Just Gettin' Warmed Up

Dengue fever is surging worldwide. A hotter planet will make it worse.

Climate change helped fuel an explosion of dengue cases in the Americas, including Puerto Rico, as mosquitoes multiply in warmer, wetter weather.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The curly-haired girl came to the emergency room with fever, aches and signs of dehydration, common indications of many childhood illnesses. But the 9-year-old — pale and listless beneath her Pokémon blanket — looked sicker than most children and exhibited no respiratory symptoms. She could only whimper as a pediatrician stroked her hair and softly questioned her in Spanish.

The sharp-eyed doctor suspected dengue, a disease that is often missed but is now exploding around the world.

The girl, Genesis Polanco Marte, is among a record 10 million people who have fallen ill with dengue so far this year — an unprecedented surge that scientists say is fueled in part by climate change. Soaring global temperatures have accelerated the life cycles and expanded the ranges of the mosquitoes that carry dengue, helping spread the virus to roughly one in every 800 people on the planet in the past six months alone. An influx of patients has overwhelmed hospitals from Brazil to Bangladesh, recalling the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic. Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency this spring, with more dengue cases reported in the first five months of 2024 than all of last year. Public health officials are bracing for the virus to crop up in more temperate regions, including the southernmost portions of the United States.

“The storm’s comin’, folks,” Grayson Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Puerto Rico Vector Control Unit, advised a group of California officials in a recent webinar. “It’s here in Puerto Rico, but you guys are going to feel it pretty soon.”

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of an increased risk of dengue infections in the United States, urging clinicians to stay on alert for the disease when treating feverish patients who have traveled to places with dengue transmission.

But even as human-made warming spurs cases to historic highs, dengue remains one of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases, according to the World Health Organization. Three out of four cases are mild or asymptomatic, making the illness difficult to track. And because the virus comes in four varieties, or serotypes, natural immunity after one illness does not protect against future infections with other types. What makes dengue unusual is that the risk of severe complications may actually increase with sequential infections of a different type.

There is no cure for the virus, which in severe cases can lead to plasma leaking from veins, internal bleeding, organ failure and, in rare instances, death. Unlike other illnesses, vaccination is complicated. Few options are available, and few people know about them. The only vaccine available in the United States is for children 9 to 16 years old who have already been infected with dengue — those most vulnerable to hospitalization. But it won’t be available after 2026.

The crisis in Puerto Rico is a warning sign for the rest of the United States. It shows how quickly an outbreak can metastasize in communities with fragile infrastructure, underfunded health systems and temperatures that get hotter with each passing year.

Without drastic action to control the virus and slow climate change, research suggests some 2 billion additional people across the globe could be at risk for dengue in the next 50 years.

Rising temperatures spur global dengue spread

Relatives mourn 10-year-old Fer Maria Ancajima, who died of dengue, during the wake at her house in Catacaos district, Peru in June 2023. (Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images)
It has been more than a decade since Puerto Rico saw its last dengue outbreak. Though the virus is endemic in the territory and typically recurs every five to seven years, that cycle was interrupted by the emergence of Zika — a closely related virus that tore through the island in 2016 and gave some cross protection against dengue — and the isolation measures necessitated by the coronavirus.

But the return of global travel — especially Caribbean cruises — brought thousands of tourists who had been exposed to dengue elsewhere, introducing strains that hadn’t been dominant in Puerto Rico. The virus spread swiftly through the population of susceptible people, reaching Genesis in late May.

The girl had been feverish for several days before she arrived at the hospital. Her doctor, Zurisadai Rivera Acosta, pressed on the girl’s fingertip and saw it took longer than normal for the color beneath to return to pink — a sign of dehydration. More concerning, the doctor noted, she had begun vomiting and her count of blood platelets was low. Rivera admitted the girl to the hospital amid signs her condition was deteriorating. Genesis was one of 91 dengue cases reported in Puerto Rico that week, health department data show.

Puerto Rico public health officials are bracing for case counts to soar as the island heads into the hot and rainy season. By mid-June, the territory had reported more than 1,500 cases. At least two people have died.

Sweltering and stormy is the preferred weather for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that is the main vector for dengue in the Americas. It lays its eggs wherever there is standing water: in vent pipes of septic tanks, water meters, discarded tires and broken flower pots. A single bottle cap filled with rainwater can hold more than 100 eggs, said Sadie Ryan, a medical geographer at the University of Florida who specializes in insect-borne diseases.

“They’re tenacious, they’re pernicious,” Ryan said. “Really, they’re just good at being everywhere.”

Its eating habits further bolster the bug’s ability to wreak havoc. Unlike the mosquitoes that transmit malaria, which require only a single blood meal before laying their eggs, female Aedes aegypti are “sippers,” Ryan said. They behave like tiny vampires at a human buffet, flitting from person to person, potentially spreading disease with each bite.

In Puerto Rico’s crowded urban areas, most families cannot afford air conditioning so they keep cool by opening windows and doors, which lack screens to keep mosquitoes out.

