From wildfires and floods to record heat, it’s clear we’re at the point of needing to save what we can while we can.
By David Helvarg / The Progressive / July 18, 2023
Since before the release of the first United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 1990, scientists have been warning that, without global action to quickly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we could shift from a dangerous to a catastrophic climate situation.
Last summer’s weather made the argument, and this summer has confirmed it—we’ve entered that catastrophic phase. Within a few years we’ll blow through the 1.5 degree Celsius warming of the planet that the world committed to preventing at the 2015 Paris Climate Summit.
The ocean, a natural driver of climate and weather, is heating up faster than even the most sophisticated climate models predicted.
The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is projecting that half of the world’s oceans could be experiencing “marine heat waves” by September of this year.
From this summer’s wildfires in Canada giving the East Coast and Midwest a taste of the harmful smoke that the West has been experiencing from its own drought driven mega-fires, to heat waves and flooding in China, India and Japan, to heat domes in Texas and Arizona and flooding in Vermont and New York, to incredible 98 degree waters off the Florida Keys (where most corals have already died), to the hottest days ever recorded on the planet (at least in human history) on July 3, 4, and 5, following June, the hottest month in history, the climate signal has become an alarm siren.
But as with the melting of Arctic ice, too many corporations and governments hear this alarm as a dinner bell—an opportunity to drill for oil in newly opened waters or to mine the ocean’s depths.
Civilization, which emerged and grew over the past 10,000 years thanks to the temperate climate conditions that allowed for the development of agriculture, is now threatened in ways never before known. In the last century humanity barely escaped two existential threats, global fascism and nuclear destruction.
Today, while neither of these threats is completely eradicated, the linked threats of climate change and the extinction crisis are far from being adequately addressed. With the human population having exploded from three to eight billion in my lifetime, displacing wildlife at a rate not seen in sixty million years, 96 percent of today’s remaining mammals are either humans or the animals they raise as livestock. And they too are suffering from the heat with a more than 3.5 percent decline in cattle in the United States due to drought in 2022-2023.
What we need today is a global mobilization of resources such as occurred during World War II.
But with one of the two major political parties in the world’s largest economy acting as a fully owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel cartels—along with some Democrats—and much of major U.S. media still reluctant to link extreme weather events to climate change lest they be seen as “partisan,” we have only recently begun to address the climate emergency in a modest fashion.
While I worked for and supported the Biden Administration’s efforts around the Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act—two climate laws that commit an initial $300 billion over the next ten years toward a just energy transition—what we need today is a global mobilization of resources such as occurred during World War II.
At this point in the Anthropocene, we need to start thinking about triage—saving what we can while we can and hoping that the feedback loops long warned about by climate scientists, such as the release of methane from the ocean and thawing permafrost, don’t supercharge planetary heating and mass extinction even if we are able to end fossil fuel usage.
And while today’s insurance costs and death tolls continue to mount (a new study says that 60,000 people died of heat in the European Union last year), I worry that the best present plan for serious climate action is a work of science fiction—Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. The book outlines a complete transformation of the global economy to a more just and equitable system where eco-restoration becomes humanity’s primary task, a vision that it is up to us to make real.
Please go to the original for any links.
Build to Rent will save us!
If we can just keep building more high density luxury apartments by the tens of thousands in San Diego, the oceans will stop acidifying and global temperature will come down several degrees and save the planet!
SB 10 THE MOST CORRUPTED STATE LEGISLATION IN HISTORY
But of course we need more luxury apartments! Below are the reasons why:
Here’s the latest from Dr. James Hansen and his team. You all remember him, yes? The NASA climate scientist that stood in front of Congress in 1988 and warned everybody? This is what he said last week:
‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/19/climate-crisis-james-hansen-scientist-warning
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Yep Mateo, the reason is WE ARE DAMNED FOOLS.
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So…this is what his team put out a few weeks ago:
https://www.ecoshock.org/2023/01/hansen-a-world-10-degrees-c-hotter.html
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10’C hotter? Are you kidding me? Every large land animal on the planet will be dead, as will the oceans. Large animal being anything above the size of a…mouse I guess.
sealintheSelkirks
Like it was said in the 70’s
Over population and deforestation. Plane and simple.
