As the climatologists have pointed out, the effects of climate change will not be uniform. No nice 1 degree rise in temperature and everything otherwise stays the same. Chaos theory rules. Infinitesimal changes here lead to spectacular and unpredictable changes there. Drought there. Deluge here. Drought yesterday. Deluge today.

DALLAS, June 27 — More than a foot and a half of rain flooded broad swaths of Central Texas on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a 13-year-old boy drowned in a Dallas suburb after he was swept away in a creek.

In the Central Texas town of Marble Falls, bridges and mobile homes were washed away, taps went dry in about two-thirds of the city and dozens of people were stranded on the roofs of cars and homes, the authorities said.

Rain in Texas

Desertification could drive tens of millions of people from their homes, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, a U.N. study warned on Thursday.

Desertification

Meanwhile, up in Alaska, all those tax rebates the good Cits have been chortling over for years might be needed, now

Higher temperatures, melting permafrost, a reduction in polar ice and increased flooding are expected to raise the repair and replacement cost of thousands of infrastructure projects as much as $6.1 billion for a total of nearly $40 billion — about a 20 percent increase — from now to 2030, according to the study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.


Climate Change in AK

We could of course go further afield: Africa for example.

Africa’s “great lakes” are shrinking.

Burundi is on Lake Tanganyika, which is still a vast expanse of water. But the shoreline has retreated 50 feet in the last four years, and ships can no longer reach the port. …

The biggest of Africa’s great lakes, Lake Victoria, was dropping by a vertical half-inch a day for much of last year. And far to the north, once enormous Lake Chad has nearly vanished. The reasons for the dipping lake levels seem to include climate change.

Kristof: NY Times ($)