🌱Climate Change🌡⛈

On BBC’s HARDtalk 5 years ago, Roger Hallam was slammed across the board for saying billions of lives were at risk. The liberal climate movements tried to refute and play down the existential risks ahead. The last few months have shown ever more clearly that he was right. After all, what do we actually think the “end of civilization” will look like?

Several new scientific papers from Ripple and Pearce have outlined that not only are billions of lives on the line, but that “richer humans will be responsible for [the] killing”. This month, the NASA Climate Scientist, Peter Kalmus, also added his voice to that position. The time for shying away from our existential reality is over. The precautionary principle dictates that these realities form and guide the mission of our lives - that only a revolution to change who makes the big decisions is going to save us.

Join resistance at 4billiondead.org

‪@Revolution21c‬ #revolution

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/71102061

If you live in europe, please check in with your elderly neighbours. Hot temperatures can be deadly for old people

The 10.2% increase in beef production forecast by the Brazilian government is expected to cause at least 57,000 sq km of deforestation by 2034

gold mining [...] is projected to cause an extra 375 sq km of deforestation by 2028

Additional pressure is coming from mining for critical minerals, such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt that are used for batteries and other technologies used in the transition towards cleaner energy. The study estimates cumulative deforestation linked to the global electric vehicle fleet will be between 1,500 sq km to 4,700 sq km by 2050 on current trends.

For biofuel-related soy crops alone, [the study] predicts between 31,600 sq km and 35,000 sq km of Amazon vegetation will be cleared by 2035.

The only thing happening faster than the federal rollback of climate policies is the global renewable energy revolution that will turn all of these concessions to Big Oil into a massive lost opportunity to build a better, safer Canada.

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/13895382

Flooding across northern Michigan last month pushed rivers to record levels, testing the limits of the state’s aging dams so severely that officials in one city nearly ordered evacuations as water threatened to spill over the top of a key barrier — a close call that highlights the growing risk that intensifying storms pose to similar infrastructure around the country.

Nationwide, the average dam is 64 years old and most were built for rainfall patterns that no longer reflect today’s changing climate. Thousands are classified as high hazard, meaning their failure could result in the loss of life. Dam safety experts say inspections are uneven and improvements often underfunded.

More than half of Michigan’s dams are beyond their 50-year design life, and the risks became clear as snowmelt and weeks of heavy rain swelled rivers. Rising water came within 5 inches of flowing over Cheboygan Dam in Cheboygan, a city of about 4,700 people, on April 16. In Bellaire, officials deployed about 1,000 sandbags to shore up a century-old dam.

“This needs to be considered not the worst we can experience. This needs to be considered as typical of the future,” said Richard Rood, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies climate change.

There are about 92,000 dams in the United States. About 18% are considered high-hazard. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates repairing all of these aging structures will cost more than $165.2 billion. In Michigan, that estimate is $1 billion.

Communities facing these risks are left with difficult choices. Given the cost of repairing and upgrading dams to withstand stronger storms, removing them is often cheaper. That can reduce long-term risk and restore rivers to a more natural state. But it often faces resistance from property owners and communities with economies built around the reservoirs those dams created.

As floodwaters recede across Michigan, local leaders, dam safety advocates and experts are renewing calls to bolster safety regulations and deal with aging dams.

Bellaire Dam in Bellaire, Mich. on April 13, 2026
Austin Rowlader / IPR News

Bob Stuber, executive director of the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Commission, considers the April flooding a wake-up call and believes the solution is clear: upgrades where feasible and removal where it makes sense.

“I think every opportunity we have to remove an aging dam, we should take advantage of it because it’s not going to get better,” he said. “It’s just going to get worse.”

Officials in Traverse City came to that conclusion in 2024 and removed the Union Street Dam along the Boardman-Ottaway River as part of a decades-long restoration project that includes FishPass, which will allow key species to pass while blocking harmful invaders like sea lamprey. Engineers said that removal and upgrade most likely reduced flooding impacts when waters surged to near-record levels last month, falling just short of a 500-year flood.

“Upstream would have been under two more feet of water, which would have been quite devastating,” said Daniel Zielinski, a principal engineer for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. “We actually had a really great stress test of the system. It functioned really well.”

Removals are increasing across the country, according to data from American Rivers. Since 2000, more dams have come down than gone up, and that pace is accelerating as aging infrastructure, safety concerns, and environmental benefits reshape how communities weigh their value.

In northern Michigan, conservation groups like Huron Pines help dam owners make that decision. It has managed nine removals in the last 13 years and has seen growing interest after the recent flooding, said Josh Leisen, a senior project manager for the organization. Removal reconnects river ecosystems and eliminates the need for expensive upkeep of aging structures, he said.

“There are costs associated with repair and there are risks associated with having a dam,” Leisen said. “Even if it seems to be in good condition, you get extreme weather events like we just had.”

Removing dams is not always straightforward. Beyond the technical challenges, many communities are reluctant to give up the lakes and waterfronts those structures create.

“There’s this emotional attachment to that impoundment,” said Daniel Brown, a climate resilience strategist at the Michigan-based Huron River Watershed Council.