Shade the earth so she can breathe!
“… In cities, the heat is amplified by something called the urban heat island effect.
Urban heat islands are a byproduct of a built environment. Gas-powered cars and air conditioning units generate and radiate heat. Concrete parking lots and buildings absorb the sun’s heat and emit that heat long after the sun sets. Fewer trees mean less shade. Densely built areas essentially become islands where temperatures are hotter than their surroundings…”
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/26/1190071137/its-hot-out-there-a-new-analysis-shows-its-much-worse-if-youre-in-a-city
Extreme Urban Heat Islands
Nine cities are home to at least 1 million people who live in neighborhoods that climb 8 degrees higher than surrounding areas.
New York: 7.1 million
Houston: 4.3 million
Los Angeles: 3.3 million
Dallas: 2.2 million
Chicago: 2.1 million
San Antonio: 1.5 million
San Diego: 1.4 million
Phoenix: 1.3 million
Detroit: 1 million
US cities are so much less crowded than so many others around the world but even so, all of them are completely unsustainable.
As for the heat island effect, take away the giant parking lots of black asphalt. Take a look at these two:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/20/business/parking-minimums-cars-transportation-urban-planning/index.html
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And in Europe:
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-07-24/un-global-heat-officer-its-criminal-to-build-squares-that-do-not-have-shade-or-cooling-elements.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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sealintheSelkirks
Conventional paving materials can reach peak summertime temperatures of 120–150°F (48–67°C), transferring excess heat to the air above them and heating stormwater as it runs off the pavement into local waterways. Due to the large area covered by pavements in urban areas (nearly 30–45% of land cover based on an analysis of four geographically diverse cities1), they are an important element to consider in heat island mitigation.
Cool pavements can be created with existing paving technologies (such as asphalt and concrete) as well as newer approaches such as the use of coatings or grass paving. Cool pavement technologies are not as advanced as other heat island mitigation strategies, and there is no official standard or labeling program to designate cool paving materials. To help address the growing demand for guidance on pavement choices, the Transportation Research Board has formed a subcommittee on Paving Materials and the Urban Climate. The subcommittee’s scope includes modeling, design practices, testing, standards development, and planning and policy considerations.
Benefits and Costs
In addition to reducing heat islands, the benefits of cool pavements include:
– Reduced stormwater runoff and improved water quality: Permeable pavements can allow stormwater to soak into the pavement and soil, reducing runoff and filtering pollutants. Both permeable and non-permeable cool pavements can also help lower the temperature of runoff, resulting in less thermal shock to aquatic life in the waterways into which stormwater drains.
– Lower tire noise: The open pores of permeable pavements can reduce tire noise by two to eight decibels and keep noise levels below 75 decibels, although noise reduction may decline over time.2
– Enhanced safety: Permeable roadway pavements can improve safety by reducing water spray from moving vehicles and increasing traction through better water drainage.
– Better nighttime visibility: Reflective pavements can enhance visibility at night, potentially reducing lighting requirements and saving both money and energy.
– Improved local comfort: Cool pavements in parking lots or other areas where people congregate or children play can provide a more comfortable environment.
source: https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/using-cool-pavements-reduce-heat-islands
The Los Angeles Zoo uses a reflective paving product.
More on Heat Islands, and the top US cities and how it affects them:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27072023/new-york-los-angeles-chicago-houston-heat-islands/
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I’m guessing TPTB in San Diego are upset they didn’t make it onto this list as they are doing all they can to do so with their policies…
sealintheSelkirks
sealintheSelkirks
Here in San Antonio the new cool pavement technology testing is providing good results. We show a 7 to 10 degree drop in surface temperature. The hope is that these new technologies will help to lower the heat in the inner city neighborhoods. We get about 14% of our electricity here from nuclear power. I keep wondering- Doesn’t that mean that electric vehicles increase nuclear waste? Are they REALLY better for the environment? I don’t know the answer to that one.
