[TheClimate.Vote] July 25, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Jul 25 11:00:28 EDT 2018
/July 25, 2018/
[CBS storms and fires]
*Extreme weather wallops both coasts with flooding, scorching heat,
wildfires
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/extreme-weather-temperatures-wildfires-flooding-forecast-today-2018-07-23/>*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/extreme-weather-temperatures-wildfires-flooding-forecast-today-2018-07-23/
[fierce fires]
*Greece wildfires: scores dead as holiday resort devastated
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/23/greeks-urged-to-leave-homes-as-wildfires-spread-near-athens>*
Death toll rises to 74 as Red Cross official says 26 people died as they
huddled together on beach in Mati
Tue 24 Jul 2018
Greece fires: deadly blazes rage around Athens - video
The worst wildfire to hit Greece in over a decade tore through a small
resort town near Athens on Monday afternoon, killing at least 74 people,
injuring almost 200 and forcing hundreds more to rush on to beaches and
into the sea as the blaze devoured houses and cars.
Huge, fast-moving flames trapped families with children as they tried to
flee from Mati, 18 miles (29km) east of the Greek capital. Among the
dead were 26 people whose bodies were found huddled tightly together
close to the beach, a Red Cross official said on Tuesday morning...
- - -
The 26 who died close to the beach "had tried to find an escape route
but didn't make it in time," Nikos Economopoulos, the head of Greece's
Red Cross, told the country's Skai TV. "Instinctively, seeing the end
nearing, they embraced."
A fire brigade spokesman said at least 74 people had died. The toll was
expected to rise as rescue crews searched through the charred remains of
houses.
The government said at least 172 people were hurt, including 16
children, and 11 adults were in a serious condition. The Greek
coastguard said the bodies of four people were retrieved from the sea
off Mati.
But there were also stories of remarkable rescues: coastguards and
others saved 696 people who had fled to beaches, while boats pulled
another 19 people alive from the sea.
The town they had left behind had been gutted. Many hours after the
blaze broke out, the strong smell of charred buildings and trees
lingered in the air. White smoke rose from smouldering fires...
- - - -
"It happened very fast," he told the Associated Press. "The fire was in
the distance, then sparks from the fire reached us. Then the fire was
all around us. The wind was indescribable."
- - - -
Areas around Athens were like a tinderbox, emergency workers said, after
a dry winter and a summer heatwave in which temperatures have risen
above 40C. However, heavy rain was forecast across southern Greece on
Wednesday.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/23/greeks-urged-to-leave-homes-as-wildfires-spread-near-athens
[Awakening syndrome]
*Republican lawmaker pitches carbon tax in defiance of party stance
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/republican-carlos-curbelo-pitches-carbon-tax-climate-change>*
Representative Carlos Curbelo has proposed a tax on carbon dioxide
emissions but Republicans are expected to block it
Curbelo's bill has virtually no chance of becoming law, however, due to
the serried ranks of Republicans in Congress who instinctively reject
any sort of government intervention, particularly taxes, to help stem
the increasing heatwaves, floods, fierce storms and social upheaval
caused by a warming planet...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/republican-carlos-curbelo-pitches-carbon-tax-climate-change
[give and take]
*Brown proposes big change in wildfire liability to help California
utilities
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Brown-proposes-big-change-in-wildfire-liability-13101511.php>*
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Brown-proposes-big-change-in-wildfire-liability-13101511.php
[USA Today]
*Pakistan is ground zero for global warming consequences
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/24/pakistan-one-worlds-leading-victims-global-warming/809509002/>*
Pakistan contributes less than one percent of the world's greenhouse
gases blamed for causing global warming, yet its 200 million people are
among the world's most vulnerable victims of the growing consequences of
climate change.
The nation is facing ever-rising temperatures, drought and flooding that
threaten health, agriculture, water supplies and hopes for development
of a society that ranks in the bottom quarter of nations, based on
income per person.
Pakistan is among 10 countries affected most by climate change,
according to the 2018 Global Climate Risk Index released by the public
policy group Germanwatch.
Bridging the Middle East and South Asia, Pakistan is in a geographic
location where average temperatures are predicted to rise faster than
elsewhere, increasing 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by the
year 2100, according to a 2012 World Wildlife Fund report.
This past April 30, the temperature in the southern city of Nawabshah
soared to 122.4 degrees Fahrenheit (50.2 degrees Celsius), the hottest
day on earth ever recorded in April, the Pakistan Meteorological
Department and World Meteorological Organization said. It was even
hotter in the southern city of Turbat on May 28, 2017, when the
temperature hit a sizzling 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit (53.5 Celsius)...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/24/pakistan-one-worlds-leading-victims-global-warming/809509002/
[What do you ask if you are super wealthy?]
*How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity>*
They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum
computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into
their real topics of concern.
Which region will be less affected by the coming climate crisis: New
Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his
brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will
it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage
house explained that he had nearly completed building his own
underground bunker system and asked: "How do I maintain authority over
my security force after the Event?"
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse,
social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack
that takes everything down.
It's a reduction of human evolution to a video game won by finding the
escape hatch and bringing BFFs along for the ride
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew
armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry
mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What
would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires
considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only
they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in
return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards
and workers - if that technology could be developed in time....
