Prolonged bouts of high temperatures in China have challenged power grids and crops, and concerns are mounting of a possible repeat of last year’s drought, the most severe in 60 years.
China is no stranger to dramatic swings in temperatures across the seasons but the swings are getting wider.
On Jan. 22, temperatures in Mohe, a city in northeastern Heilongjiang province, plunged to minus 53C, according to the local weather bureau, smashing China’s previous all-time low of minus 52.3C set in 1969.
Since then, the heaviest rains in a decade have hit central China, ravaging wheat fields in an area known as the country’s granary.
These few sentences really capture the horror of “climate change”, that so many people overlook. Yes “average global temp” might increase by 1 degree celsius, but the really immediately terrifying part is changes to large weather patterns that provide a foundation to gargantuan food production industries.
I live in Western Australia. It’s a large state perhaps 3 times the size of texas, but it’s very arid and mostly desert aside from the south west corner in which there’s a “belt” of land with appropriate conditions for cropping in which 18 million tonnes of grain is grown each year, of which 90% is exported. Suppose this year the state receives 30% less rain, then next year 30% more. Suppose that halves production this year, and washes away some of the dry top soil next year. Hell, we might even receive more rain but just a few hundred kilometers from where it usually is.
Point is, even a mild interruption to established weather patterns is going to have a huge and detrimental impact on human agriculture. It’s terrifying really.
For those wondering, one degree celsius increase means every kilogram of air has at least increased by 1°C. The specific heat of air is about 1158 J/(kg*C). Now that might not seem like a lot of energy, in fact 4g (one teaspoon) of sugar has 68,000 J of chemical energy.
The thing is, you might have noticed, there’s a lot of air around us. About 5.14 x 10^(18) kg of air. So when you take a pretty normal number and multiply it by an insanely huge number, you get an insanely huge number. That’s about 5 exajoules of energy. That is the total energy consumption of the US in 2021 for four million years. Or in sugar terms, equal to the energy of sugar if you converted a little over half of the Earth’s entire mass into sugar.
We hit that additional amount of energy in our atmosphere in 2017.
But as an Australian myself i believe the government will ensure we’re all fed and not leave us to starve. Especially not in the Northern Territory where we can’t grow fuck all. /s (do we do that here)
Some reuters reporting here.
Including…
These few sentences really capture the horror of “climate change”, that so many people overlook. Yes “average global temp” might increase by 1 degree celsius, but the really immediately terrifying part is changes to large weather patterns that provide a foundation to gargantuan food production industries.
I live in Western Australia. It’s a large state perhaps 3 times the size of texas, but it’s very arid and mostly desert aside from the south west corner in which there’s a “belt” of land with appropriate conditions for cropping in which 18 million tonnes of grain is grown each year, of which 90% is exported. Suppose this year the state receives 30% less rain, then next year 30% more. Suppose that halves production this year, and washes away some of the dry top soil next year. Hell, we might even receive more rain but just a few hundred kilometers from where it usually is.
Point is, even a mild interruption to established weather patterns is going to have a huge and detrimental impact on human agriculture. It’s terrifying really.
For those wondering, one degree celsius increase means every kilogram of air has at least increased by 1°C. The specific heat of air is about 1158 J/(kg*C). Now that might not seem like a lot of energy, in fact 4g (one teaspoon) of sugar has 68,000 J of chemical energy.
The thing is, you might have noticed, there’s a lot of air around us. About 5.14 x 10^(18) kg of air. So when you take a pretty normal number and multiply it by an insanely huge number, you get an insanely huge number. That’s about 5 exajoules of energy. That is the total energy consumption of the US in 2021 for four million years. Or in sugar terms, equal to the energy of sugar if you converted a little over half of the Earth’s entire mass into sugar.
We hit that additional amount of energy in our atmosphere in 2017.
The air increasing by 1⁰C isn’t too crazy.
The ocean increasing by 1⁰C is an insane nightmare. Do you know how massive a heat sink the ocean is? For it to change, even by 1⁰, is terrifying.
And we’re gleefully adding thermic energy to this constantly at a rate of about four Hiroshima bombs every second.
But as an Australian myself i believe the government will ensure we’re all fed and not leave us to starve. Especially not in the Northern Territory where we can’t grow fuck all. /s (do we do that here)
When Westralia seceeds you territorians should come with.
We shall hoard our wealth of grain and hydrogen and watch the world burn.
China is massive though, Mohe is further north than Mongolia, it’s 2,200 km north of Beijing.
It’s nowhere near the central wheat fields so it’s not really comparable
I’m not saying the agricultural circumstances are comparable.
I’m saying that it’s the changes to weather patterns, hot or cold wet or dry, that are scary.
“It was hotter” is IMO a bit of a distraction, because no one really knows what that means in practical terms.
Like in the linked Reuters article, the higher than usual rainfall could well be more problematic than the higher maximum temp.