Flooding in Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium. Climate chaos everywhere

**Aragorn** · 26th July 2021, 13:46

In Belgium, the coast line has been hit hard this morning. In the city of Nieuwpoort there was over 60 liters of rainfall in just one hour. Lots of flooded streets, and a few flooded basements too. And during the weekend, it was the south-east that was getting hit hard again. I saw a video on the website of a Belgian newspaper in which you can see a wet street being transformed into a knee-deep mud stream in just over one minute ─ literally, just over one minute. It appeared to be coming out of the sewer system, and as the street was on an incline, you can see it coming from around the bend, first on one side of the road and then spreading to cover the whole width of the street, and rushing down the incline as if you're standing by a muddy river that's headed for a waterfall. It was surreal.

Over here in town there was a pretty rough shower on Saturday ─ it was hitting my window panes and my balcony very hard ─ and the sky went very, very dark, but it was all over and done again in only about 20 minutes. Right now I can hear thunder again in the distance, but it's very transient. The sky will suddenly go dark, and then within minutes, the sun breaks through again. The storm clouds are moving very fast, and they're headed west, toward the sea.

Last year, we had a heatwave with an absolute record-breaking registered peak temperature of 41.9°C over here. But this July, the temperatures have been so low that my central heating actually came on a couple of times. Normally it wouldn't do that between the beginning of June and the end of August, or even the beginning of September.

It's all fucked up, and no climate change agreements are going to stop it. Even if all industrial activity were to stop right now, then it still won't make a difference. The corona pandemic with all of its lockdowns has proven that. The only thing that actually got better was the quality of the air in the cities. But we've already passed the point of no return.

Of course, what could be done, is that the authorities would be putting in the effort to minimize any damage by future flooding, future violent storms and future droughts. You know, like improving the sewer systems, deepening and/or widening problematic waterways, or creating emergency water reservoirs for when there is drought. But they won't, because (1) they still don't have the wisdom to correctly assess and anticipate any threats, and (2) it supposedly costs too much money to do all of those things, and the financial-economic society model is sacred and untouchable.

Limiting or even taking away people's freedom is okay, as is instigating discrimination ─ e.g. of those who haven't been vaccinated against Covid-19. But Earth will have already long been burned to a crisp by the expansion of the sun before they'll ever consider putting financial-economical interests beside them.

And the lobby groups will see to that, too. We've seen it when the pandemic first hit us in the (northern) spring of 2020. Everything went in lockdown, and everybody was so sympathetic, and so in agreement that it was absolutely necessary. Such unity, such benevolence all around, and such harmony. For about two weeks, and then the hypocrisy revealed itself, when the complaints started coming in about the lockdown taking too long and small businesses going bankrupt. And you know what? I was already expecting things to turn around that way ─ from day one. If it seems too good to be true, then it usually is. Humans are so transparent.

There are times when the authorities have to have a spine and put their foot down, just as there are times when the authorities should step back and stay out of people's way. And in Belgium, that's exactly what the authorities do, but they do it ass-backwards; they only have a spine and put their foot down when there's nothing threatening them, so that they can take away people's freedom and make life more difficult for everyone with the least amount of resistance. Just like in the middle ages. But when they should have a spine and put down their foot, then they will cower and cave in under the pressure from the lobbyists. And they need the lobbyists, because no one in a position of power over here has the wisdom to occupy said position.

Oh well, nothing I say is going to make any difference anyway. It's just another pointless rant.

**Dreamtimer** · 26th July 2021, 14:27

It's an appreciated rant, Aragorn. And sometimes a person just needs to rant.

**Dreamtimer** · 30th July 2021, 14:49

Fires in Siberia.

[TWITTER]https://twitter.com/siberian_times/status/1420765904334323721[/TWITTER]

I can't see the video here, but you can if you go to the tweet itself.

**Dreamtimer** · 30th July 2021, 17:30

Arizona is now getting its monsoon rain. There's flooding in Tucson. That happens because the rain washes over the hard desert ground. It doesn't soak. Sabino canyon is amazing right now. I've seen lightening strike over Tucson but not this dramatically.

**Aragorn** · 30th July 2021, 18:04

Originally posted by Dreamtimer

Arizona is now getting its monsoon rain. There's flooding in Tucson. That happens because the rain washes over the hard desert ground. It doesn't soak. Sabino canyon is amazing right now. I've seen lightening strike over Tucson but not this dramatically.

