Editor’s note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, writer and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a contributor to WRAL TechWire.  Brain takes a serious as well as entertaining look at a world of possibilities for Earth and the human race.  He’s also author of “The Doomsday Book: The Science Behind Humanity’s Greatest Threats.” Brain has written several posts recently about the threat of climate change. His exclusive columns written for TechWire are published on Fridays.

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RALEIGH – “What is going on?!” is perhaps the best way to sum up the month of August 2022 on Planet Earth. In terms of catastrophic climate change events, August 2022 has been an incredibly newsworthy (and therefore deeply depressing) month for humanity. I realize that most people do not have the time to keep up with every news item. In addition, the fact that these different events have been spread out all over the globe can obscure the total impact. For a lot of people, “out of sight, out of mind” can be a real thing.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Wednesday was a fantastic day in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. “Fantastic” means moderate temperatures, moderate humidity, perfect blue skies, and beautiful sunshine. My son and I sat on a bench outside and had lunch together. We just couldn’t get over how nice a day it was. In other words, in our little corner of the world, everything was great. But at the exact same time, in other parts of the world, millions of our fellow human beings are experiencing screaming hair-on-fire climate emergencies that cannot be believed.

Therefore, let’s condense the month of August 2022 into a single article so that we can all see the full catalog of major climate catastrophes that have unfolded. This way we can understand how bad the climate change situation is getting, and perhaps this can help to spur humanity’s leaders into real action.

Climate Disaster #1 – The Unbelievable Heatwave in China

You may not have even heard about the unfolding climate catastrophe that China is facing this year. China is on the other side of the planet, and it is a country that may not receive a lot of sympathy right now. But if we dig a little deeper, it is possible to find buried headlines of a most urgent nature:

The problem is that it has stopped raining in Southern China. It is a huge swath of land affecting millions and millions of fellow human beings. And then the temperatures have skyrocketed. These two things together have the potential to eventually affect the entire planet in one way or another because of China’s central role in the world economy.

In a nutshell, here is what has happened in China:

  1. Hundreds of cities and towns all over southern China have been reporting unprecedented record-high temperatures for weeks. Many cities are seeing summer temperatures above 100 degrees F during the day, some topping 110 degrees F in places that have never seen temperatures this high.
  2. In conjunction with the high temperatures, the rain has stopped.
  3. Therefore, the rivers and reservoirs are drying up.

This combination of heat + dry can have multiple disastrous effects. It impacts agriculture, electricity production, drinking water, river navigation and so on. See this video for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysb1-6hY-u0

The reason why these problems can have global effects is because the world is already facing grain shortages. Therefore, agricultural problems in a highly populated country like China make everything worse. And then the reduction in power generation from the drought can affect factories that many parts of the world depend on.

Climate Disaster #2 – Rivers Are Drying Up All Over the World

Headlines tell the tale of dying rivers:

Human beings have loved rivers for thousands of years. Many of the world’s great cities therefore are located on rivers. Rivers are beautiful. Rivers can be an important source of drinking water plus irrigation water, and they can also carry away waste water. We can dam rivers to form reservoirs and generate power. And we can also use rivers for transportation. A river barge is an efficient and inexpensive way to move cargo between inland areas. Think of a river as a water highway. One barge can easily carry the load of a hundred or more trucks.

Now imagine major rivers drying up. Major cities that have depended on these rivers for hundreds of years lose these advantages due to droughts from climate change. In China, the Yangtze River is drying up. In Europe the Danube, Loire, Oder and Rhine rivers are affected. In the United States it is the Colorado river and its big reservoirs. Now everyone who depends on these rivers is scrambling. See this video for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GMxj5yoKCo

Climate Disaster #3 – A Gigantic Flood in Pakistan

Major rivers may be drying up, but in Pakistan they have the opposite problem – catastrophic floods from unstoppable rain:

The rain has killed thousands of fellow human beings and left millions homeless. Satellite photos show major parts of the country underwater. This video shows the scale of the disaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xDC_KL4ujk

Climate Disaster #4 – 1,000-year floods in the United States

What’s happening in Pakistan affects an entire country at once. In the United States we are seeing more regional storms that are just plain weird:

6 rare ‘1,000-year’ rain events within a month? Climate change may force NOAA to update criteria

The six regions affected include:

  • Dallas – 9 inches of rain
  • Death Valley – 1.5 inches of rain
  • Eastern Kentucky – 10 inches of rain
  • Mississippi – 8 inches of rain
  • Southeastern Illinois – 12 inches of rain
  • St. Louis – 9 inches of rain

The worry is that these kind of flooding events will become normal occurrences, and areas that have never seen floods start being randomly destroyed on a regular basis. See this video for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_4Jb7sddTE

Climate Disaster #5 – Greenland is melting fast, leading to catastrophic sea level rise

Last week scientists made a disastrous announcement about Greenland:

From the second article:

“The unavoidable ten inches in the study is more than twice as much sea level rise as scientists had previously expected from the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet. The study in the journal Nature Climate Change said it could reach as much as 30 inches (78 centimeters).”

