Since I don't engage in "social media" anymore, apart from blogging, I'm not terribly up to date on what climate experts are thinking and writing about. I get some email newsletters, and follow the news, but I do feel a little out of touch.
Nevertheless, I'm frustrated by things like this piece in the Miami Herald, that contains utterances like this:
<blockquote>“What we are seeing lately is very consistent with what we would expect to see in a warmer world,” said Jayantha Obeysekera, head of Florida International University’s Sea Level Solutions Center. “This is a sign of things to come.”</blockquote>
And...
<blockquote>“Climate change did not cause this event,” he said. “Let’s be clear, it did not trigger what happened yesterday, however, the severity of the event got enhanced by climate change.”</blockquote>
No, "let's be clear," the climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change until such time as we stop altering the earth's atmospheric composition and the system approaches a new equilibrium state, which may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years.
Climate is:
The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.
The key words there are "characteristically prevail."
As of some time ago, those words became meaningless because the climate system, which establishes those prevailing characteristics, departed from its own "prevailing characteristics," chiefly the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The climate we are currently experiencing has never existed before in this planet's history.
Yes, there have been periods with similar amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. But not with the present and recent past polar ice sheets, the locations of the tropical rain forests, the ocean current systems, and certainly not with the human generated land characteristics.
What happened in south Florida last week is not a "sign of things to come," it is a "prevailing characteristic" of the present, which is one of period of transience. We do not currently have the luxury or advantage of a stable climate system. We have destroyed that for ourselves and we're not getting it back in the lifetime of anyone living today.
It is undergoing a transient, driven chiefly by CO2, but also by the heat that has already been absorbed by the oceans, the changing polar ice coverage in the arctic, and other changes that are ongoing, which include the slowing and possible collapse of the AMOC.
It's meaningless to say, "Climate change did not cause this event."
"This event" occurred in a changed climate. There is no other context to consider.
Climate does not "cause" the weather. "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get." But weather is caused by the conditions that establish what the climate is, and those conditions have changed, are changing, and have caused the weather we experience to change.
This is not a "sign of things to come," this is our present reality and it is only going to get worse from now on. It is not going to stop changing, until we stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and then we have to wait centuries until it achieves a new equilibrium state.
Maybe less time if we can actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate that makes a difference.
Yes, as the article mentions, it's possible that Florida may actually become drier in our changing climate, while also still experiencing rainfall events that exceed all of our present stormwater infrastructure capacities.
"Climate change" is what is happening right now. It's a reality. All of our weather is occurring in a climate system that is undergoing a rapid, dynamic and possibly non-linear transition, a dramatic change.
Everything we have built, all of our infrastructure, our economies, our transportation systems, our agriculture was constructed in and for a climate that no longer exists.
It is useless, stupid and futile to think about whether or not a particular extreme weather event was "caused" by climate change. It's a distraction. We no longer have a stable climate, the "prevailing characteristics" no longer prevail, and we are in a world of hurt and the sooner we figure that out, the better.
I'm not optimistic.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:10 Sunday, 16 June 2024