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U.S. Pacific Northwest heat wave bakes wheat, fruit crops
- Daishiman 5y agoSo basically this heat wave has wiped away a substantial amount of biomass in the impacted area. We are watching the world wither away, quite rapidly, with nothing to show for it.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago> We are watching the world wither away, quite rapidly, with nothing to show for it. Except for the entirety of human civilization, sure.
- Daishiman 5y agoThe entirety of human civilization existed for all but the last 200 years without combustion engines.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoBut most humans by far have existed in the last 200 years. The current mean birth age of all humans ever (50% humans born before & 50% born after) is probably only like 1950 at the oldest.
- CameronNemo 5y agoWhy is that a good thing? Humans, their livestock, and their crops have grown to dominate much of the land. That reduces biodiversity and makes for a less resilient ecosystem overall.
- alexose 5y agoAt the risk of sounding like a movie villain... anyone who's tried to go to Yosemite on a weekend must agree with this on some level
- sharkjacobs 5y agoThat's not really relevant but also not true. A reasonable estimate is that ~105 billion modern homo sapiens have ever lived[1], the inflection point you're talking about (50% humans born before & 50% born after) probably happened closer to 200-300CE[2] [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12288594/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12288594/ [2]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-are-the-demographics-of-heaven/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-are-the-demographi...
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoHmm interesting. Would the number of human-years or human-hours lived be different? Perhaps looking at population/exponential graphs is giving me a false intuition because the birth & growth rates were much higher in the past but the overall growth rate stayed the same. It is relevant if you think that the individual unit of human civilization is a single person.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoAnd? I think human civilization is a lot more impressive now than 200 years ago.
- klyrs 5y agoYeah, early humans were only capable of extincting megafauna. Today, we're doing dozens of species per day! We'd be much more impressive as a species if we didn't limit the use of DDT, CFCs, etc
- smokelegend 5y agoCrazy to think that in the life span of this planet is ??? Before christ? After christ? A million years or two? Exactly, no one knows the answer.... We can't agree as a civilization when this planet started, but everyone knows when it's going to end.... irony is thick around these parts... "One thing I know, I know nothing."
- klyrs 5y agoWeird troll. You don't need to know what day a person was born, to recognize that they've got a dangerously high fever. The world will keep turning, regardless of fitness for human life.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoThat's a pretty bad metric for success.
- klyrs 5y agoAgreed, I'm playing with the neutrality of the word "impressive." A tsunami is certainly impressive... Modern humans are more impressive than our ancestors, according to you. Is that good, or are we a tsunami?
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
- howaboutnope 5y ago> Ah, yeah. We're gonna go to Mars. And then of course we're gonna colonize deep space. With our microwave hot dogs and plastic vomit, fake dog shit and cinnamon dental floss, lemon-scented toilet paper and sneakers with lights in the heels. And all these other impressive things we've done down here. But let me ask you this: what are we gonna tell the intergalactic council of ministers the first time one of our teenage mothers throws their newborn baby into a dumpster? How are we gonna explain that to the space people? How are we gonna let them know that our ambassador was only late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend half an hour punching his wife around the kitchen? And what are they gonna think when they find out, its just a local custom, that over 80 million women in the Third world have had their clitorises forcibly removed in order to reduce their sexual pleasure so they won't cheat on their husbands? Can't you just sense how eager the rest of the universe is for us to show up? -- George Carlin Our material wealth and our industrial capabilities just make our failings so much more shameful in my books.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoThis quote seems really pathetic to me personally. One because it feels defeatist and ignores bounds of progress made against a problem that is simply difficult. Two because it highlights specific problems for which carlin has no personal culpability. Organizing civilization is hard. I have no doubts the council of intergalactic ministers had a difficult run as well. That is the nature of nature.
- scrollaway 5y agoCompletely agreed with you. It's one thing to acknowledge humanity's faults, another to just be defeatist to the point of ignoring all good things we have done as a species just because we've done bad ones too.
- iNane9000 5y agoSelf improvement requires not falling into the mindset of blame. It’s “them” destroying the planet, rather than “us” solving the hard problems together. I think only human understanding and mastery of ego will determine the fate of the planet. We can do it, if we work on ourselves first.
