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When El Niño flips the switch in 2023, will it shut down ‘business as usual’ for good? [1]

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Date: 2023-01-05

When El Niño flips the switch in 2023, will

it shut down ‘business as usual’ for good?

Pakalolo’s recent post…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/4/2145284/-Europe-s-heatwave-is-the-most-extreme-event-ever-seen-in-European-climatology

…opens with this paragraph, the implications of which have stuck in my head ever since reading it.

“Despite being in a La Nina climate cooling pattern, the world has endured deadly droughts, heat waves, and heavy rainfall flooding in 2022. It was a brutal year for billions as climate change supercharged the effects of La Nina, intensifying natural disasters across the earth. That pattern is expected to continue perhaps to August or fall of 2023 when the warming climate pattern of El Nino arrives. We will be out of the frying pan and into the fire as surface temperatures are expected to heat further, perhaps to the Paris milestone of 1.5C or higher, as climate breakdown continues to intensify unabated. In other words, we were spared the worse last year. We won't be spared in 2023 by any means.”

After what Europe experienced last summer, I was surprised and dismayed that the COP27 in Cairo did not adequately address the true magnitude of our ‘climate emergency’ ,as it was once again watered down by denial and the inflexible agendas of the powerful, the wealthy and corporations.

(SHARM EL-SHEIKH CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE - NOVEMBER 2022 https://unfccc.int/cop27 )

It is a profound and sobering lesson in human nature, that our subconscious need for normalcy, when coupled with our greed driven desire for ‘business as usual’, can still override unprecedented and extremely dangerous temperatures coupled with ongoing drought severe enough, not just to destroy crops, but dry up major European rivers.

It was one thing when climate collapse was ‘only’ flooding most of Pakistan or fueling the ‘zombie fires’ continually burning the arboreal forests ringing the Arctic Circle.

I understand that when we are not effected directly we are slow to react.

Had Europe not been experiencing a drought last summer and the humidity had gone over 35%, it would have most likely suffered ‘wet bulb’ events which can kill millions of animals and any humans who cannot get into climate controlled conditions. Shade and ample hydration will not stop hyperthermia heat stroke, although submersion in a body of water, large enough to be cold enough or a deep enough cave, will. As Europe has about 25% residential AC and England has less than 5%, the death toll could have been catastrophic and it would have taken place in a matter of days.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw1838

But since this very real threat went for the most part unreported and thus flew under the radar, it’s perfectly understandable that it should not have seemed to have much impact at the conference. If it’s not broken, there’s nothing to fix.

For 30 years, I have lived adjacent to an intersection that only has stop signs for the traffic on one of the streets and not the other. Over that time, we’ve probably averaged several collisions a year or perhaps more, but the intersection has never become a 4 way stop. I’ve attributed this to an insufficiency of fatalities, as it seems to take high levels of human loss for action to become warranted, especially since I’m certain the people in charge traffic control were not in any of the cars that collided.

When warming El Niño takes the place of cooling El Nina, supercharging the record breaking heat being generated now, will this finally be sufficient to get us to react and become collectively proactive…or will we continue to cling to our already shredded denial?

With the looming and scientifically verified threat of ‘wet bulb’, as well as the predictions of impending catastrophic crop failures and the resulting civil unrest generated by food shortages and starvation, El Niño sounds like a game changer. Furthermore, it appears inevitable, barring the intervention of ‘climate shutdowns’, the validity of which has been verified by climatological studies of the Pandemic Shutdown. If implemented ASAP, shutdowns might still have a moderating influence.*

For now, it is a certainty, that we are rapidly reaching a threshold when we will no longer be able to sustain the illusion of ‘business as usual’, because business, as we know it, will no longer be sustainable.

*Since proposing the viability of ‘climate shutdown’ over a year ago, although I have read other sources supporting the idea, I have come across no other verified strategy of comparable merit. There may be some worth to the idea of seeding the ocean with iron, but it’s long term effects are apparently still not known. On the other hand, the Pandemic Shutdown unintentionally served the purpose of a trial climate shutdown, and since it’s benefits came from a drastic drop in CO2 emissions, it would be a safe way to proceed environmentally. All of the dire warnings put forth about the Pandemic Shutdown damaging the world economy, etc. were fundamentally ill-founded and are now largely forgotten. But as it’s coming to a choice between economic stability or global annihilation, I think that for all but sociopaths, the choice is clear.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/26/2118953/-Perhaps-the-most-important-information-of-all-time-and-hardly-anyone-is-listening

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/5/2145546/-When-El-Ni-o-flips-the-switch-in-2023-will-it-shut-down-business-as-usual-for-good

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