Tuesday Reads: Heatwave! And Other News
Posted: June 29, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Climate change, Donald Trump, heat domes, Manhattan District Attorney, Miami building collapse, Pacific Northwest heatwave, Portland OR, Seattle WA, Trump Organization 20 CommentsGood Morning!!
Collioure in the Summer, by Henri Matisse
We’re having another heatwave here in the Boston area–four days of 90 degrees or more–with a high temperature today of 99 degrees. Thunderstorms are expected to break the heat tomorrow night, with temperatures in the 80s on Thursday. But that is nothing compared to what is happening in the Pacific Northwest. I talked to my sister in Portland, OR, yesterday, and she said the temperature was supposed to hit 115 degrees! She said her garden is dying even though she is soaking her plants every morning.
The New York Times: How Weird Is the Heat in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver? Off the Charts.
Heat waves and the “heat domes” that can cause them aren’t rare, but the recent weather that’s been smothering the Pacific Northwest has little precedent in at least four decades of record-keeping….
The heat has been not only widespread, but also intense, in some places surpassing previous records by double digits.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, this past weekend’s temperatures were far above norms for this time of year, and a town in British Columbia reached nearly 116 degrees, the highest recorded temperature for any place in Canada in its history. In Seattle, there have been only two other days in the last 50 years with temperatures in the triple digits: in 2009 and 1994.
The heat has resulted from a wide and deep mass of high-pressure air that, because of a wavy jet stream, parked itself over much of the region. Also known as a heat dome, such an enormous high-pressure zone acts like a lid on a pot, trapping heat so that it accumulates. And with the West beset by drought, there’s been plenty of heat to trap.
In Seattle, Portland and other areas west of the Cascades, hot air blowing from the east was further warmed as it descended the mountains, raising temperatures even more.
Beach Scene by Martha Walter, American impressionist painter
Climate is naturally variable, so periods of high heat are to be expected. But in this episode scientists see the fingerprints of climate change, brought on by human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Karin Bumbaco, Washington’s assistant state climatologist, said that any definitive climate-change link could be demonstrated only by a type of analysis called an attribution study. “But it’s a safe assumption, in my view, to blame increasing greenhouse gases for at least some portion of this event,” she said.
On a global average, the world has warmed about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. “When you have that warmer baseline, when you do get these extreme events it’s just going to get that much warmer,” she said.
This heat wave is also unusual because it occurred earlier than most. Those two previous triple-digits days in Seattle, for example, happened in late July, about 30 days later.
This one occurred just a few days after the summer solstice, which may have contributed to the extreme conditions. “The days are longer, and we’re not getting that cool-off at night,” she said.
Read more details at the NYT, with maps and charts.
The Washington Post: The Pacific Northwest heat wave is shocking but shouldn’t be a surprise.
More than three decades ago, in his seminal study predicting the course of human-caused climate change, NASA scientist Jim Hansen wrote that “temperature changes within several decades will become large enough to have major effects on the quality of life for mankind in many regions.”
Hansen used the analogy of “loaded dice” to describe how climate change would increase the likelihood of extremely hot weather in a given year while decreasing the chance of unusually cold weather.
Even before that, in 1979, the National Research Council published a study led by the late meteorologist Jule Charney that predicted serious global warming would evolve. “It appears that the warming will eventually occur, and the associated regional climatic changes so important to the assessment of socioeconomic consequences may well be significant,” the report said.
Since those prescient projections 30-to-40-plus years ago, heat waves all over the world have intensified. Heat domes, the sprawling zones of high pressure at high altitudes that essentially bake the air underneath them, have strengthened.
Claude Monet, The Beach at Sainte-Adresse
During the European heat wave in 2003, blamed for 70,000 deaths, the average temperature was higher than any year since at least 1851. A study published in 2004 found human influence “at least doubled the risk” of a heat wave of that magnitude.
By 2010, when a historically intense heat wave killed 50,000 people in Russia, the risk of such an event was tripled due to climate change, according to a study published in 2012.
In 2016, a report from the National Academies of Sciences concluded that of the connections between human-caused climate change and extreme weather events, heat waves had among the most straightforward ties.
See also this excellent piece at Axios that summarizes a great deal of information about the heat wave. It’s much longer and more detailed than the usual Axios post: Pacific Northwest heat wave reaches astonishing peak on Monday.
In other news, Axios analyzed traffic at “partisan” news sites and discovered big drops in clicks since Trump was ejected from the White House: Boring news cycle deals blow to partisan media.
In the months since former President Donald Trump left office, media companies’ readership numbers are plunging — and publishers that rely on partisan, ideological warfare have taken an especially big hit.
Why it matters: Outlets most dependent on controversy to stir up resentments have struggled to find a foothold in the Biden era, according to an Axios analysis of publishers’ readership and engagement trends.
By the numbers: Web traffic, social media engagement and app user sessions suggest that while the entire news industry is experiencing a slump, right-wing outlets are seeing some of the biggest plunges.
- A group of far-right outlets, including Newsmax and The Federalist, saw aggregate traffic drop 44% from February through May compared to the previous six months, according to Comscore data.
- Lefty outlets including Mother Jones and Raw Story saw a 27% drop.
- Mainstream publishers including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Reuters dropped 18%.
App visits tell a similar story. Both right-leaning (including Fox News, Daily Caller) and left-leaning (including Buzzfeed News, The Atlantic) saw considerable average drops in app user sessions over this time period at 31% and 26%, respectively, according to Apptopia data.