Meanwhile, human-caused warming is spawning an explosion of mosquitoes here.

Greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels, have raised average temperatures in the commonwealth by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, according to the National Centers for Climate Information.

The change has been a boon to Aedes aegypti, which is able to transmit diseases at higher temperatures than other mosquito species. In laboratory experiments, researchers have found that warmer conditions can make the insect grow faster, bite more people and lay more eggs. Heat also makes the dengue virus more infectious and allows it to replicate faster inside its hosts.

Models and real-world data show that these mosquitoes can transmit dengue at temperatures ranging from 64 to 94.1 degrees Fahrenheit — conditions that are found in Puerto Rico every month of the year.

Though this species is found in several states, including Texas, Florida and even California, the mosquito’s predilection for heat has historically limited dengue’s reach. Even when the virus hitches a ride via travelers from tropical regions, low nighttime and winter temperatures prevent it from spreading very far.

But officials are increasingly concerned that rising temperatures could set the stage for more outbreaks in the United States. Florida has already reported eight cases from local spread this year, health department data show — and the state’s warmest months are yet to come.

“Even one case in an area that doesn’t usually see dengue can consume a large number of resources, as well as create considerable public concern,” said Gabriela Paz-Bailey, chief of the CDC’s dengue branch in Puerto Rico. “It means the mosquito has acquired the virus, and you have the potential for additional transmission happening.”

In tropical regions across Latin America, Africa and Asia, where dengue once circulated primarily during summer months, a lengthening warm season is turning the disease into a year-round phenomenon. Meanwhile, the shifting climate is allowing dengue to infiltrate temperate regions and high-altitude communities where it has never been found before.

Nepal, which hadn’t seen a dengue case before 2004, recorded more than 50,000 cases in each of the last two years. Mauritius and Chad have experienced their first-ever significant outbreaks in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Italy, France and Spain documented dozens of instances of local transmission of the virus in 2023 — suggesting the disease may be gaining a foothold in spots where winter cold once kept it at bay.

But it’s not just rising temperatures that contribute to disease spread, researchers say. Climate-induced droughts can prompt people to stockpile water, creating more mosquito habitat. Escalating hurricanes and floods also produce standing water while simultaneously forcing people from their homes and increasing their exposure to mosquitoes, said Mallory Harris, a disease ecologist at Stanford University.

By combining climate models with simulations of disease spread, Harris is developing techniques that can help link cases to climate disasters — and project how future storms and droughts could trigger new outbreaks. In an analysis of Cyclone Yaku, which ravaged Peru’s northern coast in March 2023, she found that the storm was responsible for 33,000 dengue cases. Nearly 400 people died of the virus.

Only U.S. dengue vaccine runs out in 2026

The fact that the dengue virus comes in multiple serotypes and has an unusual mechanism for causing severe illness in people makes it especially tricky to fight. An infection with one type generates disease-fighting antibodies that protect a person from future infection with that variety. But those same antibodies can bind to viruses of a different serotype, facilitating their entry and causing more severe illness. (WTF? 🤨)

Dengvaxia, developed by the French-based manufacturer Sanofi, is the only vaccine approved for use in the United States. It protects against all four dengue types and is approved for children 9 to 16 years old living in high-risk areas such as Puerto Rico. The shots are covered by most health insurance plans. But the three-dose regimen — administered six months apart over the course of a year to be fully protected — requires patients to have a laboratory-confirmed previous dengue infection. It’s the only vaccine with such a requirement, complicating rollout efforts in vulnerable communities.

In May, WHO expanded the use of a second vaccine, Qdenga, which is already approved in several hard-hit countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia and throughout Europe. The vaccine, developed by the Japanese company Takeda and is recommended by WHO for children ages 6 to 16, requires only two shots and can be used regardless of prior infection. But the company withdrew its application from the Food and Drug Administration in July 2023 because of data collection issues.

A third vaccine being developed by the National Institutes of Health is still in clinical trials and won’t be available in the United States for at least a few years.

Meanwhile, health-care workers in Puerto Rico lament that few residents know about Dengvaxia.

At HealthProMed, Hector Villanueva, the community clinic’s senior adviser for dengue, urged Mayra Rivera to vaccinate her teenage nephews, who Rivera took in this year after their parents died. The boys had been hospitalized with fever, vomiting and diarrhea from the virus in January. Villanueva warned they could become even more severely ill if they were to be infected again.

Rivera eagerly signed them up for shots. The 13-year-old, whose diabetes can make dengue more lethal, received his first dose in April. His older brother is scheduled to receive his shot in July.

But uptake among other children in Puerto Rico has been slow. Many parents aren’t aware of dengue’s dangers and after the pandemic, are tired of hearing about getting more vaccines, Villanueva said.

“Most of the cases, they didn’t know they have dengue or they may have mild to moderate symptoms, so there is low perception of risk,” Villanueva said. “Parents are saying, ‘What are you talking about? Dengue, does that still exist?’”

