With apologies to my readers, and especially my donors and subscribers, urgent business requires me to head over to the mainland. Kali is going to be very kind and help me post some stuff whilst I’m away, so do check in, but it won’t be as comprehensive as usual. I’ll be properly back at my station with an “Economic” thread on Monday. Thank you for bearing with.
Huge thanks to Gerry for being this month’s sponsor. He has asked me to post the following: Still alive in ’25 – we’re all in this together! Find supportive community and resources at postdoom.com (founded by Michael Dowd; RIP).
“Copernicus: 2024 is the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial level.
“2024 was the warmest year in global temperature records going back to 1850. According to ERA5 (1), the global average temperature of 15.10°C was 0.72°C above the 1991-2020 average, and 0.12°C above 2023, the previous warmest year on record. This is equivalent to 1.60°C above an estimate of the 1850-1900 temperature designated to be the pre-industrial level.”
https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level
“Sea surface temperatures and deeper water temperatures reached new record high in 2024…
“From 2023 to 2024, the global upper 2000 meters ocean heat content increase is 16 zettajoules (1021 Joules), ~140 times the world’s total electricity generation in 2023.”
“2024 wasn’t just the warmest year on record. It was the moistest year on record, too.
“Atmospheric moisture was above average for 86% of Earth. A warmer planet is a wetter planet. The trend is unmistakable.”
https://x.com/BenNollWeather/status/1877736875873403044
“La Niña is finally here but it won’t stay for long…
“A weak La Niña climate pattern has emerged in the Pacific Ocean, months later than was initially forecast. This will raise the risk of drought and heavy rain in parts of the world, even as it lowers global average temperatures.”
[Meanwhile there is still record heat in much of the tropics; updates on the next climate post]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2463518-la-nina-is-finally-here-but-it-wont-stay-for-long/
“Biodiversity loss and climate change: Interdependent global challenges…
“Climate change is one of the drivers of biodiversity loss, along with factors including unsustainable food production and the overuse of natural resources. Nature is considered a key tool in combating rising global temperatures…”
“One-quarter of freshwater fauna threatened with extinction.
“On the basis of monitored natural inland wetlands (including peatlands, marshes, swamps, lakes, rivers and pools, among others), 35% of wetland area was lost between 1970 and 2015, at a rate three times faster than that of forests.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08375-z
“BlackRock quits climate change group in latest green climbdown..
“All six of the largest US banks, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, have quit a similar group for banks, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, in recent weeks.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f0fb9841-db1d-442e-a757-1a1327497fb1
“Conflict between Turkey and Kurdish groups rises around key dam in northern Syria...
“Over a thousand protesters from Kurdish areas in northeast Syria gathered Wednesday afternoon at the Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates River in Aleppo province, a critical source of both water and electricity that has been at the center of clashes.”
“Phoenix hasn’t seen rain in 139 days. Here’s how that ranks all time.
“With little chance of rain in the forecast, our current drizzle-less streak could reach record-breaking territory.”
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/phoenix-days-without-rain-streak-ranking-20933249
“An insurance crisis was already brewing in L.A. Then the fires hit.
“The Los Angeles wildfires could threaten California’s already unstable insurance market, which carriers have been fleeing as disasters multiply.”
“Mel Gibson also offered up his own theory about the LA fires as he waits to find out the fate of his own home in Malibu and whether it is still standing amid the state of emergency.
“The actor said: ‘All those earmarks, the precursors of a collapse, they’re present in our time.’
“The Braveheart star cited 2011 Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed as he said ‘it didn’t take long’ for a civilization to collapse.
“Gibson explained: ‘It says all the things you need for a civilization to cave in and collapse.”
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You can read the previous “Climate” thread here. Justin will be back on Monday with an “Economic” thread.
Nice early one Kali.
Fascinating developments on the business, political megalomaniac front arising pre-Trump II era.
California, such a tragedy and still unfolding. On a selfish note it’s going to smash house insurance here in Oz. Fires in mid winter reminds me of the east coast of Oz Black Summer (2019-20). I was a paid firefighter then and my diary records show me fighting fires in July, our mid winter. It will return here and similar events will repeat.
