Commenting on Headlines

Draft script:

As most people watching this video know, I read many articles every day about climate change. I try to report information from the most important of these articles. To do so, I collate, organize, and summarize abundant information and then put it into a relatively short video. The resulting video is intended for a general audience unfamiliar with the jargon used in peer-reviewed papers.

With this video, I’m taking a slightly different approach. Rather than focus on a single topic, I will instead read headlines from articles I’ve read. For some of the articles, I’ll include part of the text. For all the articles, I will provide a brief overview. In so doing, I will attempt to convey a lot of information about a variety of topics within the constraints of a relatively short video.

Of course, “relatively short video” varies from person to person. I’ve been told that accepting the information I present is a lot like gargling razor blades. It’s not much fun. I’ll try to make this video slightly more fun than gargling razor blades, even though I lack the experience necessary to conclude whether or not I’m successful. As usual, I will include embedded links in the script appearing at Substack.

I’ll start with old news, published 14 February 2022 in The Washington Post. Here’s the headline: “Southwest drought is the most extreme in 1,200 years, study finds.” According to the lede, “The past 22 years rank as the driest period since at least A.D. 800.” The study mentioned in the headline was published in the peer-reviewed Nature Climate Change on 14 February 2022. The bottom line from this renowned peer-reviewed paper: It’s hot and dry. I understand that, if you haven’t lived in the southwestern United States, you might think it’s always hot and dry there. And it is, to a certain extent. The point of this peer-reviewed paper and the attendant story in The Washington Post is that it’s even hotter and drier than usual. In fact, “2000-2021 was the driest 22-year period since at least 800.” I lived in southern Arizona for 20 years, and in southern New Mexico for a bit more than another 7 years. I know about hot and dry. The driest period during the last 1,200 years is worth mentioning, even by The Washington Post.

Moving on to other, more recent information, we have several reports about the ongoing heatwaves. From CarbonBrief on 25 April 2023 comes this headline: “Unprecedented heatwaves could occur in any region globally.” The take-home message from the story: “Climate change is driving a rise in ‘record-shattering’ heatwaves that break existing temperature records by unprecedented margins. The 2021 Pacific north-west heatwave—which broke long-standing temperature records across much of the US and Canada by as much as 5C—is a clear example.” The story goes on: “New research, published in Nature Communications, finds that 41 regions around the world have experienced ‘statistically implausible’ heat since 1959—accounting for 31% of the planet’s surface.” The CarbonBrief paper quotes the peer-reviewed paper in Nature Communications: “It appears that such extremes could occur anywhere and at any time.” It goes on to describe some of the impacts resulting from record-breaking heat: “The impacts were widespread and deadly. Wildfire raged, crops wilted and railways buckled. Schools and businesses closed, while buildings with air-conditioning such as libraries, cinemas and shopping malls opened to the public as emergency ‘cooling shelters’. Despite these precautions, hundreds of people died due to heat-related illness across Canada and the US.”

I’ll turn now to the peer-reviewed, open-access paper in Nature Communications. Titled, The most at-risk regions in the world for high-impact heatwaves, the paper was published 25 April 2023. The abstract includes this information: “Heatwaves are becoming more frequent under climate change and can lead to thousands of excess deaths. Adaptation to extreme weather events often occurs in response to an event, with communities learning fast following unexpectedly impactful events. Using extreme value statistics, here we show where regional temperature records are statistically likely to be exceeded, and therefore communities might be more at-risk. In 31% of regions examined, the observed daily maximum temperature record is exceptional. Climate models suggest that similar behaviour can occur in any region. … We urge policy makers in vulnerable regions to consider if heat action plans are sufficient for what might come.”

Wait, what? Let’s again read the last sentence in the abstract: “We urge policy makers in vulnerable regions to consider if heat action plans are sufficient for what might come.” Of course, they’re not sufficient for what might come. They’re not sufficient for what’s already happening, much less for the even worse phenomena to come.

In a span of 20 days, we have the following headlines:

Extremely dry spring leaves southern Albertan farmers on the road to ‘zero production.’ That’s on 11 June 2023 in Global News.

Ocean temperatures are off the charts, and El Niño is only partly to blame. That’s from Phys.org on 13 June 2023.

Inflation hits 114% as government faces dollar shortage. That’s from Buenos Aires Times on 14 June 2023.

From the Daily Mail in the U.K. on 18 June 2023 comes this headline: Maps reveal 'extreme' marine heatwave developing off the British coast - after the UK's warmest start to June in decades.

Two days later, on 20 June 2023, Democracy Now hits us with this headline: “Deadly Heat Wave in India Kills 170 as Temps Top 110 Degrees Fahrenheit.”

Moving ahead to 1 July 2023, we have this headline from Scientific American: “Extreme Heat Is Deadlier Than Hurricanes, Floods and Tornadoes Combined.” The article begins with a paragraph about the consequences of hot weather: “On June 25, 2022, Esteban Chavez, Jr., started his day like any other, working his route in Pasadena, California, as a driver for UPS. But the city was in the middle of an intense heat wave, and by midafternoon the temperature was higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. After completing his last delivery of the day, Chavez collapsed off his seat in the cab of the truck. He went unnoticed for 20 minutes before the homeowner at his delivery location saw him and sought medical assistance. Chavez’s family said he died from heatstroke as a result of heat exhaustion. He was 24 years old.”

As we have reported previously in this space, people are dying. Even young, healthy people are dying from the heat. We are losing habitat for human animals throughout the world. According to a paper in the peer-reviewed Environmental Science & Technology published on 23 May 2023, “the concurrence of a multiday blackout event with heat wave conditions [will] more than double the estimated rate of heat-related mortality across all three cities” studied. Three American cities were studied because they represented three distinct climate zones: Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Phoenix, Arizona. Here’s the bottom line: “In this study, we find the health impact of a multiday electrical grid failure event during heat wave conditions, and in the absence of cooling interventions, to be substantially greater than the estimated levels of heat mortality and morbidity associated with a heat wave alone.”

It will get worse, and then it will get much worse. What can we simple, not-wealthy people do?

There are many actions we can take. Admittedly, none will extend our personal lives. But if you’re interested only in living to a certain age, then I suspect you’ve come to the wrong YouTube channel. So, then: On to those actions, which we’ve mentioned several times in this space.

I recommend living where you feel most alive and, simultaneously, where you feel most useful. I recommend living fully. I recommend living with intention. I recommend living urgently, with death in mind. I recommend the pursuit of excellence. I recommend the pursuit of love.

In light of the short time remaining in your life, and my own, I recommend all of the above, louder than before. More fully than you can imagine. To the limits of this restrictive culture, and beyond.

For you. For me. For us. For here. For now.

Live large. Be you, and bolder than you’ve ever been. Live as though you’re dying. The day draws near.