Let Them Eat Air Conditioners

The jet stream pattern over Europe on July 1, 2015 (click to enlarge; source).

by Gaius Publius

This seems to have been a week of partial news. There's Greek news, but not much of it until the weekend. (Then look out.) There's Clinton news, but not much of it. There's Other Clinton news, but nothing you didn't expect. And there's horrible weather news, which climate delayer Judith Curry wants to turn into a "more carbon please" investment opportunity — in air conditioning, in Pakistan. Shorter Judith Curry — "Let them eat air conditioners."

And there's Bernie Sanders news, but you read that here already. Again, nothing you didn't expect. Thus begins the holiday weekend.

A brief wrap-up:

■ The Sanders news and the Clinton news, coupled with the Other Clinton news, means basically that Sanders can win the primary, even if neither candidate has a Macaca moment. From the Sanders piece:

Last night Bernie spoke to a capacity crowd at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum (which the corporatists call the Alliant Energy Center) in Madison. People had warned him that, with school out, he would be lucky to fill a quarter of the 10,000 capacity venue. But he filled it. ...

Hillary is counting on the $45 million she's collected, primarily from Wall Street and individual fat cats, to help her overcome Bernie's policy-oriented appeal. According to CNN, he's collected $9 million so far[.]

Even that $9 million Sanders figure is out of date now. One day later than the CNN report, The Hill and others report a higher number. Make that $15 million that Sanders has raised:

Sen. Bernie Sanders has raised $15 million in his first two months on the campaign trail as he looks to bankroll his bid against frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s massive war chest.

“It’s a tremendous start, we are on our way to building a massive campaign fundraising organization built on small donors all around the country,” Tad Devine, a Sanders aide, told The Hill, after the campaign released a snapshot of its fundraising totals on its website.

Consider the ifs. Were Sanders quickly out of the race, Clinton clearly gets the nomination, then tries to unburn her bridges to actual progressive Democrats in the general election, all the while publicly washed in the money that's floated both Clinton careers, spouting progressive mottos and fending off 10 years of stored Republican oppo research. Will she win? It depends on this.

With Sanders in the race for the long haul, she could be in real trouble. Speaking with friends recently I rough-guessed that she had about $50 million by now, to his $5 million. I was right about her money, and off by one-third about his. That, plus his ability to pull crowds, plus his ability to be tack-sharp in speeches and interviews makes him what Stephen Colbert used to call "a formidable opponent." This plane has barely taken off.

Thom Hartmann: "Bernie Sanders could be the next FDR."

If you click the video, note at about 0:45: "If Elizabeth Warren wants be a senator and wants to have power and authority in the Senate, the Clintons have long memories and they punish their enemies and help their friends ... So if Elizabeth Warren endorses anybody before the primary who is other than but Hillary Clinton, a lot of opportunities for her, if Hillary Clinton becomes president, may close ... a lot of doors may close."

Which supports my suggestion that they will tag-team on message through the primary without any visible signs of coordination. I was told over the weekend by someone who had observed each of them, that both Sanders and Warren were "very savvy." The view from my outsider's chair tells me that's true.

■ In Greek news, there's a referendum this weekend on the latest EU proposal, which may morph into a referendum on Grexit (Greek exit from the EU) and a return to the drachma, after a gut-wrenching and painful transition. Tsipras may have overplayed his hand ... or not. He may have caved to the EU after calling the referendum and recommending a No vote ... or not. The clever folks running the world of money in Europe may succeed at "extend and pretend" ... or not. Or they may not even try. Do they even think they need Greece? Who knows?

So one waits. After our day of Freedom, will the Greeks return to their chains? One waits.

■ And the weather news is horrible. I'm in Europe, wilting in 100°F weather. My friends on the West Coast have just had their bout in the 100s. The Pakistanis are dying in 110°F weather. As are the Indians. Signs of global warming (sorry, climate change)? You decide.

