NASA/Goddard Scientist; "Not A Wake-Up Call Anymore"; No Way We're Ready For Our New Climate Reality

[hatrack]

This summer of fire and swelter looks a lot like the future that scientists have been warning about in the era of climate change, and it’s revealing in real time how unprepared much of the world remains for life on a hotter planet.

The disruptions to everyday life have been far-reaching and devastating. In California, firefighters are racing to control what has become the largest fire in state history. Harvests of staple grains like wheat and corn are expected to dip this year, in some cases sharply, in countries as different as Sweden and El Salvador. In Europe, nuclear power plants have had to shut down because the river water that cools the reactors was too warm. Heat waves on four continents have brought electricity grids crashing.

And dozens of heat-related deaths in Japan this summer offered a foretaste of what researchers warn could be big increases in mortality from extreme heat. A study last month in the journal PLOS Medicine projected a fivefold rise for the United States by 2080. The outlook for less wealthy countries is worse; for the Philippines, researchers forecast 12 times more deaths.

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And even if there are variations in weather patterns in the coming years, with some cooler years mixed in, the trend line is clear: 17 of the 18 warmest years since modern record-keeping began have occurred since 2001. “It’s not a wake-up call anymore,” Cynthia Rosenzweig, who runs the climate impacts group at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said of global warming and its human toll. “It’s now absolutely happening to millions of people around the world.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/climate/summer-heat-global-warming.html

[Botany]

1. Cynthia Rosenzweig will soon be fired

Last edited Sun Aug 12, 2018, 11:36 AM - Edit history (2)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future-flooding-climate-change.html

This is New York in the not-so-distant future:
Even locals who believe climate change is real have a hard time grasping that their city will almost certainly be flooded beyond recognition.

[The_jackalope]

2. The four saddest words in the English Language

"I told you so."

[Mickju]

3. It's happening much faster than most people realize

We are in a real climate emergency right now.

[The_jackalope]

4. Yup. That's what happens with non-linear processes.

By the time the average person realizes there's a problem, it's too fucking late.