said about North Dakota, it’s a place where nature makes a serious effort to kill you every winter.

    • 105? Sounds like the two Summers I spent living in Phoenix. And my car didn’t have AC. Although, I have to admit that driving with the windows down becomes uncomfortable above about 110.

        • Sweet Old Bob
          In 1963 I bought a brand new Corvette Stingray. A buddy and I took a vacation in Arizona. We were driving from Prescott to Phoenix on a hot July day. We were on a long upgrade at about 7,000′ elevation. I decided to find out just how fast the car would go. I put the pedal to the floor and after a short bit had settled in at 112 MPH; I rolled my window up and it nudged up to 114. However, Tony still had his bare feet hanging out his window and didn’t want to be bothered with the experiment.

  13. There’s a genre of climate communication that just makes sh!t up. It’s nothing more than fictional apocalypticism, that doesn’t even try to make an effort to find provenance in evidence-based science.

  14. Interesting that:
    Willis wonders where all his money has gone and up pops Eric with the answer

    Dubai came from zero to be what is by riding on a raft of oil.
    It is Totally Zero without oil.
    Inside a century it will return to being zero.

    hey Eric, did you not visit the Garden Of Eden while you were passing through – just a few miles to the north-west.
    Or The Hanging Gardens – no need for air-con there I imagine.
    What about a bit of big game hunting in the forests and jungles that spread all the way west, right across to Casablanca by accounts or a bit of fishing in the rivers and lakes that are there.

    *WERE* there. Not now.
    Oh. Why’s that?
    “The Climate Changed” you say?
    I say: “How?”
    Would it be OK if I didn’t just get arm-waving and or an appeal to your own authority?
    Something coherent and scientific. Cause & Effect, that sort of thing.

    • Inside a century it will return to being zero.

      That rather depends on how well it diversifies what it has to offer. It’s trying to shape itself into a tourist destination and a business haven. and it seems to be having some success in doing so. So even when the “oil raft” has run it’s course, it may just continue being something more than zero if it manages to play it’s cards right.

      hey Eric,

      I’m not sure if you meant to be addressing Eric, or if your comment is more appropriately directed at Mr. Jacobs (the author of the piece about Dubai which Eric was quoting)


      Yes, climate changes. has for as long as there has been climate. Referencing the Garden of Eden (some thousands of years ago, if it ever existed) The Hanging Gardens (of Babylon, some 2600 years ago), and other ancient world places doesn’t do anything to support the idea of man-caused climate change/catastrophe. There were no SUVs, coal-fired power planets or industrial factories belching out CO2 in Eden or Babylon, and yet the climate, as you say, changed. Those pushing the climate change scare are the ones that need to explain how it is the forces that caused those changes then aren’t the forces causing any supposed change now. Which, if that is what you are getting at, means Mr. Jacob and not Eric is the one you need to be addressing.

      • “Garden of Eden-if it ever existed.” We will never know will we, since some humongous landscaping, mentioned in most myths of the world, seems to have occurred between then and now.

    • They have used that money to educate their population and to build up an infrastructure.
      When the oil money runs out, what they have built with the oil money will remain.

    • Hey Peta, the “Garden of Eden” wet Arabian peninsula and Northern Africa was a feature of the Holocene Optimum, back when temperatures in that part of the world at least were warmer than today. So maybe global warming wouldn’t be such a bad thing for Dubai.

      Holocene Climate Development of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula

