Last Week in Collapse: September 29-October 5, 2024

Hunger, War, Displacement, Hurricanes, and the New World Disorder.

Last Week in Collapse: September 29-October 5, 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 145th newsletter. You can find the September 22-28 edition here on Reddit if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.

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A survey study of climate experts examined the predictions of 211 IPCC expert authors, and determined that a supermajority of them believe we will blow past 2 °C warming (86% predict we will pass this by 2100)—and about half saying earth will exceed 3 °C. The authors also believe net-zero carbon will be achieved later this century.

San Francisco felt its hottest day in 2024 earlier this week, as a heat wave rolled through the southwest. Phoenix, Arizona has also recorded at least 67 days with temperatures exceeding 110 °F (43.3 °C) this year. Many large private equity companies continue to invest heavily in fossil fuel expansion. Japan ended its second-hottest September on record. Darwin, Australia had its hottest September in 100+ years.

Damage report from Nepal: flooding in the previous weekend killed 200+, in what was some of Kathmandu’s worst flooding in history. Another damage report from Hurricane Helene says over 150 people were killed by the storm. Helene was not the first Category 4 hurricane to wreak havoc—and it will not be the last...or the most dangerous. And FEMA is running out of money to deal with more large hurricanes this year. Typhoon Krathon killed 4 as it ravaged Taiwan, with 700+ injured. The death toll from Hurricane John was adjusted up to 29 fatalities.

At the border of Italy and Switzerland, melting glaciers are forcing a reconsideration of national borders. Switzerland’s glaciers lost 10% of their remaining mass within the last 2 years. You can explore Switzerland’s glaciers here on a monitoring website if interested.

A Nigerian ferry capsized carrying hundreds of Muslim pilgrims; 60+ dead bodies were found. Another two boats capsized off the Djibouti coast, killing 61+ people. Flooding and landslides in Bosnia killed 18.

When temperatures in Mexico hit 48 °C (118 °F) on 29 September, it was the latest date in the year for such high temperatures—the latest 48 °C temperature in the northern hemisphere in human history. Phoenix, Arizona felt its hottest September day in history: 117 °F (47.2 °C). A tornado struck the Moscow suburbs, killing one. Wildfires in Greece killed two. Flooding in part of Oman.

The EU is trying to delay for a year the implementation of a ban on products linked to deforestation. This photo report shares images from the devastating wildfires sweeping across South America. One expert has said that the Amazon has crossed the “point of no return” and that the future of the Amazon rainforest is in existential danger. “In 30 to 50 years, we will have lost at least 50 percent of the {Amazon} forest.”

Some people are coming together to promote psychedelics as a way of expanding climate consciousness and responsibility. Scientists say that Antarctica has greened faster than expected: a more-than-12x increase in green areas (especially moss) since 1986. Scientists blame low autumn rainfall, caused by climate change, for the continual drying up of Australia’s Darling River.

A Nature study determined that hurricanes actually kill more people than previously believed. The reason: downstream effects from the paths of destruction wrought by the storms, including financial difficulties, damaged support networks, and other such effects. These effects are estimated to continue affecting the population of storm-damaged regions for up to 15 years.

MIT released the 5th annual 2024 State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report last week. The 28-page report is the summation of contributions from 7,000+ logistics workers (mostly in North & South America), and indicates that investor pressures are the top force pushing supply chains into a more sustainable direction. The report addresses the difficulty in addressing and identifying individuals & corporations responsible for emissions.

“Companies have become proficient at calculating direct emissions (Scope 1) and those from purchased utilities (Scope 2). However, Scope 3 emissions, which include indirect emissions from a company’s value chain and suppliers, continue to be challenging…..organizations are not financially backing their stated goals, causing companies to not be set up to meet sustainable objectives….The Covid-19 pandemic and recent regional wars have presented supply chain networks with significant hurdles that impact trade routes, resource availability, and humanitarian needs…”

A study from two weeks ago suggests 1952 as the starting point for the Anthropocene, the era in which human activity has become a massive force in reshaping the environment.

“Starting approximately 12,000 y ago, with the development of agriculture, humans began to use approximately 75% of the total terrestrial area….it could be argued that the Anthropocene might be better considered as an "event" without a clear isochronous boundary….the global surge in anthropogenic fingerprints can also serve as a marker for the point in time of the ascendancy of a new subsystem, the “Technosphere”, or a human society/material culture-included “Anthroposphere”...an overwhelming force with global influence can now be associated with human activities during the Great Acceleration, rapidly and fundamentally transforming diverse natural processes and cycles in the Earth system. Moreover, the global upsurge in anthropogenic fingerprints suggests that humans have become a geological and planetary force capable of inscribing abundant and diverse anthropogenic fingerprints in strata worldwide. This period marked the start of profound planetary-wide changes, such as climate deviations from the Holocene conditions, the transformation of the nitrogen cycle, and intercontinental invasions and colonization of alien species. Thus, the nearly simultaneous and unprecedented surges in anthropogenic signals worldwide suggest that human influences began to profoundly change the Earth system around 1952 CE.”

India felt its hottest October night ever. Botswana felt an October frost for the first time in decades. A flood in Iran killed 15. In Japan, record rainfall is expected over the next decades; “We anticipate that previously unseen amounts of rain will fall as the temperature rises in the future,” said one professor. Meanwhile, one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries is seeing record lows. And Canada felt a record warm September, along with parts of Finland; while pats of the UK saw their wettest September.

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Scientists continue to warn about links between COVID and gut health. COVID can change the digestive microbiome and inflame various organs—and these effects can linger for long after you test negative. The WHO has approved a rapid test for mpox.

Across India, people are working more hours to meet the increasing demands of corporate and informal employers. Wildfire smoke in the United States is responsible for 11,000 annual deaths, according to a study in PNAS. One wonders how bad the effect is in Brazil, where 80% of the country is affected by smoke from the region’s historic wildfires.

Two suspected cases of Marburg virus closed part of Hamburg’s train station. The virus has a CFR of 88% and has recently seen an outbreak in Rwanda. LA County is experiencing a few cases of locally-transmitted dengue.