At What Point Do We Admit This Is the Pattern?

I keep looking at the weather around the world.

Not one storm.

Not one fire.

Not one hot day.

The whole picture.

And I keep wondering how long we can continue looking at what is happening around us and treating every event as though it exists by itself.

Canada is burning again.

By early July, more than 1.4 million hectares had already burned across the country this year. Hundreds of fires were active.

Here in Alberta, it has been almost the opposite story in places.

Rain.

More rain.

Heavy rain.

Flooded streets and basements.

Storm after storm.

And now we are halfway through August and I'm watching the temperature fall again.

Someone inevitably says, "So much for global warming."

But that sentence reveals how badly we have communicated climate change.

Climate change was never supposed to mean that every place on Earth gets progressively hotter every day.

That's not how a climate system works.

Look beyond Alberta.

Look at the United States.

Extreme heat has been hammering large parts of the country this summer. Death Valley country reached 119°F in July.

Look across the Atlantic.

Western Europe just experienced its hottest June on record.

Spain broke June temperature records.

France recorded its hottest national day on record in June.

Switzerland set a new June temperature record.

Barcelona's Fabra Observatory, with more than a century of observations, reached 40.5°C in July.

Then came the fires.

France.

Spain.

Portugal.

Other parts of the Mediterranean.

Heat and dry soil creating the conditions for landscapes to burn.

Then look at Asia.

Heat.

Changing monsoons.

Flooding in some places.

Water stress and drought in others.

Look at Australia.

Look at Africa.

Look at South America.

Look north toward Siberia and the Arctic.

The details are different everywhere because climate is regional.

That is precisely the point.

Climate Change Doesn't Mean "Everything Gets Hot"

I think this is where the conversation goes wrong.

People hear "global warming" and imagine somebody turning up the thermostat in a house.

Yesterday it was 20°C.

Today it is 21°C.

Tomorrow it will be 22°C.

Then Alberta gets a cold spell in August and somebody thinks they have disproved climate science.

But Earth isn't a house.

It is an enormous interconnected system of oceans, atmosphere, forests, ice sheets, rivers, soil, clouds, currents and living organisms.

Add energy to that system and it doesn't distribute itself evenly.

Ocean temperatures change.

Atmospheric circulation changes.

Evaporation changes.

The atmosphere can hold more moisture.

Rainfall patterns change.

Snow and ice change.

Drought patterns change.

Fire conditions change.

Jet streams and storm systems move.

Some places get brutally hot.

Some get extraordinarily wet.

Some dry out.

Some experience strange swings between extremes.

And yes, sometimes a place experiencing long-term warming still gets cold.

Weather didn't stop existing because the climate changed.

"The Climate Has Always Changed"

This is probably the sentence I hear most often.

And it is completely true.

The climate has always changed.

Earth has been much hotter than it is today.

It has also been much colder.

Ice sheets have covered enormous portions of continents.

Sea levels have risen and fallen.

Species have appeared and disappeared.

Mass extinctions have happened.

Continents themselves have moved.

None of that disproves what is happening now.

It actually helps us understand it.

The important question isn't whether Earth's climate has changed before.

Of course it has.

The question is:

How quickly is it changing now, and why?

That is the part we keep avoiding.

Geological change can happen across thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Human civilization, however, operates on decades.

Our farms are where they are because of relatively predictable rainfall and temperature.

Our cities were built around historical flood risks.

Our reservoirs were designed around expected precipitation and snowmelt.

Our electrical grids were built around expected demand.

Our forests developed within particular temperature and moisture ranges.

Our coastlines contain cities built for sea levels that existed when those cities were constructed.

We built civilization around a climate we assumed was relatively stable.

Now we are changing the conditions underneath it.

Look at the Pattern

This is what bothers me when every event gets debated individually.

A wildfire happens.

"Wildfires have always happened."

A flood happens.

"Floods have always happened."

A drought happens.

"Droughts have always happened."

A heatwave happens.

"It gets hot in summer."

A cold snap happens.

"See? Global warming is fake."

Individually, every one of those statements can contain some truth.

Of course wildfires existed before industrialization.

Of course floods happened.

Of course drought happened.

Of course heatwaves happened.

Climate science doesn't claim otherwise.

The question is what happens to their frequency, intensity, geography and probability as the background climate changes.

That's where the pattern matters.

You don't understand a baseball player's season by looking at one pitch.

You don't understand an economy by looking at one transaction.

And you don't understand Earth's climate by looking out your window this afternoon.

You look at the data over time.

You look across regions.

You look at oceans.

You look at glaciers.

You look at atmospheric greenhouse gases.