      Sebastian Luening, Fritz Vahrenholt

      Holocene climate in North Africa and on the Arabian Peninsula has undergone major changes. In this contribution, we review hydroclimate and temperature changes in the region over the past 15,000 years by correlating and integrating all available case studies. A pronounced wet period corresponding to the ‘Green Sahara’ and its equivalent in Arabia commenced between 15,000 and 9000 years BP and ended sometime between 6500 and 3500 years BP, followed by arid conditions throughout the late Holocene. Start and end dates vary between locations, depending on local factors, climate amplifiers and chosen climate proxies, leading to a spatially and temporally complex distribution. Some studies show gradual transitions between the hydroclimatic states while other locations evidenced abrupt changes. The humid phase was triggered by a northward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) due to orbital precession. The northernmost parts of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were not reached by the ITCZ. Here, increased early Holocene humidity may have been due to an intensification of southern Mediterranean winter rain and its deeper penetration southwards into the present-day desert areas. The early Holocene ‘Green Sahara’ forms part of a long series of wet periods that have occurred over the past hundred thousand to million years in North Africa and Arabia. Notably, climate models are still unable to match the observed hydroclimatic changes in a quantitative way. Simulated rainfall during the African Humid Period over the Sahara is not sufficient to sustain vegetation at a level seen in the palaeo record, indicating that processes such as vegetation and dust feedbacks still need to be refined. Sea surface temperatures in North Africa and Arabia during the early Holocene were generally one to several degrees C warmer than during the late Holocene. Warming began around 12,000 years BP and ended around 5000 years BP. The warm period generally coincided with the early Holocene wet phase in the region and is linked to the Holocene Thermal Maximum, an early Holocene period during which temperatures were globally elevated. The review suggests that the Holocene climate history of North Africa and Arabia is closely linked to the global development and that significant temperature changes have also occurred in subtropical climate belts.

  15. Ah yes who could forget their history lessons about the first people arriving in the Arabian Peninsula and constructing malls and interconnected climate spaces in order to survive and build a civilization there.

    “During Dubai’s long summer, stretching from mid-April through October, temperatures make it unbearable to be outside for more than a few minutes.” That basically says it all right there. I hope he didn’t chip a nail while writing this … story?

    • Funny, I used to be able to walk to the compound swimming pool in mid-summer. That writer has a vested interest in exaggeration methinks. It is darned hot but people have lived thereabouts for millenia.

    • Indeed. How many hellscapes do you know of that are popular with tourists?

      Tourist: Hmmm, I could vacation in a paradise destination or in a hellscape?… Sign me up for the hellscape.

      nope, sorry but I just don’t see many tourist making that choice.

      • How many tourists visiting the Hellscape known as Dubai arrive in their private jets?

  16. What an ignoramus Harrison Jacobs, on every level. The epitome of the ignorance and stupidity of the alarmist cult personified.
    You’ve insulted everyone! The good people of Dubai and the the rest of the thinking world with your inane ridiculous and outright incorrect statements.

  17. That sounds familiar, like a shallow reporter visit to any assignment they did not favor. It could be any number of National Geographic reports that I used to dislike before I stopped the gift subscription.

  18. “temperatures make it unbearable to be outside for more than a few minutes.” ?
    So how did they build the buildings before they had the “safety” of buildings to protect them from the heat ?… Safe Spaces ?

  19. ‘a good approximation of what I imagine living with the severe effects of climate change to be.’

    Well, at least he’s admitting it’s all his imagination. Like 97% of the rest of it.

  20. Many people consider, say, NYC or LA to be hellholes. They address the problem by living somewhere else.

    And if this person doesn’t like Dubai after development, he should have tried it before..

  21. Harrison Jacobs could have at least thrown in the obligatory “it’s like living with a million Hiroshima atom bombs going off every day….” type of idiocy. C”mon Harrison, step up your BS.

  22. I have always believed that “Business Insider” is no more about business than the movie Monkey Business was about business. A better name for “Business Insider” should be “Millennials Without Real Jobs”

  23. The guy needs to visit Phoenix in July. I lived there 10 years and for me the weather was nearly the only good thing about that city.

  24. I am getting a pop up ad when on my iPhone but not on my Mac again. Can’t view site at all when on my phone. Sorry to be off topic.

  25. The average CONUS temperature is presently about 55F. In Florida, the average is about 68F. So why wait till 2100? Just move from most anywhere in the US to Florida and experience what a 3F or more rise will feel like.

    • Which neatly illustrates the lack of logical thinking of Mr Jacobs and his ilk. To raise the average temperature of CONUS to that of Florida would need a warming of a wee bit more than 3F and to that of Dubai, throttles to the firewall (in pilot speak)

  26. His piece illustrates the effect of alarmist narratives on some of the utterly uninformed. I hadn’t realized it, but some of them aren’t thinking in terms of a rise of five degrees (max.) by 2100, but many times that. Incredible.

