We are facing a miserable forecast as record-strong high pressure creates a "heat dome" in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.
Heat waves like this are one of the clearest manifestations of human-caused global warming, with studies showing that climate change boosts the odds of their occurrence and heightens their severity. Some recent studies, in fact, have shown that certain extreme heat events could not have occurred without an added boost from human-caused warming.
Update (June 28): Several all-time record highs were recorded on June 27. (And this is just mainly in Oregon!)
Also, Robert Hunziker points to a report published in Geophysical Research Letters that finds the Earth's energy imbalance has approximately doubled from 2005 to 20019.
Update (June 30): I'm hoping this is the worst of it.
The temperature at the Yakima Air Terminal weather station hit 113 on Tuesday afternoon, comfortably topping the all-time record of 110 degrees reached there on Aug. 10, 1971.
Also, Anne Mulkern explains why this is happening with help fromOregon state climatologist Larry O’Neill.
The high temperatures came as the result of a high-pressure system over Oregon and Washington. Climate change played a role in that system, said O’Neill.
One of the mechanisms for the formation of a high-pressure system is tropical cyclone activity in the western Pacific Ocean. Those are the West Coast equivalent of hurricanes. And like hurricanes, they are strengthened by warmer ocean temperatures.
Update (July 2): Jeffrey St. Clair recounts this week's heat wave.
[T]he "heat dome" shouldn't have caught any of use by surprise. The new normal is yesterday's abnormal. The surprises and anomalies come and go, but only in one direction. The hotter they come, the hotter the records fall. It’s time to stop calling the PNW heat wave "unprecedented" and start calling it the precedent for a future that has already arrived.
Portland's high temperature [of 116F on Monday] was 40 degrees above normal, 4.5 standard deviations from the mean, making it the most severe heatwave ever recorded in North America, the kind of event only expected to happen every 400 years. But these kinds of wild fluctuations usually happen in fall and spring, almost never in summer. Portand's deviation from the norm would be like Dallas hitting 134F.
On Sunday afternoon, Lytton, British Columbia, broke the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada with a measurement of 46.6C (116F). Then it broke that record again on Monday. And again on Tuesday with a high of 49.6C (121F), shattering the old heat record set 84-years ago by 4.6C (8F)!
Update (July 4): Actual high temperatures for the past two weeks. From June 26 through June 30, records were either tied or broken.
Update (July 8):From a study published by World Weather Attribution:
[A]n event such as the Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave is still rare or extremely rare in today’s climate, yet would be virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.
Looking into the future, in a world with 2°C of global warming (0.8°C warmer than today which at current emission levels would be reached as early as the 2040s), this event would have been another degree hotter. An event like this – currently estimated to occur only once every 1000 years, would occur roughly every 5 to 10 years.
Update (July 16): A short video made from satellite images shows the loss of snow pack on Mt. Adams during the heat wave. Mt. Rainier lost 30 percent of its snow pack from June 26 to July 11.
Update (July 18): Peter Reiners explains why "wet bulb" temperature matters more than record highs.
The closer wet bulb temperature gets to our body temperature, the less heat is lost. ... [Anything] higher than 88 °F (31 °C) make it impossible to do physical labor, and a wet bulb temperature of 95 °F (35 °C) kills healthy humans within a few hours.
Update (July 26): In an interview with Zoya Teirstein, Daniel Swain discusses extreme weather events.
I'm less convinced that recent events tell us that things are moving faster than projections have suggested. But I am increasingly convinced that we've underestimated the impacts of some of the changes that were actually fairly well predicted.
Climate models aren't intended to capture the fine details of transient events. Weather forecasts turned out to be fairly accurate--a forecast of 113 vs the actual 114 for that record-breaking day.
[T]his just keeps coming back to this notion that a degree or two of global warming doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a tremendous shift in the system. But that's not intuitively obvious to really anyone except for folks who really understand the dynamics of these nonlinear Earth systems interactions.
Update (June 14, 2022): This year, over 100 million people in the U.S. are facing record-breaking heat at the start of summer.
