Climate Change, Pollution, Clean Energy, and the Environment

[jackd]

The Supreme Court doesn't care.

[LFC]

I so loathe this greedy, self-centered bastard. As far as he's concerned the only good subsidies are the ones that put that fat cash into his own wallet. Bonus FUD from a pack of liars mine.

Senator Joe Manchin III’s opposition to government incentives for electric vehicles remains a key point in talks over President Biden’s tax and spending package – talks that came to a head this week after months of fits and starts. has been

Mr Biden and most Senate Democrats want billions of dollars in tax credits for consumers who buy electric vehicles, which they see as a key to fighting climate change.

The transition from polluting gas-powered cars and trucks is even more important to the administration’s climate goals after a recent Supreme Court ruling that undermined the government’s authority to cut pollution from power plants.

Mr. Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who has taken more campaign contributions More than any other senator, from the oil, gas and coal companies, has attacked the proposed tax credit, which would be up to $12,500 per vehicle, as unnecessary and wasteful. He has also expressed doubts about the increase in government expenditure in the era of inflation.

Mr Manchin’s opposition to tax credits for electric vehicles mirrors that of the oil industry, which will be threatened by a wholesale shift away from gas-powered cars and trucks. The American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the fossil fuel industry, has warned against an “early EV transition”, saying government action to support electric vehicles could limit transportation options for Americans and leave them “high and dry”. can.

[LFC]

For some this climate change shit just got real! Here's a link to a list of interesting changes occurring.

While sriracha is widely regarded as a gift direct from the gods, it’s actually made from plants—plants that are failing amid so little water.

Production of the wildly popular spicy condiment is on hold because of a lack of red jalapeño chili peppers, its main ingredient. In April, Huy Fong Foods sent out an email announcing a pause on new orders until after September.

“Currently, due to weather conditions affecting the quality of chili peppers, we now face a more severe shortage of chili. Unfortunately, this is out of our control and without this essential ingredient we are unable to produce any of our products,” wrote the company.

Drought and climate change are largely to blame for the pepper shortage, reports NPR. (Although, Huy Fong also set itself up for a higher risk of shortages when it narrowed its pepper sourcing in 2017.) The specific type of chili used in Sriracha only grows in the southwest U.S. and northern Mexico, which are both experiencing the same regional megadrought because national borders are irrelevant when it comes to climate.

[LFC]

Copper may be a limiting factor in moving to renewables.

As the world shifts to renewable energy, our appetite for copper—a key component for renewable technologies—is rising rapidly. But we may not have the tools to meet the growing need.

By 2035, the global demand for copper is projected to nearly double, according to a new S&P Global report released Wednesday. In the worst-case scenario, based on our current production trends, the report projects a shortfall of 9.9 million metric tons of copper in 2035.

“The gap arises even under assumptions of aggressive capacity utilization rates and all-time-high recycling rates,” says the report. “Even with these aggressive assumptions, refined copper demand will outpace supply in the forecast period up to 2035.” To provide an additional sense of scale, the report explains that the amount of copper that will be in demand over the next 30 years will be more than all the copper we used in the world since 1900. That’s a lot of metal.

“The energy transition is going to be dependent much more on copper than our current energy system,” Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global, told CNBC. “There’s just been the assumption that copper and other minerals will be there…. Copper is the metal of electrification, and electrification is much of what the energy transition is all about.”

Copper is a great conductor of electricity, second only to silver in its ability to funnel electrons and protons from point A to B. As a consequence, the metal is a key component of batteries, electronics, appliances, power grids—you name it. If it runs on a current, it probably actually runs on copper. But it’s a limited resource, and mining and processing the metal is a dirty business in its own right.

To kick our fossil fuel addiction, we’ll need copper, and there will need to be some environmental compromises to get it. We’ll also need to reclaim and recycle as much of the metal as we can. But even then, the new report emphasizes that our current plans might not be enough.

“Substitution and recycling will not be enough to meet the demands of electric vehicles (EVs), power infrastructure, and renewable generation,” the report says. “Unless massive new supply comes online in a timely way, the goal of Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 will be short-circuited and remain out of reach.”

[LFC]

Europe is cooking right now.

Europe Endures Massive Heat Wave

The U.K. has declared a national emergency as the country faces record-breaking heat of 41°C/106°F on Monday, its hottest temperature yet.