Only 145 children in Puerto Rico have started the vaccine series since it became available in 2022, according to CDC — a tiny fraction of the roughly 140,000 eligible.

And now access to the vaccine is closing. A few months before Puerto Rico declared its public health emergency in March, Sanofi informed U.S. officials that it has stopped producing Dengvaxia because of low demand. The last doses will expire in August 2026.

Adam Gluck, who leads Sanofi’s U.S. corporate affairs, said the company tried making the vaccine easy to access but the complexity of screening for a prior infection before administering the required three doses kept demand low. The decision to discontinue the vaccine “is not driven by quality, safety or efficacy concerns,” he said in a statement.

Rivera said she is grateful her nephews qualify to receive the shots but is dismayed other children will no longer have the chance to protect themselves against dengue. “If they stop making these vaccines,” she said, “a lot of people will die.”

Combating dengue in Puerto Rico

On a recent steamy morning, a mosquito-control technician from Puerto Rico’s Vector Control Unit peered into a trap outside a home, a plastic bucket filled with water and hay whose odor was designed to attract egg-laying females. Sure enough, when he opened the trap, a mosquito with white markings was stuck on the special adhesive paper.

With schools out for the summer, another group of technicians went from classroom to classroom at a nearby elementary school, trapping mosquitoes to identify locations that could have been super spreaders. Workers thrust vacuum-like machines along walls, in corners, under piles of papers to flush out the insects, then caught their quarry in butterfly nets.

Unlike many mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti tend to bite during the day and are resistant to the most commonly used insecticide. So officials must focus on identifying and destroying mosquito habitats in high-transmission areas to reduce spread.

Teams rely on low-tech traps placed outside homes to collect mosquitoes, then test them to determine what percentage carry the virus. In areas with high rates of dengue-carrying mosquitoes, field teams apply larvicide and go door-to-door urging residents to use repellent and get rid of breeding grounds, authorities said.

The ongoing explosion of cases presages a future in which dengue becomes one of the dominant mosquito-borne threats to humanity, experts said, in some countries even eclipsing malaria. As temperatures in tropical regions get too hot for other mosquito species, Aedes aegypti is poised to take over.

Singapore, Brazil and Colombia have programs to infect mosquitoes with a bacteria called Wolbachia, which blocks offspring released into the wild from transmitting the dengue virus. But that expensive and labor-intensive strategy has not been approved in the United States.

In Puerto Rico, one big challenge remains awareness among clinicians, who seldom treat the disease. The CDC and Puerto Rico health department are training doctors to monitor for warning signs of severe dengue, including abdominal pain, persistent vomiting and bleeding from the gums or nose. Unlike other diseases, where fever reduction is often a sign someone is getting better, the reverse is true for dengue.

Rivera, the emergency room pediatrician who recently treated 9-year-old Genesis, said she recognized the dengue symptoms in the young patient only because her own aunt and cousin had contracted dengue during the coronavirus pandemic. When Rivera rushed them to a hospital, doctors insisted the two had covid, not dengue. Her aunt almost died, Rivera said.

“There’s no rapid test for dengue,” Rivera said. “We have to diagnose it clinically.”

Genesis received intravenous fluids in the hospital, and her platelet count gradually trended up. Three days later, she was allowed to go home. Despite her recovery, the girl remains vulnerable to a second infection.

The mosquitoes are out here, waiting to bite.

Comin' Up Fast

This piece says straight out that it'll take 40 years to stop the increase in CO2, even if we could slow our emissions dramatically starting right now.

And if we got those emissions down close to zero by the end of this century, it'll take another 200 years for CO2 to drop below 400ppm again.

Seems like it's getting harder not to shrug and say, "We're fucked anyway - why bother."

But here's the thing: It's not unreasonable for me to do something good now, so as to make things better for people two centuries after I'm dead.

I'll never sit in the shade of an oak tree I plant today, and I don't need my magnificent foresight acknowledged by someone who will.

A lab on a Hawaii volcano is capturing ominous signals about the planet’s health

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever.

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa’s Observatory just captured an ominous sign about the pace of global warming.

Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren’t just on their way to yet another record high this year — they’re rising faster than ever, according to the latest in a 66-year-long series of observations.

Carbon dioxide levels were 4.7 parts per million higher in March than they were a year earlier, the largest annual leap ever measured at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration laboratory atop a volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. And from January through April, CO2 concentrations increased faster than they have in the first four months of any other year. Data from Mauna Loa is used to create the Keeling Curve, a chart that daily plots global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, tracked by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.

For decades, CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa in the month of May have broken previous records. But the recent acceleration in atmospheric CO2, surpassing a record-setting increase observed in 2016, is perhaps a more ominous signal of failing efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and the damage they cause to Earth’s climate.

“Not only is CO2 still rising in the atmosphere — it’s increasing faster and faster,” said Arlyn Andrews, a climate scientist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

A historically strong El Niño climate pattern that developed last year is a big reason for the spike. But the weather pattern only punctuated an existing trend in which global carbon emissions are rising even as U.S. emissions have declined and the growth in global emissions has slowed.

