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Can you expand a bit? Wonder how long before we have a massive famine here that kills off a lot of Americans and makes COVID look like nothing.
I mean there's a reason this is an important mark. People have virtually no clue how bad things will get in the coming decades. is not going to be a walk in the park.
Can you expand a bit? Wonder how long before we have a massive famine here that kills off a lot of Americans and makes COVID look like nothing.
Not just famine but drought and rolling outages
We will hit 2C probably in the 2050’s. Now, the same mainstream science that predicts the warming
also does not predict billions of dead people, even by 2100. The biggest number I’ve seen is 83 million. I think mainstream science is assuming humans will migrate away from uninhabitable zones and adapt in areas that are merely degraded. The adaptation assumption is probably true. The migration one… we’ll see. I’m not hopeful.
Housing in desirable areas costs big money, that's why people are instead moving to Arizona, Texas, Florida, etc. You think the housing market is ed right now wait until cities like Phoenix are gutted due to poor availability of water. Having lived on the southside of Houston years ago and seen what the flooding was like then due to the land sinking after digging the shipping channel can't imagine what that whole side of town will look like with higher seas and further sinking of the land in 50-70 years. Gotta think it'll lose a lot of residents too. As will Miami, Tampa, the remaining s of New Orleans, etc.
I’m not talking about migration within the United States. I’m talking about a world where a couple billion people in Africa and Asia have to leave their countries because it gets to 130 in the summer and there is no water or hope of growing crops, but no livable countries are going to want to take them in.
Another ERCOT conservation alert from 4-9pm today. These alerts used to be rare, we've had 6-7 in past two weeks.
1. 60 days and counting in 2023 as of August 27th
2. 59 days in 2009
3. 58 days in 2022
4. 57 days in 2011
5. 41 days in 2013
6. 36 days in 2020
6. 36 days in 1998
8. 33 days in 1948
Any bets on where we end up this year? I'm gonna go with 72 days of 100+ for San Antonio in 2023.
Most people don't understand the economic and human costs associated with the changes that are coming due in part because they don't understand the gravity of the changes. For instance, can you imagine what not having pine forests in the four corners states would mean? Yet that's one of the projections I've seen by 2100 due to heat mortality, bark beetle outbreaks, fire, or a combination of those issues. Right now the reservoirs out west are in good shape after a big winter, but that's unlikely to be the case for much longer. Right before this we were on the verge of some pretty large catastrophes for people who use water from the Colorado river basin which is an insane number of people. What do you think happens if Vegas, LA, and other cities out there don't have access to enough water? Have you see how expensive the flood control projects along the TX gulf coast are? Are public utilities going to be able to operate the same way with a summer of insane rates every afternoon for the foreseeable future? What does heat wave mortality look like when we have major grid problems? What about when we see a major hurricane come through and knock out power for months at a time and then we see these increasingly normal temps after?
What about when ocean ecosystems just crumble? This summer is likely to kill off an insane amount of coral reefs in the gulf. Air temps across the globe have been exceptional, but that is nothing compared to the implications of our water temps. Those reefs just aren't for snorkeling, they're important parts of the oceanic food chains and without them we get even closer to losing important food sources. I just got back from a work trip to Alaska, and the situation with the Salmon up there is dire. The big thing is that these systems are so complex that there's no way scientists have a full grasp on what is going to happen and how its going to play out. We can analyze the physical systems and how they will respond, so we know when the ice will melt (generally although we've been too conservative in general), how hot it will get, and we have an idea of what it means to the dynamics of the atmosphere but its much harder to understand what that means for complex interwoven biological systems. What we do know is that when big changes like this happen suddenly, biological systems can't adapt fast enough and virtually crumble so I wouldn't expect anything else.
We can adapt, but not without spending a lot of money and killing a lot of people. COVID was a really good indicator at how we'll respond to climate change when large numbers of people start dying. We'll just normalize those deaths and act like its NBD. So humanity will almost certainly survive, but its going to come at a huge cost and thats only to the benefit of the few people who continue to profit off oil and gas.