• The British government directly attributed the crisis to climate change, with a researcher at the U.K.’s Met Office saying that the chances of seeing 40°C days in the country “could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence.”

• Thousands of people in Spain, France and Portugal are expected to evacuate to escape wildfires caused by the heat.

[LFC]

As with so many other things the perception of climate change is highly polarized with the Democrats embracing reality and the Republicans embracing alternative facts.

Pew's data is based on a survey of over 10,000 US residents, and it was performed in early May (that's before the most recent surge in gasoline prices, which may be relevant for some questions). In a number of cases, the same questions have been asked for several years running, so we have some data on how attitudes have changed over the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration.

Overall, a slim plurality (49 percent to 47 percent) of the country feels that Biden's policies are taking the country in the right direction when it comes to climate. But the partisan split here is enormous, with 79 percent of Democrats agreeing and 82 percent of Republicans feeling the policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.

That said, there's solid support for most of the actual policies: 90 percent support tree-planting efforts, 79 percent support tax credits for carbon capture, 72 percent want to see requirements for more renewable power, 68 percent support emissions-based taxes on companies, and 67 percent approve of incentives for hybrid and electric vehicles. Even among Republicans, support for all of these items is over 45 percent.

The one policy that had low support across the board was phasing out internal combustion vehicles. Only 43 percent of the public favored this course of action, with 55 percent opposed. Sixty-five percent of Democrats did support this measure, while 82 percent of Republicans opposed it.

A large number of people now think they've experienced the reality of climate change. Over 40 percent say they've experienced extreme weather and/or extended heat waves, while 30 percent say their region has gone through drought and another 20 percent cite major wildfires. In all these cases, 80 percent of those who said they had experienced these problems suspect that climate change has contributed to them (as, in many cases, it has).

As you'd expect, these results show regional differences, with people in the Western United States far more likely to note heat waves, droughts, and wildfires; other areas of the country more likely to note severe storms.

The disturbing thing here is that partisanship is clearly skewing basic perceptions of reality. With a single exception, Democrats were more likely to say they've experienced these phenomena than Republicans—the lone exception being drought in the West. The gaps in these perceptions could be enormous, such as a 24-point difference between the parties in the Northeast when noticing severe storms and heat waves. Most gaps were smaller, but their consistency across regions and weather phenomena was striking.

[LFC]

I understand why but I don't like protests which are designed right up front to be destructive.

Environmental activists smashed the windows of Rupert Murdoch’s News Building in London Tuesday morning after taking issue with his paper’s coverage of this week’s heat wave in the U.K. Protesters from Extinction Rebellion (XR) scrawled messages including “TELL THE TRUTH” and “40 DEGREES = DEATH” on the lavish office building in central London alongside recent headlines from The Sun, including “It’s not the end of the world! Just stay cool and carry on.” Temperatures in Britain are expected to exceed 104 F (40 C) for the first time Tuesday as Europe swelters in an unprecedented heat wave. “These newspapers have spent 30 life-or-death years denying or ignoring the climate crisis to ensure that Business As Usual keeps the money flowing into their already obscenely bloated bank accounts,” XR member and ex-Sun journalist Steve Tooze said in a statement. “As a result, millions of us still have no clue about the terrifying dangers that threaten us.”

[Bact PhD]

Jul 19, 2022 17:50:42 GMT LFC said:

I understand why but I don't like protests which are designed right up front to be destructive.

Environmental activists smashed the windows of Rupert Murdoch’s News Building in London Tuesday morning after taking issue with his paper’s coverage of this week’s heat wave in the U.K. Protesters from Extinction Rebellion (XR) scrawled messages including “TELL THE TRUTH” and “40 DEGREES = DEATH”

Agreed. With some of these kooks, I can’t help wondering whether “climate justice” (or “animal rights” or…”Free-Dumb”) is merely the excuse to engage in anarchist behavior / knock a few heads in/ trash a bunch of stuff.

[LFC]

Climate deniers in the UK are doing what they do best: being dicks.

The UK just smashed temperature records, in another startling sign of how climate change is altering everyday life. But according to some climate deniers, it’s still not hot enough to be concerned.

