The corporate predecessor to Americaâs largest refiner of oil, Marathon Petroleum, explained in a company periodical nearly 50 years ago that global temperature rise potentially linked to âindustrial expansionâ could one day cause âwidespread starvation and other social and economic calamitiesâ.
This decades-old description of climate breakdown is from a 1977 issue of the magazine Marathon World and is attributed in the article by an unnamed author to several experts including a scientist working for a top US agency.
âAlthough climatologists disagree on the underlying reasons, many see a future climate of greater variability, bringing with it areas of extreme drought,â said the magazine, previously published by Marathon Oil Company, which later split into Marathon Petroleum as well as the exploration and production company Marathon Oil.
Marathon Petroleum is among several oil and gas companies â including Exxon, Shell and BP â currently being sued by the city of Honolulu for allegedly engaging in a coordinated communications effort âto conceal and deny their own knowledgeâ of catastrophic climate impacts caused by burning their products.
That lawsuit alleges that Marathon knew of the dangers of global temperature rise long before the general public due to its membership in the American Petroleum Institute, which began studying the link between fossil fuels and global heating decades ago.
This newly surfaced article shows the company was undertaking efforts on its own to stay up to date on the latest climate science and the threats a more volatile climate could pose to humankind. (...)
June was the Earthâs 13th consecutive month to break a global heat record. It beat the record set last year for the hottest June on record, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Union.â
We should consider this the new normal,â said Katherine Idziorek, an assistant professor in geography and community planning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. âWe need to be preparing for more heat, more often. Thatâs the reality.â
More than half the U.S. population â almost 175 million people â faced extreme heat on July 4, and the impacts of this new normal continued to broil the country this week. (...)
âHeat is like the silent storm,â said David Sittenfeld, the director of the Center for the Environment at Bostonâs Museum of Science. Other climate-related hazards like heavy rain and wildfires are more visible, he said, but heat affects everyone and can exacerbate socio-economic inequalities.
The burden of urban heat, for example, isnât equally distributed. A Columbia University analysis showed that neighborhoods that were historically redlined experienced hotter summers in 84 percent of major American cities, including Houston.
These communities often experience the urban heat island effect: Roads and rooftops absorb more heat than natural spaces do, making urban areas hotter than rural areas. A report by the nonprofit research group Climate Central found that almost 70 percent of 50 million city dwellers are in areas where the temperature was at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit higher because of city infrastructure.
Based on that analysis, over 1.7 million people in Houston were experiencing heat at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 90-degree temperatures that led to a heat advisory on Thursday â while more than a million people were still without power.
You see all this on Main Stream Media and I think most folks just don't get it, or don't care, or are resigned to it being normal. Wouldn't it be nice if when you went to the supermarket to buy groceries there were signs or videos showing what this heat does to our food infrastructure. When it's triple digits for weeks on end, how do you think the vegetables are doing? The cattle, the chickens. When it floods does everything bounce right back like it never happened? Instead most people think the high cost of groceries are the governments (usually the presidents) fault. There needs to be some other form of communication to regular folks that this is effecting their lives in ways they don't obviously see but are real.
June was the Earthâs 13th consecutive month to break a global heat record. It beat the record set last year for the hottest June on record, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Union.â
We should consider this the new normal,â said Katherine Idziorek, an assistant professor in geography and community planning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. âWe need to be preparing for more heat, more often. Thatâs the reality.â
More than half the U.S. population â almost 175 million people â faced extreme heat on July 4, and the impacts of this new normal continued to broil the country this week. (...)
âHeat is like the silent storm,â said David Sittenfeld, the director of the Center for the Environment at Bostonâs Museum of Science. Other climate-related hazards like heavy rain and wildfires are more visible, he said, but heat affects everyone and can exacerbate socio-economic inequalities.
The burden of urban heat, for example, isnât equally distributed. A Columbia University analysis showed that neighborhoods that were historically redlined experienced hotter summers in 84 percent of major American cities, including Houston.
These communities often experience the urban heat island effect: Roads and rooftops absorb more heat than natural spaces do, making urban areas hotter than rural areas. A report by the nonprofit research group Climate Central found that almost 70 percent of 50 million city dwellers are in areas where the temperature was at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit higher because of city infrastructure.
Based on that analysis, over 1.7 million people in Houston were experiencing heat at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 90-degree temperatures that led to a heat advisory on Thursday â while more than a million people were still without power.
Over the July 4 weekend, hundreds of fires sparked across California, feeding on the hot, dry conditions of an ongoing heat wave.
But some of these fires were strange.
They grew rapidly and expanded their territory at a time when fires, like people, traditionally rest: at night.
