Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

What did he say?

[crazy canuck]

BC has had a significant climate disaster.  A atmospheric river hit us a couple of days ago, the equivalent of the rainfall we would get in the whole month of November fell in one day.  The resulting flooding washed out large sections of vital rail and road transportation links between Vancouver and, well, everyone else in Canada.

The reason the rain had such a devastating effect - the fires we had during the summer.  The forests would normally have mitigated the effects of all that water - but they were burned.  And so the water streamed over ground that could not absorb it.  I always thought the big one to really hit us would be an earthquake - but it was fire and water.

[Jacob]

I don't think this is the big one.

[mongers]

I don't thinkthis is the there will be a bigger one.

FYP?

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, he is right that this is just the tip of the ice berg - using that while it still has meaning.

But if he means a major earthquake would have more devastating effects - no earthquake could wipe out all the buildings and infrastructure this flood has destroyed in the locations that took place.  It is a view that can be held by someone in Vancouver proper - just 50-200 km east of us it is a very different story.

[viper37]

But if he means a major earthquake would have more devastating effects - no earthquake could wipe out all the buildings and infrastructure this flood has destroyed in the locations that took place.  It is a view that can be held by someone in Vancouver proper - just 50-200 km east of us it is a very different story.

I'm guessing most buildings built since the 80s have had strict rules enforced about earthquakes, so the damage would be mitigated in Vancouver.  Outside the cities, earthquakes, unless it is an earth-shattering ones like in movies where the ground splits open in multiple place, it wouldn't have that big of an impact.  Even if a few buildings fall on themselves, they don't bring down all the neighbourhood like dominoes.

Fire and water however...  You just can't realistically protect against this in the countryside.  Not for something of the magnitude that happened in BC

with global warming and deforestation, the trees left standing are dryer, the forest does not have as much humidity retained so the fire will spread faster and further, even if it's an human-caused accident.  And like we've seen in that small community, when it's so damn hot there's flash fires, the people can't evacuate in time.  In a city, worst case scenario, the asphalt melts.  In forested area, people burn.

Water problems can be alleviated, but it's costly.  You have to restrict building in floodable areas, even 100 years flood areas aren't safe now.  Cities will have to keep marshes intac, villages will need more forested area - and then be subject to more danger from fires, damns will need to be higher and stronger and will need to be constantly maintained.

If Quebec is any indication, the lessons from the 2019 floods seems to have been already forgotten by most afflicted cities.

And I understand their stupidity: there is little incentive to prepare for disaster. Sure, you lose everything.  But then the provincial government bails out the city.  And the Federal government bails out the city.  If push comes to shove, the world governments will even bail out the insurance and reinsurance companies.  But they'll stop covering floods and fire long before that (most insurance companies already refuse to cover "acts of God" and don't cover your house if you are in flooded plains, even when the city authorized building there, even when your water damage has nothing to do with outside events, like a broken pipe).

[Jacob]

Yeah, he is right that this is just the tip of the ice berg - using that while it still has meaning.

I think there's worse coming.

But if he means a major earthquake would have more devastating effects - no earthquake could wipe out all the buildings and infrastructure this flood has destroyed in the locations that took place.  It is a view that can be held by someone in Vancouver proper - just 50-200 km east of us it is a very different story.

I think a major natural disaster that hits Vancouver proper will have more a more devastating effects in terms of lives lost, immediate economic damage, and long term economic impact.

This is not to downplay the individual human and community impact, nor the economic devastation of the current floods. But I think this is the first "one of many" that we need to prepare for that on a societal level (indeed, the wildfires were another "one of many" and may have from what I've read contributed to the severity of the current disaster).

To me "the big one" is most likely a major earthquake that hits Vancouver proper, resulting in massive loss of life from the collapse of bridges and buildings, land-slides on the North Shore, and major infrastructure damage (electricity, sewage, water) that may render the city close to uninhabitable until remedied.

Alternately, an earthquake that triggers a major tsunami that catches sizeable coastal communities close to unawares.

While "the big one" traditionally refers to an earthquake, I'm fine with including other natural disasters as well. But I think by its nature it has to be something that's unlikely to happen again in a while, and I think it includes major loss of life. The current floods have neither of those qualities. On the negative side, there's a pretty high risk that this will happen semi-regularly. On the positive side, while sadly there has been loss of life it can't reasonably be described as "major" IMO.

[ulmont]

While "the big one" traditionally refers to an earthquake, I'm fine with including other natural disasters as well.