You look at temperatures.

You look at precipitation.

You look at ecosystems.

You look at the whole system.

And Now El Niño Is Strengthening

There is another complication happening right now.

El Niño is strengthening.

El Niño is natural.

It existed long before humans began burning fossil fuels.

And that is important because acknowledging natural climate variability doesn't weaken the argument for human-caused climate change.

Both things can be true.

Natural cycles continue operating while we alter the background climate in which those cycles occur.

El Niño redistributes heat and changes rainfall around the planet. It can bring drought to some regions and increased rainfall to others.

But now it is occurring in a world whose oceans and atmosphere are already unusually warm.

We didn't replace the natural climate system.

We changed the conditions under which that natural system operates.

That's a very different argument from saying every drought, fire or flood was "caused by climate change."

I don't think we need to make that claim.

The evidence is troubling enough without exaggerating it.

This Isn't Really About Politics

This is where I probably frustrate people on every side.

Because I don't think accepting climate science automatically tells us what political policies we should adopt.

You can believe climate change is real and oppose a carbon tax.

You can support oil and gas development and acknowledge greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere.

You can argue for nuclear power.

You can argue for renewables.

You can debate pipelines.

You can debate regulations.

You can debate how quickly we transition away from fossil fuels.

You can ask what happens to workers and communities whose livelihoods depend on those industries.

Those are legitimate political arguments.

But whether carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation isn't a political argument.

Whether oceans are accumulating heat isn't decided by Parliament.

Whether glaciers lose mass doesn't depend on who wins an election.

Nature doesn't negotiate with us.

The atmosphere doesn't vote.

The oceans don't have an ideology.

Physics doesn't care whether you're conservative, liberal, socialist, libertarian or anarchist.

Reality simply continues doing what reality does.

Maybe That's What Frightens Me

I don't think humanity is stupid.

Look at what we've accomplished.

We split the atom.

We mapped the human genome.

We landed people on the Moon.

We built machines capable of looking billions of light-years into space.

We developed vaccines.

We connected billions of human beings through a global communications network.

We built artificial intelligence.

Our species is astonishingly clever.

But clever isn't necessarily the same thing as wise.

We are extraordinarily good at solving immediate problems.

We aren't nearly as good at responding to slow-moving problems whose consequences unfold beyond election cycles, quarterly earnings reports and individual lifetimes.

Climate change is especially difficult because there isn't one moment when someone rings an alarm and says:

This is it.

The climate changed today.

Instead, records fall.

Then another record falls.

Then another.

A forest burns.

A river dries.

Another region floods.

A glacier retreats.

An ecosystem shifts.

Another species disappears.

And life continues.

People go to work.

Markets open.

Elections happen.

Bills arrive.

Children go to school.

We adapt to each new abnormal until it becomes normal.

Then the baseline moves again.

Temporary Doesn't Mean Disposable

I've been thinking a lot lately about impermanence.

Human lives are temporary.

Families are temporary.

Civilizations are temporary.

Species are temporary.

Even Earth itself is temporary.

Eventually the Sun will change and this planet will no longer be what it is today.

But I've come to almost the opposite conclusion from nihilism.

Something doesn't have to last forever to matter.

A forest doesn't have to exist forever to be worth protecting.

A whale species doesn't have to exist forever to matter.

A river doesn't have to flow forever to be sacred.

A civilization doesn't have to be permanent to be worth preserving.

And Earth doesn't have to exist forever for what happens here to matter.

Temporary doesn't mean disposable.

We are here now.

So are the forests.

The rivers.

The oceans.

The animals.

Our children.

And whatever generations come after us.

Maybe our responsibility isn't to preserve the planet forever.

We can't.

Maybe the responsibility is much simpler.

Leave something living behind.

Look Around

I don't expect one strange summer to convince anyone.

It shouldn't.

Science isn't built on one summer.

But I do think we need to stop looking at each event in isolation.

Canada burning.

Alberta flooding.

American heat.

European heat and wildfire.

Asian drought and flooding.

Changing oceans.

Retreating ice.

Shifting ecosystems.

Record after record after record.

Don't take my word for it.

Don't take a politician's word for it.

Don't even take a scientist's word for it simply because they're a scientist.

Look at the measurements.

Look at the historical records.

Look at multiple independent sources.

Ask whether there is another explanation that fits all of those observations better.

Be skeptical.

I think skepticism is healthy.

But skepticism has to work both ways.

At some point we also have to be skeptical of the comforting explanation that everything happening around us is merely coincidence.

Because eventually enough individual events form a pattern.

And I think we're looking at the pattern.