Yes, I think we are starting into a very grim stage. The foundations of international cooperation have not been as weak as they are now since at least the 1980âs, and we made minimal progress on this crisis when the foundations were much better. The Global North simply failed to make real progress on mitigation. Many Global South actors have spent 20 years making the best the greatest enemy of the good, in some cases actively obstructing progress on emissions reductions in order to advance their own demands, particularly on adaptation. Now, as Global North populations start to face the first real adaptation costs, any hope of seeing North-South wealth transfers for adaptation is probably gone, but the consensus-based model of the UNFCCC will likely continue to stutter trying to accommodate it with yet another round of promises no one will keep.
Thatâs satire right? Right? RightâŠ?
Weâre often made to think about the difficulty of action through the lens of climate change deniers. They are clearly a huge issue, given how many of them (or at least people who play their role for their day job) have their hands on the levers of power in the US, but it hit me over the weekend how entangled the rest of the broken media ecosystem is in this challenge.
For months, one ostensibly Democratic Senator has been publicly opposing the BBB bill, a bill that includes a good amount of money for green energy infrastructure. While his personal fortune is the result of the coal industry, his stated opposition is concerns over inflationary spending. Most analysis suggests the overall effect is counter inflationary, but the vibe that everyone is familiar with is that government spending = âoverheated economyâ = excess inflation. It is so baked in that these actual analyses just seem to be irrelevant to the discussion. Iâd concede that they might be wrong and people may be able to raise opposition to spending based on pointed critiques of the analyses, but that isnt whatâs happened. We just ignore it and say âeveryone knows government spending causes inflationâ
Since this first became an issue, the bill has been stuck in negotiations, and so the spending has not happened. Yet weâre in a situation of global excess inflation regardless. While you cannot use this to disprove Manchinâs concerns, it certainly doesnt verify them. It cannot be used to support his idea that the bill would have made inflation worse, but it at minimum speaks to the limitation of the model these conservative small government types lean on that treats the spending as the only thing that matters. Yet, what we now see is the thought leaders of the self-identified responsible wing of the âconservativeâ movement, the ones who would never publicly admit to being a climate change denier, now falling over themselves to credit Manchin from saving us from inflation. They have used the existence of inflation in the absence of government spending as evidence their concern over government spending has been validated.
There are so many bad narratives baked into our collective understanding that even if we could get the GOP and their supporters back to an 80s view on the legitimacy of the issue, weâd keep finding justifications for still doing nothing about it.
I really donât hold out much hope for the US on this issue set in the near-term. The Supreme Court ruling has basically closed the door to what little progress had been made on regulation in 20 years. I am not sure the entire Southwest being rendered unlivable will actually create a consensus.
deadfall and standing dead trees. itâs very common for trees to die, once itâs dead they actually encourage them to be taken for rural heating as it allows seedlings to grow in itâs place.
the pine beetles which have ravaged the boreal forests here have left hectares of dead tree which then dry out and donât have the natural moisture a live tree does to prevent it from catching fire from lightning strikes. hence the huge burns we have had here last few years. Fort MacMurray was a big one, as was Lytton. I drove through there a few months ago, whole mountainsides still black near Logan Lake.
Of course, the pine beetle itself was one of the early manifestations of climate change. In their traditional habitat, the boreal forest pattern did not exist - quite possibly because of the beetle.
the earth has been in a warming pattern since the ice age. no denying that humans are having an effect on the planet with our production of gases⊠but we are mere specks of dust and weâll be long forgotten in a few millenia when mother nature decides to reset again.
We are 4-5 weeks into the monsoon when itâs supposed to rain heavily and frequently. He havenât had any rain in weeks. I get it that seasons donât come & go by calendar, but this is now ominous.
There are some complex interactions between the El Nino/La Nina cycle, the hemispheric trade winds, and the monsoon in the Indian Ocean. The La Nina did something weird this year, it appeared to be breaking down in February, then it stabilized and extended. To be honest, I donât really understand the system let alone the interaction, but that extension appears to have kept the westerly trade winds strong longer than is normal, delaying the monsoon.
Writ large, the warming should be producing more rain during the monsoon season.
In and of itself, anthropogenic climate change is not going to kill the Earth, which is not a living thing to begin with.
What it will do is drastically change habitats and environments, and result in the extinction of a lot of species.
Weâve been really wet here already. Rainy season is said to be mid May-Oct but it really doesnt start in earnest until July. Yet even this early our water table is high enough that Im experiencing flooding in an area of my property I havent had it happen in through 11 previous full rainy seasons. Fuck knows how the next 10 weeks are going to go.
thereâs a fair number of people which would argue that statementâŠ
This lame excuse by climate deniers boils my piss, pun intended.
To me, if youâre pumping millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere somethingâs got to change.
I appreciate the reality is far more complex than that but when the numpties canât even grasp that idea weâre never getting anywhere. That of course ignores those that benefit from fossil fuel consumption.
last few years have been heat domes. water restrictions, forest fires.
This year, we had a late freshet. rivers are all still really high but appears we are getting a good salmon return so fish on! I havenât had to water my lawn yet this year, and probably wonât!
itâs only 22âC today, rest of week is supposed to +25-28âC and sunny
Suck it up kids and grandkids 
39.1°C already recorded in the UK today before 12. New hottest temperature ever in the UK.
Predicted to go up to 42ÂșC too. The all-time record prior to today was 38.7ÂșC.
Turns out those limited, flawed climate models that always get derided underpredicted the pace at which these records might go do. All time highs arenât supposed to move in increments of 2-3 deg C.
Perversely, some will argue, âSee, the models are incorrectââŠ