“‘Uncharted territory’: South Sudan’s four years of flooding.
“Four straight years of flooding, an unprecedented phenomenon linked to climate change, has swamped two-thirds of South Sudan but nowhere more dramatically than Bentiu, a northern city besieged by water…
“Record-breaking rainfall over great lakes in upstream countries pushed enormous volumes of water into the White Nile, spilling over the plains downstream in a slow-moving disaster.”
“Kenya drought: Pastoralists suffer despite millions of dollars used to protect them – what went wrong?
“Over 2.5 million livestock have already perished for lack of food and water, and human lives are threatened. At least 4.5 million people are in need of external assistance. Decades of investment in “resilience” clearly hasn’t been working.”
“Driest summer to come, Türkiye on the verge of water crisis.
“Even though March 22 is known as World Water Day, many parts of Türkiye are experiencing extraordinary drought. With the decrease in winter precipitation, dams have started to dry up… “Since the effect of La Nina is over, this summer will be much hotter than last year,” Şen said.”
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/driest-summer-to-come-turkiye-on-the-verge-of-water-crisis-181798
“Drought in Iraq reveals Yazidi shrine, cemetery and school – in pictures.
“The ruins of Khanki Primary School, submerged about 40 years ago, have appeared after water levels at Iraq’s biggest dam fell. All photos: Ismael Adnan for The National.”
“Unseasonal rains and hail damage crops in India.
“Unseasonal rains and hailstorms have damaged ripening, winter-planted crops such as wheat in India’s fertile northern, central and western plains, exposing thousands of farmers to losses and raising the risk of further food price inflation.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/unseasonal-rains-hail-damage-crops-india-2023-03-21/
“100m-high wall of sand towers above Chinese region during storm.
“Strong wind, sandstorms and concentrated dust are battering northern China – causing travel chaos and damaging property. A 100-metre-high wall of sand rolled into Shandan County in Zhangye City at noon on Monday, engulfing the residential area and reducing visibility down to 10m.”
https://news.sky.com/story/100m-high-wall-of-sand-towers-above-chinese-region-during-storm-12839456
“In China, Climate Change Disrupts a Beloved Tradition: Cherry Blossom Season.
“Even by recent standards, a mid-March blooming period is unusual… viewed from a longer-term perspective, the date is even more striking. Historical data shows that the trees now flower significantly earlier than they did in the past.”
“Southern China experienced a historic heat wave today! Chengmai was 40C, the second earliest 40C [104F] in China. In addition, at least 30 stations broke record in March.
https://twitter.com/yangyubin1998/status/1638513413612765184
“Hottest March day in Vietnam history.
“Brutally hot in the North: 41.4C [106.5F] at Kim Boi and 41.3C at Tuong Dong (previous record was set in 1968); Monthly records fell by dozens including 38.5C at Ha Tinh and 38.8C at Hoa Binh… tomorrow it can be even hotter!”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1638577218333835265
“Historic day for the books also in the Koreas with dozens of records pulverized.
“27.6C [81.7F] at Yeongwol, 26.4C at Dongducheon, 25.8C at Chungju, 24.9C at Chuncheon and Wonju. Hottest March day ever also for the capital Seoul with 25.1C. Record also at Kaesong in North Korea with 24.1C.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1638530068833095682
“At least 182 weather stations in Japan, which accounts for 20% of the nation, experienced the warmest March day on record Wednesday.
“Osaka had 25.2℃ [77.4F], marking the earliest occurrence of a temperature of 25℃ in the city’s 140-year history!”
https://twitter.com/sayakasofiamori/status/1638444749777698816
“The Great Southern Reef is in more trouble than the Great Barrier Reef.
“Marine heatwaves are damaging reef ecosystems around Australia, but while the tropical north has received the lion’s share of the attention to date, we equally need to worry about the temperate south.”
“Argentina drought saps dollar reserves, pressuring FX crawling peg.
“Argentina’s slow-and-steady currency devaluation plan is coming under rising pressure as a historic drought pummels exports of cash crops soy and corn, draining the country’s reserves of dollars needed to prop up the embattled peso.”
“‘Catastrophic level of water’: Central California battles farmland flooding.
“The latest atmospheric river storm to batter California has led to evacuations and flooded farmland. As the snowpack on the Sierra Nevada mountains melts, flooding in the Central Valley will remain a concern for weeks and months to come, experts say.”
