Climate Crisis 'Wreaking Havoc' on Earth's Water Cycle, Report Finds (theguardian.com) 41
The climate crisis is "wreaking havoc" on the planet's water cycle, with ferocious floods and crippling droughts affecting billions of people, a report has found. The Guardian: Water is people's most vital natural resource but global heating is changing the way water moves around the Earth. The analysis of water disasters in 2024, which was the hottest year on record, found they had killed at least 8,700 people, driven 40 million from their homes and caused economic damage of more than $550bn.
Rising temperatures, caused by continued burning of fossil fuels, disrupt the water cycle in multiple ways. Warmer air can hold more water vapour, leading to more intense downpours. Warmer seas provide more energy to hurricanes and typhoons, supercharging their destructive power. Global heating can also increase drought by causing more evaporation from soil, as well as shifting rainfall patterns.
Deadly flash floods hit Nepal and Brazil in 2024, while river flooding caused devastation in central Europe, China and Bangladesh. Super Typhoon Yagi, which struck south-east Asia in September, was intensified by the climate crisis, as was Storm Boris which hit Europe the same month. Droughts also caused major damage, with crop production in southern Africa halving, causing more than 30 million people to face food shortages. Farmers were also forced to cull livestock as their pastures dried up, and falling output from hydropower dams led to widespread blackouts.
Rising temperatures, caused by continued burning of fossil fuels, disrupt the water cycle in multiple ways. Warmer air can hold more water vapour, leading to more intense downpours. Warmer seas provide more energy to hurricanes and typhoons, supercharging their destructive power. Global heating can also increase drought by causing more evaporation from soil, as well as shifting rainfall patterns.
Deadly flash floods hit Nepal and Brazil in 2024, while river flooding caused devastation in central Europe, China and Bangladesh. Super Typhoon Yagi, which struck south-east Asia in September, was intensified by the climate crisis, as was Storm Boris which hit Europe the same month. Droughts also caused major damage, with crop production in southern Africa halving, causing more than 30 million people to face food shortages. Farmers were also forced to cull livestock as their pastures dried up, and falling output from hydropower dams led to widespread blackouts.
The way we manage water is wreaking havoc (Score:4, Insightful)
In the USA, we cut down trees, pave the land over, and jam it full of high density housing and strip malls, ie no permeability. We funnel the storm water into concrete sewers and fast track it into the ocean. The result is less ground water replacement as we pump our aquifers dry. Of course, we pump our aquifers and then fast track that water into the oceans as well. Make that make sense.
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Re:The way we manage water is wreaking havoc (Score:4, Interesting)
It fits pretty well everything I saw in Washington State, Oregon, Virginia, and South Carolina. That's obviously not the country as a whole, so I can't verify it entirely, but it does seem a very accurate reflection of reality.
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Reality check - the USA has a lot of undeveloped / fallowed land. While to much hardscape certainly creates a lot of local problems, I don't think more broadly it is likely driving aquifer depletion, at least with respect to the continents as a whole.
You don't like high density housing, what you suggest as an alternative more lower density housing and more sprawl. That still means a lot of habitat destruction and environmental problems even many types of wildlife can share ex-urban environments with us.
Whi
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You haven't looked into why immigration drives population growth... It's our economic system based on greed and eternal growth. If you don't have a constantly growing population, it all starts to fall apart.
The truth is we have (on average) been living beyond our means on a combination of exploiting foreigners and our own children. If you want to stop immigration, prepare for a significant reduction in your standard of living.
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It's our economic system based on greed and eternal growth. If you don't have a constantly growing population, it all starts to fall apart.
I agree 100%. We need to find a new system that doesn't require a constantly growing population. Unfortunately, that seems to be the hard part.
I also don't think bringing in droves of unskilled workers is going to keep our current system afloat. It's a hard problem to fix without a percentage of the population working for little or no money. NO ONE wants to do that ever again!