The future is beyond my imagination, scary, incomprehensible, unbelievable and full of no-surprises.
Good fortune to all who visit these pages from around the globe.
“The future is beyond my imagination, scary, incomprehensible, unbelievable and full of no-surprises.”
That pretty much nails it for me.
FIRES
January 9, 2025 , Written by Patrick REYMOND
I would come back to these fires that had ” ravaged the whole of Australia “, 5 years ago. In fact, uh, no, it’s not the whole continent, it’s only 5% of the continent, or simply, 5% of the forests that had burned, which was already not bad.
As it is eucalyptus that is burning, in a TV show, we are told that, ultimately, it was not a catastrophe, eucalyptus needs to burn in its cycle, to burst its seeds and allow them to grow, and their biomass, antibiotic, does not decompose, but dries on the spot.
Well, let’s add, the zest, the disappearance of the rural population, in fact a population that knew how to do it, clear nearby brush, and make controlled and preventive fires. If there is indeed a population in the countryside, it is now also an urban population.
Same story in the USA, as elsewhere, ban on clearing brush, here on collecting dead wood, in contradiction with all medieval customs, it was the poor man’s share. Let’s add another zest, the usual stupidity of ecologists, always brainless, like FNE here. It’s prohibitive, forbidden to be ecologist and intelligent. A real ecologist is a complete asshole. A primate.
I remember a village, like so many others, on the water’s edge. Like the others on the water’s edge, it was built with stones from the river. Today, would that be possible? An ecologist would sue!
Same for the floods in the north. Is it forbidden to dredge rivers? It’s legally complicated in any case, farmers and gardeners did it to recover the silt as fertilizer. And then, in any case, we dropped the maintenance.
Similarly, in 1955, there were very few trees growing in or on river banks. There was always someone to cut them down.
So, California today is on fire, while, apparently, the insurers have given up on everything: too many risks. There are simply too many people in California. And for the risk of fire, in “homes at risk”, fire protection is clearly highlighted, in particular by clearing brush and felling trees as a preventive measure. So the Raneys are fucking gifted, and the Californians are fucking brainless. I had also tried to make a facsimile of a Californian understand that having a flame barbecue next to a Leyland cypress was not a good idea, but he never understood.
The film industry should migrate to other skies, politically different (we talk a lot about Atlanta), and a nice fire is an excellent opportunity to make room and replace everything with Tiny houses. But also, an excellent opportunity to reduce the size of the city. The city of Bourges, for example, began its great decline in 1487 with the fire that destroyed 1/3 of the city.
Of course, we’re going to talk to you about global warming, but not about human improvidence. And if I don’t have much respect for environmentalists, I have even less for journalists.
“The Raneys are gifted.”
Yeah, ok.
Just as Joe the Imbecile Limbaugh/Rogan serves as good inspiration to never listen to podcasts, remarks like that are a good reason never to comment on or in the Interwebs.
Who gives a shit if some random dunce doesn’t’ have “respect” for anything?
If the 5% refers to Australia the comment is baseless.
Probably 30-40+% would burn most years, tropical savanna still loosely under traditional management.
The rest depends on the season and El Niño and La Niña.
No, the 2019-20 were bad beyond imagining, ancient rainforests unburnt for 10s of 1000s of years.
As an ecologist and professional fire fighter of over 30 years, you claims are entirely false.
“Good fortune to all who visit these pages from around the globe.”
Some waited too long to visit the reality of Pan’s C&E. Choosing procrastination leading to depression is not a good strategy for living. 😉
Ok then -commentary on the causes of the LA fires from professional ignoramuses Joe Rogan & Mel Gibson in the Tory press.
Morons and Nazis as the default analysts of the Climatastrophe – what fun.
On a fun lite note, Mel Gibson is ready for the real life part of Mad Max..
Also, Rogan predicted the fires 6 months ago on a YouTube post from his show..