- riffic 5y agothe arrogance to think that human civilization will make it through this unscathed, or even deserves to.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoHuman civ will probably not survive. Deserves is about as grey as individuals committing abuse driven by their own victimization
- r00fus 5y agoProfits are what we have. For the few.
- cronix 5y agoSo your paycheck is generated from losses?
- GoodJokes 5y agoYou do know wiped away is a pretty fake news headline term yes? These animals and fruit will bounce back pretty fast. Wither away? Drama is getting big on here
- refurb 5y agoNothing to show for it? I mean if I get a cut I won’t die of a bacterial infection, so that’s pretty cool.
- yaitsyaboi 5y agoIronic since the biggest threat to effective antibiotics is industrial agriculture practices.
- refurb 5y ago‘Tis better to have antibiotics and lost them than to have never had them at all.
- erdos4d 5y agoWell, shareholders are getting fat, so its all good, eh?
- neom 5y agoMore than a billion seashore animals may have cooked to death in B.C. heat wave, says UBC researcher - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/intertidal-animals-ubc-research-1.6090774 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/intertidal-a...
- pvaldes 5y agoWill be a once in life opportunity for doing research in ecological sucesion. If this was a unique event, my bet would be a fast recovery of most invertebrates in 2-3 years. Maybe a year of savage algae blooming. If the event becomes more frequent the entire ecosystem will be replaced by southern animals. Crustaceans will explode in a few years, probably. This is a blessing for some animals.
- neom 5y agoReal question: What If it's not a unique event and happens frequently moving forward? (I noticed you have a PhD in biology, cool!!)
- pvaldes 5y agoThe species will be replaced by other better adapted to stand heat that now can be found in lower latitudes. Arctic areas have a lot of starfish, sea urchins and clams. This will change somehow. Most of the brown and red algae will probably disappear before ten years. This means that entire submarine forests could vanish. The worse of all this changes for men would be that Cod will disappear. Cod eggs can't stand heat and we are talking about two of the three more important fishes in the entire planet for us, so the hit will be huge.
- mistrial9 5y agomassive sea-urchin population growth in the last ten years along the California coast has destroyed 500 miles of kelp forests, done. details on request
- 5y ago
- alexose 5y agoDying forests, megafires, failing crops. For all the talk of a looming crisis, it seems apparent that we're already in one. It's time to consider solar geoengineering or other more extreme mitigation strategies.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoIf we implement a bandaid with geoengineering, do you think we'll still try to fix the root cause (burning fossil fuels)? Or will we kick the can even further?
- alexose 5y agoThat's an important question. My thought is that it doesn't really matter in the short term. Our ecosystems out here in the west won't withstand another couple of decades of this. Any attempts to fix the root cause haven't worked fast enough, so it's time to try something else. In the long term, I hope that the economic forces of cheap renewables and energy storage might be enough to get us down to a reasonable PPM. And maybe, just maybe, we'll see advances in sequestration that get us down to where we were before. I'm not an expert, so please don't take any of my views as fact. I'm just a layman trying to find some hope in what looks like a pretty hopeless situation.
- not_jd_salinger 5y ago> Our ecosystems out here in the west won't withstand another couple of decades of this. Which is unfortunate because even if we dropped emissions to zero tomorrow, we would still be in for a few more decades of escalating climate crisis. In the grand spectrum of what's already be chosen as far as climate change goes, this is just the very, very beginning. Our chance to act to prevent what we're seeing now was 30-40 years ago.
- Pokepokalypse 5y agoI would expect fossil fuel companies to be first on the geoengineering bandwagon. Probably the only thing that could possibly save their industry.
- zwieback 5y agoMy hope is that there's a silver lining: farmers may finally accept that climate change is happening and start supporting policies to combat it. It's a long shot but I'm somewhat hopeful. I live in the Willamette Valley, the heat wave has actually helped my fruit trees and blueberries but the eastern part of OR and WA are in pretty bad shape.