In other cases, dismantling isn’t practical. Some dams provide electricity or drinking water, linking them to local economies and infrastructure. “(Removal) is not really something that’s on the table because they are connected in this very practical way,” Brown said.

Still, Brown said there are limits to how much aging structures can be adapted to a warming world. “(A dam) is this very long-term, huge, expensive infrastructure that you’ve put on the landscape that’s going to stay there. And that is not how climate change or nature or rivers behave,” Brown said.

Dismantling dams, like upgrading them, can come with steep costs. The Boardman-Ottaway River project — which removed three dams in the largest removal effort in state history — cost $25 million. Huron Pines is managing the removal of Sanback Dam in Rose City next month, at an estimated cost of $4 million.

Half of the expense is funded through a grant program from the Michigan Department of Environment, Energy and Great Lakes, or EGLE, launched in response to the 2020 Edenville Dam failure which overwhelmed the downstream Sanford Dam. The twin catastrophes forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents, destroyed thousands of homes and flooded ecosystems in a disaster that investigators later found was avoidable. The $44 million state program funded several dam removals, upgrades and engineering studies before it ended last year.

Neil Hawk and his wife Dawn take a rowboat out to a residential part of Sanford to inspect the damage to their neighborhood following extreme flooding throughout central Michigan on May 20, 2020 in Sanford, Michigan. Matthew Hatcher / Getty Images

Federal funding is available through programs administered by agencies such as FEMA or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But those resources fall short of the estimated $165.2 billion needed to address the issue, and some are at risk of elimination.

State governments regulate roughly 70 percent of the dams in the United States, with the federal government regulating hydropower dams and providing funding and guidance. This means inspection standards, regulations, enforcement, and resources can vary widely.

In Michigan, about 1,000 dams fall under state oversight, while 99 hydroelectric dams are overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The remaining 1,500 are smaller barriers that don’t fit the criteria for state regulation, according to the Michigan Dam Inventory.

Now, state officials are renewing calls for more money and stronger regulations. “Dam safety may be an issue that isn’t partisan,” said Phil Roos, director of EGLE.

Proposed state legislation would bolster inspection rules, address private ownership, update design standards, and create more funding opportunities for upgrades or removals. “It’s so important to our state that we can come together, and whether it’s passing the legislation that was proposed, or improving procedures or ultimately funding,” Roos said.

Michigan State Senator John Damoose has expressed concern about private dam ownership since the close call at Cheboygan Dam, which is under both state and private control. About 75 percent of the dams Michigan regulates are privately owned.

“Somebody made a point, ‘Well, we can’t have private companies owning these things.’ I tend to believe in private ownership but they might be right,” Damooose said during a Traverse City roundtable discussion on dam safety.

It’s not just a Michigan issue. Most dams in the United States are privately owned, meaning responsibility for maintenance, upkeep and potential failure falls on individuals, not governmental agencies, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and intense storms. As the world warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, fueling more intense precipitation, according to Rood at the University of Michigan.

“Recent flooding “has shown an incredible vulnerability,” he said. “(Dams) are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”

Luke Trumble, chief of dam safety for Michigan, said the state is already dealing with conditions that many dams were never designed to withstand.

“It’s a little bit of a misconception that if we fix the dam issue, there’ll be no more flooding,” Trumble said. “There’s still going to be flooding on rivers whenever we get rain like this, or rain on snow.”

“What we can do with dam safety legislation is help ensure that flooding is not made worse by a dam failure,” he said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46750360

Climate Central examined historical trends in fire weather — a combination of hot, dry, windy conditions — across the U.S.

This analysis uses data from 476 weather stations to assess fire weather trends in 245 climate divisions spanning the contiguous U.S. from 1973 to 2025.

On average, climate divisions in the western U.S. experience 32 fire weather days annually. That’s four times more than in the eastern U.S.

Wildfire seasons are lengthening and intensifying, particularly in the western U.S. Parts of the eastern U.S. have seen smaller but impactful increases in fire weather days.

Much of the country has seen fire weather increase the most during spring. The Southwest is also seeing more fire weather during summer.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/37488787

The term El Niño is part of a broader phenomenon called El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It’s a recurring climate pattern involving changes in sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern tropical Pacific.

The phenomenon has three phases: the warm phase is El Niño, the cool phase is La Niña, and between the two lies a neutral or transitional phase, when neither dominates clearly. The changes occur in the tropical region of the Pacific Ocean, within 700 miles of the equator.

Countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have seen temperatures soar well above seasonal averages, with some areas approaching or exceeding 45°C

The AMOC is both the product of a stable climate and a factor in maintaining weather patterns around the planet.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/37170577

If the history books that I've read are correct, then during the time of Alexander the Great, the northern coast of Africa (outside of the areas with higher human population density) was a functioning dry-forest ecosystem. During the time of the Roman Empire, people cut down large areas of forest in order to plant grass – wheat and barley for human consumption, and pasture grass for cows and goats. Without sufficient forest cover to pull in moisture from the Mediterranean, the rains stopped coming, the remaining vegetation died off, and the Sahara Desert advanced to the coast. This was a case of human-caused climate change.

Forests precede civilisations, and deserts follow them.

Something to keep in mind the next time that you hear/read that non-forest ecosystems are "natural" and should be preserved as they are.