Cycles, Permanent Changes, Trigger Points

    

A dying rice crop in India

“The recent record temperatures, as well as extreme fires, pollution and flooding we are seeing this year, are what we expect to see in a warmer climate…We are just getting a small taste for the types of impacts that we expect to worsen under climate change.” 

Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald.

I listened as Fox News host Laura Ingraham explained the hottest days in the hottest week in recorded history: “It’s summer! It’s supposed to be hot!” For so many climate change deniers or marginalizers – ignoring the rest of the obvious “natural disasters” from floods and fires to hurricanes and draughts – they tell us that the Bible pledged no more global disasters (after the Great Flood), that mankind was permitted unrestricted rights to do with its planet as it chooses… and everything is always cyclical, especially weather. There is some truth to that cyclical reality, but I have always thought of time-change as more of a spiral than a rather simplistic circle.

The “cyclical” nature of the current El Niño cycle – dry and rain-impaired – vs the rains-soaked, cooler La Niña, shows the essential part of periodical transitions, just as the currently enhanced solar explosions on the Sun have natural consequences on earth as well. But the intensity of those recurring transitions also describes how climate change has accentuated the increasingly devastating trigger points… creating more intolerable weather realities than we have ever before experienced. As Aniruddha Ghosal, writing on July 16th for the Associated Press, points out, global food supplies are at risk now, perhaps more in Asia than much of the rest of the world:

“An El Niño is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific that shifts global weather patterns, and climate change is making such events stronger. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the present one in June, a month or two earlier than it usually does. This gives the event time to grow. Scientists say there’s a 1-in-4 chance that it will expand to supersize levels.

“That’s bad news for rice farmers, particularly in Asia, where 90% of the world’s rice is grown and eaten, because a strong El Niño typically means less rainfall for the thirsty crop… Past El Niños have resulted in extreme weather as diverse as drought and floods.

“There are already ‘alarm bells,’ said Abdullah Mamun, a research analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute, pointing to rising rice prices because of shortfalls in production. The average price of 5% broken white rice in June in Thailand was about 16% higher than last year’s average.

“Global stocks have run low since last year, in part from devastating floods in Pakistan, a major rice exporter. This year’s El Niño may worsen other woes for rice-producing countries, such as reduced availability of fertilizer because of the war in Ukraine and some countries’ export restrictions on rice. Myanmar, Cambodia and Nepal are particularly vulnerable, a recent report by research firm BMI warned…

“[In] northern India’s Punjab state, [less] than one-tenth of the usual rainfall had come by early this month, and then floods battered young crops that had just been planted.” Rice is such a basic foodstuff but added to the wheat shortages caused by Russia’s invasion or Ukraine, the pressure on the poorest on earth is now literally the difference between life and death. Indeed, the planet is sweltering, now in the equatorial region and the northern hemisphere, soon to be followed by parallel horrors in the southern hemisphere in their summer later this year. Although El Niño and La Niña cycles are always temporary, their intensity is far stronger now than ever before.

The July 16th Associated Press also summarizes this current heatwave, exacerbated by El Niño: “An already warming Earth steamed to its hottest June on record, smashing the old global mark by nearly a quarter of a degree, with oceans setting temperature records for the third straight month, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced [July 13th].

“June’s 61.79-degree global average was 1.89 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, according to NOAA. Other weather monitoring systems, such as NASA, Berkeley Earth and Europe’s Copernicus, had already called last month the hottest June on record, but NOAA is the gold standard for record-keeping with data going back to 1850.

“The increase over the last June record is ‘a considerably big jump’ because usually global monthly records are so broad-based they often jump by hundredths, not quarters, of a degree, said NOAA climate scientist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo…

“Both land and ocean were the hottest recorded in any June. But the globe’s sea surface — which is 70% of Earth’s area — has set monthly high temperature records in April, May and June, and the North Atlantic has been off-the-charts warm since mid-March, scientists say. The Caribbean smashed previous records, as did the United Kingdom…

“NOAA says there’s a 20% chance that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, with next year more likely, but the chance of a record is growing and outside scientists such as Brown University’s Kim Cobb are predicting a ‘photo finish’ with 2016 and 2020 for the hottest year on record. Berkeley Earth’s Robert Rohde said his group figures there’s an 80% chance that 2023 will end up the hottest year on record.

“That’s because it’s probably only to get hotter. July is usually the hottest month of the year, and the record for July and the hottest month of any year is 62.08 degrees set in July 2019 and July 2021. Eleven of the first dozen days in July were hotter than ever on record, according to an unofficial and preliminary analysis by the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. The Japanese Meteorological Agency and the World Meteorological Organization said the world has just gone through its hottest week on record.” It is the new American abnormal. Texas, anyone? Gov. Greg Abbott, the Tsar of climate change marginalizers, thinks we need more fossil fuels in the marketplace. Sigh. Texas has had some of our highest summer temperatures.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how passionate climate change deniers and marginalizers would be if they did not have air conditioning and did not have the ability to buy food at their local grocery stores.