Environmental Disasters! (we saw coming)

[TigoleBitties]

I remember that book Factfulness by Hans Rosling that came out in 2018 claiming the world is better place now than it's ever been. It's an interesting read.

But here's a good critique of why some of those positive figures are misleading. Interestingly, it comes from a fellow Swede.

 

[vapviking]

Getting better and worse at the same time!
It's a horse race at this point.

 

[florduh]

Then, there's the other side of the coin.

Natural History Museum scientists described a record 815 new species in 2023

This year scientists at the Natural History Museum have been busy.

www.nhm.ac.uk

The last line of the article:

With species around the world going extinct as an increasingly concerning rate, it is vitally important that we continue to describe as many new species as possible so that we have a record of the intricate web of life on this planet.

Scientists are in a race to identify new species just in time for us to wipe them out.

I remember that book Factfulness by Hans Rosling that came out in 2018 claiming the world is better place now than it's ever been. It's an interesting read.

But here's a good critique of why some of those positive figures are misleading. Interestingly, it comes from a fellow Swede.

Brother, that video is a banger. It reminds me of an American scientist/Epstein associate named Stephen Pinker. He had a whole schtick about how, if you stare at graphs, the world is getting better. So stop complaining or demanding that things improve, you ungrateful peasants.

 

[olysh pops]

A boiling planet.

It's confirmed: 2023 was the hottest year on record.

In 2023, the planet reached a global temperature rise of + 1.48°C above pre-industrial levels, approaching the symbolic + 1.5°C warming limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement in order to curb climate disruption.

According to Copernicus, the European climate observatory, the planet has probably not experienced such high temperatures for at least 100,000 years. The readings for 2023 far exceeded those for 2016, the year of the previous global heat record.

Global Climate Highlights | Copernicus

climate.copernicus.eu

 

[florduh]

A boiling planet.

It's confirmed: 2023 was the hottest year on record.

In 2023, the planet reached a global temperature rise of + 1.48°C above pre-industrial levels, approaching the symbolic + 1.5°C warming limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement in order to curb climate disruption.

According to Copernicus, the European climate observatory, the planet has probably not experienced such high temperatures for at least 100,000 years. The readings for 2023 far exceeded those for 2016, the year of the previous global heat record.

Global Climate Highlights | Copernicus

climate.copernicus.eu

So, last year was also an El Nino year. That causes slightly hotter temperatures. However, El Nino happens every 2-7 years. And 2023 was the hottest year in 125,000 years. Before human civilization began.

There's a natural explanation for the hotter temperatures 100,000+ years ago. No such explanation exists for current warming. By natural causes alone, the planet should be cooling. But here it is, getting hotter. Sorry...but it's the carbon emissions

 

[Cheebsy]

Atmospheric river storms are getting stronger, and deadlier. The race to understand them is on | Meteorology | The Guardian

As the climate crisis supercharges storms over the Pacific, scientists are creating tools that can measure them from the inside

amp.theguardian.com

"Given the amount of warming we’ve seen so far, we expect that big precipitation events should be about 10% more intense than they were before greenhouse gasses were added to the atmosphere,” said Alex Hall, a UCLA atmospheric physicist and climate scientist.
“The scary thing is that if you look into the future to the point where we have twice as much warming as today, you have events that are 20% more intense, and entirely new classes of events that don’t even exist now.”

 

[CANtalk]

Scientists want to build 62-mile-long curtains around the 'doomsday glacier' for a $50 billion Hail Mary to save it

The Thwaites Glacier is melting. Scientists plan to test underwater curtains to prevent the "doomsday" glacier's total collapse and subsequent flooding.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[CANtalk]

Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too​

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html

 

[darkstar72]

Consumption of crap or capitalism is the problem. Spending half our adult waking hours at work sucks. Could we bring on degrowth communism instead?

Here is an interesting article.

Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction | George Monbiot

Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up

www.theguardian.com

 

[Perfect_Speed4069]

Could we bring on degrowth communism instead?

Or at the very least, a donut approach to economics. The current state of wealth distribution/ inequality will be our undoing, if we allow it.

 

[darkstar72]

@Perfect_Speed4069 - I just watched the link to the donut approach to economics. Thanks. I've heard the term but now know what it means. The hole in the donut represents extreme poverty (not enough food, etc) and the outer edge represents ecological overshoot (unnecessary consumerism, stupid pollution, etc), and we should aim to have all people in the donut. This implies socialism or massive state intervention to help the 1 billion or so hungry people and more importantly state intervention to stop unnecessary consumerism. Maybe extremely high taxes on income and already accumulated net worth. Essentially a redistribution of wealth. Realistically this is not going to happen in the short term here in the US. The situation is dire - @CANtalk 's link above is about the lack of alarm concerning how our fragile world “has never — in its entire history — heated up as rapidly as it is doing now.”
@Perfect_Speed4069 - Thanks for your second link implying wars and famine are coming and are likely the only equalizers of inequality. I'll have to check out Walter Scheidel's book, "The Great Leveler."
The next 50-100 years will be a freaking rollercoaster. Of course in our magnificence we created the hydrogen bomb in 1957. About 100 times more powerful than the original atomic bombs. The US has 1500 on the ready and 1000 mothballed. So does Russia. Pakistan even has few which are likely poorly guarded. Who knows if 100 years is even possible.
I'm scrolling some article yesterday about AI used for making new biological weapons and an image of gas masks was on the phone. With my seven year old sitting next to me he asks, "what's that?" Cool costume, right? Man, people are perverse. We create and worship gods with superpowers that are human looking.