Update (August 1, 2022): There's just no escaping--this year's record breaking week for Yakima:
I believe the 27th through the 30th were all new record highs. This week saw the first 100 degree day of the year.
Update (August 20, 2022): Last month set the record for the highest nightly low temperature.
The average low temperature for the Lower 48 states in July was 63.6 degrees (17.6 Celsius), which beat the previous record set in 2011 by a few hundredths of a degree. ... July’s nighttime low was more than 3 degrees (1.7 Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average.
Update (August 27, 2022): China has been enduring a two-month heat wave that Maximiliano Herrera calls the most severe recorded anywhere.
This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time. There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable.
A joint report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services addresses the links between two crises.
Climate change impacts and biodiversity loss are two of the most important challenges and risks for human societies; at the same time climate and biodiversity are intertwined through mechanistic links and feedbacks. Climate change exacerbates risks to biodiversity and natural and managed habitats; at the same time, natural and managed ecosystems and their biodiversity play a key role in the fluxes of greenhouse gases, as well as in supporting climate adaptation.
A series of reports from ProPublica uses secretly obtained tax records to illustrate how little income tax the rich typically pay.
Our analysis of tax data for the 25 richest Americans quantifies just how unfair the system has become.
By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion.
For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth.
The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion.
The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion.
Update (June 16):More about the mechanisms by which the rich avoid transparency and taxes.
Today’s tax code incentivizes the nation’s billionaires to plow as much of their money as possible into investments in … family funds, further amplifying their wealth.
Update (June 21): A report published by the Institute for Policy Studies and Inequality.org finds that "dynastic" wealth has exaccerbated political inequality in the U.S.
The 27 families who were on the Forbes 400 list in 1983 had a median increase in their net worth, adjusted for inflation, of 904 percent over those 37 years. In contrast, between 1989 and 2019—the most recent year available—the wealth of the typical family in the U.S. increased by just 93 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The five wealthiest dynastic families in the US have seen their wealth increase by a median 2,484 percent from 1983 to 2020.
Update (June 28): John Stoehr reacts to ProPublica report.
Unlike normal people, whose income is what they earn with their labor, the very obscenely rich's "income" is what their assets earn with their asset's "labor".
None of this would be a BFD if the very obscenely rich paid their fair share. They do not. Yes, they pay income tax on income. But, again, the vast bulk of the money coming into their households is not taxable.
Unsaid in the ProPublica report, but worth saying clearly, repeatedly and loudly, is that the US tax system encourages idleness while discouraging actual work.
Update (July 13): Sarah Anderson, Brian Wakamo, and Justin Campos discuss tax inequality.
The raging debate over public investment financing has created a huge opening for long overdue fair tax reforms. Without drastic changes in the tax code, we will continue to see those at the top accumulate ever more obscene levels of wealth and power while our physical and human infrastructure crumbles and low-income Americans, particularly people of color, get left behind.
Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.
Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations should Democrats win more votes. They are seeking to restrict access to the ballot, the most basic principle underlying the right of all adult American citizens to participate in our democracy. They are also putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators. State legislatures have advanced initiatives that curtail voting methods now preferred by Democratic-leaning constituencies, such as early voting and mail voting. Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.
In future elections, these laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections could enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections.
[T]hese actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy.
Update (June 2): Amanda Marcotte notes that Democrats could choose to do a lot to preserve democracy if only the Senate would do away with the filibuster. Unfortunately, two members continue to want to believe in the fairy tale of bipartisanship.
[The] turn towards public shame is a sign of Democratic desperation, no doubt. The only real hope that it works lays in the fact that Manchin and Sinema have spent months getting attention for being the holdouts. This likely means they can no longer bask in the ego boost from having the president and others cajole and plead for them to do the right thing. They don't get to be the belles of the ball anymore, but the choice of whether to be hated villains of history is up to them.
Will it work?
Only time will tell. But it's a troubling sign that Democrats are at the end of the line, seemingly short on strategies to save American democracy. Everything now depends on two people, both who seem unbelievably pigheaded and egotistical, to grow up and start acting like they care about the people who got them elected.
Update (June 3): Senator Kyrsten Sinema explains her support of the filibuster.