“At this point in the Anthropocene, we need to start thinking about triage—saving what we can while we can”
This, I have come to believe, is the most important point of all in David’s important post. Having spent a good portion of the last three years reading what I used to call “post-apocalyptic” fiction (including the Ministry of the Future and a good deal else by Kim Stanley Robinson), and believing there is much truth to found in good fiction the point is not that bad things are coming but they are already happening. “Apocalypse” is not the point . . . too much religious overtone. What is happening is very material and demands very concrete responses, and not just on the political level. We need collective and compassionate self-organization on the level of collectives, community, organizations and even institutions that can act to minimize the impacts on people and other creatures. Current leadership, all over the world, is lacking. The only sane voice I ever hear from the mainstream is that of UN Sec’y General Guterres. His latest message (paraphrase) is that we have left the time of global warming, it is now global boiling. Gotta get it together! There is no political force out there with the vision or capacity to lead us out of this.
I beg to disagree with two things; the quote”need to start thinking about triage” and the term Anthropocene.
Our so-called ‘leaders’ should have started a crash course about the quote the very same day Dr. James Hansen stood in front of Congress with his bad news warning in 1988.
What did they do? Ignored him and all the other climate scientists for the joy of sucking the hind tit of fossil fuel robber barons and the wealthy that buy their silence through bribery…oh excuse me, ‘campaign contributions’ and ‘gifts’ and ‘vacations’ and all the rest that we’ve come to expect of our ‘leaders’ and ‘Supreme Court Justices.’
Second, we’re beyond the Anthropocene. It’s now turned into the ‘Blowtorchocene’ (yes, a word I invented).
But I do agree with the concept of word mis-use with the heavily connected-to-religious myths ‘Apocalypse’ to describe what we are now experiencing. The myths of a nomadic sheep-herding culture of 2,500 yrs ago who didn’t understand the world isn’t flat and the funny lights in the sky weren’t circling us are not truly appropriate to conceptualizing that what we’ve done to the planet is OUR FAULT due to greed.
That we have a 30 yr lag time between emissions and consequences of those emissions in the atmosphere is also nearly too horrible to contemplate. Which is probably why we see nearly nobody changing any of their behavior. We are not an intelligent species. Clever, yes, I will give us that.
sealintheSelkirks
My youngest half-brother & family live in North Carolina. No contact yet. My little brother down in NorCal has not been able to get through to their cell or home phone since ripped through.
Wait until the climate catastrophe politely nicknamed ‘climate change’ gets where the scientists (like retired NASA Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Andrew Glikson, Dr. Paul Erlich, and so many others) are saying it will. Hurricane Helene is just a taste. As was Hurricane Maria. As are the wildfires, droughts, and deluges.
In other words, we ain’t seen nothing yet. And it is accelerating so much faster than even the most ‘alarmist’ scientist thought it would. Well, almost all as there are a few that did like those listed above.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/03/hurricane-helene-clean-water-access-health-risks
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https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/were-only-beginning-to-understand-the-historic-nature-of-helenes-flooding/
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And the fossil fuel industry owns the politicians so the tiny little techno-fixes are way too little and far too late for a civilization that has based its entire existence on fossil fuel. Dr. Hansen stood in front of Congress in 1988 and WARNED us all. Forty years later we have cracked 424ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and are now in the Pleistocene Era range that the species on the planet didn’t evolve to breathe. His most recent study said 10’C of warming is on the way. Anybody else read that and felt the shiver go down your spine? Mine did.
What clever little primates we are…. Big sigh.
sealintheSelkirks
Keep us abreast of you reaching your family in North Carolina. What part of the state do they live in?
My North Carolina contacts are in Asheville. People must pay cash (which they don’t have) for gas, and charge their cell phones in their cars. The lack of electricity is driving many other problems. But communications have to be kept to a minimum. I hope they are OK and are just focused on the moment. It is worse for more people than you can imagine.
A former co-worker of mine relocated to Asheville a few years ago. I did some research on the town. It looked absolutely idyllic, beautiful area. Small town. with a river. Trees everywhere, hilly, not flat like much of the south. Mild climate. It just looked like a place safe from violent weather because it was far enough from both coasts. I was amazed at what happened there. My former co-worker and his family came through it ok, no major damage to their home. What do you do? Once Eden has betrayed you, can you ever trust it again?
Publisher dude:
I actually don’t remember where in NC the youngest brother & family live. The middle brother sent him one of my books back in 2020 but it’s slipped my mind what the name is. I do remember that I’d never heard of it before. I have a very splintered family…what’s left of it. I’m actually the oldest left alive now.
