Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

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Carbon stored in landscapes for thousands of years is leaching back into the atmosphere via rivers, and human activity may be to blame

“There is a possibility that we’re disturbing these long-term carbon stores, and so, as a result, we’re seeing more old carbon coming out through this pathway,”

For example, rising temperatures caused by climate change could be triggering the release of carbon from thawing permafrost, or accelerating the rate of rock weathering. Other activities, such as the draining of peatlands or drying out of wetlands, could also be contributing. Dean stresses that more work is needed to determine the extent to which human activity is driving this process, and how the release of carbon is changing over time.

Journal reference

World Meteorological Organization report says record heat in 2024 was driven by climate crisis and intersected with extreme weather events

At the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Americans see a host of economic issues – from inflation to the affordability of health care and the federal budget deficit – as top problems facing the country.

Over the past decade, a number of issues have been marked by deep partisan divides, with some of the issues that rank among the top concerns for one party ranking among the lowest for the other.

There is a 54-point gap in the share of Democrats (67%) and Republicans (13%) who rate climate change as a very big problem facing the nation, also similar to previous years. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to see “the impact of natural disasters” as a very big problem, though the partisan gap on these views is more modest (54% of Democrats vs. 33% of Republicans).

A massive wall of dust enshrouded the city of Chicago recently, forcing a ground stop at the Midwestern hub’s airports and stunning the city’s more than 2.6 million residents.

But, while sudden dust storms can be dangerous, the lesser known harms lie in the windswept particles themselves — with the Chicago dust storm likely to contain lead, farm chemicals and particles that aggravate respiratory conditions such as asthma. “I’m sure people will have some health issues after it,” said Karin Ardon-Dryer, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, said of Saturday’s event.

Like other blowing dust, the composition of the Illinois dust could include heavy metals. Lead exposure is another concern, according to U.C. Merced researcher Estrella Herrera. Exposure can result in reproductive issues, high blood pressure, hypertension, nerve disorders, muscle and joint pain, and memory and concentration problems in adults. In children, it can lead to hearing problems, slowed growth, headaches, learning and behavioral difficulties, lowered IQ, and damage to the brain and nervous system.

Archive : https://archive.ph/vUDSo

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23109024

Its collapse was in many ways a good thing for a lot of people.

Looking around me, as it will be again

As millions of students get ready to graduate this spring, their prospects for landing that first job that helps launch their careers is looking dimmer.

LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, said artificial intelligence is increasingly threatening the types of jobs that historically have served as stepping stones for young workers who are just beginning their careers.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for college graduates has been rising faster than for other workers in past few years, Raman pointed out, though there isn’t definitive evidence yet that AI is the cause of the weak job market.

To fix entry-level work, Raman called for colleges to incorporate AI across their curricula and for companies to give junior roles higher-level tasks.

Archive : https://archive.ph/mPnIP

While he may be right, the future for young workers is tough. I think it's a waste that colleges have to incorporate AI into the curriculum.

This could be a solution for a while. But every time AI gets better, these kinds of job positions will eventually be replaced by AI. In the end they are only useful to help AI companies get richer.

Global public debt could increase to 100 percent of global gross domestic product by the end of the decade if current trends continue, according to projections in our latest Fiscal Monitor. The rising ratio of public debt to GDP reflects renewed economic pressures as well as the consequences of pandemic-related fiscal support, according to our report. This trend raises fresh concerns about long-term fiscal sustainability as many countries face rising budget challenges.

The Chart of the Week shows that about a third of countries, accounting for 80 percent of global GDP, have public debt that’s both higher than it was before the pandemic and rising at a faster pace. More than two-thirds of the 175 economies in our study now have heavier public debt burdens than before COVID spread in 2020.

https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2025/05/29/debt-is-higher-and-rising-faster-in-80-percent-of-global-economy

A new study by the non-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) looked at access to antibiotics for nearly 1.5 million cases of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) infections across eight major low- and middle-income countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa. CRGN bacteria are superbugs resistant to last-line antibiotics - yet only 6.9% of patients received appropriate treatment in the countries studied.