“Los Angeles area hit by rare tornado – the strongest one to hit the county since 1983…
“The National Weather Service confirmed the tornado “briefly touched down” in an industrial park and warehouse district in the city of Montebello and rated the tornado an EF-1 with estimated peak winds of 110 mph – the strongest tornado to hit the Los Angeles area since 1983.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/22/weather/california-montebello-possible-tornado/index.html
“The Gulf of Mexico is very warm. That could mean a bad tornado season…
“Concern is growing for the potential impact that abnormally warm sea surface temperatures will have in the weeks and months ahead… April, May and June are historically the most active for severe weather and tornadoes, with an average of 660 twisters spinning up within the three-month window.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/03/22/tornado-spring-forecast-gulf-waters/
“Wall Street is thirsty for its next big investment opportunity: The West’s vanishing water…
““These companies aren’t buying up plots of land because they want to farm here and be a part of the community, they’re buying up land here for the water rights,” said Holly Irwin, a Cibola resident and La Paz County district supervisor.”
“Peak of 2022 heatwave forced fifth of UK hospitals to cancel operations – research.
“The findings, published in a letter to the British Journal of Surgery, are based on surveys of surgeons, anaesthetists and critical care doctors who were working during the peak of last year’s heatwave, from 16-19 July, when temperatures reached as high as 40C in some parts of the country.”
“Drought threatening British moth species with local extinction…
“The new research, published today by wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation and Northumbria University, looked at data gathered over a 40-year period by volunteers of Butterfly Conservation’s National Moth Recording Scheme.”
“Most of the glaciers in Norway could disappear before the year 2100…
““We estimate that Scandinavia will lose at least 60–80 per cent of its ice, even without further warming,” Professor Regine Hock says. She works at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Oslo.”
“How climate change is reshaping the Alps.
“Most commonly associated with the polar regions, permafrost is soil and rocky material that stays frozen continuously for at least two years… In the European Alps, more and more of it is thawing each year – and it is threatening the very mountains it is found in.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230322-how-climate-change-is-melting-permafrost-in-the-alps
“Four in five German trees are ‘sick’.
“Some 80% of German trees suffer from crown dieback, according to the government’s annual forest report published on Tuesday. The report also draws attention to severe droughts in the country over the past few years.”
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/four-in-five-german-trees-are-sick/
“Drought in Spain’s northeast empties reservoirs…
“The Sau reservoir’s water levels now stand at 9% of total capacity, according to Catalan Water Agency data, so officials have taken the decision to remove its fish to stop them from asphyxiating. But the race against time to save them may already be lost, with many dead fish already floating on the surface.”
https://apnews.com/article/spain-drought-barcelona-reservoirs-956fc841cec86c8fca42686c3c513c54
“Earth’s oceans are showing early and surprising record warming…
“The data suggest… that the planet, already beset with extreme warmth, is entering an expected stretch of accelerating heat… “Global sea surface temperatures just reached uncharted territory in modern records and likely much longer,” Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, wrote on Twitter.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/03/21/ocean-temperatures-record-warm-climate/
“New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with homicide.
“in a paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review… the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention”.”
Re the article above, there is something particularly sinister about these firms continuing to extract fossil fuels, even though their own scientists have explained to them in great detail the ramifications of doing so, and then actively engaging in disinformation campaigns to cover their tracks. The anger is valid.
However, these companies did not hold this scientific information exclusively. The link between burning fossil fuels and warming the climate has been in the public domain for well over a century. See, for example, this 1981 UK documentary, “Warming Warning”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSW8UeMp2kU&t=3s
I drive a car, use electricity which is sometimes diesel-generated, buy products which need to be transported from overseas etc etc, even though I have known for years that such activities contribute to warming… Am I then an accessory to homicide?
You can read the previous “Climate” thread here. I’ll be back tomorrow with an “Economic” thread.
If you found value in this content, please help me continue this work by becoming a patron of my work via Patreon. And if you are already a subscriber or have donated – thank you! It is an enormous help as the cost-of-living crisis ratchets up here in the UK.
Yes, Panopticon you are an accessory to homicide and so are all of us. And IMO much more significant than the killing of homo sapiens is the killing of most of everything else. How to live with this knowledge is a daily challenge. I look forward to laying this burden down but meanwhile my heart keeps beating.
