China, Europe, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and parts of North America are all enduring record-breaking droughts.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1430157
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1430157
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Don’t worry, folks. Just a temporary blip. Nothing to see here. And really, folks, sacrificing a virgin is not going to change the direction or magnitude of the effects of increasing global warming. And god is not going to save you or your children or your grandchildren, who could well be the last humans on Earth. But you do have the great privilege of witnessing what no humans have ever seen - the death of this world due to the utter stupidity and willful ignorance and incredible greed and weakness of humans. Kiss it goodbye. Don’t burn your lips.
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It’s been hot and dry here in Kansas as it usually is all summer but this year seems different. Most of the Siberian elms in town (about half the trees) have turned brown and I’m not sure if they died or simply went dormant.
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The heat causes drought for multiple reasons. But the heat and warming seas also causes more water to evaporate and enter the atmosphere. Sky rivers develop and floods put destructive amounts of water where it can’t be used. And so, a universal existential threat will serve to unify all of humanity to work together in order to survive. Or not.
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We had fairly stable weather patterns for millions of years. We’ve had ice covering the North Pole for millions of years.
We’re expected to have an Arctic BOE (Blue Ocean Event) in the next few decades. If you think weather has gone crazy now…just wait for the BOE.
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Trees stressed for water can fall victim to disease and insect pests that they could normally fend off. Once they turn brown, they are in real danger. Several years ago, New Mexico piñon trees were wiped out in large areas of the state by borers that normally could be controlled by production of pitch. The infested trees mobilized stored pitch reserves before dying. The wood that was left was like cardboard and rotted within a few years. Many of the juvenile trees that were left are doing well, but it is a very slow growing tree.
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Local news says it’s elm wood borers but I’ve seen none, and I looked on multiple trees on my walk just a bit ago.
EDIT: Elm leaf beetles, my bad!
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Amid all the horrible things that happen in this world every day, what is happening to the water cycle may ultimately be the most disturbing of all in the long run.
Then again, it rained in my neck of the woods the other day, so what the hell do these “scientists” know?!
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Those dreaded Chinese hoaxers are getting really good!*
*h/t Charles Pierce
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If I could figure out how to upload a video of my creek from two weeks ago I could show you all the power of the water that hit my creek.
And it wasn’t the height of the water, it was the sound of the creek. I’ve never heard the roaring sound that the water was making as it rushed past my house. It’s also annoying when I try to describe my concern about what happened. Damnit I lived here for 60 years. I know parts of this creek like the back of my hand.
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As for pictures of the drought I thought this was cool
dinosaur tracks that usually covered by creek water in a Texas park.
And then there’s this Neroian era bridgeworks in the Tiber that have been revealed.
When I read this all I could think of was that I hoped the Roman public works guys are using this opportunity to inspect the bridges that cross the Tiber. With the water this low here their chance to inspect, repair, and not have to wear a wet suit.
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And… Right on cue, time for libtards to jump right from “OMG we’re running out of water” right over to “OMG, we’re all gonna drown”.
Sheesh, pick a mantra and stick with it already.
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The way it’s cropped, that first photo of Jinxian, China really looks like it could be an artist’s rendering of a cherry tree or something similar. Apparently, nature doesn’t just make crabs.
Mother Nature loves fractals.
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Quick! Someone get Jim Inhofe a snowball!
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Nah, humans won’t go extinct, and the planet won’t die. People will survive in small pockets in remote locations, and things will stabilize at the new average temp (which will probably be somewhere in the range of the late mesozoic’s avg temp). With people mostly gone, plants will recolonize, ecosystems will rebound, and we’ll see (well, we won’t…) a lot of larger, more active reptiles for a while. Big cat populations like jaguar and puma will move into new ranges, wolves will mostly drift a bit north, crocodilians will just go ham and if the conditions persist long enough, we’ll probably see a return to terrestrial, fast-moving crocs.
In the ocean, yeah, we’ll see significant ecosystem collapse, but even there, things will adjust and begin to rebound once we’re largely out of the picture. Who knows, maybe the pockets of humans that survive will be some of the smart ones, who documented technology and the potential problems, and spend the Collapse years relying on renewable power sources while they keep working out how to improve them. Might even come out the other side with a sense of how to keep population levels at sustainable thresholds.
Or they might come down from the highland retreats that catch the monsoon rains, to sweep down like a horde of rats. But they’ll survive, on some level. Like rats, and roaches, we’re an infestation that isn’t purged that easily.
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Right, the planet won’t die, not for a few billion years, until the sun swells up and eats our dirtball. But humans? I dunno. I suspect it will take a long time - hundreds of thousands, millions of years - for the ecosystem to produce the large predators that would treat what’s left of us as snacks. The question is can the species survive the big heat? Even now there are places in the world where it’s too hot and humid to work outdoors during the day for parts of the year. We’re destroying our water supplies too. We’ve polluted everything. There’s that law in ecology: Organisms can’t survive in their own waste. Waste is all we’ve got. And never mind the big predators. The really dangerous ones are the microscopic ones hiding in what’s left of the natural world. Maybe there’s Covid contagion with a bit of an Ebola twist in its genome just waiting in some African swamp or pond for some fool to come along and take a drink and kill off the humans. The old Star Trek maxim, “Life finds a way”, may apply, but it sure as hell won’t be the yuppy life or the Gen-whatever-the-hell life. Like the man said, it’s going to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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Crocodiles exist now. 
Like I said, I expect pockets in remote places. Larger Pacific islands, for example. I don’t see New Zealand becoming completely uninhabitable, and shifting weather patterns might even green up the western Sahara a bit. Humans may need to be crepuscular in some environments, and agriculture may be extremely limited, but I don’t see us actually going extinct.
No, it won’t be… but that’s Jurassic Park, not Star Trek.
There’s crocs in the Nile too, but when they get up to the former Arctic zones where what’s left of humanity is hiding out, break out the mayo. (Yes, I know crocs don’t use mayo!)
As for the islands, let’s see, in a total ice melt, sea level will rise over 200 feet. What’s left of the big islands will be little islands. With little pockets of people. Surrounded by mayo loving saltwater crocs. Not to mention all those Crocs us humans have tossed into the sea. And really, does anyone really want to live in a pocket? In all that heat and humidity? With the smell of mayo and croc breath all around. Maybe even a few plesiosaurs that finally escaped from Loch Ness.
The “life finds a way” cropped up in the Star Trek movie where Kirk’s wife and friends greened a deadish planet and Spock got fried inside a dilithium radiation chamber and was buried on the planet. Forgot the name of it, but they brought him back like a zombie in the next movie. And yeah, Goldberg said it in Jurassic Park. Of course I could be mistaken. I’m relatively ancient and occasionally a fact slips by my memory on its way to intergalactic space. My occasional trips to Earth tend to disturb my space-mind-time continuum. Good of you to keep me on my toes.
Yup. But they’ll survive in those pockets.
Beats dying.