In "Holy Crap" News

I just strolled through my morning Google Alerts and they're almost enough to make you jump in a bunker and slam the hatch shut over your head. And so, we begin.

You know that storm that has brought devastating floods and killer tornadoes to the southern US before driving into Canada yesterday? It's not done. In fact, it's headed for the already flooded UK and will bring a "weather bomb" to Iceland later this week.

The vigorous low pressure system that helped spawn devastating tornadoes in the Dallas area on Saturday is forecast to explode into a monstrous storm over Iceland by Wednesday.

And the storm will batter the United Kingdom, reeling from recent flooding, with another round of rain and wind.

Computer model simulations show the storm, sweeping across the north central Atlantic today, rapidly intensifying along a jet stream ripping above the ocean at 230 mph.

Ahead of the storm, the surge of warm air making a beeline towards the North Pole is astonishing. In the animation below, watch the warm temperature departures from normal, portrayed by red shades, explode towards the Pole between Monday and Wednesday.

The North Pole is expected to reach 32F on Wednesday, about 50F warmer than normal. Some experts put the difference at 70F.

Okay, so much for that. Nunatsiaq Online reports that new studies show that a lot more methane is being released in the Arctic than previously believed.

The amount of methane gas emitted from the ground in the Arctic during the long cold period each year is likely much higher than estimated by current climate change models, says a new study carried out in Alaska by a team of researchers led San Diego State University.

Their study, published Dec. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found methane, a potent greenhouse gas that intensifies atmospheric warming, is being released from the Arctic permafrost even during the winter.

In California, research has found some 888 million trees are suffering from the ongoing drought of which 58-million may already be beyond recovery. The state, meanwhile, is looking at having to spend billions of dollars to replace infrastructure being destroyed by land subsidence, mainly resulting from heavy pumping of groundwater resources. 

Four years of drought and heavy reliance on pumping of groundwater have made the land sink faster than ever up and down the Central Valley, requiring repairs to infrastructure that experts say are costing billions of dollars.

This slow-motion land subsidence — more than one foot a year in some places — is not expected to stop anytime soon, experts say, nor will the expensive repairs.

The Guardian offers a scathing indictment of Britain's political caste for ignoring all the warning signs of the climate devastation now hitting the UK.

Ministers cannot plead ignorance. Four years before the NAO report, around the time of the 2010 general election, a lengthy study from the Government Office for Science, Foresight Land Use Futures, warned that 57% of our best (grade 1) land and 13% of grade 2 occupied flood plains. Not for nothing did it describe these golden acres as “an important asset in terms of national food security”.

Today we produce 62% of our own food, down since our 1984 peak of 78%. Alarmed by government complacency, the National Farmers’ Union calculated earlier this year that the country has the potential to reach 85% self-sufficiency, with higher productivity, more investment in research and development and, of course, greater emphasis on flood defences to withstand future tidal surges and rising sea levels. Do nothing, says the NFU, and domestic food production will assuredly fall below 50%.

What we have lacked is an informed debate on the pressures facing our land – increasing demand for food, energy, water and housing – when we should be adapting to and mitigating the impact of climate change. But that means planning ahead, prioritising resources and, yes, borrowing as a nation to invest in and safeguard our future – unlikely at a time when the very concept of planning, still less long-term investment, has become a pejorative term. (Sound familiar?)

The USCentre of the London School of Economics has an interesting analysis of how rightwing politics has the sea level rise threatening Virginia in a deathgrip of inaction in the State legislature.

Bad as the situation may be in Virginia, Grist.org reports it's worse, much worse, in Florida where it says the GOP is killing off the state.

Florida is disappearing. For those who think of the state only as a swampy backwater populated by alligators and meth heads, this may seem like a good thing. But it’s not a joke: Florida is disappearing.

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about visiting Miami Beach in a recent issue of The New Yorker. What she saw there was frightening: city streets that regularly flood with the high tide, with residents marooned on stoops and porches watching their trash cans bob in the street. “For the past several years,” Kolbert wrote, “the daily high-water mark in the Miami area has been racing up at the rate of almost an inch a year, nearly ten times the rate of average global sea-level rise ….

Now the state has fallen to a governor, Rick Scott, who not only denies the reality of climate change but has forbidden state officials from mentioning it and a GOP senator/climate change denier, Marc Rubio. Good luck with that, Florida.

Let's wrap it up with the latest on heatwaves - in Buenos Aires, Australia and, of course, Florida.  The Argentine capital is being hammered by a prolonged heatwave that has predictably led to power outages. When temperatures soar and the air conditioning goes out, it's the formula for a lot of deaths.

South Australia, meanwhile, is bracing for a week of above 35C temperatures. Even northeast Florida, which usually experiences cooler conditions in the winter is enduring a heatwave that's causing an infestation of bugs, especially mosquitoes.

That's it, I'm done. I could go on about other problems such as biodiversity but I'm already in climate change overload. If you've read down this far I expect you are too. Here's the thing. I posted all these summaries and links to try to drive home the point that this isn't going away. We're in a mess right now - not some time in the future, not tomorrow, it's here today - and we're going to have to dig our way out as best we can. Looking the other way is not an option. We have to realize what is happening and begin figuring out how best we can respond if only to safeguard ourselves and prepare the Canada we want to leave to our grandkids.

As citizens, this has to be at the top of our agenda if we want it to be at the top of our political caste's agenda.