Those of us in hurricane country (ate a cat 4.9 [150mph winds, 157mph needed to be a 5) hurricane this year that knocked out power for 11 days in 95 degree weather) appreciate the inclusion.

[Jacob]

While "the big one" traditionally refers to an earthquake, I'm fine with including other natural disasters as well.

Those of us in hurricane country (ate a cat 4.9 [150mph winds, 157mph needed to be a 5) hurricane this year that knocked out power for 11 days in 95 degree weather) appreciate the inclusion.

I'm glad you I can make you feel included

[mongers]

Super typhoon Rai smashes into the Philippines, here it's coverage in the news broadcast I watched was just above the celebrity UAE divorce settlement. 

[Sheilbh]

Super typhoon Rai smashes into the Philippines, here it's coverage in the news broadcast I watched was just above the celebrity UAE divorce settlement. 

No comment on the Filipino news. But it's a not a celebrity UAE divorce settlement.

It's a (huge) divorce settlement against the ruler of Dubai. The reason it is so high is to help protect his ex-wife and their children from the threat he poses to them. The court found that he had orchestrated to abduction of his two other children (including one being snatched on the streets of Cambridge), he'd subjected his ex-wife to an intimidation campaign. That he used Pegasus spyware to hack into her phone and those of her friends (and two of her divorce lawyers) and that at least once she had moved house and he would have agents buy the surrounding properties.

It's a divorce involving the leader of an ally using the full resources of a state against his ex-wife and children (who are resident in the UK).

I think it's a very legitimate news story.

[mongers]

Super typhoon Rai smashes into the Philippines, here it's coverage in the news broadcast I watched was just above the celebrity UAE divorce settlement. 

No comment on the Filipino news. But it's a not a celebrity UAE divorce settlement.

It's a (huge) divorce settlement against the ruler of Dubai. The reason it is so high is to help protect his ex-wife and their children from the threat he poses to them. The court found that he had orchestrated to abduction of his two other children (including one being snatched on the streets of Cambridge), he'd subjected his ex-wife to an intimidation campaign. That he used Pegasus spyware to hack into her phone and those of her friends (and two of her divorce lawyers) and that at least once she had moved house and he would have agents buy the surrounding properties.

It's a divorce involving the leader of an ally using the full resources of a state against his ex-wife and children (who are resident in the UK).

I think it's a very legitimate news story.

[mongers]

This is a thoroughly worthwhile project often carried out by former oil industry employees:

https://welldonefoundation.org/

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/11/oceans-hottest-temperatures-research-climate-crisis

Hottest ocean temperatures in history recorded last year

Ocean heating driven by human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, in sixth consecutive year record has been broken

The world's oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere's temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans.

Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Niña event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.

"The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and co-author of the research, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise.

Oceans take up about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity, causing them to acidify. This degrades coral reefs, home to a quarter of the world's marine life and the provider of food for more than 500m people, and can prove harmful to individual species of fish.

As the world warms from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other activities, the oceans have taken the brunt of the extra heat. More than 90% of the heat generated over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans, temporarily helping spare humanity, and other land-based species, from temperatures that would already be catastrophic.

The amount of heat soaked up by the oceans is enormous. Last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the warming occurs, absorbed 14 more zettajoules (a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules) than it did in 2020. This amount of extra energy is 145 times greater than the world's entire electricity generation which, by comparison, is about half of a zettajoule.

Long-term ocean warming is strongest in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, the new research states, although the north Pacific has had a "dramatic" increase in heat since 1990 and the Mediterranean Sea posted a clear high temperature record last year.

The heating trend is so pronounced it's clear to ascertain the fingerprint of human influence in just four years of records, according to John Abraham, another of the study's co-authors. "Ocean heat content is one of the best indicators of climate change," added Abraham, an expert in thermal sciences at University of St Thomas.

"Until we reach net zero emissions, that heating will continue, and we'll continue to break ocean heat content records, as we did this year," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and another of the 23 researchers who worked on the paper. "Better awareness and understanding of the oceans are a basis for the actions to combat climate change."

[Gaijin de Moscu]

This Telegraph article made me curious about the white bears and their habits. Interesting that they would they migrate from Alaska to Siberia across the ice and sea, following the temperature changes in Alaska:

https://twitter.com/telegraphworld/status/1477653423143145472?s=21

Never seen so many white bears in one pic