It's official -- Hell has frozen over...
Yahoo! UK & Ireland News and BBC Newcastle

India's roads melt as record-breaking heat wave continues

As soon as it's summer, global warming denialists go into hibernation.

As soon as it's summer, global warming denialists go into hibernation.

Global warming denialists are like polar bears, a species facing extinction.

India's roads melt as record-breaking heat wave continues

Oh yeah, I remember standing on some asphalt in the summer of '95 (a record-breaking summer at the time) and I actually started to sink into it and it stuck to me. I'd figured they probably used better heat-resistant asphalt in warmer climes.

I'd figured they probably used better heat-resistant asphalt in warmer climes.

They do. In Estonia, melting asphalt is an ordinary summer phenomenon, because we make crap asphalt like Russians. Everybody else in the world does better.

To be fair to Russia, it does get a lot colder and warmer than here. It can't be easy to make an affordable material that deals well with both circumstances. I guess melting a little in summer is a better trade-off than breaking in winter.

I had motorcycles falling to the side a couple times, once here in Lisbon and the other near Seville, because the stand buried into the asphalt at a hot summer day under the sun.
Climate temperatures are measured at shadow, under direct sun a 40 degrees day easily goes up to near 60.

To be fair to Russia, it does get a lot colder and warmer than here. It can't be easy to make an affordable material that deals well with both circumstances. I guess melting a little in summer is a better trade-off than breaking in winter.

The correct highway material would be the kind of concrete you build houses with - designed to never melt, never break. Expensive, but indispensable due to climate. Particularly indispensable when you don't know how to make (or you refuse to make) proper asphalt. We have had some stretches of highways like this here built under Nazi occupation. Works fine with minimal repairs for almost a century now.

I'd figured they probably used better heat-resistant asphalt in warmer climes.

Yeah, our roads don't do that and we live at 40 C three months of the year. I think saw it once or twice minor streets and approached 50 C before.  Maybe it's because India is still an emerging market economy and they can't afford the better quality road surface everywhere?

To be fair to Russia, it does get a lot colder and warmer than here. It can't be easy to make an affordable material that deals well with both circumstances. I guess melting a little in summer is a better trade-off than breaking in winter.

http://www.interpretermag.com/bad-roads-a-domestic-russian-problem-so-bad-putin-cant-ignore-but-cant-fix/

October 10 - The state of Russia's road system, which now ranks 136th out of 144 countries evaluated, is so bad that even Vladimir Putin, who recently has been given to upbeat statements about the country, has had to change his tone. But his comments in Novosibirsk yesterday suggest that he won't or can't change the main underlying problems.

According to commentator Aleksandr Ivakhnik, Putin's public statements in recent times have seldom featured any critical comments about the situation in Russia. Instead, the Kremlin leader has preferred to stress his confidence about the basic stability of the economy and its good future prospects.

But at a meeting of the presidium of the State Council on the day after his birthday break, Putin changed his approach and spoke about the real problems of what he said was "a vitally important" sector of the Russian economy, one that other participants painted in even darker colors than he.

Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of Tatarstan and head of the State Council working group on roads, told the Novosibirsk meeting that 53 percent of federal highways and 63 percent of regional ones are substandard and that the situation is growing worse: Every year, the number of cars in Russia rises by six percent, but the highway system expands only 2200 kilometers.

In his speech, Putin said that the road sector remained "a difficult and problematic issue," with any resolution of current problems being a matter for the future. He suggested that the quality of existing roads had not improved despite massive spending and that the size of the network is insufficient to support economic growth.

The road system isn't everything. How's Russia's other infrastructure?

Rouble fell twice last year. If you are planning a little summer trip, now's the right time to go see Russia.

The fall of currency has hit Russians hard, because their loans are tied to USD. This should be illegal, because the country has its own currency and banks should not favour their own gains over those of the rest of the country.

The idea with devaluation is that everybody takes a hit while private credit receives some easing. But when loans are tied to a foreign currency, then everybody takes a hit except banks while private credit receives no easing, which makes devaluation an economic disaster.

Speaking about global warming, Northern Sweden has the warmest temperatures in the country right now.

