“Colossal floods stun Kazakhstan. Entire swathes of Kazakhstan look like a scene from a disaster movie.
“Vast amounts of floodwater have destroyed villages and carried away livestock. Social media is filled with images of people clambering for safety onto the roofs of their homes as rescue helicopters circle above.”
https://eurasianet.org/colossal-floods-stun-kazakhstan
“The worst yellow dust hit northern China, including the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region…
“… local governments, companies, and schools have suspended work and classes, and major factory facilities have temporarily stopped operating, according to the Korea Meteorological University.”
https://www.mk.co.kr/en/world/10977974
“Massive hailstones the size of eggs battered cars during a heavy storm in China.
“Shocking video footage captured the freak storm that shattered windscreens. The hailstorm hit in the city of Yiwu in Zhejiang Province on Monday. It barraged vehicles with large hailstones measuring up to two inches.”
“Hail paints northern Vietnam white.
“Hail and tornadoes have been wreaking havoc in several mountainous areas in northern Vietnam, damaging over 1,000 houses and thousands of hectares of crops.”
“Coffee prices at record high in Vietnam as dry weather drives supply concerns…
““With the current low supply situation and negative new crop supply prospects, Vietnamese farmers and traders are still in a ‘stockpiling’ mood,” Mercantile Exchange of Vietnam said in a note earlier this week.”
“Today, only one station in China broke the March record (Dongshan, Fujian, SE China), but a fierce heat wave is coming.
“Baise, Guangxi may experience China’s first 40C this year, and many places may break the highest record in March.”
https://twitter.com/yangyubin1998/status/1773334421078208709
“China’s hydro generators wait for the rains to come.
“China’s hydro generation has been essentially flat for the last three years, despite commissioning several large new power plants, as a prolonged drought has sharply reduced river flows in the southwestern part of the country.”
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-hydro-generators-wait-rains-come-2024-03-22/
“Karnali villages are emptying as water sources dry up [Nepal]…
“Of 366,370 households in the province, only 130,000 have reliable access to drinking water… “The water supply project has stalled due to the absence of a road to transport the transformer needed for supplying electricity to the project,” explained BK.”
https://kathmandupost.com/national/2024/03/30/karnali-villages-are-emptying-as-water-sources-dry-up
“Indians may already be experiencing temperatures close to limits of human survivability without even being aware…
“The basic criteria for IMD to declare a heatwave currently does not include take into account relative humidity, which is increasingly becoming a cause of humid heatwaves.”
“Climate change is making giant heat waves crawl slower across the globe and they are baking more people for a longer time with higher temperatures over larger areas, a new study finds.
“Since 1979, global heat waves are moving 20 per cent more slowly — meaning more people stay hot longer — and they are happening 67 per cent more often…”
“Unseasonal rain, hailstorm ‘entirely’ wipe out crops in Zhavame [Nagaland, NE India]…
“‘I’ve never witnessed a hailstorm of this magnitude before,’ says 72-year-old citizen… “The hailstorm lasted for about 25 minutes- the longest that I have seen in all my life”, he told The Morung Express aftermath of the hailstorm.”
https://www.morungexpress.com/unseasonal-rain-hailstorm-entirely-wipe-out-crops-in-zhavame
“Hail storm strikes northeastern Thailand, most sizable hailstones in decades…
“Video clips shared by locals on social media during the hail storm showed that the hailstones were large, some as big as a child’s fist or a tennis ball. Many people, posting on Facebook, mentioned that in the past 40-50 years, they had never witnessed such large hailstones before.”
“THAILAND-INDONESIA are still racing.
“From 1 January EVERY SINGLE DAY they broke heat records and none seems to quit first. Tonight it was the hottest March night on record with a TMIN of 28.0C [82.4F] at both Surabaya and Patthaya.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773869922726142317
“In Indonesia, deforestation is intensifying disasters from severe weather and climate change…
“Roads turned to murky brown rivers, homes were swept away by strong currents and bodies were pulled from mud during deadly flash floods and landslides after torrential rains hit West Sumatra in early March, marking one of the latest deadly natural disasters in Indonesia.”
“HISTORIC HEAT SE ASIA – HOTTEST MARCH NIGHT IN HISTORY VIETNAM AND PHILIPPINES.