 

[Perfect_Speed4069]

your second link implies wars and famine are coming and are likely the only equalizers of inequality.

The donut and horsemen hypothesis are useful because they're simple, pragmatic ideas that are literally in most people's interest, everywhere. And hard to argue against, unless you believe in magic or have faith in things that do not exist.

 

[Abele Rizieri Ferrari]

This implies socialism or massive state intervention to help the 1 billion or so hungry people and more importantly state intervention to stop unnecessary consumerism.

Why do you think state intervention is the way?

 

[KeroZen]

Why do you think state intervention is the way?

Because the "invisible hand of the market" proved times and times again that the only thing it's helping is filling its own pocket? (...or stomach, for the matter)

 

[Abele Rizieri Ferrari]

Because the "invisible hand of the market" proved times and times again that the only thing it's helping is filling its own pocket? (...or stomach, for the matter)

This implies that the proposed government intervention is the only alternative to the current capitalist system. I wasn't asking what are the advantages of replacing capitalism with strong government socialism, but why it is that socialism or government intervention is their preferred way to combat the problems of capitalism, in stead of another approach.

 

[darkstar72]

@Abele Rizieri Ferrari I have not dreamt up an other way apart from hoping government intervention could steer our society away from excessive consumption. Do you have any ideas? I guess the idea is that a democracy represents the will of the people and if the public wants real environmental policy change government would lead. Unfortunately it appears our democracy looks more like the shadow cast by big business. That it is a one party system representing the business class. So I guess I see your point about expecting the government to lead change.

 

[Abele Rizieri Ferrari]

If the unlikelihood of global scale socialism allows similarly unlikely options to be suggested, my preference would be to collectivize the means of production by the people in stead of socializing them by the state. The worker's benefit after all is opposite of the capitalist's benefit. Makhnovshchina could act as an inspiration, as well as aspects of Revolutionary Catalonia.

 

[olysh pops]

Drought affects more than 1.8 billion people worldwide

Taking advantage of the resonance of the climate conference (COP28), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in its report "World Drought Outlook in 2023", published on Friday December 1 in Dubai, on the seriousness of the situation.

In 2022, the Plata river basin, which stretches from Brazil to Argentina, experienced its most severe drought since 1944 , according to the World Meteorological Organization. In southern China, according to the same source, the Yangtze River dropped to record levels, affecting almost 5 million people.

The lack of water has a direct impact on the loss of pastures, declining harvests, soaring food prices and famine. It concentrates pollutants in rivers, and also affects energy production, industry, health, river transport, well-being and overall GDP.

A critical drought is taking hold in the Mediterranean basin

Spain, southern France, most of Italy, Malta, Cyprus, parts of Romania, Greece and Turkey : water shortages are already forcing rationing affecting agriculture and tourism.

Southern Europe is experiencing its second consecutive dry year; Morocco is facing the sixth year with little or no rainfall.

- Extremely high risk of fire

Combined with a lack of rainfall and high temperatures for at least the past two years, soil moisture levels are insufficient in most parts of the region. The scientists from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) in a report on this phenomenon, published on February 20, warn of a "very high" or even "extreme" fire danger in North Africa, and "moderate to high" in south-eastern Spain.

- Extreme storms

Drought and extreme storms are two sides of the same coin [linked to rising sea temperatures]. In September 2023, the Mediterranean "hurricane" named Daniel caused two dams to burst at Derna, in Libya, causing almost 6,000 deaths and 8,000 missing, followed by severe flooding in Greece.

Canada prepares for another dreaded megafire season

"Will the exceptional be repeated ? 2023 was a record year for forest fires in Canada : some 6,700 fires ravaged 18.5 million hectares across the country, the equivalent to a territory the size of Greece, producing smoke so intense that it spread as far as the neighboring United States.

"More than 150 fires, born in 2023, are still active in early spring," says Marc-André Parisien, a researcher with the Canadian Forest Service, based in Edmonton, Alberta. In previous years, only about fifteen continued to burn through the winter. These slow-burning infernos threaten to reignite once the snow has disappeared.

Like the rest of the planet, January was the warmest month on record, with an average temperature of 55,65°F/13,14°C according to the European observatory Copernicus, Canada set a series of warmth records winter season.
This exceptionally mild winter was accompanied by low snow cover : a map of climate change, by the Canadian Ministry of the Environment, shows that by mid-March, almost the entire country had a snow cover deficit of the order of 11.81 to 15.74in /30 to 40 centimetres, compared with averages recorded between 1998 and 2011.

"The less snow there is, the less it moistens the soils, the greater the risk to vegetation and, therefore the greater the likelihood of fire," explains Yan Boulanger of Natural Resources Canada.

(Source : Lasting drought takes hold of Mediterranean region, Canada prepares for another dreaded megafire season, Drought affects more than 1.8 billion people worldwide)