Predicting the temps is easy because its the first domino. Its the physical response to a relatively physical system. (How taht response varies geographically is a bit more complex, but even that is relatively simple) But how biological systems, economic, and political systems respond to that will ultimately have a lot of impact on how many people die. Scientists can't model how many wars are a result of climate change driven droughts (whats up Syria) or which countries will take the necessary steps to protect people from extreme heat (you want to bet that we will after COVID?) so I wouldn't put too much weight on any projections of how many people will die from AGW one way or another. I definitely think we're about to see the start of climate migration, but even in places that will remain better (IE Upper midwest vs the southwest) you're going to see elevated mortality from climate change affected events. We've already seen this in the Pacific NW in the recent heat waves, for instance.
So yeah, I don't know how many people will die (but 83 million by 2100 strikes me as a big time underestimation, frankly) but I do know that the best case where we save a lot of people from dying will come at huge economic costs and I don't particularly view that scenario as anything near likely.
Ugh ing 105 at 2PM
This country doesn't even give a about saving people's lives at negative economic costs, eg keeping for profit healthcare vs single payer when single payer would be cheaper.
San Antonio is 105 at 2PM
Houston is 106 at 2PM
Austin is 106 at 2PM
Waco is 104 at 2PM
How the is the grid going to hold up today?
The front is moving through. Already past Dallas.
Wind is overpeforming due to the front and while temps to the south of the front are higher due to compressional heating its starting to drop in north Texas. Today probably has lower odds of being an issue than the previous days.
Demand forecast overshot at 8PM. And I gotta think that demand forecast is low when the temperatures are looking to be hotter than forecast today if we're hitting predicted highs in population centers in south and central Texas at only 2-3PM.
Hope so. Yesterday DFW was the only population center on the grid that was blazing hot at 7-8PM whereas today it's Houston, SA, and Austin, though doesn't look like that compressional heating ahead of the front will hit Corpus, Laredo, Brownsville, etc today.
The graphs showed overshoot on several previous days too, but they never even got to emergency phase 1.Demand forecast overshot at 8PM. And I gotta think that demand forecast is low when the temperatures are looking to be hotter than forecast today if we're hitting predicted highs in population centers in south and central Texas at only 2-3PM.
I turn the thermostat up from 77 to 80 at 2 PM, turn on the fans, and hope for the best until 9 PM. That knocks my consumption during those hours down by half. Between businesses implementing conservation measures, and maybe 5% of customers actually heeding the conservation pleas, they’re flattening the curve enough to get through so far.
Front ended up coming a lot earlier than I was expecting from the forecasts I saw making it sound like it would stall to the north and not pass Austin nor reach us until tomorrow. But with Austin at 90 now and the front having just crossed 410 hopefully we'll be in the 90s within the next 45 minutes or so. Houston though , still showing 106 at Bush Intercontinental on Weather Underground.
JFC not even a cold front can get us below 100. 100 at the airport at 2PM
1. 61 days and counting in 2023 as of August 28th
2. 59 days in 2009
3. 58 days in 2022
4. 57 days in 2011
5. 41 days in 2013
6. 36 days in 2020
6. 36 days in 1998
8. 33 days in 1948
wells and springs running dry this summer.
https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-...water-drought/In several cases, widespread irrigation of grass caused water system problems as supply grew short. For example: some residents of Bee Cave woke up to low or no water pressure in late June.
“The storage tanks were drained overnight by Over-irrigation of lawns,” Bee Cave mayor Kara King wrote on Facebook.
The same thing happened in Dripping Springs, where some residents received a boil water notification on July 20. Rick Broun, general manager for the local water supply company, told the Dripping Springs Century News that the loss in system pressure resulted from “an enormous amount of irrigation use last night.”
With this near-daily crunch around 8 PM as solar is going offline, anyone who can get a battery station up and running should be set to make a killing.
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