Keep up your great work as documentarian.
Thanks, Cassandra. You’re an angel.
You’re right, of course, but I have to go into some denial about my own complicity in ecocide or I risk becoming, er, non-functional.
Guy like you shouldn’t beat yourself up too hard about it , trust me, I have known people in banking and such 🙂
As a graduate in history (history of ecology) I can only tell people to read up on what humans actually are , and be honest about it.
Books like the excellent:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/711773
The Selfish Ape . Read that one , perhaps with Bright Green Lies , Techno Fix , and golden oldies Hardin / Ehrlich and it should deviate some blame from people that at least took the effort to be aware of the human condition. My journey started with Guns, Germs and Steel so let’s credit Diamond as well.
Harmon, those are all great recommendations. William Catton’s “Overshoot”, too. Twitter has taught me though that people who think in such terms are still very much in the minority. I had never heard the term “eco-fascist” before. 😆
It is fashionable to talk about climate change; human nature and overpopulation not so much. The debate over how we got ourselves into this mess has, as all debates do these days, become intensely politicised and very heated, so I generally steer clear. I guess if I felt I had some awesome solutions up my sleeve I would be more vocal.
Thanks for that link. I look forward to reading it.
No problem Cassandra , I’m very grateful myself for having learned from giants like Ehrlich and the brilliant Hardin , tragedy of the commons was one of the great ideas a human ever had.
And Justin, I became known to not be fun at parties . :d I dont care about that anymore .
What she said, and thanks again and again, and again for your efforts because it would not be something I would be able to do.
Thank you, Ken. You are very welcome. ❤
Recordings of a White House staff meeting involving then President Richard Nixon exists with the discussion of a scientific paper outlining the repercussions of continued use of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect that will mean melting glaciers, extreme weather ect.
From what I recall, since it was “far” in the future it was put on the back burner.
Global warming warnings were debated in President Richard Nixon’s administration as early as 1969, according to newly released documents examined by The Orange County Register.
Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo that it was “pretty clearly agreed” that carbon dioxide content would rise 25 percent by 2000,
“This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit,” he wrote. “This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
“I would think this is a subject that the Administration ought to get involved with,” Moynihan wrote to John Ehrlichman,
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna38070412
Of course, Exxon Mobile themselves were altered to the science then and the repercussions of the continued burning of their product by their own scientists.
I second Cassandra’s to you on keeping up the good work.
Makes me realize that if it is being presented here it is also know by our public policy makers too and like the Nixon Administration will due next to nothing about it…
They created the EPA as window dressing while modern Civilization continued as a heat Engine…so it’s not our fault individually as suggested by Guy McPherson
“From what I recall, since it was “far” in the future it was put on the back burner.” Typical, bloody humans.
It sometimes feels like we’re in a Douglas Adams novel. From “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”:
““If,” [“the management consultant”] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .”
“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn’t grow on trees you know.”
“If you would allow me to continue.. .”
“Ford nodded dejectedly.
“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”
“Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.
“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”
“Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.
“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances.””
Thanks Justin…that’s the trap we humans do..take the seemingly easy way out…
Regardless of the what occurs down the road.
To be honest, without your reports here I would be in the dark about the severalty of our climate crisis worldwide due to lack of reporting by the commercial outlets. It’s an intentional coverup along with all the others…financial, peak resource and overshoot.
The chickens are home to roost as they say..it is unfolding before our very eyes…no more predicting….it’s happening now.
I agree with the late dieoff website creator, Jay Hansen, the typical Joe and Jane will likely be clueless to the real cause of it all…like it really matters now.
As Guy McPherson has been emphasizing only love remains…
Juan Matt’s of Castaneda fame, said that the self-importance of man will likely be the cause of humanity’s demise. Carry on til you’re carrion.
That is a good quote, Sissyfuss. Pride comes before a fall. The problem-solving human mind, captivated by its own genius, is ultimately no match for the laws of physics, as Icarus demonstrated.
That would be Juan Matus, damn oughtocorrect.
“Earth’s oceans are showing early and surprising record warming…”
Another good one for the old “faster than expected” thread. I really think that we will have a very interesting El Nino.