Overnight hours, when temperatures tend to go down and relative humidity, or the amount of water vapor in the air, goes up, can act as a barrier to fire. Overnight, fires tend to creep along, giving firefighters a chance to sleep or manage smaller flames. But human-caused climate change has accelerated nighttime warming more quickly than daytime warming, dismantling this natural shield.
âNight wonât save us,â said Kaiwei Luo, a doctoral student in environmental sciences at the University of Alberta and the lead author of a recent study in the journal Nature that found overnight burning can cause fires to burn larger and longer. âWith climate change, we will see more and more overnight burning,â he said. (...)
Beryl, which made landfall early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths â one in Louisiana and six in Texas â and at least 11 in the Caribbean. At midday Tuesday, it was a post-tropical cyclone centered over Arkansas and was forecast to bring heavy rains and possible flooding to a swath extending to the Great Lakes and Canada.
More than 2 million homes and businesses around Houston lacked electricity Tuesday, down from a peak of over 2.7 million on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us. For many, it was a miserable repeat after storms in May killed eight people and left nearly 1 million without power amid flooded streets.
Food spoiled in listless refrigerators in neighborhoods that pined for air conditioning. Long lines of cars and people queued up at any fast food restaurant, food truck or gas station that had power and was open. (...)
Robin Taylor, who got takeout from Dennyâs, was getting tired of the same old struggle. She has been living a hotel since her home was damaged by the storms in May. When Beryl hit, her hotel room flooded.
She was angry that Houston didnât appear prepared to handle the Category 1 storm after it had weathered much stronger ones in the past.
âNo WiFi, no power, and itâs hot outside. Thatâs dangerous for people. Thatâs really the big issue,â Taylor said. âPeople will die in this heat in their homes.â (...)
Hey, climate change's only a hoax invented by commies!
Beryl, which made landfall early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths â one in Louisiana and six in Texas â and at least 11 in the Caribbean. At midday Tuesday, it was a post-tropical cyclone centered over Arkansas and was forecast to bring heavy rains and possible flooding to a swath extending to the Great Lakes and Canada.
More than 2 million homes and businesses around Houston lacked electricity Tuesday, down from a peak of over 2.7 million on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us. For many, it was a miserable repeat after storms in May killed eight people and left nearly 1 million without power amid flooded streets.
Food spoiled in listless refrigerators in neighborhoods that pined for air conditioning. Long lines of cars and people queued up at any fast food restaurant, food truck or gas station that had power and was open. (...)
Robin Taylor, who got takeout from Dennyâs, was getting tired of the same old struggle. She has been living a hotel since her home was damaged by the storms in May. When Beryl hit, her hotel room flooded.
She was angry that Houston didnât appear prepared to handle the Category 1 storm after it had weathered much stronger ones in the past.
âNo WiFi, no power, and itâs hot outside. Thatâs dangerous for people. Thatâs really the big issue,â Taylor said. âPeople will die in this heat in their homes.â (...)
At the heart of attempts to halt damaging climate change is a pair of ideas: decarbonise electricity and electrify the economy. So, how is it going? Badly, is the answer.
Here is a sobering fact: in 2023, the production of electricity generated by fossil fuels reached an all-time peak. The share of electricity produced this way did fall, from 67 per cent in 2015 (the date of the celebrated Paris Agreement) to 61 per cent in 2023. But global output of electricity jumped 23 per cent in those eight years. As a result, even though generation from non-fossil-fuel sources (including nuclear) rose by an impressive 44 per cent, that from fossil fuels rose by 12 per cent. Alas, the atmosphere responds to emissions, not good intentions: we have been running forward, but going backwards. (See charts) (...)
Moreover, it is clear by now that past predictions of global warming have proved largely correct. To persist with scepticism is immoral and stupid.
Of course, half of America or their self-elected representatives still believe the Earth is flat. This epitomizes Capitalism as being perceived as superior and in favor of a flourishing mankind... for the akashic records and beyond.
Abstract: Canadian wildfires in 2023 were record breaking with wide-reaching impacts on people, nature, and climate. Extreme heat and low rainfall associated with climate change led to unprecedented forest fires that released enormous amounts of carbon as they burned. This study used data on fire-driven tree cover loss and forest carbon fluxes to estimate the total extent of stand-replacing forest fires and their associated carbon emissions. We found that the 2023 Canadian wildfires burned nearly 7.8 million hectares of forest and accounted for more than a quarter of all tree cover loss globally. Furthermore, forests impacted by wildfires emitted nearly 3 billion tons of CO2 or about 25% more carbon than all primary tropical tree cover loss that year. These results have important implications for global carbon budgets because emissions from these wildfires will largely be excluded from official greenhouse gas reporting.
