The Whole Hog: How Climate Change is Leading to an Apocalyptic Future

Two hundred years ago, in 1818, they had the ‘year without a summer’. It came amid a perfect storm of sorts. The earth was still in the so-called Little Ice Age; there was the Maunder Minimum effect, which is part of the long-term climate cycle; and then there were the volcanic eruptions of Tambora in Indonesia, the biggest such series of eruptions in history, which shrouded the earth in dust.

The world was thrown into convulsions. The volcanic winter that followed Tambora lasted into 1819. Harvests failed across Europe, North America and Asia. The demobilisation of soldiers after the Napoleonic wars had released a large population of easily aggrieved individuals back to their home areas; bread riots ensued throughout Europe and in Britain; and there was famine and a typhus epidemic in Ireland.

Extended periods of adverse weather can do that: it is, a point one might make to a visiting oaf who believes there’s no climate change, only changeable weather. But we’ll return to that anon.

So warm has our summer been that it’s easy to forget that we’re fast approaching the equinox. Students will know this better than most, as the rhythm of the academic year kicks relentlessly in. The gradual slide into darkness and winter – and long hours in the library – has begun. More and more, however, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that when it comes to the weather, the odds are less than even. And so, rain and gale force winds are starting to recur. Out there somewhere, the storms gather.

HOTHOUSE STATE

Let’s remind ourselves: on August 22 last year, Met Éireann’s weather station at Malin Head recorded 77.2mm of rain. It was the station’s wettest summer day in 62 years, with 63mm falling in a 6-hour period. Less than two months later came Storm Ophelia, bringing the most powerful winds in Irish history. These were recorded at Roche’s Point in Cork. The strongest gust was 84 knots (155.6km/h); and the highest 10-minute wind speed was 62 knots (114.8km/h).

Ophelia was what Met Éireann called “an extra-tropical cyclone.” So we can’t blame the tropics. Sufficient energy is now being captured in the oceans in more moderate latitudes to generate plenty more where Ophelia came from.

And the snow last Spring? All you need for a repeat of that, during the winter, is the kind of high pressure that gave us the recent hot summer. Both draw air from the east, bringing blistering heat in summer and fierce cold in winter.

So we’ve had wildfires this year, in dried-out Portugal, Greece, California, Australia, Siberia and Sweden. Elsewhere there are floods. As you trudge to the library, or try to earn a crust on the run-in to Christmas, ponder this: a million people had to flee their homes in Kerala in India last month after catastrophic monsoon rain. A million. In Laos last July, the Xepian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower dam collapsed after huge falls of rain, unleashing more than 130 billion gallons of water on rural villages in southern Laos. There was flooding across much of Europe too. The list of recent weather-related catastrophes is long, and they are becoming more common and extreme. But behind them lurks something far worse, a tipping point beyond which there is – or will be – no return. There is nervous debate right now among climatologists about how rapidly melting ice sheets will affect us all, but make no mistake, they are melting, and we will be affected.

Current research estimates that over 4 trillion tonnes of ice from Greenland and Antarctica have melted since the turn of the century, flowing into the oceans and elevating sea levels. The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, something that has never been seen before.

It had been assumed that this would be the last northern sea ice area to melt, but now? Maybe not.

This highlights the possibility of so-called ‘feedbacks’ that could push the earth into a hothouse state. The Gulf Stream, which has kept Ireland’s weather moderate for as long as we can recall, is currently at its weakest in 1,600 years, thanks to the Greenland ice melting and to ocean warming. The weakened ocean circulation has changed global wind patterns, and ocean currents and weather systems are getting stuck for longer periods than before. Like during the summer just past.

RIPPING UP JAPAN

In the worst-case scenario, you could have massive sea rises even by 2050. Coastal defences will be imperative. Even then, who knows? Many of Donald Trump’s hotels will be destroyed by water. He’ll probably have shuffled off this mortal coil by then. Which is a pity. You’d love to see the pernicious waster hoist on his own petard, as they say, with his ultimate indignity captured for all in an exclusive photo shoot in the National Enquirer.

You could also have a huge release of methane that’s currently trapped in the permafrost. (Possibly also in Donald Trump, though that too is a different imponderable). If enough of this lethal gas escaped, it could well do for humanity altogether. A more certain prospect is that it would greatly exacerbate the impact of climate change. There would be hundreds of millions of climate refugees, until an inevitable pandemic spread. And no one knows where that might end.

Indeed, we’re getting close to that particular tipping point already; even without an apocalypse there’s trouble ahead. Look at Typhoon Jebi, ripping up Japan, storming in on top of massive floods.

Two centuries have passed since the year without a summer and we’re in trouble again. There is no doubt whatsoever about this. Sea levels are rising. So are temperatures. The weather is becoming more and more unpredictable and extreme. Crops are failing. Fish, animals, birds, insects and diseases are migrating. Economic systems and food supply chains are under immense and increasing pressure. Our ecosystems are crumbling.

It’s the proverbial state of chassis; and there are precious few encouraging straws to clutch at. There may be opportunities here. Certainly, it would pay the greatest minds of the emerging generation of students and young professionals in Ireland to be focussed on this. It is, perhaps, the greatest political, social and economic challenge humanity will ever face.

Yes, we can all do our bit in cutting back CO2 emissions. And our Government can push us to do better. But when you look at the odds that are stacked against humanity, and the extent to which so many politicians seem to be sleepwalking their way towards the abyss, you can’t but be pessimistic.

Even if we in Ireland became carbon neutral it would hardly scratch the skin of global climate change, especially now that the US has withdrawn from the Paris accord and has abandoned renewable energy as a priority. Brave new global initiatives are needed. There is no reason that they cannot begin here.

There may, meanwhile, be a smidgeon of hope for the future in China. Now choking on its own pollution and a large-scale importer of fossil fuels, the world’s most populous state is setting out with typical and admirable zeal to go green and efficient. It has to if it’s to survive. That’s to say, if we’re all to survive. Failure to tackle this agenda means the jig is up.