There has been a sharp increase in discussion of climate change weather extremes in the context of the flood calamity in Western Europe, wildfires in the North West US, and the #ArabianMonsoonBurst
This thread looks at the big picture right now. What's next?
The image above from @Meteoblue shows most of the Northern Hemisphere & rainfall at the moment. The intense blobs of colour indicate high rainfall from thunderstorms.
What is immediately apparent looking at this is that there is an immediate issue now in the West Pacific.
What will soon be Typhoon In-Ha is forecast to make landfall in Taiwan and then stall bringing massive rainfall to the Philippines, China and Taiwan.
There is second tropical storm to the left of what will soon be In-ha which is simultaneously bringing extreme weather to HK.
Here's another view of IN-FA from the Joint Typhoon warning center. This is a very large very wet cyclone.
This is today's forecast path for the storm.
But what is particularly unusual about this storm is its wider context, it is imbedded in the middle of a monsoonal traffic-jam.
The animation above is the latest GFS precipitable water simulation for the Western Pacific. The details may change. But the set up is clear. A massive area of low pressure is forecast, with very high levels of moisture.
There are three typhoons in this forecast, two of them huge. And the picture at the end is littered with low pressure systems which could also develop into tropical storms.
This graphic shows forecast rainfall over this period (also from the GFS 16-day model).
I attended the Bonn climate talks. They were very disappointing to everyone. The elephant in the room was (of course) the U.S. decision to withdraw from the talks altogether.
Unfortunately.. perhaps intentionally in advance of the continuation of climate talks regardless of #US_Disintigration the talks were also very sparsely attended particularly by activists and NGOs. The reason for this was @elonmusk destroying @-USAID.
@elonmusk As you can see the USAID Twitter account is now dead - deleted which is an appalling act of vandalism executed by Elon and his tech-bro team of teenagers.
This article is deeply depressing. For my part at Scoop.co.nz it is clear to me that:
1. The Govt has a deliberate strategy - probably not official but nevertheless operative to destroy NZ media. 2. This is not going to change any time soon. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-07…
& Sadly from what I discerned last year the @nzlabour opposition is both apathetic and indifferent to the plight of media. Also the @NZGreens. And have always been so for as long as I can remember.
This is extremely disappointing
@nzlabour @NZGreens I will be returning to NZ in August to ensure continues to function in these very difficult times for NZ media. We have faced numerous big challenges recently and thank our supporters and readers for their support.Scoop.co.nz
Ok so this is a bit weird, but in a kinda chill way so do bare with me and and I will be happy to answer questions afterwards. It’s about a castle on a virtual island in a massive online role playing game called Evony and it involves a possible but speculative discussion about @elonmusk and @X.
All will be revealed but first a picture or four actually from the game. More will come.
Ok. So here’s what I think is going on in a nutshell. I think elonmusk has invested in a MMORPG: a “Massive Multimedia Online Role Playing Game” which is a bit of a mouthful, called EVONY.
I liked its Twitter ads and finally clicked. It’s huge. Someone else can do the business story here which I am sure is interesting too.
But the this bit is weird.
The mysterious knight on the red horse arrived this morning beside my castle and he had some treasure.
I hadn’t a clue who it was so I grabbed the treasure and tried to kill the horse and rider as that’s what you do. But we got smashed badly.
This interview with working class Uk financial markets savant Gary Stevenson - who has just published an autobiography - is seriously terrifying. He now has a @YouTube channel it seems and I’ll post a link shortly.
James O'Brien meets Gary Stevenson | LBC via @YouTube
His prognosis for the collapse of social democratic nation state finances due to the very sharp rise in income distribution inequality in the UK is horrific.
The consequences of unfettered transfers of money over decades due to neoliberal economics initially and more recently quantitative easing driven transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 5% of the population is the cause of his concern.
It’s very hard to imagine what can be done politically to rebalance this.
Thomas Piketty’s thesis which among other things warned about all of this based on long term historical analysis of wealth inequality appears to be colliding with Western Civilisation in a manner that threatens the very foundations of that civilisation.
Gary’s YouTube channel which addresses all this is here.
Well this was actually pretty good… very little crazy right wing stuff - none in fact - some light criticism of wokeness and a consensus that Hitler was a socialist or communist dictator not a rightwing liberal fascist - mercifully no discussion of Greenland Panama or Canada
The bit at the end was actually quite nice and agreement about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Importantly and probably deliberately there was very little to zero overt electioneering - a little bit of criticism of Weidel’s Spitzencandidat competition from Weidle but nothing extreme.
So nothing imo that could be seen as being election interference IMO - nor any reason for the DSA to be concerned or to get involved.
I didn’t even hear any particularly overt endorsement that went beyond that you might hear in passing in a podcast interview.
It ended with a discussion of mars - Elon’s favourite subject of conversation - which was quite interesting including a reference to the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy series and Douglas Adams.
From Weidel’s point of view though there was a lot of positive moderate exposure of her party and probably around 200k + listeners. Which may give her a bounce in the polls.
Also the final segment talking about space was quite delightful and genuine and portrayed the AFD Leader in a positive light.
And I’d say the two of them have both found a new friend.