Climate Emergency
- The temperature threshold the human body can’t survive Source: Grist
- Why is England so vulnerable to droughts? Source: The Guardian
- California urges residents to cut power use as searing heatwave grips US west | California Source: The Guardian
- US issues western water cuts as drought leaves Colorado River near ‘tipping point’ Source: The Guardian
- Report: Arctic heating nearly 4 times faster than rest of Earth Source: The Week
- The drought across Europe is drying up rivers, killing fish and shriveling crops : NPR Source: NPR
- Rhine close to running dry in German energy nightmare Source: The Telegraph
In Western Australia, an ambitious project to take thousands of farms and properties off-grid is slowly taking shape.
Climate collapse will continue to intensify the destruction. People will stubbornly, stupidly continue living there as people across the US continue engaging in the behavior that has locked us into much worse warming.
From the Danube to the Loire, these lifelines for the continent’s economy are running low after five months of brutal drought and years of dry weather.
The Drying Up of Europe’s Great Rivers Could Be the New Normal | WIRED
“The only landscape we know is something dead.”
Utah Youth Climate Activists Hold Wake for the Great Salt Lake – Mother Jones
Nate Hagens' podcast, The Great Simplification is always a deep, but very understandable and enjoyable dive into current, near and long term implications of how we’re living on the planet.
While the US still clings auto-based transport the world is moving on to the future.
While Paris has not been known as a cycle-friendly city, all that is changing, with some 50km of bike lanes added in the past few months alone.
Prolonged droughts and insufficient moisture can contribute to a tipping event that transforms a rain forest ecosystem into an environment resembling a savanna. “Increasingly, if this drought intensity is above a certain threshold, then we have a straight transition from a forest state to this savanna state.
It’s just symbolic but likely just the beginning of a larger, direct action movement that will be increasingly confrontational as conditions worsen. Emergency will become desperation. Climate Rebels Are “Disarming” Europe’s SUVs – Mother Jones
I find Apple users' obsession with bragging about their iPhone pre-orders a bit weird. Future humans trying to survive on an over heating planet will look back to us and wonder what we were thinking.
I don’t know. I spent the morning drinking coffee and eating cake donuts.
The 12 Steps for Climate Grief: Steps 1–3 | by John Halstead | Medium Originally published at anotherendoftheworld.org on January 8, 2022.
Thanks to @jabel for sharing the link with me.
Going forward I expect this to become a theme in daily life as we try to adapt and cope. I feel like we’ll need support groups of some sort. Heat waves, wildfires and floods: How climate change effects mental health : Shots - Health News : NPR
This but everywhere. As much as possible. Cars should be the absolute last resort. European cities look to phase out cars in ‘transportation revolution’
Greenhouse gases on worst-case scenario Atmospheric CO2 equivalent (all GHGs) is tracking above the worst-case scenario (RCP8.5) at 508 ppm CO2 eq. for 2021. Energy 84% fossil. CO2 emissions fast as ever, methane faster. NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (An Introduction)
The number of people impacted by the floods in Pakistan right now is the size of a small country.
Swaths of the country are now underwater, after what United Nation officials have described as a “monsoon on steroids” brought the heaviest rainfall in living memory and flooding that has killed 1,162 people, injured 3,554 and affected 33 million since mid-June.
Pakistan flood created a 100km-wide lake, satellite images show - CNN
| Population (millions) | |
|---|---|
| Sri Lanka | 22.2 |
| Australia | 25.8 |
| Ghana | 31.7 |
| Malaysia | 32.8 |
| Pakistan (as of August 27) | 33 |
| Peru | 33.4 |
| Uzbekistan | 34.9 |
| Saudi Arabia | 35.3 |
Struggling to comprehend the full implications of the climate emergency is something that I do on daily basis. I’m grateful for what seems to be a new trend of increasing media coverage on all of the many ways that rapid and severe climate change are now being seen everyday across the planet. Finally, it seems that the immediacy and the real-time urgency of the problem is being acknowledged. Interestingly, it brings me a simultaneous sense of relief that it is finally being given the attention it should be given but with that is increased panic and frustration that we’re still acting too slowly and too mildly.
