The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: “The Climate Bomb Has Gone Off”
Dear Diary. Politicians are beginning to react to astounding worldwide heatwaves’ this year…or at least those that think that climate change is a real deal and are not beholden to the fossil fuel industry. One former governor from Washington State that I truly respect is Jay Inslee. He has been a stalwart fighter against carbon pollution and has led his state far towards a green future.
Jay Inslee has gotten on his bully pulpit over the past week and declared that a climate bomb has gone off in light of 2023 historic heatwaves and associated severe weather. He’s pulling no punches when it comes to climate deniers. Here is a Common Dreams article which encapsulates his concerns and why he is shouting from the rafters for humanity to so something:
‘The Climate Change Bomb Has Gone Off,’ Says Jay Inslee Amid Extreme Heat (commondreams.org)
Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee speaks prior to U.S. President Joe Biden at Green River College in Auburn on April 22, 2022. (Photo: Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
‘The Climate Change Bomb Has Gone Off,’ Says Jay Inslee Amid Extreme Heat
“What the scientific community is telling us now, is that the Earth is screaming at us,” said the Washington governor. “We need to stop using fossil fuels. That is the only solution to this massive assault on humanity.”
Jul 23, 2023
As record-shattering heat persists from Phoenix, Arizona to southern Europe, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee highlighted on Sunday that humanity already knows how to combat climate chaos: ditch planet-warming fossil fuels.
With tens of millions of Americans under heat alerts, Inslee—who ran a climate-focused 2020 presidential campaign—appeared on ABC‘s “This Week” to discuss current conditions and solutions with co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
“Look, the climate change problem, the fuse has been burning for decades, and now the climate change bomb has gone off,” Inslee said. “The scientists are telling us that this is the new age. This is the age of consequences because whatever we thought of climate change last year, we now understand that the beast is at the door. We knew this beast of climate change was coming for us, but now, it’s pounding on the door.”
“What the scientific community is telling us now, is that the Earth is screaming at us, and that is the situation,” he added. “I talked to a leading international scientist the other day who told me that we knew this was going to happen to us, but it’s happening to us maybe two decades earlier than we really thought could be in the realm of the possible.”
“We have to dramatically increase our efforts. That is necessary.”
Scientists have long warned that driving up the global temperature will make heatwaves worse—with dangerous consequences, including for the world’s food system. Last month was the hottest June on record and the trend is expected to continue during what Malta residents are calling the “summer of hell.”
Already, July has seen the warmest day and week ever recorded, and much of the Northern Hemisphere is still enduring extreme heat. Campaigners held an international day of action on Saturday as the “Climate Clock” dropped below six years, a warning of how close humanity is to using up the carbon budget and likely killing any hope for the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C limit for global temperature rise this century.
Greek authorities said Sunday that roughly 19,000 people were evacuated from the island of Rhodes due to wildfires. Reuters reported that “thousands spent the night on beaches and streets during what Greece said was its biggest safe transport of residents and tourists in emergency conditions.”
“We have to dramatically increase our efforts. That is necessary,” Inslee said of action to cut emissions. “There’s good news here. We can do this. Look, we’re electrifying our transportation fleet. We’re electrifying our homes. This is a solvable problem, but we need to stop using fossil fuels. That is the only solution to this massive assault on humanity.”
The governor argued that the United States needs to lead on a global scale but also emphasized that “this is not just something for the federal government. States can act. Our state is acting. We have 23 states in the U.S. Climate Alliance. And this is necessary.”
“We’ve had tremendous action under President [Joe] Biden’s leadership with the Inflation Reduction Act. And, unfortunately, the Republicans are trying to repeal that now,” Inslee noted. “But we need to go further and faster. And states can go further and faster. And we are doing that.”
Biden, who is now seeking reelection in 2024, campaigned on bold climate pledges going into the 2020 contest. While he has taken some of those promised actions, the president has also faced criticism from green groups, voters, and some Democratic lawmakers for backing fossil fuel initiatives—from the Mountain Valley Pipeline to the Willow oil project—and so far declining to declare a climate emergency.
Meanwhile, many Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates—including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—are pushing policies even more hostile to the climate and friendly to the fossil fuel industry.
Kyle Jones of the Center for Policy Advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council said earlier this week that legislation marked up by the GOP-controlled U.S. House Appropriations Committee “reads like a ‘how-to’ manual for destroying the planet.”
Raddatz asked how to convince people to care given that there are “candidates out there like Donald Trump, who mock the idea of climate change, and there are a vast number of Americans who ignore it, don’t care about it, or don’t believe it.”
Inslee insisted that “we can’t wait for Donald Trump to figure this out. We don’t have time to mess around to wait for this knucklehead to figure this out. We just got to make sure he’s not in office. And the way we do this is vote against climate deniers.”
“Vote against people who refuse to assist this moral and economic crisis that we have,” he advised. “You can’t wait for these folks, you’ve just got to make sure they’re not in office where they can do damage. Let them go off and play golf. We’ll solve this problem. It’s a solvable problem if we work together.”
“And people are coming around to this very, very rapidly because their homes are burning down. They’re choking on smoke from the Canadian fires,” he said. “When Ron DeSantis wants to go swimming, he can’t because the water is like a sauna, like a hot tub off his beaches. We’ve just got to make sure those folks are not in office. We don’t have the luxury of allowing these people to destroy the planet.”
This post has been updated with reporting on conditions in Greece.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
Here are some other “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is more climate and news from Monday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)