Did you think it would all happen so fast? The heat domes, the millennial floods, the apocalyptic fires, that awful orange sky? This summer’s convergence of extreme events feels like living in a CGI-laden disaster movie. But those epic blockbusters all offer the same material comfort: an ending. What we are experiencing is different.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The heat is here
I’m a summer fanatic. All year I look forward to that plume of hot dog smoke emanating from a Weber grill, what a satisfaction thud the moment you close the lid of a frozen cooler. Strangely, I’m fine even with that humidity soaking my shirt.
And yet, the first half of summer 2023 tainted my nostalgia. The last few months Blade Runner the sky wasn’t just creepy; it was downright depressing. Across the country, many summer rites of passage seem to be fading away, whether one is willing to admit it or not.
In Austin, Texas this week, a firefighters battalion chief measured a slide at a local playground at 130 degrees, practically hot enough to cause a second-degree burn in seconds. Last night in part of the Florida Keys, sea surface temperatures soared to 37 degrees. Canada’s Northwest Territories, near the Arctic Ocean, reached 100 degrees on Saturday. Last week was officially the hottest week on record on Earth.
All of these numbers and stats easily start to get mixed up. When All a disaster, many of us become numb to news of climate change. But consider the following: 54 million Americans could experience triple-digit weather this week. Phoenix, Arizona could break its all-time record for consecutive days above 110 degrees. Death Valley could hit huge 130 on Sunday. None of this is a mere inconvenience. It can be lethal. Climate reporter Jeff Goodell, author of the new book The heat will kill you first, described the experience of walking 10 blocks in Phoenix on a 115-degree day in a recent essay: After walking three blocks, I felt dizzy. After seven blocks, my heart was pounding. After 10 blocks, I thought I was a goner.
Even our memories of colder places may be out of sync with our current reality. Last Friday, while on a family vacation on the Jersey coast, I swam in the bewildering heat of the Atlantic Ocean. I went back to work yesterday still a little flabbergasted, so I emailed climate scientist Michael Mann seeking clarity.
Even if you don’t know Mann, you might know his work. Mann’s hockey stick graph, illustrating the massive and sudden rise in temperatures during the 20th century, has become one of the defining figures in climate science.
Mann told me that he had been vacationing on the east coast of Virginia last weekend and noticed that the water there was unusually warm, too. But in his view, warmer ocean water is less tied to the sun or outside temperature than we might assume. This probably has more to do with variability in ocean currents, he said in an email. Several weeks ago, the waters off the east coast of the United States were cold and the waters in the eastern Atlantic were very warm. Now we have a bit of the opposite, with the east coast waters having warmed up a bit. I suspect it has to do with the direction the Gulf Stream is taking, he wrote.
Some observers have speculated that rising sea surface temperatures have contributed to other recent extreme weather events across the country, namely heavy rains in the northeast. That’s the other thing to consider: it’s not As soon as Heat. The streets of Montpelier, Vermont were heavily flooded with muddy water after more than five inches of rain fell yesterday. On Sunday, bridges collapsed and roads were washed away in New York’s Hudson Valley. (The United States Military Academy at West Point recorded about eight inches of rain.)
Mann pointed out that climate change is leading to anomalous heat across the planet at large, and warmer ocean waters mean more moisture in the atmosphere is available to produce flooding rains. He noted that the stalled jet stream is also a factor in what we’re seeing. You may remember the term jet stream from reports of smoke from Canadian bushfires that has lingered in the Northeast and Midwest for the past few weeks. As the behavior of the jet stream changes, other things start to change, it seems, for the worse. A few weeks ago, the spare N-95 mask I’d kept in my backpack for doctor’s office visits became an essential (albeit imperfect) layer against breathing wildfire particulate matter.
But the truth is, once the smoke cleared, I kicked it out. I’m embarrassingly among the millions who pause momentarily to glance at climate news soon after these weather events, then return to more short-term concerns. I asked Mann how climate scientists like him deal with the frustration of this reality.
It’s definitely a frustration, he wrote. The modern 24-hour news cycle is unkind to challenges like the climate crisis that require diligence and concerted action, day after day, week after week, year after year.
From a practical point of view, how should the average person conceive of all these extremes? What should non-climatologists do? Should we mentally prepare ourselves for hotter summers and skin-burning playground slides for the rest of our lives?
We should understand that the choice is ours, wrote Mann. We can make matters worse by continuing to rely on fossil fuels. Or we can rapidly decarbonize our economy, prevent many if not all of these impacts from worsening, and stay within our collective resilience as a civilization.
The challenge of fitting in it’s not unlike the challenge of fighting the human urge to succumb to nostalgia. It’s easier, and much more comfortable, to pine for the way things used to be. It is undoubtedly wiser to accept that we no longer live in the world we grew up in.
Related:
Today’s news
- Microsoft will be allowed to complete its acquisition of Activision Blizzard after a judge rules against the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction.
- Attorneys for Donald Trump and Walt Nauta are asking that their trial over classified documents be delayed until after the 2024 presidential election.
- President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Vermont as the state experiences its worst flooding since 2011.
Evening reading
Beware of the Luxury Beach Resort
By Lauren Groff
i hate the beach. My skin burns and blisters as soon as the sun touches it, I don’t like to sweat without exercise, and sand doesn’t make any sense to me—it’s just warm, gritty dirt that other people apparently enjoy rolling around in. I was raised by parents whose idea of downtime is cutting miles of woodland trails and painting an entire house by hand, so the prospect of enforced idleness makes me panic. Furthermore, the ocean itself, while aesthetically pleasing, is terribly unreliable, with its tides, hurricanes, tsunamis, sharks, microplastics and creepy crawlies of the deep. He has too many sneaky ways to kill you.
When I went on a beach vacation, it was under duress. I married into a family of generous people who are also awfully extroverted and whose notion of fun is a leisurely, boozy, and mostly lounging on a tropical island together. But for doomsayers like me, the luxe beach resort raises a whole new set of psychological torments beyond those provided by more ordinary beaches.
Read the full article.
More from The Atlantic
Cultural break
Clock. The Leaguea new documentary examining how the Negro leagues shaped modern baseball (in theaters now and available to stream on Apple TV+ and Prime Video July 14).
Listen. To Taylors Version of Better Than Revenge, by Taylor Swift, which features new lyrics.
Play our daily crossword puzzle.
PS
After all that climate change sadness, I encourage you to put a spin on instrumental guitarist Hayden Pedigo’s new album. Cheekily titled The happiest times I’ve ever ignored, Pedigo’s latest record is a great soundtrack to a summer night. Even if you’re not a fan of instrumental music, this might work for you. It’s not background music; it is contemplative but somehow never snobbish and eminently approachable. Rather than trying to impress you with his shredding skills, Pedigo builds delicate songs, he’s a speechless storyteller. And as he’ll show you in the music video linked above, he’s also a big jerk.
John
Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.
#Boiling #ocean
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