… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: extreme weather

  • Thousands Evacuated Amid Northern California Wildfire and Heatwave

    Spread the love

    Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Law enforcement officers watch as the Thompson Fire burns over Lake Oroville in Oroville, California on July 2, 2024.  (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

    “It cannot be stressed enough that this is an exceptionally dangerous and lethal situation,” the National Weather Service warned.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in a northern county where a major wildfire has burned thousands of acres and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents amid near-record heat throughout much of the Golden State fueled by human-caused global heating.

    The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) said shortly after noon local time Wednesday that the Thompson Fire, which began Tuesday morning in Butte County, had burned 3,568 acres with no containment in and around the city of Oroville, home to more than 20,000 people.

    Citing an “imminent threat to life,” Newsom, a Democrat, issued an emergency declaration and said that “we are using every available tool to tackle this fire and will continue to work closely with our local and federal partners to support impacted communities.”

    CAL FIRE said that more than 1,400 firefighters using 199 engines, 46 dozers, eight helicopters, and other equipment are battling the blaze. More than 28,000 Oroville area residents have been evacuated.

    Red flag conditions are being exacerbated by low humidity and near-record temperatures throughout California. Oroville is expected to hit a high of 110°F on Wednesday, with daytime highs forecast to remain in the 110s through the holiday weekend. Dozens of daily, monthly, and all-time records could be broken throughout the state.

    “It cannot be stressed enough that this is an exceptionally dangerous and lethal situation,” the National Weather Service’s (NWS) San Francisco Bay Area branch cautioned as it extended the red flag warning through Friday while preparing the public for the possibility of further extensions.

    Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said during a video briefing, “I’m not so sure that really any of us will have seen this many days at this sustained level of heat, both daytime and most importantly nighttime heat.”

    Commenting on the wildfire and heatwave, Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said on social media that “we need the California Legislature to pass their climate superfund bill NOW to #MakePollutersPay for these fossil-fueled disasters.”

    Introduced in April by California state Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-20) but shelved the following month, S.B. 1497—the Polluters Pay Climate Cost Recovery Act—would require major fossil fuel producers to pay for their historic carbon emissions.

    The NWS said that as of Wednesday, more than 110 million people across the United States were facing either a heat advisory, watch, or warning. So far, 2024 has been the hottest year on record. Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization focusing on the worsening planetary emergency, said climate change has made the current California heatwave at least five times likelier.

    Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • ‘Historic’ Category 5 Hurricane Beryl Offers Terrifying View of Future

    Spread the love

    Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    John Cangialosi, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, inspects a satellite image of Hurricane Beryl on July 1, 2024 in Miami, Florida.
     (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    “Beryl isn’t ‘unbelievable,’” one expert said. “it’s what happens when you heat up the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades.”

    As Hurricane Beryl barreled toward Jamaica on Tuesday after killing at least four people in the Caribbean’s Windward Islands, climate scientists warned the record-breaking Category 5 storm is a present-tense example of what’s to come on a rapidly heating planet.

    Even before the Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an 85% chance of above-normal activity and 17-25 total named storms this year. Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for The Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang, highlighted some records Beryl has already broken.

    “There is a strong, well-documented link between the effects of human-induced climate change and the development of stronger, wetter storms that are more prone to rapidly intensify,” he wrote Tuesday. “Beryl sprung from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in just 48 hours, the fastest any storm on record has strengthened before the month of September.”

    Beryl is also the earliest Category 4 and 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic, Cappucci pointed out. Previously, the earliest storm to reach the top level of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was Emily, in mid-July of 2005.

    The Capital Weather Gang reported that Beryl “strengthened more Monday night, its peak winds climbing to 165 mph. It has surpassed Emily (2005) as strongest July hurricane on record. It’s early July but Atlantic is acting like late August.”

    Certified consulting meteorologist Chris Gloninger emphasized that “the climate crisis has led to well-above-average ocean water temperatures and helped this storm explode.”

    As Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Potsdam University explained: “The heat in the upper ocean is the energy source for tropical cyclones. This heat is at record level, mainly caused by emissions from burning fossil fuel. That’s why an extreme hurricane season has been predicted for this year. It’s off to a bad start!”

    Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach on Monday shared graphics showing that “Caribbean ocean heat content today is normally what we get in the middle of September.”

    While some expressed disbelief over the storm, CNN extreme weather editor Eric Zerkel stressed that “Beryl isn’t ‘unbelievable’ or ‘defying all logic,’ it’s what happens when you heat up the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades. The oceans store roughly 90% of that excess heat. The ocean is as warm as it typically is… when Category 4 storms form. June is now August.”

    Acknowledging Beryl’s strength, Steve Bowen, a meteorologist who serves as chief science officer at the global reinsurance firm Gallagher Re, concluded that “this is a massive warning sign for the rest of the season.”

    Looking beyond this hurricane season, which ends in November, University of Hawaii at Mānoa professor and [C]Worthy co-founder David Ho said, “Let’s remember that things are just going to get [worse] as we continue to consume nearly 100 million barrels of oil every day.”

    The “historic” storm is sparking calls for action to phase out fossil fuels across the globe. Noting how Beryl “is breaking records and leaving a trail of destruction throughout the Caribbean,” the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement argued that “we must prosecute Big Oil for their role in causing devastation like this.”

    In response to a climate scientist who shared a photo of some damage Beryl has already caused, Rahmstorf expressed hope that people around the world won’t “wait with voting for climate stabilization until extremes hit their homes.”

    Beryl made landfall Monday as a Category 4 hurricane on Carriacou, a Grenada island, and also affected St. Vincent and Grenadines. According to The Associated Press, at least four people were killed.

    The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Tuesday afternoon that on its current path, “the center of Beryl will move quickly across the central Caribbean Sea today and is forecast to pass near Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands on Thursday. The center is forecast to approach the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico on Thursday night.”

    Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Deadly heat waves in Mecca and Greece underscore climate crisis

    Spread the love

    https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/heat-waves-greece-mecca-saudi-arabia-climate-crisis

    As the U.S. faces another potentially record heat wave this week, the Middle East and Europe’s Mediterranean have endured extreme temperatures that have proven deadly.

    The big picture: Multiple heat-related deaths have been reported in Greece during the country’s earliest heat wave on record and Jordan’s official news agency said Sunday “14 Jordanian pilgrims died and 17 others were missing” in the searing heat while on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

    Tourists outside the Acropolis during high temperatures in Athens, Greece, on June 12, when authorities announced the closure of the ancient site for five hours due to soaring temperatures that also shut schools. Photo: Hilary Swift/Bloomberg via Getty Images
    • The heat waves sweeping these regions this month have been made “at least five times more likely” because of human-caused climate change, per new Climate Central analysis.

    Context: Climate Central’s analysis is based on the group’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), which compares observed or forecast temperatures with simulations of the same weather conditions minus excess atmospheric greenhouse gases, per Alex Fitzpatrick.

    • The idea is to compare real-world conditions with what might have been the case had human-caused climate change been absent.
    • Saudi Arabia had a CSI of 5, meaning that human-caused climate change made a given daily average temperature five times more likely as of Monday morning. Greece, which has endured two weeks of extreme heat, had a CSI of 5 last week and 2 on Monday. Parts of Turkey had a CSI of 5.

    Between the lines: Greece has been among the worst-affected European countries for extreme weather caused by the climate crisis in recent months, enduring an intense heat wave, severe wildfires and heavy rains flooding the country’s streets last year.

    • A joint report by UN and European Union agencies found in April that Europe’s temperatures are rising about twice as fast the global average due to human-caused climate change — making it the fastest-warming continent on Earth.

    …

    Continues at https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/heat-waves-greece-mecca-saudi-arabia-climate-crisis

  • Climate change made UK’s waterlogged winter worse

    Spread the love

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp992nxxe7do

    Brussel sprout crops have been hit by the wet weather. Joe Gidden/PA

    Climate change is a major reason the UK suffered such a waterlogged winter, scientists have confirmed.

    It was the country’s second wettest October to March period on record and a disaster for farmers, who faced flooded fields during a key planting period.

    Global warming due to humans burning fossil fuels made this level of rainfall at least four times more likely, according to the World Weather Attribution group.

    One farmer in Lincolnshire told the BBC that a third of his farm could not be planted in time this year.