On Tuesday, Heathrow Airport in London clocked a temperature of 104.4 degrees Fahrenheit (40.2 degrees Celsius), marking the first time that temperatures in Britain have officially gone over 40 degrees Celsius. Tuesday proved to be a record-setting day throughout the country, with multiple other sites also recording readings above or very close to 40 degrees Celsius.

It’s not just the daily highs that are staggering: the lows are also up there. On Tuesday, the country’s Met Office reported that minimum daily temperatures held at 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius) overnight in various parts of the country, significantly outpacing the previous highest daily minimum of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (23.9 degrees Celsius).

Europe is in the midst of a dangerous heat wave that has crippled the continent for the past week, killing up to a thousand people in Spain and Portugal and sparking wildfires in multiple countries. This is the second intense heat wave of the summer and follows a particularly hot and dry spring juiced up by climate change.

“I wasn’t expecting to see this in my career,” Professor Stephen Belcher, the Met Office’s Chief of Science and Technology, said in a video posted to Twitter. “Research conducted here at the Met Office has demonstrated that it’s virtually impossible for the UK to experience 40 degrees C in an undisrupted climate. But climate change driven by greenhouse gasses has made these extreme temperatures possible, and we’re seeing those possibilities now.”

The responses from the dicks?

But these jaw-dropping temperatures are no big deal to climate deniers. British right-wing commentator Darren Grimes on Monday posted to Twitter a (terribly made) graphic depicting a peaceful beach contrasted with a burning hellscape of a city; the caption to the image reads “Australia at 40C” over the photo of the beach, and “British media predicting 40 degrees Celsius in the UK” over the picture of the city on fire. (Grimes has been adamant that he is not a “denier” but a “climate realist,” because he says he accepts climate change is happening—but still continues to tweet stuff like this that flies in the face of science, so I’m not sure what he’s angling for here.)

Meanwhile, Bjorn Lomborg, a prominent climate contrarian, published a lengthy Twitter thread Monday that used cherrypicked figures to contrast deaths from extreme heat in Spain versus those from the cold to argue that the heat wasn’t that serious. Lomborg has beat this drum before, including in a column in the New York Post where he called the response to last year’s bombshell IPCC report a reaction of the “hyperventilating media” and misleadingly claimed that climate change was helping to decrease deaths from extreme cold. Some of the scientists whose studies Lomborg cited as “evidence” for this claim have publicly denounced his use of their work and said that his interpretations are incorrect; by the looks of Lomborg’s Twitter thread, which recycles these bad assertions, it seems he didn’t get that memo. (Grimes also echoed some of Lomborg’s rhetoric later in the day when he tweeted that “more people die from the cold than the heat.”)

The implications of these tweets are well-worn climate denier territory: that the media is getting overworked about nothing, that a little heat wave is not worth all the bother, that we’ll be fine in the face of this new reality. Like most climate denier rhetoric, they seem based in common sense—but a little tugging on the strings helps them all fall apart.

Let’s take Grimes’s flip assertion that a 40-degree day means nothing more than a trip to the beach in Australia. Life lived in the summer in the UK is vastly different to what it’s like during the hot season in Australia, where people are used to searing temperatures. A shockingly small number of households in the UK have air conditioning—estimates range from under 1% to under 5%. By contrast, 75% of Australian households have at least one air conditioner. Meanwhile, the features of urbanized areas can amplify heat waves; it’s a lot easier to keep cool by the water than in a crowded city like London.

Assholes.

[pnwguy]

Jul 19, 2022 21:57:30 GMT LFC said:

Assholes.

If there is a single flaw in human DNA that will take our species down, it's our acquiescence to the dominance and tolerance of Assholes in our midst.  Tribal cultures of hunter gatherers could marginalize them or push them out of the tribe to perish.  We elevate them and put them in leadership.

[LFC]

Computer cloud services are suffering from the heat.

If you think your office is stifling even with your lone air conditioner buzzing away hour after hour, think how much worse it is for the always-on server banks during this hot, hot summer.

The Register first reported on the cloud server heat-related failures as a record-breaking heat wave has caused massive havoc with not just civil infrastructure, but also, apparently, computer infrastructure as well.

The heat brought havoc to England’s cloud computing apparatus. Oracle cloud servers were reportedly taken offline Tuesday afternoon and came back Wednesday at around 11 a.m. UTC. Apparently, the company’s London center failed to keep up with the 104 degrees Fahrenheit temperature, automatically instituting a protective shut down. The report notes that some Oracle Cloud users were delayed in accessing their data hosted on the servers.