The spike is “not surprising,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at Scripps Institution, “because we’re also burning more fossil fuel than ever.”

Why carbon dioxide levels keep rising

Carbon dioxide levels naturally ebb and flow throughout each year. At Mauna Loa, they peak in April and May and then decline until August and September. This follows the growth cycle of northern hemisphere plants: growing — and sequestering away carbon — during the summer months and releasing it during fall and winter as they die and decompose.

Once CO2 makes it into the atmosphere, it stays there for hundreds of years, acting as a blanket trapping heat. That blanket has been steadily thickening ever since humans turned materials that were once dense stores of carbon — oil and coal, primarily — into fuel to burn.

That means the Keeling Curve reaches new heights each May, forming a new peak in a sawtooth-like pattern.

The Keeling Curve, a diagram of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations,
shows a spike each May as northern hemisphere plants grow -
yet the trend overall is upward.
(Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

The chart originated when Charles David Keeling, Ralph Keeling’s father, started recording atmospheric concentrations of CO2 atop the Mauna Loa volcano in the late 1950s. It was the first effort to measure the planet-warming gas on a continuing basis and helped alert scientists to the reality of the intensified greenhouse effect, global warming and its impact on the planet.

Each annual maximum has raised new alarm about the curve’s unceasing upward trend — nearing 427 parts per million in the most recent readings, which is more than 50 percent above preindustrial levels and the highest in at least 4.3 million years, according to NOAA. Atmospheric CO2 levels first surpassed 400 parts per million in 2014. Scientists said in 2016 that levels were unlikely to drop below that threshold again during the lifetime of even the youngest generations.

Since that year, carbon dioxide emissions tied to fossil fuel consumption have increased 5 percent globally, according to Scripps.

Why annual increases vary

The increase in carbon dioxide from year to year is not precisely consistent. One factor that tends to cause levels to rise especially quickly: the El Niño climate pattern.

El Niño is linked to warmer-than-average surface waters along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific. That warmth affects weather patterns around the world, triggering extreme heat, floods and droughts.

The droughts in particular contribute to higher-than-normal spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, Keeling said.

Tropical forests serve as reliable stores of carbon because they don’t go through the same seasonal decay as plant life at higher latitudes. But El Niño-linked droughts in tropical areas including Indonesia and northern South America mean less carbon storage within plants, Keeling said. Land-based ecosystems around the world tend to give off more carbon dioxide during El Niño because of the changes in precipitation and temperature the weather pattern brings, Andrews added.

That can allow CO2 concentrations to rise especially quickly on the tail end of El Niño events — such as the current one, which NOAA scientists said Thursday is likely to end this month.

The increase observed at Mauna Loa over the past year is some five times larger than the average annual increases seen in the 1960s, and about twice as large as in the 2010s, according to NOAA data.

A record surge in early 2016 was also at the end of a historically strong El Niño.

Why carbon matters

It will take some four decades to stop the annual growth in CO2 concentrations, even if all emissions began declining now, Andrews said. Because Earth’s carbon cycle is so far out of its natural equilibrium, plants, soils and oceans would give off stores of extra CO2 in response to any reduction in humans’ emissions, she said.

And for CO2 concentrations to fall back below 400 parts per million, it would take more than two centuries even if emissions dropped close to zero by the end of this century, she added.

In the natural carbon cycle, the element passes through air, soil and water, and plants and animals, eventually making its way into deep ocean sediments and fossils deep underground. Carbon’s movement throughout Earth systems helps regulate our planet’s temperatures — unlike on Venus, for instance, where CO2 accounts for most of the atmosphere, making that planet’s surface hellishly hot.

But human emissions of CO2 throw that system out of balance. It’s like adding more and more trash to a dump, Andrews said. Even if each load of trash gets smaller, “it’s still piling up.”

Meanwhile

... back at the dying planet ...

NYT:

Nearly freezing and often an otherworldly shade of blue, glacial lakes form as glaciers melt and retreat. These lakes are a source of drinking and irrigation water for many communities. But they can turn deadly in an instant when the rocks that hold them in place shift and send torrents of water coursing downstream.

Now, researchers have compiled the first global database of glacial lakes and found that they increased in volume by nearly 50 percent over the last few decades. That growth, largely fueled by climate change, means that such floods will likely strike more frequently in the future, the team concluded in a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change.

Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary, and his colleagues did not set out to take a global census of glacial lakes. They had originally planned to focus on only a few dozen concentrated in the Himalayas and neighboring mountain ranges in East and South Asia. But when the team finished writing computer programs to automatically identify and outline water in satellite images, they realized they could easily expand their study to include most of the world’s glacial lakes.

“It wasn’t that much of a bigger leap,” Dr. Shugar said.

The researchers collected more than 250,000 Landsat images of the Earth’s surface and fed that satellite imagery into Google Earth Engine, a platform for analyzing large Earth science data sets, to assemble the most complete glacial lake inventory to date.

“We mapped almost the whole world,” Dr. Shugar said.

