WTF Climate Change News

[Beebo Brink]

India and Pakistan already sweltering in ‘new normal’ heatwave conditions | Climate crisis | The Guardian

The summer conditions south Asian countries dread each year have arrived alarmingly early, and it’s only April. Much of India and Pakistan is already sweltering in heatwave conditions, in what scientists say is fast becoming the “new normal”.

Temperatures in the region typically climb through May, peaking in June before the monsoon brings relief. But this year, the heat has come early. “As far as Asia and the Indian subcontinent are concerned, there was a quick transition from a short window of spring conditions to summer-like heat,” said GP Sharma, the meteorology president of Skymet, India’s leading private forecaster.

In Delhi, where spring usually offers a short spell of mild temperatures, thermometers have risen past 40C in April – “up to 5C above the seasonal average” – according to a report by ClimaMeter, a platform that tracks extreme weather events.

 

[Soen Eber]

India and Pakistan already sweltering in ‘new normal’ heatwave conditions | Climate crisis | The Guardian

102, just in April?

Easy Conversion: 25c = 75f, each 5c adds 9f
or 10f if you're lazy and don't need to be very accurate

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

A BlueSky thread - not super long, and worth your read.

Mike Sowden (@mikeachim.bsky.social)

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

bsky.app

 

[Beebo Brink]

Climeworks’ capture fails to cover its own emissions - Heimildin

The carbon capture company Climeworks only captures a fraction of the CO2 it promises its machines can capture. The company is failing to carbon offset the emissions resulting from its operations – which have grown rapidly in recent years.

A professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University in the United States, Mark Z. Jacobson, says the capture and disposal industry – abbreviated CCS in English – is nothing more than a scam. “This is the Theranos of the energy industry,” he says in an interview with Heimildin, referring to the notorious fraud company of Elisabeth Holmes, who claimed to be able to diagnose diseases from a single drop of blood with a machine that never worked. The analogy is clear, even if it is presented here symbolically. Mark intends to say that the carbon capture industry is nothing but a scam.

“Direct capture is a scam, carbon capture is a scam, blue hydrogen is a scam, and electrofuel is a scam. These are all scam technologies that do nothing for the climate or air pollution,” Mark says bluntly.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Ice melt opens up enormous cracks in Greenland’s ice sheet » Yale Climate Connections

 

[Beebo Brink]

Svalbard: How it feels to be a climate scientist in the fastest-warming place on Earth

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Get ready for several years of killer heat, top weather forecasters warn

Top weather agencies warn that the world should get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes the globe to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes.

apnews.com

 

[Free]

Several...years...

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

That's such a weird.... downplaying headline from the Associated Press. Maybe it's a tactic to try not to sound "bias" to an increasingly polarized political landscape. I know people who seriously think we're just as likely to be heading into a new ice age kind of soon.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Right now, a collective of American meteorologists and climatologists are holding a continuous livestream; they started yesterday and will be streaming until Sunday. There was a panel discussion yesterday by former National Weather Service directors, and another with some employees who were recently fired by DOGE. This evening there's gonna be a panel with leaders from the American Meteorological Society. But in between you just have all scientists giving presentations about various topics in weather and climate - probably more than you ever wanted to know.

You can watch the live or previous streams on their YouTube channel: The Weather & Climate Livestream

Lots more infos at the website: 100 Hours to Save America's Forecasts

 

[Free]

A Swiss village is buried after a glacier collapses in the Alps

A Swiss Alpine village was largely wiped out on Wednesday after a massive glacier carrying rock and debris detached and roared down the mountainside, destroying everything in its path.

Scientists had predicted a likely disaster and authorities evacuated the entire village of 300 people in the Valais region, south of Switzerland's capital Bern, on May 19. Sheep and even grazing cows were airlifted by helicopter.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Free]

Alaska Just Issued Its First-Ever Heat Advisory—and It Won’t Be the Last

As Alaska warms nearly twice as fast as the Lower 48 states, two of its National Weather Service (NWS) offices are stepping up their messaging.

gizmodo.com

The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Fairbanks, Alaska, issued a heat advisory on Thursday, June 12. It’s never had to do that before.