    • Indeed. that what happens when you show the uninformed scary graphs that show large movement upwards (because the scale of the chart is in fractions of a degree) when the actual change thus far is barely a blip on the thermometer (not even noticeable to the naked eye, and smaller than the error bars for reading said thermometer) – it’s the equivalent of making a molehill look like a mountain.

  27. so how is this different from Dubai before Globul warming? aside from fewer air conditioned buildings?
    the well off Arabs head for their summer playground – London, so who cares what the weather in Dubai summer is. The Marriott Grosvenor Square parking area was full of their Lambos, and Ferraris. I suppose those staying at top flight hotels have Bugatti’s. I don’t know if those were their London cars, or do they have them flown in for the summer?


    Wow, what a wimp.

  29. Or, to visit a hellscape that might represent the world if the greenies have their renewable energy dreams fullfilled, North Korea can be dark, cold and hellish.

  30. At least Mr. Worrel was honest enough (” a good approximation of what I imagine living with the severe effects of climate change to be”) to tell us he was just making it up as he went along.

    • you mean Mr. Jacobs was honest enough to tell us he was making it up as he went along as the quote you mention comes from Mr. Jacobs’ article that Mr. Worrel was reporting on.

  31. The climate in Dubai isnt any hotter than it has ever been. It is in a desert. According to Al Gore’s Church of climatology, deserts won’t get any hotter than now even with runaway global warming. That is because there is little water vapour to increase the temperature as per the Church’s CAGW theory. So if runaway global warming occurs we can all move to the Sahara. Even 11 billion people could fit into the Sahara. I guess cactus could be the main food staple. CAGW is such a farce.

  32. Gee, Dubai sounds a lot like where I live in the low part of the Victorian high country in Australia.
    Summer, generally hot and dry. Temperatures up to 43 degrees C every summer, although not for more than a few days at a time. Lots of temps in the very high 30’s. The view from my house is one of verdant abundance. Sure a bit burns off ( dries out ) but once the autumn comes its back to green and then down to the minus 2 degrees C. What a hell hole.

  33. Dubai is a beautiful and pleasant place to be, the Monaco of the Middle East. I was fortunate to attend an endodontic conference there a few years ago.
    As I walked beside the clear blue sea feeling the balmy air and a backdrop of palm trees and attractive architecture, I can’t really say that I felt “ravaged” at all by the climate and environment.
    But then, I’m not a climate scientist, what would I know?

  34. People who complain about living in Dubai should have visited it before the widespread introduction of air-conditioning occurred. Those who visit Dubai in July, need to consult the climate charts in advance and reconsider the need to travel. January in Dubai is great.

  35. Next time this guy should fly, swim, walk to Pyongyang and hang in it’s suburbs until cleared to leave after successfully attending political reeducation facilities.

    Almost no cars, frequent electricity outages, heating is a luxury few can afford, not even stray animals, mice, rats, as all that could be, dissidents inclusive, was eaten long ago.

    Earth day every day, I still wonder why no greens expat there.

  36. My wife and I were in Dubai back in October … no problems at all. Used Uber instead of taxis, only UberX mind you (the standard service) and both times we were picked up by a driver in a Lexus. Yes, everyone was polite, the mall we visited was as good as any I have seen (great food court), and the hotel was top notch despite not being expensive (unless you worry about alcohol prices).

  37. Harrison Jacobs is apparently unaware of Hadley Circulaton. Winds are generally from West to East from around 60 to 30 degrees North and South, generally East to West from the Equator to 30 degrees North and South, thanks to the spin of the Earth, the Coriolis effect, and differential heating at the Equator and Poles.

    The Horse Latitudes or Doldrums, form two belts around the Earth around 30 degrees North and South. Along those bands there are plenty of deserts, and it gets extra hot, as evaporating water in those latitudes doesn’t rise and carry away latent heat as it does in other regions. They may shift Northward or Southward depending on global warming or cooling, but they’re going to exist as long as the Earth has an atmosphere and continues to rotate . Dubai is in that desert region around the horse latitudes.