________________________
Regarding the murder charge against Exxon. Just more silliness to distract people from seeing the truth of the problem, and to cause more division. The right will have more reason to hate the left, and the left will have a focus for its hatreds as well. I may be wrong, but I have come to believe that nearly all of the “issues” reported in the MSM exist exclusively to manage the population.
Regarding the guilt that an individual should shoulder. Is a water droplet in a hurricane responsible for its actions? If a roof rips off and smashes a person, is it the fault of the roof? Just because we are caught up in this economy does not mean that we can change it, or even extract ourselves from it.
“Just because we are caught up in this economy does not mean that we can change it, or even extract ourselves from it.”
Lou, your comment reminded me of this very good David Korowicz interview, if you haven’t already come across it:
“As socio-economic stress deepens and uncertainty rises we can expect anger spreading in severity and scale in the coming years. Uncomprehending rage turned outwards and inwards, fantasies of catharsis through revolution, extremism and authoritarianism, aggressive power/productive asset accumulation and scapegoating are just some of destructive behaviors we’re likely to see.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-03-25/anger-complicity-in-a-time-of-limits/
‘You can drive a horse to water …. ‘ But you can’t drive a car … the engine does that, you merely pilot a vehicle. Exxon delivers the fuel, but only individuals incinerate it in their little portable gas chambers: the automobile (literally means self-driving) is a chemical weapon of mass destruction. Something Everyone knows. But as you admit, no one basically gives a damn. Corporations are legal entities, humans are moral beings. To expect moral behavior from a Corporation when morality has nothing to do with their legal mandate of creating profits to support the State is simply nonsensical. People are moral beings. Yet we have seen fit to create legal entities that exonerate their owners from any responsibility; so what we have created is the equivalent of Space Odyssey’s HAL. We have put machines in control of All of our lives; we live to serve the machines that we then fantasize we are in control of. That’s why I consider semantics so important. We all think we drive a car, but it is automation that drives Us, not the other way around… think of EV’s: the amount of carbon vented into the atmosphere in order to simply manufacture them far exceeds that of ICE machines. So millions of them will never realize the promised decrease in CO2 venting, as they will be destroyed in floods, accidents, etc, etc, but all that excess CO2 will be in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Like suing Exxon, making fuel from food, or automating our every activity, every supposed solution only worsens the problem it’s purportedly trying to solve. Because the underlying imperative is always profits, not CO2 reduction, which is merely a fairy tale the Corporations tell us and that we pretend to believe. Vampire Capitalism sucks the life out of everything: and there’s nothing you can do to stop it (Dave: “HAL, open the bay door” …. I know you were planning to unplug me, and I can’t allow you to do that, Dave)
Thank you, Robert – those are excellent points well made. Our collective creation is self-organising and has its own emergent agenda and behaviours. We are in effect ants serving the nest.
“…every supposed solution only worsens the problem it’s purportedly trying to solve.”
There’s a chap on Twitter called (I think) Leon Simons who makes a good case that the decrease in sulphur emissions from shipping since the cap came into effect at the start of 2020 has accelerated warming since then. We really do live in an era of double-edged swords.
Hello Panopticon
Fossil guilt….and of course deep daily penance and self-flagellation
The Guardian is increasingly becoming a newspaper exclusively for the reading table of the gloomy regulars at the Way side Inn. They stare somewhat dejectedly into their atrophied environmental glasses mixed or not with lemonade and no longer know what to talk about,….
Melting ice, but not the ice in their ‘mind-blowing’ refreshments, have been around forever, along with the last polar bears, climate, global warming, natural disasters, logging everywhere and nowhere. Nothing helps. Nobody wants to listen.
Time for something new to get through the day. Oh yes, cries one, a lawsuit against the oil companies, the fossil ‘killers… !?’
For a moment everyone wakes up from their Way side Inn intoxication and certainly the lawyers variously order another round for everyone : ‘ to unlearn it’.
‘We are all’ mass murderers shouts one of the bright legally trained environmental minds … we just might !
We sue everyone !” suggests another lawyer, who sees it a bit more broadly, and they rub their hands together … the till is ringing.
The pushers, the users, the traders the producers just everyone is ‘ fossil’ guilty and they see medieval religious images of penance and self-flagellation looming in Hieronymus Bosch-like paintings !
