This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/collapse by /u/LastWeekInCollapse on 2024-07-14 06:02:47+00:00.
Coal, bombs, gang warfare, an assassination attempt on Trump, forest degradation, and a lot more heat records.
Last Week in Collapse: July 7-13, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-shattering, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 133rd newsletter. You can find the June 30-July 6 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these posts (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox with the Substack version.
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Hurricane Beryl weakened as it moved north from Texas into the United States, but still caused flash flooding as far as New England—and a record number of tornado alerts for July. At least 8 Americans died as the storm moved through the southern United States. Cyclones in Canada can also spread wildfire smoke aerosols.
Although Colombia continues to lose forest cover each year, the amount deforested hit a record low for over 20 years. In 2023, 792 square km of forest was lost—equivalent to about half the size of Greater London. A Nature study on forest “degradation from selective logging, fire and edge effects is a major driver of carbon and biodiversity loss, with annual rates comparable to those of deforestation.” The effect of degradation doesn’t stop at the edge of roads or farms, but can be felt over one mile into the forest as well.
Run for the hills. A study in Geophysical Research Letters concluded that high elevation regions (2000m+) will be much more likely to preserve (and even increase) their biodiversity than lower-lying regions, as climate change worsens. The study used “Shannon's diversity index” (SHDI) to evaluate biodiversity over the past 70 years, and predicts high elevation zones will also become refugia for displaced species.
A study from Earth’s Future found that the capacity of American forests to store carbon has been impacted by Drought and wildfires. 19 forest regions were examined in the American West. “Global drought trends are on the rise, leading to diminished terrestrial water storage, increased plant water stress, and elevated tree mortality. In many places, extreme droughts are amplifying the frequency, size and severity of climate-sensitive disturbances, like fire and insect outbreaks, that can cause widespread tree mortality and convert vast quantities of carbon from live to dead pools,” the authors write.
Flash Droughts are becoming increasingly common in South Asia, particularly in the “crop season.” The reason: “meteorological forcing,” which is basically a process in which air rises, preventing the transportation of moist air to the region. One lead researcher claims, “flash droughts will expand and worsen in the future, requiring adaptation measures for the water, agriculture, and energy sectors.”
Scientists published a 52-page white paper through the University of Chicago to debate the pros, cons, and potentials for geoengineering to be employed to protect (or prolong the life of) glaciers. The paper’s top priority is reducing, or at least slowing, the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. Scientists proposed as possible solutions: constructing large underwater curtains to prevent warm ocean water from undermining glaciers, boring lots of holes into glaciers to impact meltwater runoff, and attempting to artificially freeze the bottoms of glaciers. “Even the most optimistic reductions of future greenhouse gas emission, in the absence of either carbon dioxide removal or solar geoengineering used at sufficient scale to significantly reduce radiative forcing, will not prevent ice-sheet melt and attendant sea level rise…”
After briefly dipping below record global sea surface temperatures, earth broke the record again, for early July. The Solomon Islands set a new July minimum temperature, 27.5 °C (81.5 °F), and several locations in California also set all-time highs—but Death Valley did not break the all-time hottest temperature as predicted. Earth has exceeded 1.5 °C warming for 12+ months in a row now.
Other places in the United States set heat records, and 146M+ people were put under heat alerts—and at least 6 died. NYC hit temperatures so high that a swing bridge’s metal expanded so much that it couldn’t close again. A city in Oman set a new July record, as did the Azores, and temperatures are reaching such severities in Japan that the government has added a new level of heatstroke warning. Meanwhile, La Plata, in Argentina, tied its all-time low temperature, and southern Africa felt a few new cold records fall. And a heat wave struck eastern Europe & the Balkans.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal miners in Zimbabwe, alongside seasonal Droughts and floods, are impacting the water quality, biodiversity, and forest cover in the country. Desperate for a tiny bit of gold, these miners have compounded stresses for subsistence farmers. In Myanmar, 31,000+ people were evacuated to avoid flooding. So far this year, over 35,000 sq km of Russia has been burnt by wildfires, equivalent to a little more than Taiwan.
A 60-page white paper examined the impacts of wildfires on earth and civilization, according to a bunch of scientists attending a conference last year. Overall earth territory burned is down from 2001, although fire intensity and fire risk has risen.
“Changing trends in fire regimes (e.g., fire intensity or spatial organisation) in response to climate change (e.g., drought, loss of ice or snow, or changing temperature) and human activity (e.g., firefighting, deforestation, urban expansion, or land management), are altering interactions between fire and other components of the Earth System, including societies….the magnitude and frequency of extreme fire events have been increasing rapidly, particularly in extra-tropical and polar regions….Increasing fire weather potential is expected to impact environments where ample fuel loads are present and where fuel dryness is the dominant control on fire….Prime examples of a sensitivity to climate include the temperate and boreal forests, such as those in boreal Canada, western Northern America, Siberia, and southeast Australia….there is consensus in the community that humanity will see more and larger impacts in the coming years…” -excerpts from the report
Two died in Turkish flooding. Uttarakhand, India, set a new heat & flooding record for the last 2 months. 5+ people died from flooding in South Korea with several thousand evacuated; part of that country [felt its worst flooding](https://watchers.news/2024/07/10/south-korea-hit-by-most-in...
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