    Colin Chappell, a fourth generation farmer on the banks of the River Ancholme in Lincolnshire, who produces food including peas, oil and wheat, says he will only produce half what he would usually expect.

    “There are some farms in the valley that will not see a harvest at all this year. That hasn’t happened here since 1948,” he says.

    He believes the future for many farmers is bleak.

    …

    Article continues at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp992nxxe7do

  • ‘An Affront to the World’: Shell Posts Billions in Profits as Planet Burns

    Spread the love

    Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
    Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

    “The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal,” one campaigner said.

    Oil major Shell announced $7.7 billion in profits during the first quarter of 2024 on Thursday, as well as a $3.5 billion share buyback program.

    The news comes as every month covered by the period was the hottest of its kind on record. The three-month period also saw the second-largest wildfire in Texas history, extreme heat in West Africa and the Sahel, and the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef’s fifth mass bleaching event in eight years. Scientists have clearly linked global heating, and the weather disasters it exacerbates, to the climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

    “As extreme weather accelerates and the cost-of-living crisis rumbles on, Shell’s latest billion-pound profits are an affront to the world,” Izzie McIntosh, climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. “The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal.”

    “This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich.”

    Shell’s profits for the first three months of 2024 were around 20% lower than for the same time in 2023, CNBC reported. However, the company brought in $1.2 billion more than analysts had predicted. The world’s largest oil firms, including Shell, saw record profits in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed.

    “Shell has beaten expectations by a reasonable margin, despite the impact of lower gas prices during the first quarter,” Stuart Lamont, an investment manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said in a statement shared by CNBC.

    Global Witness pointed out that Shell’s earnings to date amounted to over $58,000 a minute, more than the average U.K. nurse makes in a year.

    “Shell continuing to rake in huge sums of money shows us that huge polluter profits were not a one-off but are the twisted reality of an energy system that benefits climate-wrecking companies to the cost of everyone else,” Global Witness fossil fuel campaigner Alexander Kirk said in a statement.

    Shell announced its profits one day after the U.S. Senate held a hearing on how large oil and gas companies, including Shell, have continued to deceive the public about the dangers of their products, moving from outright climate denial into making commitments they don’t intend to keep or touting false solutions like carbon capture and storage that they then fail to develop. Shell, according to the testimony of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), spent only 11% of its capital on low-carbon technologies between 2009 and 2023.

    The hearing sparked calls for accountability from the fossil fuel industry—such as mechanisms to make climate polluters pay for the transition to renewable energy—and the news of Shell’s profits generated more.

    In the U.K., Labor Shadow Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband proposed increasing the tax on energy company profits. Shell paid the U.K. government around $1.4 billion in taxes in 2023, of which around $300 million went to the Energy Profits Levy, according toThe Guardian. Also last year, it paid its shareholders $23 billion, nine times more than it invested in its “Renewables and Energy Solutions” program.

    “These results show yet again why it is so damning [that Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak refuses to bring in a proper windfall tax on the oil and gas giants,” Miliband said. “These are companies that have made record profits at the expense of working people. Labor says tax these companies fairly so we can invest in clean homegrown energy that will end the cost of living crisis and make Britain energy independent.”

    Greenpeace U.K. called Shell’s latest profits “shameless.”

    “Their reckless hunt for profits needs to end,” the environmental advocacy group wrote on social media. “When will world leaders find their backbone and make polluters pay?”

    When one commenter suggested governments held back out of desire to keep collecting Big Oil’s taxes, Greenpeace fired back, “What taxes?” and noted that Shell avoided paying U.K. taxes for years.

    “At the end of the day we want clean, cheap renewable energy not to face the worst impacts of climate change,” Greenpeace continued. “Solutions exist, we just need the political and industrial will to get them in place.”

    Global Witness and Global Justice Now also took the opportunity to call for an energy transition.

    “This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich,” Kirk said. “This spiral won’t stop until we make the urgent switch to a fairer renewable energy system that puts both people and planet first.”

    McIntosh concluded: “We urgently need to bring a fair and organised end to the fossil fuel era, and that means companies like Shell must stop trying to extract new oil and gas, and start paying what they owe for the loss and damage they’ve caused. Profit announcements like this for a corporate dinosaur like Shell need to become a thing of the past.”

    Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).