Category: GlobalWarming

climate change note book — day 5

whbeebe1 Comment

From The Guardian:

France, Spain and other western European nations braced for a sweltering weekend that is set to break records and sparked concern about forest fires and the effects of climate change.

Temperatures already nudged over 40C (104F) in parts of France on Friday.

The weather on Saturday will represent a peak of a June heatwave that is in line with warnings from scientists that such phenomena will now hit earlier than usual because of climate change.

Temperatures are due to relent slightly from Sunday, with thunderstorms forecast in parts of France and elsewhere in Europe.

But French state weather forecaster Meteo France said June temperature records had already been beaten in 11 areas on Friday and could reach as high as 42C in some areas on Saturday.

In Spain, forest fires burned nearly 9,000 hectares (22,240 acres) of land in the north-west Sierra de la Culebra region on Friday, forcing about 200 people from their homes, regional authorities said.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/18/europe-heatwave-france-braces-for-record-breaking-temperatures-as-spain-battles-forest-fires

Today’s Orlando weather:

  • Morning low at 6:00 am was 80° F
  • Today’s high at 2:00 pm was 95° F
  • Humidity was 50%
  • No rain
  • Mostly hazy conditions

Today’s weather was peculiar. This was supposed to be a big rain day, with all three iOS apps I have on my iPhone (Apple Weather, Dark Sky, and Hello Weather) forecasting rain starting at 2 pm. The problem with that forecast is it was wrong, at least in my neighborhood. The skies grew cloudy, then overcast, and I could hear the occasional bit of thunder in the far distance, but we never got any rain. I even had apps saying we were getting rain, yet when I went outside to look, it was dry. The temperature (thankfully!) did drop, by ten degrees by 5 pm.

I’m to the point where I’m purchasing components to build several small weather stations for my back yard, tied to a central station in the house with LoRa, so I can have greater accuracy with local weather forecasting. I’ve come quite a way with MicroPython and ESP-IDF on Espressif boards, pushed there in part because I can’t purchase any Raspberry Pies from anyone. I’ve discovered that I can write sophisticated applications in Python or C++ for those boards, which are much smaller than a Raspberry Pi and consume a lot less power. Those boards, and specifically, those chips on those boards, are still available. I’m really disappointed in the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Foundation’s original “promise” to be there for the experimenter is garbage.

climate change note book — day 4

whbeebe

From ArsTechnica:

As the US struggles to recover from a dire infant formula shortage, the Abbott formula plant at the center of the crisis has again shut down—this time due to flooding from heavy rain on Monday.

The plant in Sturgis, Michigan, is the largest formula factory in the US and is operated by Abbott, one of the largest formula manufacturers in the county. The facility had previously shut down in February, driving a nationwide shortage of infant and specialty formulas to a critical point, but had managed to reopen on June 4.
…
In a Congressional hearing last month, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf testified that the conditions at the plant were “egregiously unsanitary” and told lawmakers that “frankly, the inspection results were shocking.”

Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/as-us-crawls-out-of-baby-formula-crisis-troubled-plant-floods-shuts-down-again/

Whether the flooding was due in part to global warming is interesting to consider. The greater issue is how moneyed interests (i.e. greed) has motivated the aggregation of critical infrastructure into larger and, as a consequence, fragile structures. Thus when it floods for whatever reason these large, critical, and fragile structures and services are easily knocked off line, adversely affecting the most vulnerable among us. Incidents like this will only increase in frequency and intensity before it (if ever) gets better.

On a personal note when my youngest daughter was a newborn she was in the hospital for a week due to salmonella poisoning. They never did discover the source, with one of the doctors attempting to blame it on us. My daughter was in intensive care for a week before she finally came home for good. Now she’s all grown up in her mid-thirties, but for those first few weeks of her newborn life it was frightening for us. We always suspected the formula she was put on as a newborn, and I always will.

And then there’s this article of global warming mayhem down in Miami via The Drive:

In the clip posted by Instagram user Florida_Corvette_Owners, 10 or more cars with six-figure price tags are presumably stranded in an underground parking garage after rainstorm flooding. The Drive staff spotted two Rolls-Royce Cullinans (one potentially a Mansory), a C7 Corvette, a Ferrari 488, a Ferrari SF90, a Ferrari Roma, a Plymouth Prowler, a McLaren SLR, and a Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series in the mix, all covered in post-flood muck. It’s painful to see it.

Link: https://www.thedrive.com/news/miami-flooding-drowned-this-entire-garage-of-supercars

Oh, those poor rich people living down in Miami! All those expensive toys that helped contribute to the very problem that just ruined them with flooding due to global warming!

Ask me if I’m feeling sorry for those poor rich people in Miami. Go ahead, just ask…

Today’s weather:

  • Morning low at 6:00 am was 77° F
  • Today’s high at 5:00 pm was 99° F
  • Humidity was 44%
  • No rain
  • Mostly hazy conditions

We’ve gotten another heat advisory for Saturday 18 June from 2 pm to 8 pm. Why we didn’t get one today I don’t know.