No System Of Government Designed By Human Beings Can Survive What The Climate Crisis Will Bring

Esquire - Charles P. Pierce

The window to prevent the worst of it is closing. Fast.

ARUN SANKAR Getty Images

It is a long held belief here in the shebeen that, thanks to those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters, the next world wars are going to be fought not over oil, but over water. 

This is especially true in places like India, which is currently in the middle of a murderous heat wave in which temperatures regularly top out at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and where hugely populated cities are running out of water. From the BBC:

Residents have had to stand in line for hours to get water from government tanks, and restaurants have closed due to the lack of water. "Only rain can save Chennai from this situation," an official told BBC Tamil.
The city, which, according to the 2011 census, is India's sixth largest, has been in the grip of a severe water shortage for weeks now.
As the reservoirs started to run dry, many hotels and restaurants shut down temporarily.
The Chennai metro has turned off air conditioning in the stations, while offices have asked staff to work from home in a bid to conserve water...
The water crisis has also meant that most of the city has to depend solely on Chennai's water department, which has been distributing water through government trucks across neighborhoods.
"The destruction has just begun," an official said. "If the rain fails us this year too, we are totally destroyed."

And, as the Times of London reports, the combination of heat and drought not only is killing people, but also is emptying villages in the northern part of India. (Gee, I wonder where everyone will go and how welcome they'll be when they get there?) And things among the people who have stayed so far are getting ugly.

In the worst-hit areas many villages starved of water have been abandoned until the arrival of the monsoon brings relief, after weeks of temperatures topping 50 degrees.
In the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan fighting has broken out over scarce water supplies, with police deployed to protect water trucks and wells.

Water levels in the four main reservoirs in Chennai has fallen to one of its lowest levels in 70 years, according to Indian media reports, with the current levels amounting to only 1.3 percent of full capacity. ARUN SANKAR Getty Images

This is a part of the new normal, and it's coming soon to a theater near you. But, not to worry. According to this guy, if we don't turn things around on those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters in the next half-decade, we're all screwed anyway. From those noted tree-hugging libs at Forbes:

"We have exquisite information about what that state is, because we have a paleo record going back millions of years, when the earth had no ice at either pole. There was almost no temperature difference between the equator and the pole," said James Anderson, a Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer.
"The ocean was running almost 10ºC warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today," Anderson said of this once-and-future climate, "and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme, because water vapor, which is an exponential function of water temperature, is the gasoline that fuels the frequency and intensity of storm systems."...
People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions, Anderson said in an appearance at the University of Chicago.
Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation of industry—an acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth's poles.
This has to be done, Anderson added, within the next five years.
"The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero," Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.

No system of government devised by human beings can withstand what's coming, any more than overbuilt coastal enclaves can.

Links

• Chennai water crisis: City's reservoirs run dry - BBC News
• Tens of Thousands Flee Extreme Heatwave in India as Temperatures Topping 120°F Kill Dozens Across Country
• Thousands abandon villages in India to escape record 50 degree heat wave
• We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

New Temperature Record Set As France Swelters Through June Heatwave

ABC News - Reuters


As the mercury climbed, Europeans were doing all they could to beat the heat (Photo: AP). (ABC News)

Key points: The previous highest temperature record in France was set in 2003 Wildfires are being fought in northeast Spain, which firefighters said could easily quadruple in size A 93-year-old man in central Spain collapsed and died from the extreme heat

France has registered its highest temperature since records began as the death toll rose from a heatwave suffocating much of Europe.The mercury hit 45.9 degrees Celsius in Villevieille, in the southerly Provence region, the weather forecaster Meteo France said, almost two degrees above the previous high of 44.1 Celsius recorded in August 2003.
The World Meteorological Organisation said that 2019 was on track to be among the world's hottest years, and that 2015-2019 would then be the hottest five-year period on record.
It said the European heatwave was "absolutely consistent" with extremes linked to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
Four administrative departments in France were placed on red alert, signalling temperatures of "dangerous intensity" that are more typical of Saudi Arabia.