“Tmin 29.0 [84.2F] Phu Quoc; 27.9C Cebu (also 27.8 Roxas, Catbalogan, 27.5 San Jose; 27.4 Dipolog; 27.0 Masbate).”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773291672027181519
“Incredible record broken again and again in FRENCH GUIANA, 37.1C [98.8F] today, every day St Laurent do Moroni is beating and re-beating its own records continuously now nearly 3C above its previous record.
“Few days ago also record hot night in the Cayenne Airport with Tmin 27.0C.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773508361205452991
“In a heated discussion with BBC reporter Stephen Shakur over Guyana’s oil reserve, the country president, Irfaan Ali, said that he “would lecture” him….
“…the president says, “Let me stop you right there,” and adds, “Do you know that Guyana has a forest forever that is the size of England and Scotland combined? A forest that stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon? A forest that we have kept alive.””
“Smoke Blankets Venezuela…
“…unusually warm and dry weather, potentially a consequence of global warming and shifting circulation and rainfall patterns associated with the ongoing El Niño, parched the country’s landscapes and primed them to burn.”
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152607/smoke-blankets-venezuela
“Another record in NICARAGUA . Almost 100% of Nicaraguan stations broke records this month, even for all months (37.0 / 98.6F) Rivas 2 days ago).
“The capital Managua yesterday with 38.2 had its hottest March day in history, breaking the 37.8 record set on 23 March 1983.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773831301486813310
“Cattle are drinking the Colorado River dry…
“…86% of the water consumed in the Western U.S. is used to irrigate crops… Most of that, however, is used to grow food for cattle — alfalfa, hay and grass. “We were quite surprised to see how large a proportion was going to cattle crops,” Richter told me in a Zoom interview earlier this month.”
https://www.hcn.org/articles/cattle-are-drinking-the-colorado-river-dry/
“Bird flu spreads to dairy cows in Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico and Ohio.
“A highly virulent bird flu first detected in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas this week has spread to additional herds, bringing the number of affected states to six and adding evidence the virus may be spreading cow-to-cow… “Spread of symptoms among the Michigan herd also indicates that HPAI transmission between cattle cannot be ruled out.””
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/03/29/bird-flu-cows/
“Record low Great Lakes ice jump-starts Michigan’s severe weather season…
“The lack of ice on the Great Lakes this winter could cause thunderstorms and tornadoes to occur earlier than usual in the region. Michigan is expected to see more severe weather in April and May, said Paul Pastelok, a meteorologist for AccuWeather.”
“Portland [Maine] experiences record wet March, prepares for warmer April…
“As of Friday afternoon, 11.07 inches of rain has fallen in Portland. This has put the Portland area in 2024 second all-time for the wettest March on record. This data dates back to 1871.”
“Potato planting in peril: Irish farmers face uncertain future amidst wet weather woes.
“In a concerning turn for the Irish potato industry, farmers across the nation are grappling with a pressing dilemma due to unrelenting rainfalls. The situation has left them in a state of uncertainty, as they question whether planting their crops this year is a feasible option…”
“Oxford’s Boat Race preparation ‘thwarted’ by flooding.
“Oxford’s Wallingford HQ has been underwater for much of this winter, and the flooded Thames has been too dangerous to row… This is unlikely to be a one-off. If you lump rainfall data into 30-year chunks, the national average has risen from 247mm for 1831-60 (the first available period) to 347mm for 1991-2020.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rowing/2024/03/28/oxford-boat-race-preparations-thwarted-by-flooding/
“Andalucia’s economy is predicted to grow slower compared to other Spanish regions this year, with a study suggesting that the drought is to blame…
““Agricultural production in southern communities continues to be affected, leading to below-average growth in Castilla-La Mancha, Andalucia, Extremadura and Murcia,” the BBVA said.”
“UNBELIEVABLE! 30c AT NIGHT IN GREECE… at 6:40am this morning Sisi, Crete was at 30.0 [86F].
“Europe will live some extraordinary with hundreds of records beaten with extreme margins.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773278498775257140
“Athens chokes in clouds of Sahara dust…
“The city regularly experiences such sandstorms but the current one is accompanied by unusually high spring temperatures, heightening the choking effect.”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-athens-clouds-sahara.html
“Bulgaria basks in warm spring weather as temperature records set.
