So Many Weather Disasters, So Little Time

There’s a whole lotta suffering going on

I was overwhelmed yesterday by a barrage of news and photos documenting climate-related disasters world wide. Today’s column is going to be short on analysis and long on quotes and photographs cribbed off social media. It’s the best way to tell the story. 

I’ll start with Bill McKibben’s latest post- Fossil Fuel Kills, Asians in particular - New data that shocked even me. 

• New data last week from University of Chicago researchers showed that across South Asia, air pollution—mostly from burning fossil fuels—is robbing people of five years of life on average. Five years! If you live in Delhi, the most polluted big city on the planet, that number is an unimaginable 11.9 years. If you would have lived to 70, you died at 58. Thank about that. Across the region, “particulate pollution levels are currently more than 50 percent higher than at the start of the century and now overshadow” other health risks. Every breath that people take is killing them, every hour of every day…

First, McKibben cites a truly terrifying story from the Washington Post:

• Pakistan is the epicenter of a new global wave of disease and death linked to climate change, according to a Washington Post analysis of climate data, leading scientific studies, interviews with experts and reporting from some of the places bearing the brunt of Earth’s heating. This examination of climate-fueled illnesses — tied to hotter temperatures, and swifter passage of pathogens and toxins — shows how countries across the globe are ill-prepared for the insidious, intensifying risks to almost every facet of human health.

…And here’s what it looks like on the ground…

• On a recent 109-degree day, babies wailed and adults vomited into buckets in the crowded heat stroke ward of Syed Abdullah Shah Institute of Medical Sciences, a 350-bed government medical center in central Sindh. With just seven beds for heat stroke victims, patients’ parents and relatives crowded together on the mattresses. Nurses in green scrubs attached bags of intravenous hydration fluids to the arms of even the tiniest patients as fans whirled and two air conditioners dripped and chugged.

• The number of heat stroke patients coming to the hospital in summer has increased around 20 percent a year in the last five years, according to M. Moinuddin Siddiqui, the hospital’s medical director, at a time when Pakistan experienced three of its five hottest years on record.

The story brings to mind the opening chapters of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future, describing on the ground misery in India where a whole town dies during an extreme heat wave. 

Then McKibben calls our attention to another Washington Post story explaining the impact of ever-increasing temperatures in the Mediterranean:

• “The number of days of high or extreme fire danger in southern Europe is already at levels we thought we wouldn’t see until 2050,” said Jesus San Miguel, a senior researcher at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. “Because of climate change, we are going much faster than we thought.”

• Wildfires — some record size — have been turning virgin forests into preternatural moonscapes and trigging mass evacuations of developed areas. Fires are threatening cultural heritage, too, in a part of the world known as much for the ruins of ancient civilization as the joys of the modern vacation.

The Mediterranean climate story got bigger today. 

Flooding in Spain, late summer heatwave in Central Europe and flooding in Greece, with the most extreme conditions yet to come.

France experienced its hottest September day since at least 1947.

A **MEDICANE**—A very rare hurricane/cyclone-like storm in the Mediterranean Sea, due to very hot waters from Europe’s 2023 heat dome emerging this week, dumping astronomical amounts of rain and causing flooding in Greece. Hurricane-level wind gust also recorded already.

A substantial Saharan dust event is ongoing across portions of western Europe, as seen here by the NOAA-20 satellite.

Record rainfall caused major flooding in Spain over the weekend, resulting in at least three deaths. Daylight revealed some of the catastrophic damage left behind by flash flooding in central Spain.

Zagora, Greece recorded a jaw-dropping 528 mm (21 inches) of rain in just 10 hours.

Heat records are falling all over the world.

In China, there was rain. A lot of rain. In Yongtai, Fuzhou, the rainfall was as high as 119mm (4.68 inches) in one hour, causing severe flooding in the county and interrupting communications

***

Fierce storm in southern Brazil kills 21 people and displaces more than 1,600 Via The Associated Press

• At least 21 people died in southern Brazil due to a fierce storm that caused floods in several cities, authorities said Tuesday.

• Rio Grande do Sul Gov. Eduardo Leite said the death toll is the state’s highest due to a climate event. He said about 60 cities had been battered by the storm, which was classified as an extratropical cyclone.

Hurricane Hilary notwithstanding, we are so lucky to be living in San Diego. 

Extreme heat forces school closings and early dismissals  Via NBC News

• More than 50 million people are under heat alerts from Texas and Oklahoma north to Minnesota and Michigan, and in Mid-Atlantic states such as Virginia and Maryland through the Northeast.

• This week’s heat wave comes after what was a stifling long weekend for parts of the country. Nearly 30 heat records were set across the country on Labor Day, and forecasters said dozens more could fall in the coming days.

• Studies have shown that heat waves are becoming longer and more frequent and intense as a result of climate change.

Tropical Storm Lee forms, forecast to be powerful Atlantic hurricane

Updated model has been incredibly consistent with an absolutely remarkable intensification. Hurricane #Lee probably reaches into Category 5 this weekend. 180 mph winds possible. This image is for is Saturday evening, a few hundred miles NE of Puerto Rico.

I’m not sure what it will take to get Americans angry enough to demand an end to the dirty energy industry’s bribe-laden lobbyists and its misinformation/lies. It seems like there a rich dudes everywhere shelling out a lot of money to undermine the efforts of good people trying to do something about climate change.

Former Vice President Al Gore’s latest Ted Talk on  the environment is a barn burner coming from a politician. (Come back and watch it later if you don’t have 25 minutes to spare right now)

Here’s the YouTube description:

• In a blistering talk, Nobel Laureate Al Gore looks at the two main obstacles to climate solutions and gives his view of how we might actually solve the environmental crisis in time. You won't want to miss his searing indictment of fossil fuel companies for walking back their climate commitments -- and his call for a global rethink of the roles of polluting industries in politics and finance.