Last Week in Collapse: December 1-7, 2024

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a crisis by the toe.

Last Week in Collapse: December 1-7, 2024

This is the 154th weekly newsletter. You can find the November 24-30 edition here on Reddit if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.

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What a strange week. Japan confirmed that 2024 had its warmest autumn since they began keeping records in 1898. Northern India also set a November heat record. Storm Bora killed 3 in Greece. In Grenada, rising seas are even tearing up cemeteries. In Bosnia, the country is drying up after a savage year of Drought. In Spain, although the floodwaters have left, the wreckage remains to be cleaned up. Indonesia saw record December heat, as did Vietnam.

How long does an ocean remember for? According to one study, about 10-20 years. During this time, atmospheric anomalies are busy being distributed into the oceans. Scientists write in the study that “climate models lose excess heat from the ocean faster than the real world, potentially underestimating multi-decadal climate variability.” Another study in Science Advances indicates that the melting of mountain glaciers in Asia is the primary cause of rising erosion and sediment transfer downstream.

A team of scientists predicted when we will see the first ice-free Arctic: 3 years in the worst-case scenario. They predictably indicated that “a reduction in anthropogenic warming to the level of the SSP1s (which means staying around or under 1.5 °C of global warming) may not prevent an internal-variability induced first ice-free day but could increase the probability of delaying or avoiding an ice-free day and month.” Current simulations of the first ice-free day in the Arctic expect it to be followed by about 24 more consecutive ice-free days. And carbon-removal efforts still have a long way to go.

A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change criticizes the approach to climate change focusing on tipping points. The writers argue that this metric can be unspecific, mixed up with applications in social sciences, and oversimplified.

“Defined by the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) as “critical threshold[s] beyond which a system reorganises, often abruptly and/or irreversibly”, tipping points have come to characterize the potential for climate change to cause large-scale shifts in the Earth system….The tipping point concept is increasingly being applied beyond large-scale Earth system transitions to diverse climate-related social phenomena, including human migration, political disruptions and the adoption of electric vehicles….the tipping points framing does not necessarily highlight—and may even obscure—their most critical or consequential aspects….With its roots in complex system dynamics and its use of the mathematically precise concept of a ‘point’, the tipping point framing conveys a sense of precision. In practice, however, the concept has understandings across disciplines and communities that are as diverse as more obviously vague boundary concepts like sustainability and resilience….Summer Arctic sea-ice loss—the first proposed climate tipping point described in the scientific literature, now generally not regarded as a tipping point but nonetheless often included in tipping point reviews—seems to be neither irreversible nor self-amplifying….climate tipping points are generally abstract and hard to recognize while they are occurring. They are thus ill suited to create focusing events…. researchers and communicators should be clear when they are simply invoking the term rhetorically—as synonymous with a threshold, a ‘point of no return’ or a metaphorical ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’....there is no specific increment of temperature increase that science can identify as the boundary between our current, already-dangerous climate and a future catastrophic climate, and no justification for doomism and paralysis while the world continues to warm…” -excerpts from the study

A study found that some $8B (USD equivalent) Aussie dollars went into a project to prevent the precipitous decline of the Murray-Darling River Basin…..and failed to achieve much. Most of the river’s water continues to be used for agriculture.

16 died from Cyclone Fengal in Sri Lanka last Sunday, with 3 killed in India. Norway broke its December record for temperature three times already. Finland announced that last autumn was its 4th-warmest in history, although some parts of the country felt their warmest autumn ever. A number of future climate assessments are said to focus more on water availability, migration, and broad adaptation efforts.

Portugal saw its warmest November on record. Flooding killed 29 in Thailand, forcing tens of thousands to relocate. At a UN desertification conference in Saudi Arabia, one official said that three billion people are being currently impacted by land degradation.

Canada is planning adaptation for a future when its winter ice-roads are less reliable. Denmark is conducting hundreds of projects to address the triple threat caused by water: rainfall is increasing, groundwater is rising, and the sea levels are creeping up. China reported its warmest autumn on record. A paywalled study claims that the East Antarctic Ice Sheets may be closer to Collapse than most scientists think, based on analysis of the Conger Ice Shelf which showed decades of progressive weakening before its 2022 Collapse. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

A study in Nature Communications studying Arctic glaciers found that “submarine melting and calving occur almost exclusively in autumn for all types of outlet glaciers” and that “marine-terminating glaciers in high Arctic regions exposed to Atlantification are prone to rapid changes that should be accounted for in future glacier projections.” The study examines the role of ocean-water on reducing glacier size, and the impact of meltwater on further glacial cutback.

Several children have gone missing after a dam burst in Colombia. Several Caribbean locations recorded record warm night temperatures for December. Scientists confirm their correct predictions for near-record low sea ice in 2024 according to a study in Communications Earth & Environment.

A doomy study in Science posits that one third of species will go extinct by 2100—if we continue down the worst-case scenario of 5.4 °C warming by 2100. Apparently the shift from 2 °C warming to 2.7 °C warming increases the percent of species which will go extinct from about 3% to approximately 15%. Oceania and South America appear to be particularly impacted.

An interesting report from Nature Sustainability examined world forests (from 2002-2014, anyway) using satellite data, in order to determine how these forests were being disturbed or destroyed. Farms and fires seem to be the leading causes, though analysis varies by region.

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One week after one dictionary named “enshittification” as 2024’s word of the year, Oxford University Press chose another term: “brain rot.”

Medical scientists looked at the correlation between air pollution and Long COVID and found that the increased risk from air pollution was not statistically significant. Another study found that more than 30% of adolescents reported some Long COVID symptoms 24 months after initially testing positive for COVID-19. On average, these Long COVID sufferers experienced 5 symptoms, with (#1) tiredness, sleep difficulty, shortness of breath, headache, and cough (#5) ranking as the Top 5. According to the particular research definition of Long COVID, 70% of adolescents with Long COVID recovered within two years. This study also represents data from a time period before the Omicron variant, and before the first vaccine rollout. Meanwhile, more research is being done into how Long COVID impacts the human brain.

Scientists are growing more concerned about recent mutations in H5N1 which would help it spread more easily—and possibly combine with another flu. One strain is one mutation away needed “to enact the change from avian to human specificity.”...CRISPR, anyone? Arizona recorded the first 2 reported bird flu cases in the state.

A mystery disease in the DRC has killed 140+ people, and infected a few hundred more—since November. The illness causes symptoms similar to the flu. A look into antimicrobial usage found that wealthier communities use more antibiotics per capita—and create more to AMR.