Tangle - The heat records set last week.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the heat records that were shattered, broken, approached, passed, whatever you want to call it, last week across the globe. Also, obviously, we've been dealing with some wildfire smoke here in the United States that's

Starting point is 00:01:44 kind of tied into this conversation, which is all related to climate change. We're going to be talking about what the records were, what just happened, some of the commentary it has ignited, and of course, share some views from the left and the right. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. with some quick hits. First up, President Joe Biden is touring Europe this week with stops in the United Kingdom, Finland, and Lithuania. Number two, nine people were wounded in a mass shooting in downtown Cleveland on Sunday. Number three, the coalition government in the Netherlands collapsed on Friday after four parties were unable to agree on a migration policy. 4. Drone strikes carried out by the United States killed an Islamic State leader in Syria on Friday, according to U.S. Central Command.

Starting point is 00:02:39 5. Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Pergozhin, met in person this week. An astonishing milestone this week. Monday and Tuesday, the hottest days ever recorded on Earth. Here in the U.S., Americans feeling the brutal summer heat firsthand. Over 20 million under heat alerts today. Millions of Americans are under alerts and across the planet, thermostats are at the top of the range. More than 67 million Americans from Arizona to Maine saw temperatures hit the 90s. It's been a week of record-breaking heat around the world. The average global temperature on Wednesday hit 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit. According to researchers at the

Starting point is 00:03:34 University of Maine, that matched the unofficial record high just set on Tuesday. The grim milestones are the latest in a series of climate change driven extremes. Out-of-control wildfires in Canada have burned millions of acres, displaced tens of thousands of people, and blanketed wide swaths of the U.S. in thick smoke. Last week, Earth recorded four straight days that tied or broke the hottest days known since record-keeping began in 1979.

Starting point is 00:04:04 Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the average global temperature on Thursday climbed to 63.03 degrees Fahrenheit, 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the average for that date, and an increase from the 62.9 degree Fahrenheit record set the day before. Global temperatures were driven up by a marine heat wave in the North Atlantic, heat temperatures were driven up by a marine heat wave in the North Atlantic, heat waves across Texas and Mexico, record heat in China, and the drought conditions that have contributed to wildfires still burning in Canada. Smoke from those wildfires has caused major cities across the northern United States, including New York,

Starting point is 00:04:39 Chicago, and Philadelphia, to experience some of the worst air quality in the world over consecutive days in the last month. While global heat records like this are preliminary, the data will be checked and poured over in the coming weeks, temperature monitoring is more reliable now than it has ever been. The temperature readings are collected from weather balloons, satellites, land surface stations, and ocean buoys. Of course, since these tools have only existed since 1979, the temperature record is incomplete. However, paired with studies in which meteorologists have estimated the history of the planet's temperature, the reading suggests we could be living through the hottest days in human history. Climate scientists from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which is funded by the European Union,

Starting point is 00:05:21 say these record-breaking temperatures are the result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions and a powerful El Nino weather pattern, which is a periodical natural phenomenon that develops over the Pacific Ocean. More than a dozen people in Texas have died from the heat and hundreds of others have been sickened, while extreme weather events like floods, hail, and tornadoes also hit the southwest last month. Additionally, June was the hottest month on record for global ocean temperatures. The record-breaking heat, the wildfires in Canada, and smoke across the northern United States has set off a slew of commentary on climate change. Today, we're going to dive in, examining the recent data with opinions from the left and the right, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left warn that we are

Starting point is 00:06:20 in a dangerous era and must take more immediate action to fight climate change. Some suggest we are experiencing the hottest days in the last 125,000 years. Others emphasize that dirty air and wildfires are the result of climate change. The Los Angeles Times editorial board asks whether world leaders will now get serious about climate change. The last three days have probably been the Earth's hottest on record. Last month was the hottest June ever recorded. Punishing a deadly heat has hit large swaths of the planet, and oceans are experiencing heat waves with surface temperatures hitting new highs, the board said. The long-predicted hotter future fueled by climate change is happening now. Remember, the global temperature of 62 degrees may not sound startling,

Starting point is 00:07:03 but that average includes parts of the world that are in the middle of winter. It's frightening to see how fast the planet is warming and what that portends for countries across the globe that are feeling the effects of extreme weather, including intense heat waves, wildfires and drought, they said. eastern United States was cloaked in smoke from wildfires in Canada, and powerful heat waves in recent weeks have claimed lives in Texas, Mexico, and the Southwest, and across the globe in India. The time for incremental steps is over, and the major economies of the world have to immediately switch to renewable energy and slash planet warming pollution in half by 2030. In Time magazine, Jeff Goodell said the last time the Earth was hotter than it is today was at least 125,000 years ago, long before any human civilization. Just look at the events of the last year. Wildfire smoke from Canada turned the skies on the east coast an apocalyptic orange.

