Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Uh oh!

The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts. Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global heating and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021.

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Amoc carries warm ocean water northwards towards the pole where it cools and sinks, driving the Atlantic’s currents. But an influx of fresh water from the accelerating melting of Greenland’s ice cap and other sources is increasingly smothering the currents.

A collapse of Amoc would have disastrous consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and west Africa. It would increase storms and drop temperatures in Europe, and lead to a rising sea level on the eastern cost of North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

Never mind; let’s talk about the Barbie movie.

Not the way to think about (much less deal with) the climate disaster:

Rishi Sunak has signalled the government could delay or even abandon green policies that impose a direct cost on consumers, as he comes under pressure from the Conservative right to create a dividing line with Labour at the next election.

Listen up. A “dividing line” between one political party and another is short term stuff. Climate disaster is long term – it’s your children and their children and their children, ffs. Making the climate disaster worse for the sake of dividing lines between political parties is like getting a manicure just before the Titanic breaks in half.

The prime minister said the drive to reach the UK’s net zero targets should not “unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives” as he rethinks his green agenda after last week’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection.

Downing Street confirmed on Monday that the government would “continually examine and scrutinise” measures including a ban on new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, phasing out gas boilers by 2035, energy efficiency targets for private rented homes and low-traffic neighbourhoods.

Here’s an idea. How about all the Tories go for a nice summer holiday on Rhodes. Right now.

The move to row back on some green measures comes after the Tories’ opposition to the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) was credited for their narrow byelection victory in Boris Johnson’s former seat on 20 July.

Tory strategists believe they could replicate their win in other newly marginal seats across the country by creating clear dividing lines with Keir Starmer’s Labour, which has its own internal tensions over environmental policy since the byelection.

Maybe they could, maybe they could, but is it really worth it? On the one hand a potential slight political gain, on the other hand a planet that no longer supports most forms of life?

On a visit to the West Midlands, where he arrived by helicopter despite the journey only taking 90 minutes by train, Sunak was asked if he would stand up to Tories who are urging against net zero measures after Jacob Rees-Mogg said that “getting rid of unpopular, expensive green policies” created a political opportunity.

Well there you go. Can’t turn your back on a political opportunity, can you.

H/t Mike Haubrich

There are some precautions we can take though. I would say a very easy one is: don’t go hiking in the desert when it’s hot. Just skip that.

Two women who had been hiking at a Nevada state park were found dead on Saturday, park rangers said, as record-breaking heat waves rippled through the region and sent temperatures rising through parts of the western and southwestern United States.

The coroner’s office in Clark County, Nev., identified the women as Jessica Rhodes, 34, and Diana Matienzo Rivera, 29. State park rangers said that they had been hiking the Prospect Trail together in the Valley of Fire State Park, a desert area known for its sandstone and limestone outcroppings and rock formations that is about 45 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Summer temperatures in the park often exceed 100 degrees and can even reach 120 degrees, according to park officials.

Soooo don’t hike there in summer.

Park rangers conducted a search and, about an hour later, found the body of one of the women on the trail, which stretches 11 miles. The body of the second woman was found at about 2 p.m. that day, near a canyon that the trail bisects, leading the rangers to believe that she had gone searching for help.

Why go for a walk in the desert when it’s extremely hot? Do people just not realize that heat can kill you?

Mr. Brunjes said that the deaths were possibly linked to heat exhaustion.

“Anytime you’re going hiking you should go extremely early, carry at least a liter of water and wear light-colored clothing,” he said. “We can’t emphasize these things enough.”

The women, Mr. Brunjes added, had worn dark-colored clothing and did not seem to have been carrying enough water.

Just stay home.

To the surprise of no one –

The deadly, protracted heat waves that have scorched parts of North America and Europe this month would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to a new study published Tuesday.

The analysis by the World Weather Attribution network, a coalition of scientists that conducts rapid analyses to determine how the warming atmosphere influences extreme weather events, examined weather data and computer model simulations to compare the climate as it is today, having experienced warming of about 1.2 Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, with the climate of the past.

