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California wildfires like this one, unprecedented in number, extent and the length of their season, are only one small part of the onslaught of climate change now under way in America.
The heat wave that just relaxed its grip — slightly– on the Pacific Northwest was unprecedented in the history of the region, indeed of the entire United States. It came earlier in the year, set more all-time records, and set them by unprecedented margins of in some cases 20 to 30 degrees. That it has backed off for now means nothing, as Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state understands; this is climate change. “This,” he said on national TV, “is the beginning of a permanent emergency.”
Underground and surface water in the region are depleted; crops over much of the state are damaged or dead; human health has been affected by temperatures and humidity levels that are simply not survivable (in a region where air conditioning is regarded as unnecessary).
Meanwhile the drought over the entirety of the American southwest is proceeding implacably into similar, record-breaking territory. “The West has never seen a drought like this, especially so early in the dry season,” according to climate journalist Brian Kahn. “We are in a climate emergency.”
Over 90% of the western region, home to 98 million people, is in a drought, and 56% of the region is in the two highest classifications of drought. 54 large wildfires are currently burning in the region.
None of this would have been quite so startling had the Trump Administration not suppressed an EPA report completed three years ago detailing damage already done to the country by climate change, and specifying for the first time (for the EPA) that the harm is being done by human activity. Finally released by the Biden administration last month, the EPA report says the country has entered an unprecedented era, in which the effects of climate change are more visible, more numerous and coming on faster than ever before.
The report details the multiple heat waves, extended droughts, expanded wildfire seasons, melting permafrost, vanishing Arctic sea ice and coastal flooding that are among the manifestations of a rising emergency now afflicting in one way or another every town, city or rural community in the country, in the words of the EPA administrator.
Other reports, all of them strident in their declarations of emergency, are emerging all over the world. A team of scientists studying ice sheets and ocean currents has concluded that they are approaching tipping points, at which they begin to generate feedback loops that accelerate each other’s deterioration. Other scientists have measured a significant slowing of the ocean currents that transfer tropical heat to the North Atlantic and Europe, a trend that if continued could dramatically accelerate sea level rise on the US East Coast and alter the climate of Europe, among other things.
And in Florida, a shattered condominium high rise building stands in what may turn out to be mute testimony to the increasing savagery of climate change; we now know that rising sea water — salt water — has been infiltrating the building’s basement during every unusually high tide for decades. And we’re now told that during the 1990s, the building was observed to be sinking at a rate of two millimeters per year into the reclaimed wetlands on which it was built. These things were noted, reported, and ignored.
Maddeningly, the EPA report concludes with the same, mealy-mouthed, craven disclaimer that every official and journalistic description of climate change seems to find necessary: that things will soon get really rough if somebody doesn’t do something. As its own report made abundantly clear: the emergency is here; the disaster is unfolding; it is far too late to avoid it.
Thanks Tom.
I can tell you for a fact that the heatwave did not stop at the 49th parallel.
Local & national high temperature records smashed to hell up here in the Great White North. I gave my mom a portable A/C – heater unit on wheels for mothers day 3 years ago. She wasn’t overly impressed at the time. She gets it now. In addition to the cavalcade of broken temp records here in BC, there’s been a bunch of people & pets dying and/or getting sick.
1 example from 1 municipality
‘More than 25 people have died in 24 hours in Burnaby, many due to heat, police say’
https://globalnews.ca/news/7989968/sudden-deaths-burnaby-heat-wave/
If you’re in it, stay hydrated people & add extra electrolytes to your food & drinks [salt, baking soda, ‘no salt’ is a great & cheap source of potassium]
” … things will soon get really rough if somebody doesn’t do something.”
Yeah, we’ve entered the pleading phase. That was to be expected.
It doesn’t matter. It’s all coming down to Solar Radiation Management. It should “work,” and if calcium carbonate proves a worthy reflective particle, then humans won’t have to deal with the side effects that would’ve attenuated a sulfur based SRM regime, namely, acid rain and Ozone destruction.
Then it will be about finding a proper balance (forever and forever) between 9 gigatons of yearly carbon emissions -at present- and the artificial albedo effect of the particles.
All that won’t change the fact that the oceans will be fished out by 2050, according to several studies, and should those studies prove wrong, other studies are indicating that by 2050, the oceans will be too acidic to support life.
Either way, the oceans are apparently, dead men walking.
Also, it won’t change so many other things, like the fact that Russia’s adversaries now have nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on their borders, which means, if Russian Air Defense C&C centers get an early detection false-positive like they have several times in the past, they won’t have time, this time, to deliberate, and reach proper conclusions, they will be forced to launch.
Hell, they might launch anyway, out of spite, as the Russian Federation is not going to be happy seeing their trillion dollar operation above the Arctic Circle, the new life blood of the Motherland (!), getting … refrozen.
“…and a third part of the trees was burnt up, and the green grass consumed.” — Rev. 8:7
John of Patmos penned these lines while confined to an island that the Romans used as an asylum for the criminally insane. (The Romans of that era were remarkably liberal in certain key areas.)
Nuts or not, John, in his weird allegorical masterpiece ‘The Revelation’ accurately narrates the ghastly process of societal collapse. He includes detailed descriptions of numerous shocking environmental disasters which seem quite plausible today, but a bit over-the-top for his time. One wonders how he could have come up with such a prophetic work. It is, at once, bizarrely fantastic and brutally realistic…A grand read, if a tad dense.
The old gentleman may have had the Roman Empire in mind when he wrote this, but his references to ‘The Whore of Babylon’ could easily apply to present day America as well.
It is a “grand” read, but what a different world we might be living in if “the council” hadn’t decided to slap it on the end of the New Testament.
They knew their religion was going to need the muscle, I suppose, to compete for survival in the ages yet to come, and maybe they were right.
Still, Revelation is why I became an atheist at the age of 10. None of the adults around me could adequately answer the simple query of a child: which Jesus should I believe in, the mass killer or the selfless lamb?
Both, was always the reply, and that reply didn’t square up then, and it doesn’t now.
Note: Jesus, if you’re listening, despite what the Christians would have me believe about you, you are still my second favorite Buddhist.
Good stuff, Greg.
Thanks, Max. I share your ambivalence regarding John’s work.
There’s a clear climate change connection [sea level rise] to the condo collapse.
The collapsed Miami condo had regular floods in the basement garage which could’ve seriously damaged it, reports say
https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/collapsed-miami-condo-had-regular-100055028.html
I say many Florida officials have the condo victims blood on their hands. I could lay out a case for a criminal conspiracy – murder for money.
Florida officials knew and they did the exact opposite of policy recommendations from scientists, engineers, etc. Hell, they made climate denial ‘the policy’ & punished state employees who would not deny.
Florida banned state workers from using term ‘climate change’ – report
‘Global warming’ and ‘sustainability’ among phrases allegedly barred at state’s Department of Environmental Protection, investigative report finds
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/08/florida-banned-terms-climate-change-global-warming
Dig & you’ll find a whole lot more. Who knows how deep this rabbit hole goes. Deep enough to easily swallow a collapsed condo & 155 dead bodies with plenty of room to spare. Criminals.
No doubt about how horrid is our state government in Florida, propped up by a rigged voting system and gerrymandering. :-(
On the other hand, municipalities in Florida have been somewhat proactive and doing as much as they can without state (or federal, in some administrations) support, while being backed into a climate change corner. Example:
https://www.miamigov.com/Government/ClimateChange