Starting point is 00:08:00 Sea ice in Antarctica hit a record low. All-time temperature records were shattered in Puerto Rico, Siberia, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Texas. I live in Austin, where as I write in this late June, it's 106 degrees Fahrenheit. In the North Atlantic Ocean, sea surface temperatures in late June are the highest ever recorded, Goodell said. The truth is, extreme heat is remaking our planet into one in which large swaths may become inhospitable to human life, he added. One recent study projected that over the next 50 years, one to three billion people will be left outside the climate conditions that gave rise to civilization over the last 6,000 years. Even if we transition fairly quickly to clean energy, half of the world's human population

Starting point is 00:08:43 will be exposed to life-threatening combinations of heat and humidity by 2100. Temperatures in parts of the world could rise so high that just stepping outside for a few hours, another study warned, will result in death even for the fittest of humans. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Drew Shindell said that wildfire smoke and dirty air are climate change problems. As the eastern United States and Canada reeled from days of thick wildfire smoke in early June, millions of people faced the reality of climate change for the first time, he said. But even without wildfires, the air that 99% of the world's population breathes in is not safe. That's according to the World Health Organization. Air pollution is everywhere,

Starting point is 00:09:25 killing 7 to 10 million people a year. Carbon dioxide is the largest driver of climate change, but things like black carbon from vehicles, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons increase global warming and have disastrous impacts on our health. Fortunately, there are practical, technically feasible, and cost-effective ways to reduce the prevalence of these pollutants. A quick way to dramatically reduce methane is to patch up leaks in oil and gas pipelines, which actually saves companies money, too, he said. Hydrofluorocarbons, often used in refrigerators and air conditioning units, can be replaced with alternatives that have low or zero global warming potential. with alternatives that have low or zero global warming potential. Shifting to electric vehicles and helping people in developing countries transition to clean methods of cooking instead of on open fires can also reduce black carbon.

Starting point is 00:10:22 All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right question how meaningful the heat records are and argue that the data is imprecise. Some criticize the solutions being pushed by the left, arguing that dire predictions about the future have often been inaccurate. Others say it is environmental groups that have made some of these issues like wildfires harder to address. In the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Malloy said, don't believe the hottest days ever rhetoric. One obvious problem with the updated narrative is that there are no satellite data from 125,000 years ago. Calculated estimates of current temperatures can't be fairly compared with guesses of global temperature from

Starting point is 00:11:01 thousands of years ago, Malloy wrote, pointing to average temperatures of 57.5 degrees tracked by the website temperature.global. Moreover, the notion of average global temperatures is meaningless. Average global temperatures is a concept invented by and for the global warming hypothesis. It is more a political concept than a scientific one. The Earth and its atmosphere is large and diverse, and no place is meaningfully average. Also, our temperature data are imprecise, he said. It has been estimated that 96% of U.S. temperature stations produce corrupted data. About 92% of them have a margin of error of a full degree Celsius or nearly two degrees Fahrenheit. The lack of precision of reported temperatures, whether estimated or measured, is not reassuring. Even temperature data presented since 1880 is misleading, as regular temperature collection in places such as the North and South Poles began

Starting point is 00:11:55 much later. In Fox News, Jim Nell said the Green Mafia is losing its collective mind. In the 1960s, we were all going to die from famine driven by overpopulation. We were heading for a new ice age in the 1970s. The oceans were going to be void of fish and the hole in the ozone layer was going to kill us all. Then we started to hear about global warming and the predictions became even more dire, Nellies wrote. When that didn't happen, the Green Mafia coined the phrase climate change to basically blame any natural disaster or unusual weather event as yet another human-driven greed and gluttony. Laws in California have already gone into effect prohibiting large trucks killing 200,000 cows, effectively reducing the nation's dairy herd by 10%. Not to be outdone, New York City has proposed new regulations for wood and coal-fired pizza ovens operated within

Starting point is 00:12:56 the city's five boroughs. That would cost $20,000 to $30,000 per eatery. But the grand prize goes to the Biden administration, which is open to studying how to block sunlight to save the earth from climate change. In the Washington Examiner, John Karakoulakis said environmental groups deserve some blame for things like wildfires. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web,

Starting point is 00:13:34 his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor

Starting point is 00:13:55 about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Piling up brush, thinning dense strands of trees, and pruning lower branches are some of the ways

