Consider This from NPR - What — And Who — Is To Blame For Extreme Heat?

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

A punishing heat wave has left more than a dozen people dead across Texas. In recent days temperatures have climbed above 100 degrees in many parts of the state. Now the extreme heat is heading east, putting people's health at risk across the Mississippi Valley and the Central Gulf Coast. NPR's Lauren Sommer reports on how climate change and the El Niño climate pattern are increasing the intensity and frequency of heat waves. And Monica Samayoa from Oregon Public Broadcasting reports on how one county is suing oil and gas companies for damages caused by a heat wave. This episode also features reporting from KERA's Toluwani Osibamowo in Dallas.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. If you live in the southern U.S., you don't need us to tell you it is hot. To me, it feels like it gets hotter every summer. For Ashley Hardy in Dallas, this punishing heat wave means walking her dog early before it gets truly unbearable and keeping that walk short. We're probably going to be on here for less than 30 minutes total and then be back in the AC. Even the squirrels are suffering. Inks Lake State Park in Burnett, Texas posted a Facebook video of a squirrel splayed out flat on a shady patch of concrete captioned, I feel ya. What

they're doing is they're putting their body in contact with a surface that's a little bit cooler than them. Carlos Botero is a biologist at UT Austin. Basically what that helps is in dumping all the extra heat that they have to lower down their body temperature. It's a strategy called splooting. And Botero says if you see a squirrel doing it, you know the heat has gotten bad. It may look a little bit cute, but it's actually an indication that these guys are in trouble. And millions of people are too, as the heat wave spreads east.

More than 60 million Americans are expected to face dangerous levels of heat over the next week as the Mississippi Valley and Central Gulf Coast begin to experience what Texas has been dealing with for weeks. This would have been a case of pick your poison. National Weather Service meteorologist Victor Murphy is based in Fort Worth. Parts of the state have seen all-time record high temperatures. The other side of the coin has been just very, very high dew point temperatures, which is a way of measuring the amount of moisture in the air. Across the South, heat index temperatures, meaning what it feels like outside,

are expected to top 110 degrees in many places. Extreme heat kills more people every year than any other natural disaster. Already, Texas has recorded more than a dozen heat-related deaths. The high temperatures are driven by a weather phenomenon known as a heat dome. Well, the heat dome is basically a large area of high pressure loft, very stable, pretty much precludes any development of any clouds or even showers, just a lot of hot air trapped. You can think of it like putting a lid on a pot. As for what is making this heat dome so extreme? It's hard to attribute one specific event to climate change, but I do see a couple of climate change fingerprints, shall we

say, at the scene of this crime. Consider this. Climate change is making extreme heat events like this one more likely. We'll hear how a county in Oregon is going to court to argue that oil companies should be responsible for the damage heat waves cause. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Wednesday, June 28th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation. Working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org.

It's Consider This from NPR. The U.S. is not the only place facing record-breaking heat this year. China and India have faced oppressively hot weather too. Scientists say climate change is a major driver. And something else is coming into play, the El Nino climate pattern. Lauren Sommer from NPR's Climate Desk has more. When it comes to understanding how climate change is making weather more extreme, heat waves are pretty much the clearest example out there. Heat waves are likely the one type of extreme weather events that is most directly associated with climate change. Kai Kornhuber is a climate scientist with Columbia University and Climate Analytics,

an extreme weather research group. He says the Texas heat wave, where records have been shattered for days in a row, shouldn't be surprising. When temperatures rise due to burning fossil fuels, it pushes heat waves into a new category. They get hotter. They are occurring in higher frequency. So that also increases the likelihood of sequential heat waves. And heat waves get longer, which means they take a bigger toll on our health. Extreme heat is the deadliest weather

related killer, especially in low income and communities of color. And this year, there's something added, El Nino. It starts when the ocean in the Central and Eastern Pacific gets hotter. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that makes the planet warmer. That's its role in the global climate system is moving some of the energy up from depth and dumping it into the atmosphere. This year, scientists are predicting El Nino could be quite strong, but it's just getting started and there's a lag time. That lag is because, of course, it takes some time for that extra heat near the surface of the ocean to actually make it into the atmosphere and be moved around by wind currents. And because of El Nino, scientists say this year

could be one of the hottest ever recorded. The last eight years were already the hottest since record keeping began. Of course, the long-term driver is human-caused climate change, where we're sort of stair-stepping up along that inexorable upward trend. El Nino is kind of like an exclamation point on that trend, he says, which means more heat waves are on the way in the near term. In the long term, avoiding more dangerous extremes will take cutting fossil fuels. NPR's Lauren Sommer. The science that connects climate change and extreme heat is at the heart of a new lawsuit filed last week. It centers on the heat dome that hit the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2021, killing around 800 people in the U.S. and Canada. Research has shown that the heat dome would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.

And now, a county in Oregon is coming after oil and gas companies for damages in court. Monica Samayoa from Oregon Public Broadcasting has more. Multnomah County, which includes Portland, is suing over a dozen fossil fuel companies in state court, including Shell, Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil. They say the companies were aware their products would increase temperatures and have a negative effect on the planet, but deceived the public about it. These companies have known their products were harmful for decades, but we are the ones literally paying the consequences. That's Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega-Peterson. She says the county is seeking $50 million for damages from the 2021 heat wave, in which temperatures reached 116 degrees

Fahrenheit and 69 people in the county died. They're also seeking more than a billion in damages for future extreme weather events and an additional 50 billion dollars for climate adaptation. Peterson says that extreme heat waves will only become more common as the planet continues to warm. Researchers have said that the heat dome was virtually impossible without the burning of fossil fuels and that similar events could get much more frequent as temperatures increase. We know the likelihood of things getting better or even staying the same are less than zero unless these industry giants start paying for what they've done. Not all of the companies named in

a lawsuit responded to requests for comment, but in a statement, an attorney for Chevron called the lawsuit unconstitutional and, quote, a counterproductive distraction. And a spokesperson for ExxonMobil said lawsuits like these, quote, waste time, resources, and do nothing to address climate change. This lawsuit is part of a growing list filed by over two dozen other cities and counties across the nation. Corey Silverman-Marotti is a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He says that these lawsuits face an uphill battle. Oil and gas companies have immense legal resources to fight back, and it could take a long time to go to trial. Past efforts to hold industries accountable for these types of products, like like tobacco have taken years and have gone through waves of litigation. But if any case were to win,

I think it could have a galvanizing effect. Rorty says a winning case could provide a legal strategy for others to follow. Lawyers in Multnomah County expect it could take at least a decade for the case to be resolved. That's Oregon Public Broadcasting's Monica Samayoa. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, Thank you.