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“They are not rare in today’s climate,” Friederike Otto, co-leader of the group and a climate scientist at Imperial College London, said in an interview. “What surprises me is that people are so surprised. It is exactly what we expected to see.”

I’m surprised that she’s surprised that we’re surprised. People are good at denial when it comes to the future, and especially good at it when being good at it allows us to go right on breaking everything.

At least scientifically, Otto said, the findings support a growing consensus among researchers: The warmer the world gets, the more likely regions are to experience crippling heat waves, stronger storms and other climate-fueled disasters.

The warmer the world gets, the warmer the world will get. I think I grasp the idea now.

Ultimately, they found that the heat waves that baked the Southwest and southern Europe would have almost no chance of happening in a world without climate change. The Chinese heat wave was made about 50 times more likely given global warming, the study found, while the European and North American heat waves were at least 1,000 times more likely.

Ok ok ok. We can’t pretend it was the fault of something else. We can’t pretend we didn’t do this to ourselves (and everything else on the planet).

Also it’s only going to get worse.

Otto is adamant that the startling heat waves of recent weeks, while no longer rare on a warming planet, do not represent a new reality. “We don’t know what the new normal is until we stop burning fossil fuels. We are not in a stable climate,” she said.

Until the trajectory of human emissions falls sharply, temperature records will continue to fall. Heat waves will grow more fierce and more prolific, offering only a glimpse of potentially hotter stretches ahead. “This is not what extremes in the future will look like,” Otto said. “This could be even a cold year in the summers to come. This is not what we need to get used to. We need to get used to this, and worse.”

But vast numbers of people will not get used to it but be killed by it.

Gee, what could go wrong?

The BBC has apologised after one of its reporters asked an “inappropriate” question about homosexuality which critics claim endangered the safety of the first Arab team in the Women’s World Cup.

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A correspondent, said to be from BBC World Service, asked: “In Morocco it is illegal to have a gay relationship. Do you have any gay players in your squad and what’s life like for them in Morocco?”

Brilliant. “X is illegal in your country. Are any of your players X? Please name them and tell us where they live.”

An official intervened saying: “Sorry this is a very political question so we will just stick to questions relating to football.”

The correspondent responded: “It is not political, it is about people. Please allow her to answer.”

Please remember she lives in Morocco.

Shireen Ahmed, a contributor to CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, tweeted: “The reporter was completely out of line. Harm reduction matters and posing the question to the captain or coach was unnecessary. The question was waved off by a Fifa media officer moderating but it shouldn’t have been asked.”

In a better world she could safely and cheerfully answer the question but this isn’t that world.

But…how…

But how can there be a space that aligns best with someone’s gender and needs if all the spaces are open to all genders? If all the spaces are the same in the sense of being open to both sexes, how can it be possible to differentiate them in order to choose the one that best aligns with one’s gender and needs?

If everyone is entitled to dignity and privacy, why is everyone not allowed access to washrooms and change rooms that are for one sex to the exclusion of the other? How can people have dignity and privacy when they have to take their clothes off in front of strangers of the opposite sex? If everyone is entitled to dignity and privacy, why is the Greater Toronto Y making sure they can’t have it?

As the northern hemisphere burns:

Guardian Australia asked seven leading climate scientists to describe how they felt as much of the northern hemisphere is engulfed by blistering heatwaves, and a number of global land and ocean climate records are broken.

Dr Joelle Gergis:

What is playing out all over the world right now is entirely consistent with what scientists expect. No one wants to be right about this. But if I’m honest, I am stunned by the ferocity of the impacts we are currently experiencing.

Bill Hare:

Driving all this is the fossil fuel industry. Enabling it are political leaders unwilling to bring this industry under control and who promote policies such as offsetting and massive gas expansion that simply enable this industry to continue.