Har du en solig sommarbild du vill dela med dig av?

I'm going to guess that this says (in Dutch)
Heb je een "zalig" zomerbeeld dat je met ons wilt delen?
Do you have a nice summer picture that you want to share with us?

What summer? It's still spring.

"Solig" means sunny. Basically, when it's sunny and over 15 C, it's summer, hurry to swim and stuff. And Estonian meteorologists predict that entire June will be without precipitation.

Huh, I thought "sol" was from Romance languages while Germanic languages went with some form of sun, with an -n.

All Scandinavian languages have gone with sol. Quite troubling...

What summer? It's still spring

Technically, but here we'll reach 38 C today, climbing to 42 on Saturday and Sunday   Yup, we're under and excessive heat watch , which I'm guessing will turn into a warning by Friday (today's about normal.)

Oy! It's 19° C here today. Perhaps the most normal temperature this month. It was approaching 28 or so a couple of weeks ago I think.

I wonder if there are statistics on the number of hospitalized jackass tourists that dehydrate themselves with alcohol and step out into temperatures like this.

Slashdot echos the usual tripe:

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the BBC:
The US and China -- together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions -- have both formally joined the Paris global climate agreement... It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions. Before China made its announcement, the 23 nations that had so far ratified the agreement accounted for just over 1% of emissions. This will put pressure on G20 nations over the weekend to move faster with their pledge to phase out subsidies to fossil fuels...

There's a G20 summit starting on Sunday, and the BBC's environmental analyst reports that the accord "will just need the EU and a couple of other major polluters to cross the threshold." Its ultimate goal is to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius -- "well above the aspirational 1.5C heating that the UN accepts should really be the limit" -- though U.K. researchers report that already 2016 temperatures may be rising 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.
(source: Slashdot.com... )

The U.S. doesn't let the president ratify (...that's agree to, for you folks in other parts of the world) treaties; and this is ostensibly a treaty.

(Iran should also take note!) But -as the stoners say- "It's all good!" There's actually nothing in the Paris "agreement" that is binding, on anyone... That makes sense, for the global warming purists: As long as there's a way to achieve political power via this meme, it's worth pursuing!

Incidentally, no credible authority -and certainly no science!- says that we can prevent (...if the models are correct -- a proviso that almost all "alarmists" insist upon!) a 1.5 or 2º C raise in "the earth's" temperature by 2100... Ooh! Scary!
So: We should do our best to make sure that we won't be able to deal with it, if it does happen.
Typical.

I'm always amazed, that people who don't create anything think that government can just order others to do so...

Indeed, it would be good if so-called "alternative" energy sources could replace fossil fuels. So let's do that!
But it can't be done by fiat... It actually needs to happen, to become viable.
Environmentalist pipe dreams (...or Red/Green wet dreams) won't cut it!

Oy!    It's 19° C here today

42º C today in Lisbon, 44º or more in many other places.
No registers ever from such a hot summer.

Just to shut up Oakdale's "models".

 

Just to shut up Oakdale's "models".

He doesn't realize it isn't just about climate models, even though by now it's become clear that  climate change has outpaced  the warming predicated by the models. Yes, Oakdale. The models were wrong by being too conservative about how fast the climate change.

You live in an alternate universe, Sang... So the current "state of science" is from 2012? Well, if you have an agenda, I guess you have to pick and choose your "science"...
Mind you, however, this was an op-ed piece. (Funny, how such usually end up being cited by AGW zealots.)

I incorrectly thought that even you could understand that article, since your comprehension of the science is all but non-existent. You know the temperature anomaly has increased since 2012, right? And 2012 was a year with comparatively little anomaly, right? Oh wait. You don't know this because you've been brainwashed by rightwing blogs.

I understood the article just fine: As I said, it was an op-ed. It began with given viewpoint and never strayed... Typical "sciency" stuff!

Anomaly used to be a term of art; now -for AGW warriors- it's become the data itself. Which might explain why the actual data -temperatures- disappears into a statistical model.
You are aware, Sang, that just because scientists disagree with your preferred conclusion that doesn't mean that they're "right wing"... It only means that you're hopelessly "left wing"!