Climate Change Stuff

We're fucked, aren't we?

This Alaskan glacier holds back billions of gallons of water. Until it doesn’t.

This summer’s flood on the Mendenhall Glacier destroyed houses and displaced residents in Juneau. It won’t be the last.

JUNEAU, Alaska — On the morning of the flood, Amy Ballard arranged her twins, Brighton and Broderick, on a hummingbird-and-butterfly blanket for their photo. The note between their smiling faces read: “We are 7 months old today.”

It had been a tough year for Ballard, an elementary school teacher and single mom. She spent months on bed rest in Anchorage, followed by weeks for her infants in intensive care. But she was back in her third-floor condo overlooking the Mendenhall River, a tranquil, glacier-fed waterway that coursed through her wooded neighborhood before flowing out to sea.

By the end of that sunny Saturday in early August, Ballard had watched the Mendenhall transform into a terrifying torrent of gray glacial silt that ripped down towering fir trees, devoured dozens of feet of riverbank and washed away neighbors’ homes. That evening, she recorded the scene from her balcony, her voice almost drowned out by the roar of the water: “This may or may not be the last video I get to take from my porch,” she said.

This torrent of meltwater — normally held back by the giant glacier looming above Juneau — known as a glacial outburst flood, dwarfed any that have occurred since the phenomenon began here a dozen years ago.

The destruction has exposed just how unpredictable these floods can be, as glaciers around the world recede amid warming temperatures. Each year, more than a half-million people visit the Mendenhall Glacier, and scientists have a detailed understanding of how meltwater builds up and then pours out of it.

And yet, the magnitude of these glacial floods doesn’t tend to follow any clear pattern, fluctuating dramatically from one year to the next, said Eran Hood, a hydrologist with the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau who studies the glacier’s dynamics.

Since many glacial floods happen in remote areas, there are “just so few long-term records,” he said. “These things are happening all over Alaska, they’re happening all over the world.”

Glaciers have unleashed deadly floods from the Andes to the Himalayas. Sometimes a dam of sediment left by receding ice will give way, causing a single flood. Other times, as in Juneau’s case, these outbursts can be recurring, based on the complex interplay between the changing glacier and the melt in tributary basins.

Some 15 million people worldwide live under the threat of sudden flooding from glaciers, according to a study published this year in the journal Nature Communications. As the climate warms, glaciers everywhere are retreating and meltwater lakes have grown in size and number, intensifying this threat.

Federal scientists and local academics have closely tracked the state of Mendenhall Glacier, and the water level in the abutting rock depression, known as Suicide Basin, that fills with snowmelt. They map and monitor the area with drones and remote cameras, and warn residents about potential floods.

And yet, the flood on Aug. 5 far exceeded forecasts by the National Weather Service or the worst-case expectations of homeowners along the river, releasing about 40 percent more water than the last record flood seven years ago. The river was flowing at more than six times its normal rate, hydrologists here said, an event that had just a 0.2 percent chance of happening — on the order of a 500-year flood.

“This was unprecedented seeing this amount of water come out,” said Aaron Jacobs, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau.

Ballard and other neighbors had not been perched on the river’s edge, but set back at least 50 feet from the bank. They were not in a designated flood zone.

As the Mendenhall Glacier and its tributaries continue to melt, scientists are facing renewed urgency to understand this looming threat above Juneau.

Does Suicide Basin hold more water than scientists realized? Has something changed inside the glacier?

“The big mystery,” Hood said, “is why was the flood so big this year?”

‘Uncharted territory’

On the morning of Aug. 4, Jacobs was flying home from Sitka, Alaska, when a colleague texted him: “Got time for a call. Looks like the basin is going.”

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) gauge at Mendenhall Lake — at the foot of the glacier — was showing water levels rising sharply. Jacobs had been expecting this. All summer, a jumble of icebergs and meltwater had been filling Suicide Basin. And when it eventually flushed out, as it had done more than 30 times since 2011, the water would pour into Mendenhall Lake and down the river to Juneau.

From his office, Jacobs can track the status of the basin via a remote USGS camera stationed on the hillside, next to a laser that takes height measurements every 15 minutes. The glacier normally served as a dam for that reservoir of ice melt and rainwater, but when enough of it accumulated, the tremendous pressure could lift the glacier and let water escape underneath.

This was known as going “subglacial.” When that happened, Jacobs said, the passageway within the glacier can rapidly expand, emptying billions of gallons of water downstream in a matter of hours.

There were signs that moment was approaching. In late July, two of Hood’s colleagues had taken a helicopter up to the basin. Standing on a rock face overlooking the swollen lake, they launched a drone that took more than 1,000 overlapping images that help create a three-dimensional elevation model of the basin and estimate how much water it might hold at full capacity.

About a week later, water began overtopping the ice dam and flowing down along the glacier’s flank.

When this overtopping had happened in two previous years, the water found its subglacial escape hatch about a week later. But each year the glacier is changing, and the holes made the summer before may be gone. No one knew exactly when it might burst.

On Aug. 4, with lake levels rising, the National Weather Service issued a warning predicting that Mendenhall Lake would peak the following evening around 10.7 feet — about five feet above its typical level.

Jacobs was out the next day talking to residents and observing the raging river as water levels surpassed that initial projection and then kept going beyond the 12-foot record set in July 2016. Before the night was over, it would rise three feet higher.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” he recalled thinking.

A ‘tough house’ destroyed

Steven Peterson came to the same conclusion when he watched the current sweep away a towering Sitka spruce near his deck that had stood for decades.

“It just started cutting that bank away like Swiss cheese: shoo, shoo, shoo,” he said.

Peterson, 80, had built much of his 7,500-square-foot house by himself when he retired from Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game two decades ago. In the garage was his beloved wood shop — where lately he’s been making duck decoys for Christmas presents — and above that a two-bedroom apartment where tenants lived.

Peterson evacuated at about 10 p.m., and within an hour the river had ripped away the wood shop and apartment.

A few days after the flood, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) toured the damage along the river. She stopped by Peterson’s home as he and his daughter picked through the wreckage.

Peterson told her he wanted to demolish the damaged house, stabilize the bank and sell the property so someone else could build on a safer portion of the property.

“You sound like a pragmatic Alaskan,” Murkowski said. “Stuff happens and we’ve got to do something.”

“You don’t solve anything by crying,” he said.

Inside, however, the weight of what he had lost was hard to ignore. The room with his handmade bar now opened onto the rushing current. Peterson climbed a ladder into the room from below to retrieve his doctoral dissertation about long-tailed ducks in the Arctic. He took his collection of single-malt scotch, too.

A fire alarm was incessantly blaring as he packed up canned food. He surveyed the warped floors and walls riddled with cracks. At least some of it was still standing.