Starting point is 00:14:22 forest managers reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and encourage the new kind of growth and restoration that benefits wildlife, he wrote. But a faction of the environmental movement finds this kind of human activity in forests to be unacceptable, and for decades these activists have been waging war against forest managers in the courts. The worst example was in 2015, when Cottonwood Environmental Law Center won a court case allowing the use of the Endangered Species Act to block existing forest management plans. On federal land alone, there is already an 80 million acre backlog of forest ecosystems that need restoration work. The wildfire threat posed by this backlog has been called a crisis by the Biden administration, which is attempting to fast-track forest thinning projects over the next decade, he said. But the Biden forest plan and other

Starting point is 00:15:09 forest management proposals to reduce the backlog are now clouded in uncertainty because of the renewed threat of legal action. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So let me make a few broad points and then I'll try to briefly flesh them out. One, climate change is real and it is caused by human activity and it is concerning. Two, average temperature records don't seem like a very important measurement to me. Three, there is a lot of great news on our energy transition. Four, the wildfire issues are not just about the climate. And five, doomerism is not going to get us anywhere. First, climate change is real. This is rather simple.

Starting point is 00:16:02 We wrote a whole piece examining climate change, and if you want, you can go read it. Humans are an incredibly powerful force on the planet, and we are impacting it every day with our emissions, which are contributing to increased global temperatures. There are worthy caveats to this, like that climate change might impact us in a way we haven't expected. Stephen Coonan just wrote a whole piece about how its impact on the economy might be far more marginal than we think. Others have suggested global warming will actually in a way we haven't expected. Stephen Coonan just wrote a whole piece about how its impact on the economy might be far more marginal than we think. Others have suggested global warming

Starting point is 00:16:29 will actually reduce extreme weather deaths because cold is so much more dangerous than heat. These kinds of variations might be true, but the overall cost and threat of climate change is still very real, and we're witnessing it now in real time. Two, global average records are not the most important thing to focus on. This is just tied directly to today's main topic. I understand why breaking

Starting point is 00:16:51 these heat records is newsy and makes for headlines. If the planet is getting measurably warmer on average, we can expect temperatures to be going up in most places. The central threat of climate change is that, as a result of higher temperatures, certain areas will become difficult or impossible to inhabit due to extreme weather and sea level rise and then constant flooding, which will create mass migration and threaten food and water supplies. This will be expensive, disruptive, and potentially deadly. Things like insects spreading to new places or ocean habitats being harmed by warm temperatures will also matter a great deal. But quibbling over global averages is in some ways a distraction. It's the trend that matters, and that trend is pretty obvious. The primary threats are about what happens because of this trend. Already hot places getting way too hot, and coastal areas flooding. More concerning to

Starting point is 00:17:42 me than global temperature records is the extreme and unprecedented heat in localized places like the southwestern United States and seeing temperature readings trending up and to the right in the data we have on record. Three, energy transition. This has not been talked about enough during the current news cycle. There are so many things to cite, it's hard to know where to start. The U.S. is drastically reducing its emissions, which is primarily driven by energy sources. Wind and solar have overtaken fossil fuels in the European Union. The cost of solar panels has plummeted, driving more adoption. We're investing billions and billions of dollars into more efficient energy sources. Technology tied to electrifying transit is absolutely booming. Battery storage is improving. carbon capture technology is in its infancy, and future technology like fusion and next generation nuclear

Starting point is 00:18:30 energy are promising. You can go read dozens and dozens of stories about the positive moves we are making. The upshot? We are actually making meaningful progress in changing how we consume energy, which has a large impact on how we treat the planet. Four, wildfires are not just about the climate. One of the most jarring experiences for me in the last year was the wildfire smoke that blanketed the East Coast. It really did feel apocalyptic and actually did have a direct and meaningful negative impact on my life. I was forced inside for consecutive days. I had to cancel outdoor plans. In parts of the world, wildfires are probably worsening because of the drought-induced dryness

Starting point is 00:19:10 caused by climate change. But the right and Trump are also correct that they are worsening because of terrible forest management. Environmental groups trying to protect areas from controlled burns can make this a lot worse, but that doesn't mean that increased drought conditions aren't still a major problem. And five, doomerism isn't helping. Just like the debate about the existence of climate change is dead, as Philip Bump put it in the Washington Post, so too should climate doomerism die. Our way out of this is not anti-capitalist rhetoric about how the planet is beyond repair, and we have no way out except to lower our standard of living, to de-grow, and to upend daily life with overnight changes. In the short term, U.S. government investment and involvement

Starting point is 00:19:55 has probably gone as far as it will, but there is still a lot we can do. As Noah Smith has written, the answer is a technology-focused, bottom-up, whole-of-society effort. Jim Nels, under what the right is saying, is actually right that a lot of the predicted doom, like ozone layer destruction, never came to be. But the reason for that is that we didn't spend all our time talking about whether the problem was real or how it would be impossible to overcome. We actually took concerted action by leaning into solid science and banning chemicals that we discovered were destroying the ozone layer. We need that same kind of collective, holistic effort on these climate issues too. Yes, countries like China must curb its coal industry.

