Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Syt]

Days >30°C in Vienna since the 1870s:

[Syt]

Also, nights that didn't drop below 20°C.

[DGuller]

To be fair, not deny that the climate is warming, but these kinds of statistics literally leverage the increases in the mean temperature.  A small change in the mean can lead to a very large change in the exceedance probability (in this case, probability of exceeding 30 degrees).  A change in the variation of daily temperatures without a change the mean temperature can also lead to this kind of a pattern.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't that exactly the point though? And for many cities, the risk?

[mongers]

Isn't that exactly the point though? And for many cities, the risk?

Well DG is looking at it from a statistical perspective and yours is from living a life viewpoint.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Vienna is ill-equipped for hot days, it is like London in that respect. If it is just a few days a year then there is almost a sense of holiday, people take their ties off, knock off an hour early to have a beer etc etc. This is not feasible for 40 days a year 

Contrariwise, to comment on the 30% increase in hot days that England will experience by 2030 (or was it 2040?); Preston has had three oppressively hot days in the past five years, so a 30% increase is only 2 extra hot days per decade :flatcap

[Syt]

It's a combination of climate change and city planning - for a long time the city would renovate or create public spaces by largely just paving them over, with maybe a few trees cemented up to their trunks. Or remove roadside trees to make room for parking.

It's slowly starting to change, but it's gonna take a while.

[mongers]

It's a combination of climate change and city planning - for a long time the city would renovate or create public spaces by largely just paving them over, with maybe a few trees cemented up to their trunks. Or remove roadside trees to make room for parking.

It's slowly starting to change, but it's gonna take a while.

;yes:

Turns out having streets cleared for convienience of cars and road/pavement sweepers was a very short-term policy: green those cities.

[mongers]

Already 11 days into its heatwave, Greece's national weather institute on Saturday warned reprieve was still days away, setting this up to be the longest hot spell the country has ever seen.

"According to the data, we will probably go through 16-17 days of a heatwave, which has never happened before in our country," Kostas Lagouvardos, director of research at the National Observatory, told ERT television Saturday.

The previous heatwave record in Greece was set in 1987 when scorching temperatures higher than 39C [102F] lasted for 11 days.

Full article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/22/greece-faces-its-hottest-july-weekend-in-50-years

[Duque de Bragança]

Still not too hot in 'Atlantic' Portugal as in Bragança with 27°C.

21°C in Paris with a few showers now and then. 

Should start to heat in Alentejo (south) by next week-end.

[Josquius]

Torrential rain for a week :/

[Jacob]

If weather patterns change, places with increased rainfall are likely to be better off than those with morr and longer heatwaves.

[Syt]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/25/lord-frost-rising-temperatures-likely-beneficial-britain/

Lord Frost: Rising temperatures likely to be beneficial for Britain

Former Brexit negotiator's comments come as Conservative Party becomes engulfed in row about its net zero commitments

Rising temperatures "are likely to be beneficial" for Britain because seven times more people in the UK die from cold than from heat, Lord Frost has said.

The former Brexit negotiator said the fall in deaths related to cold temperatures had "more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperatures" since the start of the millennium, calling on the Government to tackle climate change differently.

He told the Lords it was the "rational thing" to "move away from the current high-cost mitigation efforts, efforts which also involve huge investments in unproductive renewables, huge changes in lifestyles as well as crushing economic growth".

Lord Frost said mitigation should be pursued by "investing in effective energy production, nuclear, gas, other technologies as they emerge, and meanwhile spend the manageable sums that we need to on adaptation so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge".

He said: "Now, I'm not sceptical about adaptation. I'm sceptical about mitigation."

His comments come as the Conservative Party becomes engulfed in a row about its net zero commitments.

After Labour failed to win the Uxbridge by-election amid a voter backlash against the expansion of London's ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) under Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor, there have been calls from within the Tory party for it to rethink some of its own climate change policies.

In an interview, Rishi Sunak said the Government would "make progress towards net zero" but "in a proportionate and pragmatic way", declining to explicitly say that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would go ahead in 2030 as planned.

