The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

extreme heat is an entirely human artifact, a legacy of human civilization as real as the Great Wall of China.

the ocean absorbs the equivalent of the heat released from three nuclear bombs every second.

Until we figure out a way to suck massive amounts of CO2 out of the sky, we will be stuck with a hotter planet.

When the next pandemic hits, the chances are good it will be caused by a pathogen that leapt from an animal that was seeking out a cooler place to live.

Before there was light, there was heat. It is the origin of all things and the end of all things.

To avoid the superhot sand, they run fast—up to a meter per second, which, given their small body size, is the equivalent of a human running 450 miles per hour.

Camels evolved in North America

Heat waves are created most often by changes in the jet stream.

As the Arctic warms, it’s changing the temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics. That in turn weakens the Rossby waves, allowing the jet stream to meander and get twisty. Sometimes those twists trap hot air over a region, not allowing it to escape. The trapped air gets hotter and hotter, as a result of both the warm land below and the increasing high pressure that keeps out clouds and amplifies the sunlight. And that, to oversimplify greatly, is how you get a heat wave.

“By attacking Ukraine, the breadbasket of the world, Putin is attacking the world’s poor,

The salt content of our blood plasma is similar to the salt content of seawater.

Eighty percent of the ocean remains unmapped, unobserved, unexplored. Marine biologists still don’t know how sharks sleep or how an octopus learns to open a jar.

One metric ton of plastic enters the ocean every four seconds (at this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050).

Reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet—they occupy less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, but are home to more than 25 percent of marine life.

An unstable West Antarctic ice sheet means goodbye Miami—and virtually every other low-lying coastal city in the world.

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic is releasing pathogens that haven’t seen daylight for tens of thousands of years.

naming a heat wave is not science. “It is branding,” Baughman McLeod says unabashedly. “It is PR. And it’s PR that will save lives.” But

The fight between the past and the future defines the battle lines in many cities struggling to adapt to our fast-changing climate.

What’s at stake here is not just architecture. It’s our history, our culture, and our identity. But given the acceleration and urgency of the climate crisis, the harsh truth is, not everything can be saved.

We can save the future or we can save the past, but we can’t do both.”