- - - -
That's when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were
concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology...they were
preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with
making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human
condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and
present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations,
global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the
future of technology is really about just one thing: escape...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity
[Barents Region is on fire]*
Fire fighters combat wildfires from the Kola Peninsula to Norrbotten as
record heat wave continues north of the Arctic Circle.
<https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/07/barents-region-fire>*
By Thomas Nilsen - July 23, 2018
After 31 wildfires in Norrbotten in recent days, fire fighters are tired
and need rest. But the danger is far from over, emergency officials
warn. The dry warm weather could last for at least another week.
Lars Gyllenhaal from Lulea is one of the many who have signed up as
volunteer to combat wildfires in Northern Sweden. He says all help
possible is need.
"The scene I'm met with is similar to photos I've seen of the burning
Torne valley during Second World War. Then it was Hitler's war machine
that caused the fire and smoke skies. Now I'm asking myself who is the
crook now?"
Gyllenhaal answers his own question: "It is probably ourselves, or more
correct, humanity which has triggered the climate changes we suffer
from," he says to the Barents Observer.
- - - -
Shortly after talking to the Barents Observer on Monday evening, yet
another wildfire was discovered near Jokkmokk, Norrbotten
Socialdemoraten reported. The newspaper informs that there have been 31
wildfires in Norrbotten recently.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/07/barents-region-fire
[The Atlantic]
*Climate Change May Cause 26,000 More U.S. Suicides by 2050
<https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/high-temperatures-cause-suicide-rates-to-increase/565826/>*
*Unusually hot days have profound effects on mental health and human
physiology.*
For almost two centuries now, scientists have noticed a place's suicide
rate bears troubling links to the changing of the seasons and the
friendliness of its climate.
In 1881, the Italian physician Enrico Morselli noted that suicide rates
peak in the summer, deeming the effect "too great for it to be
attributed to chance of the human will." Two decades later, the French
sociologist Emile Durkheim noticed the same effect—though he also found
the suicide rate was higher in Scandinavian countries.
Even today, CDC data confirms that suicides peak in the United States in
the early summer.
Now, scientists have identified one more way that climate shapes
suicide—and, worryingly, they have projected that it will only become
more pronounced as suicide rates rise in a rapidly warming world.
Unusually hot days cause the suicide rate to rise, according to a study
published Monday in Nature Climate Change. If a month is 1 degree
Celsius warmer than normal, then its suicide rate will increase by 0.7
percent in the United States and 2.1 percent in Mexico.
"It's sort of a brutal finding," says Marshall Burke, a professor of
earth science at Stanford University and one of the authors of the paper...
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/high-temperatures-cause-suicide-rates-to-increase/565826/
[Ugh. Another violent distopian term: arctic monsoon]
*Arctic Monsoons: A New Climate Nightmare
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4h2gm5tfxU>*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jul 23, 2018
Please help me wake up mainstream media. We have a climate EMERGENCY on
our hands. Extensive, long duration heat waves, caused by a stuck
jet-stream are roasting people in heatwaves around the globe. People
living in the far north, in countries extending up north of the Arctic
Circle are enduring unprecedented heat, wildfires, drought, and
torrential rains and of course have no air conditioning; why would they.
With the land super-hot for days on end, convective lifting (hot air
rises) lowers air pressure at the surface, drawing in moisture filled
ocean air, leading to buildup of Arctic Monsoons, yet another
"unexpected" surprise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4h2gm5tfxU
*This Day in Climate History - July 25, 1977
<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0F11F8395E137B93C7AB178CD85F438785F9>
- from D.R. Tucker*
July 25, 1977: The New York Times runs a front-page story entitled:
"Scientists Fear Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate."
The focus of concern is the addition of carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere by fuel burning. While that gas represents less than
one‐tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere, it acts like glass in a
greenhouse. That is, it permits passage of sunlight to heat the
earth but absorbs infrared radiation that would otherwise return
some of that heat to space.
In recent months several scientists have warned of the consequences
of increasing, long‐term dependence on fossil fuels, notably coal,
as the chief energy source because of what could be disastrous
effects on climate. The argument has been seized on by advocates of
nuclear energy.
The new study does not deal with alternative energy sources. Nor
does it call for early curtailment of coal burning. Heavy use of
such fuel is being promoted by the Carter Administration as a means
of avoiding excessive dependence on nuclear energy.
The central recommendation of the re port, prepared with help from a
number of Government agencies, laboratories and computer facilities,
is initiation of farreaching studies on a national and international
basis to narrow the many uncertainties that affect assessment of the
threat.
To this end, it proposes creation by the Federal Government of a
climatic council to coordinate American efforts and to participate
in the development of international studies. Representatives of the
White House and Government agencies that would be involved in such
an effort were at the academy on Friday to hear presentations on the
281‐page report...
- - - -
Much of the report deals with expected effects of a global warming.
Agricultural zones would be transferred to higher latitudes. The
corn belt, for example, would shift from fertile Iowa to a Canadian
region where the soil is far less fertile, Dr. Revelle said.
Particularly vulnerable, he added, would be the fringes of arid
regions, where a large part of the world population derives its
sustenance, though the effect is difficult to predict. Marine life
would suffer from lack of nutrients because a "lid" of warm water
would impede circulation that normally brings nutrients to the
surface....
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0F11F8395E137B93C7AB178CD85F438785F9
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