- LatteLazy 5y agoI hope you're right. That said, if the US government keeps bailing out farmers why change? Edit: Citation in case people people need one... https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/farmers-got-billions-from-taxpayers-in-2019-and-hardly-anyone-objected https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/fa... The USDA pumped 20bn in as recently as 2019. Partly for trade war and partly for flooding and other natural disasters. They didn't even need congressional approval, the USDA has a mandate to spend as it deems necessary.
- arbitrary_name 5y agoThe bureau of reclamation had much to answer for here. Why are we growing stupid things like low value alfalfa in the desert? Why are we growing rice in the desert? Because we are giving the water away for almost nothing, that's why. Large farming operations have been parasites feeding off taxpayer subsidized water, irrigation and hydro power for the last century.
- drdeadringer 5y agoApparently I am out of a loop: Farmers are denying climate change? If my livelihood depends on good climate, how can I not notice a good climate going bad? I'd like to understand. Is this something beyond wilful denial?
- blakesterz 5y agoLooks like that might be changing: 2020 Farm Groups Moving To Address Climate Change : NPR https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/936603967/farmers-are-warming-up-to-the-fight-against-climate-change https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/936603967/farmers-are-warming... Though apparently that wasn't the case 8 years ago: Why Don’t Farmers Believe in Climate Change? - Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/07/farmers-climate-change-denial/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/07/farmers-clim...
- ortusdux 5y agoThere was a substantial die-off of mussels because their black shells baked in the sun during low tide.
- danans 5y agoIf this persists annually, it could result in another selective event like what happened with peppered moths in Sheffield during the Industrial Revolution: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768
- pvaldes 5y agoBlack shade is related with having a stronger shell and protection in a dark place, so we would have two opposite selective forces crashing one against the other. Crabs would track and eat any white mussels in its first months (probably, I'm just speculating).
- y-c-o-m-b 5y agoI live around Portland, OR. I took my family berry-picking a couple of weeks back and it was a very sad sight. Almost all the raspberries, blackberries, boysenberries, and marionberries were gone. The blue-berries were the only things to survive pretty much, but they had very little flavor. In my backyard on the first day we hit 107-108, I lost all my pea plants and my green beans took a major beating. My corn and zucchini plants were wilting like crazy, I thought they were a goner. The second day I said forget this and just let the garden sprinkler run all afternoon; high water-bill be damned. That did the trick, I managed to save my tomatoes, corn, a good chunk of the green beans, and the zucchini. The south-facing side of my Japanese maple is still scorched. What a crazy event. The worst part of it is all the people that lost their lives.
- yaitsyaboi 5y agoThis is pretty chilling to consider. Also notable that many right wingers in colder climates think (or at least claim to believe) that climate change might be a net positive for them. https://twitter.com/xongkuro/status/1412778979342356482?s=21 https://twitter.com/xongkuro/status/1412778979342356482?s=21
- seattle_spring 5y ago"I say let the world warm up, see what Boutros Boutros-Ghali-Ghali thinks about that! We'll grow oranges in Alaska."
- drewzero1 5y agoDammit Dale! I was thinking of this, but couldn't remember where it was from.
- Alkhwarizmi 5y agoUtterly baffling how so many people openly exhibit sociopathic tendencies so easily!! No shared pain for those negatively impacted whatsoever
- asmos7 5y ago
- calebm 5y agoIn Georgia, this year has been cooler than usual. I don't even think it's broke 90 (F) yet here where we live in North Georgia. And a late frost took out a good number of fruits (like figs) and killed a number of trees.
- alexose 5y agoThe east coast has experienced some amount of cooling due to Greenland literally melting into the Atlantic ocean
- mrfusion 5y agoMaybe not: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/greenland-ice-loss-2020-was-below-record-above-average https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/greenl...
- calebn 5y agoWhat’s your point, big guy..
- mrfusion 5y agoWhy is this heat wave from climate change but past heat waves were not? Is every temperature anomaly caused by climate change?
- swader999 5y agoNo, its just weather. The smallest time window for climate is 30 years of weather and you need more of course to find trends.