“Records for maximum temperatures were set at Bulgaria’s Black Sea major coast cities on March 29, according to the country’s weather bureau. In Bulgaria’s main Black Sea city of Varna on Friday, thermometers recorded 25.6 [78.1F] degrees Celsius…”
https://sofiaglobe.com/2024/03/29/bulgaria-basks-in-warm-spring-weather-as-temperature-records-set/
“Next 2 days will rewrite the European climatic history: thousands of records will be wiped out all over the Balkans, Central/Eastern Europe, Belarus, the Baltic countries, NW Russia, Ukraine.
“A dozen countries can break their national records… Ukranian city of Odessa just had its warmest March day in history with 24.8C [76.6F].”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773778722979487954
“RECORD! Africa is under an exceptional heat wave which will rewrite climatic books for days to come.
“Today BURKINA FASO had its hottest March night on record: TMIN 31.7C [89.1F] at Dedougou. 100% of african countries beat records every single day for months.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773655360076763240
“TOGO, GHANA and BENIN are very close to their national all time highs, all 3 are at risk next days.
“Today 45.6C [114.1F] in the CHAD capital Ndjamena. RECORDS FOR MARCH: 44.6 San, MALI; 44.0 Magaria NIGER; 43.8 Boromo, BURKINA FASO; 42.3 Dapaong, TOGO.”
https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1773801435358007380
“At Least 18 Dead, Thousands Displaced As Tropical Cyclone Causes Devastation in Madagascar…
“The cyclone has led to extensive flooding, submerging entire villages partially, displacing or affecting around 47,000 people, and triggering landslides that caused injuries to three individuals, as stated by the National Office for Disaster Management.”
“In Iraq, water crisis leaves farmers clinging to sidr trees…
“…the landscape has been devastated by upstream damming of the main two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, lower rainfall trends and decades of armed conflict, leaving farmers, such as Ibrahim, facing the loss of their livelihoods.”
“Vegetables are losing their nutrients. Can the decline be reversed?
“…recent research has documented the declining nutrient value in some staple crops due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels; a 2018 study that tested rice found that higher CO2 levels reduced its protein, iron and zinc content. The climate crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/28/vegetables-losing-nutrients-biofortification
“As climate change and pollution imperil coral reefs, scientists are deep-freezing corals to repopulate future oceans…
“Today, the world’s coral reefs are degrading at unprecedented rates due to pollution, overfishing and destructive forestry and mining practices on land. Climate change driven by human activities is warming and acidifying the ocean, producing a reef crisis that could cause most corals to go extinct within a few generations.”
“‘Garbage Lasagna’: Landfill Dumps Are a Big Driver of Warming, Study Says.
“These landfills also belch methane, a powerful, planet-warming gas, on average at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/climate/landfills-methane-emissions.html
“Copernicus online portal offers terrifying view of climate emergency. Looking at the mass of information, there is only one conclusion: we are running out of time…
“…it seemed to this observer that scientists have been underestimating for some time how quickly the situation is deteriorating.”
“Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium [James Hansen et al]…
“Our paper, Global Warming in the Pipeline was greeted by a few scientists, among the most active in communication with the public, with denial. Our friend Michael Mann, e.g., with a large public following, refused to concede that global warming is accelerating. We mention Mike because we know that he won’t take this notation personally.”
https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
“Seven ways that climate change will alter our holidays by 2050…
“Northern Europe, as opposed to the Med, may well become the destination of choice in summer… The vineyards of southern England – once derided – are now flourishing. Warmer temperatures are producing plenty of lauded, refreshing bottles, and paving the way for the development of wine tourism.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/ways-climate-change-will-alter-holidays-by-2050/
You can read the previous “Climate” thread here. I’ll be back on Monday with an “Economic” thread, although it may be shorter than usual with the news-cycle slowing over the Easter break.
