It has long been known that cities are hotter than the countryside. Some of the ‘scientists’ measuring global warming have purposely put some of their temperature measuring devices near air conditional exhausts or runways where planes idle to make sure that the surface stations show an increase in temperature. In 2012 a study was posted at WattsUpWithThat explaining that half of the global warming in America is artificial. Yesterday CNN posted an article explaining that urban heat is worse in black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, due to racism.
The article reports:
On a warm September afternoon, Mona Scott sat on the front porch while her home baked like an oven. As she ran a frozen water bottle across her forehead and arms, Scott told CNN her air conditioning broke 10 days earlier and had not yet been fixed.
“The windows are painted shut,” Scott said. “We come outside at night to sleep because it’s too hot inside.”
Like Scott, residents in the low-income communities across south and southwest Atlanta are struggling to cope with the hottest summer since the Dust Bowl period of the 1930s.
Why are the windows painted shut? Can’t you scrape the paint off and open them?
Note: “the hottest summers since the Dust Bowl period of the 1930’s.” If global warming has been happening so rapidly, why was this the hottest summer since the 1930’s? How many SUV’s were driving around in 1930?
The article continues:
Across America’s largest cities, Black homeowners are nearly five times more likely than White families to own homes in these historically redlined communities, according to a study by Redfin. These communities, like where Scott resides in South Atlanta, endure the greatest burdens of our rapidly warming planet, and now tend to be the hottest and poorest areas.
Extreme heat threatens the health and well-being of underserved communities today, while predominantly White neighborhoods reap the cooler benefits of decades of investment.
“I went to get groceries the other day and I thought I was going to pass out.” Scott told CNN. She said she suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, which are underlying health conditions made worse by excessive heat.
Keeping the lights on is hard enough financially for Scott, and so many other disadvantaged community members, let alone having access to reliable air conditioning.
Do these residents have jobs? If not, how much do these residents receive a month in housing assistance, food stamps, and basic welfare payments? Are they required to work for these payments? How is that money spent?
The article also notes:
Some cities, like New Orleans and New York, suffer from the worst urban heat in the nation, according to a recent study by Climate Central. Atlanta, affectionately known as “Hotlanta,” is also particularly hot.
Spelman College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, partnered with a NOAA campaign and other universities to map the hottest and most vulnerable communities. Spelman’s involvement is significant because it is the first time a historically Black college or university has led an initiative such as this, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College told CNN.
“As we think about global challenges like climate change, this is one of the issues that disproportionately impacts Black and other communities of color,” Jelks said. “So, it’s very important that we are at the table.”
Am I supposed to believe that global warming seeks out minority communities and makes them hotter? I don’t think so. Not all of the poor who live in urban areas are minorities. Not everyone who lives in a southern urban area is a minority. Everyone who lives in a city lives in a place where it is warmer than the corresponding rural area. That has nothing to do with race, creed, or color–it is simply science. I object to the idea of trying to turn climate change (the climate has been changing since the earth was created–why else did they find evidence of plant life under the ice in Greenland?) into a racial issue.
