Last Week in Collapse: January 28-February 3, 2024
Tensions grow between Iran and the West, while temperatures rise around the world.
Last Week in Collapse: January 28-February 3, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, amazing, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 110th newsletter. You can find the January 21-27 edition here on Reddit if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.
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Devastating flooding in the DRC—the worst in 60+ years, they say—has accounted for 300+ dead and 280,000+ displaced. Growing wildfires in Chile have killed 51+ people and caused the President to declare a state of emergency.
There is a system for providing warnings about coral reef heat stress—three new categories had to be added in December 2023 to represent new thresholds being crossed. The Pacific is being particularly affected, and one ocean region has almost complete coral mortality predicted.
Andalusia, in Spain, is extending its Drought emergency and budgeting €50B for its drying agricultural industry; Catalonia is also extending its Drought emergency. In British Columbia, Canada, snowpack is down, forecasting a drier wildfire season later this year. The EU is still exchanging economic productivity for air pollution, a tale as old as the Industrial Revolution.
Record temperatures in some Pacific states for February have already been set, and in Australia. Part of Argentina set a new February record on the 1st; part of French Guiana too; and Norway. And Martinique. In California, a pineapple express storm & atmospheric river blasted the west coast. The global sea surface temperature continues setting new records.
Mexico City (metro pop: 22M) is facing a water shortage, and people are already getting desperate. Ghana introduced a carbon tax, becoming Africa’s third country to impose one. The UK sold 24 licenses across 17 companies, enabling them to drill for oil & gas in the North Sea; some operations will begin extraction before the year’s end. Pakistan is facing a dry winter, impacting their harvest.
Although earth has recently set a number of new record nighttime temperatures, the gap is growing between average daytime temps and those at night. Cloud coverage during daytime is also, on average, decreasing, which increases solar radiation touching earth’s surface. The difference between night and day temperatures will impact plants and animals in diverse ways to be determined.
A study in Nature Climate Change examining why people deny climate change science concluded that much of it is “motivated reasoning,” a kind of self-deception that some feel is necessary to maintain their psychological health. Another dense study concludes that melting permafrost is an underappreciated danger, both because of the carbon sequestered is now being released, and because some Arctic rivers will rise dramatically as it melts. An interesting study about Greenland in Geophysical Research Letters claims that, as Greenland’s massive glaciers melt, the landmass may actually rise because less pressure is pushing the land down. Another study determined that Greenland is actually a methane sink, owing to microorganisms inhabiting the upper layer of Greenland’s dry soil, converting CH4 into CO2.
Research into tidal flora suggest that these ecosystems, like saltmarshes and mangrove barriers, sequester more carbon than previously believed. Wetlands are also responsible for important biodiversity, and are in danger from rising sea levels.
Drought is impacting Canadian hydropower generation. Yet in Anchorage, Alaska, a record snowfall for this time of the year has come—more than twice the average snowfall for winter. Wildfires in South Africa forced the evacuation of several small villages.
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If you think nuclear winter is coming, plan for a future eating seaweed. A study from Earth’s Future assessed the viability of seaweed/macroalgae and claims large-scale seaweed farming could scale up in about one year to feed 45% of humans when most plants and livestock die. The nutritional profile of seaweed is also decent enough.
Yet another article claims millions of Americans are afflicted with Long COVID, a number which will inevitable increase because basically nobody is taking preventive measures. Even when someone tests negative for the virus, it can reside in the human gut or brain, where it can continue to replicate and cause problems, including long-term brain fog. Apparently these symptoms are acceptable compared with the unpleasantness of strapping a mask on for a little while. COVID continues to cause heart problems.
Pandemics get worse with climate change, according to history. Rome’s Plague of Justinian, which struck from 541-549, was linked to Italy’s cold & dry climate conditions at the time. The Plague was confirmed in 2013 to be none other than yersina pestis, the bacteria responsible for the Black Death (1346-1353). Yet the climate crisis is not treated like the health threat it is.
Syphilis cases are rising in the United States—up 80% since 2018. American health authorities continue to worry about measles. WHO authorities are saying that cancer rates will skyrocket over the coming decades.
Oregon’s governor declared a state of emergency in downtown Portland over out-of-control fentanyl and opioid use. The emergency is set to last 90 days—will anything fundamentally change?
Despite rising adoption of renewable energy, the solar industry in America is encountering tough times. Sales & marketing is eating away at profit margins and the financialization of the industry has led countless installers and solar panel sellers to go bankrupt. In Kenya, a truck carrying natural gas crashed, causing an explosion that killed 3 and injured 270+. Saudi Arabia dropped its plan to boost oil production this year.
Egypt’s currency is sinking and debt is surging. Egypt (pop: 104M) has a national debt of $165B USD—with an annual cost of servicing that debt sitting around $42B per year. When that bubble bursts, it’s going to be a hell of a pop. The U.S. commercial real estate market is facing financial troubles amid lingering losses in office spaces across the world.
A woman died in China last week from a combination of two bird flu variants. Two more Cambodian people got avian flu. And the first king penguins have died from H5N1 in Antarctica, and scientists fear a devastating epidemic could kill far more.
A study on nanoplastic structures examined how shape and composition of these tiny plastics can impact toxicity. Other scientists have reportedly made a breakthrough in sifting out microplastics from our food and water, while a newly invented filter may catch 80% of microplastics in washing machines. Yet some experts say we inhale a credit card’s worth of microplastics—every week…
Hepatitis E is spreading in South Sudan after flooding impeded vaccination efforts. Hep E has no cure, and affects 20M+ people every year, mostly in poor countries.
U.S. arms exports hit record highs in 2023 amid fears of rising conflict. Serbia is considering restarting conscription. Most Brits believe WWIII is coming in 5-10 years, right on schedule with many other predictions.
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Scientists fear that climate change will bring authoritarianism, unrest, and psychoses to the masses. Sri Lanka tightened its grip on the internet within its country, limiting free expression allegedly in the name of national security. In Pakistan, former PM Imran Khan was sentenced to 10 years more in prison—and then, the following day, sentenced to 14 more years. Khan was ousted as PM in April 2022.
Mali (coup 2020), Burkina Faso (coup 2022), and Niger (coup 2023) three Sahel states recently drawn together by coups and rising anti-French sentiment, are leaving ECOWAS. A local Nigerian chieftain was killed and his wife kidnapped, probably for ransom. A Kenyan opposition leader is alleging that their President will move forward with the police deployment to Haiti, even though a Kenyan court blocked the military operation two weeks ago. Senegal’s President postponed their election indefinitely, a move which the opposition has called a coup.
The number of migrants landing in the Canary Islands hit record highs for January—7,270 in 2024 compared to 566 people in January 2023. Taiwan is struggling to catch all the Chinese spies within its military & government ahead of a not-too-distant potential attack on the island. The U.S. is stockpiling weaponry in Australia in preparation for (or deterrence to) a Chinese War against Taiwan.
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