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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Hurricane Otis' "Explosive Intensification" Over 100mph in 24 Hours [1]

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Date: 2023-10-26  

Hurricanes

The strength of Hurricane Otis, the 15th Eastern Pacific storm this year, pummelled southern Mexico as a Cat 5 hurricane, increasing by over 100 MPH in 24 hours, in a phenomenon that is being referred to as “explosive intensification.” This intensification is attributed to warming ocean temperatures resulting from climate change.

Journalist Emily Atkin is suggesting that reporters covering disasters that have increased in intensity due to climate change expand their coverage to focus on why these events are occurring:

So consider this my official push for journalists and meteorologists to go one step further. When they write about disastrous weather phenomenons that are “connected to climate change,” I believe that in order to be truly responsible, they must also note the primary causes of climate change: fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial agriculture. I have seen some new outlets already take up this practice. Reuters, for example, mentioned the primary source of carbon pollution—fossil fuels—in its climate coverage of the Maui wildfires back in August. heated.world/...

Though rare on North America’s west coast, Vox reports the region has already experienced several hurricanes this year, including August’s Hurricane Hilary in California in August, and Hurricane Dora whose winds fueled catastrophic wildfires in Hawaii.

Nature's Role in Solving Climate Change

In a Newsweek interview, Razan Al Mubarak Thinks a Key Climate Solution Is Right in Front of Us—It's Nature, Al Mubarak, president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, warns about the dangers of failing to recognize the vital role nature can play in addressing climate change.

Now if it's that important, why hasn't it been obvious within the climate change discourse? This is a narrative that we need to change. [Nature] hasn't been there because it hasn't been seen as fundamental. It's been seen as ornamental, or it's a nice thing to have. When some things are already there, we sometimes take them for granted, and nature is there, and it's already absorbing half of our anthropogenic emissions for free. So, the challenge is to move away from this myopic view of what climate action requires. But the worrying thing is that if we don't act, the solutions that nature can provide have an expiration date. If we don't meet the 1.5-degree target, most of the nature that we depend on will actually be lost.

Eco Anxiety

In a New York Times guest essay, This Is What Keeps My Eco-Anxiety in Check, screenwriter and novelist Ron Currie writes about how his daily habit of picking up garbage has helped him cope with anxiety over our environmentally devastated world.

… instead of blowing up a plastics factory, I go and gather garbage by myself most days. And occasionally something will occur that happily disproves my dim view of humanity. People will notice me, and wonder what I’m doing all sweaty and breathless down there among the marsh grass and the rocks. I present an intriguing enough figure for them to stop, in the midst of their preoccupations with the day, and take the time to discern what I’m up to. And when they figure out that I am, in fact, picking up garbage, sometimes — not often, but occasionally — they’ll come and join me. We’ll chat or, more likely, we won’t do much other than exchange hellos, or simply nod. Just a couple of strangers doing something small and futile together, for no other reason than that it’s right. The kind of modest, workaday miracle that feels like it could, with any luck, lead to something bigger.

A Yale Sustainability Q&A Yale Experts Explain Climate Anxiety provides insights from two researchers, Anthony Leiserowitz, the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at Yale School of the Environment, and Yale School of Public Health clinical psychologist Sarah Lowe, who was co-author of a research paper that showed how collective action could be a buffer against climate anxiety for young adults.

According to Leiserowitz, “27 percent of Americans say they are very worried about climate change. This also is reflected in our Global Warming’s Six Americas research. We’ve been tracking how the size of different groups has been shifting, and people who are “Alarmed” about climate change have almost tripled in size over the past six years. We call them the Alarmed—but that does not mean eco-anxious.”

On a question on how widespread eco anxiety is in the US:

LEISEROWITZ: We have identified a small but notable number of Americans who seem to be experiencing things that we would call eco-anxiety. In our latest nationally representative survey, around 10 percent report feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge about global warming at least several days per week. Nine percent reported being unable to stop or control worry about global warming, and 7 percent said they had experienced diminished interest or pleasure in doing things because of global warming. Another 27 percent say they avoid thinking about climate change, but some of those responses are because they believe the issue is a hoax or a waste of time. LOWE: Climate anxiety is highly correlated with generalized anxiety, so it tends to affect people who are already anxious about other things.

The End of COPs?

Should this year's COP28 be the last?

In the eight years since the Paris Agreement, subsequent UN COPs have made little progress. Is it time to call it quits on this model?

The model — bringing together all the world's nations, which is inherently laborious and complex — may have been effective in 2015, but it is now showing its limits: no global agreement has been signed since. Worse still, the COP model now appears to be counterproductive, gradually becoming the symbol of a grand diplomatic rave against a backdrop of greenwashing. COP28, to be held in Dubai in November and December, is the most caricatured example of this. It will be difficult to convince European, Asian, African or American public opinion to opt for a more sober growth model coming from the United Arab Emirates. The small Gulf petro-monarchy, with a population of just ten million, is the sixth largest per capita emitter of CO2 in the world, at 22 tonnes per person per year. The UAE is also the world's seventh-largest oil producer, producing and exporting nearly 4,000 barrels a day.

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