Southern hemisphere's winter is over. Today is the third day of spring and magpies all over the land are swooping passersby. If today's weather forecast for Sydney (a maximum of 28 Celsius -- 82.4 Fahrenheit) is any indication, this is going to be a hot year.
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Winter itself was a bit of a no-show this year:
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See also: "Queensland asks 'what Winter?' After Unseasonably Warm Weather"
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Further afield:
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According to the UN, "about 40 million people had been affected" by the monsoon floodings in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh (by 2016 a combined population of approximately 1.5 billion, according to Google), while "Oxfam said its Bangladesh staff reported two-thirds of the country was under water and in some areas the flooding was the worst since 1988".
Is that flood necessarily caused by global warming and weather change? Sorry, I am not qualified to answer that.
Is that indicative of the potential effects of rising sea-levels, particularly on Bangladesh? Maybe not.
One thing I think I can say with some certainty: we better start thinking how to respond to extreme weather events affecting tens of millions of people.
You sent your winter to the Kiwis ;)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11902412
Good catch, Bob. Damned Kiwis. :-)
DeleteExtreme weather events everywhere. I just wonder what kind of anomaly would it take to persuade people that things are not okay, that there's something really wrong going on.
An ice free arctic ocean would open a few eyes.
DeleteFailure of the world grain harvest would be more persuasive.
Here is a website that may interest you:
ReplyDeletehttps://earth.nullschool.net
(click on Earth for the options menu)
(setting the height to 250 will display the jet streams)
Thanks, Bob. Really cool.
DeleteAn essay I found interesting:
ReplyDeletehttps://thenextsystem.org/six-theses-on-saving-the-planet
It is rather disturbing, I'd say. I does not please me to see someone is as worried as I am.
DeleteFrom the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, workers, trade unionists, radicals, and socialists have fought against the worst depredations of capitalist development: intensifying exploitation, increasing social polarization, persistent racism and sexism, deteriorating workplace health and safety conditions, environmental ravages, and relentless efforts to suppress democratic political gains under the iron heel of capital. Yet, even as we fight to hold onto the few gains we’ve made, today, the engine of global capitalist development has thrown up a new and unprecedented threat, an existential threat to our very survival as a species. The engine of economic development that has brought unprecedented material gains, and revolutionized human life, now threatens to develop us to death, to drive us over the cliff to extinction, along with numberless other species. Excepting the threat of nuclear war, the runaway locomotive of capitalist development is the greatest peril humanity has ever faced. This essay addresses this threat and contends that there is no possible solution to our existential crisis within the framework of any conceivable capitalism. It suggests that, impossible as this may seem at present, only a revolutionary overthrow of the existing social order, and the institution of a global eco-socialist democracy, has a chance of preventing global ecological collapse and perhaps even our own extinction. By “global eco-socialist democracy,” I mean a world economy composed of communities and nations of self-governing, associated producer-consumers, cooperatively managing their mostly planned, mostly publicly-owned, and globally coordinated economies in the interests of the common good and future needs of humanity, while leaving aside ample resources for the other species with which we share this small blue planet to live out their lives to the full.
But we have more pressing problems. Here, same sex marriage, for instance. The Yanks must replace the grotesque abortion they have as president by the more presidential Pence.
God, we are so fucked. Thank goodness men in my family die young.
The status quo and its supporters displease me. So much so that I prefer to hang out with critics and worrywarts.
DeleteAcknowledging the systemic nature of the problems we face is a necessary step. As a 'low energy' person, I find that step satisfying. High energy types (activists) will want to build upon it.