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Lyle Lewis, Racing to Extinction, pg 230:
“There is no silver bullet or magic spell that will save humanity. Carbon taxes, biodiversity initiatives, recycling programs, green energy, fuel- efficient vehicles, and water conservation measures are well meaning, but at best would only delay the inevitable in some minuscule way, if at all… Humanity can’t survive the combined effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, mountains of trash, toxins in the environment, and our imagined self-importance.”
James Hansen, former GWBush/Dick Cheney fair-haired boy, Andrew Yang supporter: nuclear great! Policy decisions coming, with children leading the way! Carbon planning by nice governments and corporations!
Notice no link to some gasbag substacker Get off my-lawn Ash Wednesday political bullshitter. The straight dope, concise. And, contra our wonderful hero Lyle Lewis, no Dear Abby life advice for collapseoids. We’re all enmeshed in our inherited particulars, and, despite the semi- heroic but self-acknowledged as futile example of someone like Lewis, some of us have life partners and fossil fuel lifeways to acknowledge as numero uno.
Great quote from Lewis.
I am constantly gobsmacked by the ability of people to ignore the obvious.
Not to pick on James Hansen, I greatly admire his work and the tenacity with which he backs it up with data, but yeah…, “Hey, everybody! Let’s throw a hail mary and build out massive amounts of nuclear power!” Ugh.
Again, for what purpose? So we can keep this death project going just a little bit longer? It’s for the kiddos!
I’ve been doomscrolling for many years and in that time I have tried very hard NOT to despair. Got to live my life, I would tell myself, no matter what the rest of the world is doing.
Now that things are getting real I am finding it very difficult to watch otherwise intelligent people frantically trying to come up with some scheme to keep this shit-show going at full speed.
Absolutely ridiculous! What we have now is a gross abnormality. A hideous and tortured maladaptation brought on by a massive one time dose of opioids in the form of fossil fuels. The sooner it ends the better!
Oh, but don’t say that out loud. You will be crucified for being a “misanthrope”.
I think it’s mostly talk and wishful thinking unless Trump or Jesus can Make America Competent Again – MACA. The last reactor the Americans built (Georgia) took 17 years from the drawing board to completion and 14 years under construction. The initial estimate was $7 billion. The final cost was $15 billion. There’s a twin reactor at that site but it is not yet complete – $14 billion for the pair. The reactor before that (Tennessee) took over 40 years to complete.
“Construction on Vogtle 3, and its sister reactor Vogtle 4, began in 2009, making it the first nuclear reactor built from the ground up this century, but not the first new reactor in the last 23 years.
That honor belongs to Tennessee-based Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, which brought its second reactor online in 2016. Watts Bar Unit 2 began construction in 1972, but was paused in 1985. Construction wasn’t resumed until 2007, and took another nine years to finish.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/01/us_nuclear_reactor_vogtle/
~
Perhaps if they ask nice, the Russians or Chinese will build a few new reactors for them.
It IS difficult to watch the shitshow and as you point out we can’t say jackshit lest we be labeled a… Cassandra!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lawmakers-rush-stop-catastrophic-level-020000023.html
We are living in a toxic hell hole
It’s hard not to feel that way in the UK with our record sewage spills, ‘forever chemicals’ and various psych meds in the water.
Soaring cancer rates in the under-50’s, declining sperm quality etc must, at least in part, be the result of environmental pollution.
That last entry is the kicker, it’s as though they have no idea that climate change has happened already, even as it’s denied, it’s in the rear view mirror: we have entered into the era of full blown climate derangement, so salivating over the future prospects of using arable land to provide oenophiles intoxicating beverages while the world starves seems a tad unseemly.
Lyle Lewis may believe that clean energy and EV’s are “well-intentioned”, but I would argue that their only intention is to get on the gravy train of taxpayer money being funneled to corporate coffers and then distributed to their shareholders using the rubric of “green” energy” as their suckers’ bait. But just as the criminal enterprise of Enron used “mark-to-market” to pull profits that were calculated using sanguine forecasts of the future to pull fanciful profits onto their books that hadn’t the least potential of materializing, carbon offsets and every other “green” scenario follows the same deliberately flawed scenario, this time with CO2: book the CO2 offsets as though they are reality so as to glean all that government cash, and by the time they’ve shown themselves to be nothing but hopium, the ruse (ethanol from food crops, for example) is so entrenched, that the utter disaster they really are is deliberately obfuscated by the very people suffering the worse effects … such that the voters of Iowa will viciously attack any criticism of ethanol-from-corn so as to not interrupt the flow of federal dollars, even as that flow wreaks havoc on their own long term interests.