Professor Ian Lowe:

Now all the projected changes are happening, so I reflect on how much needless environmental damage and human suffering will result from the work of those politicians, business leaders and public figures who have prevented concerted action. History will judge them very harshly.

Professor Matthew England:

It makes me feel deeply frustrated to watch the slow pace of policy action – it’s bewildering to see new fossil fuel extraction projects still getting the go-ahead here in Australia. And with this comes deep resentment for those who have lobbied for ongoing fossil fuel use despite the clear climate physics that have been known about for almost half a century.

Still the cruise ships trundle in and out of port.

Whatever you want, all the time.

This crap makes me so tired.

What does any of this have to do with “equality”?? Nothing. Men pretending to be women has nothing to do with equality; men trying to force women to agree that the men are women has nothing to do with equality; men trying to take everything that belongs to women has nothing to do with equality; men assaulting women with impunity has nothing to do with equality.

Not. one. fucking. thing.

The reception of this news is not altogether delighted.

Sam Cowie’s friend isn’t best pleased either.

There’s a torrent of furious replies and quote tweets.

This is beyond belief. The police “issue a warning” to the guy who slammed a woman in the face and arm with a sign. The National frames the whole thing as the woman’s fault. The police announce there were no injuries when there were.

POLICE have issued a statement after an assault of a gender critical protester at a Women Won’t Wheesht event in Scotland. The incident took place on Sunday July 23 as campaigners from Women Won’t Wheesht (WWW) took to Speaker’s Corner in Aberdeen’s Duthie Park.

Officers said they had been in attendance at the organised protest and were forced to step in after reports of an assault. They said that a woman, aged 54, was involved with a clash with a 26-year-old who was issued a recorded police warning.

She wasn’t “involved with a clash” with the 26-year-old MAN; he attacked her.

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “On Sunday, 23 July, 2023, officers were in attendance during an organised protest in the Duthie Park area of Aberdeen.

“We were made aware of an assault of a 54-year-old woman during the event and an individual, aged 26, has received a recorded police warning in connection with the incident.

A man. A man age 26 assaulted a woman age 54.

“There were no reports of any injuries and the protest later ended with no further issues.”

Like hell there were no reports of any injuries.

The WWW group were displaying a sign claiming that “women’s sports are under threat”, according to their own photos of the event. The sign mentioned trans cyclist Emily Bridges, using her former name and labelling her a “male”.

The National, or Xander Elliards who wrote this filthy piece, or both, is/are trying to portray the violence against a woman as her own fault and gender critical women as deserving assault by men.

“What does she expect?”

More reactions to Esme Houston’s joy at attacks on women.

Adding a couple more

This guy part two:

Our “silly games” he calls it. He’s the one who’s going around demanding to be allowed to get naked in the women’s changing room and he accuses us of “silly games.”

I read a long long string of comments and didn’t see one that agreed with him, let alone cheering him on or crying with him or shouting at women for him.

Could the ship be slowly slowly slowly turning around?

This happened today:

Was anyone around to say “maaate”? Did it help?

Entitled man in a skirt rages about the servants.

There is no “rule of self identity.” There is no rule that says everybody has to take everybody else’s word for their magic “identity.” We don’t have to do that. Angry men don’t get to force us to do that.

And we feminist women who say a skirt doesn’t turn a man into a woman aren’t playing silly games, we’re risking jobs and friendships and mental tranquility on defending our rights against the encroachments of entitled men in skirts.

https://twitter.com/AnneICoombes/status/1683114970165260290

He wants to send a hotel worker for re-education because she knows a man when she sees one. Also, being sent on a DIE (better known as EID for perhaps obvious reasons) course is being punished, especially if the course is there to teach people that men are women if they are wearing skirts.

Rhodes is burning.

A large wildfire tearing through the Greek island of Rhodes forced thousands of tourists to flee their hotels in what Greek officials said was the largest evacuation effort in the country’s history.

Those caught up in the blaze described chaotic and frightening scenes, with some having to leave on foot or find their own transport after being told to leave.