Though servers were apparently restored, the service notes “a subset of Oracle Integration Cloud resources continue to experience impact” even going into Wednesday.

Tuesday morning, Google also noted that several of its UK cloud servers were experiencing hiccups, including extra errors, high latencies, and server outages in its europe-west2 server bank, also located in London. Those server outages apparently impact a multitude of Google services other than the regular Google Cloud Storage, including Cloud Machine Learning, Cloud Firestore and Cloud Datastore.

All this was apparently tied to a “cooling related failure” in one of the buildings that hosts the europe-west2 servers. While the company noted that cooling systems were restored and that some services should be back online, there are still lingering issues. Google did say that going into Wednesday people using multiple services would be experiencing blackouts and service interruptions.

But both Oracle and Google said there should not be any further service interruptions for UK users while they try to get all the various programs back up and running.

It’s been noted how unprepared the whole of England has been for a heat wave. Many residential buildings lack any air conditioning. Of course, a building meant to house computer services will have some kind of HVAC system in place, but it seems they weren’t built to withstand those constant 100+ degree temps.

[LFC]

The Rhine River may soon be too low for shipping to function.

Less than a foot of water currently stands between European business as usual and a German supply chain crisis. Amid a record-breaking, continent-wide heat wave, the Rhine river has dropped to levels so low, that shipping on the waterway may soon become economically untenable or even impossible.

The current water level at Kaub, a chokepoint for heavy freight ships about midway along the river, is hovering around 70 cm (about 27.5 inches). If it drops to 40 cm or below (about 15.7 inches), barges will no longer be able to carry enough weight to justify their journeys, said German Federal Institute for Hydrology representative, Joerg Belz, to Bloomberg News on Monday.

[snip]

The Rhine runs more than 760 miles from the Alps to the North Sea, winding through Germany but also parts of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, France, and the Netherlands. Along the way, it cuts through major cities like Basel, Rotterdam, Dusseldorf, Cologne, and Bonn. The river is widely considered the most important inland waterway in Europe. About 80% of goods shipped through Germany’s inland waterways rely on the Rhine, according to a report from CNBC.

This isn’t the lowest recorded level the river has ever been at (that’s 25 cm in 2018), but this is a notably low level for the time of year when the river averages around 220 cm (~86 inches). Usually, the Rhine reaches it’s annual low in early October. So, things are expected to get drier from here. The last time the river was this shallow at Kaub at this time of year was 2007. In 2018, that drought and record low Rhine level led to a months long economic standstill in Germany, and severely inhibited shipping.

[LFC]

Despite decades of effort algal blooms have been causing dead zones in multiple places including an enormous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every year. Much of the problem is agricultural runoff. There are failures to rectify the problems in multiple places but the cleanup performance of states in the Mississippi River Basin seems to be particularly dismal.

Midsummer is the time for forecasts of the size of this year’s “dead zones” and algal blooms in major lakes and bays. Will the Gulf of Mexico dead zone be the size of New Jersey, or only as big as Connecticut? Will Lake Erie’s bloom blossom to a human health crisis or just devastate the coastal economy?

We are scientists who each have spent almost 50 years figuring out what causes dead zones and what it will take to resuscitate them and reduce risks of toxic blooms of algae. Researchers can forecast these phenomena quite well and have calculated the nitrogen and phosphorus pollution cuts needed to reduce them.

These targets are now written into formal government commitments to clean up Lake Erie, the Gulf, and the Chesapeake Bay. Farmers and land owners nationwide received $30 billion to support conservation, including practices designed to reduce water pollution, from 2005 to 2015, and are scheduled to receive $60 billion more between 2019 and 2028.

But these efforts have fallen short, mainly because controls on nutrient pollution from agriculture are weak and ineffective. In our view, there is no shortage of solutions to this problem. What’s needed is technological innovation and stronger political will.

Failure in the Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone forms every year during the summer, fueled by nutrients washing down the Mississippi River from Midwest farms. It typically covers at least 6,000 square miles, sometimes expanding up to 9,000 square miles (23,000 square kilometers), and affects an area very rich in fisheries.