Joe Rogan’s chilling LA wildfire prediction resurfaces
#breakingnews #losangeles #joerogan #wildfire #california
An eerie six-month-old clip of comedian podcaster Joe Rogan speaking about bushfires in Los Angeles is doing the rounds on social media. Speaking to comedian Sam Morril on his show in July, Rogan recounted being evacuated from his former LA home three times due to wildfires.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ONwjYOrCBV0
Thanks for the post Kali…short and bitter 🎂 sweet
Surviving my first New York winter off-grid.
Watching the world burn.
What a time to be alive.
Hope you are staying warm! Good for you off grid. It won’t save us as you well know but it must be nice to disconnect from the beast of IC.
How could we have fires in CA. when all the actors, celebs & elites who have doctorates in fire suppression, mitigation & prevention are telling us all the problems that could have been avoided? They’ve been so helpful,
so now, STFU! I’m sure they will be glad to increase taxes to maintain firefighters & equipment throughout their developments & all other developments during fire seasons. I guess dumb asses think someone else will pay for their property protection? One of the top10 prime directives: You can’t have any service you aren’t willing to pay for.
I still waiting for Anthropogenic Global Warming to bring different disasters to the majority of American & global deniers. Uh Oh! Didn’t see that coming, did you? The only reaction this species has is to lay there & bleed out it’s willful ignorance.
Punch them in the face with reality! Their mass bitching & moaning can’t stop what’s coming. I love unregulated free market enterprise. Insurance companies pull out of any area whose denial of AGW puts profits at risk. We will not tolerate decreasing profits.
My carpal tunnel will not allow my to type a thousand Ha, Ha ,Ha’s.
link: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/an9NW3n_700bwp.webp
Can’t seem to post pictures.
It breaks my heart to see what this scum species has done to all the other plant & animal species. The Finding Out is going to be hell but that is what the 8 billion deserve.
I guess Noaa la office was predicting high winds 10 days prior to the event. I have a civil engineering degree and the water conspiracy stuff is driving me nuts. Also la hasn’t had rain in over a year its really dry. No mention of climate change anywhere but we are all pissed our home is gone and no insurance because i guess they don’t have data either on weather events showing things are getting really bad too.
https://youtu.be/T6_F3iVUh6A?si=Pv6bR7QkviWbMS3I
Here is a link to the water infrastructure and problems
Sean wrote:
“If the 5% refers to Australia the comment is baseless.
As an ecologist and professional fire fighter of over 30 years, you claims are entirely false.”
*Nodding*.
I lived through that -6-8 weeks, and several other major bushfire seasons all my life in the eastern states The Black Summer of 19-20 was so far off-the-scale, and sections of the NSW south coast near where I live, have still not recovered very much. Yes eucalypts & other native species need fire, but not burned down to the ground rock, covered in white ash looking like a dirty snowfield. The extreme heat intensity, warping steel structures, fuelled by high windspeeds never seen before, the fire storms & fire tornadoes flashing to ash whole valleys, cracking granite escarpments to major rock falls etc. At least SoCal botanical landscape looks recoverable. Only getting so much attention because of where it is and the average wealth of the population that lives there. I’m surprised by so many complaints of lack of water in built-up areas.. if fire has killed the power grid .. it logically kills the operation of water/waste management infrastructure too, duh! But American emergency/disaster response & management has long been of relatively poor quality compared to many other countries.
Methinx also the Canadian ‘Black Summer’ was worse for ecological damage to the vast northern boreal forests, (along with Siberia) despite the sparsely populated areas. Human hubris, if it doesn’t affect many people or major urban developments it’s considered no big deal.
Informative comment. Thanks!
Exactly Raiin.
By the time summer arrived in December 2019, I had been on emergency fire duties for 5 months, that’s why I hate the term Black Summer. As would the Queenslanders on the Sunshine Coast Pereregian Beach or at O’Rielly’s in Springbrook.
The fire that ran through Rappville NSW to me defines the new era of CC fuelled fires. Unstoppable beasts moving at ludicrous speeds over vast distances. I witnessed senior more experienced colleagues gobsmacked, terrified and stunned by that fire.
The cycle will return after this wet period and it will be bigger.