This isn't sci-fi. It's not a game or a joke. This isn't some quaint curiosity. This is bloody reality. Wake up. 1.5C was already in the pipeline in 1965. Plus more for the other GHGs. Nineteen Sixty-five. Mark Cranfield
In every disaster movie, there is a scientist that is being ignored. This meme has been popular among climate scientists recently in what appears to be a futile effort to wake up world governments and people like you and me to lower carbon emissions today or perish. I write only to remind you that your very survival is at risk. People should prepare themselves to survive this terrifying transition to a world that humanity has never experienced.
The problem is much larger than ignorance because we have allowed the ilks of the Murdochs to run roughshod over our governments. The response by governments is to lie to you, and it works for them. They get to kick the can down the road for another day, another COP, 28 and counting,
Climate change is out of control, period. We can't refreeze Antarctica, the Arctic, the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes, or the permafrost. I have barely scratched the surface of how fucked we are. Humans have forced our world's physics to change, not for the better; think about that for a moment.
What’s that you say, doomer, you might be thinking.
Give me a few moments to explain; there is breaking news on an intermittent climate phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific Ocean known as El Niño and La Niña or neutral; the two active “phases are known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation – the strongest and most consequential factor driving Earth’s weather.”
The Conversation invites scholars such as the Chief Research Scientist at the Oceans and Atmosphere of CSIRO, Wenju Cai, to explain a new study that proves El Niño and La Niña will be disrupted in just eight years, forty years earlier than expected.
I will borrow heavily from the article as per creative commons. I can Republish it in its entirety though I have not. The Conversation is like that; please consider a donation to help them share the invaluable news that few report (You are free to republish the text of this article both online and in print. We ask that you follow some simple guidelines. Please note that images are not included in this blanket licence as in most cases we are not the copyright owner. Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author, their institute, and mention that the article was originally published on The Conversation.)
During an El Niño phase, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean warms significantly. This causes a major shift in cloud formation and weather patterns across the Pacific, typically leading to dry conditions in eastern Australia.
During a La Niña phase, which is occurring now, waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are cooler than average. The associated changes in weather patterns include higher than average rainfall over much of Australia.
When the oscillation is in the neutral phase, weather conditions hover around the long-term average.
Previous research has suggested El Niño and La Niña events may vary depending on where in the tropical Pacific the warm or cold ocean temperatures are located.
But climate change is also affecting ocean temperatures. So how might this play into El Niño and La Niña events? And where might the resulting change in weather patterns be detected? These are the questions our research sought to answer.
We examined 70 years of data on the El Niño–Southern Oscillation since 1950, and combined it with 58 of the most advanced climate models available.
We found the influence of climate change on El Niño and La Niña events, in the form of ocean surface temperature changes in the eastern Pacific, will be detectable by 2030. This is four decades earlier than previously thought.
Scientists already knew climate change was affecting the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. But because the oscillation is itself so complex and variable, it’s been hard to identify where the change is occurring most strongly.
However, our study shows the effect of climate change, manifesting as changes in ocean surface temperature in the tropical eastern Pacific, will be obvious and unambiguous within about eight years.
So what does all this mean for Australia? Warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, fuelled by climate change, will cause stronger El Niño events. When this happens, rain bands are drawn away from the western Pacific where Australia is located. That’s likely to mean more droughts and dry conditions in Australia.
It’s also likely to bring more rain to the eastern Pacific, which spans the Pacific coast of Central America from southern Mexico to northern Peru.
Strong El Niño events are often followed by strong and prolonged La Niñas. So that will mean cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the rain band back towards Australia – potentially leading to more heavy rain and flooding of the kind we’ve seen in recent months.
Yeah, “the kind of heavy rain and flooding of the kind we’ve seen in recent months.”
Australia is prone to severe natural disasters. These weather systems will only amplify its danger as climate change is a threat multiplier affecting our ability to grow food, and our infrastructure, prevent world economy collapses, the availability of fresh water, and our health, including the lives of wildlife and livestock.
I confess that I have little hope in humanity dealing with the situation. Green energy is great; if we had transitioned decades ago, we likely would have saved ourselves. That’s not what we did, and record-breaking carbon emissions combined with the carbon required to build our green energy grid is not a hopeful sign for changing our trajectory.
From Jonathan Franzen:
What If We Stopped Pretending?
There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” This is a fittingly mystical epigram from a writer whose characters strive for ostensibly reachable goals and, tragically or amusingly, never manage to get any closer to them. But it seems to me, in our rapidly darkening world, that the converse of Kafka’s quip is equally true: There is no hope, except for us.
I’m talking, of course, about climate change. The struggle to rein in global carbon emissions and keep the planet from melting down has the feel of Kafka’s fiction. The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.
If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.
Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. The facts have changed, but somehow the message stays the same.
I’m tired. I am tired of the apathy. I am tired of bringing the grim reality to this community. I am tired that a community member has to do it. I am tired that most Daily Kos staff has left this heavy burden to me. My diaries don’t go far on this site; the biggest story in human history is being missed by staff, Community Spotlight, and DK social. An activist site that only they can inform the public outside of this community. You know, activism. Why are they unable to do so?
Perhaps this story will get me banned; it will be the only way I can imagine leaving it, at least for now. If I thought someone else would pick up the ball and run with it, I would say aloha, move on, and enjoy the rest of my life.
Instead, I want you to prepare yourself for survival, fight for adaption and defeat the enemies of life with whatever power you may have. I am oh so tired.