Beyond the end of a democratic America, what’s really at stake in the upcoming November elections is the most-likely end to humanity due to climate change.
T-Rump, as well known, is a full-blown denier of climate change, calling it a hoax and gladly would really, really f*ck-up any attempts to combat the accelerating crisis. A good synopsis of a second-term T-Rump presidency and climate change can be found at Mother Jones from yesterday: ‘“It’s real bad.”‘
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris in her speech last year at the UN climate summit in Dubai: ‘“Across our world, communities are choked by drought, washed out by floods, and decimated by hurricanes. Wildfire smoke darkens our skies, and rising seas threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. The urgency of this moment is clear. The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time.”‘
And just now, another bang on the clock:
A new record, yes, but the actual value is so close to the one of July 2023 to be basically indistinguishable from it. What is really striking though is how much warmer these 13 months have been with respect to the previous years. https://t.co/GQSvt5tiev
— Carlo Buontempo (@carlo_tuitter) July 23, 2024
Details via the Guardian this afternoon:
World temperature records were shattered on Sunday on what may be the hottest day scientists have ever logged, data suggests.
Inflamed by the carbon pollution spewed from burning fossils and farming livestock, the average surface air temperature hit 17.09C (62.76F) on Sunday, according to preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which holds data that stretches back to 1940. The reading inched above the previous record of 17.08C (62.74F) set on 6 July last year, but the scientists cautioned that the difference was not statistically distinguishable.
“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” said the Copernicus director, Carlo Buontempo. “We are now in truly uncharted territory – and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”
The finding comes as large parts of the world roast in punishing heat. Hot weather fuels crackling wildfires that burn homes to a crisp, and triggers silent waves of mass mortality that spill through hospital wards and retirement homes.
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who works on the Berkeley Earth data project, said the record was “certainly a worrying sign” on the back of 13 record-setting months and that it should show up in datasets from other research groups. “It also makes it even more likely that 2024 will beat 2023 as the warmest year on record.”
[…]
Prof Peter Thorne, director of the Icarus centre at Maynooth University, Ireland, and a coauthor of an IPCC report that found humanity was responsible for all of the observed rise in temperatures since the 1850s, said Sunday’s record might one day be seen as “anomalously cool” if the world did not rapidly reach net zero emissions.
“Just a quick glance at the range of events happening around the globe right now – wildfires, flooding, heatwaves – tells us that we are not remotely prepared for the extremes that this warmer world has bought us,” he said. “We are even less prepared for what is to come.”
So making voting a way-way-high priority — go Kamala!
Overheated or not, yet here we are once again…
(Illustration out front found here.)