“You can compare it to a loaded gun. The magazine is full, but the atmosphere hasn’t pulled the trigger yet.” Prof Axel Timmermann, IBS Center for Climate Physics. Pusan National University in South Korea.
Hundreds of miles along the Pacific at the equator, there is an enormous pool of warm ocean water up to 656 feet below the surface. It is now likely, perhaps, as early as June, when that water makes it to the surface and sends the world’s temperatures soaring across the planet. One of the worst El Nino impacts will likely occur in the Australian continent where drought, heatwaves, and wildfires await.
We will see unspeakable horrors unfold that we will not want to face in Australia, Central America, and the Indian subcontinent. The world is getting warmer, and all hell could break out anywhere, don’t get comfortable. A food crisis is likely.
Australian News (this site is owned by the Australian News website owned by News Corp Australia) reports a vivid scenario that might play out at the regional level with SE Asia in 2023.
In a worst-case scenario of blistering heat lasting for many weeks, participants in a kind of war game were played out by SE Asian and Australian defense officials at the Australian National College of Asia and the Pacific. The group determined that the world needed the military for mobilization and not militarism to prop up an economic system against the demands of the population to do anything to stop the agony. Most defense officials come from where temperatures such as Vietnam, Laos, and the Philippines shatter heat records. They get it.
Dr. Elizabeth Bouton, a military and security expert and an Australian Army vet, noted that the war game was focused only on climate change and not climate change as a threat multiplier.
The scenario consisted of “a searing September 2023. Cities across the equatorial regions suffer electrical grid failures. Pumps fail. Pipes crack.” The heat continues through October the oceans, lakes, and rivers become too hot for fish to survive. Attempts by infrastructure workers can not repair the damage quickly, and humans, livestock, and wildlife all die en masse. The heat wave extends through October.
Fish start dying in rivers and lakes (in Spain, the government is relocating some while others are euthanized, Australia did the same in 2019 and 2020). Attempts at repairing infrastructure keep falling further and further behind.
Then people start dying of heat stroke and thirst. Hundreds of thousands of rotting bodies pile up in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila.
Jamie Sidel from Australian News writes this compelling story:
Water and food rationing must be imposed. Emergency supplies must be sourced.
Bodies lay rotting in the streets. People are getting sick.
Angry and grief-stricken populations begin to protest. Looters target food and water sources. And global supply chains buckle under the strain.
Citizens demand an emergency response. They demand that immediate crises be addressed. They insist the long-term climate threat be reversed.
Amid the social uproar and suffering, the UN Security Council declares a planetary emergency.
Dr Raymond says the challenge was to force the participants to assess the implications of such a climate crisis with candour.
“In this scenario, the nations asked military commanders to lead the response,” he says. “There are plenty of precedents for that. Our previous federal government appointed a military commander to run the Covid-19 pandemic response. So it’s not completely far fetched.”
The criminal groups moved in and became the security providers of choice,” Dr Boulton says of the war game’s outcome.
The Australian and South East Asian defence officials – at least those on the blue team – set out with good intentions and innovative solutions. But time was against them.
“They decided to override vested interests, to deal with the social dislocation, deal with the misinformation and policy settings in a very cohesive rather than piecemeal way,” explains Dr Raymond. “But they soon found out they were not the only force operating.”
The participants found that not one country can do this and that there needs to be a regional response to the collapse, such as a security response to disasters and power grid failure. One example that stood out is the starving lace water with cyanide to kill fish for a quick meal. It eliminates any possibility of a subsequent meal, the gamers note.
The war game strongly hinted that it would be a radio host that sparks an uprising. Does a charming Rush Limbaugh type of individual come to mind?
“When we look at who’s causing the whole climate ecological crisis, people are aware the fossil fuel industry has known about the fallout for a very long time,” Dr Boulton says. “I think we can say that we are now dealing with a different form of conscious hostile intent.
“A ‘knowingness’ of killing.”
Australia was very wet, and many regions flooded over the past three La Nina years. What this means for drought is unclear, but like climate-ravaged California, reservoirs are full from the unprecedented rainfall.
There is so much more at the ABC link embedded above.
Poppies