As seen in Palm Springs, California. REUTERS/Sam Mircovich
Just Chill
By Rebecca Leberon Jun 21, 2016 12:18 pmShare
Welcome to the future, where news like this becomes mundane:
“Record-Breaking Heat Tops 120 Degrees in Parts of Southern California”
“1,000 flee L.A.-area wildfires fueled by heat wave”
“Deadly Heat Wave Adds Misery to Fire-Ravaged West”
“Oppressive heat to challenge all-time records across the southwestern U.S. early this week”
These are all headlines from a local news channel, USA Today, NBC, and Accuweather about the brutal heatwave that hit the Southwest this week. One-fifth of the country felt the miserable temperatures marking the official start of summer, and parts of California and Arizona even surpassed the 120-degree mark, in what the National Weather Service described as a “rare, dangerous and deadly” heatwave.
But this kind of event is becoming less rare in a climate-changed world that is constantly breaking all kinds of extreme records.
Scorching heat has had deadly consequences in India, where a heatwave this year contributed to a death toll of 1,500. Nor is this easily fixed by running the ACs higher, which packs a double punch of aiding warming and pumping pollution into communities of color.
As the headlines show, the future is not very far away at all.
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Baked Alaska
By Ted Alvarezon 5 Jan 2015commentsShare
If you’ve ever met an Alaskan, you know talking about disappeared sea ice and dead polar bears might get yawns or a semi-concerned shrugs. But try telling her that she’ll need to put wheels on her dog sled, or that her nordic team is now cross-country track, and you’re angling for a punch in the mouth.
Mouthguards, everyone: 2014 was one of the warmest years on record for America’s wintriest state. It was also the warmest for the Bering Sea and Anchorage’s warmest since 1926. In fact, for the first time in recorded history, the temperature never dropped below zero in Anchorage for a whole calendar year.
So with skis stuck in closets and White Christmas dreams dashed (see video above), Alaskans have more reason than ever to pay attention to climate change. From the LA Times:
“To me, the fact that Anchorage won’t dip below zero degrees in calendar year 2014 is just one more signal — as if we needed another one — of a rapidly changing climate,” said Andrew Hartsig, director of the Ocean Conservancy’s Arctic program.
Hartsig said Anchorage’s comparatively balmy weather is consistent with other long-term trends, including diminishing summer sea ice and increasing sea surface temperatures.
“These are definitely red flags that are very consistent with climate change,” said Chris Krenz, senior scientist at Oceana, an international conservation group. “These are anomalies … that show our climate system is off-kilter.”
But Alaska’s hyper-variable weather conditions mean the climate connection isn’t a straight one:
James E. Overland, a research oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, […] argues that Alaska’s very cool heat wave is not evidence of climate change but rather the next stage in a long-term weather pattern that began with six years of warming in the Bering Sea and southern Alaska, followed by six cold years.
“This year, then, was the breakdown of the string of cold years,” Overland said. “What all the scientists are wondering now [is]: Is this just one warm year? Could we flip back to a cold sequence again, or is this the start of a warm sequence? … We don’t know, and it makes a big difference.”
Over at Andy Revkin’s DotEarth, scientist Mike McCracken argues that current weather extremes may offer a preview of new norms under advanced climate change:
Such large variations of the climate likely won’t occur every year over the next few decades given the limited global warming to date, but it would seem likely such conditions will occur more and more frequently as global warming continues, disrupting both social systems and ecosystems.
Of course, concerns about a warmer Alaska extend beyond mushier mushing. Alaska’s valuable pollock (McD’s Filet-o-Fish to you) stocks are threatened by too-warm waters, and even oil companies bemoan their inability to move around Alaska’s vast, roadless interior without reliably packed snow and frozen muskeg. We’d point out the irony in that last one, but we’ve misplaced our Alaska-sized neon irony sign.
Source:
Alaska’s toasty temperatures in 2014 worry observers
, L.A. Times.
While Much of the U.S. Shivers, Alaskan Fourth Graders Bemoan a Warm, Snowless December on YouTube
, New York Times.
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The village of Gorak Shep. Photo: Frank Kehren
There is no plumbing on Mount Everest. When nature calls, climbers must use makeshift holes dug by sherpas, or use buckets as substitute toilets. With the ever-increasing number of climbers attempting to scale the mountain, containing all of that human waste is no small problem.
Currently, National Geographic reports, much of the excrement is carried in sealed containers on the backs of porters to the nearby village of Gorak Shep (which also lacks plumbing or sanitation facilities), where it is emptied into open pits. Up to 12 metric tons of the stuff can be hauled to Gorak Shep in a single year. But the village is running out of space for containing the mess, and last year researchers discovered that the refuse had contaminated one of the village’s two major water sources.
Seattle climber and engineer Garry Porter witnessed the problem first hand when he attempted to scale Everest ten years ago. Since then, the image of all of that waste has stuck with him. ”I couldn’t shake the feeling that my final tribute to Nepal and the people of Everest was having my waste dumped in these open pits. It just didn’t seem right,” he told National Geographic.
Porter decided to found the Mount Everest Biogas Project as a potential fix, along with Everest guide Dan Mazur.
In biogas production, bacteria feed on organic waste (like feces) and produce several gases as a byproduct. One of these is methane, which is the primary component of natural gas and can be burned for heat and light, or converted to electricity. One cubic meter of biogas provides about two kilowatt-hours of useable energy. This is enough to power a 60-watt light bulb for more than a day, or an efficient 15-watt CFL bulb for nearly six days. A biogas reactor at Gorak Shep could address the fecal contamination problem while providing the perennially low-income community with a sustainable source of methane gas for energy, especially for cooking, Porter says.
The team plans to keep the biogas digester tanks warm (they stop working if temperatures drop below freezing) with solar panels.
In addition to getting rid of all the feces, the team hopes that the biogas project will relieve some of the pressure on Everest’s natural resources. All of those poop-producing climbers also need to eat, and cooking fuel often takes the form of native plants harvested around Everest, including an endangered species, the alpine juniper. If successful, the project will be the world’s highest elevation biogas reactor and could be introduced to other high altitude areas around the world.
More from Smithsonian.com:
Mount Everest Is Not Immune to Climate Change
Conquering Everest
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