Apocalypse, sometime soon?

Good Afternoon!

I’ve been struggling with the stomach flu for the last two days, so today’s post is brief. Sorry for that, but for most of the last 48 hours my brain has been pretty foggy. Back at it in full by Friday!

-Mike

Bullet point-o-rama

Let’s do a quick rundown of the various weather/climate disasters around the globe:

• Sea ice is growing at a record low in this year’s Antarctic winter. It’s a “six sigma” event for you stats-heads. “Otherwise known as a once-in-7.5-million-year event.”
• People are dying in Algerian wildfires. Meanwhile it’s also reaching 135-degrees Fahrenheit there.
• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which moved warm equatorial water north along the North American coast and then over to the British Isles, seems to be in danger of collapsing due to increased cold water flows from melting Arctic ice, according to a recent study. A collapse could mean new, freezing air for New England and Britain, and the end of species like cod.
• Greenland is warming faster than other places, and Arctic spring starts earlier every year, finds a study conducted since 1995.
• Another study concluded that the July heat waves in the U.S. South, Northwest China, and Southern Europe were “made much more likely by climate change.”
• When it’s not 115-degrees in Southern Europe, making cell phones shut off, there’s giant storms dropping grapefruit-sized hail.
• A “super typhoon” hit the Philippines with 115 mile per hour winds yesterday, and is headed towards Taiwan and China.
• Ocean water surrounding Southern Florida is topping 100-degrees, likely bleaching coral reefs. The normal temperature is 85.
• And NASA says it’ll likely be even hotter in 2024.

This month’s extreme weather has launched a flotilla of think pieces on What This All Means, some of which are pretty good.

• How quickly will climate change actually come? asks Lois Parshley in The Atlantic
• The heat waves are bigger history makers than we’re familiar with, writes Bill McKibben in The New Yorker.
• It’s hard to figure out a climate change tipping point, says Neel Dhanesha in Heatmap.

Thank you for reading Heat Rising. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Other Things Happened

• Great graphics from Reuters on the total area burned by Canadian wildfires, as well as where the firefighters are coming from.
• This month the U.S. Department of Energy started enforcing efficiency requirements for light bulbs – 47 lumens per watt. Most incandescents are about 13 lumens per watt, so say goodbye to those in stores.

You made it to the bottom! Have you heard about gravestone recipes?