It’s always just around the corner, so, if you could be so kind as to stop using fossil fuels (it’s ok if you’re an Elite, though), and give your money and freedom to government that would be great
The world inches toward catastrophic climate events: ‘Bigger shocks are on the way’
In the opening scene of American writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” a heat wave combined with a breakdown of the electrical grid in India kills 20 million people. The devastation causes the world’s nations unite to combat climate change.
Scientists have long warned that the world will experience more intense extreme weather events like heat waves, storms, floods and droughts. But what once seemed like the realm of fiction is now discussed as a possibility, even an inevitability.
The warn, but, they never seem to prognosticate when. Just “in the future”
Warning about an “extreme of extremes” or the “Other Big One,” a play off the California reference of a big future earthquake, can be fraught. After all, nobody can say for sure when a weather catastrophe may happen. But in the last few years, the planetary ingredients needed for a massive disturbance have been building. And alarm is growing.
Oh, so, they’re doomsaying but aren’t actually sure? Just trying to scare people?
“The risk is that people just think you are exaggerating,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the California Institute for Water Resources. “It’s the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ problem. Sometimes wolves are real. If it’s outside the door, wouldn’t you want to know?”
Sure. When’s the wolf going to be around? Sometime between 1990 and 2100, you say? That margin of error is rather big
Fast-forward: Today, Earth is being heated by massive amounts of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere, leading to a gradual rise in average global temperature. That increase, 1.44 degrees Celsius (2.59 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer in 2025 compared to the early 1800s, leads to more frequent, and more intense, extreme weather events.
Even if it is 2.59F (which is vastly overestimated from the reality of around 1.6-1.7F since 1850), that’s nothing unusual for a Holocene warm period. Anyhow, it’s a very long and doomy screed, ending with
Overall, the Earth is on a dangerous path.
“We need to be talking about some of the worst things that can happen,” said Tim Lenton, climate science professor at the University of Exeter. “It’s natural to think that some bigger shocks are on the way.”
Y’all have been yammering for 35+ years, and doom is still always around the corner. I might believe it if the biggest believers weren’t complete climahypocrites.
