For the past three years the world has been experiencing a La Nina (cool girl), where cold water comes to the surface of the south east Pacific, both cooling the atmosphere by about 0.250C and sucking in more carbon dioxide into the ocean than usual (cold water holds more CO2). As well as keeping climate change relatively out of the news, these three years of El Nino have also delivered relatively warm winters to the Northern Hemisphere. Well the cool girl has overstayed her welcome, three years is usually the limit for her visits, and it is time for the hot boy (El Nino) to return. The result will be warm water rising in the south east Pacific, global temperatures reaching new records and atmospheric CO2 rising faster than before. Suddenly, the climate will once again be in the news.
Here is a good explanation of the La Nina and El Nino phenomena, which are part of the El Nino-La Nina Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
As the focus comes back to climate change toward the end of this year, and most definitely in 2024, we will be reminded that we have made absolutely no progress in reducing atmospheric CO2, and also that atmospheric methane (CH4) levels have been accelerating upwards. In a 20-year period methane has up to 100 times the warming effect of CO2. We will find that global coal consumption reached a new high in 2022, and most probably increased again in 2023. Also, that natural gas demand is at a new high (helping to drive yearly increases in atmospheric methane that are 50% higher than the 2011-2020 average) and will continue to increase in the next few years, and that oil demand will also continue to grow in the few years. All of the theatrical shenanigans at the annual climate change gala, otherwise known as the Conference of the Parties (COP), continue to hide an utter lack of progress. It is quite possible that global temperatures will blow through the 1.50C above pre-industrial levels by mid-decade.
Some will point to the increasing sales of electric vehicles (EVs) as proof that humanity is making progress. There are multiple problems with such a view, especially within the next ten years. Firstly, in markets such as China most new cars are additions to the fleet rather than replacing older internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, so the market share of EVs would have to be in the region of 75% to start to reduce the number of ICE cars on the roads. “But what about Europe and the North America?” some will say, as most new cars there do replace older ICE cars. Problem is a lot of those replaced cars don’t actually go to the great car heap in the sky, but rather get exported to poorer nations where they continue their polluting ways for many years to come. The really big “hidden” problem is that it takes more energy (much of it fossil fuel derived) to produce an EV than an ICE vehicle, and it can take between 3 (in the US) and 7 (in China) years for that to be offset by the years of lower emissions operation (as at least some fossil fuels are incinerated to produce the electricity used). As sales of EV’s continue to rise, the fossil fuels required for the new EVs produced will not be offset by the EVs in operation for many years. EVs will actually create an increase in the use of fossil fuels probably until at least the end of this decade!
Without actually reducing energy consumption humanity will never be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by meaningful amounts no matter how much marketing money is spent to sell all the highly speculative technologies pushed by the fossil fuel companies – such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), and even direct air capture (DACS). The reality is that humanity is rushing towards a climate emergency where blocking the sun with man-made aerosols or other such technologies will become the only option. The West’s drive to “defeat” Russia and China to maintain the West’s global domination only makes this problem worse, as it puts a premium on the economic growth that converts into national economic, financial and military power. We will have more meaningless global climate change galas until one day an emergency will be declared (who could have seen it coming?) and technologies to partially block the energy of the Sun will be imposed through emergency measures. That is if feedback loops such as the Arctic Sea Ice, the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra do not rest back control of the climate from humanity and end the Anthropocene in short order.
As I am now getting somewhat long in the tooth, I have been scouting Southern Hemisphere locales for my last few decades, as history shows that the climate shit tends to hit the proverbial fan in the Northern Hemisphere first and takes a while to get down south. All that water in the Southern Hemisphere compared to the land masses tends to mitigate temperature rises. Due to the strangeness of the Antarctic ice mass producing a gravity pull on the oceans around it, even if those ice masses start to roll into the southern oceans it will be the Northern Hemisphere that will take the hit. The reduced ice mass will produce less of a gravity pull, creating a fall in southern-ocean levels while the northern oceans will rise; good for Uruguay not so good for Florida. My only concern is that I will be surrounded by the very elites that have caused the climate emergency, as they practice their “f**k everyone poorer than me” and “apres moi le deluge” (after me the deluge) modus operandi.
The return of the El Nino will not be good news for the Europeans that are trying to spite the Russians by swapping cheap Russian gas for US (and other) more expensive gas. With El Nino’s tend to come colder winters in the Northern Hemisphere pushing up natural gas demand in both North America (where Europe is hoping to get a lot of their LNG from) and Europe. Together with the Chinese economy recovering after its reopening and increasing its LNG imports, it may be a very painful winter of 2023-2024 in Europe; especially in those nations that are reducing the energy subsidies for their citizens. Even worse if Russia has to conserve natural gas for its own citizens during a hard winter, pushing China and Japan to bid up the price of LNG in global markets. It may also prove nose-bleedingly level expensive to refill those European natural gas storage tanks in 2024. The return of the hot boy may be on the side of Russia in its existential fight with the West in the next few years. And no one will care about the existential threat to humanity as a whole, kept on the back-burner to be dealt with “later”.
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Great summary. Thanks a bunch!
A suggestion regarding 'Together with the Chinese economy recovering after its reopening'.
In only five past years has China's economy grown faster than it did in 2022. Don't be fooled by people who quote GDP growth in meaningless percentages. Percentages do not measure growth or anything else. Growth is measured in PPP dollars.