Yeah, this graphic is a little alarmist… but you get the idea. Image: The US Independent
In the face of a lot of terrifying proof, there are still people out there who deny that the climate is changing much faster than it should be. The World Meteorological Organization just dropped their annual report and… holy shit, it’s bad.
For a while, there were people who denied climate change entirely because it snowed every now and then. At the time, researchers called the phenomenon “global warming” because on average, the globe was getting warmer. A warming earth makes for powerful storms that bring inclement weather. So with each snowfall, Podunk Pete and would sit on his porch and yell at the sky, “I done tol’ ya so! Them glerbal wermin’ consperahcy theorists is full of it!” Then Donald Trump, pulling a bunch of Rex Tillerson’s pubes off his tongue, would give Podunk Pete a thumbs up, throw him a red hat, and promise him a job.
So here’s the deal, according to actual science, and not the president’s Twitter account. The WMO’s report, which was created for the first time in partnership with the United Nations, basically says, in no uncertain terms, that we’re already seeing the devastating effects of a rapidly warming earth. WMO and the United Nations partnered on the report because it’s more than just an environmental concern–our changing climate will have effects on the world economy, as well.
“This report confirms that the year 2016 was the warmest on record – a remarkable 1.1 °C above the pre-industrial period, which is 0.06 °C above the previous record set in 2015. This increase in global temperature is consistent with other changes occurring in the climate system,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “Globally averaged sea surface temperatures were also the warmest on record, global sea levels continued to rise, and Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average for most of the year. With levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere consistently breaking new records, the influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident.”
According to the report, since 2001, every year has been almost one degree warmer than the baseline used. That baseline was set according to temperatures between 1961 and 1990. “This warming was exacerbated in 2016 by the particularly strong El Niño that developed off the east coast of the Americas,” wrote Josh Davis on IFL.com, “though the weather event by itself was still not enough to explain away the abnormally hot temperatures that were experienced around the globe.”
This is science. It is real. Image: World Meteorologic Organization.
If there is a canary in the coal mine of earth, it’s the ice caps. The Arctic, despite near-constant denials from stupid people, is losing sea-ice like a hooker loses her pants. “Global sea ice extent was down by 4 million square kilometers (1.5 million square miles) in November when compared to the average, a terrifying anomaly for that time of year and completely unprecedented,” Davis continued. “The sea ice maximum has been declining by 3.2 percent per decade, while the minimum has been crashing by 13.3 percent per decade, increasing the chance that soon we’ll be seeing an ice-free Arctic during the summer months.”
While many have been able to keep their heads in the sand when it comes to what’s happening around them–and it’s easy to do, because it’s scary as hell–the math says differently. Climate models show scientific proof that that recent large-scale weather events (along with things like record-breaking coral bleaching events) are indeed driven by climate change.
Although the rest of the world is beginning to come around and face the future (thanks in large part to the Paris Agreement), the Trump administration is bent on going back in time. The EPA’s funding is being slashed, headed by a man who has sued it more than a dozen times, and coal and oil production is going into overdrive. And while that’s good (in short term) for the economy, in the long run, it’s a huge step back.
In our quest for comfort, we’re feeding a very hungry, very dangerous fire, and we don’t know how hot it’s going to burn or how big it’s going to get.
“We are seeing other remarkable changes across the planet that are challenging the limits of our understanding of the climate system,” said World Climate Research Program Director David Carlson. “We are now in truly uncharted territory.”
