Earth, Wind & Fire; Let’s Talk Weather
In one of my more pollyannish moods recently I observed the bustling outdoor restaurant scene in NYC and the responsibly distanced beach goers across the country and I couldn’t help but celebrate a return to normalcy and everyday human interaction that has been (responsibly and necessarily) in short supply throughout this pandemic. However, I quickly realized that you take the good with the bad and as the opportunity for human connection increases, so does that favorite of all human interactions: small talk. The backbone of modern civilization. Given that we’re all a bit out of practice these days I thought I’d help you out, so let’s talk about the weather.
On June 20, 2020 a town in eastern Siberia registered a new record high for the region — 38 degrees Celsius or 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. You read that correctly. Siberia. 100 degrees. The town was Verkhoyansk and it is located in Northeastern Siberia in Russia, within a region also referred to as Arctic Siberia, and it lies on the same latitudinal plane as Greenland and Northern Canada. As if a region in Siberia recording triple digit temperatures was not ominous enough, the warm air coupled with dry soils have led to a record year of wildfires, including the terrifyingly-named ‘Zombie fires.’ Worrying global climate trends see the arctic warming even faster than the rest of the world and melting arctic ice is releasing immense amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 32x more heat than CO2 (according to a recently released Purdue research paper) into the atmosphere. It is estimated that 16.3 million metric tons of carbon, or about 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, were emitted in Siberia in June. If a tropical Siberia and Zombie fires aren’t enough to keep the chit chat going, “an intense cold front” is expected to bring heavy precipitation, including large swaths of snow, to South Africa, 84% of the continental U.S. population will be experiencing a heat wave this week, and torrential rain has led to extreme flooding and landslides in Japan.
While climate change induced weather patterns might work to liven up what used to be an awkward space filler, that’s not much of a silver lining. And, unfortunately, despite a pandemic-aided expected drop in emissions for 2020, global temperatures continue to rise, and I fear that a balmy Siberia is just the tip of the extreme weather iceberg. Which is fitting, because if Siberia continues to feel more like the Caribbean, the tip is all we’ll have left.
Tucker Pribor, VP Investments
If Zombies don’t get you (and you’ve already forgotten about murder hornets), how about the fact that scientists have studied that extreme weather makes spiders more aggressive and that climate change is leading to an Arctic wolf spider baby boom. Thanks 2020, the hits just keep on coming.
A law that could make climate change illegal: Denmark looks to bring the climate agenda into legislation and hold successive governments accountable to progress on climate action, ensuring that long-term priorities are not forgotten in the wake of short-term government tenure.
An interesting book recommendation from the FWP reading list, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate is currently in my Amazon Cart (a potentially ironic statement given the title and subject matter).
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