And that’s just the contribution from the Greenland ice. Antarctica and glaciers will also be contributing, meaning that costal cities will feel a lot more pain. See this video for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqzV20EEWhA

Climate Disaster #6 – Nuclear Power Plants Shutting Down in France and Iran

Nuclear power plants seem like a good thing for climate change, in the sense that they generate electricity without releasing any carbon dioxide. But there is one minor problem – many nuclear power plants use local water supplies for cooling. If summer heat makes these water supplies too hot, then the nuclear power plants need to shut down or curtail production. And this is exactly what is happening in France and Iran:

From the third article:

“Iran’s only nuclear power plant at Bushehr has limited its power generation as the seawater in the Persian Gulf is too warm to cool reactors… In France, where nuclear power generation accounts for around 70 percent of the electricity mix, utility giant EDF warned early this summer that nuclear power generation would be reduced as high temperatures of rivers Rhone and Garonne make them too hot to cool reactors.”  

When these nuclear power plants were designed, no one was thinking, “Global heat waves from climate change will warm up our oceans and rivers so much that it will shut down this power plant.” It wasn’t even on the designer’s radar. Now the heat is a major factor and can make the reactors useless in the summer. See this video for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RQms02iQZg

Climate Disaster #7 – Siberia and the Arctic are heating rapidly

This headline paints a dreadful picture for Earth’s Arctic region:

The Arctic is heating up nearly four times faster than the whole planet, study finds

“There are hotspots in the Bering Sea over Northern Europe and Siberia, which are heating up about seven times faster than the global average, the study estimates.”

The heat is melting permafrost, causing wildfires, exposing more ocean water to sunlight and generally wreaking havoc:

“Rapid Arctic warming affects people living far from the Arctic circle. For example, there is evidence that weather patterns are shifting across the U.S. and Europe as sea ice melts.”

This video helps you see the effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFwf2qt-uBE

Climate Disaster #8 – Russia burns off natural gas leading to massive emissions

And then to add insult to injury in the Arctic we have this bizarre event:

Russia burns off gas as Europe’s energy bills rocket

“As Europe’s energy costs skyrocket, Russia is burning off large amounts of natural gas, according to analysis shared with BBC News. They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m (£8.4m) worth of gas every day.”

Besides the obvious carbon dioxide emissions, flaring like this can produce huge quantities of tiny soot particles due to incomplete combustion. The soot is a deep black color and either hangs in the air or deposits on ice sheets. Either way, the black color absorbs sunlight every efficiently, leading to even more warming. See this video for details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dGjMf6KULo

Conclusion

Even a year ago, we might get one of these disastrous climate change events or announcements in a month. Now we see eight in August, and the events are rising to a catastrophic level. The problem is simple: In 5 years, will things be five times worse and we see 40 events like this in a month? There really is no way to tell, except we know that the effects of climate change are accelerating.

We have to ask: what is humanity going to do about it? Two weeks ago we talked about the recent [climate change aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act]( https://wraltechwire.com/2022/08/12/united-states-takes-its-first-real-stab-at-climate-legislation-but-are-we-still-doomed/). But this is a drop in the bucket. Faced with existential threats like the ones seen above, and faced with the prospect that events will multiply, humanity needs to 10X or 50X its efforts with three main goals:

  • Stop burning fossil fuels
  • Extract a trillion tons of carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere
  • Solve the [fresh water crisis]( https://wraltechwire.com/2022/08/26/doomsday-or-nuts-the-h2o-case-for-banning-almond-trees-in-california/) that seems to be coming like a freight train

Can humanity rise to the challenge? Will global leaders look at all these events in the aggregate and understand the peril we face?

One thing that we as citizens can do is raise our voices and demand action, so that our leaders can no longer avoid significant change on the climate front.

Sources