4 Sept 2023, Durango, CO—Labor Day, and the ceremonial end of summer. Yesterday’s high of 76F was the coolest high since the heat arrived in mid-June. What a hot, dry summer it has been here, and our garden shows it with mixed results even with good irrigation from the very snowy winter. But we were not alone—with global temperatures hitting all-time records, smoke persisting across the US and Canada, hot-tub ocean temperatures, coral bleaching, hurricanes doing crazy things in spite of an El Nino, drastic Antarctic sea ice declines, droughts and floods around the globe, and of greatest note, almost an inch of rain at Burning Man! “Unprecedented” is becoming overused in weather news and in need of synonyms.
Remembering the Summer of ’23—No, not another Taylor Sheridan series, but a season we would do well to remember. We have an amazing ability to forget, both as individuals and as a society, as we carry on with business as usual. Winter will be here soon, and it will be less easy to make the connection in the public’s mind between CO2 emissions and extreme winter weather. This past summer is a teachable moment handed us to take good advantage of.
Tipping Points are very useful in considering where we are and where we are going, but are pretty darn hard to definitively pin down until after they occur. In spite of this, the concept of a tipping point is useful as an image that the public can understand. Since they are, in Webster’s words, points “beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place,” we would do well to pay close attention to the warnings from climate scientists of tipping points that we are approaching or may have even already passed. The potential irreversibility inherent in passing tipping points should not lead to despair and paralysis, but a determination to keep things from getting worse—we still have so much we can do to prevent further harm to the climate, ourselves, and the planet.
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), El Nino/La Nina, Omega Blocks, and more—so much to learn! We can let the climate news pass us by as something we just can’t understand and therefore can’t do anything about, or we can become a bit more climate literate and active. Googling a reputable source can help, and I find that following ex-hurricane hunter Jeff Masters’ Eye on the Storm blog on Yale climate Connections gives an excellent real-time explanation of extreme weather and climate events.
Climate Shift Map—Talking about extreme weather as linked to climate change is essential if we are to develop the public will to take decisive action on climate. Starting up a serious conversation can be hard sometimes, but having good facts to add to the inevitable conversations about daily weather can help. Besides Master’s blog above, another such source is the daily Climate Shift Map from Climate Central. Hovering your mouse over your region on the map will show you how the forecasted high or low compares (using a 1-to-5 “CSI” index as in the diagram above) to what it would be without climate change. So, when the water cooler comment is about how hot it is today—you could add that “actually, today’s high is four times more likely now than before climate change kicked in.” The awe at your knowledge will be palpable, and you may be making some real progress.
Smoke, the great equalizer—This summer’s smoke wasn’t confined to the usual fire-prone areas of the West. Somewhat reminiscent of the Dust Bowl sending clouds of dust across much of the country, this smoke, as a symptom of climate change, was hard to ignore anyplace in the U.S.—including Washington, DC. We can hope that some good may come of that. In some ways, this is an answer to “Where can we move to escape climate change?” While the smoke showed relatively equal treatment geographically, it did not socially. So many people with limited resources are without air conditioning or other air filtration and other ways of protecting their health, so the socio-economic disparities of climate change impacts were highlighted again.
The Lloyd’s World Food Supply Scenario revisited—Another socio-economic impact of the worsening climate is being felt in food supply, in some local areas and globally. Back in 2016, we wrote about how Lloyds of London saw “uncomfortably high odds” of major disruptions of food supplies around the globe—but especially when more than one disruption happened at the same time. This should be ringing bells right now as so many parts of the world are having extreme agriculture-disrupting weather events, over extended periods, and exacerbated by geopolitical events such as the war in Ukraine. How much longer can we wait to address the vulnerabilities of our global food system, including the need to increase local food production for local consumption?
Any positive tipping points in sight?—The mere mention of tipping points may be unsettling as the uncertainty is heightened by the prospect of irreversibility. Obviously, however, things can tip toward the good—tipping toward renewables, fossil fuels left in the ground, and the like. Could the Summer of ’23 be when a sufficient critical mass of people became convinced that the climate crisis is real and became committed to taking action in their own lives and committed to their civic duty to push for wise policy reforms and wise politicians? Could it be the time when we moved past the divisiveness that is crippling our democratic process and moved together in tackling climate as common ground? That would be a wonderful tipping point to have behind us.
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