The country hit worst by climate change is India by sheer population which depends on agriculture which is becoming unsustainable due to uncertainty and very high temperatures in summer (as high as 50 C in some places).
Uncertainty in Weather + Water problems + Inefficient agriculture + biggest population (in 5 years i think)
Also, the richer countries will have ways to mitigate the effects of climate change - such as running air conditioning on the streets, or just staying 99% of their day in offices and houses. While the people in poor countries can only escape. So unfortunately, it will be the poor countries that will get hit the hardest. India, South-east Asia, central and south Africa.
Much of Bangladesh will become essentially uninhabitable with a small increase in sea level and summer heat index. I think they're going to end up worse off than Qatar.
You can also put it the other way around: Qatar without fossil fuels (and therefore without the climate change they entail) probably wouldn't exist at all except for few, poor and sparse settlements.
If you were a citizen of Qatar, what do you think would be your choice: to be poor in a desertic country with max summer temperatures of 40 degrees, or to be rich in a country so prosperous that can afford outdoor air conditioning in between its skyscrapers?
I'm not defending Qatar in general. I'm just trying to suggest, with a real example, that there are cases in which climate change might be preferable to climate change mitigation.
Qatar is an extreme case, but when we think of the climate change issue we seem to forget just how much wealth we got from fossil fuels and therefore, in some sense, how much we benefited and keep benefiting from climate change. But of course it's easier to just click on the downvote button and forget about it.
> Being sustainably poor might also wind up being better than a collapsing state after oil revenues run out.
Oil revenues will run out with efforts to move away from fossil fuels. So the collapse of the country is not one of two options, it will be the result of the mitigation efforts.
In the article it’s mentioned that
“ Qatar, which is the largest per-capita emitter country of greenhouse gases, according to the World Bank — nearly three times as much as America and almost six times as much as China – uses about 60 percent of its electricity for cooling.”
“ Air conditioning accounts for less than 10 per cent of China’s or India’s electricity use.”
How much of Qatar’s 2°C increase is due to urban heat island and how much is believed to be climate change? TFA says it’s a combination of both but does not elaborate.
I was thinking why not just mist water, but with the high humidity that’s not going to work.
Sounds like a good market for personal cooling devices. Cooling certain areas of the skin like your wrists is good at helping shift the apparent ambient temperature. Much more efficient than cooling the streets. There are also those devices you can wear around your neck.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was possible to create a specially insulated shirt that has a personal chiller (perhaps backpack size) piping cool air down your back to bring down core temperature.
200Wh in a 1kg battery can probably provide a decent amount of personal cooling, particularly if it’s built to interface intelligently with specialty clothing using performance fabrics. You need a system than can intelligently disperse the heat in a compact format, even in 50°C ambient, which is probably the hardest part.
It’s not like this place wasn’t always blisteringly hot, if you live in the desert you’re going to want good tech to stay cool.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was possible to create a specially insulated shirt that has a personal chiller (perhaps backpack size) piping cool air down your back to bring down core temperature.
I'm not going to bother digging up a link, but such things exist, some of my less heat-tolerant motorcycle buddies have them. One system I know of has a cooling unit that one would have to strap to the rear seat (probably six-pack cooler sized), but I believe self-contained, don't-have-to-drag-a-box-with-me units are available now.
Actually, trees have lower albedo than sand meaning, they reflect less sun energy back to space.
Also, trees do not help if you get hit by a wave of 50C desert air.
Also, the drynes of air in arabic countries is actually their saving. The only way for a human being to be able to survive outside in air hotter than 35C is if the air is dry so it is possible to cool by sweat evaporating.
Above 35C air temperature human body cannot remove heat any other way than through evaporation of sweat.
At 46C you need air that is less than 50 percent humid to even survive. And this means you can only lie flat in shade and breath, any more exertion and you cook from inside.
For anybody to survive outside in 46C air and additionally you want to exert yourself in any way like walking the air must be very dry.
Commenter is talking about the wet bulb temperature, which is basically the temperature at maximum humidity.
Qatar is running about 32 degrees maximum wet bulb temperature, which is still barely survivable, but a couple more degrees and living without AC in Qatar will be unsurvivable for humans.
It's called wet-bulb temperature - it's measured by a thermometer whose bulb is covered by fabric and water slowly drips on it. It shows how much can evaporation (sweating) help to cool us down in those particular weather conditions.
If the humidity is 100%, the wet-bulb temperature will be equal to the normal temperature - because evaporation stops, therefore no cooling effect.
And if the wet-bulb temperature is more than our body temperature, we are overheating. So air temperature over 37 degrees with 100% humidity is indeed potentially lethal.
> The only way for a human being to be able to survive outside in air hotter than 35C is if the air is dry so it is possible to cool by sweat evaporating.
Spend some time in the tropics to easily disprove that misconception.
Having grown up in the caribbean where it is often more than 35C (95F) and quite humid, I'm still alive. (Also, never had air conditioning, couldn't afford it.)
I wonder if the ACs from the stadium in Doha can keep the temp on the field an even 25C. Not sure about the fans leaving the stadiums though. They could die.
They have high humidity and temperatures. Swamp coolers wouldn't be terribly effective in that environment. These are probably conventional chillers pumping out cold air.
I'd design it in the ocean if these units are in costal city, or maybe as a passive element in the water mains if the flow is substantial enough. Not a thermal engineer though so take it with a grain of salt
For the Middle East it's the biggest issue though, because the others could be solved, or at least alleviated, with money. But Middle Eastern economies heavily rely on oil (90% of Saudi exports, 94% of Iraqi exports, 72% of Iranian exports, etc). Take that money out and this entire house of cards comes down.
A friend of mine who worked for an energy company also mentioned that some of their solar panels got stolen often enough they had to factor that into their costs.
