A big thank you to October’s sponsor, Rusty Flanagan.
“Breaking News! Code Yikes!
“The latest ECMWF data for October 23rd showed the global mean surface temperature anomaly at 1.74°C above the pre-industrial average.
“That temperature marks the hottest day since April 2nd of this year, at 1.78°C. It also broke last year’s record!”
https://x.com/EliotJacobson/status/1849793683434229886
“Here we go again: Close to record high Sea Surface Temperatures; Record high global air temperatures; Record low global sea-ice extent
“Happening on the same day.”
https://x.com/LeonSimons8/status/1849836427455975426
“October is forecasted to end up above the average temperature anomaly of the past 16 months!
“I can’t wait to see all those climate communicators downplay the significance of this, as usual. They can’t blame El Niño for this one…”
https://x.com/LeonSimons8/status/1849732602913054944
“EXTRAORDINARY EVENT IN MEXICO.
“Brutal unbelievable 45.9C/114.6F at Plutarco yesterday – it has never been that hot anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere this time of the year. World climatic history writes a new page.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1849884569425617192
“An unprecedented number of flood emergencies have ravaged the US. It’s a warning of what’s to come…
“Extreme weather has thrashed the United States this year with more flood emergencies than any other year — a deadly, sobering statistic that scientists say paints a picture of the future as the planet warms. An unprecedented 91 flash flood emergencies have been issued…”
“The U.S. is experiencing the driest fall on record, which could potentially impact the quality of upcoming autumn harvests, experts told ABC News.
“About 77% of the mainland U.S. is abnormally dry, and almost half of the country is experiencing drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/half-us-experiencing-drought-affect-food-industry/story?id=115102946
“Wildfires in the western US aren’t only growing bigger. They are also growing faster, putting millions of people and properties at greater risk.
““In the context of home destruction and lives lost, we really need to think more about fire speed than fire size,” says Jennifer Balch at the University of Colorado, Boulder.”
“Warm, dry weather sparks hundreds more wildfires than normal [Wisconsin].
“Wisconsin has seen around 250 more wildfires this year than the average for the last decade as the state faces high fire danger due to dry, warm weather… In the past week, there were 82 wildfires reported in the state, and Army National Guard helicopters are on standby to assist with fire suppression.”
https://www.wpr.org/news/warm-dry-weather-sparks-hundreds-more-wildfires-than-normal
“Another exceptionally warm day in Quebec, at record levels for this time of year!
“26.5°C [79.7F] Hemmingford; 26.2°C Danville; 26.0°C Sherbrooke; 25.9°C Sainte-Clotilde; 25.8°C Drummondville; 25.7°C Granby & Laurierville; 25.6°C Beauceville, Beauport & Ormstown; 25.4°C Bagotville.”
https://x.com/ThierryGooseBC/status/1849250026419372375
“Kotzebue [Alaska] flooding declared state disaster as residents recover from coastal storm.
“Residents began evacuating their homes on Tuesday afternoon as rising water levels threatened numerous structures… . Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration in response, and emergency efforts are continuing as multiple organizations assess the damage.”
https://alaskapublic.org/2024/10/23/kotzebue-flooding-declared-state-disaster-as-residents-recover/
“Near-record rainfall of 7.62in recorded on Wednesday [Bermuda]…
“7.62in of rain was recorded by the BWS on Wednesday, making it the second wettest day on record. Alex Young, the weather service’s deputy director, said yesterday the rainfall fell just below the single-day record of 7.77in set on June 1, 1996.”
“”Our analysis shows that it is the freshening linked mainly to increasing precipitation in a warming climate which pushes the AMOC past tipping point.” [from Stefan Rahmstorf’s recent paper]
“This is bad!”
https://x.com/LeonSimons8/status/1849846764104196113
“Exceptional rainfall intensity during a storm in Vidauban, SE France yesterday:
“25.4 mm/5 min Top 3 France; 29.9 mm/6 min Top 5; 64.7 mm/15 min Top 2; 101.3 mm/30 min French record [four inches]! 119.0 mm/60 min Top 19.”
https://x.com/ThierryGooseBC/status/1849849284063023167
“Arrival of new ‘Dana’ weather system could deposit up to 300mm [12 inches] of torrential rain in parts of Spain…
“”In addition, the depression will be accompanied by the subsequent growth of a very powerful ridge further north, which will isolate it even more and cause it to move slowly, which in turn will affect its duration and make its effects potentially worse…””
“Poland to amend budget bill for 2024, in wake of floods.