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"Which is why it is so important if we really want to address the environment for our posterity and leave the United States a great green garden to for them..."
Who is "them"? Environment matters for all of us.
"More people means less room for nature, that is all there is to it. "
Well, no. "Nature" isn't a thing that consumes "room", and more people can fit into less room. The problem is elsewhere, besides, strictly speaking the amount of "room" that humans take up on the planet is small.
"... to address th
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Get used to it, things will get worse before they have a chance to get better... And they love their scapegoats so don't expect introspection and change.
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Nice try, but it fails. The "undeveloped land" - you mean like in the Dakotas, or Wyoming? Where there's no jobs, and nothing to do, and then there's winter.
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Make this make sense. We have people that pave over tobacco fields to cover the land in solar PV panels, then celebrate this as "green".
People don't like tobacco? That's fine, but not a reason to cover it in concrete so nothing can grow there. Plant strawberries there instead. Or cotton. Or corn. Or anything, just don't turn productive land into a so called "solar farm".
I know someone is itching to reply with "agri-voltaics", that there's ways to plant your solar panels and eat your strawberries too.
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Solar panels are best used over areas like parking lots. It would keep cars out of direct sunlight other harsh weather.
Re:The way we manage water is wreaking havoc (Score:5, Informative)
>> We have people that pave over tobacco fields to cover the land in solar PV panels
Absurd remark as usual. Solar farms aren't paved over. The panels do have ground-mounted support structures but rainwater can obviously reach the soil between the panels and be absorbed there.
https://www.courier-journal.co... [courier-journal.com]
Re:The way we manage water is wreaking havoc (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, high density housing requires less pavement per household than single family detached housing. [njfuture.org] That's a good thing.
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Clearly if you choose 2008 as the starting point of your trend line you can get a decreasing trend line that "goes back decades" (if you call 16 years "decades")
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"That isn't a rebuttal. It's counting of total costs."
What a ridiculous lie. In the Abstract: "We find that US 143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change."
Climate CHANGE, not climate. not trend line. Costs during to change in climate.
"You don't even need to read more than two paragraphs of abstract to conclude this"
You only need to read the FIRST paragraph to refute your claim.
And funny how you quoted the article in a way that suggests your position, but conven
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Except none of that is actually true.
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*Citation needed*
*Citation needed*
*Citation needed*
Nothing good ... (Score:2)
This is no great shock (Score:3)
We know from previous civilisations, such as the Maya and Khmer, that altering the environment drastically alters rainfall before almost anything else. It is extremely sensitive.
This will worsen, and it will worsen quickly. Rainfall in some areas will simply stop, and in other areas will worsen dramatically.
Britain is actually experiencing almost the reverse. About a third of Britain is temperate rainforest, but the forests largely vanished for fuel and to build giant fleets of wooden warships. So here in the UK rainfall had actually already fallen dramatically due to the abuse of the environment. The increase we're experiencing now is therefore really restoring us to normal levels, albeit with abnormal scheduling.
So, what is the new water cycle ? (Score:2)
With global warming more water is evaporating from the oceans, and flooding seems understandable since the velocity of the water cycle is faster.
What's the hand-wavy explanation for an increased level of droughts? Why is global warming apparently causing rain to fall in different places than it normally would (causing droughts in some areas, floods in others) ?
Re:So, what is the new water cycle ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee I wonder. Maybe the same reason you have a rain shadow on mountain ranges.
Oh, except for the fact that raising the temperature of the entire atmosphere changes thermal gradients throughout the whole atmosphere meaning topography has a smaller and smaller impact. And if topography has less forcing power everything is more chaotic and harder to predict where specific things may occur. Like eliminating, or at least lessening, rain shadows on mountain ranges. Suddenly the rain shadow lands are getting more water since the water isn't being forced out of the air as it moves over the mountain range. Unsurprisingly the formerly shadowed place gets way more water than it used to, and the other side of the mountain range gets less...
