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Earth Canada

CNN Reports 'Unprecedented Heat, Hundreds Dead' as Climate Change Hits the Northern Hemisphere (cnn.com) 211

Canada's highest temperature ever recorded happened Tuesday, in the small British Columbia town of Lytton, reports CNN. But it's just part of "an unprecedented heat wave that has over a week killed hundreds of people and triggered more than 240 wildfires" across the Canadian province — "most of which are still burning." Lytton hit 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.3 degrees Fahrenheit), astounding for the town of just 250 people nestled in the mountains, where June maximum temperatures are usually around 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit). This past week, however, its nights have been hotter than its days usually are, in a region where air conditioning is rare and homes are designed to retain heat. Now fires have turned much of Lytton to ash and forced its people, as well as hundreds around them, to flee.

Scientists have warned for decades that climate change will make heat waves more frequent and more intense. That is a reality now playing out in Canada, but also in many other parts of the northern hemisphere that are increasingly becoming uninhabitable. Roads melted this week in America's northwest, and residents in New York City were told not to use high-energy appliances, like washers and dryers — and painfully, even their air conditioners — for the sake of the power grid. In Russia, Moscow reported its highest-ever June temperature of 34.8 degrees Celsius (94 degrees Fahrenheit) on June 23, and Siberian farmers are scrambling to save their crops from dying in an ongoing heat wave. Even in the Arctic Circle, temperatures soared into the 30s [above 86 degrees Fahrenheit]. The World Meteorological Organization is seeking to verify the highest-ever temperature north of the Arctic Circle since records there began, after a weather station in Siberia's Verkhoyansk recorded a 38-degree day on June 20 [over 100 degrees Fahrenheit].

In India, tens of millions of people in the northwest were affected by heat waves... And in Iraq, authorities announced a public holiday across several provinces for Thursday, including the capital Baghdad, because it was simply too hot to work or study, after temperatures surpassed 50 degrees and its electricity system collapsed.

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CNN Reports 'Unprecedented Heat, Hundreds Dead' as Climate Change Hits the Northern Hemisphere

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  • by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @11:49AM (#61549864) Homepage

    Well keep listening to big oil see where we end up. I wish people like the Koch Brothers could be sued personally, but only their companies can.

    In the 70s, even US President Carter knew about Climate change and installed Solar on the White House I think in 1978. But he was tossed out and then the idiot took over and we started doubling down on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. The chickens have come home to roost and people are suffering. This suffering does not compare to what the young will suffer in 30 or 40 years.

    If you are young, get out and vote and get your friends to do the same. Right now, looks like the small amount of forward motion the US made on Climate Change in the past 6 months will start to reverse next year unless young people get out in large numbers.

    • Because solar technology in the 70s was more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels?

      • by tekram ( 8023518 )
        What was installed in the 1970s White House were solar hot water which has not changed very much and are still very much efficient in many parts of the world.
    • rather terrifyingly there's "Big Water" coming up. Specifically a bunch of rich assholes are buying up water rights.

      Imagine how much money you could make if you control access to water....
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )

      You can blame corporations, but I just burned several gallons of gas yesterday, and I'm going to burn more today. Sorry about that, but until technology gives me other options, I am not changing.

      • And as much as I would like to be off of oil, this is the real crux. And more so for the rest of the world, since while we have a shaky as fuck power grid, places with the largest densest populations don't have much of one at all.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Come on then, tell us the extreme requirements you have that absolutely could not be changed and that mandate the burning of gasoline.

        For some reason the excuses seem to get ever more outlandish, as if no amount of range and no amount of high power charging will ever be enough for some people.

        • Nah, I fully expect the next car I buy to be electric, just because the technology is improving so quickly.

          My point wasn't about that. My point was that you can't just blame corporations and forget about the problem, we're all in this together.

      • by dryeo ( 100693 )

        I stayed home today, no actually I had to drive a couple of miles to get water as my well has dried up 2 months early, but would have gone to town if gas wasn't C$1.76 a litre.
        Also noticed all the trees are turning brown after last weeks 40C temperatures, which is scary.

    • Jimmy Carter installed token solar cells on top of the White House to power, what, exactly? Amy's tropical fish tank? It was a token gesture taken down shortly after he left office.

      George W Bush's private residence has been 'off the grid' for decades, but can't talk about that, cause, you know, he's not a democrat.

    • by haunebu ( 16326 )

      "Get out and vote..." Meanwhile, China pollutes more than all other industrialized nations COMBINED. Appreciate the sentiment, but unless and until China curtails its own pollution, it's just pissing in the wind.

      Also, where do you think those solar panels are made? China. So we should feed the polluting beast while ignoring our own natural resources, thereby hobbling our own economy. Right...

  • It's Slashdot, so here comes the deluge of climate changing denialist set on destroying this planet to own the libs or something something. Don't worry, the planet will pick itself up by its bootstraps without us no doubt.

    • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Sunday July 04, 2021 @12:21PM (#61549968) Journal

      It's Slashdot, so here comes the deluge of climate changing denialist set on destroying this planet to own the libs or something something.