“Poland will amend its budget bill for 2024, a government website showed on Friday, after Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski said last month that September’s devastating floods in southern Poland were likely to lead to changes in this year’s budget.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-amend-budget-bill-2024-wake-floods-2024-10-25/
“Greece’s chestnut harvest set to shrink, hit by drought and heat.
“In Greece, one of the world’s largest chestnut producers, farmer Anestis Altinis searches for nuts suitable for harvest. But after months of searing heat and drought, most have not ripened, a familiar problem in his village where output is expected to drop 90%. “I don’t remember this happening before,” said Altinis…”
“Wildfire breaks out on Kos island, residents alerted…
“Twelve firefighters supported by six fire trucks are working to extinguish the blaze near the town of Kefalos. Aerial support includes three aircraft and a helicopter.”
“SOUTHERN AFRICA HEAT WAVE: Record of hot nights all over the region.
“TANZANIA MIN 23.1 Musoma 1150m asl; MOZAMBIQUE 25.0 Mocumba; Minimums up to 27C in MADAGASCAR. Next days MALAWI declared a red alert for extreme heat with temperatures up to 45C [113F] on Monday.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1849449345994588494
“Farmers devastated after hail storm hits Beitbridge district [Zimbabwe]…
““We experienced such losses to frost in winter and just when the farmers were recovering, they were again hit by the hailstorms which lashed the district.””
“Hailstorm Devastates Farms and Homes in Tororo [Uganda]…
“The storm ravaged fields of crops and tore roofs off several homes, pushing many into despair. Crops like watermelon, tomatoes, cassava, maize, and rice—some just weeks away from harvest—were severely damaged, leaving farmers in shock.”
https://nilepost.co.ug/news/223247/hailstorm-devastates-farms-and-homes-in-tororo-
“On October 24, a powerful storm has brought intense rainfall to Taif in Mecca Province [Saudi Arabia], resulting in significant street flooding and widespread disruptions.
“Streets, normally bustling with activity, are now submerged…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2frUMkEI-0M
“Residents block Karachi’s Jehangir Road in protest over water, power shortages [Karachi experiencing brutally hot October]…
“For the past week, the city has been facing an extreme and unusual load-shedding, with electricity being cut off during the day and only restored in the evening when markets are closed, causing significant economic disruption.”
“Is extreme rainfall leading to ‘green drought’ in Western India?
“In India, farmers in rural Gujarat are caught in a cycle of droughts and floods, and increasingly frame the impacts of these co-located hazards in the form of ‘leelo dukaal’ (green drought).”
https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/is-extreme-rainfall-leading-to-green-drought-in-western-india/
“Cyclone Dana death toll rises to 4 in West Bengal.
“Severe cyclonic storm Dana struck the eastern coast in the early hours of Friday, triggering torrential rain and high-speed winds that uprooted trees and electric poles and caused significant damage to infrastructure and crops in Odisha and West Bengal.”
https://www.siasat.com/cyclone-dana-two-more-deaths-reported-in-west-bengal-toll-rises-to-4-3120265/
“Lead pollution in a remote Tibetan glacier reveals far-reaching human activities.
“In a study of the Guliya Ice Cap there, Franco Marcantonio of Texas A&M University and his colleagues discovered that significant lead pollution of the ice cap began in 1974, with the highest levels between 2000 and 2007.”
https://new.nsf.gov/news/lead-pollution-remote-tibetan-glacier-reveals-far-reaching
“Today, another seven stations in China broke the highest record in late October, with Yuanyang, Yunnan reaching 36.2C [97.2F].
