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kp777 · 2 years

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By Robin McKie

The Guardian The Observer

July 30, 2022

The publication of Bill McGuire’s latest book, Hothouse Earth, could not be more timely. Appearing in the shops this week, it will be perused by sweltering customers who have just endured record high temperatures across the UK and now face the prospect of weeks of drought to add to their discomfort.

And this is just the beginning, insists McGuire, who is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London. As he makes clear in his uncompromising depiction of the coming climatic catastrophe, we have – for far too long – ignored explicit warnings that rising carbon emissions are dangerously heating the Earth. Now we are going to pay the price for our complacence in the form of storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves that will easily surpass current extremes.

In this respect, the volcanologist, who was also a member of the UK government’s Natural Hazard Working Group, takes an extreme position. Most other climate experts still maintain we have time left, although not very much, to bring about meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A rapid drive to net zero and the halting of global warming is still within our grasp, they say.

Such claims are dismissed by McGuire. “I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.”

McGuire finished writing Hothouse Earth at the end of 2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as publication loomed, he found that many of those records had already been broken. “That is the trouble with writing a book about climate breakdown,” says McGuire. “By the time it is published it is already out of date. That is how fast things are moving.”

Among the records broken during the book’s editing was the announcement that a temperature of 40.3C was reached in east England on 19 July, the highest ever recorded in the UK. (The country’s previous hottest temperature, 38.7C, was in Cambridge in 2019.)

In addition, London’s fire service had to tackle blazes across the capital, with one conflagration destroying 16 homes in Wennington, east London. Crews there had to fight to save the local fire station itself. “Who would have thought that a village on the edge of London would be almost wiped out by wildfires in 2022,” says McGuire. “If this country needs a wake-up call then surely that is it.”

Wildfires of unprecedented intensity and ferocity have also swept across Europe, North America and Australia this year, while record rainfall in the midwest led to the devastating flooding in the US’s Yellowstone national park. “And as we head further into 2022, it is already a different world out there,” he adds. “Soon it will be unrecognisable to every one of us.”

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notwiselybuttoowell · 2 years

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In the decades ahead, summers are set to get ever hotter and last longer, overwhelming the other seasons, and reducing winter to a couple of dreary months punctuated by damaging storms and destructive floods. Blistering heat will be the default weather for July and August, when a combination of high temperatures and humidity will make sunbathing and working in the open extremely unpleasant and potentially deadly. Our poorly insulated homes will provide little respite as they are turned into unliveable heat-traps. Camping out in gardens and parks will become commonplace as baking nights make sleeping indoors impossible. Inevitably, increasing numbers of people will flee the cities to escape the heat-island effect that will transform them into unbearable saunas. A general migration northwards and uphill can be expected, as cooler conditions become a big property selling point.

But hothouse Britain is about far more than insufferable summer heat. Progressive climate breakdown will affect everyone and insinuate itself into every aspect of our lives. Transport and energy infrastructure will succumb repeatedly to the onslaught of extreme weather, making otherwise straightforward journeys increasingly problematical, and power outages a normal part of daily life.

Health and wellbeing services will buckle, as tens of thousands of the most vulnerable people struggle in the growing heat and humidity, cases of poisoning due to heat-related food and water contamination burgeon, and new diseases suited to the hotter conditions – including malaria and dengue fever – gain a foothold. An explosion in mental health problems is also foreseen as living conditions become ever more desperate for many, and the strain on individuals and families takes its toll.

A confluence of desiccating drought, torrential rains and battering hail, flooding and new pests that thrive in the heat will take a massive toll on crops at a time when frequent harvest failures and climate wars will mean an erratic and unreliable supply from overseas. We have already seen price hikes and gaps on supermarket shelves as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict. Climate breakdown will bring far worse. One study predicts that by 2050 the world will need half as much food again, while crop yields could be down by as much as 30%. This is nothing less than a recipe for widespread hunger, social unrest and civil strife, and the UK is unlikely to be immune.