“Oh well,” he said. “I built a pretty damn tough house.”

He had also been fastidious about labeling his things. In the days since the flood, people have been calling from all over with his belongings. One person found a gun case; another his vacuum-packed halibut. The backpack he used for clamming washed ashore in Tee Harbor.

And someone even called from Portland Island, four miles out to sea, to report that a duck decoy with his name on it had just made landfall.

An ongoing issue

Three days after the flood, Hood flew back to the glacier to map the changes in the drained basin.

He was stunned by the view.

“When I got up there, I said, ‘Oh my god,’ it’s much lower than it has been in the past,” he recalled.

The jumble of icebergs on the surface had fallen some 500 feet. But it was still difficult to know precisely how much water the trough could hold.

When USGS hydrologic technician Jamie Pierce began monitoring the basin more than a decade ago, he bolted pressure sensors onto the rock wall that would get submerged as the water level rose — to estimate depth. But when the basin emptied during floods, plummeting ice sheared the wall.

“The icebergs would crush our stuff,” Pierce said.

The remote camera-and-laser system he built has worked better, but the depth of the ice and the internal plumbing of the glacier remain elusive.

Using models from before and after the flood, Hood and his colleagues estimated that 14 billion gallons escaped in the torrent.

The mapping also revealed that melting has extended farther into the Mendenhall Glacier than previously known. And that the rate icebergs are melting within the basin is accelerating, he said, adding more water.

The basin also drained more fully than in the past.

“The estimates for volume we had didn’t account for that because we’d never seen that before,” Hood said.

Since the Mendenhall Glacier began shrinking in the mid-1700s, it has retreated more than three miles, including some 800 feet between August 2021 and August 2022. The rate of retreat depends on various factors, but scientists say the rapid loss is due in part to human-caused global warming in recent decades.

While the severity of any given outburst flood is guided by the interplay of the glacier and the basin, “the overall mechanism for these types of events is caused from a warming environment,” Jacobs said.

At some point in coming decades, when the Mendenhall Glacier recedes past Suicide Basin, these floods will no longer be a problem, although other basins may flood from higher up on the glacier. For the time being, the problem is expected to continue each summer.

“It’s likely that we haven’t seen the biggest one yet,” Hood said.

Lives upended

If that happens, Ballard and her twins won’t be on the river to see it. Her condo, condemned after the flood, was eventually cleared for her to return. But she doesn’t plan to live there again.

“I don’t know if it would ever be safe,” she said.

On the evening of the flood, Ballard scrambled to collect clothes, medicine and baby formula as firefighters evacuated her building. She spent the night with her aunt.

Throughout, she was texting and calling her friend Elizabeth Kent, a fellow teacher on leave while she taught English in Nicaragua.

Kent’s three-bedroom home, next to the condo building, stood more than 100 feet from the river, but the flood swept all that away and demolished her home.

She now owes hundreds of thousands of dollars for a mortgage she can’t pay — with her tenants also displaced. The estimate to stabilize the bank on her property is another $120,000, and the state assistance she might qualify for would cover only about one-third, she said. Her insurance company has denied her claim and is offering nothing. She is facing bankruptcy.

The fact that her home was not in a Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zone was one of the reasons she bought it three years ago. The home was just so far from the water, she never thought it could be at risk.

Maybe this was that unlucky once-in-500-year moment, she said. Or maybe more is changing in ways that are harder to understand.

The Costs Of Climate Change

So I guess maybe the clear-eyed, pragmatic, let-the-markets-figure-it-out, level-headed conservatives - uhm - aren't.

Or - way more likely - they're being exposed as the cynical manipulative parasites they are.

There's a solid pattern being reprised that has to be acknowledged and sharply denounced. A pattern that points to the shitty things that plutocrats do to keep their profits (and their own portfolios) fat and healthy at the expense of everybody and everything else.

Black Lung? Yeah, but you can be proud of your family's tradition of working the mines and braving the dangers - like men - like good Americans.

Radiation sickness? Cancer? But isn't it your patriotic duty to stay in there and produce the weapons necessary to defend the nation? The arsenal of freedom is counting on you.

COVID? You're not going to let a little flu stand in your way are ya? You're working people - you need to work.

What's a little hot weather? You're no snowflake. Working up a good sweat won't hurt you. And just think how great it's going to be slammin' a few beers after work on a day like this. Plus, you'll have big time bragging rights. The Facebook memes are gonna do you proud.

They seem to think it's just a matter of better PR - that they can politic their way around it. But the truth is that these business geniuses are ignoring reality - the reality they're always trying to convince us they're so finely tuned in to.

• If the cost of lawsuits is less than or equal to the cost of product safety, then it's no big deal - carry on.
• If the cost of the labor force's healthcare is more than the cost of workplace safety, then we'll just externalize that cost by shifting the burden onto the workers themselves, or making sure our coin-operated politicians give us plenty of loopholes so we can make the taxpayers pick up the tab. So carry on.

Everything is factored in as the cost of doing business, with absolutely no regard for the fact that they and their businesses have to exist in the same reality as the rest of us. And I think that's what they're selling - they're trying to get us to accept the premise that given enough money and power, you don't even have to obey the laws of physics.

And BTW, you noticed how they changed the nomenclature a while back, right?

We used to be "personnel" - as in living, breathing, feeling, thinking people.

Now they call us "human resources" - as in "capital' or "raw materials".

Like we're nothing more than the interest payments on a bank loan that'll be written off, or sold off, or palmed off on whoever can be suckered into buying what's left of a dying business.

... or a load of bauxite, to be smelted down, used to stamp out as many beer cans as possible, and then discarded along with the rest of the slag.

Heat Is Costing the U.S. Economy Billions in Lost Productivity

From meatpackers to home health aides, workers are struggling in sweltering temperatures and productivity is taking a hit.

As much of the United States swelters under record heat, Amazon drivers and warehouse workers have gone on strike in part to protest working conditions that can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

On triple-digit days in Orlando, utility crews are postponing checks for gas leaks, since digging outdoors dressed in heavy safety gear could endanger their lives. Even in Michigan, on the nation’s northern border, construction crews are working shortened days because of heat.

Now that climate change has raised the Earth’s temperatures to the highest levels in recorded history, with projections showing that they will only climb further, new research shows the impact of heat on workers is spreading across the economy and lowering productivity.

Extreme heat is regularly affecting workers beyond expected industries like agriculture and construction. Sizzling temperatures are causing problems for those who work in factories, warehouses and restaurants and also for employees of airlines and telecommunications firms, delivery services and energy companies. Even home health aides are running into trouble.

“We’ve known for a very long time that human beings are very sensitive to temperature, and that their performance declines dramatically when exposed to heat, but what we haven’t known until very recently is whether and how those lab responses meaningfully extrapolate to the real-world economy,” said R. Jisung Park, an environmental and labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And what we are learning is that hotter temperatures appear to muck up the gears of the economy in many more ways than we would have expected.”