But don't be the last. Some have already made up their minds:

Heat waves are happening at least four times more often than they did before greenhouse gas emissions started boosting the planet’s temperatures, researchers at the Institute for Atmospheric & Climate Science in Zurich found in a recent study. Global average temperatures are now about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) higher than before industrialization, when countries began burning coal, oil and natural gas in buildings, factories and cars.

“Three-fourths of the hot days today are the result of man-made global warming,” said Reto Knutti, a professor at the Zurich institute and one of the study’s authors. While it’s too early to know if global warming contributed to the Pakistan heat wave, he said that in general, “There is a very clear influence of human-induced warming on the magnitude and the frequency of heat waves.”

For Europeans, this decision is not theoretical:

The European heat wave has spread to Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as Germany, where Dusseldorf's temperature of 36.1 degrees Celsius, or 97 degrees Fahrenheit, as of 8:30 a.m. ET was almost 22 degrees Celsius (40 degrees Fahrenheit) above average for this time of year.

Meanwhile, the heat is temporarily abating on Friday in parts of Spain, France and the UK, but the hot weather will come roaring back over the weekend, with high temperatures once again in the upper 30s to near 40 degrees Celsius in Paris on Friday, and only slightly cooler on Saturday. ...

Government officials in several countries, including France, have been warning citizens of the dangers of prolonged heat exposure. Europe has a history of deadly heat events, with a tragic 2003 heat wave resulting in between 40,000 and 70,000 fatalities, depending on the definition of a heat-related death. ...

On July 1, London's Heathrow International Airport recorded its hottest July day on record, when the temperature reached 36.7 degrees Celsius, or 98.06 Fahrenheit.

Nor for the Indians:

From mid-April till the end of May, nearly 2,200 people were killed by the heat − 1,636 of them in Andhra Pradesh, the worst-affected state. The normal May figure for the whole of India is about 1,000 heat-related deaths.

Dr Harsh Vardhan, India’s Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, has blamed the heat deaths squarely on climate change.

Nor for the Pakistanis:

The death toll from a weeklong heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan, has risen to 1,233, officials told the Associated Press Saturday. Some 65,000 people flooded the city’s hospitals to be treated for heat stroke, and about 1,900 patients were still receiving medical care as the country began to cool off. …

The heat wave started in earnest June 20, with temperatures climbing to 113 degrees Fahrenheit -- the hottest it’s been since 2000, CNN reported. The extreme weather came at the same time as Ramadan, a holy month most Muslims observe by fasting. Karachi’s power grid also collapsed, leaving thousands without air conditioning in a city already facing power cuts and water shortages.

In case your eyes glazed over with the numbers:

• Week-long temperatures at or near 100°F in most of Europe.
• Hottest July day on record at Heathrow Airport.
• In 2003 between 40,000 and 70,000 were killed in a similar European heat wave.
• In India over 2,000 are dead from heat.
• In Pakistan more than 1,200 are dead from the heat.

How many more dead before we curb emissions "with all deliberate speed"? Maybe we need some of those suffering faces to be ... no, I won't go there.

Let Them Eat Air Conditioners

In the climate world, Judith Curry is a famous media-hyped denier, which means she's switched to "delay" as the current tactic of choice — as in, "We know something is happening, but we don't know what it is...". Ms. Curry on the heat wave:

Bottom line is that the intuitively reasonable attribution of more heat waves to a higher average temperature doesn’t work in most land regions.

Looks like they need more air conditioning in Spain and France and also South Asia.

Does it make more sense to provide air conditioning or to limit CO2 emissions.  I vote for more air conditioning in these susceptible regions.

There a good takedown of this at GetEnergySmartNow.com (thanks to climate friend Adam Siegel for the tip). Judith Curry may not know what's happening, but you do, don't you?

There's a theme that runs through these three bulleted observations. It's the song of the world of the wealthy — "Let them eat air conditioners. It's not our job to feed them; it's theirs to feed us." (That's all three bulleted points, friends.)

GP

Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead in Eugene Oregon, 1987. Yes, that's Jerry you hear, alive in memory. (Original version here.)