- atleta 5y agoClimate change causes these kind of events to happen more frequently. So if you have N heat waves this decade while you had M<N heat waves 50 years ago in a decade then you can say that about N-M of these were causes by the climate change. But I'm pretty sure you know that. However, people seem to have demonstrated a lack of ability (or will) to understand the climate change based on the long term stats, so some think that maybe the individual events help these people understand (or accept) the reality.
- pvaldes 5y ago> Why is this heat wave from climate change but past heat waves were not? (If I'm not wrong), is a new record for the area so is the highest heat wave reported past or present. Is a new situation. > Is every temperature anomaly caused by climate change? Not, but if climate change predicts extreme temperatures, and you start having extreme temperatures, higher and higher each year, maybe we should pay more attention to the pattern.
- exabrial 5y agoBaking the wheat crop this time of year is a good thing, not a bad one. Lower moisture contents during harvest increases value as it's easier to store for a myriad of reasons.
- groos 5y agoSeattle-area resident here. Fir trees are browned on the top-sides of their branches and native shrubs and bushes have taken a bad beating from the heat. A large fraction of deciduous trees look like they would in fall. Anything near asphalt is close to dead. I measured 162F on our driveway asphalt, sufficient to cook meat. As a once every few decades event, this is not a big deal, the vegetation will recover. However, if this happens once every 2-3 years, the Pacific NW tree cover is in deep trouble. I can see it changing from evergreen to deciduous over time if the trend continues.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoWhat neighborhood do you live in? Up here in Ballard, I'm not noticing much damage yet, definitely not any dying trees, but we have a bit more coolness, humidity going on because of the bay/canal.
- groos 5y agoEastside. Close to the water, you should have fared much better. The fir trees aren't dying but their branches on topsides are heavily browned. They'll probably recover fine IF this is not a regular event. Otherwise, tree cover change in the long term looks inevitable.
- fingerlocks 5y agoCounter-anecdote: I live in Seattle, my fir trees look normal. My garden survived the heat wave without issue. Auto-drip irrigation runs at dusk and dawn, same as every other year. Our small marijuana crop was briefly at risk without extra ventilation, but otherwise it’s a normal crop year for us. Also, none of berries were scorched as mentioned in other threads. We actually had a huge, way above-average raspberry harvest. Maybe we’re just lucky?
- subsubzero 5y agoThere is ample evidence that the 20th century on the uS west coast was an abnormality when it came to rain and rainfall. The normal going back 2000 years is of a much hotter drier region for the west, here is a study that proves that - https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=13274 https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1327... and here is another using tree ring analysis - https://baynature.org/article/story-future-california-written-rings-redwoods/ https://baynature.org/article/story-future-california-writte...
- runarberg 5y agoWhat does that have to do with anything? Even if true (and say the 2000 year old climate data was not cherry picked to make a point) I doubt that the changes back then to the current ‘abnormality’ happened at the same pace the current changes back to the supposed ‘normality’. Also the changes back to this supposed ‘normality’ are only happening now because of abnormally high co2 levels in the atmosphere—emitted by humans—which are causing the temperature to go up in most places on the planet. The changes in the pacific north west is a manifestation of this broader change, and that is what people are justly worried about. No matter if the climate in this local area is going back to an “older patter”.
- subsubzero 5y ago> What does that have to do with anything? Everything, I live in California and my family has lived here for generations. If droughts and higher heat are normal events and the fact that there are an extremely large amount of people living in California currently and a large portion of nations food are grown here are extremely concerning. Expect mass exoduses to other areas of the country, and sky high produce prices if a 60 year drought happens like has happened multiple times before. In addition if the 20th century and its wet abnormality allowed a population explosion to this area we need to expedite de-salinization efforts, reduce water wherever possible and reduce carbon as well.
- oliwarner 5y agoYou don't have to go far to find someone who doesn't believe climate change will affect them in their lifetime, but I think people are [blissfully] unaware of how fragile and capitalist-driven the West's food market is. It would only take a couple of failed seasons before our poor starved and we faced massive inflation. We need to start coming up with fixes, 20 years ago. I fear what's more likely is people clawing onto what they've got by further destroying the planet, as well as excessive hoarding, further strangling supply.
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