HOW TO SURVIVE THIS (AND NEXT) SUMMER HEAT LIKE A GENIUS

‘It’s too hot!’

The phrase has become less and less of a debate topic. None of us can deny that the deadly heatwave is another lived indicator of the climate change fiasco. This not-so-cool phenomenon does not cast out Fiji where dangers of heat exhaustion had to be put on a travel advice and various marine species and habitats are threatened by heatwave.

Heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke can no longer be perceived as a stressor of fatigue and nausea. Overheating bodies can take lives for real and it can happen to anyone. Overexposure to direct sunlight also sadly promises other nerve-wrecking health risks such as skin cancer, eye cataract, compromised immune system—just to name a few.

Why is it so hot anyway?

Sweating humanity and planet all wonder how it came this far. Well, heat becomes less bearable and more life-threatening for a number of reasons. But the community of environmental scientists’ most favorite one has to be ‘what we do’.

Scientifically to generally speaking, sunlight reaches the earth’s surface just enough to sustain the lives of human, animals, and plants and then the rest of the heat is reflected out of the earth’s surface just enough to prevent it and us from overheating. It’s too hot because this is no longer the case. That ‘rest of the heat’ is now trapped and not as outgoing as it is naturally supposed to.

How is the heat trapped?

So, what traps the heat? Greenhouse gasses.

Then, why don’t we get rid of greenhouse gasses? We cannot, some of them are naturally already part of the atmosphere. NASA gave the perfect answer, “Without any greenhouse gases, Earth would be an icy wasteland”.

And, how come the greenhouse gases turn out to be so bad? They are not bad, there are just too much of them. At this point, global warming should now ring the bell.

Greenhouse gases can be both natural and man-made. When talking about climate change, we are talking about the latter. Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) is among the red-flag man-made greenhouse gases produced for various human activities from building the roof and wall and producing tumbler to making fridges and air-conditioning cool.

In one sentence, human activities contribute to the trapping of heat in the lower atmosphere in which we live.

How would a genius survive this and next summer heat?

Geniuses solve the problem where it roots. It is unlikely that they will turn a blind eye to icy drinks or ice cream or even a higher BTU air-conditioning. These are survival cooling hacks that are actually the reasons we have to survive the heat to begin with. This means all of them have one thing in common: they use refrigerant.

Refrigerant such as HFC helps make us feel cool and forget about the heat for a moment. HFC is a cooling agent for us but a heating agent for the planet and its temperature. HFC is usually contained in a colorful cylinder that are rarely seen by our eyes used in our fridges and air-conditioning. When cooling industry produces, uses, and disposes HFC, it leaves the greenhouse gas, hence the heat behind. Putting aviation to defeat, cooling industry is responsible for up to 10% of global CO2 emission.

A genius, who could also be you, would then wisely say NO to HFC-based fridges and air-conditioning and say YES to the ones that use natural or synthetic alternative refrigerants that have low or no global warming potential on the next purchase. If you have no plan to buy a new one, then the existing one should be properly serviced and maintained so that there is no leakage leading to the release of HFC into the air. As many countries and fridges companies are transitioning away from HFC, your genius demand will only prove their supplies right. It may sound like an out-of reach change, it is not. Phenomenal change like this, it simply starts with you and in your home.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, if all of us, households, and governments can finally reduce HFC use to 85% by 2047 guided by the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, we will prevent 0.5 degree Celsius of global temperature rise by 2100, in other words, can expect cooler summers to come.