The Planet’s Hottest Days in Modern History; Mpox Is Back in Riverside County–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: July 6, 2023

Indy Digest: July 6, 2023

It’s never been hotter on planet Earth—at least since humans started keeping track.

According to The New York Times:

The past three days were quite likely the hottest in Earth’s modern history, scientists said on Thursday, as an astonishing surge of heat across the globe continued to shatter temperature records from North America to Antarctica.

The spike comes as forecasters warn that the Earth could be entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth driven by two main factors: continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by humans burning oil, gas and coal; and the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern. … The sharp jump in temperatures has unsettled even those scientists who have been tracking climate change.

“It’s so far out of line of what’s been observed that it’s hard to wrap your head around,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research scientist at the University of Miami. “It doesn’t seem real.”.

Yikes.

It’s disheartening and even sickening to realize that all of those terrible things climate-change scientists have been warning us about for decades are now actually happening. According to LiveScience: “Antarctic sea ice levels reached record-breaking lows last week—and this ‘extraordinary behavior’ could mark the start of its long-term decline, scientists warn. As of June 27, the extent of sea ice in Antarctica was nearly 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers) below average for this time of year, compared with the period between 1981 to 2010, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). … ‘In the midst of its winter growth phase, Antarctic sea ice has reached a record smashing-low extent for this time of year,’ NOAA staff wrote on Twitter. ‘Sea ice extent is approaching a half a million square miles below the previous lowest extent (for this day), observed in 2022.”

Here in the Western U.S., we’re concerned not about ice/water, but one of the other elements—fire. The deadly, expensive and horrifying increase in wildfires has been oft-documented in this space, and it’s on my mind right now for a very personal reason.

The hubby and I are planning on spending a good chunk of August in Reno, Nev., for various reasons—including family commitments and, well, the fact that August here can be climatologically unpleasant. However, Reno is located in a big geologic bowl on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, and quite often, smoke from big Western wildfires gets stuck in that bowl, leading to unhealthy and downright dangerous air quality for days and even weeks at a time, including a good chunk of the summer of 2021. We’ve been having discussions about what we’ll do if the smoke gets bad while we’re there—which, due to climate change, is going to be an ongoing concern for Reno.

We’re all going to be asking ourselves climate-change-related questions like this as the years go on—and more often than not, those questions will not have any easy answers.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• A new mpox case has been reported in Riverside County. City News Service, via NBC Palm Springs, reports: “For the first time in more than six months, Riverside County reported a new confirmed or probable mpox case in the Coachella Valley Thursday, raising the overall number to 317 … with nearly half of them in Palm Springs and the last case reported in December 2022, according to the latest Riverside University Health System data. … ‘This is a good reminder that there is a mpox vaccine and clinics are held regularly,’ Riverside University Health System spokesman Jose Arballo said Thursday.”

• Related: Experts have differing opinions on the possibility of another large mpox outbreak. NPR says: “The 2022 mpox outbreak died down across the globe, despite dramatically different public health responses among countries. The fact that we don’t fully understand what drove the global decline has (experts) worried. ‘It’s like we’re telling the story over and over again’ that an outbreak is not something to worry about, (Nigerian Dr. Dimie) Ogoina says, recalling the warnings about mpox he gave years ago that went unheeded. ‘Based on the modeling, we are at risk for (another) outbreak (in the U.S.) to the magnitude equal to or larger than the peak that we saw in 2022,’ (Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy coordinator for the White House National Mpox Response Team), says.”

• If you’re on Threads, please follow us @cvindependent. And if you’re saying, “What in the heck is Threads?” here’s your answer, compliments of The Associated Press: “Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live. The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries—including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite some early glitches, 30 million people had signed up before noon on Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads. New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay—as well as corporate accounts from Taco Bell, Netflix, Spotify, the Washington Post and other media outlets.”

• In news that surprises absolutely nobody, Elon Musk is not pleased about Threads. The New York Times reports: “Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, the billionaire has instituted changes that have angered the social platform’s longtime users, especially those who do not care for his laissez-faire approach to content moderation. Twitter has also suffered from more outages and bugs. Mr. Musk isn’t taking Mr. Zuckerberg’s actions lying down. In a letter dated Wednesday, lawyers for Twitter threatened legal action against Meta, accusing it of using trade secrets from its former employees to build Threads. Twitter also asked Meta to preserve internal documents relevant to a dispute between the two companies. The letter was earlier reported by Semafor.”

• Our partners at Calmatters take a look at the results of the state’s new Middle Class Scholarship, one year in: “California cemented its status among the most affordable states to earn a bachelor’s degree after lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom fulfilled their promise to expand the state’s Middle Class Scholarship program by another $227 million in this year’s budget deal. That overhauled scholarship, which debuted last year, is now a $859 million juggernaut. … Using new data that examines how the Middle Class Scholarship helped students in its first year, a CalMatters analysis shows that the grant worked largely as intended, sending more money to students of higher-income families. But the program has frustrated some advocacy groups, who want the state to spend more on lower-income students, especially those who are ineligible for existing state financial aid. For lawmakers grappling with a shaky state financial outlook while also attempting to rein in the cost of college, this is a tough needle to thread.”

• While I have conflicted feelings about this ruling, I think this judge needs to take a chill pill and calm down a little. The Associated Press says: “A judge on Tuesday prohibited several federal agencies and officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies about ‘protected speech,’ a decision called ‘a blow to censorship’ by one of the Republican officials whose lawsuit prompted the ruling. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted the injunction in response to a 2022 lawsuit brought by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri. Their lawsuit alleged that the federal government overstepped in its efforts to convince social media companies to address postings that could result in vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or affect elections. Doughty cited ‘substantial evidence’ of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote that the ‘evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.'” Really, dude?

• And finally … speaking of conflicted feelings: While I like the outcome, the method has my brain screaming “SLIPPERY SLOPE” at a deafening volume. The Associated Press, via PBS, reports: “Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed off on a two-year spending plan Wednesday after gutting a Republican tax cut and using his broad veto powers to increase school funding for centuries. Evers angered Republicans with both moves, with some saying the Democratic governor was going back on deals he had made with them. He got creative with his use of the partial veto in this budget, which is the third passed by a Republican Legislature that he’s signed. Evers reduced the GOP income tax cut from $3.5 billion to $175 million, and did away entirely with lower rates for the two highest earning brackets. He also used his partial veto power to increase how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the ‘20’ and the hyphen to make the end date 2425.”

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