The only thing we can predict, with 100% accuracy, is more energy in a system will inevitably result in more energetic perturbations of the system. AKA stronger and / or more storms so that equilibrium can be maintained. And it doesn't really matter if the storms are stronger OR if they become more common. That's basically a choice between your crops getting blown away, or your crops getting drowned out from having too much water.
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Thanks - not sure if you thought I was being sarcastic, but I wasn't. I realize it's due to global warming, but wasn't sure of the causal link here. A lessening role for topography makes sense.
Huh. 2024? (Score:2)
I thought Storm Boris hit Europe in July 2019?
One of the last (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably one of the last true climate change articles to be published. In 2 weeks, NOAA funding will be cut or used to support the Fossil Fuel industry so Trump can start saying "Climate Change is not happening".
The end result of the next 4 years, 4C rise in the world average in about 70 years. For blame, look no further than the 15 million people who did not vote this time in the US.
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The end result of the next 4 years, 4C rise in the world average in about 70 years. For blame, look no further than the 15 million people who did not vote this time in the US.
US CO2 emissions [worldometers.info] peaked around 2005 and have been on a downward trend since. In the same period, China's emissions [worldometers.info] (which were already higher than the US in 2005) have doubled.
I'm certainly not going to quibble about US environmental policy but, given the above trends, saying "the next four years" under Darth Cheeto is somehow going to be the singular reason for your projected consequences is just fucking stupid. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously with claims like that? You do far more harm
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Yes they fell in 2008 an around covid times, but in 2021 seems emissions started rising again. In 2008 we had the housing crash and a heavy recession, and 5 years ago covid. Since 2020 the economy seems to be on a good footing.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=52380 [eia.gov]
And because of AI and *coins, I expect US emissions will probably continue to increase.
We should have started working on this 50 years ago when Carter was president. But we ignored it and for the last ~20 years really continued
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That's great, and all, but what does that have to do with your claim that "the end result of the next 4 years [will be a] 4C rise in the world average in about 70 years" because Darth Cheeto? Even if US emissions magically increase back to their peak (which will not happen) over the next four years, you're still full of shit, because China's are still more than double that.
pretty nearly all bullshit (Score:1)
The climate is warming slightly, I fully agree (as it does during an inter glacial).
The rest of this is basically nonsense.
It's not the hottest year on record it you don't massage the past and current numbers.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com]
There is no increase in hurricanes, storms, etc evident in the data. Hurricane count has actually decreased, leading to the goal posts shifting to "intensity"... But that shows no trend either.
https://t.co/1xfQyxmMIz [t.co]
https://t.co/PWeGmQejAd [t.co]
https://t.co/glX3MhDOz7 [t.co]
Wildfire
Re: pretty nearly all bullshit (Score:1)
Ah since none of you will bother to look it up and shit slashdot code can't accept simple text, nor is there a PREVIEW button on Firefox Android, here's the text again in plain:
"Of 3500 stream flow stations in the USA Central & North EU Africa Brazil and Australia 7.1% showed significant increase and 11.9% showed significant decrease in annual maximum peak flow 1961-2005"
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Failure. First, any information from Xtwit is not trustworthy. Seoncd, I have no idea what you *tried* to post, but you posted visual garbage.
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A) if you can't argue the point, attack the source. ZZZ get a new strategy.
B) you literally could see the text in the next post. My sincere apologies that i) slashdot doesn't accept cnp from other sites, ii) there's no PREVIEW feature on slashdot mobile, at least not on my phone so (shrug)
But hey, you apparently don't #followthescience so it doesn't really matter what I post - if it disagrees with your religion, you reject it. Like a cultist.
Ha ha ha ha (Score:1)
Go ahead and mod this as trolling. That's exactly what it is. Why? Because the whole premise is just ludicrous. The Amazon rain forest has a drought, but India has a rain surge! Oh no! What does it mean? What does it mean? Why, "climate crisis", of course.
Hyperlocalization of weather stats does not help (Score:2)