In 2001, the EPA and 12 Mississippi River basin states agreed to take action to reduce the Gulf dead zone by two-thirds by 2015. Researchers estimated that this would require reducing nitrogen loads reaching the Gulf by about 45 percent, mostly from the Corn Belt.

Now that deadline has been extended to 2035. Nitrogen and phosphorus loadings at the mouth of the Mississippi River haven’t budged in 30 years, so actions taken to date have failed to shrink the Gulf dead zone.

[jackd]

But that costs money!

[LFC]

The Rio Grande is running dry further upstream. My brother lived in El Paso for a number of years and it spent quite a big of that time dry or barely a trickle. Now it's running dry in Albuquerque.

The latest news from the parched West is unsurprising but still shockingly bad: One of the region’s most important rivers is running dry in places where water is usually plentiful. Following a period of incredibly hot days in July, a stretch of the Rio Grande river in Albuquerque, New Mexico is nothing more than a muddy creek bed—something that hasn’t happened in decades.

As of July 21, more than 85% of New Mexico was in severe to exceptional drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Last week, the state experienced searing temperatures that broke records. Roswell, some 200 miles southeast of Albuquerque, is on its 16th straight day of temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius). And as New Mexico still struggles to recover from its worst fires on record earlier this year, the newly dry river seems to be a sign of what’s to come.

“The river dries not with a bang, but with a muddy whimper and the dawn serenade of awakening birds,” journalist John Fleck wrote in a blog post.

In this time of historic drought, upstream reserves that could otherwise help the river with its flow are already spoken for, the Washington Post reports. One major reservoir is under construction, while others are also suffering low water levels thanks to a bad snowpack year, little rain, and searing temperatures. Under the river’s water-sharing agreement, New Mexico owes Texas water and fell short of its required water deliveries last year, meaning there’s even less water available for the New Mexico stretch. The dry patch in Albuquerque is bad news for farmers in the region who rely on the river for water, as well as for the various plants and animals that rely on the river.

Data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows the Rio Grande’s discharge rate—a measure of how fast water is flowing through a river—on July 25 stood at just 20.2 cubic feet (0.57 cubic meters) per second. This is just above the historic low set in 1974 and far below the mean daily discharge of 965 cubic feet (27.33 cubic meters).

“We’re pretty much out of water at this point,” Jason Casuga, CEO of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, told the Washington Post.

[LFC]

Texass Republicans are trying to blame renewable energy for their woes ... again.

As the grid creaks and groans under the pressure, and as the widespread and deadly systemic failures during a freeze in February 2021 are fresh on everyone’s mind, renewable energy has once again become a political hot point in this contentious election year. Texas Republicans, aided and abetted by conservative media, are quick to assign blame to renewable energy for Texas’s problems whenever convenient. Last week, as ERCOT struggled for power while the wind was low, conservative outlets like the Washington Times and Fox trumpeted how the “windmill-reliant power grid” was “strain[ing].” An editorial from the Wall Street Journal last Friday declared smugly that “unreliable renewable energy [is leading] to power outages” in Texas.

It’s hard to pin down solar and wind’s role in Texas’s energy mix. Some days wind and solar seem to be saving the grid, while low wind and cloud cover on others means that the grid is faltering. Will blackouts this summer be the fault of renewable energy?

Regardless of what Republicans may say, wind and solar are doing a great job at providing power to ERCOT this summer as they’re intended. In the first six months of this year, wind and solar provided a record 36% of power to the grid. One particularly hot day in mid-June saw nearly 40% of the state’s energy mix coming from wind. Solar has enjoyed a particularly robust growth spurt in Texas in recent months: There’s now three times as much solar capacity on the ground this summer as there was 18 months ago. And these energies are often complementary to each other, kicking in when the other is down.

“When the wind dies down during the day, that’s when the sun is producing the most power,” said Joshua Rhodes, a researcher at the University of Texas, Austin’s Energy Institute. Renewables providing so much power, Rhodes said, is also helping offset the astronomically high gas prices that energy providers are suffering through worldwide, and keep prices in Texas lower than they would be otherwise.

Gee, you go full blown privatized and companies try to skate by on low investment and high profit margin. Who could have seen THAT coming ... other than like everybody? Now that the grid is straining there isn't even any spare capacity to allow for maintenance and investment. Welcome to American conservatism, a ideology of short-term thinking.