No shit, Sherlock. It's not like the smart guys haven't been trying to tell us that for the last 30 or 40 or 50 fuckin' years.

A study published in June on the effects of temperature on productivity concludes that while extreme heat harms agriculture, its impact is greater on industrial and other sectors of the economy, in part because they are more labor-intensive. It finds that heat increases absenteeism and reduces work hours, and concludes that as the planet continues to warm, those losses will increase.

The cost is high. In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure, according to data compiled by The Lancet. Another report found that in 2020, the loss of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about $100 billion, a figure projected to grow to $500 billion annually by 2050.

Other research found that as the mercury reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit, productivity slumps by about 25 percent and when it goes past 100 degrees, productivity drops off by 70 percent.

And the effects are unequally distributed: in poor counties, workers lose up to 5 percent of their pay with each hot day, researchers have found. In wealthy counties, the loss is less than 1 percent.

Of the many economic costs of climate change —- dying crops, spiking insurance rates, flooded properties — the loss of productivity caused by heat is emerging as one of the biggest, experts say.

“We know that the impacts of climate change are costing the economy,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, and a former global executive for environmental and social risk at Bank of America. “The losses associated with people being hot at work, and the slowdowns and mistakes people make as a result are a huge part.”

Still, there are no national regulations to protect workers from extreme heat. In 2021, the Biden administration announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would propose the first rule designed to protect workers from heat exposure. But two years later, the agency still has not released a draft of the proposed regulation.

Seven states have some form of labor protections dealing with heat, but there has been a push to roll them back in some places. In June, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law that eliminated rules set by municipalities that mandated water breaks for construction workers, even though Texas leads all states in terms of lost productivity linked to heat, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by Vivid Economics.

Business groups are opposed to a national standard, saying it would be too expensive because it would likely require rest, water and shade breaks and possibly the installation of air-conditioning.

“OSHA should take care not to impose further regulatory burdens that make it more difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and create jobs,” wrote David S. Addington, vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, in response to OSHA’s plan to write a regulation.

Marc Freedman, vice president of employment policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said, “I don’t think anyone is dismissing the hazard of overexposure to heat.” But, he said, “Is an OSHA standard the right way to do it? A lot of employers are already taking measures, and the question will be, what more do they have to do?”

The National Beef slaughterhouse in Dodge City, Kan., where temperatures are expected to hover above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the next week, is cooled by fans, not air-conditioning.

Workers wear heavy protective aprons and helmets and use water vats and hoses heated to 180 degrees to sanitize their equipment. It’s always been hot work.

But this year is different, said one worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The heat inside the slaughterhouse is intense, drenching employees in sweat and making it hard to get through a shift, the worker said.

National Beef did not respond to emails or telephone calls requesting comment.

Martin Rosas, a union representative for meatpacking and food processing workers in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, said sweltering conditions present a risk for food contamination. After workers skin a hide, they need to ensure that debris doesn’t get on the meat or carcass. “But when it’s extremely hot, and their safety glasses fog up, their vision is impaired and they are exhausted, they can’t even see what they’re doing,” Mr. Rosas said.

Almost 200 employees out of roughly 2,500, have quit at the Dodge City National Beef plant since May, Mr. Rosas said. That’s about 10 percent higher than usual for that time period, he said.

But even some workers in air-conditioned settings are getting too hot. McDonald’s workers in Los Angeles walked off the job this summer as the air-conditioned kitchens were overwhelmed by the sweltering heat outside.

“There is an air-conditioner in every part of the store, but the thermostat in the kitchen still showed it was over 100 degrees,” said Maria Rodriguez, who has worked at the same McDonald's on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles for 20 years, but walked out on July 21, sacrificing a day of pay. “It’s been hot before, but never like this summer. I felt terrible — like I could pass out or faint at any moment.”

Nicole Enearu, the owner of the store, said in a statement, “We understand that there’s an uncomfortable heat wave in LA, which is why we’re even more focused on ensuring the safety of our employees inside our restaurants. Our air-conditioning is functioning properly at this location.”

Tony Hedgepeth, a home health aide in Richmond, Va., cares for a client whose home thermostat is typically set at about 82 degrees. Last week, the temperature inside was near 94 degrees.

Any heat is a challenge in Mr. Hedgepeth’s job. “Bathing, cooking, lifting and moving him, cleaning him,” he said. “It’s all physical. It’s a lot of sweat.”

Warehouse workers across the country are also feeling the heat. Sersie Cobb, a forklift driver who stocks boxes of pasta in a warehouse in Columbia, S.C., said the stifling heat can make it difficult to breathe. “Sometimes I get dizzy and start seeing dots,” Mr. Cobb said. “My vision starts to go black. I stop work immediately when that happens. Two times this summer I’ve had heart palpitations from the heat, and left work early to go to the E.R.”

In Southern California, a group of 84 striking Amazon delivery workers say that one of their priorities is getting the company to make it safe to work in extreme heat. Last month, unionized UPS workers won a victory when the company agreed to install air-conditioning in delivery trucks.

“Heat has played a tremendous role — it was one of the major issues in the negotiations,” said Carthy Boston, a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters representing UPS drivers in Washington, D.C. “Those trucks are hotboxes.”

Many factories were built decades ago for a different climate and are not air-conditioned. A study on the effects of extreme temperatures on the productivity of auto plants in the United States found that a week with six or more days of heat exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit cuts production by an average of 8 percent.

In Tulsa, Okla., Navistar is installing a $19 million air-conditioning system at its IC Bus factory, which produces many of America’s school buses. Temperatures on the floor can reach 99 degrees F. Currently, the plant is only cooled by overhead fans that swirl high above the assembly line.

Shane Anderson, the company’s interim manager, said air-conditioning is expected to cost about $183 per hour, or between $275,000 and $500,000 per year — but the company believes it will boost worker productivity.

Other employers are also adapting.

Brad Maurer, vice president of Leidal and Hart, which builds stadiums, hospitals and factories in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, said managers now bring in pallets of bottled water, which they didn’t used to do, at a cost to the company of a few thousand dollars a month.

Rising heat around Detroit recently caused his employees to stop working three hours early on a Ford Motors facility for several days in a row — a pattern emerging throughout his company’s work sites.

“It means costs go up, production goes down, we may not meet schedules, and guys and women don’t get paychecks,” Mr. Maurer said. Labor experts say that as employers adapt to the new reality of the changing climate, they will have to pay one way or the other.

“The truth is that the changes required probably will be very costly, and they will get passed on to employers and consumers,” said David Michaels, who served as assistant secretary of labor at OSHA during the Obama administration and is now a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health.