The wildfire in the central and south part of Rhodes – a hugely popular island for holidaymakers – has been burning since Tuesday. It is the largest of a number of blazes in Greece, which is sweltering due to a heat wave that experts say is likely to become the country’s longest on record.

The hotter it is the more the vegetation dries out and becomes susceptible to bursting into flames on contact with a smoldering cigarette butt.

The Greek government said nearly 19,000 people had been evacuated on Rhodes since Saturday. The government called the operation “the largest such effort Greece has ever seen,” and said 16,000 people, including tourists and residents, were transported by land and 3,000 by sea.

Good that CNN finally mentioned residents. It’s not as if tourists matter more than residents.

Large parts of the northern hemisphere have seen fierce temperatures, with Europe seeing dramatic shifts from one form of extreme weather to another.

Italy’s northern region of Veneto was pounded with tennis-ball sized hail overnight on Wednesday, injuring at least 110 people. Emergency services responded to more than 500 calls for help due to damage to property and personal injuries, the Veneto regional civil protection said.

The country also experienced record-breaking heat, with capital Rome hitting a new high temperature of 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. Earlier in the year the country was hit by devastating floods.

In the Balkans, severe thunderstorms storms claimed several lives after hitting on Wednesday, CNN’s affiliate N1 reported Thursday.

Scientists are warning that the extreme weather may only be a preview of what’s to come as the planet warms.

“The weather extremes will continue to become more intense and our weather patterns could change in ways we yet can’t predict,” said Peter Stott, a science fellow in climate attribution at the UK Met Office told CNN.

It’s shocking to see MPs (or Senators and Representatives) ranting about the wickedness of colleagues who know and say that people can’t change sex. It’s like theocracy without the theo part.

Of course parents who “support their kids through transition” are irrevocably harming them. The idea that people can change sex is a mistake, and physically acting on it is of course harmful.

Osborne is the one using dangerous language, not Helen Joyce. It’s dangerous to talk dreamily about “supporting kids through transition” as if surgery to alter genitals were like getting a driver’s license as opposed to mutilation. Encouraging children to destroy their genitalia in pursuit of a magic identity is what’s dangerous.

We’ve been hearing lately that house insurance is difficult to get, and very expensive if you can get it, in Florida. Fortune looks at it from the profit or no profit point of view:

Given that Farmers is not the first home insurer to stop offering coverage in Florida over the past year or so, things are looking challenging for its housing market, and particularly, its homeowners that are already paying the highest insurance premiums in the nation, with an average premium of $6,000 per year versus the U.S. average of $1,700 per year, according to Mark Friedlander, Florida-based director of corporate communications for the Insurance Information Institute. That’s 42% higher than the year prior, Frielander added. 

And why is that?

Florida’s insurance consumer advocate, Tasha Carter, who was appointed by Florida’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, listed four factors behind the homeowner insurance market that she said is in “dire condition.” The first has to do with claims from recent hurricanes, given hurricane Irma, Michael, and Ian (combined) generated nearly 3 million claims filed and resulted in approximately $46 billion in estimated insured losses.

Would you want to gamble on insuring houses in Florida? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Might as well drop bundles of cash down a volcano.

Florida’s Sea Level Is Rising

The sea level around Florida is up to 8 inches higher than it was in 1950.^1 | 2 This increase is mostly due to ice melting into the ocean and, complicated by the porous limestone that the state sits on, it’s causing major issues. Many traditional methods to solve for sea level rise and flooding in Florida won’t work, because water can flow through the porous ground, up from below, and under sea walls. In Miami-Dade County, the groundwater levels in some places are not high enough relative to the rising sea levels, which has allowed saltwater to intrude into the drinking water and compromised sewage plants. There are already 120,000 properties at risk from frequent tidal flooding in Florida.³ The state is planning over $4 billion in sea level rise solutions, which include protecting sewage systems, raising roads, stormwater improvements, and seawalls.

Pouring a glass of water onto a lava flow.