“In the future, the temperature in eastern China and Yunnan will remain high, and more places will break records!”
https://x.com/yangyubin1998/status/1849796009007980803
“Ridiculous warmth persists in East Asia – tropical nights in Japan and Koreas and summer-like temperatures.
“MINIMUM temperatures was 22.0C [71.6F] at Seongsan in South Korea, 21.6C at Sogwipo and 21.0C at Jeju. Summer temperatures will persist into November and break hundreds of records.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1849971921611374690
“HISTORIC HEAT IN THE SE ASIA – MINIMUM 29.3 [84.7F] Nueva Vizcaya University is HOTTEST OCTOBER NIGHT IN PHILIPPINES HISTORY.
“Min 27.7 General Santos Hottest night ever. MORE RECORDS OF OCTOBER HIGHEST TMIN: 26.0 Butuan, Philippines; 26.6 Miri, MALAYSIA; INDONESIA: 27.8 Larantuka, 26.9 Medan, 26.4 Serang.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1849361491633246714
“At least 76 killed as Tropical Storm Trami batters the Philippines.
“Nearly 320,000 people forced to leave their homes due to flooding and landslides, while thousands are stranded at air and seaports… forecasters are raising the rare possibility that it could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds developing in the South China Sea.”
“SOUTH AMERICA HEAT WAVE: Another fierce heat wave with scorching hot nights and MINIMUM temperature up to 30C [86F] in Paraguay and 28C in Bolivia and Argentina.
“Record of October hottest night in the Boa Vista Int. Airport in BRAZIL with a min of 27.6C.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1849516306703257887
“This is the horrifying moment an 18-year-old woman was swept away by floodwaters in Brazil on Thursday night.
“Sara Silva was returning home from work when her vehicle got dragged down a street in Campinas, a city in the southeastern state of São Paulo… The storm also killed Jair Marques, 22, who was inside a manhole doing drugs when he disappeared.”
“Criminals may be leveraging climate change as record acreage burns in Brazil’s Amazon.
“…with the forest drying out from drought, lawbreakers seeking to create more pasture may be skipping the expensive, labor-intensive step of felling trees. A lighter and a few gallons of gasoline suffice to start a blaze.”
“Ecuador expands power cuts to 14 hours a day due to drought…
“Acting Energy minister Inés Manzano said late Thursday that the authorities are ordering an electricity service suspension from eight to 14 hours a day in the country because the drought has worsened in recent days.”
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ecuador-expands-power-cuts-14-hours-day-due-115151299
“Record heat continues in the CARIBBEANS – record minimums 28/30C every night in the Southern Caribbean, especially Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire.
“ST LUCIA Int. Airport Hewanorra set a new October highest temperature record with 33.4C [92.1F]. The record heat will destroy all November records.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1849872098053050685
“Why Heat Waves of the Future May Be Even Deadlier Than Feared…
“The wet bulb limit was always theoretical… Above two degrees, lethal heat waves might rapidly emerge in some of the world’s most densely populated regions, including eastern China, India and sub-Saharan Africa, according to Dr. Kenney and his colleagues.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/health/heat-tolerance-climate-change.html
“‘Crunch time for real’: UN says time for climate delays has run out.
“Current carbon-cutting promises by countries for 2030 are not being met, according to the report, and even if they were met, the temperature rise would only be limited to a still-disastrous 2.6C to 2.8C.”
“”Universal suicide”: An imprisoned climate activist [Roger Hallam] on why the fight for the planet still matters…
“Let’s not delude ourselves, we’re looking at human extinction, the death of eight billion people, and there’s no way that people will be able to survive in anything like an increase of 5º centigrade.”
“Would abandoning false hope help us to tackle the climate crisis?
“…what if it is hope that is the problem? What if hope is the antidepressant that has been keeping us all comfortably numb when we have every right to be sad, worried, stirred to action or just plain angry?”
“‘We have emotions too’: Climate scientists respond to attacks on objectivity…
““Scientists have generally been very cautious with how they communicate, and where has that gotten us right now. I’m not saying that we should just flare up into a frenzy and say ‘Oh my God, this is the end’. But being honest and candid about the truth should never be hidden.””