This dynamic shows no sign of changing even as it steadily ratchets up the speed at which we are racing to our doom. Shocking!
https://www.sciencealert.com/shock-discovery-huge-carbon-credit-project-in-australia-turns-out-to-be-a-sham
I would 150% agree with you. The elitists are masterful at playing the game from all angles. Can’t wait till they get turned into meat patties
According to Rob, then, every person who understand collapse and the Climatastrophe and does the slightest even self-acknowledged futile nod in the direction of “cleaner energy” is and was a complete corporate mafioso like the oil company bosses. Yeah, sure.
That makes no sense at all. Good intentions are much, much different than being an intentional criminal asshole – even if there is no effect on the collapse process whatsoever to come from these good intentions. Have some respect and appreciation for your fellow humans in this predicament.
Hello Pan, you made my ‘day’ with your article on the holidays in the year 2050! Norway as a favourite destination…. unfortunately no sandy beach in sight….. well very many mosquitoes that will no doubt thrive in the bogs that are everywhere. One of the most famous Dutch literature books that ‘everyone’ had on their list was ‘Never sleep again’ nominated for the shortlist to one day win the Nobel Prize for literature….
I know Norway well, very well in fact 🙂 Not enduring in summer with all those mosquitoes….
The book is called ‘beyond sleep’
Nooit meer slapen, “Nevermore to Sleep”) is a novel by the Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans, published in February 1966. The protagonist, Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf, has a geology dissertation in preparation, and embarks on an expedition to Finnmark, northern Norway, to verify his dissertation director’s theory that craters in the local landscape were formed by meteor impacts rather than by Ice Age glaciers. Initially he is accompanied by a group of three Norwegian students of geology, but soon after he is isolated from his companions wandering on his own in a land where the sun never sets.
“Hello Pan, you made my ‘day’ with your article on the holidays in the year 2050!”
The disconnect between her cosy, rose-tinted preview of life in 2050 and the likely dystopian reality did give me a wry chuckle, Zip. I mean, we’ll be lucky if international travel is even viable or anything grows at all with the wildly unpredictable and seesawing weather extremes that our current trajectory portends. And good luck cultivating a flourishing vineyard at these latitudes if AMOC fails!
When I was about 12 or 13 years old I came to the conclusion that newspapers and maganzines can not shut up. If they shut up they would be only overt advertising and no one would read them and they would go out of business. And since these institutions can not shut up and say something only when there is something important and truthful to say they end up doing nothing more than producing and exporting thought pollution.
‘Interesting times’ indeed.
Ive been interested in the collapse of cheap energy/FFs following ‘peak oil’ in recent years, given the importance of oil to the keeping the wheels of industrial civilisation turning. Planes and long-distance shipping will have to be rationed.
I guess that China’s BRI is showing results, by focussing on cheaper land-based infrastructure built to last, despite the USUKIS+ continuing attempts to block, destroy or sabotage it, by fair means or foul.
What happens when there is nothing left to burn?
I see the coming collapse as being unevenly distributed across the planet, some countries/regions will last longer because their access to the remaining cheap energy will last longer than those forced to import, and some will retain local “pockets” of agricultural lands.
The recent oil price rises, primarily due to OPEC+ production cuts, are a sign or symptom perhaps.
https://youtu.be/j9ixX2hctSI?si=At1q3T-zLQf1d8nZ
I don’t know how long ago that Guy McPherson said that plants would lose their nutrient value as the temps climb. He was/is so far ahead of most scientists. When thing become unbearable Guy seems to be too nice to say: Told you so, fuckers! Now suffer!
I’m looking forward for coffee,cocoa & beef to become unaffordable, then I won’t have to see so many cars sitting in a drive thru pumping CO2. Too lazy to get out of a car & no concern for what they are doing to the habitat, entitled fuckers will suffer the consequences.
I’m so sick of 8 billion fools that all I can say is that, I’m sick of 8 billion fools. 😉