“But if we don’t want these workers to get killed we will have to pay that cost.”

Hot Enough, Thanks

Heat is the #1 weather-related cause of death in the US, killing 600 Americans every year.

And that number is going nowhere but up.

When the ocean is cool, it cools the land. When it's warm, it warms the land.

The ocean is very warm now - on it's way to pretty fuckin' hot.

There are people in Phoenix being taken to the local ER because they've contacted the asphalt pavement with bare skin for a few minutes, and suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

In one Sicilian town, the extreme heat shut down the whole electrical grid when the underground cabling melted.

Key Points

• Between 1979 and 2018, the death rate as a direct result of exposure to heat (underlying cause of death) generally hovered between 0.5 and 2 deaths per million people, with spikes in certain years (see Figure 1). Overall, a total of more than 11,000 Americans have died from heat-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates.
• For years in which the two records overlap (1999–2018), accounting for those additional deaths in which heat was listed as a contributing factor results in a higher death rate—nearly double for some years—compared with the estimate that only includes deaths where heat was listed as the underlying cause (see Figure 1).
• The indicator shows a peak in heat-related deaths in 2006, a year that was associated with widespread heat waves and was one of the hottest years on record in the contiguous 48 states (see the U.S. and Global Temperature indicator).
• The death rate from heat-related cardiovascular disease ranged from 0.08 deaths per million people in 2004 to 1.08 deaths per million people in 1999 (see Figure 2). Overall, the interaction of heat and cardiovascular disease caused about one-fourth of the heat-related deaths recorded in the “underlying and contributing causes” analysis since 1999 (see Figures 1 and 2).
• Since 1999, people aged 65+ have been several times more likely to die from heat-related cardiovascular disease than the general population, while non-Hispanic Blacks generally have had higher-than-average rates (see Figure 2).
• Examination of extreme events has revealed challenges in capturing the full extent of “heat-related” deaths. For example, studies of the 1995 heat wave event in Chicago (see example figure) suggest that there may have been hundreds more deaths than were actually reported as “heat-related” on death certificates.
• While dramatic increases in heat-related deaths are closely associated with the occurrence of hot temperatures and heat waves, these deaths may not be reported as “heat-related” on death certificates. This limitation, as well as considerable year-to-year
•  variability in the data, make it difficult to determine whether the United States has experienced a meaningful increase or decrease in deaths classified as “heat-related” over time.

Background

When people are exposed to extreme heat, they can suffer from potentially deadly illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Hot temperatures can also contribute to deaths from heart attacks, strokes, and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States, even though most heat-related deaths are preventable through outreach and intervention (see EPA’s Excessive Heat Events Guidebook at: www.epa.gov/heat-islands/excessive-heat-events-guidebook).

Unusually hot summer temperatures have become more common across the contiguous 48 states in recent decades (see the High and Low Temperatures indicator), extreme heat events (heat waves) have become more frequent and intense (see the Heat Waves indicator), and these trends are expected to continue. As a result, the risk of heat-related deaths and illness is also expected to increase. The “urban heat island” effect accentuates the problem by causing even higher temperatures in densely developed urban areas.4 Reductions in cold-related deaths are projected to be smaller than increases in heat-related deaths in most regions. Death rates can also change, however, as people acclimate to higher temperatures and as communities strengthen their heat response plans and take other steps to continue to adapt.

Certain population groups already face higher risks of heat-related death, and increases in summertime temperature variability will increase that risk. The population of adults aged 65 and older, which is expected to continue to grow, has a higher-than-average risk of heat-related death. Children are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness and death, as their bodies are less able to adapt to heat than adults, and they must rely on others to help keep them safe.8 People with certain diseases, such as cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, are especially vulnerable to excessive heat exposure, as are the economically disadvantaged. Data also suggest a higher risk among non-Hispanic Blacks.

Today, President Biden is issuing a heat wave “hazard alert” to protect workers.

Meanwhile, here’s what 2024 GOP candidates have to say about the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/7KFZY8u1lW

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) July 27, 2023

The Temp Is Too Damn High

76 million people in the U.S. may be exposed to dangerous heat today

Dangerous heat is expected to engulf most of the southern United States this week.

The Post is tracking the potential for dangerous heat using the heat index, which accounts for the combined impact of temperature and humidity — the higher the humidity, the more difficult it is for the body to cool itself off through sweating.

Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard, and the risk of longer and more frequent heat waves is only expected to increase as climate change worsens. Heat disorders such as heat stroke, heat cramps and heat exhaustion are possible with any extended exposure to a heat index at or above 90 degrees.

Heat illness can set in quickly — in as little as 10 to 15 minutes — when your body overheats and can’t properly cool itself off. This can lead to muscle cramps or spasms, heavy sweating, weakness or tiredness, abnormal pulse rate, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, headache, confusion, fainting, loss of consciousness or death.

Look up your city here

Multiple days of extreme heat, including warm nights that don’t allow our bodies to cool down, are especially dangerous. A Washington Post analysis of data provided by the nonprofit First Street Foundation estimated that the average number of Americans experiencing at least three consecutive days of temperatures 100 degrees or higher each year will climb from 46 percent today to 63 percent over the next 30 years.

Urban centers, which have fewer trees, less grass, and heat-absorbing pavement, can be up to 20 degrees hotter than nearby neighborhoods, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Weather Service issues heat watches, warnings and advisories when extreme heat — generally a heat index of 100 degrees or higher — is expected or imminent. Any watch, warning or advisory in effect for your location can be seen by entering your location into the lookup box at weather.gov.

Infants and children up to four years old, adults 65 years and older, and people who are overweight, ill, or on certain medications are at the highest risk for heat-related illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outdoor workers and athletes are also at greater risk.

The Weather Service recommends wearing light, loose-fitting clothing, drinking water often before you get thirsty, reducing or rescheduling strenuous activity, and staying in air-conditioned places during extreme heat.

OK - But For How Long?

Here I am saying it again - 

For 35 years, the smart guys have been warning us that this shit was headed our direction.

For the last 5 or 6 or 8 years, the western half of this country has caught fire regularly in the summer, and then, when the rain finally shows up - a year or ten later - they get smashed with floods and mudslides because there's no vegetation to help the dirt hold all the water.

This year, the fires in Canada have made it inconvenient (and maybe a little scary) for the Cocktail Party Set from Boston to Atlanta, and now flash floods have come to the states where they love to exile their bratty little legacy puke offspring for a month every summer, so all of a sudden, the Press Poodles are all over it.

Here's my question: It's finally becoming fashionable to be worried about the negative effects Climate Change is bound to have on the New York Social Calendar, so what can we expect a bunch of privileged little Tinker Bells to do about it?

And my next question: How long before the Poodles get tired of running the storries?

