Climate Change and the Environment

first published a couple of days ago

http://archive.today/9IvhV

Once, there were 29. Now at least one is gone, maybe three. Those that remain are almost half the size they used to be.

Mount Rainier is losing its glaciers. That is all the more striking as it is the most glacier-covered mountain in the contiguous United States.

Wildflowers, among its main summer attractions, are blossoming at odd times. The season for climbing the 14,000-foot summit is shorter. Douglas firs are climbing down the mountain slopes to areas where there is less snow than before. Rocks are tumbling down from the retreating glaciers, wiping out old-growth forests, changing the course of rivers, and most importantly for the National Park Service, flooding roads that it is supposed to maintain so tourists can drive in and enjoy its wilderness.

One small south-facing glacier, the Stevens, no longer exists and has been removed from the park’s inventory of glaciers. Two others, known as Pyramid and Van Trump, “are in serious peril,” according to an exhaustive survey published this summer by the Park Service, and may well be gone by the time the agency carries out the next survey in the coming year or two, said Scott R. Beason, the park geologist who led the study.

Man, the National Parks are dangerous enough now with overcrowding by underprepared visitors, but if (when?) climate change starts making things like flash flooding and forest fires more common people are going to die. Maybe a lot of people.

With an El Nino coming up, you guys can look forward to seeing most of Australia ablaze this summer. It was a relatively wet winter, so lots of growth. I would be surprised if we go through the summer without seeing some very destructive fires.

I wouldnt be too sure. California had one of its wettest winters ever last year, and we are only about 3 weeks away from the end of traditional fire season with no major catastrophic wildfires.

Our biggest fire this year was less than 10K acres and only burned for 8 days. Its a pretty remarkable fire season all things considered. Ill keep my fingers crossed that our friends down under have a similar season.

Meanwhile Canada seemed to have its worst fire season ever.

It’s historically dry in the west here though.

Yeah, the multiple atmospheric rivers in California this past winter seems to have pulled a lot of moisture from the North and Northwest

September beat the previous monthly record set in 2020 by a staggering 0.5 degrees Celsius, according to data released Wednesday by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. There has never been a month so abnormally hot since Copernicus’ records began in 1940.

Ocean temperatures were also off the charts in September.

81lxos

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Today is October 5th. The high outside of Sacramento was 92 degrees, as it will be tomorrow, and 93 on Saturday. The average high at this time of year is 81, so, ya know, just 11 degrees above average heading into fall. No big dealio

Our October so far vs average temp:

1st: +11
2nd: +10
3rd: +17
4th: +22
Today: +22
Tomorrow: +13

Gonna be more normal temps next week, but it’s going to take a month’s worth of rain on Saturday to get there.

Jesus christ.

There was a study released by the British Institute of Actuaries: The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios that argues we are severely under estimating the economic impact of Climate Change.

"In particular, the observed benign results for the hot-house world are deeply flawed and underestimate the impact of the risks we expect to face. Many climate models are severely under-estimating the economic impact of climate change…

Put another way, at what point do we expect 50% GDP destruction – somewhere between 2070 and 2090."

Here’s Umair Haque trying to summarize it:

Ours looked like this…

1st: +9.6
2nd: +9.0
3rd: +15.5
4th: +14.7
Yesterday: +11.9
Today: +8

Oh, wait, that’s CELSIUS. Let me just convert that…

1st: +17.3
2nd: +16.2
3rd: +27.9
4th: +26.5
Yesterday: +21.4
Today: +14.4

We had heat indexes in the mid-30s (mid-90s) most of the week.

I know this is very micro, but on an extreme local level, power prices should be way down by this point in the year, but, nope, two extra months now of paying quite a bit above average

You guys are confusing climate and weather.

Well yeah looking at weather for a given week or two isn’t telling you much of anything but weather is what defines climate. As weather changes over a period of time so does the climate. And I’d say its pretty obvious that our weather is changing/getting warmer.

https://twitter.com/HeidilBlake/status/1713866611826757964

https://twitter.com/HeidilBlake/status/1713883343958266078

A) JFC

B) Utterly predictable. How in the fuck are we allowing private companies to manage this shit?

LET THE MARKET DECIDE! RUN THE GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS!

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Its the death throes of capitalism. Once those that control the wealth control the reigns of government, there is nowhere else to go. Either the wealth controllers get to do what they want all the time, or revolution occurs and the government is taken back from the wealth controllers.

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