It is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation. Rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies, the idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before to create comity and to encourage bipartisanship and work together.
Update (June 4): Heather Digby Parton's comments make me think getting rid of the filibuster isn't really what matters--let's get rid of the whole fucking Senate.
Our federalist system that gives Wyoming the same number of senators
as California simply doesn't work in an age of partisan polarization, particularly when one of the parties is batshit insane and its party establishment is willing to win by any means necessary. Getting rid of the filibuster is absolutely necessary for the survival of our democracy. But it isn't a panacea and I don't see any way to fix the rest of it unless the Republicans come to their senses. What are the odds of that happening?
Update (June 14): Heather Digby Parton names the Republican tactic designed to truly undermine democracy.
Voter suppression is sadly familiar in American political life. Vote nullification, however, is not. And that's what all these new laws and regulations are designed to do. If the vote doesn't go their way, they are putting mechanisms in place to simply nullify the results through a complex set of "legal" maneuvers.
Update (June 16): In an interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Noam Chomsky sees an opposition where "[t]he party leadership is dedicated to the obstructionist strategy of sacrificing the interests of the country in order to regain power".
Your term "neoliberal proto-fascism" seems to me quite an accurate characterization of the current Republican organization — I’m hesitant to call them a "Party" because that might suggest that they have some interest in participating honestly in normal parliamentary politics. More fitting, I think, is the judgment of American Enterprise Institute political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that the modern Republican Party has transformed to a "radical insurgency" with disdain for democratic participation.
Update (June 18): Senator Joe Manchin thinks he has a clever compromise for a voting rights bill, but Amanda Marcotte is willing to explain reality to him.
The strategy that Republicans are using to hoodwink Manchin is the same they have used for decades to hoodwink Democrats: Pretend to be interested in a "compromise," mire the Democrats in endless negotiations, and run out the clock until elections. Then Republicans will run on a platform of accusing Democrats of getting nothing done, while ignoring the fact that Republican bad faith is why Democrats got nothing done.
Update (June 23): It's not surprise that all 50 Republicans voted against cloture on voting rights legislation. Heather Digby Parton quotes Senator Rafael Warnock.
What could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to protect minority rights in the society?
Patrick Cockburn says the most dangerous threat to the world is the transformation of the party into a fascist movement.
It was only this year that the final building blocks have been put in place by Republicans as they replicate the structure of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
Two strategies, though never entirely absent from Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their approach. One is a greater willingness to use or tolerate violence against their opponents, something that became notorious during the invasion of the Capitol by pro-[Orange] rioters on 6 January.
The other change among Republicans is much less commented on, but is more sinister and significant. This is the systematic Republican takeover of the electoral machinery that oversees elections and makes sure that they are fair. Minor officials in charge of them have suddenly become vital to the future of American democracy. Remember that it was only the refusal of these functionaries to cave in to [Dear Leader's] threats and blandishments that stopped him from stealing the presidential election last November.
It is worth listing the chief characteristics of fascist movements in order to assess how far they are now shared by the Republicans. Exploitation of ethnic, religious and cultural hatreds is probably the most universal feature of fascism. Others include a demagogic leader with a cult of personality who makes messianic but vague promises to deliver a golden future; appeals to law-and-order but a practical contempt for legality; the use, manipulation and ultimate marginalisation of democratic procedures; a willingness to use physical force; demonising the educated elite – and the media in particular; shady relations with plutocrats seeking profit from regime change.
One by one these boxes have been ticked by the Republicans until the list is complete.
Update (June 29): Chauncey DeVega warns that the risk is real and the threats haven't gone away.
Also, a great summary of how the Republicans do nothing except create distractions over non-existant problems as they subvert democracy and yet, somehow, the Democrats can do nothing about it.
Update (July 7): Democracy is at risk when the truth doesn't matter to large numbers of citizens. Amanda Marcotte notices how many Republicans insist on denying reality.
Do proponents of the Big Lie or insurrection revisionism actually believe their own nonsense? That's beside the point. Truth simply has no value to these folks. All that matters is power — and one way to exert power is to force the official narrative into the shape of a lie, untouched by even well-documented facts.