A healthy grid system would be able to meet demand when both wind and solar are offline. This means providing reliable baseload power like natural gas, nuclear, or coal. (There’s also the promise of batteries to store all that extra renewable juice: California has made some incredible gains in adding utility-scale batteries to its grid this year.) But there are deep problems with the Texas grid in particular that predate the explosion of renewable energy.

First, the state is not giving its aging power fleet any breaks. Texan power plants, which have already suffered from years of underinvestment, are being told to basically run nonstop this summer in order to meet demand, providing operators little ability to make repairs.

“Like the rest of the U.S., we’ve got an aging power plant fleet,” Rhodes said. “They’re kind of like humans—they need time to rest. If you just sprint, you’re going to run out of energy at some point, versus if you run at a more moderate pace or take a break every once in a while. We’re not letting them do that.”

[jackd]

There's also that problem of being disconnected from the regional grid and trying to do it all internally. No-one to blame but themselves. They hate that!

[LFC]

Nuclear power has long been touted as something that should be increased to help combat climate change. It turns out that climate change is already making nuclear power less reliable in some places.

From its humble start as a glacial trickle in the Swiss Alps, the Rhône River quickly transforms into one of the world's most industrialized waterways. As it winds through the south of France toward the Mediterranean Sea, its chilly water is drawn into boilers, sucked through pipes as coolant, deviated for agriculture. Among its biggest customers is a battalion of nuclear reactors. Since the 1970s, the river and its tributaries have helped generate about a quarter of France's atomic energy.

But in recent weeks that hasn't been the case. Amidst a slow-burning heat wave that has killed hundreds and sparked intense wildfires across Western Europe, and combined with already low water levels due to drought, the Rhône's water has gotten too hot for the job. It's no longer possible to cool reactors without expelling water downstream that's so hot as to extinguish aquatic life. So a few weeks ago, Électricité de France (EDF) began powering down some reactors along the Rhône and a second major river in the south, the Garonne. That's by now a familiar story: Similar shutdowns due to drought and heat occurred in 2018 and 2019. This summer's cuts, combined with malfunctions and maintenance on other reactors, have helped reduce France's nuclear power output by nearly 50 percent.

Of all the low-carbon energy sources that will likely be necessary to fight climate change, nuclear power is usually thought of as the least perturbable. It's the reinforcement that's called in when the weather doesn't cooperate with other zero-carbon energy sources, like wind and solar. But the nuclear industry faces its own climate risks.

[LFC]

The Pacific Northwest is taking it in the shorts.

Scorching temperatures are still sweeping around the world, and this time the heat is headed to the historically temperate Pacific Northwest.

Temperatures in the Portland metro area are expected to peak at a little over 101 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) and will hover around the 90s Fahrenheit for the next few days, according to the National Weather Service. Yakima, Washington is expected to see temperatures between 102 F (38.8 C) and 108 F (42.2 C) this week, according to a NWS forecast for the area. Hospitals across the area are preparing for what they predict will be an increase in patients struggling with heat injury, KOMO News reports.

[snip]

Urgency in this week’s preparations are fueled in part by last year’s deadly Pacific Northwest heat wave. Wenatchee, Washington was not ready to handle mind-boggling 145 degrees Fahrenheit ground temps late last June. Many homes in places like Oregon do not have central air conditioning, and people scrambled to buy fans and ACs in hopes of getting some sort of relief from the heat. Later analysis found that the 2021 heat wave baked the region so badly that it became a mass casualty event. Oregon officials found that about 107 people died as a result of the heat.

And yes, these events are becoming much more frequent.

The world’s top climate scientists last year found that dangerous heat waves that previously occurred once every decade are now occurring every two to three years, while extreme heat that used to strike once every 50 years is now likely to happen once a decade thanks to climate change.

[LFC]

Greenland is melting down. Oh, yeah. And F*** JOE MANCHIN!

For a few days earlier this month in Greenland, it was hot—really hot, at least for the mostly Arctic landmass. In parts of the country, temperatures hovered around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 Celsius), more than 10 degrees warmer than the average for July, according to a report from CNN.

Those unusually high temperatures triggered wide-scale snow and ice melt across Greenland’s ice sheet. In just three days, from July 15-17, the landmass lost about 18 billion tons of water. Or, in other terms, enough water to cover the entire state of West Virginia in a foot of water.