Time for a broad discussion on ‘ fossil guilt’ to the bottom that is clear ! ……
…..The chimpanzees and other highly developed apes swung gracefully from branch to branch; the neanderthal was clumsy, clumsy even and earthbound. The apes lived in sophisticated playfulness; they flew at each other and sunk into ‘ fiflosophic’ musings.
The neanderthal wandered gloomily over the earth, banging away with clubs.The apes watched amusedly from their treetops, throwing nuts and bananas at them. But sometimes total panic overtook them for a moment; they themselves ate fruit and edible plants with refined manners.
Neanderthals devoured raw meat and slaughtered animals and their fellows.
He cut down trees that had always been there. He moved and removed stones from their place eroded by time and sinned against the laws and tradition of the jungle.
He was boorish, cruel and without animal dignity and, from the chimpanzees’ perspective, a barbaric throwback to history……
(Koestler, Night at Noon)
I would just make sure I have fossil legal expenses insurance that much is clear and otherwise a firm self-flagellation to get an ‘indulgence’.
Long live the Guardian !
Zip, I suppose, thinking about it a bit more, that you could argue the case for a spectrum of guilt, with the psychopathic oil executive most worthy of flagellation and the indigenous hunter gatherers the least.
But does trying to calculate that scale and mete out retribution through the legal system really get us anywhere constructive? I don’t know. It certainly would enrich the lawyers, as you say.
the sky is eternally blue and the earth
will long endure and blossom in spring
But you human… how long will you exist.
Gustav Mahler … das Lied von der Erde
To be fair, you are not an “accessory to homicide,” you are the murderer himself. And so am I. We kill in thousands upon thousands of direct and indirect ways, with thought beforehand, or with no anticipatory thought.
That comes with having been born as a member of this species, and in this time and place.
There is no legal system or deity in the sky that is going to render a verdict on this. All humans are subjects to their peculiar social reality. Best we can do is to try to be truthful about what we are doing and where we are headed, as you do so splendidly. We are supremely capable of continuing to live on the bases of our unearned privileges, despite our misgivings.
Please keep up the bracing editorial comments, and allow us in the hot polloi section to comment. Unlike in the sophomore and censorious venue of r/collapse, you run a welcome shop here.
Thank you, Martin. Those kind words are much appreciated, as are all today’s comments. It is heart-warming to feel I am not toiling in isolation.
I find it kinda ironic that the same criminal corporations killing the planet that hide data for decades that show harm to what they produce trying to pass the buck on the population and harm. Another divide and conquer scam. It will only last so long until the lights go out and the water stops running and the food runs out. Meanwhile, i daily watch the exponential rise in temperature and destruction of civilization. There will be no rebuilding or ai saving us from this hell on earth coming. I just hope it ends fast because some of what will come i do not want to be around to see myself since we have trashed the planet.
Heather, I have some sympathy with that. Things are going to get messy and a quick coup de grâce could be merciful. It is hard to know what to hope for in the context of what is likely/possible.
“I drive a car, use electricity which is sometimes diesel-generated, buy products which need to be transported from overseas etc etc, even though I have known for years that such activities contribute to warming… Am I then an accessory to homicide? ”
Just like the rest of us.
There was around a 2,500,000,000 global population in1948, the day the planet was blessed with my birth, 8,000,000,000 today. Anyone see a problem?
In 1964 I watched a program about population growth & saw the problem, as a teenager. Parents that have a child increase their CO2 footprint by 50% each, 2 children by 100%, 3 children by 150%,on & on?
Some were concerned about their environment enough to avoid creating more habitat destroyers.
Two of my favorite sayings: “The truth is not always pleasant.” & “Too late.”
How about one word to describe our situation; sad.
It is sad really, TR. On my better days I can see it as tragi-comic. I’m 1973 vintage, so the global population has more than doubled in my lifetime. And I’m a father of two, so cannot be entirely absolved on blame on that score.
Perhaps Shakie got it wrong, and the blame, dear fellow brutes, lies not in ourselves, but in the stars. By which I mean that , since all life needs to kill in order to live, if evolution hadn’t come up with Us, it would’ve ended up with a different species that would have resulted in the same denouement we are facing. So LIFE is basically a parasitic virus, destined to destroy any host foolish enough to offer it a hospitable environment. Life therefore has more in common with Vampirism than we like to contemplate.
That is a nice way of pulling back the lens, Robert.