Last Week in Collapse: September 22-28, 2024

Earth crosses another planetary boundary, Israel targets Hezbollah, Sudan escalates, Egypt & Ethiopia drift closer to War, hurricanes make landfall, and the world keeps spinning—out of control.

Last Week in Collapse: September 22-28, 2024

This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-shattering, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.

This is the 144th newsletter. You can find the September 15-21 edition here on Reddit if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.

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Hurricane Helene slammed into the Florida coast, category 4 (gusts at 140 mph, 225 km/h). It slew 44+ people, and gave Atlanta a new 2-day rain record. 3M+ homes lost power.

Earth is approaching a 7th planetary boundary—ocean acidification—and has perhaps already passed this milestone. The full 97-page report from the Potsdam Institute, the first “Planetary Health Check” suggests humanity has crossed 6 previous boundaries: Climate Change, Change in Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Change, Modification of Biogeochemical Flows, and Introduction of Novel Entities. The report is stuffed with information & graphics, and I highly recommend looking at it.

“Atmospheric CO2 levels are at a 15-million-year high, and global radiative forcing continues to rise, with a persistent warming trend….The vast decrease in biosphere integrity raises concerns that Earth’s biosphere is losing resilience, adaptability, and its capacity to mitigate various pressures….forests have been steadily declining over the last few decades across all major forest biomes. Most regions are already in the High Risk Zone, well beyond their safe boundaries….The increasing variability and instability in global freshwater and terrestrial water systems signal growing concerns for water resource management and environmental stability….severe environmental impacts such as water pollution, eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, and "dead zones" in freshwater and marine ecosystems….Ozone recovery has plateaued, with mixed trends and ongoing challenges in addressing the Antarctic ozone hole….addressing one issue, such as limiting global warming to 1.5°C, requires tackling all of them collectively…” -excerpts from the Executive Summary

North Atlantic sea surface temperatures hit another daily high on 22 September, while global sea surface temps hit a new daily high on the 25th and 26th.

46+ people drowned in swollen rivers in India while trying to observe a religious ceremony. The “zombie storm” Hurricane John battered Mexico after strengthening to category 3 earlier this week. A Portuguese wildfire killed 4 and burnt over 250+ sq. km of area (about the size of the island Nantucket, or Cythera). With so many wildfires burning in 2024, especially in Brazil and the Arctic, this year has the second-highest emissions on record, so far.

More than 90% of offshore energy companies in the UK are not shifting to renewable energy. Yet several giant oil corporations saw big losses in the British stock exchange. Indonesia is stalling in its attempt to close coal power plants.

Scientists are developing plans to potentially refreeze Arctic ice, by spraying seawater on top of ice in the later months, where it will theoretically freeze and remain frozen through the winter. “Each decade around 13% of the ice in the Arctic Ocean is lost.” Scientists say the Thwaites Glacier, in the Antarctic, will inevitably melt more—and faster—as this century drags on. And a study in Geophysical Research Letters indicates that the deep sea around the South Pole has warmed more than previous estimates.

Another batch of research from the Australia Antarctic Data Centre is being analyzed to determine more precisely how much sea levels will rise in the event of massive Antarctic melting. “The AIS is the largest ice mass on Earth, holding enough ice to raise global sea levels by 58 metres if fully melted….Rising temperatures have increased basal melting of ice shelves and iceberg calving, particularly in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and the Antarctic Peninsula. While the EAIS has historically been more stable, recent signs of mass loss from some regions of the EAIS are raising concerns about its long-term stability….Insufficient data on key processes and vulnerable regions complicates predicting tipping points for ice-shelf collapse.”

Over the past 40 years, the Amazon has seen 880,000 sq km burn, equivalent to the size of one and a half Ukraines, or the size of Pakistan. And wildfires burn in Colombia as well as in Ecuador.

Across the UK, butterfly populations have crashed 50%+ in 14 years, and now sit at record lows. Flash flooding also struck the UK last week. Recent comparison images show the decline of a large Austrian Alpine glacier. Flooding in Tunisia. In Nepal, last week’s flooding killed at least 100 people with even more missing.

A city in Iran hit a new monthly temperature record, at 47 °C (117 °F), and reservoirs around Tehran are reportedly 74% empty. Much of Assam state in India set a new September record as well. New records dropped across parts of China, expected to be soon surpassed by an encroaching heat wave. Parts of the southeast Chinese coast saw large rainfall, 46 cm, within 24 hours. Flooding in a post-quake region of Japan killed 7. Several locations in Indonesia saw record hot nights for September.

Türkiye’s lakes are drying up as rainfall decreases and consumption grows. A landslide in Indonesia killed 15 people at an illegal gold mine. Floods in Thailand displaced 150,000+, while analysts worry that [Russia may face a bad 2025 wheat harvest due to Drought. Azerbaijan announced its COP29 plans earlier this week, but the petrostate is facing criticism over its climate track record.

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Tourism and overdevelopment have strained the water supplies of an Indian town (pop: 11,000), the site of the Tibetan-government-in-exile. In Europe, opinion is souring against immigration. In Cuba, gang violence is growing. The UN announced that 3,661+ people have been killed in Haiti in 2024, thus far—plus 700,000 internally displaced.

A paywalled study in Nature Medicine says that a bad case of COVID can reduce your brain’s gray matter and effectively age your mind 20 years. COVID is rising in the UK. The U.S. government has announced a new wave of free COVID tests which can be mailed to your address starting on 30 September.