      It's not primarily about owning the libs, that's just a means to an end. It's about older wealthy people with a vested interest in fossil fuel industry profits reaping as much as possible from the planet during their lifetimes to maximize their wealth at any cost to the planet and future generations. The "own the libs" culture war nonsense is just one of the tactics used to get voters to support this goal against their own self-interest.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        We have an unfortunate situation where a lot of people are reliant on screwing others to have a decent retirement. Property prices, oil investments, low wages, NIMBYs etc.

        To make matters worse many boomers are not happy that it turns out the good times they enjoyed in their youth was all at the expense of the kids today. The climate, the economy, housing, education, national debt, they did well but screwed everyone who came after them. That's where a lot of this crap about avocados, iPhones and unrealistic

      • I hope you're right about that, but I'm really afraid you're wrong. 20 years ago it might even have been mostly right. But today? Something like 20% of the population is emotionally invested in a mindset I can hardly begin to understand. It's a mix of evangelical Christianity, free market economics, bizarre conspiracy theories, and hatred of anything that could be possibly seen as liberal. With fanatical loyalty to a billionaire psychopath as their leader. Maybe it started with cynical corporations sp

  • It cuts both ways (Score:4, Insightful)

    by random_nb ( 2453280 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @12:08PM (#61549920)
    Pointing to a heat wave and claiming climate change is no less fearmongering than pointing at a cold snap and claiming a hoax is denialism.

    Anyone claiming that they have a solution right now that isn't nuclear power, or that there is no solution, is just preying on emotion and selling you politics. The best time to build safe, reliable, and clean fission plants is 10 years ago. The next best time is today.
    • I totally believe in climate change. But one thing's for sure: I won't take the climate change vaccine!

    • And I bet you'd be very happy if they built it right in your back yard, to reduce the cost of transportation, right?

      • I'd be personally very happy to have the airport in my backyard packed up and turned into a nuclear power plant. Passing aircraft can be obnoxiously loud, but when there's a queue of them waiting for the deicing station, it's just ridiculous. If that would also help spur replacement of noisy and filthy diesel public transport buses with battery-electric or hydrogen and powered rail, I'm really struggling to see the downside.

        I get that not everyone has a backyard that sucks and would stand to be improved w
    • I can tell you from living there, the temperatures in those regions have been higher and getting hotter for many years. And winters are generally starting later.
    • It's a book I recommend highly for being informative and objective.

      The key takeaway from it is that energy consumption is enormous and there's no basket big enough to put all our eggs in.

      I seem to remember the author found that there's not enough pressure vessel manufacturing capability to make the world's power grid as nuclearized as France's.

      The closer we come to that the better, but we'll need other sources and efficiency gains too.

    • Anyone claiming that they have a solution right now that isn't nuclear power

      Nuclear power isn't a solution right now. If you get approval to build a plant today by the time it gets turned on the world will already be fucked. Any solution you propose that *starts* making a difference in 20 years after you've sunk $10-20bn is not a viable solution.

      We absolutely should build nuclear power plants, but we also need to find a real solution to climate change in the interim.

  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @12:11PM (#61549934) Journal

    "Climate Change Hits the Northern Hemisphere "

    Cliff Mass is about as expert as they come in the subject of weather and climate in the pac no west:
    https://cliffmass.blogspot.com... [blogspot.com]

    "A number of media outlets and activists have claimed that global warming, forced by greenhouse gas emissions, is the central cause of this event.
    Such claims are in contradiction to the best science, modeling, and observations. "

    So shut the fuck up with CNN claiming this is climate change/global warming.

    • I'd take his claims more seriously if he didn't force me to listen to his podcast.

    • That's an interesting note. Did you listen to the podcast and have any details to share? Unfortunately it's hard to dig up details quickly in podcast format.

      His blog notes that a special blog post will come out on Tuesday addressing this topic which will be more accessible than the podcast format.

    • is making it worse. Yes, there's a heat dome that is the cause of the record heat wave. But a) those heat domes appear to be happening more often due to climate changes (which is exactly what was predicted, e.g. more incidence of extreme weather patterns) and b) an extra degree or two on average has a much larger impact than you'd think.

      So technically yes, the cause of the heat wave isn't climate change. However the reason the heat wave is an emergency rather than a nuisance is very likely to be climate
  • June 2020 was unusually cool and wet with snow at places like Pennask Summit in the hills west of Kelowna. That was just normal year-to-year variation, nothing out of the ordinary. Funny how that works.

    The insane temperatures are over. Now we have forest fires to contend with. Nobody seems to have a clue how to handle them, either.

    ...laura

  • Anyone telling you that US can be powered by renewables is selling you something. With existing technology the only emission free baseline-capable tech is nuclear. Anything else and you are really buying natural gas backup generator power.
  • by Hentai007 ( 188457 ) on Monday July 05, 2021 @12:38PM (#61553108)

    there is no link between smoking cigarettes and cancer, a group of scientists agree! there is no link between fracking and earthquakes, a group of scientists agree! there is no link between fossil fuels and climate change, a group of scientists agree!

    it's 120 in Vancouver, but sure, lets act like thats normal. I don't get conservatives, why are you so obsessed with defending billionaires to the point of absurdity? it won't matter how hard you pwned tha libz when we're all dead, stop pretending and grow up, help fix the problem.

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