In a sense, this is nothing new. The right has long had an interest in replacing facts with its own bellicose myth-making.
Update (August 2): Paul Rosenberg points to mainstream reporting for enabling the Republican assault on responsible government.
Bad faith has long since become pervasive throughout the GOP, and completely normalized by the press.
Bad faith can be found in Republican claims to be "the party of life" as they cheerfully spread COVID disinformation. Bad faith can be found in their claims to be "the party of law and order," while they heap contempt on the officers who defended the Capitol and want them to get to the bottom of that attack. Bad faith can be found in their claims to be the party of patriotism, as they defend Confederate monuments and defend the Jan. 6 insurrectionists from scrutiny or consequences, paving the way for the next attempted overthrow of government.
When journalists cannot honestly report what is happening, when they normalize the ongoing destruction of democracy, they become complicit in it. When their posture of balance makes the world more illegible, so that democratic self-governance becomes all but impossible, they're no longer journalists. They have become propagandists.
Update (August 4): Chauncey DeVega agrees the mainstream press doesn't present a clear picture of the threat we face.
Reporting on [Dear Leader's] crimes and putting them in full context as part of a larger attempt to protect democracy is not a high priority in the 24/7 news cycle. Instead, too many of the leading media outlets thrive on false equivalencies between Republicans and Democrats through the obsolete habit of "both sides" journalism. Even faced with one party (and its associated political movement) that poses an existential threat to American democracy, the mainstream media is still, for the most part, afraid to state that plain truth for fear of being labeled as "liberal" and "biased".
It's become far too easy to deny the implications of what Fuckface told the Department of Justice in December.
Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.
Update (August 6): Heather Digby Parton recounts revelations about the thwarted coup.
It's easy to say now that "the system worked" but it was a very close thing, entirely dependent on the good-faith actions of certain members of the government. ... It's clear they were serious about [overturning the election results in six states], and it's even clearer that this inane notion of state legislators rejecting the will of the voters has seriously gained currency on the right. This is not the last we will hear of it.
Update (August 11): Lucian Truscott says reckless, desperate actions prevented the coup from succeeding. It's still a question whether anyone will be held accountable.
Practically every move [Orange Turd] made in December and January in advance of Jan. 6 was a crime. Pressuring Jeffrey Rosen to misuse the Department of Justice to support his private lawsuits was a crime. Conspiring with Jeffrey Clark to fire Rosen so Clark could send the letter to the Georgia legislature was a crime. Calling Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp and pressuring them to "find" votes and use the legislature to overturn the election was a crime. Meeting with his own White House staff and outside advisers to plan the rally on the Ellipse at which he would incite the assault on the Capitol was a crime.
[His] problem, to put it frankly, was that he didn't start committing crimes early enough. The crimes he committed in December and January were largely impulsive, not carefully planned or focused.
The evidence keeps piling up--Byung Pak, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, testified to the Senate Judicary Committtee that he resigned January 4 because he expected to be fired for refusing to support claims of massive voter fraud in the state. Ron Filipkowski reacts:
[The Department of Justice] has no choice now, they must open a criminal investigation on [von Clownstick].
The report is damning. The president of the United States tried for weeks to get the Attorney General to overturn the election. That is the definition of an attempted coup.
Parton suggests Republican leaders believe
that if [Fuckface] gets back in power, it will be perfectly fine if he behaves exactly the same way as he did during those insane final weeks of his term. This is how pathetically corrupt and compromised the GOP's moral reasoning has become. According to one of the major political parties in the country, attempted coups are now normal politics in America.
Update (October 11): Ruth Ben-Ghiat takes the neofascist threat very seriously.
[T]he way that [Dear Leader] has already acted is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. And if we look at what he did between November and January, this was all a trial run. So, he tried to get a military intervention, but that didn't work because General Milley wouldn't go along. He tried to do what autocrats already do in Turkey and Hungary and Russia, which was to fix the election machinery.
We are in the middle of an onslaught, on a massive scale, to neutralize our entire election apparatus. Because today, you don't suspend elections except in maybe communist dictatorships. Today, you hold them, but you make sure the results are what you need them to be.
