WTF Climate Change News

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Archer]

Make that three in a row...

 

[WolfEyes]

Normally I'd avoid this thread like the plague but this popped up on my feed so ...for your pleasure:

Earth's hottest day record set, reset three times this week

The hottest day ever on Earth happened on July 3, 2023. The average global temperature reached 62.62 degrees Fahrenheit.

www.nbcdfw.com

Gee thanks. I've been avoiding those articles since yesterday and now they're here too!

But of course! It's the viper pit!

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a new law, which removes one of the few protections construction workers in Austin and Houston are guaranteed, the right for a 10 minute break every four hours to drink water and rest in the shade when it is blistering hot.

A new Texas law will override mandated rest and water breaks for construction crews as extreme heat rises

Critics of a new Texas law that preempts local ordinances say it will override mandatory water breaks for construction workers in Austin and Dallas.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

'People exploded': Can Oregon's wildfire plans survive the public? - E&E News by POLITICO (eenews.net)

I cross posted this article in a wildfires thread because it's more about fire policy than global climate change. The aspect that is pertinent to this thread is the enormous psychological resistance humans mount to news that disrupts their lives, even when hearing the truth is a matter of survival.

The Oregon wildfire map was scientifically accurate, but rolled out to the public without any regard for the emotional/social impact of the facts on people's lives. The need to manage that side of policy introduces yet another significant cost, as well as time delay, in implementing mitigation solutions. Now multiply that by every community in the country that is at-risk in some way. This becomes a massive social-engineering challenge, even assuming there is a sincere political will to introduce new policies (which we all know is far from the reality).

The worse the news gets, the more drastic the solutions, the less buy-in government will get from the public. Watch this space...

 

[Beebo Brink]

Melting Arctic glaciers are triggering the release of methane - The Washington Post

Scientists working in one of the world’s fastest-warming places found that rapidly retreating glaciers are triggering the release into the atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes global temperatures to rise.

The releases are triggered as glaciers across the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, rapidly retreat and leave behind newly exposed land, scientists said. If the phenomenon is found to be more widespread across the Arctic — where temperatures are quickly rising and glaciers melting — the emissions could have global implications.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Brilliant.

xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

 

[Beebo Brink]

An Iowa meteorologist started talking about climate change on newscasts. Then came the harassment (yahoo.com)

 

[Beebo Brink]

The climate change mantra: "Faster than we expected.... "

 

[Beebo Brink]

I'm utterly mystified why anyone would move TO Phoenix, rather than move out, but apparently the city and surrounding areas are still growing.

Burning pavement, scalding water hoses: Perils of a Phoenix heat wave
Amid record-breaking temperatures, risks to public health from burns and other exposure soars

A Phoenix power outage amid a heat wave could possibly kill thousands, study says
If the city were to lose power for air conditioning, roughly half the city could end up in the emergency room

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Hopelessness about the climate crisis threatens a new age of brutality

Doomism, despair and eco-xenophobia

nickcohen.substack.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Hopelessness about the climate crisis threatens a new age of brutality

Doomism, despair and eco-xenophobia

nickcohen.substack.com

Oh ffs. (The author of the article, not you, Innula.)

Doomism implies that sending them aid is futile.... For whatever their intentions, the doomists are feeding brutalism in a West that already gazes on refugees drowning in the Mediterranean with indifference.

This fear of doomerism is often cited as a reason for emphasizing that our situation is not hopeless, that we can mitigate climate change if only we ACT! Doomerism will rob people of the will to act! Meanwhile, despite the fact that only the tiniest minority of people are doomers, we're already not acting for many other reasons. Doomers will shut the door of migration! Meanwhile, we're already shutting the doors of migration anyway.

"Doomer" is the new dismissive term for anyone who points out the very serious challenges that climate change will trigger and how little substantive action we've taken.

The author pulled out a Bendell quote for criticism:

“The evidence before us suggests that we are set for disruptive and probably uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease, and war…With the power down, soon you wouldn’t have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbours for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won’t know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death.”

The above strikes me as a sound, realistic description of scenarios that will unfold in various regions of the globe at some point.

I cannot overemphasise how deeply environmentalists and climatologists deplore deep adaptation, and fear the consequences of Bendell’s ideology. They do not believe that we face civilisational collapse.

I'm not really swayed by the opinion of environmentalists and climatologists outside their field of study. I'd be more interested in hearing the opinion of archaeologists and historians on this topic. Even a casual perusal of history shows that the collapse of civilizations is far from a fanciful concern. It is a recurrent theme throughout the last 10,000 years of human history, and those collapses are often directly related to the over-exploitation of resources and/or climate change affecting food production. Some empires eroded slowly, but others fell swiftly, within a matter of years or even days. By their very complexity, civilizations become fragile, and nothing is more complex than our hugely populated urban areas and global trade networks, all dependent on high tech.

The tricky part is predicting when. A perfect storm of bad climate events could severely threaten the world's food supply. Crop failure and famine can fast track social upheaval. That could happen next year or not for 50 years or possibly never, but "never" would be a first in human history.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

First American insurance companies are pulling out of Florida, not accepting any new disaster coverage contracts nor renewing them in certain areas.

AAA follows Farmers in limiting coverage in Florida, citing natural disaster threat

AAA will not renew home and car insurance for some of its policyholders in Florida, citing increased natural disaster risk that it says makes the policies not worth providing. “Unfortunately,…

thehill.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Speaking of doomerism....

With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth | George Monbiot | The Guardian

We face an epochal, unthinkable prospect: of perhaps the two greatest existential threats – environmental breakdown and food system failure – converging, as one triggers the other.

There are plenty of signs, some of which I’ve tried to explain in the Guardian and, with a sense of rising urgency, in a presentation to parliament, suggesting that the global food system may not be far from its tipping point, for structural reasons similar to those that tanked the financial sector in 2008. As a system approaches a critical threshold, it’s impossible to say which external shock could push it over. Once a system has become fragile, and its resilience is not restored, it’s not a matter of if and how, but when.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Georgia, the peach state, is almost out of peaches this year! 90% of this year's crop are destroyed after a heat wave in february followed by two late-spring frosts.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/15/business/georgia-peach-shortage/index.html

 

[WolfEyes]

Ruston peaches are better. I wonder if Cody has learned where Ruston is yet.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Olive oil industry in crisis as Europe’s heatwave threatens another harvest | Food & drink industry | The Guardian

“In Spain we already know it is going to be another bad year, but no one has got to grips with what’s currently happening. The record temperatures are not going to help the situation,” said Walter Zanre, the chief executive of the UK arm of Filippo Berio, the world’s largest olive oil producer.

“I can’t share how much anxiety this is causing us. Last year, Spain came into crop with a bit of carry-over [from the year before], which negated the shortfall somewhat. This year the barrels are dry.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

Phoenix sweltered from heat that will break record for US cities | AP News

Phoenix’s relentless streak of dangerously hot days was finally poised to smash a record for major U.S. cities on Tuesday, the 19th straight day the desert city was to see temperatures soar to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 C) or more.

 

[Free]

People. Are. Crazy.

Tourists flock to Death Valley to experience possible world record hot temperature

It's one of the hottest places on Earth, and temperatures there are on the brink of breaking modern records.

Death Valley is no stranger to scorching weather, but the US National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning, urging people to take "extreme levels of precautions" if venturing outside.

This might be taken as a sign to stay clear, but plenty of tourists have been flocking to the desert valley in eastern California - hoping to experience what could be a new world record high temperature.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

People. Are. Crazy.

Tourists flock to Death Valley to experience possible world record hot temperature

What part of "Death" do these guys not get?