India bore the lion's share of CRGN infections and treatment efforts, procuring 80% of the full courses of studied antibiotics but managing to treat only 7.8% of its estimated cases, the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal reports. (A full drug course of antibiotics refers to the complete set of doses that a patient needs to take over a specific period to fully treat an infection.)

Common in water, food, the environment and the human gut, Gram-negative bacteria cause infections such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia and food poisoning.

They can pose a serious threat to newborns and the elderly alike. Especially vulnerable are hospital patients with weakened immunity, often spreading rapidly in ICUs and proving difficult - and sometimes impossible - to treat. Treating carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections is doubly difficult because those bacteria are resistant to some of the most powerful antibiotics.

"These infections are a daily reality across all age groups," says Dr Abdul Gaffar, infectious disease consultant at Apollo Hospital in India's Chennai city. "We often see patients for whom no antibiotic works - and they die."

Won't be long now.

Communities in northern Nigeria have been experiencing prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change and excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during the brief wet season.

In videos and photos on social media, floodwaters covered neighborhoods and homes were submerged, with their roofs barely visible above the brown colored waters. Waist-deep in water, residents tried to salvage what they could, or rescue others.

this is an ongoing disaster related to the previous post https://sopuli.xyz/post/27979991

Also because of its location just north of the equator, Nigeria's climate is characterized by the hot and wet conditions associated with the movement of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) north and south of the equator.

When the ITCZ is to the south of the equator, the north-east winds prevail over Nigeria, producing the dry-season conditions. When the ITCZ moves into the Northern Hemisphere, the south westerly wind prevails far inland to bring rainfall during the wet season.

The result is a prolonged rainy season in the far south of Nigeria, while the far north undergoes long dry periods annually. Nigeria, therefore, has two major seasons, the dry season and the wet season, the lengths of which vary from north to south.

https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/tropical/convergence-zone

The new study, published May 14 in the journal Earth's Future, looked at what would happen should global temperatures swell to 2.7 F (1.5 C), even for just a few decades.

Such an increase in global temperature could have a permanent impact on the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a region near the equator where trade winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet, the study found.

The ITCZ has a heavy influence on rainfall patterns, and the increase in global temperatures could cause it to shift south, changing the length and intensity of wet and dry seasons, especially in parts of Africa, the Amazon and Southeast Asia. Too much rain in some areas and not enough in others could have dire effects on agriculture, ecosystems and water availability for a major portion of the planet.

The shrinking of Alpine glaciers has destabilized entire mountain faces. Permafrost, which acts as the frozen glue holding rocks together at high altitudes, is thawing rapidly. Without it, gravel and boulders are loosened, making rockslides and glacier collapses like the one in Blatten not just possible but increasingly likely.

The collapse at Blatten serves as a stark visual metaphor for the broader climate crisis. Once-stable landscapes are becoming volatile, and traditional forecasting models can no longer keep pace with accelerating change.

For now, the focus remains on immediate rescue and relief. But as scientists and citizens alike grapple with the scale of the disaster, Blatten’s destruction will likely become a touchstone in the global conversation about climate resilience and preparedness.

In a world where glaciers are vanishing and mountain communities are becoming climate frontlines, Blatten is not an isolated tragedy—it is a warning.

While China touts climate goals and sustainability, its banks are pouring billions into commodities from the world’s rainforests, an investigation by the international NGO Global Witness has found.

Archived

Chinese banks became the largest creditors of “forest-risk” companies globally between 2018-2024 – excluding financial institutions based in Brazil and Indonesia – according to a new analysis by Global Witness, based on data released in September 2024 by the Forests & Finance coalition.

The financial sectors of Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia provide a disproportionate amount of “forest-risk” financing to commodity producers in their own countries and are excluded from this analysis, which focuses on international financial flows. When including these countries, China ranked third globally overall in 2023, the final year for which full data is available.

The Forests & Finance database, compiled by Dutch research firm Profundo, tracks financial flows to over 300 “forest-risk” companies involved in agricultural supply chains such as beef, palm oil and soy production – industries that are major drivers of tropical deforestation.