It's quite spectacular.

Over on Usenet, there's a guy from Arizona who explained a few years ago that it gets so hot over there in summer that it rains without that you're getting wet, because the heat causes the rain to evaporate again before it has a chance to hit the ground. Quite bizarre!

**Dreamtimer** · 30th July 2021, 21:36

This is just amazing.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pljl0DcwTHM

**Dreamtimer** · 30th July 2021, 21:50

I'm gonna post this one too because there's a snow rainbow at the end.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWIZcdYDxOo

(look at the face on the left in the thumbnail)

**Dreamtimer** · 31st July 2021, 11:41

I've mentioned viruses being released from melting ice. They're there for sure.

15,000-year-old viruses discovered in Tibetan glacier ice

Scientists who study glacier ice have found viruses nearly 15,000 years old in two ice samples taken from the Tibetan Plateau in China. Most of those viruses, which survived because they had remained frozen, are unlike any viruses that have been cataloged to date.

The findings, published today in the journal Microbiome, could help scientists understand how viruses have evolved over centuries. For this study, the scientists also created a new, ultra-clean method of analyzing microbes and viruses in ice without contaminating it.

When they analyzed the ice, they found genetic codes for 33 viruses. Four of those viruses have already been identified by the scientific community. But at least 28 of them are novel. About half of them seemed to have survived at the time they were frozen not in spite of the ice, but because of it.

The study of viruses in glaciers is relatively new: Just two previous studies have identified viruses in ancient glacier ice. But it is an area of science that is becoming more important as the climate changes, said Lonnie Thompson, senior author of the study, distinguished university professor of earth sciences at Ohio State and senior research scientist at the Byrd Center.

From Ohio State University

**Wind** · 1st August 2021, 13:53

You might want to see this thread on Avalon about the possible future floods in Europe.

**Aragorn** · 1st August 2021, 14:04

Originally posted by Wind

You might want to see this thread on Avalon about the possible future floods in Europe.

And as was to be expected ─ although I naively wasn't, actually ─ the thread quickly got derailed onto the subjects of climate change denialism and Illuminati-related conspiracy theories...

**Wind** · 1st August 2021, 14:07

Well, that comes with the territory.

**Dreamtimer** · 3rd August 2021, 14:07

This is not what it seems at first glance. It reflects a slow motion catastrophe. I had a couple double takes at first.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57Tzu7cAxeo

**Aragorn** · 6th August 2021, 19:35

Source: The Guardian

Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.

The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.

“The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”

It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.

Scientists are increasingly concerned about tipping points – large, fast and irreversible changes to the climate. Boers and his colleagues reported in May that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink, threatening a big rise in global sea level. Others have shown recently that the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs, and that the 2020 Siberian heatwave led to worrying releases of methane.

The world may already have crossed a series of tipping points, according to a 2019 analysis, resulting in “an existential threat to civilisation”. A major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due on Monday, is expected to set out the worsening state of the climate crisis.

Boer’s research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is titled “Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the AMOC”. Ice-core and other data from the last 100,000 years show the AMOC has two states: a fast, strong one, as seen over recent millennia, and a slow, weak one. The data shows rising temperatures can make the AMOC switch abruptly between states over one to five decades.

The AMOC is driven by dense, salty seawater sinking into the Arctic ocean, but the melting of freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet is slowing the process down earlier than climate models suggested.

Boers used the analogy of a chair to explain how changes in ocean temperature and salinity can reveal the AMOC’s instability. Pushing a chair alters its position, but does not affect its stability if all four legs remain on the floor. Tilting the chair changes both its position and stability.

Eight independently measured datasets of temperature and salinity going back as far as 150 years enabled Boers to show that global heating is indeed increasing the instability of the currents, not just changing their flow pattern.

The analysis concluded: “This decline [of the AMOC in recent decades] may be associated with an almost complete loss of stability over the course of the last century, and the AMOC could be close to a critical transition to its weak circulation mode.”

Levke Caesar, at Maynooth University in Ireland, who was not involved in the research, said: “The study method cannot give us an exact timing of a possible collapse, but the analysis presents evidence that the AMOC has already lost stability, which I take as a warning that we might be closer to an AMOC tipping than we think.”

David Thornalley, at University College London in the UK, whose work showed the AMOC is at its weakest point in 1,600 years, said: “These signs of decreasing stability are concerning. But we still don’t know if a collapse will occur, or how close we might be to it.”

Source: The Guardian