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“Massive methane leaks detected in Antarctica, posing potential risks for global warming
“A Spanish scientific expedition has discovered columns of gas emerging from the seabed. Geologists also warn about the possibility of huge landslides that could generate tsunamis.”
“Wildfires Rage in Chile as Red Alert Remains in Place.
“Several wildfires continued to burn in central and south Chile on Tuesday, February 11, prompting a red alert in the Araucanía region and an extended curfew until 6 am Wednesday.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/wildfires-rage-chile-red-alert-092118940.html
“After Patagonia, Argentina’s northern prairies consumed by fires.
“Wildfires have consumed up to 250,000 hectares of land in northeast Argentina since January, local officials said Tuesday as firefighters continue to battle blazes in the remote southern region of Patagonia.”
“SOUTH AMERICA HISTORIC HEAT:
“Extraordinary hot days (45C / 113F Argentina) AND NIGHTS
The Tmin of 30.8C (to be verified because a discrepancy) of Catamarca would be the
HIGHEST FEBRUARY MINIMUM IN SOUTH AMERICA. Also 29.2 CMN PARAGUAY Hottest February night ever in Paraguay.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1889292286682423364
“Intense heatwave in southern Brazil forces schools to suspend return.
“Record highs delay start of classes in Rio Grande do Sul, where floods fueled by climate crisis left 180 dead last May.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/12/brazil-record-heat-rio-grande-do-sul
“Brazil: Severe Flooding Hits Sao Paulo After Heavy Rain.
“Sao Paulo and the entire metropolitan area were placed on alert after heavy rain hit the region on Monday afternoon, February 10. The city of Guarulhos was severely impacted.”
“A viral video on social networks shows the development of an impressive “fire tornado” in a forest fire in the Santa Elena sector of the Galvarino commune, in the La Araucanía region [Ecuador].
“…you can see how this column of air, similar to that of a traditional tornado, causes part of the flames and black smoke generated by the same incident to rise and rotate by consuming the plant material present in the place.”
“A large forest fire has erupted in the commune Tuszów National [Poland].
“15 fire brigades and several dozen rescuers participated in extinguishing a large fire in the town of Czajkowa…:
“Ukraine war forces planes to take longer routes, raising CO₂ emissions.
“Global aviation carbon dioxide emissions increased by 1% in 2023 because planes had to fly longer routes to avoid Russian airspace, according to a new study.”
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-ukraine-war-planes-longer-routes.amp
“Climate change takes a back seat in Germany’s 2025 election.
“Ahead of Germany’s election, topics like migration, security and the German economy dominate the debate. Even though 2024 was the hottest year of record, German politicians are avoiding the topic of climate change.”
https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-takes-a-back-seat-in-germanys-2025-election/video-71580999
“The great climate disconnect…
“…it is no coincidence that the green backlash has emerged as countries stop merely setting net zero goals and start launching policies to meet them. This was always going to be fraught, especially during a cost of living crunch. Support for Germany’s AfD surged in 2023 after it exploited contentious government efforts to decarbonise home heating.”
https://www.ft.com/content/2251b8ba-97
“Spain to give legal status to 25,000 migrants affected by Valencia floods.
“Spain government will give year-long residency and work permits to around 25,000 unregistered migrants caught up in last October’s Valencia floods.”
“Catastrophic flooding in Chad disproportionately affects women and girls.
“Over 2 million people have been impacted by the catastrophic flooding in Chad. The climate crisis has also become a personal crisis for women like Gloria and Chanceline, who lost everything.”
https://www.unfpa.org/video/catastrophic-flooding-chad-disproportionately-affects-women-and-girls
“‘Without help, we will starve’: Tanzania farmers left struggling as US climate aid disappears…
“For five years, USAID-funded experts trained Kiroka farmers on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), improving yields without constant flooding… Then, early this year, the support vanished.”
“Why African nations may turn to EU as Trump slashes aid.
“The Trump administration’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement and World Health Organization, and shutter USAID, may be a chance for the European Union to build better relations with African nations.”
“Dry winter: prelude to water woes, crop failures and wildfires [Nepal].