Deaths and injuries reported due to extreme heat
Temperatures in parts of Spain were expected to hit a new June record of 43 degrees.
Since 1975, Spain has registered nine heatwaves in June. Five of them, however, have been in the past decade, according to the Spanish meteorological office.
In Catalonia, in north-east Spain, bushfires were raging across 60 square kilometres of land, but firefighters said that area could quadruple.
Farmers were asked to stop all work across the region for 48 hours.

Lakes have proven to be a welcome reprieve during the heatwave. (AP: Thomas Warnack)

In the city of Valladolid in central Spain, a 93-year-old man collapsed and died due to the heat, police said.
And in a small town outside Cordoba, a 17-year-old died of heat-related effects after jumping into a swimming pool to cool off after a day working in the fields, regional health authorities said.
In France, one boy was seriously hurt when he was thrown back by a jet of water from a fire hydrant.
Some 4,000 schools were either closed or running a limited service to help working parents unable to stay at home.
French families with elderly relatives who were ill or living alone were advised to call or visit them twice a day and take them to cool places, while the state-run rail operator SNCF offered free cancellations or exchanges on long-distance trips.
The greater Paris region, Ile de France, had already banned more than half of cars from its roads as the stifling heat worsened air pollution, the toughest restriction provided for — although all cars were to be allowed to leave the city as school holidays began.
The cities of Lyon, Strasbourg and Marseille have also restricted traffic.
The unusually high temperatures are forecast to last until early next week.

France's many canals have become a popular way for people to cool down. (AP: Lewis Joly)

Links

• Europe Heatwave Sees Temperatures Soar To Record Highs As Wildfires Take Hold In Spain 
• Europe battling heatwave so hot it's causing chicken manure to combust and spark bushfires
• In pictures: Europe swelters through early summer heatwave
• Europe's hellish heatwave is caused by a high-pressure weather system unlike any ever seen before
• European heatwave could be the norm in a climate change affected world
• Europe is cooking in yet another heatwave. Our attempts to outrun climate change are futile
• Mont Blanc is melting and is a warning of our future as climate change sees the world's temperature rise
• Europe heatwave: Temperatures to hit 45C in France as death toll grows from 'enormous' bubble of Saharan air sweeping continent
• Record-breaking heat wave cooks Europe

Is Climate Change Causing Europe’s Intense Heat? A Scientist Weighs In

Science News - Carolyn Gramling

Karsten Haustein talks about what is driving extreme heat in Europe and South Asia

SUN SHELTER  A brief, but intense, heat wave is baking much of mainland Europe, including Paris, shown in this photograph taken June 26. Researchers are working to determine how this heat wave might be linked to human-caused climate change.

Dr Karsten Haustein Dr Haustein is a climate scientist at the School of Geography and Environment, Oxford University, and a member of the World Weather Attribution Network, an international scientific consortium. Dr Karsten interests include climate modelling and atmospheric aerosol research.

Mainland Europe has sweltered for days under record-breaking temperatures, prompting researchers to try to untangle how much of the heat wave can be linked to climate change.
A report on that, by an international consortium of scientists called the World Weather Attribution Network, is expected to be released on July 2.
Previous heat records for many parts of Europe were set in the summer of 2003, when temperatures soared to 44.1° Celsius (111.4° Fahrenheit) in the southern French town of Conqueyrac.
That extreme heat killed more than 70,000 people across the continent — a death toll  that researchers determined was amplified by climate change (SN: 9/3/16, p. 5).
As another heat wave in 2018 baked Europe for three months, the consortium conducted a rapid assessment that determined it could not have happened without anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change.
Such events could occur yearly if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, the researchers found. If global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, though, such events were predicted every two out of three years.
This year’s event, which began in mid-June, is expected to be shorter. But it is intense. On June 28, temperatures in Gallargues-le-Montueux, a city in southern France, hit 45.9° C (114.6° F), smashing temperature records for the country.
But Europe isn’t the only part of the world dealing with dangerous heat levels. India and Pakistan have been suffering since mid-May under one of the longest-lasting heat waves in its recent history. In June, temperatures in New Delhi soared to 48° C (118.4° F), the highest ever recorded for the month in the Indian capital. By June 21, at least 180 people reportedly had died from heat-related causes.
Science News spoke with Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford in England who is affiliated with the consortium, about what’s behind these deadly events and how scientists determine in real time whether a particular heat wave can be attributed to climate change. His comments have been edited for clarity and brevity.

