I’ve been traveling in Asia and just missed a Typhoon hitting Hong Kong but got caught in record rains last Thursday and Friday that killed over a 100 and flooded out some subway stations. https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinio...ceptics-must-see-need-prepare-extreme-weather
Mississippi River levels are dropping faster than normal thanks to a strengthening drought in the upper basin and continued drought in the lower basin.
I'm personally relieved that this has been a great stretch of rain after years of drought in California. Having said that, climate patterns have always felt very zero sum to me. If there's extreme rain in one region, expect extreme *drought* elsewhere...
Libyan floods death toll now over 11,000 people dead with another 10,000+ missing. Some reports are saying tides are bringing back bodies that have been washed out to sea :
Truly horrific. Given how poor and chaotic Libya is probably many more will die in the aftermath and they might never be able to rebuild and recover.
This is a ridiculous graph. Canada had record fire growth as measured by Fire Radiative Power (FRP) when all previous years had tapered off by the same dates. Acres burned in Canada for the year is now 2.5 times their previous record.
I guess it’s to be expected that the Libya disaster has almost completely been forgotten by the West. Expect though to see many more disasters like this as more extreme weather events hit places with poor infrastructure and governance.
We need to internationalize response and recovery in ways well beyond what we do now. No one country, including the US, can handle everything that's coming. Of course, the details will be extremely difficult to work through. Still, if I were an anti-globalist conspiracist, I'd sure want to do something about climate change because there will be more and more international standards and agreements going forward.
Or there could be more retrenchment and distrust of Globalists leading to more Nationalism and less cooperation.
Note I started off with the word "need." We could easily go the route you suggest and I'm sure some countries will. I hope we are not one of them, but...
Don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting that route but that we are seeing strong trends towards that direction.
Same with Istanbul. Then, there's this with the drought-lowered Mississippi River--salt water out of the tap is no bueno.
Here's a little disaster prevention by a Vermont utility company. Need to see more of this hardening of the grid. There should be no new above-ground lines and utility companies should be burying lines with a definite goal of doing away with overhead lines by a certain date. (If it were up to me, I'd say by 2030, but that's probably not realistic given our current dynamics.) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/energy-environment/green-mountain-home-batteries.html
Really? The ongoing disaster of shrinking coastal wetlands has been going on for several many decades.
Oh, I grew up in southeast Houston and have been very aware of shrinking coastlines since I was a teenager and started driving all over the place. Spending time in Galveston and other areas along the Bay and get to talking with people and they would often bring up “shrinking coastlines” in one way or another. No, what I was talking about was the creeping salt water up the Mississippi. That surprised me. Sure, when thinking about it, like with you mentioning shrinking coastlines, it fits, but I hadn’t carried the salt water going up our country’s premier river to what seems obvious to me now - shrinking coastlines. Obviously, that’s connected to climate change, the phenomenon trump and his rabid followers insist doesn’t exist.