This study demonstrates cloud computing’s capabilities, said David Rounce, a glaciologist at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved in the research. “Being able to churn through over 200,000 images is really remarkable.”

The global coverage also makes it possible to pick out large-scale patterns and regional differences that other studies might miss, said Kristen Cook, a geologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, who also was not part of the research team.

Dr. Shugar and his collaborators measured how the number and size of glacial lakes evolved from 1990 through 2018. The team found that the number of lakes increased to over 14,300 from roughly 9,400, an uptick of more than 50 percent. The volume of water in the lakes also tended to swell over time, with an increase of about 50 percent.

Lakes at high latitudes exhibited the fastest growth, the researchers found. That makes sense, Dr. Shugar and his colleagues proposed, because climate change is warming the Arctic faster than other parts of the world.

All this growth is troubling, Dr. Shugar and his research team members suggest, because glacial lakes, by their very nature, can pose significant danger to downstream communities.

Some glacial lakes sit in bowl-shaped depressions bordered by glacial moraine, the often unstable rocky rubble left behind by a retreating glacier. When moraine collapses, glacial lake water can course downslope in an outburst flood.

These events, which have occurred from Nepal to Peru to Iceland, can be devastating. “They are a very real threat in many parts of the world,” Dr. Shugar said.

Some countries have made significant investments to mitigate the risk of such floods. In 2016, Nepalese officials lowered the water level in Imja Lake, a glacial lake near Mt. Everest, by more than 11 feet.

This global census can help identify other lakes in need of monitoring or remediation, Dr. Shugar said. “We hope that it allows governments to see where the hot spots might be for glacial lakes growing in the future.”

Lay That Burden Down

Don't throw your shit out the car window. Pick up after yourself. You can be a good Eco-Citizen without becoming a warrior-zealot about it.

But we can all stop acting like each individual is personally responsible for AGW-Driven Climate Change.

Vox, Mary Annaise Heglar:

I’m at my friend’s birthday dinner when an all-too-familiar conversation unfolds. I introduce myself to the man to my left, tell him that I work in the environmental field, and his face freezes in terror. Our handshake goes limp.

“You’re gonna hate me …” he mutters sheepishly, his voice barely audible over the clanging silverware.

I knew what was coming. He regaled me with a laundry list of environmental mistakes from just that day: He’d ordered lunch and it came in plastic containers; he’d eaten meat and he was about to order it again; he’d even taken a cab to this very party.

- and -

I don’t blame anyone for wanting absolution. I can even understand abdication, which is its own form of absolution. But underneath all that is a far more insidious force. It’s the narrative that has both driven and obstructed the climate change conversation for the past several decades. It tells us climate change could have been fixed if we had all just ordered less takeout, used fewer plastic bags, turned off some more lights, planted a few trees, or driven an electric car. It says that if those adjustments can’t do the trick, what’s the point?

The belief that this enormous, existential problem could have been fixed if all of us had just tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous; it’s dangerous. It turns environmentalism into an individual choice defined as sin or virtue, convicting those who don’t or can’t uphold these ethics. When you consider that the same IPCC report outlined that the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions come from just a handful of corporations — aided and abetted by the world’s most powerful governments, including the US — it’s victim blaming, plain and simple.

When people come to me and confess their green sins, as if I were some sort of eco-nun, I want to tell them they are carrying the guilt of the oil and gas industry’s crimes. That the weight of our sickly planet is too much for any one person to shoulder. And that that blame paves the road to apathy, which can really seal our doom.

Way back when, we got messages about "Don't be a litter bug" and "Beautify America" and Iron Eyes Cody in one of the most famous ads ever.

And not to get too Foil-Hat-y, but:

The kicker:

I don’t care how long you’ve been engaged in the climate conversation, 10 years or 10 seconds. I don’t care how many statistics you can rattle off. I don’t need you to be all-solar-everything to be an environmentalist. I don’t need you to be vegan-er than thou, or me, for that matter. I don’t care if you are eating a burger right this minute.

I don’t even care if you work on an oil rig. In some parts of the country, those are the only jobs that pay enough for you to feed your family. And I don’t blame workers for that. I blame their employers. I blame the industry that is choking us all, and the government that is letting them do it. 

All I need you to do is want a livable future. This is your planet, and no one can advocate for it like you can. No one can protect it like you can.

We have 11 years — not to start but to finish saving the planet. 

I’m not here to absolve you. And I’m not here to abdicate you. I am here to fight with you.

It Rolls Downhill

In keeping with Cult45's leadership on such things (cough*Puerto Rico*cough), may I just say this about the folks in Nebraska who are struggling to deal with some pretty bad shit because of the floods - because of the long-predicted effects of Climate Change - because of Anthropogenic Global Warming - because they've spent years deciding to do nothing about it:

Fuck 'em - they didn't vote for my guys - they didn't vote for my agenda - so fuck 'em - right thru the eyeballs - just - fuck 'em.

That's how we do it now, right?

