A dangerous heat wave is bringing sweltering temperatures to much of the US this weekend, including over parts of the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic. Meanwhile, a tropical system could develop this weekend through the southwest Gulf of Mexico.
Time to expand Central Park… all the way to Washington DC.
With this pace it will be the central desert.
We’re having an unusually cool year so far in Alberta. It’s been quite chilly even. This has been the first hot weekend, peaking later today, and you wouldn’t believe the number of idiots on social media who think this one cold year has single-handedly disproved climate change. Meanwhile they’ve conveniently forgotten the absolute fucking nightmare the last five summers have been, with smoke-choked skies and perpetual respiratory pain. Though many of them also think the Liberals in Ottawa sent agents out last year to start the wildfires by arson in order to perpetuate the myth of climate change. There is really no winning with these stupid fucks.
Summer just started… at least wait until the year is over before making that incorrect judgment.
At least wait until the year is over the make the judgment that the year has been unusually cool so far? Or are you talking about the other guys?
The other guys.
It’s a nAtUrAl CyClE
/s
The earth changing in massive ways that cause mass extinctions and upend everything that all the existing life had come to rely on, is part of the cycle of natural history, too. The earth can actually bounce back from it pretty quickly, in geological terms. Just, it normally happens so rarely that the chances are astronomically against any given organism having to live through it and all the death and suffering that goes with it on an individual time scale. And of course on any individual lifetime scale it’s absolutely permanent, and irreversible. Here’s one pretty fascinating example
We’re just lucky, I guess. We will have a chance to understand what’s happening and why it is our fault, and feel regret and anger as we’re watching the catastrophe, those of us that live long enough to see the true shape of it.
The death of many people from excessive heat and other effects of climate change will be quite a natural consequence of our hubris indeed.
Not dangerous yet. Give it a few years. When it starts causing massive crop failures, that’ll be when we learn about dangerous.
Enough people will die of heat exhaustion over the next few days that I think ‘dangerous’ applies.
Yeah but not like millions or more, is my point
When the food stops being is when it gets real for real
I wonder at what point will it push people to storm fosil fuel offices seeking violence?
And no, I don’t want us to go to that place, but I simply wonder at what point will survival become so difficult that we as a society will wake up and see these companies as entities that are indirectly attacking us and seek retribution.
We should have already gone to that place.
I think for quite a while, the violence monopoly will be better at that game than will the ordinary people. And in Western societies at least, you still have a lot more leverage through political organization and activism than through straight-up violence. The number of people and the level of organization that would be required to win a for-real shooting war with the fossil fuel companies which would instantly escalate to a shooting war with law enforcement and from there to a shooting war with the US government, is so much higher than to get enough people in congress to just start putting the brakes on (and keep them there long enough to make a difference.)
I’m not saying it never gets to the point where something like that’s required. Ukraine in 2014 is actually a really good example; like okay, we tried elections and protests and it seems like even enough of us to win in that arena isn’t enough to make a change, so what the fuck let’s get in the streets and make it happen anyway. But you can see; it’s way more difficult. Basically 100% of the country was behind it, and still they had to have these huge battles. Political isn’t easy, no, but the same people who are saying “OMG I can’t believe they did Bernie like that, that’s unfair, they can’t do that” and then gave up, would not react well to seeing their friends and political leaders getting shot and killed because hey, that’s unfair too, they can’t do that either. The wrong people are in charge, yes. They are cheating, yes. That’s not like a reason to quit, that’s a reason to work to make it better.
Basically there’s no getting around needing to do the work to make it happen. Is my feeling. IDK, I am not expert in this but that is my feeling.
IDK, I could see it getting to that point like you’re saying, like Ukraine or the fall of the Berlin wall, where so many of the ordinary people understand that it needs to stop and start just forcibly making it stop, that it works. I don’t think we are there yet (and if Trump gets in and starts shooting even peaceful protestors after Project 2025 cleans house then it will probably set that clock back by quite a bit), and like you I would hope that in our societies there are enough levers of power available to ordinary people that it won’t get to that point.
It’s happening across the midwest as well. It’s supposed to hit 102 on Monday in Nebraska.
It’s een hotter here in NW Ohio than in Houston all week.
Over 100° is not unusual for the Midwest. Although not usuall until late July into August.
The issue will be if these temps become standard and consistent over a wider time period. For one, that could adversely affect crop growth and development.
India: Those are rookie numbers.
The fuckers in charge won’t do anything to fix it!
Amateurs, I was in italy once and it was 45c(113f) and where i lived it was common to get 38c summer temperatures. Tho where i live now it only goes up to 25 usually and the record was 34.
There should be no air conditioning in the white house, congress, senate and supreme court - those assholes should have to experience their work first hand and full temperature.
