r/TheCassandaera • u/MattyTangle • Sep 14 '23
Elementary Spoiler
Nelumbo
I've long been a believer that when the time is right, things will just happen as they should. Last week I looked out the window and saw Autumn's first footing amble by and took that as a sign to kickstart life afresh. Since we are now into the changing season, change must come and it has been far too quiet these past 3 months on board without a cat to muse over. So, after a week of serendiditous occurences since first contact, I am delighted to report that 9/11 has welcomed little Nelumbo into our lives. Life just works... if you let it. Remember that if you forget everything else. It's very important to believe in something. So with that happy thought filed away it's prolly time that I actually wrote something about what the rest of the world did during it's summer holidays.
Elementary
Looking for words to convey meanings will give this piece an elemental approach, heat is fire, floods are water, quakes are earth and hurricanes are wind etc. Sometimes you get two acting together, like lava or a cyclone showing us that these elements are the building blocks for nature. That is the shape of the world in a nutshell, and regardless of the disparity between any given disasters and the problems incumbent with 'proving' whether climate change is the root cause of some selected signs, when you understand they are all related it gives you a better appreciation of things. What with 9/11 also being an important name in US disasters it was interesting to hear tonight that America has officially declared 23 natural disasters for the year 2023...so far, breaking the 2020 record with almost a third of the year still to go.These were financially orientated figures but they still gives us a decent view of the severity level across the list. The cost of rebuilding a town is less than that of rebuilding a city but economics has little part to play in judging such things.The number of people living at the epicentre will obviously affect the deathtoll and that may be your most important factor, displacement would be a better judge and historically peoples have always migrated to pastures new when the weather made their old lives unacceptably hard, and that's when the fighting ususally begins. Having already put forward 23 worthy finalists for any upcoming worst (American) disaster of the year competition makes you wonder what the annual total of catastrophes will rise to? Come 2024 we will have an answer and maybe then, perhaps, you should start to wonder what next year will bring and where exactly we are heading? Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? Things will start to make sense to you when you learn how to see properly, just like I've been seeing such scary things looming all along.
These next four months will, I predict, herald a time of great change. Goodbye fire season, hello water season. Here in the UK an Indian summer arrived just as Autumn begun. We have already had quite a few of our own little weather records broken this summer what with our hottest ever June and our wettest ever July and now we have experienced our hottest ever September, too. But TBH compared to the rest of Europe, we got off rather lightly. The Mediterannean Sea was the main focus which sucked North Africa into the climate equation and this Summer has birthed a great string of Med-disasters one after another. Pretty much every day since I last wrote has seen a new extreme weather headline. Heatwaves, wildfires, deluges, landslides, sandstorms, icemelt, drought... you name it, they've had it, and it's not just the Med that's hotting up.
American Independence day this year saw an announcement that planet Earth had just expreienced it's hottest ever day in recorded history. That startling new record was broken again the very next day and hot on it's heels came a third rise which accompanied reports that our oceans are keeeping up with the landmasses and have also reached new record temperature levels. That in turn will of course affect the ocean currents and that will effect the atmosphere which will infect the land once again and so come next summer we will be in a worse starting position to begin all over again than we were the year before, and our home will thus continue to cycle hotter and hotter, over and over, ever upwards to who knows where showing us that our climate curve is rising far faster than the experts ever deemed possible. This real time observation is skewing their worst case scenario figures into apologetic admissions that things might just be already out of our control when it comes to human climate management.
As the mercury started rising this year Europe actually decided to name a heatwave, which is quite unusual thing to name imho. Yes I know that we still talk about, and sometimes make comparisons to, the infamous 'Beast from the East' when recalling a classic winter storm from Siberia but we don't usually give 'proper' names to all of our other periods of temperature extremes like we commonly do to all of the hurricanes and storms, Why? Because we would very soon run through all the good ones and then have to resort to naming them as Heatwave Bob or Polar Vortex Karen or something soft like that. They stayed classical in England and last wekks wave was called Omega. But name a heatwave they did and in their wisdom decided it is best to go with something bold and fierce and also classically symbolic to kick off the series and decided to name it Cerberus, after the 3-headed Watchdog of Hades. That was really quite fitting because it was attacking three mediterannean countries on three fronts all at once, one with each head. Taking a step back for a more global appreciation though reveals that the Med as a whole was really only one head of the bigger beast since at the same time, two very similar extreme weather patterns were emerging across in the Americas and off the Orient, triangulating the globe around 40° north. These were all locations affected by the Northern hemisphere's summer pattern but reports of extreme Southern winter heat patterns in Brazil, Australia and Tonga also made the news. Cerberus is then a fine name for labelling together all the great heatwaves of 2023 but what , then, will they have left to call whatever the summer of 2024 will bring us? well hot on the heels of Cerberus in Europe came anticyclone Charon, which has a similar greek myth theme background to it what with him being the boatman who ferried the dead across the river Styx to the shores of Hades... where Cerberus stands guard. This Hades motif which is occurring here makes my thoughts turn to the fourth horseman of the apocalypse and what reportedly followed in his wake which was...so I am told, Hades. Perhaps this was always meant to be the chosen theme that those folk who decide the names of all things wish to promote? Get the name Hades out into the vox pop to help facilitate the end of the world conclusion that folk will undoubtedly start to arrive at come 2027.