As I read through climate stories I find that I have to be careful of perspective and context. It’s a lot of information, some of it on the ground reporting of current climate emergency events but often along side of predictions and expectations of both oncoming near, mid and long-term weather changes as well as the possible ways that human social structures might adapt.
This story by CBS News about the predicted increase of widespread zones of extreme heat in the US provides one example. Emphasis added below:
The nonprofit research firm gathered surface temperature data using a peer-reviewed method that taps publicly available data from satellites and weather stations. It then modeled projected temperatures under a global warming scenario referred to as RCP 4.5, under which fossil-fuel emissions peak around 2040 and then decline.
While the article is focused on this dangerous heat zone that is predicted to take over much of the Midwest of the US, what caught my attention is the fact that we will still be increasing carbon emissions for 18 more years under the RCP 4.5 model cited in the research. Assuming that that model is even close to accurate, I’m trying to comprehend, given the range of current weather extremes and resulting current repercussions for natural ecosystems and human suffering, what is the reality going to be when we continue to increase carbon in the atmosphere for 18 more years?
But even worse, at 18 years we don’t suddenly stop adding carbon, we’re just adding less than previous years. We’ll still be adding many billions of tons of carbon per year. Currently we emit 50 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalents per year. That’s likely to persist for several decades. The link above lays out the various possible trajectories. With current policies we’re looking at 2.5 to 3.2°C warming. We’re currently at about 1.3° warmer. Even in the best case scenarios of reduction we’re committed to 2° of warming.
I’m trying to really, truly begin to comprehend it. Based on what we have today at 1.3° of increase, what does each year going forward look like. Even for someone who’s been thinking and imagining the scenarios and the reality, it’s still difficult to comprehend. Here’s a just a tiny sampling of the recent headlines detailing just the most recent weather headlines:
Very sad news but not surprising. From habitat destruction to climate change to chemical agriculture, we’re wreaking havoc. Monarch butterflies are now listed as endangered
It’s not really shocking though: Global heating has caused ‘shocking’ changes in forests across the Americas, studies find - The Guardian
Trees are advancing into the Arctic tundra and retreating from boreal forests further south, where stunting and die-offs are expected
The Inflation Reduction Act is a step in the right direction in terms of shifting the US towards solar and wind. But it’s still an attempt to keep the machine rolling along. Better than nothing but not nearly enough. It’s just nudge to the steering wheel but the accelerator is still full on.
Perpetual growth and consumption is not something we can continue. It’s not a truth we want to admit.
Vox has an excellent explainer on how climate change is simultaneously causing drought and flooding:
How are floods in Kentucky and a drought at Lake Mead happening at the same time? - Vox:
The short answer for why these seemingly opposite things are happening at once is that climate change is making our atmosphere thirstier. Or, in more scientific terms, as the Earth warms, its atmosphere can hold more water vapor. This happens at an exponential rate: The back-of-the-napkin math is that the atmosphere can store about 7 percent more water per degree Celsius of warming, and we’re currently at about 1.2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. The result is an atmosphere that takes longer to get saturated with water, which means fewer rainstorms, but when they do occur, those storms dump more water at once, resulting in floods.
Paradoxically, our changing atmosphere is also a perfect recipe for drought. Higher temperatures mean water evaporates faster, and when it falls, it’s less likely to fall as the snow that has historically fed many of the American West’s rivers and streams. The rain isn’t very helpful either, since lifting a drought requires a combination of snowfall and long, sustained rainy seasons instead of short, extreme bursts.
An excellent and frightening episode of The Climavores Podcast: Today’s food crisis is a postcard from our warming future
I’m looking forward to exploring their other podcasts: Podcasts for a changing planet