Raymond Zhong, How Extreme Heat Kills, Sickens, Strains and Ages Us, New York Times, June 13.
Global warming has made the severe heat wave that has smothered much of Pakistan and India this spring hotter and much more likely to occur, climate scientists with World Weather Attribution, a collaborative effort among scientists to examine extreme weather events for the influence, or lack thereof, of climate change, said Monday. They said that the chances of such a heat wave increased by at least 30 times since the 19th century, before widespread emissions of planet-warming gases began. The relentless heat, with temperatures soaring beyond 100 degrees Fahrenheit for days, particularly in Northwestern India and Southeastern Pakistan, has killed at least 90 people, led to flooding from glacial melting in the Himalayas, contributed to power shortages and stunted India’s wheat crop, helping to fuel an emerging global food crisis. The study found that a heat wave like this one now has about a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. Before warming began, the chances would have been at least about 1 in 3,000. And the chances would increase to as much as 1 in 5, the researchers said, if the world reaches 2 degrees Celsius of warming, as it is on track to do unless nations sharply reduce emissions.”
New York Times climate reporter Henry Fountain, in Climate Change Fuels Heat Wave in India and Pakistan, Scientists Find, May 23.
Continued reliance on nuclear power going forward now is part of the price of our collective past failures.”
Drew Keeling, commenting on CTC post, For Climate’s Sake, Don’t Shut U.S. Nukes.
This is a fossil fuel war. It’s clear we cannot continue to live this way, it will destroy our civilization.”
Svitlana Krakovska, leader of the 11-member delegation from Ukraine to the 2022 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), quoted in ‘This is a fossil fuel war’: Ukraine’s top climate scientist speaks out, The Guardian, March 9, by Oliver Milman.
Some survivors of the Indian heat wave become ecoterrorists and use swarms of drones to crash passenger planes; no one can figure out how to stop the drones, and everyone gets scared. People fly less. They teleconference, or take long-distance trains, or even sail. They work remotely on transatlantic crossings. It’s not how we want change to happen. But, in the end, the jet age turns out to have been just that — an age.”
Joshua Rothman, “Can Science Fiction Wake Us Up to Our Climate Reality?,” a portrait of Kim Stanley Robinson and his 2020 novel, “The Ministry For The Future,” New Yorker magazine, Jan. 31, 2022 issue.
Breaking a long-standing national temperature record is hard (Canada’s old high-temperature record dated to 1937); surpassing it by eight degrees Fahrenheit is, in theory, statistically impossible. It was hotter in Canada that day [Tuesday, June 29, 2020] than on any day ever recorded in Florida, or in Europe, or in South America.”
The Year in Climate: A summer that really scared scientists, by Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, Dec. 16.
We are in a climate crisis. There is no room for the left hand and the right hand to be doing different things. It’s not credible to say you’re fighting for 1.5 degrees while you’re calling for increased oil production.”
Jennifer Morgan, executive director, Greenpeace International, reacting to President Biden’s appeal to OPEC countries to pump more oil, in Even as Biden Pushes Clean Energy, He Seeks More Oil Production, New York Times, Nov. 2.
Pretty wild to see people imply there’s going to be a “next time” for climate legislation. I mean, sure, you can technically pass a climate bill whenever. 2100, even. But I think the nature of the problem has eluded you.”
New Republic contributing editor Osita Nwanevu, via Twitter, Oct. 27.
“The penalty on pollution is really important. All the analyses show that you get big reductions in carbon emissions if you have a penalty on polluting. Take that away, and all you have is another government subsidy for renewable energy.”
Harvard prof. and former Obama advisor Joseph Aldy, on Sen. Joe Manchin’s bid to remove penalties for utilities that fail to rapidly phase out carbon electricity from Pres. Biden’s proposed Clean Electricity Performance Program, in NY Times, This Powerful Democrat Linked to Fossil Fuels Will Craft the U.S. Climate Plan, Sept. 19.
It looks like in 1945. But this is a war without bombs. Nature is hitting back.”
Günter Prybyla, 86, who during World War II spent five days buried under rubble in a bombed-out basement when he was 8 years old. — NY Times, Katrin Bennhold, After Deadly Floods, a German Village Rethinks Its Relationship to Nature, August 6.
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