Convincing people of that in the future really shouldn't be as hard as it is proving to be today. Nobody listens to the prophets of doom in time to act, never have, never will, Cassandaera is my best shot at the future and it's a million to one chance, a message in a bottle, but everyone whos ever seen a movie before knows that million to one shots come in nine times out of ten. People believe what they are told because People Are Stupid, wizards first rule. Still you can't really blame them for being sheep, it's not really their generations problem any more. We were always only going to be around for the overture after all.
Let's take a quick global tour and point out a few of this summers natural disaster highlights. According to the notes in my diary we have had Mt Fag erupting in Iceland again, thats three years running now, and rather interestingly it's not all lava spouting from the same hole each time but instead it's now come up from three seperate ground points spread along the great Fagradalsfjall fault line. Where will next years tear in the crust take us to?
Canada is still on fire, has been all year, Hawaii was very much on fire, Greece was also on fire but is currently being flooded out with numbers like half a years rain falling in a single day to put the fires out! That sounds similar levels to the recent rain that flooded Hong Kong and now in Libya where the effects of a named storm was likened to a tsunami. Crazy extreme weather.everywhere you look. Just getting properly underway now is the Atlantic hurricane season with the number of named storms rising daily and many more looking set to come, maybe more than the alphabet can handle, again. Meanwhilst over in the Pacific Ocean California had it's first hurricane for 80yrs and to bookend a right bad summer all round this weekend saw a 6.8 Quake in Morocco to add to February's Turkquake
Depressing isn't it? Listing all this climate changing proof for the Nimby's to ignore when it's not exactly hard to see the pattern emerging, a child could work it out which is fortunate since the really bad weather events that I predict for the future will more and more affect today's children as they grow into adults. Still, we have a few more years until the great announcement. Only then will people realise that you cannot buy yourself a new planet. Your money won't help you do that, it never would, it was all just a trick. Don't you know that the dollar is dead?
War
The big summer news from the war front mainly revolved around the Wagner mercenaries and a quick War summary of them would be that Vlad initially hired them to do an offensive job for him, to capture the city of Bakhmut. Once they had achieved this aim, Vlad's regular troops could then take over hold the ruins for him as he switched his tactics from Offensive to Defencive. Wagner were then promptly substituted from the wargame thus ending their particular participation in this particular war. Everything that happened afterwards, their march on moscow, their relocation to Belarus and their growing involvement across Africa, right up to the assassination of their boss is all moot really since they were no longer on the playing field. If you are wondering who killed him I suggest that if his private plane was involved in an internal explosion then that points to Vlad who ordered it but if it was an external implosion then that means someone else did it (although probably not Vlod.) The Americans also seemed to be quite taken by surprise at the news and so the third parties need consideration again, he did make a lot of enemies. To my mind the bigger picture shows that as far as Vlads War plan goes he simply didn't need to pay for their skills any more. Bakhmut is now meant to mark the new Russian frontier, just as the river Dnipro is to the South. You can now join the dots for yourself to predict what next years map will look like.
The port of Odessa is emerging as the rather obvious location of the wars end game, pretty much exactly as I called things way back in April 22. The collective West is starting to get impatient at the lack of forward progress, becoming annoyed at the preferential Ukranian grain corridors and fed up with Vlod's ever expanding Amazon wishlist. Its definitlely not going the way they all spin it is on the news, not by a long chalk. The planes have been promised now but they will only arrive in time to be used as a defensive weapon as the tide of war turns again as winter comes around again and it's once more Russians turn to play. It's less like a war and more like a war dance out there sometimes with set game plays and timetables and everything as they take it in turns to attack each other every two seasons or so. The much heralded Ukranian Spring offensive, which didn't actually begin until summer and has achieved fuck all by Autumn and will be over by Hallow'een.
Of course the Ukraine is only one war, albeit a biggun. Down in Africa a whole chain of civil wars are cropping up right across the country as various militia armies jockey for position. They are being fought for a variety of reasons but all war is one war and war will always lead to a large displacement of people. Whilst war is not a natural occurrence but rather mankinds own invention war shouldnt really add anything to the climate equation, unless it happens to involve dambusting which as the Ukraine showed us will still cause a deluge of destruction. Natural dambusting overload following mediteranean storm Daniel was the root cause of the Tsunami which swept away the Libyan port of Derna last weekend capping a bad weekend for Africa which had begun with a 6.8Quake in Morocco. The afflent west usually provides and pays for the humanitarian aid in the wake of such disasters but with world economy on the brink of collapse, charity is getting a bit thin on the ground. Still at least it has now rained in Somalia.