  38. “Migrant workers.” Call them what they are-slaves. They are lured there promised good wages, instead, they live in miserable conditions, have they passports confiscated as soon as they arrive and don’t get them back until they have paid their transportation to Dubai and back home. Meanwhile, the charges for their “housing” and food is more than enough to make sure that they never can go back home. Dubai is, I believe, the only country in the world where they will throw you in jail until you pay your debts.

  39. I lived in the Inland Empire of southern California for 28 years. The temperature extremes cited for Dubai were within the bounds I experienced, and I never considered it unlivable. Being outdoors was never really much of a problem. I don’t get the apocalyptic view of this.

  40. ‘Business Insider: Dubai is the Hellscape Our World Will Become Because Climate Change’ – ‘because climate change’?
    Whatever happened to prepositions – the use of which establishes relationships between components of a sentence, and makes the meaning clear?
    As an example (prepositions in capital letters), ‘Don’t walk ON the grass’, ‘ He spoke ABOUT his holiday experiences’, ‘I can run AS fast as you’ – and ‘because OF climate change’, please!
    The English language is slowly being reduced to Orwellian ‘newspeak’ and ‘because climate change’ is another step in that direction.
    Also often seen these days is the misuse of prepositions – ‘I’m tired AT hearing myself play’ is a grammatical horror which I saw some time ago in an advertisement by a banjoist looking for others to make music with.

  41. I’ve lived in one of those blast furnace deserts. Massively sucked, the ante room to hell experience for a decade. And note to the old gooters on here – your heat perception fails with age, that’s why when seniors’ ac fails they cook to death. The past 20 years where I’ve lived it’s gotten overall way hotter. It’s starting to suck here in the summer too, and it shouldn’t. We barely get snow anymore. I’m out doing yardwork in late December in a tank top past few years. I should be wearing a parka. And I’m an engineer so I looked at the graphs from the 1880s to now; temps, max min average, have us in a firm range until mid 90s – 2000. Then we bust limits with a consistent uptrend. If temperature were a stock, I’d buy right in ’cause that baby’s taking off!

    • “The past 20 years where I’ve lived it’s gotten overall way hotter.”

      Sounds like your heat perception is failing.

      • Not necessarily. Around my area, it’s noticeable warmer (in the winter) and cooler (in the Summer) compared to decades ago. Both anecdotally and by looking at the weather data between now and then. But there’s nothing unusual about that. weather patterns naturally change over time and if you look even further back in time (at the data) you’ll notice those patterns change again. Climate changes, it always has, it always will (and man has no say in the matter). Dismissing it with “Sounds like your heat perception is failing” won’t alter the facts.

  42. There is a reason that seniors and retired people flock to Florida, Phoenix, Palm Desert, and Las Vegas. Cold hurts. Cold air contributes to a variety of ills. While alarmists wring their hands over the possible range expansion of tropical disease, it’s pretty clear that cold air contributes to the spread of influenza ever year. While their projections are nonsense, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a few more San Diegos in the world.

  43. I constantly feel obliged to point out that desserts are are not caused by heat. Some of the hottest places on earth (tropical rain forests) are the wettest. The driest place on Earth (Antarctic plateau) is the coldest.

    • That is so true. The largest desert of the world Antarctica, is also the coldest place on earth. The deserts of the world (including Antarctica) are caused by semi-permanent high-pressure systems. With the exceptions of the Arctic and Antarctic deserts, the Columbia Basin desert, (not usually considered a desert because of the extensive irrigation), and the Atacamba desert in Chile, all the deserts of the world are in the semi-permanent Sub-Tropical high. The Arctic and Antarctic are in the semi-permanent Polar Highs. The Columbia Basin and the Atacamba desert are in the rain-shadows of mountain ranges.

    • Very true. The idea that they are caused from heat no doubt comes from the standard image people have of deserts – as being vast fields and dunes of sand, the unrelenting hot sun beating down on the dry landscape. People generally don’t think of Antarctica when they think desert, they then to think more of the Sahara or the deserts of the American South West.

  44. “like the driver who used to be a Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation.”

    Kinda like every service person you come across says they were special forces. Riiiight.

  45. Sounds like eastern Canada in reverse.The average temperature in the u.k would have to rise by 30 degreesC to match this.


    The very same with Toronto, Canada.

    exposed city’s have to cope with their climate.

    What’s wrong?

Comments are closed.