Brrr

WaPo:

Even Hell, Mich., froze over: The community outside of Ann Arbor was expected to see temperatures drop to minus-26 overnight into Thursday. The nearby University of Michigan took the rare step of canceling classes through Thursday.

But, according to DumFux News, we can't stop using fossil fuel now, even though the use of fossil fuel has fucked it all up for us, because fossil fuel is the only thing we have that's really reliable - and let's be sure to conveniently ignore the fact that the fossil fuel industry's efforts to make their fuel the only one we can rely on is what got us into this fuckin' mess in the first fuckin' place.

The only real defense against Winter Storm Jayden is fossil fuels—the source of the vast majority of electricity that Americans will need to stay warm. Pie-in-the-sky talk about renewable energy won’t warm hearths and hearts during this storm, because the sun isn’t shining all the time and the wind capacity simply isn’t there.

Sorry not sorry but - goddammit, I hate these assholes.

Overheard on the intertoobz yesterday:

"I think I just keyed that guy's car with my nipples."

Safety Tip

Please make an extra effort to control your rage over the next few days, because it's inevitable that you'll hear some typically stoopid jokes about "Global Warming" from some typically stoopid Red Hat Rubes.

Just try to remember: busting your knuckles on that idiot's head hurts a lot more when it's really cold like this.

Stay calm and keep shoveling

It's Here

Notice: I will not continue my efforts at self-restraint - I will not resist saying, "I told you so".

Alex Harris (w/ Jenny Staletovich), Miami Herald:

Miami-Dade has tens of thousands of septic tanks, and a new report reveals most are already malfunctioning — the smelly and unhealthy evidence of which often ends up in people’s yards and homes. It’s a billion-dollar problem that climate change is making worse.

As sea level rise encroaches on South Florida, the Miami-Dade County study shows that thousands more residents may be at risk — and soon. By 2040, 64 percent of county septic tanks (more than 67,000) could have issues every year, affecting not only the people who rely on them for sewage treatment, but the region’s water supply and the health of anyone who wades through floodwaters.

“That’s a huge deal for a developed country in 2019 to have half of the septic tanks not functioning for part of the year,” said Miami Waterkeeper Executive Director Rachel Silverstein. “That is not acceptable."

- and -

Sea level rise is pushing the groundwater even higher, eating up precious space and leaving the once dry dirt soggy. Waste water doesn’t filter like it’s supposed to in soggy soil. In some cases, it comes back out, turning a front yard into a poopy swamp.

High tides or heavy rains can push feces-filled water elsewhere, including King Tide floodwaters — as pointed out in a 2016 study from Florida International University and NOAA — or possibly the region’s drinking supply.

The loonie lefties have been warning us about this for 40 years.

On Climate Recently

Elasticity is a thing. 

We can get a spike in prices long after supply has caught up with demand.

We can see unemployment drop even after the economy starts to go south.

Etc

So 45* can crow about how US carbon emissions have been nice and low - surprising everybody by saying something that's more or less true - even as his "cabinet" and "policies-makers" are busily pulling shit on us that all but ensure a worse-than-normal outcome down the road.

And that down-the-road thing can come up pretty fast - there's always a Snap-Back.

Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis, WaPo:

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose an estimated 3.4 percent in 2018, according to new research — a jarring increase that comes as scientists say the world needs to be aggressively cutting its emissions to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

The findings, published Tuesday by the independent economic research firm Rhodium Group, mean that the United States now has a diminishing chance of meeting its pledge under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to dramatically reduce its emissions by 2025.

The findings also underscore how the world’s second-largest emitter, once a global leader in pushing for climate action, has all but abandoned efforts to mitigate the effects of a warming world. President Trump has said he plans to officially withdraw the nation from the Paris climate agreement in 2020 and in the meantime has rolled back Obama-era regulations aimed at reducing the country’s carbon emissions.

“We have lost momentum. There’s no question,” Rob Jackson, a Stanford University professor who studies emissions trends, said of both U.S. and global efforts to steer the world toward a more sustainable future.

The sharp emissions rise was fueled primarily by a booming economy, researchers found. But the increase, which could prove to be the second-largest in the past 20 years, probably would not have been as stark withoutTrump administration rollbacks, said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium.

“I don’t think you would have seen the same increase,” Houser said, referring to the electric power sector in particular.

Old Ice

Chris Mooney, WaPo:

Over the past three decades of global warming, the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95 percent, according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card.

The finding suggests that the sea at the top of the world has already morphed into a new and very different state, with major implications not only for creatures such as walruses and polar bears, but in the long term, perhaps, for the pace of global warming itself.

The oldest ice can be thought of as a kind of glue that holds the Arctic together and, through its relative permanence, helps keep the Arctic cold even in long summers.

“The younger the ice, the thinner the ice, the easier it is to go away,” said Don Perovich, a scientist at Dartmouth who coordinated the sea ice section of the yearly report.

