Cooling Down, Heating Up
As we celebrate the coolest run of US core inflation in more than two years, we should take a moment to mourn the three-dozen people who burned up in Maui this week.
Parts of the island are "a wasteland," as the AP put it, after a wildfire stoked by wayward winds from a hurricane destroyed a 300-year-old tourist hotspot. Entire communities were "obliterated," and hundreds of structures were either destroyed or damaged.
Some locals were forced to swim out into the ocean to save their own lives.
Hope this can put your mind a bit at ease: http://temperature.global
Perhaps Mother Nature will step up and bring us a temporary reprieve from every-rising temperatures. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 cooled things right off for a couple of years!
Too bad about the spiraling food prices and subsequent civil turmoil which would follow.
I used to live in Hawaii. The fact that a hurricane that missed the islands caused a SoCal style Santa Ana wind condition, that then led to SoCal style wind-driven fire is almost unfathomable to me. In L.A., when the almost yearly Santa Ana fire conditions arise, it is usually late September, dry as a bone, with temperatures over 100 degrees. Hawaii is normally very humid, with the temperature around 87 degrees, on a daily basis, almost without fail. I believe that’s why everyone there, including their governor, is so stunned! Many of the homes there are wooden bungalow-style structures that were built over 50-years ago. That’s why I believe the fire was able to move so quickly. More than anything we have seen so far, this single event informs me that climate change is here, now, and it will change things in ways we have not imagined. Like the old Sparks song says: “never turn your back on Mother Earth.”
I think that political platforms that deny climate change or seek to block efforts to address it will fare worse and worse in coming years, and not far-away years either.
“July was very likely the hottest month in the history of human civilization”. Serious question – does the data behind this statement include the whole planet or just the northern hemisphere? The accompanying chart would suggest this is northern hemisphere data (higher temperatures in July vs. 6 months earlier or later) as I’m guessing the opposite is true in the southern hemisphere.
… or perhaps the whole planet is hotter in July than in December/January (even though the earth is closest to the sun in early January – by about 3% vs. its furthest distance from the sun at 6 months later)
https://www.ft.com/content/a9c7b8fa-9dd5-4a32-9994-ef6fb894bcaa
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/06/1192413106/three-stories-from-the-hottest-month-ever
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/july-is-globes-hottest-month-in-recorded-history
https://time.com/6303288/sultan-al-jaber-cop28/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/july-was-likely-earths-hottest-month-on-record-180982654/
All of this data is publicly available. You can go grab it and drop into Excel in 10 minutes.