“Nepal has received just 5.7 mm of rainfall this winter, only 9.5 per cent of the seasonal average of 60 mm, indicating the severe drought in the country.”
https://risingnepaldaily.com/news/56980
“EXTRAORDINARY DAY- AUSTRALIA CLIMATIC HISTORY REWRITTEN.
“Both South Australia and Queensland had their hottest February days on record after weeks and weeks of hundreds of records pulverized. Records are falling allover Oceania and SE Asia. Never happened a month like this.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1889595756220154015
“Floods, heatwaves, possible snow and a cyclone: what is happening with Australia’s weather?
“An already saturated north Queensland is at risk of more flooding, while Tasmania battles bushfires before an Antarctic blast rolls in.”
“After setting an all-time record minimum on February 9th, the 365-day running mean for global sea-ice extent is headed back towards “gobsmacking bananas” territory.”
[Prof Eliot Jacobson]
https://bsky.app/profile/climatecasino.net/post/3lhvr43yt7k2s
“Two new studies suggest Paris climate goal is dead. One scientist is going even further.
“If the world experiences 18 consecutive months at or above the 1.5 degree limit [it has], it will be “virtually certain” the Paris agreement has been breached, the report found.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/10/climate/paris-climate-agreement-breach/index.html
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You can read the previous “Climate” thread here. I’ll be back tomorrow with an “Economic” thread.
“For five years, USAID-funded experts trained Kiroka farmers on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), improving yields without constant flooding… Then, early this year, the support vanished.”
Agronomic practices like SRI have been used for decades everywhere, they’re not arcane wisdom. USAID creates a dependency between smallholder adoption of these techniques and dependence on local and foreign agri monopolies and banks. A dependence that inevitably leads to dispossession. Not to mention that kind of adoption is itself unfeasible outside of micro-targeted NGO projects, and this is by design. Food sovereignty is not the purpose of USAID. National and international collectivization and coordination of agriculture is the only real solution, especially in light of multi-dimensional crises unravelling over the coming years and decades, which mechanisms like USAID actively work to prevent.
The proof is in the pudding – per capita nutrition has substantially declined and displacement of peasantry substantially increased over the past three to four decades. Diversion of land use to commodities that end up in western supermarkets has increased. That is in the third world generally, not only Africa.
Well then, it will be “national and international collectivization and coordination of agriculture” to the rescue! Say no more!
Would it be possible for you to trek on over to the Third World and tell the dying and starving and desperately poor masses there that this is what you and your anti-aid DOGE heroes are working on?
Maybe Archer Daniels Midland can sponsor your trip.
Report back to us how it goes. Thank you so very much.
(To all here) My perspective is that what is happening is that climate change is threatening the lives of millions of people in poorer countries. So the question is how much can western countries do to help them and save them? The water didn’t stop flowing because USAID stopped. Climate injustice is real but ultimately what is being completely not mentioned is the fact that adaptation is ultimately a losing game. We are all fucked. We are all going to starve. Until then, I wish any good work USAID was doing could continue but the projects supporting the neocon agenda would not. When pigs fly, as usual.
“So the question is how much can western countries do to help them and save them?”
One thing we could do is stop exploiting them but then we’d be worse off than them and they’d be the ones asking themselves that question in regard to us. Even the “good work” of USAID is part of that exploitation.
I would however, endorse USAID money being given as direct cash subsidies, without the programs and NGOs. Which, funnily enough, is how the US aids its own farmers, in some years up to 100% of current market value. That is real aid, and it’s given not out of kindness but necessity, i.e making our (US and Europe) extremely energy-inefficient agriculture “competitive”.
Anyway, the system is global, its crisis is global and all viable solutions thereto must be global. The line about the third world suffering more is NIMBYist hopium pretending to be objective. You said as much, but many deny this even in the collapse community for various, often superficially opposite reasons (e.g altruism vs self preservation). I’ll coin a term – half-denial. It’s what people choose when they can’t afford full denial cus reality cut off the allowance until they get a fricking job.
Sorry, not interested. Best of luck with your depression.