Key findings

• Recent data shows that Chinese banks have become the largest creditors to “forest-risk”* companies, after major producing countries Brazil and Indonesia, with over $23 billion in financing provided from 2018 to 2024.
• Key Chinese banks, including CITIC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China, are among the top creditors for “forest-risk” companies such as Royal Golden Eagle Group, which has faced repeated allegations that its supply chain has driven deforestation.
• The increasing flow of finance to “forest-risk” companies undermines China’s climate and environmental goals under the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration and national Green Finance Guidelines.
• Meanwhile, Chinese banks rank poorly compared to their international counterparts in terms of deforestation-related policies, with four out of six major Chinese lenders scoring zero in the Forest 500 annual policy assessment.

The UK is not officially in drought yet, however the Environment Agency is currently warning there is a “medium” risk of drought this summer without a period of sustained rainfall.

“The last two years were some of the wettest on record for England but drier conditions at the start of this year mean a drought is a possibility and we need to be prepared,” Richard Thompson, the Environment Agency’s deputy director of water, said.

Questions are now being asked whether Britain’s water supply can cope. In 2022, the last official period of drought, hosepipe bans were issued across the country and one village in Oxfordshire completely ran out of water.

The current caseload has reached over 56,000 across 45 of the country’s 78 counties, with a mortality rate of 1.9 per cent, almost double of the global standard for the emergency threshold.

Cholera, a treatable disease, has already claimed over 1,000 lives in South Sudan, with one death occurring just a day before The Telegraph visited the ward.

Cholera can kill within hours. It starts suddenly, draining the body with diarrhoea, vomiting, and cramps.

archived (Wayback Machine)

There is an 80% chance that global temperatures will break at least one annual heat record in the next five years, raising the risk of extreme droughts, floods and forest fires, a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has shown.

For the first time, the data also indicated a small likelihood that before 2030, the world could experience a year that is 2C hotter than the preindustrial era, a possibility scientists described as “shocking”.

The spring rises inside the ruins of a Roman temple in the Barada Valley and flows toward Damascus, which it has been supplying with drinking water for thousands of years. Normally, during the winter flood season, water fills all the tunnels and washes over much of the temple.

Now, there is only a trickle of water following the driest winter in decades. There are 1.1 million homes that get water from the spring, and in order to get through the year, people will have to cut down their consumption.

On a Tuesday afternoon in May, earth system scientist Thomas Gill was tracking yet more dust rolling through this border city. El Paso has experienced 10 dust storms this year, trailing only the Dust Bowl years of 1935 and 1936. The average is 1.8 storms per year, according to Gill.

There have been dust events on 34 days this year in the border city, the highest total since 1970-71. Gill has been fielding calls from reporters around the country as dust blows from West Texas as far as Des Moines.

The combination of a windier than average spring and extreme drought in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico have created exceptionally dusty conditions. High winds lift loose, dry soil and sand, creating dust clouds that travel long distances. Much of the dust blowing into El Paso comes from Southern New Mexico and Chihuahua, including from dried lakes known as playas. With little rain in the forecast, the dust conditions show no sign of stopping.

Airborne particulate concentrations have soared to hazardous levels during the storms, impacting local health. Exposure to particulate matter pollution is linked to aggravated asthma, decreased lung function and heart attacks in people with heart disease. Dust means closed highways, cancelled sports events, deadly car wrecks and increased hospitalizations.

Residents of the Borderland region, including El Paso, Las Cruces, New Mexico and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, are accustomed to dust storms. But Gill said this year is different.

“We’ve thought of the dust as a nuisance to people’s lifestyle in the Borderland, but not something that’s going to affect their activities,” he said. “I think it’s gotten bad enough this year that people are realizing it does have consequences.”

https://archive.ph/6uHeI

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22612621

A mysterious, brown foam appeared on a beach an hour south of Adelaide. It was just the beginning of a toxic algal bloom that has now grown to thousands of square kilometres in size, killing precious sea life in its wake. Experts say it could be a sign of things to come.

The blame was placed on an “ongoing marine heatwave” which had seen water temperatures 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

I wonder what prciptated the marine heatwave /s

On Kangaroo Island, which reported its first fish kills in March, some beaches were so littered with dead sea life, the smell was overpowering.