He’s a master carpenter like his father Carlos before him and, as the commenter above mentions, if they aren’t in deep doo-doo themselves I’m sure he’s very busy. I’ll be talking to the middle brother on Monday night during his NorCal radio show on KMUD. He would have called if there was any bad news.
I don’t really know the kid my being 30 years older and on the West Coast, but middle brother was around him until mom died of cancer in 1985 (when he was about 5) in Virginia Beach before he moved back to Cali while Carlos moved the youngster south into NC for work. They are far more like brothers, as the middle brother is with me, and they stayed in contact ever since. I’ve met the youngest exactly 4 times in his life…
Just hope they are okay, ya know? The pictures and vids coming out of what Hurricane Helene did are so overwhelmingly bad.
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And Geoff, it isn’t Eden that betrayed, it’s the reverse. Human greed and hubris are a devastating combination, yes? As a species we have betrayed our own planet with our behavior.
Big sigh. Safety is a myth invented by humans on a very volatile planet to make themselves feel better I think…until the planet proves there ain’t no such thing once again. I go out and dig in my garden and find the ash layer from Mt. St. Helen’s 1980 eruption…
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Third day of frozen dog water pans this morning. Was in the 90s last week…but I think Fall has finally arrived.
sealintheSelkirks
Update:
Talked with the middle brother last night during his show on NorCal’s KMUD and found out that the littlest brother moved business and family back to Virginia from North Carolina just a few months ago to buy a big old house & property to expand the carpentry/construction business he co-owns with his deceased father’s old partner into a multi-crew 2-state operation. With the destruction to the south I’m guessing business will be booming. At least for those that had some form of insurance. Most (I’m reading) were uninsured because they are too poor to afford it. Now they are destitute.
As Naomi Klein wrote about in 2010, is this Disaster Capitalism in action? I guess.
Little brother did get some wind damage in that part of Virginia, mainly roof and trees going down etc., but they were not living in the completely trashed river valleys, holler, or mud-slid mountains of NC. Why their cell phones were out is because they are part of the volunteer rescue crews going in on ATVs funneling supplies and medicine into the wrecked areas farther west…and there hasn’t been any cell service out there since Helene tore it all down. Stuff isn’t just broken, it’s gone.
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Geoff: I also found out he almost bought a house in Asheville a few years ago because his crews were doing some work there because of the floods. Turns out the town of Asheville experienced major flooding in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2021. When storms pass over western NC the moisture drops onto the mountains and flash floods happen rapidly…as we all saw from Helene. He didn’t want to move the family to where that seems to be happening regularly…smart move.
Turns out that Western NC is as high a risk place to live as Phoenix AZ is for heat. Supposedly no state experiences more flooding than North Carolina thanks to its location and its topography. At least the people of NC had a week’s warning of the approaching hurricane and had the option of leaving for a hotel in an adjoining state. Those that didn’t or couldn’t…
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Letter From Florida: Nowhere Left to Hide
If you think a climate disaster can’t destroy your town, I have a submerged bridge to sell you.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/letter-from-florida-nowhere-left-to-hide/
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Can You Afford Climate Change?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/04/can-you-afford-climate-change/
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Tomorrow Florida gets hit by a hurricane the size of 2005’s Katrina. Milton is just going to f**k their shit up when the West Coast isn’t even close to being cleared from Helene’s storm surge ten days ago. Piles of household debris everywhere mixed into the huge sand piles lining the streets, and this surge is expected to be even worse?
I knew I should have sold those inherited lots in Highland County/Avon Parks subdivision that is pretty much in the bulls-eye just inland south of Tampa/a bit east of Sarasota/St. Petersburg… Back to a Cat 5, and may hit 200mph before hopefully downgrading just prior to landfall according to the Ryan Hall weather site just a few minutes ago…
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Anyway, 82’F up here yesterday on my front porch. My mechanic friend was just called out again yesterday, after 72 days in a row with one 2-day break in the middle. He’s been home for a whole five days and is now on a big fire in Eastern Oregon. Sure isn’t much like Fall on the Canadian Border at this point.
sealintheSelkirks