Heat and drought will be the signature conditions of hothouse Britain, but there will still be rain. In the summer, downpours fed by convective storms will be so heavy that little rain will penetrate the ground, most of it flowing over the surface to feed lethal and destructive flash floods. Autumn and winter will see frequent incursions of powerful, damaging, storms and so-called atmospheric “rivers”, bringing rains that last for days on end, overwhelming catchments and driving river flooding on a biblical scale.

Coastal communities will fight a losing battle as bigger and more frequent storm surges, increasingly powerful waves and a remorseless hike in sea level supercharge cliff erosion and permanently swamp low-lying terrain. Sea level is now rising by a centimetre every two years, which is more than double the rate for the period 1993-2002. Within 80 years it will certainly be more than a metre higher, and could have climbed by 2m or even more. This would bring the North Sea far inland, threatening especially low-lying communities such as the Lincolnshire towns of Boston and Spalding.

Alongside rapid emissions cuts, the inevitability of climate breakdown makes adaptation desperately urgent. Now should be the time for massive government investment in resilient infrastructure and the preservation of health and wellbeing – but there is little sign of this. Our housing stock remains totally unprepared for the new summer temperatures and flood plains are still being concreted over for new estates; meanwhile, transport and energy networks continue to be dangerously exposed to the vagaries of flood, wind and excessive heat. No plans exist, either, for a national water grid that could ease future drought conditions. The bottom line is that every decision – from local government upwards – needs to be made in light of building resilience to climate breakdown as well as slashing emissions. But this just isn’t happening.

If you are terrified by what you have read, then I have done what I set out to do. Too many of us still think that global heating will just mean that the world will get a bit warmer and that somehow we will muddle through. This is plain wrong. So be scared, but don’t let this feed inertia. Instead channel the emotion and use it to launch your contribution to tackling the climate emergency. Things are going to be dreadful, but – working together – we still have the time to stop a dangerous future becoming a cataclysmic one.

#climate change #bill mcguire #Britain #summer heatwaves #summer 2022 #future forecasts

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subsidystadium · 2 months

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Minnesota United FC had grand plans outside their new stadium in 2016. Now? Not so much

It is 2016. Local leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota were debating whether to give millions of taxpayer dollars to Minnesota United FC to help with the construction of a new soccer stadium, named Allianz Field. This included a mixed-use development around the new stadium. In 2016, the owner of Minnesota United FC showed the city council a 33-page master plan that outlined a “series of public spaces,…

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#Allianz Field #Bill McGuire #Community Advisory Committee #Hotel #Minnesota #Minnesota United FC #Mixed-Use #MLS #Office Building #Pioneer Press #Playground #Property Tax #Restaurant Pavilion #St. Paul #Star-Tribune #Tax Increment Financing

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alicemccombs · 2 months

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#bill mcguire #climate scientist #climateactionnow #healearth

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krispijnbeek · 5 months

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Klimaatwetenschap uitgelegd door Kiri Pritchard-McLean

Klimaatwetenschap is ingewikkeld en de modellen waarmee klimaatwetenschappers werken ook. Ook het taalgebruik van wetenschappers helpt niet altijd mee om het begrijpelijk en behapbaar te maken. In onderstaande video legt Kiri Pritchard-McLean, een komiek uit Wales, uit wat Bill McGuire, emeritus professor Geophysical & Climate Hazards aan University College London, bedoelt. Bill McGuire is…

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#Bill McGuire #Climate Science Breakthrough #Kiri Pritchard-McLean #klimaatverandering #klimaatwetenschap

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suchananewsblog · 1 year

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An artiste shares her experience of a theatre production, Tara, Compass Crow, which hopes to create environmental awareness in young audiences