Starting point is 00:20:37 Yes, we'll need a diverse energy ecosystem, likely one that includes nuclear power. And yes, we'll enjoy some of these transitions organically as certain climate-friendly options become more affordable than traditional ones like electric cars or natural gas. It's silly to quibble over whether the undeniable upward trend in global temperature constitutes a record or not when we could be spending our time on better resource management, climate preparation, and technological advancement. Fortunately, much of the world is already doing that, and we are already seeing the results. All right, next up is your questions answered. This one is from Nick in Land O'Lakes, Florida. Nick said, I'm wondering what your take is on the safety of sending children to school in the

Starting point is 00:21:23 United States. With school shootings becoming normalized there and the additional mental health impacts of active shooter drills with instructions for children to cover themselves and their friends in blood. It feels like the risks outweigh the reward if you have any other options. So, Nick, look, it was a little jarring to see this question because I actually had a similar conversation with a friend just a few weeks ago, and my message to him is the same as it is to you. Sending your kids to school is still very, very safe. In fact, the most dangerous part of their day is probably the trip to school on the bus ride or in the car with their parents. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like there is nothing to worry about. When you read a new story about a school shooting seemingly every week, it is fair to get an overwhelming sense that we are utterly broken. But I also think the mass hysteria and non-stop coverage of these events make the

Starting point is 00:22:14 threat seem much bigger than it is, and has a contagion effect that actually makes them happen more frequently. The odds that an American child will die in a mass shooting at a school are roughly 10 million to one. That's pretty much on par with being killed in an earthquake or struck by lightning. If that seems hard to believe, I'm not surprised, so it's worth considering why. I find it more helpful and more believable that our mitigation methods are actually more harmful than they are helpful. harmful than they are helpful. Things like active shooter drills, which will almost never be used, yet are conducted in 95% of schools anyway, for obvious reasons are making kids more anxious and depressed. So my short answer, yes, sending your kids to school is still safe and should still be

Starting point is 00:22:57 done. Next up is our under the radar section. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, the Democrat, used a line item veto to reshape public school funding for the next 400 years. State law allows Evers to strike words and digits from a proposed revenue hike. Last week, the state was passing a budget that raised the amount local school districts could generate via property taxes by $325 per pupil for the next two school years, from 2023 to 2024 to 2024 to 2025. But Evers vetoed the hyphen and the number 20 in the end date to make it 24-25, effectively passing the budget rule for 2023 to 2024 school year to the 2425 school year, a 400 year time span. Republicans called it an unprecedented brand new way to screw the taxpayer. The move can be undone by a legal challenge or a future governor, but it sparked the latest

Starting point is 00:24:00 tussle between Evers, a former school teacher, and his Republican controlled legislature. BBC News has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. tussle between Evers, a former school teacher, and his Republican-controlled legislature. BBC News has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. Next up is the numbers section. The temperature in degrees Fahrenheit of San Angelo, Texas, on June 25th was 112. That's a new record. The temperature in degrees Fahrenheit of San Angelo, Texas's previous record from 1994 was just 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The decrease in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2020 was 20 percent, according to the EPA. The fall in the price of solar electricity from 2009 to 2019 was 89%. The percentage of the world's coal consumption attributable to China is 49%.

Starting point is 00:24:52 All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day section. Canadian Marcus Pucanen walked across Toronto last week, ending an eight-year journey around the globe without the assistance of any motorized device. Buchanan left Toronto in July of 2015 in a canoe and has walked, skied, bicycled, sailed, kayaked, paddleboarded, and pogo-sticked his way back to where he started. On his journey, he endured freezing conditions skiing across British Columbia, smoggy traffic bicycling across the Southeast Asia, and an eight-month COVID lockdown in Northern India,

Starting point is 00:25:30 and choppy seas sailing across the Indian Ocean. Now, he is back home in Toronto after having invited anyone in the area down to Balmy Beach Club for his return, and he is celebrating the end of his journey. CBC has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. I hope you all had a great, long, and restful weekend. We'll be right back here with a new episode tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:25:58 Don't forget, in the meantime, to go check out our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash tangle news, to go check out our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash tangle news, or to go to our readtangle.com forward slash live webpage in order to check out some new tickets for our Tangle Live event. We are announcing our guests this week. And when we do, I think we are going to sell out. So you should probably go get your ticket now if you haven't yet and you want to come. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena

Starting point is 00:26:40 Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad

Starting point is 00:27:47 and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Tangle - The heat records set last week.

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