Global warning
This is the new normal: summers with record heatwaves every year, winters with massive snowstorms. Pictures coming from the US are pretty telling. In France, we had negative (celsius) temperatures until they jumped up a dozen degrees (for those not familiar with celsius measurements, that’s a lot). What we have here is not merely global warming — it’s climate deregulation.
When we say ‘climate change’, we tend to think ‘global warming’. When we say ‘global warming’, we assume that overall weather trends have the world reaching ever higher temperatures. That’s half true: there is also the fact that weather patterns are becoming increasingly violent, i.e. the spread between record highs and lows keeps increasing. And that is perhaps what climate deniers have the most difficulty understanding: this process is not simply going into one direction — although it is — but it also messes with the entire climate equilibrium we’ve come to know.
A couple of notes based on that (arguably sad) state of affairs:
Actions are starting to be taken to fight this process. Actually, they have been for some years now, but they are picking up speed. They range from diversifying energy sources and (slowly) getting rid of the more toxic ones, to changing consumption habits in favor of waste-free products, to changing construction materials in favor of better insulating and less polluting ones… All these trends, and many more, are well underway, although their effects may not be visible — yet. And the return to power of a reasoned administration in the US is helping further the cause, with the most powerful — and polluting — nation on earth rejoining the Paris climate accords…
Change will take time. Wether or not actions are being taken to fight climate change, the resulting benefits will take time to properly show. We have to be prepared to go through more lows before we can expect new highs. Global weather patterns take many years to readjust, so any human-made modification in the way we consume or pollute will only show any positive effect down the line. This is once again science — one should not expect miracles, especially after having repeatedly ignored early warnings to change course when consequences could potentially have been smoother.
We don’t know everything. Maybe we’ll have a great surprise one morning when we wake up to the news that nuclear fusion is now stable. Maybe we’ll have more days with record floods and displaced populations. We’ll probably have both, but the chronology is unclear. In other words, the only given is the state we are in. What we make of it is entirely ours (and science’s), with the changes and discoveries we make along the way potentially having a major effect on a future that is still unwritten.
Let’s try writing it well.