Excessive heat is blanketing 14 states from the West Coast to Florida,
where officials in Miami issued the city's first-ever excessive heat warning.
Residents in Phoenix, Arizona, have endured a dangerous heat streak of 110° or
higher every day for 17 straight days.
One more day would tie the 1974 record of 18.
>> Cruel heatwaves are hitting not just the United States, but
other countries across the globe, in some places,
breaking temperature records and putting millions of people in danger.
Now, first, here are some more details on these unprecedented temperatures that
are impacting us here in the United States.
>> A shifting gulf stream is drawing hot air from North Africa into Europe and
also causing near record temperatures across North America.
Wildfires have been raging for months in parts of Canada,
where more than 10 million hectares forest have been destroyed in just six months.
The previous record was 7 million in an entire year, while in the US,
more than a third of the population are now living under extreme heat advisories.
And it's not only affecting the land.
>> Water temperatures in the ocean around Florida are off the charts,
they're in the 90s, very warm.
And it's not only in Florida.
Something like 40% of the planet is seeing a marine heat wave right now.
That's very serious for the animals that live in the ocean.
>> And the world has just recorded the hottest week ever recorded between
July 3rd and July 10th and the temperatures have not eased up since.
So soaring levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and an unusual band of
strong winds that have hovered high over the Atlantic have already triggered
heatwaves in Texas, Greece, Spain, Italy, and a host of other nations.
In fact, for a moment, I wanna focus on what's happening in China,
because China has now recorded its highest ever temperature that happened on Sunday.
A remote township in China's arid northwest endured temperatures of
more than 126 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday.
We've got a lot more details to get to, but Jank, curious what your thoughts are.
>> Yeah, so, first of all, on China,
they broke the record by three degrees, which is unheard of.
Like, normally, you break a record by 0.1 or 0.2 in temperature,
breaking it by three degrees is off the charts.
And so, guys, if you're not getting what's happened recently,
this is part of why we're doing the story.
This last week, July 3rd to July 10th was the hottest week
in recorded history on planet Earth.
The planet is burning, and everywhere is setting records.
In Phoenix, it's been over 110° for 14 days straight.
So, this is everywhere, and
it's going much faster than scientists originally expected.
So I'm gonna read you one more graphic here, it's number three, and
then I'm gonna give you the context that you need for this story, okay?
The Earth has not experienced anything like it since instrumental measures of air
temperatures began in the 1850s,
the World Meteorological Organization revealed last week.
We are in unchartered territory and that is worrying news for the planet,
said Professor Christopher Hewitt, the WMO's director of climate services.
Now I'm giving you that because here's what I wanna explain to you.
For those of you who don't know,
what scientists did was they started measuring temperature in the 1850s.
So what they did was they took the temperature between 1850 and 1900 and
averaged it, saying that's generally before industrialization began.
It's not perfectly neat and
doesn't encapsulate the time exactly right, but good enough.
And they say, now we cannot get above one and a half degrees Celsius more
than that temperature in those 50 years, if we do, the effects will be cataclysmic.
And then they said, my God, we're worried if we don't take immediate action that it
might get above that temperature in the year, for example, 2050, right?
Then it became 2030, and now scientists are saying, I think we're gonna
get above it next year and definitely within the next three years, like 98%.
Cataclysmic, and every scientist talking about this past weekend,
hair on fire, they're like, this is much worse and
much quicker than anticipated, we gotta do something right now.
And there's no plans, there's no nothing.
The politicians, especially in America, wouldn't act on this for at least five
years, and by that time, God knows what the hell is gonna happen to the planet.
>> I mean, we already see what's happening to the planet right now.
For instance, on the West Coast,
you saw some of the footage of the fires in Canada.
However, now parts of the West Coast are enduring dangerous wildfires as well,
including areas surrounding Los Angeles.
I just wanna show you this last video so you get a sense of what I'm talking about.
>> More than 8000 acres in Southern California's Riverside County
have been scorched after four wildfires exploded simultaneously.
Fire crews are braving sweltering heat to control the flames.
>> We weren't under any red flag warnings, no santa anas, and
it still burned 7600 acres with a very light breeze.
>> And one thing that I wanna add to that is the extreme weather events,
the wildfires, all of this is leading to various insurance companies
deciding that they're no longer gonna provide insurance to
homeowners in various parts of the country.
That's certainly true of Florida, and that's the response to the frequency and
the severity of hurricanes in that state.
It's certainly true of California, where Farmers Insurance, for instance, has now
stopped insuring individuals who own homes in the hillsides and the foothills.
And so, a lot of these homeowners don't know what to do, because if you don't
have homeowners insurance and you're hit by a climate fueled natural disaster,
how are you going to pay to rebuild your home or to fix the damage that was caused?
This is already having damaging and
lasting impacts on various communities across the country.
And the government's response to both climate change and
to the disasters that people are already facing as a result of
climate change are just not substantial enough.
People are really suffering already as a result of our inability to appropriately
respond to the climate emergency.
>> And so, because the oil companies have created manufactured doubt,
just very literally, they've paid politicians,
they paid think tanks, et cetera, to pretend that the science is in doubt,
people are questioning whether this is real, right?
Especially right wingers.
Well, guys, even if you're on the right wing, you know what's super real,
business interests, money, cash.
So when the insurance guys go, we cannot make money here anymore,
this is our core business, but these areas will be lost to humanity.
There's no hope, so we're not going to insure them.
They have done the math on it, they know the science is real and they're like,
we're not gonna lose money on purpose, we're not gonna do it.
Those are goners, those areas.
And you still don't think it's real?
They're like, we won't make money, this will be destroyed.
No, nothing's gonna get through the right wingers.
No, I heard Bob on Facebook and Tucker Carlson tell me that it isn't real and
they know better than 99% of the world's scientists, it's insanity.
Now, on top of everything else, El Nino has come around and
it's created a double whammy.
Guys, El Ninos normally make the temperature hotter,
combined with climate change, it's been an absolute disaster.
But this is just the beginning of El Nino.
It lasts a couple of years, and God knows what's gonna happen the rest of this year.
And July is set to be the hottest month in the history of the world.
And then the next couple of years are only likely to get worse.
They're about to break probably the temperature record of the planet at
Death Valley any day now.
And then finally, look, the scientists can measure back up to 1850, but
they can extrapolate the rest of the data.
And they say, this is the hottest the planet has been in the last 120,000 years.
And so, some people go, so what man?
It used to be hotter.
Yeah, when humans didn't live here.
So, we we're not messing with the planet,
the planet will recover, it's just gonna shake us off.
We're messing with our own extinction and
that's just a stone cold reality at this point.