Campaigners have said it is the wrong time to falter on net zero commitments, pointing to record global temperatures last week and wildfires raging across the Greek island of Rhodes as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Lord Frost said that in the UK "more will need to be spent on things like flood protection and reservoirs", but added: "Digging deeper, what are those consequences of the hotter, warmer summers and warmer, wetter winters? At the moment, seven times as many people die from cold as from heat in Britain. Rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial.

"The Government Actuary's Department, no less, wrote in April this year, and I quote: 'It is the low winter temperatures that have a greater effect on the number of deaths.'

"Since the start of the millennium, a decline in deaths from cold temperature periods has more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperature over the same period."

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, a Green Party peer, accused Lord Frost of reading "Right-wing conspiracy theories" and making "denialist tropes".

Lord Callanan, the energy minister, said: "Adaptation and net zero in fact go hand-in-hand – achieving net zero actually requires adaptation. We have a huge opportunity to make the substantial net zero investments that are resilient to current and future climate change risks and doing so can, of course, prevent future higher costs.

"Let me, for the avoidance of any doubt, confirm that delivering net zero is of course vitally important to this Government."

Incidentally, "Lord Frost" sounds like the name of a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

[Richard Hakluyt]

He's a stupid cockwomble. There are fruitflies that would make better peers.

[crazy canuck]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/25/lord-frost-rising-temperatures-likely-beneficial-britain/

Lord Frost: Rising temperatures likely to be beneficial for Britain

Former Brexit negotiator's comments come as Conservative Party becomes engulfed in row about its net zero commitments

Rising temperatures "are likely to be beneficial" for Britain because seven times more people in the UK die from cold than from heat, Lord Frost has said.

The former Brexit negotiator said the fall in deaths related to cold temperatures had "more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperatures" since the start of the millennium, calling on the Government to tackle climate change differently.

He told the Lords it was the "rational thing" to "move away from the current high-cost mitigation efforts, efforts which also involve huge investments in unproductive renewables, huge changes in lifestyles as well as crushing economic growth".

Lord Frost said mitigation should be pursued by "investing in effective energy production, nuclear, gas, other technologies as they emerge, and meanwhile spend the manageable sums that we need to on adaptation so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge".

He said: "Now, I'm not sceptical about adaptation. I'm sceptical about mitigation."

His comments come as the Conservative Party becomes engulfed in a row about its net zero commitments.

After Labour failed to win the Uxbridge by-election amid a voter backlash against the expansion of London's ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) under Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor, there have been calls from within the Tory party for it to rethink some of its own climate change policies.

In an interview, Rishi Sunak said the Government would "make progress towards net zero" but "in a proportionate and pragmatic way", declining to explicitly say that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would go ahead in 2030 as planned.

Campaigners have said it is the wrong time to falter on net zero commitments, pointing to record global temperatures last week and wildfires raging across the Greek island of Rhodes as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Lord Frost said that in the UK "more will need to be spent on things like flood protection and reservoirs", but added: "Digging deeper, what are those consequences of the hotter, warmer summers and warmer, wetter winters? At the moment, seven times as many people die from cold as from heat in Britain. Rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial.

"The Government Actuary's Department, no less, wrote in April this year, and I quote: 'It is the low winter temperatures that have a greater effect on the number of deaths.'

"Since the start of the millennium, a decline in deaths from cold temperature periods has more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperature over the same period."

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, a Green Party peer, accused Lord Frost of reading "Right-wing conspiracy theories" and making "denialist tropes".

Lord Callanan, the energy minister, said: "Adaptation and net zero in fact go hand-in-hand – achieving net zero actually requires adaptation. We have a huge opportunity to make the substantial net zero investments that are resilient to current and future climate change risks and doing so can, of course, prevent future higher costs.

"Let me, for the avoidance of any doubt, confirm that delivering net zero is of course vitally important to this Government."

Incidentally, "Lord Frost" sounds like the name of a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=I%27m+mr+cold&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:22e24a23,vid:fEbFfoBPfw4


He might want to read a recent article in the NY Times reporting on recently published research that the current warming his Island might shut down early then first estimated and perhaps by the end of this century.