- and -

The new findings about the decreasing age of ice in the Arctic point to a less noticed aspect of the dramatic changes occurring there. When it comes to the icy cap atop the Arctic ocean, we tend to talk most often about its surface area — how much total ocean is covered by ice, rather than by open water. That’s easily visible — it can be glimpsed directly by satellite — and the area is, indeed, in clear decline.

But the loss of old and thick ice, and the simultaneous decline in the total ice volume, is even larger — and arguably a much bigger deal. Young and thin ice can regrow relatively quickly once the dark and cold winter sets in. But it may not add much stability or permanence to the Arctic sea ice system if it just melts out again the next summer.

Remember - it's the volume, not the area:

- and - keeping in mind the tendency of "conservatives" to cherry-pick the data, watch out for the assertion, "everything's just peachy because the ice is making a comeback" - along the same lines of their famous bullshit about how "AGW has paused, and the planet is actually cooling now".

In fairness, the ice volume has rebounded somewhat since 2012. And PIOMAS is only a model, cautioned the University of Washington’s Axel Schweiger, who runs the analysis. (The model draws upon direct measurements of ice thickness taken from submarines, satellites, and other sources.) Still, Schweiger agreed that when you think about the total volume of the ice, rather than its mere surface extent, you realize that far more has been lost.

“We’ve lost about half of the extent, we’ve lost half of the thickness, and if you multiply these two things, we’ve lost 75 percent of the September sea ice,” he said

Scientists get it wrong sometimes. I'll still take their word for things over the deniers because science is self-correcting - deniers will always just deny because that's what they believe, as opposed to people who can be convinced due to evidentiary knowledge.

It's Changing

It doesn't matter if you believe it or you don't - climate change is not some global conspiracy of thousands of scientists and hundreds of national governments being valiantly resisted by a plucky band of billionaires.

National Phenology Network (USANPN.org)

Nobody's trying to snooker you out of a few extra tax bucks and your F-350 Super Duty. Get over yourself.  We'd just like your help figuring out how we can all keep what we've got without committing suicide-by-toxic-waste. Can we try that for a while?

Meanwhile, Back In The World

Charlie Pierce:

As the presidential campaign staggers to its conclusion, I think we can fairly sum up the positions of the respective political parties on the climate crisis in the following way.

Republican: It might be real. It might not be. It might be the Chinese. Middle Ages. Grant-sucking lab rats. But, if it is real, it isn't worth doing anything about because sooooo much money.

Democratic: It's real. It's happening. You hate science. Here are some solution-like proposals that prove that we know it's real and that it's happening and that we love science with a love undying. And you hate science.

Repubs may have hit on the one big thing about everything that'll count over the next 25 years - immigration.

More accurately, migration. The herds follow the food, and the food follows the water.  As more places become less human-friendly, those humans have to go someplace else.

Unfortunately, we're showing ourselves to be unwilling to do much to prevent the circumstances that drive people away from their traditional homelands, which seems to be leading us to believe the only thing we can do is to react to a shitty situation by turning USAmerica Inc into a giant Gun Club where the object is simply to keep everybody else out.

Eventually though - what's the fuckin' point? We won't be defending anything worth saving.

Not For Nothing

via HuffPo:

Still not convinced the Earth is rapidly warming? Consider this: The last time the global monthly temperature was below average was February 1985.

That means if you are 30 years old or younger, there has not been a single month in your entire life that was colder than average.

“It’s a completely different world we’re already living in,” Mark Eakin, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, told scientists gathered this week for the International Coral Reef Symposium in Honolulu. He added it likely won’t be long before that same age bracket has experienced only above-average temperatures.

“It’s happening that fast,” Eakin said.

 

Today's GIF

Grist:

The temperature spiral that took the world by storm has an update. If you think the heat is on in our current climate, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

To recap, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins wrecked the internet a few weeks ago with a revolutionary new way to look at global temperatures. Using a circular graph of every year’s monthly temperatures and animating it, Hawkins’ image showed planetary heat spiraling closer to the 2 degrees C threshold in a way no bar or line graph could do.

Let's see ya cherry pick that one, DumFux News. 

Seems Like Good News

From Juan Cole:

Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman announced Friday that Saudi Arabia would use its oil assets to back a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund. The move suggested to many observers that the kingdom is preparing for a likely end of the petroleum business and transitioning to being primarily an investor. While it is true that the money for the sovereign wealth fund is expected to come from petroleum sales, it also seems clear that the kingdom recognizes that it has a stranded asset that won’t be nearly as valuable in a decade or two as it is now. It could even end up, like coal, being regulated out of existence in many countries.

Here are 3 reasons Saudi Arabia is likely making this massive change in economic strategy:

1. Climate change denial, which the Saudis pushed and helped fund, has failed. A majority of Americans now accepts that humans burning fossil fuels is causing global warming. And that’s in anti-science, capitalist-ridden America. Everywhere else in the world it goes without saying. Since the impact of global warming will become increasingly apparent in the coming decades, likely pressure to abandon burning fossil fuels will grow. Already, most new investment in power plants is in renewables,not coal and gas.