“Last year, the Java stingaree became the first marine fish to be declared extinct as a result of human actions. Could there soon be others?
“…it remains startling to think that this is the first official marine fish extinction linked to human activity. Humans have caused the disappearance of at least 198 vertebrate species since 1900 – including various fish species found in rivers and lakes.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241022-the-marine-fish-driven-to-extinction-by-humans
“Biodiversity declining even faster in ‘protected’ areas, scientists warn Cop16.
“…simply designating more areas as protected “will not automatically result in better outcomes for biodiversity”, researchers warn, in the latest study to challenge the effectiveness of conservation practices.”
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You can read the previous “Climate” thread here. I’ll be back on Monday with an “Economic” thread.
I need to do a video on all of this!
Major doom headlines here.
Happy filming, Doom Wizard.
Anyone for 2C, going once, going twice!
Well, we briefly exceeded 2C last November. It’s kind of amazing that the UN is still selling the idea that dropping below 1.5C is possible, and 6% of climate scientists in a recent survey still believe we will achieve that goal.
To quote General Melchett from ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’: “That’s the spirit! If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.”
“The ERA5 data indicate that the global surface air temperature on 17 November reached 2.07°C above the pre-industrial average, an average temperature taken between 1850-1900 prior to extensive use of fossil fuels.”
https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-temperature-exceeds-2degc-above-pre-industrial-average-17-november
If anything positive can be said of the English it’s that their dry humor can really strike deep. That quote perfectly sums up the last ten fifteen twenty thirty years
I’ve tried in the past to hurriedly post a snarky, acid-laden response to a day’s C&E, only to lose it in ham-fisted Android phone punching, losing the entirety, sometimes over and over, lost, completely lost.
Does not really matter – the dystopian news is now outstripping C&E and every other informed curatorial intellectual site.
This is, as one good comment said in the NY Review of Books said, the 33rd year of the Reagan administration. The idiot business power cyborgs are in control, and with massive arms manufacturing, nuclear brinksmanship, bankrupted government anti-pandemic corps, and concentration camps planning and operations going across the globe, it’s just a matter, as the comments sections said yesterday, which feature of collapse gets into the first outsized crack…
But not for some of us, not yet. We are not, unless I miss my guess, like the poor Ukrainian war refugees in the amazing PBS POV doc “In the Rear View” surviving the death of a beloved spouse, sitting in a van with a cat, death and destruction all around, no food in sight, no functioning economy, the thieves outside the door…
We are not ready for that. There’s no way to “prep” for that. This has been a life of fossil fuel abundance through Third World immiseration, and that is the only life we are equipped to handle.
Poor St. Roger is in prison, basically for holding the same base of knowledge here at C&E, but thinking, like poor Julian Assange, that the same forces of power accelerating humanity over the cliff can be “reformed.” Bullshit. No evidence of that. No evidence of our founding guru William Catton’s hopes for a “paradigm shift” either.
Electoral politics was always in the grips of, and headed for, this worldwide catastrophe of corporate moron power calculus – with a side course of art and food and music for the temporarily privileged by fate. What’s not to love?
“…only to lose it in ham-fisted Android phone punching, losing the entirety.”
Too much complexity for too little material advantage makes this a frustrating, sometimes overwhelming era, Martin.
It can feel like an endless, bloody sequence of things going wrong, at least to me, and I am lucky enough to be in a country that is still somewhat insulated from the gathering chaos.
No Harry. No one is insulated. Nowhere to hide on a globe.
Interresting things can still happen though- My wife and I play a game of rummy every day. Yesterday for the first time in my life, that I can remember anyways, I had four aces with my opening cards with one of my hands in the game.
Then today in a game that lasted 7 or 8 hands, my wife got four aces with her opening cards in two hands and 3 aces once.
Curt, I take it that is a very unlikely occurrence. My grandmother was a keen gin rummy player, I recall, but I never learnt.
With electrical grids looking increasingly vulnerable, dusting off the old board games and learning how to play cards is probably not a bad idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6by9nOo4BQ
“Fuck the habitat! How can I make a buck off of it?” Now that’s Special Species sentiment.