Falling Farther Behind

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | July 15, 2023

Time for our semi-regular unofficial update on how the climate versus humans fight is progressing. We humans have thus far avoided a knockout blow, but we are way, way behind on points.

Let’s start with our normal advisory: Climate is weather patterns existing over a wide area for an extended period of time. Weather is what’s happening in our backyard right now. Climate impacts weather; weather does not impact climate.

The National Weather Service (NWS) maintains temperature records based on land monitoring, ocean buoys, and atmospheric satellite readings plus less technical data going back to 1850. They’ve recorded all-time high daily temperatures this month in half a dozen states, including Florida and Arizona. (As a former Phoenix resident, I can testify summer heat there was already borderline intolerable.)

According to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, which compiles global temperatures, July 6 of this year was the hottest day ever recorded for our planet at 63 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn’t sound all that hot until you consider that includes nighttime temperatures and the fact that it is currently winter in the southern hemisphere. It broke a two-day-old record which had broken a one-day-old record, so it seems there is a pattern.

(And, yes, for those nitpickers out there, about 125,000 years ago, in between ice ages, scientists believe temperatures were at least one degree Celsius warmer than they are today. They also believe sea levels were a whopping 30 feet higher than they are today. But accurate, contemporaneous record-keeping did not exist back then.)

Both Florida and Arizona are included by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information as states being at risk of being uninhabitable by humans within 50 years if we don’t dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Florida’s problems will be threefold. First, it will get very hot. Second, sea level rise will inundate coastal areas, as is already happening during high tides. Third, and more troubling, that sea level rise is already starting to leach into their groundwater through the porous limestone on which much of south Florida rests. That will keep getting worse until potable water becomes scarce.

Southern Arizona has a more straightforward, two-pronged issue. First, it just keeps getting hotter and hotter. A record 425 people died in extreme heat there last year, and the state is on pace to equal or surpass that this year. The heat puts enormous strain on their already fragile power grid, and air-conditioners running 24/7 actually make things hotter, especially at night. And they will ultimately run out of water. The aquifer on which the greater Phoenix metro area sits has at least 10 percent less water than was previously thought according to hydrologists at Arizona State University. That water is being accessed seven to 10 times faster than it is being recharged. And, as we’ve noted before, they’ve already been forced to reduce their allotment of Colorado River water.

Other climate news isn’t so encouraging, either. According to the World Meteorological Organization, an arm of the United Nations, the world’s glaciers are now melting and receding at an accelerated rate. European glaciers lost at least three feet of thickness in just the last year, and Antarctic sea ice is at the lowest levels on record.

NOAA also reports sea levels rose twice as fast in the last decade than they did in the previous decade, faster even than their computer models predicted. Some coastal areas, especially on the East and Gulf Coasts, will be flooded within the next half century.

Despite our efforts, or at least talking about efforts, greenhouse gasses continue to increase at record levels according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Carbon dioxide levels are nearly 150 percent more than before industrialization, nitrous oxide almost 125 percent, and methane, the worst of all the greenhouse gasses in creating climate upheaval, a whopping 262 percent increase. The industrialized world keeps talking about less while producing more, including here in the U.S.

There are glimmers of progress and hope. Solar and wind technology have advanced sufficiently, and the policy group Energy Innovations says either tech could economically replace all but one of the country’s 210 coal-fired plants. Toyota has announced new advances in lithium-ion batteries, and, even better, they are developing a solid state battery that will power a vehicle for more than 700 miles, take less time and energy to recharge, be less destructive in the manufacturing process, and include many recyclable components.

Even more promising in the long term, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) became the first to create fusion ignition that produced more energy than the experiment used, a first, tiny step toward nearly endless, safe, clean power.

We are moving forward…it’s just that climate change keeps moving faster.