Having been through that Berkeley (2024 temperature) article I am more sure that Hansen’s explanation for the 23 / 24 warming can’t be the only thing going on. The earth energy imbalance curves show there was an increase in outgoing radiation, which would be expected with higher surface temperatures by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, but there was also a drop of similar magnitude in net incoming short wave radiation, the opposite of what would be expected by the aerosol argument alone. The recent Nature Climate Communication article suggests there’s been a decoupling between the shallow and deep oceans over the last forty years, allowing faster, undamped temperature transients at the surface. It’s not realistic to use such a method to look at the last two years specifically but all the observations are consistent with an acceleration of the ocean stratification such that much more heat is staying in the surface water and atmosphere (indications such as less effective La Nina, jump in SSTs, suddenly increased sea ice melt, less CO2 sequestration).
If so this is probably the worst possible news, even among all the horrendous news we see here every day. Warming will not slow down from the 0.1 to 0.15 degrees per year we’ve seen recently but will likely speed up as CO2 concentrations accelerate, because the ocean sink has been lost, and the albedo continues to fall. From the EEI curves it looks like the gain in outgoing radiation from higher temperatures will not be enough to stop the warming until temperatures are much above those compatible with human existence. Thermal stratification will get worse with higher temperatures and more ice melt. Other positive feedbacks, including permafrost melt and aerosol loss, will kick in. Temperature thresholds would be passed many years earlier than expected. The 30s will see large scale die off and civilisation probably wouldn’t survive past the 40s.
The ultimate stratification is a Canfield ocean in which the deep waters are anoxic and only harbour sulphate reducing bacteria that produce hydrogen sulphide, which would eventually kill all complex life (as described in “Under a Green Sky”). Before that lack of oxygen at depth and acidification at the surface would kill most marine life.
But no climate scientist seems to be looking at (or at least publishing on) this and each new extreme temperature record is “unexpected”, so what am I not seeing. Most studies are based on integrated models and I don’t know how the ocean heat transfer is modelled or how easy it is to tune. I would have thought it unlikely that there 3D grid control volumes all through the oceans as that would add a huge computing load without adding much fidelity as it would be based on poorly investigated and understood phenomena.
(p.s. another observation – the North Atlantic has cooled off quite a bit recently, even as the average global sea surface temperature has been rising towards last years records and weak La Nina conditions still persist.)
In short, Civilization will not function as we remember it for most of our lives After 2030.
Everyone will be dead or wish they were by 2040.
It’s been fun!
George, I fed your very compelling comment to two different LLM AIs and asked them both to consider your assumptions on trends of climate mechanisms and also your assertions about die off and collapse.
ChatGPT conclusion:
“Your climate mechanisms assumptions are very likely correct, though some feedbacks (like AMOC collapse) have timescale uncertainties. Mass die-off is probable if warming exceeds 2.5⁰-3⁰, which now seems increasingly likely by the 2030s. Civilization collapse is uncertain, but extreme instability and major population loss are very likely by the 2040s.”
Qwen2.5 Max conclusion:
“The assumptions about accelerating ocean stratification, feedback loops, and shallow-deep ocean decoupling are plausible and consistent with current evidence, though some aspects require further confirmation. If these assumptions are true, the likelihood of mass die-off and societal collapse increases significantly, particularly in vulnerable regions and by the 2040s. The window for mitigating these risks remains open but is closing rapidly. Immediate action is needed to validate these hypotheses, enhance resilience, and prevent the worst outcomes.”
One might say you were warned.
Published Jan 29, 2020 at 2:01 PM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/methane-bubbles-boil-sea-arctic-1484666
Sometimes when one eats certain foods they may have “Massive methane leaks..” that can be life altering to other’s olfactory nerves. 😉
Interesting reference list in this wiki article for those unfamiliar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_breadbasket_failure
Quite a few other good articles out there too.
Any ‘back of the envelope’ estimates out there on global mortality secondary to multiple breadbasket harvest failure? Anyone keeping a few buckets of beans, rice, oats etc?
If these so called Ais were really intellegent they would have to give the same answers to the same question every time. The answers could change slowly over time based upon new evidence or proof that has been observed. There for I wonder if there has been any effort to do a meta analysis has been done to see if these chat bots are actually any smarter than the parrots that sit on the shoulder of a pirate. I suspect that these programs are really nothing more than the sophesticated Disney Land special effects.