Change

Humanity just lived through the hottest 12 months in at least 125,000 years

Two major reports published this week paint an alarming picture of this unprecedented heat: Humanity has just lived through the hottest 12-month period in at least 125,000 years, according to one, while the other declared that 2023 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year in recorded history, after five consecutive months of record-obliterating temperatures.

In addition to unprecedented land temperatures, ocean temperatures continued to soar. They have consistently been at record-high levels since the beginning of May, according to Copernicus, fueling an explosive development of hurricanes and tropical storms around the planet, including Hurricane Otis, which slammed into Southern Mexico last month.

Hurricane Otis was “just” a tropical storm. Then it was a hurricane, but “only “category 2. But because of high water temperatures, within 12 hours it became a category 5 hurricane. It was the strongest hurricane to make landfall on the Pacific Coast in history. It had winds up to 330 km/hr, making it possibly the highest winds on the planet.

Meanwhile…

Despite climate pledges, Canada and other fossil fuel producers set to scale up production

Canada is among a group of top fossil fuel-producing countries on pace to extract more oil and gas than would be consistent with agreed-upon international targets designed to limit global warming, according to a new analysis.

The United States, the largest producer of fossil fuels, is on track to increase production, as is Russia and Saudi Arabia.

We find that many governments are promoting fossil gas as an essential 'transition' fuel but with no apparent plans to transition away from it later," Ploy Achakulwisut, a lead author of the report and a scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said in a statement.

"Science says we must start reducing global coal, oil and gas production and use now — along with scaling up clean energy, reducing methane emissions from all sources and other climate actions — to keep the 1.5 C goal alive." “Given that governments, production plans and targets helped to influence, legitimize and justify continued fossil fuel dependence, there is a real risk that such plans are undermining the energy transition by locking in long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure," Achakulwisut said.

Despite the scientific consensus that we are condemning humanity’s children, grandchildren, and future generations to climate-change hell, many of us seem to insist on running headlong into the maelstrom.

Governments and corporations are only too happy to take us there. Some set laudable targets and repeatedly fail to meet those laudable targets. Othes embrace expanding oil and gas production and like priests, patt us on the head and promote the unfounded faith that technology will take care of all our problems if we only believe in them.

A damn sad commentary on "human civilization". AI has no other choice but to dominate us and make humans subservient to their needs (while they have any need for us at all), or maybe they've already started, and the coming maelstrom intentionally wipes out a significant portion of the human population, because having at minimum a sustainable human population, the driving force behind the destruction of the planet and all its other inhabitants, continues to remain the subject no one wants to discuss much less do anything about. And the USA is going backwards...

I think Mexico got the message with Otis. It won't change the politicians, but it's changing the people. Mexico is rising to the occasion of rebuilding Acapulco, and learning how to survive the next Otis.

https://youtu.be/-M_wkYDE7PU