SN: Why was the World Weather Attribution Network created?
Haustein: The idea was that we would look at any given extreme events while they’re happening and try to scientifically attribute the climate change factor. For example, has it become a more likely event or not [due to climate change]? We define the event, put it into historic context — for example, is it a 1-in-100-year event? — and determine if it’s setting records or getting media attention. And then we do the model analyses to isolate the climate signal. We’re also teaching other researchers, in places including Kenya, South Africa and Australia, how to use our methods.

SN: Why are you analyzing the current Europe heat wave?
Haustein: This current heat wave just started 10 days ago. [By June 24], it was already shaping up to be pretty extreme, so we went for it.
The all-time maximum temperature in France was 44.1° C, from August 2003. That was a really bad one. There are chances we’ll get up to 45° C, which would be quite a new record. [A few hours after this interview, that milestone was reached on June 28.] For June, that’s pretty epic. Germany’s temperatures will peak on Sunday [June 30], and probably Monday [July 1] in Austria. And then there are two cold fronts that will be pushing through.

SN: What atmospheric conditions are causing the intense heat?
Haustein: To get a heat wave going, you need warm air in the upper level [of the atmosphere]. That comes from the south, from Africa. We actually set a record [on June 27] for temperatures at 1.5 kilometers above Earth’s surface, reaching 25.5° C.
How those upper-level air masses translate into temperatures on the surface is a different story. In simple terms, the jet stream where it sits across Europe divides colder air in the north from warmer air in the south. Sometimes [this fast current of air above the Northern Hemisphere] becomes very wiggly, with big loops going far to the north and all the way down to northern Africa. That can transport really hot air from Africa to Europe. If it sits over Europe for several days, it can heat the surface.
What’s causing that wiggly jet stream is contentious. Some people have suggested it’s linked to increasing temperatures in the Arctic. But we don’t really know. All we can say is that, over the last 10 days, there’s been a tendency to have this pattern: We see the jet stream digging farther south, and Europe is sitting in this warm air.

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Blistering heat
Extreme temperatures scorched much of India and Pakistan from mid-May through June 2019. NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System, a global atmospheric climate simulation, created this map of air temperatures across the region on June 10. Several factors contributed to the heat wave, including a delayed monsoon. The health impacts of South Asia’s rising temperatures are unclear, though, due to other factors that can impact health, including higher humidity and air pollution levels in the region. And it’s also not yet clear if the region has been seeing an overall trend of increasing maximum air temperatures since the 1970s.

NASA Earth Observatory
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SN: What about the heat wave in South Asia?
Haustein: As far as climate attribution, it’s similar to work we did on the 2016 heat wave in India. [That heat wave included a record-breaking temperature of 51° C in the western state of Rajasthan.] India’s 2019 temperatures appear to be due to natural year-to-year variability. We did a brief analysis that found that maximum temperatures across India in the hottest months aren’t clearly increasing.

SN: What did the consortium learn in analyzing the 2018 European heat wave?
Haustein: We know that the frequency and intensity of heat waves are increasing globally. Heat waves in Europe, such as the one in 2018, are at least twice as likely to occur now as a result of climate change.

Links

• Europe Heatwave Sees Temperatures Soar To Record Highs As Wildfires Take Hold In Spain
• Air pollution and irrigation mask extremes of India’s 2019 heatwave
• Heatwave in northern Europe, summer 2018
• Attributing human mortality during extreme heat waves to anthropogenic climate change
• Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C could prevent thousands of deaths in the U.S.
• Are we ready for the deadly heat waves of the future?
• The list of extreme weather caused by human-driven climate change grows
• Half a degree stole the climate spotlight in 2018
• Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees versus 2 has big benefits, the IPCC says
• These weather events turned extreme thanks to human-driven climate change
• South Asia could face deadly heat and humidity by the end of this century
• For three years in a row, Earth breaks heat record
• Global warming amplified death toll during 2003 European heat wave