Hurricane #Estelle has spun up & grown into a massive 800k wide storm.
Whilst #Estelle is expected to remain over open water its impact on the Tropical Mega-Atmospheric river mean it's impacts will be felt in East Asia 13k kms away.
I discussed this in my thread 13 days ago which takes a deep dive into the relationship between a more extreme tropical rain belt and #extremeweather globally.
#Estelle is forecast to become a Category 2 Hurricane in the next 12 hours and a Major Hurricane within 24 hours and to remain at Major Hurricane strength for 48 hours after that.
#Estelle is also huge in size with intense convective bands extending 400kms from her center already, even though no eye has yet formed. She is - in summary - an extraordinary convection engine, delivering vast amounts of water vapour into the upper atmosphere.
In my thread back on Wednesday I looked at what the impact of all the additional water #Estelle is now generating would have in East Asia. The image below is an update of the GFS3 atmospheric water forecast from the quoted tweet below.
With more water than originally expected flowing into the system, the expected outcome is significantly worse.
Left. Forecast of a super typhoon hitting Shanghai Aug. 2nd
Right. Forecast (13/7) of relatively minor storm arriving 25/7.
Here are the two model forecasts two days apart. The latest forecast shows a massive slow moving storm similar to #Infa which struct China last July.
WARNING NOTE: The Chinese Storm forecast in the GFS3 Model run above is 16 days away and these forecast models are not accurate at this range.
That said, due to the forecast significant build up in atmospheric water in the Western Pacific #extremeweather is certainly possible.
The purpose of the thread from the 13th was to take a look at the cascading effects of water flow at the tropics in relation to possible #extremeweather events a year on from the catastrophic floods in Europe and China in 2021.
The effects of atmospheric water in the tropics have cascading impacts as water flows Westward. Here we see an updated Indian PWAT model taking into account #Estelle. (and the 13/7 comparison)
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.