Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Climate Emergency Forum. My name's Regina, and first of all, I want to say it's really good to be back with all of you. It's great to have the opportunity to be back. I'm reporting to you from ENSO Neutral here in New York City. I'm really, really excited to be with my colleagues, Peter Carter and, of course, the ever-famous Paul, which you know he needs no introduction. Paul Beckwith will lead us off as we're speaking about James Hansen's new paper on the soon-to-be-here El Niño, or Super El Niño, or as some people are calling it, Godzilla El Niño.
Call it what you will. Hansen has reported that everyone is, as usual, underestimating this, undercounting the numbers, even our friends at the IPCC. So we have a lot to discuss in this show, and I'm really, really interested to hear what our panel has to say. I know there's a lot of videos on YouTube because, you know, the latest buzzword is about this Godzilla El Niño, but we're here talking about the grandfather of climate change, the one who started the conversation many decades ago, the one who knows what it's all about. So we're going to discuss this paper, break it down for you, so that you will know what we have to look forward to. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Paul Beckwith.
Paul Thank you. Yeah, James Hansen's posts are not to be missed. His accuracy on predicting and explaining why global warming is accelerating, why the ENSO's, the El Niño is, you know, super strong, why it's setting all records and so on. So the elevator pitch would be basically climate change or global warming is greatly accelerating.
And the main reasons for that is the amount of sunlight that's absorbed by the Earth is increasing at enormously fast rates over the last several decades. And when you subtract the outgoing longwave solar radiation, you get something called the Earth energy imbalance, which is going more and more positive.
So we're heating up.
And to give you an idea of how quickly the Earth energy imbalance is increasing, it's doubled from what it was a decade ago. And then it even doubled, almost doubled from a decade ago to the previous decade. So it's just accelerating super fast.And the main reason, I think, is the lack of low level clouds that reflect sunlight, especially over the oceans, fewer aerosols. There's lots of reasons for that. And now you can add onto that the El Niño.
And we had a very, very strong El Niño just a few years ago and it's come back. It's much, much stronger Hansen's saying it will push us into record high temperatures for 2026 and certainly 2027 will far exceed even 2026. You know, it's much, much stronger, this El Niño, than the big El Niño in 96, 97. There was also a big one, like I say, you know, a couple of years ago, another big one in 2015-ish. 1981, 82, 83 was a strong one. These are called so-called super El Niños.
But when you have the super El Niño superimposed on this greatly warming climate, accelerating warming climate, then you have huge problems around the world.
Of course, the air is much hotter so that it can hold a lot more water vapour. So there's a lot more torrential rain events with flooding. Other places lack the rainfall and go into tremendous drought.
Much of Europe in the summer has seen massive heat waves and incredible drought associated with that and incredible wildfires.
So all the whole system is connected and the extremes are greatly increasing. So the latest Hansen article is on how the El Niño is proceeding. And it follows up on an article he wrote about a month ago, I believe, where he was making his predictions that 2026 would be a record hot temperature year, set a new global record and then 2027 would beat that.
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So he's on track with these predictions. He also argues that the climate sensitivity is much higher than the three degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2. That is a generally accepted number by the IPCC and I'll call them mainstream scientists. You know, the number is closer to four and a half degrees Celsius per doubling because of feedback effects.
And Hansen leans heavily on paleoclimate studies. Right. How much did the Earth change between warm and cold periods in the past, as well as on the, you know, the absorbed solar radiation versus the reflected solar radiation, the shortwave versus longwave and things like that. So he goes back down to fundamental physics and he relies less on all of the big computer models that are being run by many climate groups.
These models are important, but they're missing a lot of the feedbacks that are greatly accelerating the warming and the size of the ENSO variability patterns. Regina You touched on the fact that El Niño is on top of our already warming planet. So I really appreciate that because it's not just an El Niño or Godzilla El Niño, but it's an El Niño compounded by what's already packed into the ocean. What's the warming that is already taking place. It's compounding it.
You spoke about other El Niños and the effects, for example, the India famine. And then, you know, shortly thereafter, the grain shortage. Many people implicate the French Revolution because of that. Do you see any implications in Hansen's paper that might speak to potential future geopolitical shocks?
Paul Well, what we're seeing now with these, when we have a very powerful El Niño and then it fades away back to the neutral state, the global temperature is not returning to what it was before the El Niño. And it's even tracking above the climate sensitivity that Hansen was talking about.
So when the El Niño happens, it's like two steps forward, but we don't go two steps backwards to the neutral state. We go one step backwards. So I think we're going to be hit by global food shortages and by global water disruptions over the next five to 10 years, almost guaranteed. What's going to happen is during an El Niño is when everything will sort of hit the fan, if you know what I mean.
Regina Wow, Paul. I mean, I expected an answer, but I didn't expect such tremendous aftershocks and for such a long period of time. It's truly like what you just said is so frightening. Peter, do you share the same idea that the aftershocks will be as dire as what Paul suggests?
