This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/collapse by /u/LastWeekInCollapse on 2024-07-07 13:03:47+00:00.

2024 is more than half over, but it feels like our civilization is already finished. Heat alerts, hurricanes, financial instability, and crushing famine.

Last Week in Collapse: June 30-July 6, 2024

This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-shattering, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.

This is the 132nd newsletter. You can find the June 23-29 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these posts (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox with the Substack version.

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Hurricane Beryl—the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane in history—moved through the Caribbean last week. In St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Union Island (pop: 3,000) faced near-total infrastructure destruction when 240km/h (150mph) winds tore through on Monday. 400,000+ people lost power in Jamaica. Now Beryl has turned towards Texas. Experts agree that 2024 will be a rough season for hurricanes.

A study in NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science studied trends in hurricanes in Southeast Asia. It concluded four takeaways for the future: “(1) poleward shifts in both genesis and peak intensification rates; (2) TC (tropical cyclone) formation and fastest intensification closer to many coastlines; (3) increased likelihoods of TCs moving most slowly over mainland Southeast Asia; and (4) TC tracks persisting longer over land.”

A recent study published in Nature Communications claims that the glacier melt speed in Alaska from 2015-2019 was 6x faster than the rate 40 years earlier. The study concluded that there were three periods of ice melt speed: the first from 1770-1979, the second from 1980-2010, and the fastest paradigm extending to at least 2020, when the study’s data end. Every single glacier examined has shrunk since 1770, and 108 have melted completely. The researchers claim that this study debunks earlier claims of linear ice melt until 2040, predicting “current glacier projections may be too small and underestimate glacier melt in the future….potentially pushing glaciers beyond a dynamic tipping point.

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 21 years, with over 13,400 wildfires having been detected since January. In the Pantanal wetlands and the Cerrado savannah, wildfire records have surpassed old records. Around the suburbs of Athens, scores of new wildfires popped up, burning a number of buildings and killing at least one man; Greek islands are feeling the heat from their own fires, too. If it’s any consolation, firefighters have begun to contain California’s largest currently burning forest fire—although most of the blaze is still uncontrolled.

A depressing study in PNAS looked at Indonesia, where industrialists have cut down 25% of the nation’s old growth forests in the last 35 years. Yet 44% of the cleared land was left idle for 5+ years. 28% was converted into palm oil plantations, and much of the currently cleared land is expected to be converted into palm oil farms. A 55-page report on Australia’s 20 potential carbon offset/restoration sites found that 30% were already degraded from when they were first examined. Flooding in Assam, India, has displaced 2M+ people and killed at least six.

A sonar research experiment examined northern California’s Lake Oroville, and determined that the lake/reservoir now has 3% less volume than it did around 1970. Researchers blame the drop in capacity on rock & silt accumulation. Meanwhile, China’s agricultural production suffered flooding in the central region, and crippling heat in the south. In northwest Syria, a quadruple threat of conflict, pestilence, wheat rust disease, and heavy rain reduced wheat harvests by about 70%.

The combination of “marine heatwaves, ocean acidity extremes and low oxygen extremes” are called by some scientists “(water) column-compound extreme events” (CCX). Related particularly to El Niño, and occurring primarily in the tropics and northern pacific, “CCX expanded 39-fold, now last 3-times longer, and became 6-times more intense since the early 1960s,” when compared to 2020. So says a study published last month in AGU Advances. These compound risks can last weeks and lead to organism dieoff & migration.

Record June temperature (41 °C or 106 °F) in Taiwan. Amman, Jordan shattered its 100+ year June heat record. Death Valley, in California, is predicted by some meteorologists to feel earth’s hottest temperature on Monday: 130°F (54.4°C). A number of North African countries set new June records, and part of the continent hit four consecutive days above 50 °C (122 °F) for the first time ever. Siberia blasted old June records, and even set some all-time highs in certain regions, and wildfires in Siberia have caused a local state of emergency. Karachi’s heat wave endured for several more days. Tasmania felt its coldest July temperatures, while the Middle East also saw a heat wave and Raleigh, North Carolina felt its hottest temperatures ever (106 °F, or 41.1 °C).

New Zealand is trending towards extreme Drought and extreme rain alternating at different parts of the year, says a study in Environmental Research Letters. A study on British travel determined that “long-distance travel” (trips going 50+ miles one-way, or 80+ km) account for “69.3% of the greenhouse gas (CO2 equivalent) emissions from passenger travel.”

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A study in Nature Communications examined the impact of future climate effects on investment (using Mexico as a case study), and concluded that “investor losses are underestimated up to 70% when neglecting asset-level information, and up to 82% when neglecting tail acute risks.” One of the authors said, “potential losses from extreme {weather} events can be up to 98% higher than these averages suggest.”

China’s factory production declined in June for a second month in a row. The head of the Bank for International Settlements is warning of negative impacts to the global economy as a result of rising government debts. Others paint a more panicked picture of the consequences. One economist writes that “public debt is completely out of control” and will cause an “**all-encompassing fisca…

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