As a little one rising up in the Potala Palace (Lhasa, Tibet), the Dalai Lama would usually run up to the roof and practice his telescope upon herds of yak being taken to market. On seeing them, he would race to a shrine room, sequester some of the choices, instruct a palace employee to purchase all the herd and liberate them. It is that this highly effective spirit of direct motion that…

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#Bill McGuire #children #climate change #Eco-theatre #Goa #Hothouse Earth #Tara Compass Crow #Young audience

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hihomeghere · 3 months

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You could say I’m a bit obsessed with these dumb cowboys <3

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kisu-doodles · 2 days

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Been awhile since i've drawn any rdr2 art so here are some beefy cowbois!!! John is getting his monthly flea dip and the resident twinks have drawn the short straw

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spoonsand · 2 months

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RIP RED DEAD CHARACTERS YOU WOULD HAVE LOVED

Dutch- disposable fruity flavoured (mango) vapes, Duolingo

Hosea- rollerblading, old VHS movies, The Sound of Music, ear studs, small hoops, and ear cuffs

Arthur- LED strip lights, therapy, The Joy of Painting

John- Ax body spray, deodorant, those little arm floaties little kids wear in the pool

Mary-Beth- Lego flowers, The Notebook, Pinterest

Tilly- Easter egg hunts, making slime, slumber parties

Karen- Tube/crop tops, jean shorts, weightlifting

Sean- make your own mead kits, TikTok, “kiss me in Irish”, SUNSCREEN

Abigail- AirTags (she would put one on little Jack), Roasting marshmallows, Crime shows/courtroom dramas, Man! I Feel like a woman! By Shania Twain

Uncle- recliner chairs, dog sledding, Wheel of Fortune, Crosswords

Susan- Dark nail polish, cats(I’m 100% sure she’d own either a black cat or a tortishell that would sit on her lap/shoulder), dishwashers

Kieran- Creep by Radiohead, Tv shows about veterinarians, friendship bracelets (with Arthur)

Reverend Swanson- Support groups, The Robert Langdon series (especially Inferno, Angels & Demons), communion wine

Javier- Cards Against Humanity, online sheet music, ear gauges

Molly- Champaign toast anything from bath and bodywork’s, naval AND lip piercing, SUNSCREEN

Bill-sexy firefighter calendars, Grindr, Bumbl, all the dating apps, apples dipped in caramel, jolly ranchers

Charles- IMessage games (mini golf and battleship in particular), those long distance ‘thinking of you bracelets’, 90’s sitcoms

Lenny- The Carpenters, cologne to make him seem grown up, head pats

Trelawney- Harry Houdini, 50-60s movies, smoke bombs, dramatic flares

Strauss- a soul, Nigerian Prince scams, telemarketing

Sadie- gyms, self defence classes, the free Britany movement

Micah- staying in the strawberry jail, toothbrush + paste, good posture

Pearson- small businesses, handmade gifts, trying TikTok recipes

EXTRA

Annabelle- Gwen Stefani, sequins, Fast and the Furious

Jack (young)- The Backyardagains, cocomelon, a little toy train

Jack (epilogue)- Monty Python, skateboarding, swimming

Bessie- Bette Midler look a like contests, growing old, brown eyeliner, SUNSCREEN

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synthsays · 2 months

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Spoilers for RDR2 below!!!:

I was visiting Kieran's grave the other day and there were light blue flowers not far away and they reminded me a lot of him it was crazy so I decided to make a list of flowers that remind me of all the rdr2 characters

Kieran Duffy: Tweedia/Forget-me-not

Lenny Summers: Lantana

Hosea Mathews: Dasiy

Arthur Morgan: Poppy

Javier Escuella: Rose

Dutch Van Der Linde: Red hibiscus from Tahiti

Molly O' Shea: Honey Suckle

Sean McGuire: Dandelion

Susan Grimshaw: Red Tiger Lily

Sadie Adler: Sunflower

Charles Smith: Plume Thistle

Reverend Swanson: Queen Anne's Lace