These fuckin' people.

Climate Disasters Daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal.’

Around the United States, dangerous floods, heat and storms are happening more frequently.

Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley. An unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix. Ocean temperatures hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami. A surprising deluge in Vermont, a rare tornado in Delaware.

A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration. This week, they are happening simultaneously as climate change fuels extreme weather, prompting Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, to call it “our new normal.”

Over the past month, smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed major cities around the country, a deadly heat wave hit Texas and Oklahoma and torrential rains flooded parts of Chicago.

“It’s not just a figment of your imagination, and it’s not because everybody now has a smartphone,” said Jeff Berardelli, the chief meteorologist and climate specialist for WFLA News in Tampa. “We’ve seen an increase in extreme weather. This without a doubt is happening.”

It is likely to get more extreme. This year, a powerful El Niño developing in the Pacific Ocean is poised to unleash additional heat into the atmosphere, fueling yet more severe weather around the globe.

“We are going to see stuff happen this year around Earth that we have not seen in modern history,” Mr. Berardelli said.

And yet even as storms, fires and floods become increasingly frequent, climate change lives on the periphery for most voters. In a nation focused on inflation, political scandals and celebrity feuds, just 8 percent of Americans identified global warming as the most important issue facing the country, according to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

As climate disasters become more commonplace, they may be losing their shock value. A 2019 study concluded that people learn to accept extreme weather as normal in as little as two years.

“This is not just a complicated issue, but it’s competing for attention in a dynamic, uncertain, complicated world,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Lilian Lovas, a 77-year-old lifelong Chicagoan, said she has seen climate change affect her hometown, but that she avoids the news in order to stay positive.

“It used to get so cold here in the winter but now we only get a couple real bitter days a year,” she said. “I vote and do my part but things are really out of my hands.”

Kristina Hengl, 51, a retail worker in Chicago, said she wasn’t so sure the weather extremes were anything that hadn’t happened before.

“I’m not a scientist so it’s hard for me to make a judgment call,” she said, before offering an inaccurate explanation. “Our planet has always had changes and this may be just the cycle of life. You have to consider that deserts used to have lakes, Lake Michigan wasn’t always a lake.”

In spite of the growing alarm among climate scientists, there are few signs of the kind of widespread societal change that would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously heating the planet.

“Even though storms and other extremes of the climate are happening, if they are at a distance, we just as soon pretend it doesn’t affect us, because we don’t want to do the things that are needed to deal with this threat,” said Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon who specializes in the psychology of risk and decision making.

“More and more people recognize climate change as a problem, but they don’t like the solutions,” Mr. Slovic added. “They don’t want to have to give up the comfort and conveniences that we get from using energy from the wrong sources, and so forth.”

Last Thursday, on what researchers say was the hottest day in modern history, a record number of commercial flights, each one emitting more planet-warming gasses, were in the air, according to Flightradar24.

As wildfires and sea level rise wipe out communities from California to North Carolina, residents continue to rebuild in disaster-prone areas.

And while more electricity is being generated by wind, solar and other clean energy, the world is still largely powered by fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, the primary sources of planet-warming emissions.

The cumulative effects of all those greenhouse gases are now on terrifying display around the globe. The planet has warmed by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, fueling a dizzying array of extreme weather events.

Studies show that the deadly flooding in Pakistan last year, the heat dome that baked the Pacific Northwest in 2021 and Hurricane Maria, which battered Puerto Rico in 2017, were all made worse by climate change.

“Climate change is here, now,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not far away in the Antarctic and it’s not off in the future. It’s these climate change fueled extreme weather events that we are all living through.”

Weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion in damage are on the upswing in the United States, according to a Climate Central analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1980, the average time between billion-dollar disasters was 82 days. From 2018-22, the average time between these most extreme events, even controlled for inflation, was just 18 days.

“Climate change is pushing these events to new levels,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central. “We don’t get breaks in between them to recover like we used to.”

Human activity has had such a significant impact on the planet’s ecosystems and climate that scientists are now discussing whether to declare that Earth has entered a new interval of geologic time: the Anthropocene.

And with emissions still rising globally, scientists are warning that there is only a short amount of time to drastically change course before the effects become truly catastrophic.

“This is the last slap upside the head we’re going to get when it might still matter,” said Bill McKibben, a longtime climate activist. “It’s obviously a pivotal moment in the Earth’s climatic history. It also needs to be a pivotal moment in the Earth’s political history.”

In the United States, climate change is a partisan issue, with many Republican leaders questioning established climate science, promoting fossil fuels and opposing renewable energy.

Climate scientists and environmentalists hold out hope that each new hurricane and hailstorm could nudge Americans toward action.

A survey of adults this spring found a majority are now concerned about climate change and support federal action to combat global warming and promote clean energy, according to a recent survey by Yale.

Even in Florida, a state that has grown more conservative in recent years, a growing number of residents believe humans are causing climate change, including a record number of Republicans, according to a survey by Florida Atlantic University.

“The polling data has shifted over the last few years, and I would bet that it’s going to lurch again,” Mr. McKibben said. “At a certain point, if you see enough fires and floods, who are you going to believe?”

Here Comes The Hot

If it's not arrived where you are yet, sit tight - it's coming.

We're already in record-setting territory for hot weather - July 3-5 being the hottest days ever recorded, and possibly the hottest days in 125,000 years.

So it's here whether you know it or not. And whether you're willing to acknowledge the reasons or not, it's fucking hot.

So, of course, we crank up the AC. One word: don't.

Typical HVAC systems are designed and engineered to operate effectively within a range of "normal" temperatures.

• A heat pump will keep you snug and toasty at 72°F as long as the outside air temperature isn't below about 35°F.
• On the other side, your AC will keep you cool at 72°F as long as the outside temp is below about 100-105°F.

The gear is made to work with temperature differentials of about 40 or 50°F tops.

So if the outside temperature gets down to (eg) 20°F, the heat pump can't extract enough warmth from the cold air - it can only heat the air going into your house by 40 or 45 degrees, so it's going to blow cold air. At that point, either the Auxiliary Heat kicks in (ie: electric heating coils), or the system goes to gas or heating oil of whatever.

Likewise, the AC is going to struggle hard trying to cool the outside air by more than about 35-40 degrees. So if the outside temp is about 90 or so, then it shouldn't be a big deal, but as it gets up around 105°F, you're putting a lot of unproductive (and likely harmful) stress on your system. Which is bad for the power grid, and requires more power to be generated, which contributes to greenhouse warming, which is at the root of the problem in the first fucking place.

Don’t crank down your thermostat when it’s hot out. Do this instead.

If you’re seeking relief from the scorching summer heat, resist the urge to dramatically turn down your thermostat.

