Last Week in Collapse: February 11-17, 2024
Bombardments, prions, tipping points, and the decline of democracy…
Last Week in Collapse: February 11-17, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 112th newsletter. You can find the February 4-10 edition here on Reddit if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.
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Around Utah’s Great Salt Lake, dust storms are impacting respiratory health of nearby residents. In Libya, although no stranger to devastating flooding, groundwater is surging up in one coastal town, for unknown reasons, undermining buildings and creating the breeding grounds for mosquitoes. A study on “sub-seasonal precipitation anomalies” (week-to-week rainfall discrepancies) in the Middle East suggests that climate patterns in the Indian Ocean will intensify their impact on the Middle East—potentially resulting in future stronger rains in the region, thanks to the Indian Ocean Dipole.
The Keeling Curve—the CO2 ppm readings taken at Mauna Loa—hit new record concentrations last week, peaking at 426.5 ppm. The annual Munich Security Conference convened last week, and said climate change is more dangerous than Russia—and that migration and Islamism are rising fears for Europeans. Security professionals are also concerned about the future of NATO after Trump’s suggestion that NATO ought not to protect “delinquent” countries not meeting their 2% defense commitments.
The average North Atlantic sea surface temperatures continue rising, foreboding a bad hurricane season ahead.
Damage report from the Philippines, where flooding triggered landslides that have now killed, according to current estimates, at least 68 people. A brutal heat wave struck north and South Africa. The American Midwest is emerging from a “lost winter” that’s the warmest on record. A landslide in Türkiye trapped 9 gold miners. A vicious storm in Cyprus blasted Limassol.
Drier than average conditions in Afghanistan over the past 6 months have dropped harvests and worsened hunger. A recent influx of Afghans deported from Pakistan has also complicated the situation and added pressure to resources.
Scientists claim most of the Amazon rainforest could cross its tipping point by 2050. The study’s authors say that stopping deforestation will not be enough; reversing worldwide CO2 emissions would be necessary to safeguard the long-term health of the Amazon. In other words, it’s only a matter of time. Three possible futures of the Amazon were proposed: white-sand savanna, degraded open canopy, and degraded forest.
A recent study in Nature Climate Change suggests that the vast majority of humans support stronger climate mitigation measures—yet action still seems to be lacking. The study, which surveyed about 130,000 people, reportedly found that 69% of respondents were willing to contribute 1% of their income to measures fighting climate change. If that 69% figure seems high, you are not alone; respondents believed the number of people willing to sacrifice 1% of their income for (unspecified) climate actions is much lower than it actually is. In other words, there may be considerably more support for climate actions than we realize.
Experts say that “megafires” are going to become more common moving forward—indeed, in some places, wild “zombie” fires already are. A study into the psychological impact of wildfires concluded that wildfires which began in one country and spread into another had a stronger impact than domestic blazes. Another study into warming on the eastern coast of the U.S. found that 19th century reforestation efforts succeeded, inadvertently, in keeping the coast cool. However, scientists are also saying that reforestation efforts in the African savannah are backfiring and endangering local ecosystems. Land degradation is rapidly shrinking the amount of usable agricultural land.
An ice-free Arctic may also mean a bear-free Arctic. There are about 25,000 polar bears in the wild today—and they’re starting to starve. A recently published study surveying the movement of bears concluded that many polar bears lose more weight when they live on land—compared to ice. Heat waves in the Arctic Circle are the new normal. Meanwhile, Greenland’s vegetation doubled in the last 30 years, as the ice receded, according to a study in Scientific Reports.
The oil spill off the coast of Tobago has spread to Venezuelan waters. Kazakhstan’s mega-methane leak was determined to have been raging for more than 6 months, until it was finally capped last Christmas—after emitting 127,000+ tonnes of CH4.
Japan saw record temperatures for February in many cities. Yet northeast China saw record cold temperatures for February. Some scientists are worried that India could become a new hotbed for locusts in a warmer future. Jeddah also set a new February record minimum temperature, at 26.7 °C (80 °F). Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago, saw its all-time second-highest temperature on record.
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British Columbia has confirmed its first cases of chronic wasting disease (CWD), and released an initial strategy to combat the prion disease, which has not yet evolved to infect humans. Alaskapox—a zoonotic virus that has probably not yet gone Human-to-Human transmissible—killed one man in Alaska. There have been 7 confirmed human cases of Alaskapox since 2015.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is more than 4x more common for COVID survivors, according to the CDC. Some experts say that many of the “natural” deaths seen in the last 3 years were actually COVID-related. Although vaccines have demonstrated some effectiveness in preventing serious COVID problems, booster vaccination rates are very low in many countries, and unlikely to rise soon. According to WHO data on influenza, worldwide flu cases are spiking right now.
Egypt’s financial and resource difficulties are starting to push Sudanese refugees back out of the country they fled to for safety. The Sudan Civil War is also setting off famine alarms in the region, aggravated by attacks on Red Sea shipping. In Zambia, cholera is surging to its worst levels since 2017.
The Tijuana River is poisoned with a mix of chemicals and drug-resistant pathogens. In West Africa, diphtheria cases have been rising for a few months. Diphtheria is a bacterial infection that affects the respiratory system; there are vaccines, but they are in short supply.
About half of migratory species are declining in population quickly. And the New York Times Opinion section is taking the possibility of a sudden drop in global homo sapiens population fairly seriously.
Hunger and inflation have landed in Argentina. Insurance on Red Sea ships is rising, pricing out some ships and forcing them to make a longer, more polluting detour. Another large Chinese real estate developer is defaulting on some of its bonds. And a growing “debt bomb” in the UK might take down countless pensions alongside the trust of the public.
How much more time does humanity have? Some thinkers, the so-called “neo-luddites,” theorize that this civilization has about five more years left. In an unrelated documentary on doomscrolling by Al Jazeera, our subreddit r/collapse received a little featurette.
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Pakistan’s election results were finalized, and resulted in a slight majority for the military coalition—though observers predict the new government won’t last long. Meanwhile, in Mali, thousands of IDPs are arriving and putting pressure on an already-scarce commodity market.
The first death occurred in Senegal’s protests, over a presidential election indefinitely postponed. A mass shooting at the Super Bowl victory parade injured 21 and killed 1. Two South African soldiers were killed in the DRC by unspecified militants. Tutsi-led M23 fighters are reportedly moving on Goma, and have allegedly killed 200+ and displaced 52,000+ people over the past few weeks.
Tensions rose in Serbia-Kosovo after Kosovo abandoned the Serbian dinar as their currency and embraced the Euro. Two Chinese fishermen who were trespassing in Taiwanese waters (off the coast of Kinmen) resisted inspection and died after their fleeing boat capsized in the ocean. The Philippines is standing firm in its claims to part of the South China Sea.
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