We've all felt the lethargy, known the discomfort. It's a close call for me when it comes to the worst of it I've experienced - between 46 degrees in Jaisalmer in the Thar desert in India and 45 degrees on the south coast of NSW some years ago.

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In India, while my eyes burned in the heat, all fight had gone out of the stallholders, on this day too fatigued to haggle. On the coast, all fight had gone out of me. With no air conditioning in the shack and no sea breeze, even the beach offered little respite. The sand was too hot, the water was cool but the heat in the air made breathing a chore. All I could do was seek shade under the pergola and ride it out. Inert and a little nauseous.

Yesterday, I felt for those in South Australia, Victoria and west of the Great Divide in NSW, as they sweltered in temperatures I'd always associated with places like Marble Bar in Western Australia - or the Sahara. For them, the warnings came thick and fast all day as the weather "event" took hold. Fires, of course, and threats to human health from the extreme heat.

In cooler climes and times, Oscar Wilde said, "Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative." This summer, I have to disagree. In fact, my imagination has been working overtime, mulling over the possibility that what we call a weather event today might in a few short years become commonplace - a new and unpleasant normal. That summer so many of us yearn for during the cold, dark depths of winter, becomes a season of dread and regular destruction.

Climate scientists (yes, I sense the sceptics out there muttering, "It's cool where I live so there's no global warming") have long warned of the increase in extreme weather events as average temperatures rise. More storms, more floods, more droughts, more heatwaves and, yes, even more dangerous winter cold snaps.

By global standards, Australia is already a hot place. But temperatures nudging 50 degrees are at the very limit of human endurance. In the Mallee town of Ouyen yesterday, as the mercury hit 46 degrees as it headed towards the forecast 49, residents hunkered down indoors, the furnace outside too much even for these heat-hardened folk.

Unless it could be conducted inside in air-conditioned comfort, all work reportedly stopped. The heat sapped energy and productivity along with it.

The World Meteorological Organisation estimates that worker productivity declines by 2 to 3 per cent for every degree above 20. On the conservative measure that's a 100 per cent drop on a 49 degree day, which has a huge impact on that part of the economy based outside.

This has implications for the........

© Canberra Times