Peter Yeah, Regina, for me, for many years, the big thing about climate change, climate disruption is food security, food production. Now, of course, we're really seeing that we're getting into big trouble with that regard. And this is widely recognized out there by the farmers and the big food corporations. They're all warning that, as Paul says, things are going to get worse with regards to our ability to produce food.
And for sure, I mean, look at Europe, the devastated by heat waves and drought. And France, by the way, which was the worst affected, is the biggest producer of food in Europe. It's a very, very effective food producer. So we have that, but we also have an announcement by the USDA now that wheat production in the United States is going to be a historic low. They very responsibly point out that this is actually a long term trend. The low is because of the persistent drought that we've got in the prairies. So, you know, it's happening already. OK, so that's right. It's going to get worse and worse. And people have to know the truth is going to get worse and worse.
Now, Regina mentioned India, which is very, very important. If this is a historic El Niño, it's going to be a super killer El Niño. That's what it's going to be. And the reason is that the models and projections are pretty well all agreed that the entire subcontinent of India becomes drier with an El Niño. And all of Oceania to the south east of India, in a sense. So that's a huge hunk of planet that becomes drier with a strong El Niño.
And that means with regards to food security. Right. I mean, we're a food production interdependent world now. So, you know, there's no way to isolate it. Canada can't say it will be all right. When other countries reduce their food productivity, we all get affected. And that's happening already. I mean, my gosh, everybody knows food prices are going up.
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So the big problem, of course, you know, I repeat over and over that the big problem is emissions and the big problem is fossil fuels. Right.
This gets mentioned less and less and less. I find this quite extraordinary.
Now, the main point to me, the big point in the Hansen paper, which I spotted, was that this increase in this supering of El Niño is, he says, likely human forcing. Now, that actually is not well known. So another excellent, good mark for Hansen. Thank you. But the recent El Nino and the research does support that.
Now, two thousand and twenty three was almost a super El Niño. It was the record El Niño in the past. And that's only a couple of years ago. OK. Before that was 2015. These were both shocking El Niños with shocking impacts, you may remember. 2015 was a record super El Niño. Then you have to go back to 2009 with a strong El Niño and then you have to go further and further back.
So it does look as though the research that says that we're going to get more frequent El Niños and more frequent extreme El Niños is right. There was a recent paper last year entitled Determining the Frequency of El Niños indicating that theoretical science says they're going to get more frequent. Very, very important paper in two thousand and twenty four. And another one in 2014 saying that we will get an increase in extreme El Niño. Right.
So that's what we've got to plan for. That's what we've got to look for. Planning for means massive adaptation, huge resources, massive improvements in public health and agriculture and everything in every country. Right. It also means, as the IPCC said in its last assessment, there must be concerted immediate action. That's a media quote, Because emissions should have been in decline by 2025 and that's for the two degree C limit. So, yeah, we're looking at an awful El Niño future.
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Regina Thank you for that, Peter. And also, you know, you bring up an interesting point, I have to say, because I have been listening like so many other people and watching and you're absolutely correct. Everyone's talking about El Niño and the super El Niño and Godzilla amidst all of this. It's funny because there are some outlets that will speak to how it's amplified due to climate change. But there is no discussion about what's causing the climate change. It's so funny. It's like a lot of people now are saying, yes, I agree, there's climate change, but we're not seeing a discussion of what's happening, why it's happening, how the continued use of fossil fuel is driving this. Well, it's almost like a de facto thing. Climate change, just like after Sunday, there's Monday. I think the cavalier attitude speaks to like a coarsening of humanity because you spoke to these famines, the starvation of millions of people. People don't have food to eat. And in fact,
I read that the El Niño of 2015 led to 60 million people facing food insecurity. Of course, we have more people now and we have greater poverty, don't we? So these effects can, I hate to say it, but perhaps get worse. Let's see what we can do in terms of adaptation. Paul, what do you have to add to that?
Paul Well, one of the effects that we're seeing with the European heat waves and also heat waves in the southwest of the U.S. is the rivers and the lakes are way, way down. I mean, look at Lake Mead in Arizona, the levels of the Indus River. You know, India is built around rivers, basically. I mean, rivers are sacred.
And in fact, before the country was called India, the name was Hindustan. And Indus is within that word Hindustan because it was centered around the Indus River. In fact, Hindu is from Indus, dropping the S. So, you know, it's vital to their culture and their way of life.
And as the water, you know, is polluted heavily and as the water level is dropping from droughts, et cetera, the pollutants get concentrated. And we're seeing that across the U.K. as well. So, yeah, I mean, the El Niño, of course, exacerbates all of these problems.
Like Peter, I noticed when Hansen was actually saying that the strength of the El Niños are actually increasing alone because of anthropogenic climate change, human caused climate change effect. So not only are we have an accelerating warming and then the El Niño is superimposed on that, but the strength of the El Niño itself is increasing from climate change.