“Definitely don’t do that,” said Jennifer Amann, senior fellow in the buildings program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit group. “It’s not going to really cool your home any faster.”

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint
She and other experts say cranking down your thermostat will only strain your air conditioner, which already has to work harder when it’s hot out. It also increases your energy use, placing more pressure on the electricity grid and potentially contributing to blackouts or brownouts during periods of high demand.

This summer is already shaping up to be historically hot, increasing the chances this year will be Earth’s warmest on record. The extreme weather is raising concerns about power grid failures and exposure to dangerous heat.

Here’s how to set your thermostat to stay safe and save energy during hot days. Adjusting the temperature one degree warmer, for example, can typically yield energy savings of 1 percent, experts say.

“Particularly, in the middle of a hot day it can really help avoid reliability issues on the grid,” Amann said.

Setting your thermostat low doesn’t cool your home faster

Your home air-conditioning system doesn’t work like a water faucet, said Shichao Liu, an architectural engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

When the indoor temperature is warmer than what your thermostat is set to, your system turns on, he said. But setting the thermostat really low doesn’t increase your air conditioner’s cooling capacity.

“People think, ‘If I make the thermostat set point 60, I’ll get more cooling than a set point at 70,’ but that’s not correct,” Liu said. “You get the same amount of the cooling.”

If you set your thermostat to a temperature that exceeds your air conditioner’s capacity, the system will keep running as it tries to cool your home to that point, he said. And continuously running your air conditioner guzzles energy and can shorten the life span of your system.

Best temperature when it’s hot

One study conducted on the University of Georgia’s campus in Athens in summer 2014 found people reported feeling comfortable in indoor temperatures anywhere between 71 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit.

“If a person was in their house and they’re going to be there all the time, they could maybe turn up to 76 or 77 or so,” said Thomas Lawrence, a professor of practice emeritus at the University of Georgia who co-wrote the peer-reviewed paper. The study’s results suggest “most people will be fine with that.”

“People should realize that if it’s really hot outside, having it at 77, 78, or even more, on the inside for a little while still feels good,” he said.

Best settings when you’re out

And when you’re not at home for extended periods of time, Amann suggested setting your thermostat 5 to 10 degrees warmer than what would normally be comfortable for you.

Programming your thermostat to a higher temperature for eight hours a day could result in annual energy savings of as much as 10 percent on heating and cooling, according to the Energy Department.

“If everybody who is away from home has set their thermostat so that they’re saving at least 5 percent of their cooling, then across all of the houses that can really make a difference in addressing that peak load,” Amann said.

Manage your AC in peak hours
When you do a temperature setback matters, Amann said.

“The most critical times to be thinking about really managing your AC load is in those peak hours in the middle of the day, those really hot afternoon hours” when electricity demand is high, she said. “That’s when it can be particularly important to do a setback if you can.”

Keep in mind, though, that air conditioners are also critical for dehumidifying, which is a major part of keeping you feeling physically cool and comfortable.

Other cooling methods

When it’s really hot out, you can feel warmer indoors even though your thermostat is set to a temperature that’s usually comfortable for you, Liu said. Instead of dialing down the temperature, use other approaches to stay cool, he said.

Ceiling fans, for example, can be a huge help, and typically require little energy to run.

“People don’t realize how much more comfortable they can be if they used their fans strategically,” Amann said.

Other tips include:

• Make sure your blinds or shades are closed during the hottest parts of the day, particularly if you don’t have updated windows.
• Avoid using appliances such as dishwashers, ovens, stovetops and dryers, which can make spaces hotter and more humid and force your air conditioner to work harder.
• Open and close windows to help increase air circulation and ventilation, particularly at night.

Climate Change

Go ahead and try to make your case for the fucked up air quality having nothing to do with human activity.

We had begun to isolate

at the front end of the pandemic.

Some very large pieces of the economy

were still cranking along.

Yeah, OK - there's a problem with fires,

and those fires are fucking up the air.

So how come all the fires, genius?

That's Hot

Sea surface temperatures 4 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal

surround the United Kingdom on Wednesday. (NOAA)

‘Beyond extreme’ ocean heat wave in North Atlantic is worst in 170 years

The exceptionally warm waters could pose a deadly threat to marine life and impact summer weather in the U.K. and Europe

The ocean waters surrounding the United Kingdom and much of Europe are baking in an unprecedented marine heat wave that scientists say is being intensified by human-caused climate change. Scientists are astounded not only by how much the waters have warmed during the past month but also how early in the year the heat wave is occurring. The warm waters are a threat to marine life and could worsen heat waves over land this summer, they say.

Sea surface temperatures are running as high as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, the warmest in more than 170 years, and are more typical of August and September when the waters are usually at their warmest. The event has registered as a Category 4 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine heat wave scale with localized areas reaching Category 5, the two highest categories on the scale.

NOAA defines a marine heat wave as a period with persistent and unusually warm ocean temperatures, “which can have significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies.” The agency describes Category 4 as “extreme” and Category 5 as “beyond extreme.”

Last month was the warmest May since 1850 for the North Atlantic around the United Kingdom and the warmest compared to average for any month, the country’s Met Office reported. And that was before water temperatures soared in early June, in part because of abundant sunshine and warm breezes from the southwest, Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern said in a video update Tuesday.

The average sea surface temperature near the United Kingdom and Ireland is closing in on 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit), which has only happened once before in June, tweeted Ben Noll, a meteorologist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand. “It seems very likely that June 2023 will set a new record in the region as sea temperatures continue to rise,” Noll said.

The global average sea surface temperature for 2023 through Tuesday (solid black line) is running significantly warmer than any year on record. (NOAA/University of Maine)
The North Atlantic heat wave is part of a rapid warming of ocean waters globally since March that has scientists confused about the cause and concerned about its impacts.

Global ocean surface temperature reached a record high in May for the second consecutive month, NOAA said in a report last week, and appears to have continued on a record pace during June. The chance of seeing such warm sea surface temperatures is 1-in-256,000, Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, said, adding “this is beyond extraordinary” in a recent tweet.

This is how the sea surface temperatures look right now.

🟥 = Warmer than average
🟦 = Cooler than average

Records are being broken every day. pic.twitter.com/BH9iCXUgXC

— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) June 15, 2023

NOAA forecasters say the marine heat wave conditions in the North Atlantic have a 90 to 100 percent chance to continue through August and a 70 to 80 percent chance to last through the end of the year, although the intensity of the heat is predicted to decrease. Most of the world’s oceans have at least a 70 percent chance of marine heat wave conditions persisting at least through the summer, NOAA predicts.

The unusually warm waters in the tropical Atlantic are already influencing the hurricane season, having helped Tropical Storm Bret form the farthest east of any storm on record so early in the season. Longer-term impacts of warming oceans could include higher sea levels, more intense storms with heavier rain and more frequent regional marine heat waves like the one surrounding Europe now.