- Data from Sensor Tower shows that downloads of fringe-right social networking apps like MeWe, Rumble, Parler and CloutHub have also plummeted.
Engagement on social media has taken the biggest dive, according to data from NewsWhip.
- Left-leaning and right-leaning publishers have seen social interactions on stories drop by more than 50%, while mainstream publishers have experienced a slightly more modest drop of 42%.
The big picture: Opposition media traditionally relies on traffic booms when a new party takes office, but right-wing outlets have seen some of the most precipitous declines in readership since a Democratic president took office.
Untitled and undated painting by Harold Newton
Political news sites would get a big upsurge in hits if the Trump Organization is indicted in New York this week. The Washington Post: Trump attorneys meet with New York prosecutors to argue that his company should not be criminally charged over its business practices, By David Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey, and Shayna Jacobs.
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Sky Dancing 
BBC News: Picasso painting found as builder arrested over art heist
Wonderful that these paintings have been found, but horrible that the Caccia work had literally been flushed down a toilet.
“That makes “living with Covid” a risky and dangerous strategy”
I’m relieved louder people than us smallfry are finally pointing this out. Not dying is great, but living with a disabling disease for the rest of your life can be only slightly better than dying. See: rate of suicide among the people bearing the actual burden.
Singapore just announced this nonsense of “living with it” as their official policy.
The pandemic has been a real eyeopener for me in watching how people deal with life-threatening danger. “Oh hell. I’m bored. I’ll just jump out of the plane now instead of waiting for it to land.”
And that’s when we have the solution at hand! If everybody just got vaccinated, we’d be okay. But nooo.
We’ve known for at least a year that approx a third of persons infected with Covid-19 have neuro sequelae. That’s something I make sure to tell my vax-hesitant patients about! I do not understand the people saying “tra-la-la I can’t hear you” with their fingers stuck in their ear canals to clinicians and scientists.
Honestly. These people with their “oh I’m sure some internet rando has found a cleverly concealed truth unknown to thousands of peer-reviewed scientists.” They drive cars, use phones, take antibiotics, completely and utterly depend on science for their entire lives, but vaccines? Those were invented pollute their pure essential fluids.
/*endless screaming*/
I admire your ability to talk calmly to them without screaming.
“I admire your ability to talk calmly to them without screaming.”
Yeah, but you should hear me after clinic’s over!
Way back in 1983 I was on a bus tour in Europe (I worked for the tour company) and as we were all being guided through a particularly ornate building filled with art work in France, one of the group commented how wouldn’t it be better for there to be a King again? He was obviously struck by all the glamour and show of wealth. The poor French guide was pretty dumbfounded so I helped her out and told him “Viva la democracie!!!”….hahahaha.
People are so dumb.
Enjoying the indoors today, although I remember sweating the days away before we had much A/C around- remember driving on the highway with all the windows open to get a breeze? I can’t
imagine how people lived during the summer before electricity, especially down south. And as the paintings show, women had so many clothes on! Uggh.
The boring news link was interesting. I am exposed to the evening news nightly and I can say the MSM sure has a bland focus. They all repeat the same stuff over and over, describe the problem and never really get to any solutions or really any analysis. Add in summertime and the decompression after the Turd/Trump years and viewership has to decline. Send ’em back to journalism school or something.
One thing was that not that many people lived there. Electricity meant a *big* increase in population in the South. Two: they did have swamp coolers. They’re not as good in humid climates as the desert, but they do cool nearby air down 5-10F, which is a big difference if you’re going from 95 to 85.
As for how people managed who couldn’t sit in front of a swamp cooler (mint julep in hand?) but had to work, out in the sun, yes. Just boggling how they got through that, and how people still do in the ever-hotter places around the world.
Yes the advent of A/C brought a population explosion down h’yah! People weren’t the fat candy-asses we are now, either.
Nice selection of art today!!!! I love the Newton painting! It’s raining again here but at least it’s not that triple-digit heat. We’re nicely in the 70s and 80s which is fine! Everyone above that drink lots of water and stay cool!
Wow!
I kept looking for the sheep dogs but couldn’t pick them out. They must have been there.
This is not a heat wave. This is the new normal. I live in Buffalo, NY. Forty years ago, you never needed A/C in your apartment or even your home. Even offices had open windows in the summer. We had the most beautiful summers known to man. Rarely over 85 degrees, with a constant cool breeze off the lake.
Now A/C is a necessity. The breeze off the lake is no longer cool, in fact Lake Erie is like bathwater. It’s 90 degrees as I write this. It’s too hot to go outside.
Ya know why I’m a winter person? Because in the winter, you can bundle up & go outside & enjoy the weather. There’s no enjoying this hell.
I heard only 35% of folks in Seattle actually have AC currently.
Yes, that’s true, and that’s even an increase compared to ~5 yrs ago. We used to never need it — well, to be honest, hardly ever. I’m old enough to recall when one didn’t need a/c in the car. That also was back when cars had those nice little triangle portions to the windows so you could open just that and get air blowing at your face. Detracts from the aerodynamics, alas. The amount of land covered in concrete and buildings has increased, and the tree cover has decreased. That by itself is responsible for a couple of degrees higher in temps.They consider this when looking at temperature sensor locations.
Portland is further inland than Seattle so they’ve been hotter.
Yesterday was ~107. Today “only” low 90s, the next week 80s every day. Uraaagh! But now I can tell the difference between 100-degree heat and 90-degree heat. I water the garden using drip line — some plants are damaged not from drought but from the intense heat.
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