2. Another fossil fuel, coal, is being quickly phased out and will likely be illegal in fifteen or twenty years. It is being phased out by the Environmental Protection Agency because it puts out pollutants, including CO2. The writing is on the wall for coal and petroleum.

3. More affordable, longer-range electric cars are now coming on the market, with the Chevy Bolt due next December and Tesla 3 the following year. Most petroleum is used for transportation, so electric vehicles are deadly to that market. The new generation of electric cars is less than $30,000 in the US after tax rebates. And it typically can go 200 miles on a charge. Tesla is putting fast recharging stations everywhere it can, and people have already gone across the country in a Tesla. Battery costs are falling and batteries are becoming more efficient, so the writing is on the wall for the combustion engine. Consumers are combining electric cars with solar panels on their houses, getting free fuel. Low gasoline prices won’t impede solar car sales because prices would have to fall another dollar US before EVs would not be worth it.

In as little as fifteen to twenty years, petroleum may be illegal in some places; and will be in retreat everywhere. Saudi oil is a stranded asset. So they are attempting to create a revenue stream from investments. As for fossil fuels, their business model is under severe pressure.

So, if I look past the part about The House of Saud becoming even more parasitic than they are now - at least they're making some attempt to move away from literally burning the place to the ground trying to milk every last dime outa the suckers, to a new and exciting career as straight-up Rent-Collecting Leeches.  Which somehow seems bizarrely logical in that it means they're being more "honest" as to the total buggery of what they're all about(?)

Baby steps.

VICE is Nice

What we don't know will kill us.

Skipping To The Chase

...and also too, a new acronym: ACD = Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

The "good news" is that Climate Change has been on a minor hiatus; tho' not really, since the bad-news part is that all the shit we were expecting somewhere down the road is  pretty much on pace to become one ginormous fuckburger way sooner than we tho't it would.

Here're the last bits from a long piece at truthout (with a link to a report from those treehuggin' pussies at DoD):

Hence, they are also unlikely to believe anything that comes out of the "progressive" and "left-leaning" US Pentagon, which just released its 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which states:

"Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing and severe weather patterns are accelerating. These changes, coupled with other global dynamics, including growing, urbanizing, more affluent populations, and substantial economic growth in India, China, Brazil, and other nations, will devastate homes, land, and infrastructure. Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions - conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence."

Every single piece of information you’ve just read is only from the last month.

This is what catastrophic ACD looks like.

This information may lack the dramatic background music and thrilling scenes that would accompany the Hollywood blockbuster movie that many in the United States might expect advancing ACD to look like. However, it is real. It is happening right now. And it is time for all of us to pay attention.

Seems A Little Silly

...but sometimes ya gotta beat the horse even after it's dead(?)  I honestly don't know what else to say about it.  Climate Change (most probably due to AGW) is a real thing, and somehow, we still have a substantial percentage of people who just can't bring themselves to recognize it.

I refuse to give Marsha Blackburn any time on my little blog here; and I sure as fuck hate even acknowledging a preening fluffer like David Gregory; so I'll just give ya'll this little bit:

Some Things Don't Get Better

Just a tasty tidbit - a little reminder that we still have to figure out what to do about the political and economic disasters heading our way, now that we've pissed away practically every chance we had at being able to do anything about the actual causes of the coming disasters.

And in case you've been wondering about "the cooling period" or the "warming pause" over the last several years?   Well, it appears the ocean's been doing its job; soaking up the kajillions of calories or BTUs or whatever you like to call all that "missing" heat, only to deliver it right back to us in the form of a typhoon that pushes a 20-foot tidal surge with winds gusting 170 mph.

Isn't it the least bit puzzling that we have a "once-in-a-lifetime storm" every few years now?

Nature bats last, dumbass.

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) -- As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms ever recorded unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.

Officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides. Even in the disaster-prone Philippines, which regularly contends with earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.

Are We There Yet?

There are no atheists in foxholes, and there are no Climate Change Deniers carrying axes and chainsaws on the fire line.



I know a goodly buncha people who still say Climate Change isn't a real thing because the Gloomy-Doomy predictions haven't materialized.

How 'bout 2 dead homeowners in Colorado?  And how 'bout 19 dead firefighters in Arizona?  Do ya wanna talk about the 285 dead because of Sandy last year?  Tragedy enough for those 400 or 500 families, but that's the proverbial drop in the bucket when we know the World Health Organization attributes 150,000 deaths per year to AGW/Climate Change.

Do you really need to be ass-deep in alligators before you realize you've wandered into the swamp?

Shit got real quite a while ago, kids - we're just starting to see the beginning of the horribleness.

An awful lot of us have to do some serious cramming to get ourselves up to speed on this.  And the first thing is that we have to understand that we're well past the point of being able to prevent the 2-or-3-degree rise in average temperature that triggers the catastrophe, so we have to work now on dealing with it as it happens.

Bill McKibben 'splains it all (btw, try to ignore his highly annoying quirks - the guy's in desperate need of some Presentation Coaching):