Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele, climatologist at UCLouvain was the guest of Fabrice Grosfilley this morning on Bel RTL. He asked him what he replied to all those who still believe that we are doing too much with global warming. For him, the question of the consequences of global warming on public health arises in a very concrete way today.
“We have to stay serious. The consequences of heat waves, the consequences of extreme rains like those we had last year, are starting to have effects on human health, on human life. Do you know that summer In 2020, for example, 1,400 people died in Belgium alone because of the heat wave. This year, we must expect that there will be hundreds of deaths, hidden, probably. In the coming days, it is often elderly people who will die as a result of the very difficult temperatures to bear, especially for people who already have health problems”.
According to the specialist, we should have foreseen what is happening today. He criticizes the authorities for not having done more. “We know that there were 1,200 deaths during the great heat wave of the summer of 2003. We have taken, supposedly, measures, adaptation plans since. And we see, about fifteen years more late, in 2020, that we have even more deaths than 2003. We did not take the measure of what to do.
The destruction of thousands of hectares of forest: soon in Belgium?
Fabrice Grosfilley also asked Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele if we should fear fires such as those that France and Spain, for example, encounter. For the specialist, the answer is yes.
“What the latest IPCC report, published a year ago, shows is that weather conditions conducive to fires were going to become more and more frequent around the Mediterranean in any case. North, that is to say at home, it will come a little later, with a little less intensity but I think that we should also expect the drought to cause it at home. seen, near Mouscron and in other places, agricultural fires, straw fires and things like that which show that the weather conditions are favorable for fires. At home, we can have forest fires too.
50 degrees in the coming years
Finally, he was asked about the worst-case scenario we are heading towards if we do not quickly change our tune, as recommended by the IPCC, namely: 2 or 3 degrees of warming, what does this mean, concretely, for us? Here again, his answer is without appeal.
“2 or 3 degrees of global warming on average would be catastrophic from the point of view of the repetition and frequency of heat waves, but also very, very heavy rain events like those we had last year. , it would be very difficult to adapt to it. Unfortunately, even if it was inconceivable a few years ago, we are going to approach 50 degrees. It is not next year but in the course of this century , we will reach extremes which will approach 50 degrees if we do not manage to stabilize the climate. It becomes extremely difficult to adapt to that “.