Possible causes range from cleaner air to climate change

What’s causing such extreme ocean warmth is debatable.

Some scientists have pointed to a reduction in air pollution from ships, which starting in 2020 were required to use fuel containing less sulfur. Sulfur degrades air quality but also acts to cool the Earth’s surface by reflecting sunlight back into space.

Other warming influences might include a weaker-than-normal area of high pressure in the North Atlantic, weaker winds carrying less sun-blocking Saharan dust into the Atlantic and a developing El Nino, which tends to warm ocean waters in certain areas. In addition to natural variation in weather and ocean patterns, scientists say that human-caused climate change has increased the odds of heat waves both on land and in the oceans.

“Every spike in the variability between warmer and cooler events tends to be greater than the previous one,” Thomas Smith, a professor of environmental geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said in an email. “That underlying trend is caused by fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions.”

Potential impacts on marine life and local weather

Experts say that while the impacts on marine life depend on how long the heat wave persists, they could be deadly because warming waters deplete the oxygen marine animals need to survive.

“The temperatures are not yet lethal for most sensitive species, although they will be stressed,” Smith said. “However, if temperatures remain at 4 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal through to September, we could witness a significant die-off in critical species for the marine ecosystems that surround the UK, such as kelp and seagrass, as well as oysters and various fish species that are important for regional economies.”

Potential weather impacts for the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe this summer and beyond range from heat waves to higher chances for heavy rain.

Smith notes that because the United Kingdom and Ireland are surrounded by an unusually warm North Atlantic Ocean to the west and an equally warm North Sea to the east, “whichever way the winds blow, they will pass over warmer waters than we’ve ever experienced in the observational record for this time of year.”

That could lead to “a more turbulent atmosphere, and the associated storms and heavy rainfall,” Smith said. “If the winds don’t blow and we sit under a high pressure system, the surrounding heat has the potential to form a heat dome that might exacerbate summer heatwaves.”

Heat domes are sprawling zones of high pressure that trap heat underneath them and can lead to extreme and extended heat waves, such as the one that has scorched Texas with blistering heat since last week. Summer is already off to an abnormally warm start in Europe, and temperatures are forecast to remain well above normal through at least much of the next week.

'Beyond extreme' by definition.

Ireland and the British Isles are at the epicentre of a major marine heatwave. We have not seen the North Atlantic look like this in modern records.

Marine heatwaves are categorised from 1 to 5. There are hotspots hitting category 5. pic.twitter.com/2lle3hrsGv

— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) June 19, 2023

Today's Tweet

It was nasty at my place last night too - but nothing like this.

And remember - the smart guys have been warning us about this kinda shit for decades.

Tonight was the scariest night of my life. It started pelting people with hail at Red Rocks and my sister and I luckily found shelter under a sign. I am bleeding and have huge bumps on my head from the hail. Hoping everyone made it out safely. pic.twitter.com/jong1SBuYd

— nicole (@nikkitbfh) June 22, 2023

The Antropocene Epoch

The gain is always tempered by the cost.

God love the nerds

HIDDEN BENEATH THE SURFACE

Digging deep into a humble lake in Canada, scientists found a spot on Earth like no other — and a record that could redefine our history of the planet

This summer, researchers will determine whether Crawford Lake should be named the official starting point for this geologic chapter, with pollution-laden sediments from the 1950s marking the transition from the dependable environment of the past to the uncertain new reality humans have created.

In just seven decades, the scientists say, humans have brought about greater changes than they did in more than seven millennia. Never in Earth’s history has the world changed this much, this fast. Never has a single species had the capacity to wreak so much damage — or the chance to prevent so much harm.

“It’s a line in the sand,” said Francine McCarthy, a professor of Earth sciences at Brock University in Ontario, who has led research on Crawford Lake. “The Earth itself is playing by a different rule book. And it’s because of us.”

Seeking the golden spike

Every new phase of Earth’s history begins with a “golden spike” — a spot in the geologic record where proof of a global transformation is perfectly preserved.

These spikes are like exclamation points in the story of the planet, punctuating a tale of shifting continents, evolving species and temperatures that rose and fell as carbon levels fluctuated in the atmosphere. They mark the starts of epochs — small segments of geologic time. And they have helped scientists interpret the forces that shaped Earth’s past climates, which in turn allows them to forecast the effects of modern warming.

In 2009, the International Commission on Stratigraphy — an obscure scientific body responsible for defining the phases of Earth’s past — created a new working group to investigate the evidence for the Anthropocene. The group’s mission: to identify a potential “golden spike” site that might convince fellow scientists of the new epoch’s validity.

Their search spanned from mountain summits to the depths of the ocean, from the Antarctic ice sheet to tropical coral reefs. And, in 2018, it led them to McCarthy’s office door.

Before that moment, few beyond her field knew of McCarthy’s research studying lake sediments for signs of past climate change. Her outreach work was meaningful, but largely local: advocating for conservation of the Great Lakes, teaching geology to students at her midsize public university.

Crawford Lake was similarly modest — just a pretty little pool at a park in the Toronto suburbs. Schoolchildren liked to visit its reconstructed Indigenous longhouses. Locals treasured it as a quaint spot to have a picnic and watch for birds.

Yet McCarthy’s colleague Martin Head, a geologist at Brock who had been involved with the Anthropocene Working Group, was intrigued by the rare chemistry uncovered at Crawford.

No other water body is known to possess this particular combination of attributes, making Crawford Lake a unique bellwether of global change.

“It’s a freak of nature, but it’s my little freak of nature,” McCarthy said. “And it’s perfect for what we need.”

As she considered her colleague’s proposal, McCarthy thought about the decades she’d spent studying prior planetary upheavals. Her work on lake sediments from the past several million years had shown her how dramatic swings in temperature destabilized ecosystems and drove species to extinction.

Without drastic action to stave off modern climate change, she said, that history could repeat.

The diary of the Earth

McCarthy stood on the shore of Crawford Lake, watching the April breeze ruffle the water surface, waiting for work to begin.

First, researchers had to tether a wooden raft in the deepest part of the lake, right over the spot they wanted to sample.

To extract the lake’s layered sediments, the team used a tool called a “freeze corer,” but more affectionately known as “the frozen finger.” The long aluminum wedge was filled with a mixture of alcohol and dry ice, making it much colder than the surrounding water, soil and air.

They suspended the freeze corer from a tripod and lowered it through a hole in the raft. Down, down it went, through 75 feet of water, until finally it sank into the squishy mud on the lake bottom.

Then they waited. It would take about 40 minutes for the lake sediments to freeze onto the corer’s chilly surface.