Then, the melting intensified even further. Between 8 and 10 billion tons of water per day melted and ran-off from the ice sheet from July 20 to July 23, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, in an email to Gizmodo. The Copernicus satellite image was captured at the height of that melt event on July 22.

All of that meltwater carried tens of thousands of years of glacial sediment along with it. The opaque, putty colored patches bleeding into the bright blue fjord visible in the satellite image are that sediment (effectively, glacial mud) heading toward the Labrador Sea. Godthåbsfjord, labeled in the image, is known as Nuup Kangerlua in Greenlandic and is located on the Southwestern coast of the country. It’s one of the largest fjord systems in the world, and Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, is located at its mouth.

Since last week, the spike in Greenland’s ice melt has fallen and leveled off closer to what is standard for this time year. However, large melt anomalies remain worrying. In 2021, it rained at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time in recorded history. The same month, the landmass lost enough ice in a single day to cover Florida. In 2019, Greenland lost 532 billion tons of ice—the largest amount ever recorded in a single year.

[Bact PhD]

Speaking of ice melts: This Op-Ed piece in my local rag has some interesting points. The author quotes extensively from a recent presentation.

www.gainesville.com/story/opinion/2022/07/25/susan-nugent-climate-change-cause-migration-alachua-county/10062920002/

Dr. Harold Wanless, a climate scientist from University of Miami’s department of geography and sustainable development, spoke at Gainesville’s Temple Shir Shalom. He brought dire news to those attending the event, “How Sea Level Rise in South Florida Could Drown Us in North Florida.”

[snip]

When Wanless graphs the future, he considers many regional influences on sea level rise, for example changing ocean currents and redistribution of earth mass following ice melts. Consequently, his rising sea level projections are higher than other models.

He provides data showing that in “less than a mortgage cycle” rising sea levels will reach three feet based on ice melt alone (one foot has already occurred). At that level, the western barrier islands and western portion of South Florida counties will face challenges including saltwater intrusion, the loss of fresh water and failure of infrastructures.

Wanless advises that homes below 10-foot elevation will soon be unsellable and vulnerable to flooding. For Gainesville and Alachua County, he warns of a huge migration of people. South Floridians will need to move elsewhere. Because our part of the state will not suffer rising sea levels, ours will become a destination for others.

Yeah, it’s gonna be huge, considering that the population of Southeast Flori-DUH (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, & Monroe counties) is over six million. Even if that prediction plays out in four decades, rather than three, it’s gonna be rough for North Flori-DUH in the coming decades.

[jackd]

You know what? Based on experience to date, they won't move until their flotation devices run out of air.

[pnwguy]

Jul 26, 2022 22:38:51 GMT Bact PhD said:

Yeah, it’s gonna be huge, considering that the population of Southeast Flori-DUH (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, & Monroe counties) is over six million. Even if that prediction plays out in four decades, rather than three, it’s gonna be rough for North Flori-DUH in the coming decades.

And if southern Flori-DUH has all those dark skinned people from Other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America who will be migrating north, how will that go over with the white Christian nationalists of the panhandle?  

[Bact PhD]

Jul 27, 2022 0:17:57 GMT pnwguy said:

Jul 26, 2022 22:38:51 GMT Bact PhD said:

Yeah, it’s gonna be huge, considering that the population of Southeast Flori-DUH (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, & Monroe counties) is over six million. Even if that prediction plays out in four decades, rather than three, it’s gonna be rough for North Flori-DUH in the coming decades.

And if southern Flori-DUH has all those dark skinned people from Other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America who will be migrating north, how will that go over with the white Christian nationalists of the panhandle?  

Yeeaahhh, especially considering that at one point, a bumper sticker that gained popularity in some quarters in South Flori-DUH had the request, “Will the Last One Out Please Bring the Flag?” Yeppers, the first wave or 2 of expatriates that settled in these parts a couple of decades ago had a non-trivial “white flight” component even then.

Shorter Answer: It could get ugly, particularly as the cities/suburbs encroach more into rural territory.

[indy]

By pretty much all measures, Miami is #1 most exposed city to rising sea levels. It's built on that oh so porous limestone. Any mitigation efforts are gonna be most likely completely fruitless. It's not like you build sea walls to keep the water out. All the drinking water will be contaminated. A lot of estimates show sea level rise of more than 7 feet by 2050, which is about what it will take.