2023 very probably pretty surely is the hottest Year ever.
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2023 very probably pretty surely is the hottest Year ever.
With all past ten years being also the hottest.
2023 on track to be the hottest year on record, say scientists, with "1.43°C above the pre-industrial average" and last month being the hottest October since forever with a staggering 1.7°C above late-1800s levels -- which also increases the hottest three-month period on record to a four-month period.
But these are not the only statistical climate anormally here.
The hottest ten years on record as of yet are, in order of average temperature, 2016, 2020, 2019, 2017, 2015, 2022, 2018, 2021, 2014, 2010. With 2023 very probably pushing out 2010 from that list and now being the marvelous giant towering over all those other years, all ten hottest years on record are to be found in the last ten years.
To give you a more visual hint at the literal hot water we're in, i adapted this Statista-graph for these new numbers, and this graph, like so many regarding climate change, should give you a pause:
I'd welcome, if politics and economics pull their heads out of the sand and at least try to limit climate change to 2°C, because the Paris Agreement at this point already is out of the window — and it always was, with James Hansen, the scientist speaking to congress about climate change in the 80s, calling it “bullshit“ back then.
He was right, and instead of political solutions for a hard decarbonization of the economy, we get this: ‘Insanity’: petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels, says UN report.
The world’s fossil fuel producers are planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over, a UN report has found. Experts called the plans “insanity” which “throw humanity’s future into question”.
The energy plans of the petrostates contradicted their climate policies and pledges, the report said. The plans would lead to 460% more coal production, 83% more gas, and 29% more oil in 2030 than it was possible to burn if global temperature rise was to be kept to the internationally agreed 1.5C. The plans would also produce 69% more fossil fuels than is compatible with the riskier 2C target.
The countries responsible for the largest carbon emissions from planned fossil fuel production are India (coal), Saudi Arabia (oil) and Russia (coal, oil and gas). The US and Canada are also planning to be major oil producers, as is the United Arab Emirates.
A recent paper found that "the remaining carbon budget for a 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5 °C is around 250 GtCO2 as of January 2023, equal to around six years of current CO2 emissions. For a 50% chance of 2 °C the remaining carbon budget is around 1,200 GtCO2."
This means we have 30 years left of unchanged carbon emissions to keep temperatures below 2°C with unchanged emissions. But with these planned expansions in fossil fuel extractions, emissions will continue to rise and these 30 years will shrink to two decades or maybe further.
There is no way that we will build a carbon neutral economy until then, with these players on the steering wheels, and even if we could, temperatures would continue to rise, until we massively install carbon-suckers everywhere.
This is why to a growing number of scientists, climate change is an ‘emergency’, and this is why we should massively support Climate Activists, instead of criminalising them and their very appropriate and, dare i say, tame actions. After all, they are upholding the law.
Albert Einstein famously said that "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". And all of the above is, indeed, what insanity looks like which holds especially true when it comes to expanding fossil fuel extraction in the face of climate change which already resulted in this breathtaking series of heat records and a rising death toll.
The question, then, is:
How long can we tolerate the insane running the asylum?
2023 very probably pretty surely is the hottest Year ever.
At least we can be pretty sure it will be one of the cooler years of this era retrospectively :'(