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And he didn't elaborate in this article, but I'm sure he will in the future.
But one thing I'd like to point out is the last powerful El Niño we reached, you know, we often talk about the 1.5 Celsius and two degrees Celsius targets. And those arose from Paris, the COP in Paris in 2015. We, reached 1.6 in the last El Niño. And Hansen is arguing that by next year, we'll probably reach 1.7 with this present super El Niño. So we're getting closer and closer to that two degrees Celsius number from the Paris agreement.
And like I said, when we get this temperature jump from the El Niño, when the El Niño ends, we're not going back down to where we were before it occurred. We're going about halfway back down. So it's two steps forward, one step back in terms of the temperature rise. We live on the land. Land temperatures have risen double that of ocean temperatures, which is another thing that Hansen clearly points out.
So basically, climate zones are migrating towards the poles. What used to grow in a certain latitude, now the climate is favorable at a much higher latitude because of the distribution of the warming on the planet. We don't all experience the same warming. Depends on where we live, latitudes, et cetera, proximity to the ocean, things like that, altitude.
Regina Farmers are having a really difficult time, Paul. I've heard a lot about that. And it doesn't affect just farmers. It doesn't affect just people, but it affects entire industries, entire economies and states, countries. I know I've talked in years past about the wine industry, which is a huge industry in California here in the States. A big part of upstate New York has invested in making wine. Far upstate New York has part of the industrial rust belt here in the country. And so the wine industry there is very important to that economy. But as you say, agriculture is changing with the warming weather, so it's just causing a tremendous amount of difficulty. And it seems like whenever people are trying to adjust to the new normal, it gets shifted all over again. Peter, can you close us out?
Peter I just want to mention that we live in Canada. I use Extreme Weather Europe as my best scientific guide for extreme weather, but also for El Niños and things like that. They're really excellent. There was one came out just a couple of days ago. And yet again, I saw that in a super El Niño, Canada gets heated up. You've got one of these, you know, complete contradictions of the climate and so and that means more fires up in the north of Canada. So I'm very, very worried about that.
But also, I noticed that the projection is the computer model is that Europe's going to get heated up again. Well, I mean, I've been so sorry for those people in Europe. I mean, what they've gone through. But there we go.
We've got to do all we can to stop this madness and to phase out the fossil fuel industry fast.
Regina Thank you so much, Peter.. My big fear, I have to say, I mean, in addition to droughts, floods, mudslides, geopolitical instability, is the rise of strongmen that can come out of all of this type of instability. I'm not trying to get too close to home here, but it's something that we have witnessed, I would say, over the last 10 years. The little that we've seen, I'm putting quotes, is terrifying. And I'm really worried about the implications of this particular El Niño and what we'll see. And Paul, you made the astounding, to me, declaration that the results could be in the pipeline for the next five or 10 years. Do you have anything else to add to that dreary thought for us?
Paul We've been talking about heat waves, the heat waves in Europe and also in North America. I just want to point out that they're very connected by the jet stream. So the jet stream has a very powerful ridge moving to very high latitudes over North America. And then there's a very sharp trough over the Atlantic Ocean, which has experienced the least warming in the last 100 years, the North Atlantic. And then a very sharp ridge again over Europe.
And underneath the ridges, you get very hot and dry weather, very few clouds and drought conditions. And yeah, the UK has seen five heat waves this summer, and there's probably some more on the way. People there are just not used to that sort of heat, but they have learned, you know, when there was a heat wave of less intensity in 2003, I think 70,000 people perished in Europe. And this summer, I've seen numbers as high as 25,000, 30,000 people.
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So people are starting to, you know, take more attention and there's cooling centres in major cities, et cetera.
But a lot of the studies on how heat affects human mortality have been greatly undercounting the mortality rates because heat affects people quite differently. So anybody over 60 is much more greatly affected by heat than younger people.
As we get an aging population, we're going to get more of these problems, these fatalities from heat. It never says on somebody's death certificate, died from a heat wave. It'll be some stroke or cardiovascular disease. So it's being very undercounted that way. You have to look at, you know, the mortality rates in a particular region that are sort of baseline and then compare them to what they are during heat waves to extract the numbers that way. There's a few different ways of doing it. So we're getting better at doing that. And then we're also getting better at identifying regions that are at greater risk for higher mortality.
In a confidential memo to the Republican party,[30] Luntz is credited with advising the Bush administration that the phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favour of "climate change", which he called a "less frightening" phrase than the former.[31] Oliver Burkeman, Memo exposes Bush's new green strategy"- The Guardian, March 3, 2003. Retrieved May 31, 2017. Goldenberg, Suzanne (May 28, 2014). "Americans care deeply about 'global warming' – but not 'climate change'". The Guardian. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
