Warm but not on the boil side this late-afternoon Wednesday here in California’s Central Valley — just regular summertime shit with temperatures simmering just under the century mark, with more of the same expected the next few days.

Although weather continues to be a major news story, back east in DC the shit-hitting-the-Republican fan is considered nothing short of “despicable and disgraceful,” rightly says Liz Cheney. Republicans in government are worthless. Despite the raw nature of our nation’s capitol and the one-sided debate on how to investigate an attack made on said capitol, the weather and climate are the bigger stories, or actually, one giant, ugly story.
Most-likely may be bigger than the virus.

Yesterday, John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, in a speech at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens: ‘“I am very sorry to say, the suffering of COVID will be magnified many times over in a world that does not grapple with, and ultimately halt, the climate crisis … We don’t have the luxury of waiting until COVID is vanquished to take up the climate challenge.”‘

Climate change is here:

Every ten years, NOAA releases an analysis of U.S. weather of the past three decades that have come to represent the new “normals” of our changing climate. Is global warming affecting the Normals? You bet. https://t.co/2PxjCYsBaS pic.twitter.com/7TAvAuGqGe

— NOAA Climate.gov (@NOAAClimate) July 21, 2021

Most obvious in the last couple of months is the heat. As the charts above show, it’s been getting hotter and hotter even as we speak — and this summer has been a record into itself.
An in-depth view of weather influenced by climate change at The Washington Post yesterday, and those ‘heat domes’ — some noted points:

As viewed on a weather map of the globe, no fewer than five powerful heat domes are swelling over the landmasses of the Northern Hemisphere. These zones of high pressure in the atmosphere, intensified by climate change, are generating unforgiving blasts of heat in North America, Europe and Asia simultaneously.

The heat domes, in a number of instances, are the source of record high temperatures and are contributing to swarms of wildfires in western North America and in Siberia. In recent days, all-time record highs have been set in Turkey, northern Japan and Northern Ireland.

Lined up like a parade, the heat domes are also part of a traffic jam of weather systems that instigated the flood disaster in Europe last week.

Heat domes like this are normal at this time of year, the hottest point of summer, but it’s unusual to have this many this intense. Every one of these heat domes is generating exceptional weather.

Those five ‘domes’ are profiled with their effect on the area, and then the concluding bottom line:

Scientists have determined that climate change is increasing the intensity of heat domes and making heat waves hotter than they would have been without human influence.
This explains the frequency at which temperature records are being set every summer.
Already this summer, seven national high temperature records have fallen.

But the current weather pattern, in which these heat domes are not only intensified but also prolonged, may also be linked to climate change.

Climate change is expected to decrease the strength of steering currents as the high latitudes warm more quickly than the mid-latitudes, reducing the north-to-south temperature differences that drive the wind.
According to a 2018 study from climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, weaker high altitude winds will produce a slower jet stream with more wavy peaks and troughs, which he ascribes to a process known as “quasi-resonant amplification.”

The more wavy peaks are the breeding grounds for intensified heat domes, like we see spread around the Northern Hemisphere, while the troughs are the low-pressure zones that can set the stage for floods like we just saw in Germany and neighboring countries.

And back to square one —  a major hole in the fight against climate change, like a fight for the reality of insurrectional inciters investigating an insurrection:

What a fucking moron https://t.co/iu3K4ZIOXv

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) July 21, 2021

Adapting to climate change, according to the UN: Adaptation refers to adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts. It refers to changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change. In simple terms, countries and communities need to develop adaptation solution and implement action to respond to the impacts of climate change that are already happening, as well as prepare for future impacts.

Would a moron grasp that and understand? Shit no!
We’re pretty-much beyond adaptation and into the fevered cut-back mode, or should be if we want to survive. However, as things sit now, we be fucked.
In context, there’s an anticipated climate report due out early next month that’s supposed to paint a fairly-grim picture of our planet’s environmental future — some notes on it at Thomson Reuters Foundation yesterday afternoon:

From devastating floods to destructive wildfires, the impacts of accelerating climate change are increasingly visible – and a report due out next month from the world’s climate scientists will be “a wake-up call” for governments, analysts said Tuesday.

“We are now observing climate change with our own eyes in ways we did not broadly before,” said Corinne Le Quere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and an author of the upcoming assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, compiled by the world’s top scientists and signed off by governments, will look at physical changes happening, and projected to happen, as a result of climate change – from harsher extreme weather to rising sea levels.

It is expected to confirm that the world is not on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change and that holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times is now “very challenging.”

At the request of governments, it will for the first time look at the growing possibility of “black swan” events.
Those are low probability but high impact shifts, such as irreversible melting of major ice sheets that could lead to huge increases in global sea levels.

“The fact we’re starting to see some of the impacts of climate change… really ought to be a wake-up call for global governments that this isn’t something they can ignore,” said Emily Shuckburgh, a University of Cambridge climate scientist.
“We’re seeing the impacts here and now today, and the impacts are going to get worse unless we take immediate action,” she told an online event.

But growing evidence of climate risks – including in richer nations — is not necessarily driving swifter action to counter them, said Richard Black, a net-zero emissions expert at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.

Government leaders in Australia, for instance, which in 2019 saw devastating wildfires that affected many of its 25 million people, have so far done relatively little to spur the country’s lagging climate efforts, he said.

“As a society you tend to get used to things fairly rapidly. If wildfire risks are going up, the first thing (you ask) is, ‘How do I adapt to that?'” rather than why the government is not doing more to curb fossil fuel use, Black said.

Much of the technology needed to swiftly cut emissions and climate risks is now available and presents a huge investment opportunity, the scientists said — but political will to make the changes is still missing, they added.

When it comes to acting on climate change, “the decisions today are political decisions”, Le Quere said.

And we know politics nowadays — ‘despicable and disgraceful…’

(Illustration out front by Handoko Tjung, found here)