Heat advisories are new to both the Fairbanks and Juneau NWS offices, which implemented the use of these notices on June 2. Until now, Alaska weather officials exclusively issued Special Weather Statements to notify the public of potentially hazardous heat. The change comes as Alaska continues to warm at nearly twice the rate of the lower 48 states, with the statewide average annual air temperature increasing by 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) over the last 60 years.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Labour will drop ‘unaffordable’ net zero policies, predicts Reform’s deputy leader | Environment | The Guardian

Richard Tice, the energy spokesperson for Reform and MP for Boston and Skegness, told the Guardian his party would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement that tries to limit global heating to 1.5C.

He also said Reform would end a five-year funding plan to help developing countries cope with the impact of climate breakdown.

“The idea that we can afford £10bn for climate aid is ridiculous,” he said. “We have plenty of problems ourselves that we rely on government to look after.”

 

[Noodles]

Eh, I mean, we only have been ignoring the problem for like 30 or 40 years now, it's fine, we are already past the point of no return.

Why do unaffordable things that mess with the money makers.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Link to Guardian article

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Link to Guardian article

The misinformation ranges from industry promoting fossil gas as a “low-carbon fuel” to bizarre conspiracy theories such as that wildfires in southern California this year were planned by officials in order to destroy child-trafficking tunnels.

Among the findings are that the fossil fuel industry has engaged in a “dual deception” of the public, first denying the reality of climate change, obscuring its responsibility and obstructing climate action, and, second, deploying greenwash to portray itself as an environmentally sustainable enterprise. The report says other sectors have also promoted climate misinformation: US electricity companies, animal agriculture, airlines, tourism, and fast food.

Measures to fight climate misinformation include regulation to improve the moderation of content by social media companies, as with the EU Digital Services Act, and requiring fossil fuel companies to make standardised declarations of their emissions. Jensen said some legal cases against purveyors of climate misinformation were already under way. In the longer term, improved climate education would enable citizens to identify misinformation.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Well, this is helpful....

NZ pulls out of global coalition for phasing out fossil fuels | RNZ News

The New Zealand government has quietly pulled out of an international coalition for phasing out fossil fuels.

The move follows the announcement of $200 million funding to support new drilling for fossil fuel fields at the Budget.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Well, this is helpful....

NZ pulls out of global coalition for phasing out fossil fuels | RNZ News

I'm sure that agreement will completely unravel soon. Most people know climate change is real, but I think a very small percentage of people are willing to accept any real amount of lost economic growth to stop it. They want pain free solutions. And it's even harder to sell such action to people if they know their global competitors aren't going to do it. It's hopeless...

 

[Beebo Brink]

Most people know climate change is real, but I think a very small percentage of people are willing to accept any real amount of lost economic growth to stop it. They want pain free solutions.

Bingo.

This is why I don't put much faith in polls that show high numbers of people worried about climate change. Of course they're worried, and of course they want government to Do Something About It, but it's easy to say that in a general sort of way. Put a specific action in front of them -- like hey, eat less meat -- and they lose their shit.

The kind of disruption that would result from truly meaningful action would be painful, very painful. Because our modern lifestyle is founded on oil, in everything from the plastic forks we use for a single meal to our centralized agricultural regions to the car-centric structure of the majority of our infrastructure. Trying to unravel oil from our lives is much more complicated than driving an EV or putting solar panels on our roof. Oil is THE most portable, energy-dense resource that humankind has ever discovered, and it owns us now.

Case in point: I know running air-conditioning is a problematic way to deal with heat. It is an energy-hog and it dumps even more heat back out into the atmosphere. We are currently in the middle of a heat wave (with heat index of 107 today) and my wife and I are running several AC units night and day, and we're still miserable, but at least we aren't (literally) dying of the heat. So yeah, sacrificing for the greater good is a hard sell....