Last Week in Collapse: April 21-27, 2024
Bird flu in the milk, an Israel-Lebanon War draws closer, and the worst-case scenarios get even worse.
Last Week in Collapse: April 21-27, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 122nd newsletter. You can find the April 14-20 edition here if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.
The EU Green coalition claims that the Green Deal is probably dead now, since conservatives are projected to make small gains in this June’s EU Parliamentary election.
Gullies are becoming more common across Brazil and several other South American states, a crisis worsened by climate change & deforestation. One coastal municipality in Brazil has seen 50+ homes eaten by new holes; 100+ families have been displaced there as well. The process happens when large quantities of rainfall, unable to be absorbed into the soil (because of overdevelopment & deforestation), run off, carrying the dirt away with it. In the Himalayas, glacial lakes are growing from the massive meltwater piling up in the mountains.
Climatologists believe this summer is going to break records for temperature and/or humidity, with a 70% chance. A study in npj climate and atmospheric science determined that AI holds great potential in forecasting future storms…An analysis of the November 2023 Storm Ciarán predicted its 48-hour trajectory with reasonable accuracy.
A dust storm blew into Athens from Africa, the worst such incident in 6 years. The images look like they’re straight out of a cli-fi movie—or from Mars.
Taiwan felt 6.3 magnitude aftershocks from its 7.3 earthquake 3 weeks earlier, rumbling buildings. Thailand [issued an extreme heat warning](https://phys.org/news/2024-04-heatstroke-thailand-year-kingdom.html) after temperatures surpassed 40 °C (104 °F) this week, with a heat index expected to break 52 °C (125 °F). In the first 108 days of the year, Thailand recorded 30 deaths from heatstroke—compare that with 37 in all of 2023. Meanwhile, the heat index in the Philippines hit 47 °C (117 °F), forcing the government to close thousands of schools; one scientist said there was a 50/50 chance it the heat worsening in the coming days. Drought in the Philippines got so bad that an old settlement, flooded by the construction of a 1970s dam, resurfaced after El Niño-aggravated Drought dropped reservoir levels.
The CDC and the U.S. National Weather Service released a new heat scale, with another color representing the most dangerous level of heat. You can search your zip code here to check for your heat alarm level. Meanwhile, the famed climate scientist Michael Mann is predicting the most storms on record this hurricane season, estimating 33 in total.
Water shortage in Scotland. Drought in Spain & Greece expands; one major Spanish wine company laid off 80% of its staff indefinitely because the vines are barely producing anything. In Thailand, sugar farms are drying up. In France, a strange kind of “last chance tourists” from all over are converging on the Alps to see once-epic glaciers before they’re gone forever… Europe, the fastest warming continent, is seeing more days of heat stress than ever before.
A study in Earth’s Future examined the effect of wildfires in Greater Siberia, and found that they are projected to create a cooling effect over part of the northern hemisphere, along with the more obvious: lowered air quality & economic damage.
The total area of oases across the world expanded from 1995-2020 by 220,000+ km² (85,000+ mi²)—an area larger than the size of the island Britain, or Japan’s largest island, Honshu. Most of this expansion was the result of artificial expansion. However, the study from Earth’s Future also says that the risk of desertification is quite high, owing to mismanagement of water resources.
Wildfires in British Columbia & Alberta, including dozens of carry-over fires from last year. Record night temperatures for April in parts of West Africa—Chad even tied its hottest day in history with 48 °C (118 °F). Six countries in southeastern Asia recorded their hottest April night temps. Türkiye felt its hottest day ever in April last week: 39.2 °C (102.5 °F). Drought in Mexico is causing conflict between subsistence farmers and the cartel-linked avocado plantations. Sea surface temperatures remain at record highs for this time of year.
A 14-page article in Science Advances claims that deep sea troughs ferrying circumpolar deep water (CDW) (often warmer & saltier) to the undersides of ice shelves is causing concerning levels of melt. Making the problem worse is an upwelling of an ice shelf’s newly melted freshwater, which rises and pulls the salty water upwards. The study summary explains better, and warns that this feedback loop may reduce the stability of our ice shelves, leading to their Collapse. Some experts are proposing a large geoengineering attempt, spraying aerosols in the stratosphere atop ice shelves within the next 25 years—although they warn such efforts will not be productive unless they are also accompanied by massive CO2 emissions reductions.
Anchovies traditionally found in the Mediterranean have been detected off the Irish coast—about 750,000,000 of them—and scientists are baffled. They say that rising ocean temperatures are probably not enough to attribute this habitat change, since fewer than 150,000,000 anchovies were detected in those waters four years ago.
South Africa & Namibia saw record autumn temperatures. Flooding in Mauritius forced the shutdown of many banks & offices, and flooding worsened in East Africa, where 90+ have been killed by storms in the last fortnight. Tobacco plantations in Uganda killed off the usual animal food sources, forcing local species to eat virus-thick feces...yes, really. Meanwhile, one of the largest mountains of trash in India has been on fire for a few days, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere; and it’s still growing by 2,000 tons of garbage every day.
NASA released before & after images from Dubai’s historic flooding.
Foreign diseases & pests are damaging EU agriculture—some 70 new threats each year. In Botswana, Drought is evaporating muddy ponds, trapping hippos; those which escape, desperately thirsty, become aggressive and invade nearby villages.
Over Antarctica, the ozone hole is stretching into December, the start of summer—and the breeding season. Scientists say the exposure to extra radiation is affecting the eyesight of animals, and may threaten their general health. They also blame Australian wildfires for the longer-lasting ozone hole.
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Drinking water in Bangladesh is being poisoned by rising salinity in drinking water. Women are especially affected, particularly pregnant women, who suffer complications resulting from malnutrition, hypertension, menstrual interference, and more.
Residents of an old neighborhood in Ethiopia were given 5 days notice before demolition—ostensibly to rebuild a modern city center……including a $10B (USD) palace complex. Standardized test scores in the UK are at appalling lows—a result blamed, myopically, mostly on COVID school closures.
A study summary from the UK claims that 28% of COVID survivors will develop some form of Long COVID—25% of those will experience brain fog, and 75% some form of depression and/or anxiety. Examinations into the variant of COVID which infected an old Dutch man—and persisted in his body for 613 days—found that the COVID strain mutated into a new immuno-evasive strain inside his body…before killing him.
A 75-page report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) concluded that migration has now rebounded completely from its COVID dip. The U.S. FDA announced that food recalls hit a new high in 2023, the most since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scientists claim bird flu was in cows last year, probably. The U.S. FDA also announced that traces of bird flu were found in pasteurized milk—some 20% of samples—but the milk is still safe to drink. Nevertheless, the USDA is doing ongoing milk testing, albeit less than they first promised. The spread of Asian tiger mosquitoes farther northward in Europe portends the spread of malaria and dengue fever to areas where it has never before reached.
Shadow banking relates to non-bank lenders: mostly private investors, and unregulated institutions. Shadow banking is supposedly a $63 trillion (USD) problem worldwide—and the shadow real estate market in South Korea has central banks concerned. Delinquency rates are up, and shadow banking in real estate totals almost $7 trillion (USD). The Bank of England is warning about massive job losses if trends in shadow banking turn sour. Commodity prices worldwide are supposedly going to drop slightly, but inflation will remain.
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