Finally, it was time to pull the corer back up. Clinging to its face was a five-foot slice of mud, cut from the lake bottom like a piece from the center of a cake.

Back on shore, McCarthy traced a gloved finger over the core’s delicate brown and white stripes — sharper than any other sample she’d seen.

She had uncovered dozens of Crawford Lake cores by that point — but every extraction felt special, and strangely intimate. Each sample, she knew, would give her a glimpse into a thousand years of the lake’s history, revealing its deepest responses to the changing world above. Each was like a new page from the diary of the Earth.

What secrets would she find inside?

The archive inside Crawford Lake’s cores shows how human pressures on the lake built up over the centuries like steam inside a kettle, until finally the kettle boiled over.

But humanity’s influence hasn’t always been so destructive. The first people to make their mark on the lake were Native villagers who built longhouses near the lakeshore. Researchers have counted more than two centuries’ worth of sediments from the lake’s “Indigenous period” containing crop pollen and other evidence of human habitation alongside ancient goose droppings and traces of trees.

Around the start of the 16th century, all signs of the settlement vanished for reasons still unknown. Yet the seasonal process that built the lake’s layers remained.

Sediments from subsequent eras showed Europeans’ growing influence on the landscape. White pine pollen counts dwindled as people cut down trees. Traces of ragweed marked how different species flourished in the cleared land.

The impacts piled up throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Tiny black bits of fly ash — a byproduct of burning coal and oil — drifted into the lake from rapidly industrializing cities. Heavy metals like copper and lead increased in the mud.

And then, around 1950, the world reached a tipping point.

“This is when humans essentially overwhelmed the Earth as a functioning system,” said Head, McCarthy’s collaborator. Crawford Lake — and the rest of the planet — were fundamentally, irrevocably transformed.

The sharpest sign of change was a surge in radioactive plutonium that started in Crawford Lake’s mud around 1950. The element rarely occurs naturally on this planet; it could only have come from nuclear weapon tests happening thousands of miles away.

Other shifts weren’t necessarily new, but they appeared at scales ten or a hundred times greater than anything the lake had seen before. A lighter form of nitrogen — a molecular signature of burning fossil fuels — proliferated. The amount of fly ash increased eightfold in less than five years. Acid rain, caused by pollution reacting with water in the atmosphere, diminished the calcite layers.

Still more sediments recorded irreversible losses. Certain microbe species were eliminated locally. The amount of elm pollen plummeted — a consequence of the invasive fungus that was decimating North America’s tree populations at the time.

All the while, greenhouse gas pollution made the planet inexorably hotter. The lake’s calcite layers became thicker during warm years; pollen grains show how the forest composition shifted to include more heat-loving tree species.

Average temperatures in southern Canada have increased about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in this time. The globe as a whole is now warmer than it’s been at almost any point since the end of the last ice age.

Researchers were able to calculate summer temperatures from the pollen detected in the core sediments

These changes all are the result of what scientists call “the Great Acceleration” — the dramatic, simultaneous surge in almost every measure of human activity that started in the mid-20th century and continues through today.

The same evidence appears all over the planet, in every potential golden spike site the Anthropocene Working Group has examined. Peat bogs, ocean basins, the skeletons of coral reefs — even the ice of Antarctica has been permanently tainted by human pollution.

“What we have measured, in a very objective and quantitative way, is we are living in a world with conditions that are no longer within the last 11,000 years of natural variability,” McCarthy said. “The Earth is, in fact, fundamentally different.”

‘Where we have a story to tell’

When the last core samples were taken from Crawford Lake this spring, Catherine Tammaro couldn’t bring herself to watch.

To the Wyandot artist and faithkeeper, who is descended from the people who likely once lived here, the lake is a living being. She calls this space “Kionywarihwaen” — a Wyandot name meaning “where we have a story to tell.”

And Crawford Lake had already endured so much painful history. Dredging up its sediments — even for science — felt like another invasion.

But after hours of reflection alongside representatives from other First Nations, Tammaro had come to agree that the coring should go forward.

“It’s like a surgical operation,” she said. “It’s painful, but we recognize that it should be done … because it may help prevent further climate disaster by adding to our understanding of how humans have had an impact on the Earth.”

The extraction of this core was one of the last steps before the Anthropocene Working Group selects its preferred “Golden Spike” site, a decision that is expected this summer. Crawford Lake is considered a top candidate for the recognition.

Before the Anthropocene — and the lake — can claim a place in geologic history, the proposal must undergo several more rounds of voting. And not all geologists are convinced the Anthropocene belongs on Earth’s 4.6-billion-year timeline. Some say this period of overwhelming human influence has been too brief to know whether it is truly an epoch, a span that typically lasts millions of years. Others have pointed out that — unlike the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and other epoch-defining events — human-caused changes didn’t happen simultaneously all around the world.

“Formalizing the Anthropocene creates a hard and bright line, and you either exist on one side or the other,” said Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist at the University of Maine. “But really, it’s been a long gradient, a long process of changing how we live.”

Yet advocates for naming the new epoch say Crawford Lake’s sediments make clear the stark contrast between human impacts before 1950 — which were mostly local and often reversible — and the rapid transformation wrought by modernity.

Unless the world takes drastic steps to curb global warming, pollution and declines in biodiversity, the situation will become worse, said geologist Colin Waters, chair of the Anthropocene Working Group. Scientists warn that the planet is getting dangerously close to climate “tipping points,” where ice melt will accelerate and major weather systems could collapse.

“It is a permanent legacy of human impacts on the planet, written in the rock record,” Waters said.

Yet as much as the Anthropocene is a recognition of humanity’s culpability, it is also a declaration of human agency, McCarthy believes. Alongside geologic evidence of environmental destruction, Crawford Lake holds proof of people’s capacity for repair.

In 1963, when nations agreed to ban nuclear weapons testing that could contaminate the water and atmosphere, plutonium concentrations in Crawford Lake started to diminish. Fly ash counts fell after the United States and Canada required new pollution controls at power plants and other industrial facilities. The revitalization of the lake’s distinctive calcite bands during the 1980s is a sign of successful efforts to combat acid rain.

But not all changes captured in the Crawford cores can be so quickly undone. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will remain elevated for tens of thousands of years. It will take at least as long, and a dramatic drop in temperature, for the polar ice sheets to return to their preindustrial majesty.

But “it’s not just a doomsday story,” McCarthy said. “It is a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ story. It shows we can make meaningful change.”

She estimates that Crawford Lake will continue to accumulate new sediments for at least 10,000 years. That means a geologist in the distant future will be able to dig into those layers just as McCarthy has.

They will see whether the world managed to zero out carbon emissions and stabilize global warming.

They will learn whether people preserved threatened species and set aside nuclear weapons.

And they will discover what lessons humanity drew from this record of the Earth.