Tag Archives: Extreme Weather

Silent Earth Review

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“Silent Earth” has received a five-star “must read🏆” review on Reedsy. Blending scientific depth and practical foresight, this book is both a wake-up call and a guide for navigating environmental collapse.

Synopsis

Silent Earth is a technical reference for civil engineers, land-use and urban planners, and city administrators. It covers a broad range of topics and should serve as a springboard for specialists wishing to learn more about adapting to climate change and biosphere decline.

As the Earth’s living systems deteriorate at an unprecedented rate, human societies face the urgent challenge of adapting to an increasingly unstable environment. Physical Geographer Garry Rogers offers a clear-eyed examination of our options, arguing that while complete restoration of the biosphere is no longer feasible, strategic adaptation remains possible. Drawing on extensive research, Rogers outlines practical approaches for communities to maintain essential functions as ecosystem services decline. While large-scale adaptation efforts face significant barriers, this groundbreaking work shows how planners and administrators can implement effective strategies to enhance resilience in a transforming world. Essential reading for navigating our environmental future. Ideal for policymakers, scholars, environmentalists, and engaged citizens, Silent Earth challenges readers to envision a future where, even amidst biosphere decline, adaptation and innovation can pave the way for survival.

Garry Rogers’ Silent Earth: Adaptations for Life in a Devastated Biosphere explores the escalating degradation of Earth’s biosphere, offering strategies for human adaptation. It points to the realistic inevitability of this need to adjust, as humanity is facing the consequences of irreversible damage already done. Rogers goes beyond the simple dialogue of climate change, expanding and examining the interconnected impact of the entire biosphere, from current impacts such loss of biodiversity to coral reef bleaching.

In Section IV, Rogers draws upon research to emphasize that as soon as 2030 we are on the brink, and that we urgently need to act not only to prevent further destruction, but also to prepare for survival:

The cumulative and synergistic effects of human impacts are pushing ecosystems closer to tipping points. Feedback loops and shifting ecosystem boundaries are accelerating environmental change, while these effects interact in complex ways, amplifying their individual impacts. As we approach 2030, addressing these interconnected challenges will require an integrated approach to conservation and climate action to mitigate the far-reaching impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem stability.

The strength of Silent Earth lies in Section V, which presents a blueprint for adaptation. Rogers proposes various strategies from water management to cultural and governance reforms. His emphasis on grassroots action and local resilience is both pragmatic and empowering, especially given his acknowledgment of the political and societal inertia that is likely to hinder adaptation on a wider scale.

Silent Earth is thoroughly researched, intellectually stimulating, and well-cited. Rogers excels in synthesizing vast amounts of ecological, social, and technological data into a cohesive narrative.

Silent Earth is a valuable resource for those interested in interdisciplinary approaches to global challenges. It’s an important and thought-provoking read for anyone seeking to understand and address the complex realities of ecological decline.

Reviewed by: Brittney Banning

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States At Risk: America’s Preparedness Report Card

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This report card explores the preparedness actions that each of the 50 states are taking in relation to their current and future changes in climate threats.  From: statesatrisk.org

Here’s an interesting map.

Global Climate Emergency declared by Scientists at Columbia University Earth Institute

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Global Climate Emergency

Climate-change projections published by scientists at the Columbia University Earth Institute have shifted from warnings to emergency alarms.  The scientists are ringing GarryRogersthe emergency bell because of the coming loss of human health and lives.  However, the real disaster lies with natural ecosystems. Earth’s webs of life constructed of interacting plants and animals will suffer far greater and more important loses than will human civilization.  For one thing, humans can emigrate (if their neighbors let them) from landscapes becoming uninhabitable.  Plants and most animals cannot.  (If you want a refresher course on climate change, this is an excellent review:  Global Warming Basics.)

In addition to the U. S. Southwest:

The tropics and the Middle East in summer are in danger of becoming practically uninhabitable by the end of the century if business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions continue, because wet bulb temperature could approach the level at which the human body is unable to cool itself under even well-ventilated outdoor conditions.[3] —James Hansen and Makiko Sato

The ecosystems of the tropics are the most diverse and complex.  Desertification there is an incomprehensible tragedy for the Earth.

I excerpted the following from:

Regional Climate Change and National Responsibilities

“Discussion:  We conclude that continued business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions will begin to make low latitudes inhospitable.  If accompanied by multi-meter sea level rise,[11] resulting forced migration and economic disruption could be devastating.

The overall message that climate science delivers to society, policymakers, and the public alike is this: we have a global emergency. . . . We argue that country-by-country goals, the approach of the 21st Conference of the Parties[13] cannot lead to rapid phasedown of fossil fuel emissions, as long as fossil fuels are allowed to be the cheapest energy.  It will be necessary to include a carbon fee that allows the external costs of fossil fuels to be incorporated in their price.  Border duties on products from countries without a carbon fee, would lead to most nations adopting a carbon fee.”–James Hansen and Makiko Sato.

Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions

(a) Updates of Figure 5 in Hansen and Sato (2001) “Trends of measured climate forcing agents” (also in PDF) and (b)same quantities as in (a) but in linear scale (also in PDF.) [Last modified: 2015/08/07]

Updates of Figure 16 in Hansen (2003), “Can we defuse the global warming time bomb?” [Figure also in PDF. Last modified: 2015/08/08]

[Figure also in PDF. Last modified: 2015/08/08]Data source: Boden, T.A., G. Marland, and R.J. Andres. 2015. Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2015. Digital data are available at CDIAC web pages and used for 1751-2011. BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 data are used for extensions to 2014.

See More Figures.

GR:  For a broader discussion of the emergency, go to http://robertscribbler.com.

Population News: El Niño

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Here’s another of Joe Bish’s Daily Emails (click and subscribe).

El Niño Is Fueling One of the Scariest Droughts In Recent History

By Joe Bish, Issue Advocacy Director for the Population Media Center

Joe Bish“Perhaps the best way to introduce today’s content is to quote from journalist Maddie Stone, writing for Gizmodo: “Imagine if crop yields across the United States dropped more than 50 percent in a single year. It’s difficult to fathom just how catastrophic this would be-but that’s exactly what’s happening in Ethiopia right now, thanks to a deadly, El Niño-fueled drought.”
“As you will see as you scan the headlines, . . .”

Humankind’s Last Days Below 400 PPM CO2?

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“By mid November of 2015, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory had again risen above 400 parts per million. Over the past two weeks, these levels maintained. And even though we may see a few days during which CO2 levels drop below that key threshold during late November and, perhaps, early December, those days could well be the last.”  From: robertscribbler.com

GR:  What does 400 parts per million mean for the Earth?  From the article:  “Atmospheric CO2 levels remaining at 400 parts per million for any significant period will push the Earth climate to warm by between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius. It will push for sea levels to rise by at least 75 feet. In other words, a world at 400 parts per million is a world radically changed. A world that human beings have never seen before. And as a cautionary note, the total forcing from all greenhouse gasses currently emitted by humans is now in the range of 485 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. A level well beyond the current 400 parts per million threshold and one that likely equates to around 4 degrees Celsius worth of long term warming.”

Nature News Digests

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GarryRogersNature News Digests:

Record-Breaking Wildfires, Greenland Melting and Earth’s Hottest Month Ever

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Humans have some advantages over other animal species, but like the animals, we can’t control our urge to reproduce and our desire for the security of material wealth. Sentient but not sapient, sensitive but not wise, our advantages have let us to eliminate competition, disease, and danger. Thus, nothing can stop our booming population and our world-destroying “environmental footprint.”  (ACD = anthropogenic climate disruption)

Exposing the Big Game's avatarExposing the Big Game

The following article from Truthout.org covers all that I was going to go over in Part 2 of Global Warming: the Future is Now, so here’s this instead:

Featured Image -- 10312

Dahr Jamail | The World on Fire:

The US is now officially in the worst wildfire season in its history, as almost 7.5 million acres across the country have burned up since spring.

Articles about ACD’s impacts are now being published in more mainstream outlets, carrying titles that include verbiage like “the point of no return,” and it is high time for that, given what we are witnessing.

A recently published study by the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Reliance revealed that “major shocks” to worldwide food production will become at least three times more likely within the next 25 years due to increasingly extreme weather events generated by ACD. One of the coauthors of the report…

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Worst Flood in 200 Years — 1.2 Million People Displaced by Rising Waters in India

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Global Warming Extremes

robertscribbler's avatarrobertscribbler

When you’re rolling with loaded climate dice the situation, as Indian disaster relief officials stated earlier today, is indeed grim.

*   *   *   *   *

The Earth has been warmed by 1 degree Celsius over the past 135 years due to hundreds of billions of tons of fossil fuels burned. That’s a pace of warming more than 10 times faster than at the end of the last ice age. And with that one degree Celsius of global temperature increase, we get a 7 percent increase in the rate of evaporation and precipitation. Unfortunately, that heat-driven alteration in the hydrological cycle is not even. In some places, where the heat piles high into great atmospheric domes and ridges, we see excessive drought. In other places, the moisture finds a weak spot in the heat and then we see inundation. The ridiculous country-spanning floods that have now become all-too-common.

Komen Monsoon India August 4

(The…

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November-Type Gales Hit England in August — Looks Like a Weird Atmospheric Response to El Nino + Climate Change May Be Unfolding

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Conservatives are beginning the shift. If these long-range forecasts come true, we might see a stampede. Perhaps we could see more than 32% by 2030.

robertscribbler's avatarrobertscribbler

Atmospheric ENSO INDEX

(Atmospheric El Nino Index by WSI shows a very strong atmospheric response is unfolding. But long range weather maps, long range NOAA forecast shows an atypical pattern for El Nino. Image source: WSI.)

They say that a picture can paint a thousand words. How about a graph that exceeds 100 El Ninos? It may not jump out at you at first, but that’s what we’re looking at above.

This graph, provided by Weather Channel Affiliate WSI (and based on atmospheric data collected by NOAA) represents intensity of atmospheric response patterns to El Nino. Typically, this means cloudiness at the Central Pacific Equator, the propagation of near equatorial westerlies, atmospheric wave propagation in the Jet Stream, and storm track amplification. In other words, teleconnections.

On the left side of the above graph, we see positive and negative numbers indicating standard deviation correlation to an ENSO neutral state. Push into 2…

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