“Sometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken,” says the climate scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota. “After all the flooding, fires, and droughts of the last three years worldwide, all related to climate change, and after the fury of Hurricane Otis in Mexico, my country, I really thought governments were ready to listen to the science, to act in the people’s best interest.”
Instead, Cerezo-Mota expects the world to heat by a catastrophic 3C this century, soaring past the internationally agreed 1.5C target and delivering enormous suffering to billions of people. This is her optimistic view, she says.
“The breaking point for me was a meeting in Singapore,” says Cerezo-Mota, an expert in climate modelling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. There, she listened to other experts spell out the connection between rising global temperatures and heatwaves, fires, storms and floods hurting people – not at the end of the century, but today. “That was when everything clicked.
“I got a depression,” she says. “It was a very dark point in my life. I was unable to do anything and was just sort of surviving.”
Cerezo-Mota recovered to continue her work: “We keep doing it because we have to do it, so [the powerful] cannot say that they didn’t know. We know what we’re talking about. They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”
Cerezo-Mota recovered to continue her work: “We keep doing it because we have to do it, so [the powerful] cannot say that they didn’t know. We know what we’re talking about. They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”
Cerezo brings out an interesting point. It takes decades to actually change the averages that define climate change. However, global warming has a more immediate impact. Consider how many severe weather events it takes to changes the climate averages. This all goes back to George Bush changing global warming to climate change. The term global warming promotes a more immediate impact. I think Peter has the right idea in stressing Meteorological events enhanced by global warming that are happening NOW.
There is a small change of a little less heat. EL Nino conditions seems to change into La Nina. It may help a little bit maybe.