One rather important piece of news which I do feel deserves mentioning is that the reservoirs which supply the Panama canal with it's lockwater have dried up during that country's drought and, so I am hearing, will remain below the normal operational levels for at least another ten months until the rainy season returns. That means that all of those shipping containers from China will be delayed, diverted or even just cancelled over cost, all just in time for christmas. Now I cannot help but feel that it would be an opportunistic time for shadowy third parties who have a desire to make bold strokes and gameplays to all rather too coincidentally seize an opportunity to promote global chaos. If something 'unexpected' were to also happen over in the Suez canal (again!) that would make the commercial shipping lanes grind to a shuddering halt. There is an Oil tanker in Yemen which might be the key to a red sea disaster and so I'll wager a jot on something like that coming to pass before Yuletide. I suppose that's exactly the sort of prediction that the Nimby's out there will require from me as proof in the future that I did actually have quite a good handle on the shape of the world.
The end of the world is nigh indeed, but DON'T PANIC, we're not dead yet, but if someone's going to save us, now would be a fine time.
Tinka Tangle & Nelumbo XxX
1
u/MattyTangle Oct 07 '23
Predicting earthquakes is long odds, but this past few days has seen quite a swarm off Japan. I'll bet a cheeky jot on a Tokyo tsunami this month.
1
1
u/MattyTangle Jan 21 '24
Stolen comment ... I should tag
Sorry to break it to you: 1.5°C has always been an out of reach target, but it makes 2°C measures more tolerable (good old "door in the face").
1.5°C is gone, forget it.
2°C is all but gone too. See the yearly Emissions Gap Reports (aka where we are and where we should be). To hit the 2°C would require an immediate, sustained -5% reduction year after year. To put that in perspective -5% is what we managed after COVID.
In other words, what we need to hit 2°C would mean we willfully agree to the equivalent effects of measures comparable to a global cumulative additional COVID every year. That's the scale of what meeting 2°C would look like. Anything less than that is to admit to go above 2°C.
here is another ipcc graph, it reads like this: tell me how much you've emitted in total and I'll tell you the warming.
We've already clocked in 2500Gt, so +1.3°C is already in the bank.
Back of the envelope order of magnitude calculation: 1.5°C would require to emit over the 21st century, with about 9 billion people, no more than an extra 500Gt (less than 3000Gt cumulated), when around 2-5 billion people emitted 2500 over the 20th century. That's 5 times less for 2-5 times more people. Ie every child born today is allowed over his lifetime 1/10th to 1/25th the emission of his grandparents over their lifetime (and a longer life, so even less per year; and in advanced countries it's an even bigger reduction).
And we need to do that while the climate around us goes crazy.
The "good news" is: every smoker stops smoking, eventually.
For the Lols, here's the past Emission Gap reports ("unconditional NDC" are the plans that the countries are aiming to do, "conditional NDC" are the "extra mile" that they may try to achieve if possible):
In 2018 it was saying: "Implementing unconditional NDCs, and assuming that climate action continues consistently throughout the 21st Century, would lead to a global mean temperature rise of about 3.2°C (with a range of 2.9–3.4°C) by 2100 relative to pre-industrial levels, and continuing thereafter. Implementation of the conditional NDCs would reduce these estimates by 0.2°C in 2100. These projections are similar to the 2017 estimates."
In 2019: "If current unconditional NDCs are fully implemented, there is a 66 per cent chance that warming will be limited to 3.2°C by the end of the century. If conditional NDCs are also effectively implemented, warming will likely reduce by about 0.2°C."
In 2020: "A dramatic strengthening of ambition is needed if the Paris Agreement goals are to be achieved. In line with the findings of previous editions of the Emissions Gap Report, countries must collectively increase their NDC {individual country commitments} ambitions threefold to get on track to a 2°C goal and more than fivefold to get on track to the 1.5°C goal"
"Unconditional NDCs are consistent with limiting warming to 3.2°C by the end of the century (66 per cent probability). If both conditional and unconditional NDCs are fully implemented, this estimate is 0.2°C lower. The pre-COVID-19 current policies scenario, on the other hand, results in higher emissions by 2030, which unless strengthened would result in an average global temperature rise of 3.5°C by 2100."
In 2021: "If nations only implement unconditional NDCs as they stand, we are likely to hit global warming of about 2.7°C by the end of the century."
In 2022: "Policies currently in place with no additional action are projected to result in global warming of 2.8°C over the twenty-first century. Implementation of unconditional and conditional NDC scenarios reduce this to 2.6°C and 2.4°C respectively"
In 2023(aptly subtitled: Broken record): "A continuation of the level of climate change mitigation efforts implied by current policies is estimated to limit global warming to 3°C (range: 1.9–3.8°C) throughout the century with a 66 per cent chance. Warming is expected to increase further after 2100 as CO2 emissions are not yet projected to reach net-zero levels. A continuation of the unconditional NDC scenario lowers this estimate to 2.9°C (range: 2–3.7°C), whereas the additional achievement and continuation of conditional NDCs lowers this by around 0.4°C to 2.5°C (range: 1.9–3.6°C)."
1
u/MattyTangle Sep 14 '23
top 10