The Climate Crisis

Another Reason It's The Climate Crisis

I began arguing years ago that one barrier to understanding all this was nomenclature: while technically correct, the terms "greenhouse effect" and "global warming" were deceptive in tone--they made the whole thing sound mild, even pleasant. "Climate change" was not much better-- again it's technically correct but deceptive (it hinges on the difference between "climate" and "weather," which is weak in the popular mind) and "change" has too many positive connotations: put them together, and you get "a change in the weather," which, if the weather happens to be bad, is good.

I argued for "global heating" to stress the severity, and "climate crisis" to reflect the urgency. But there's another reason to stick with Climate Crisis: the emphasis on "warming" gives the impression that any weather other than a rise in temperature--and especially a drop in temperature--contradicts the global warming/greenhouse effect thesis. And it doesn't.

Cases in point: this month's weather. A few days ago, large parts of Europe were hit with ferocious storms and hurricane force winds. What Jeff Masters of Weather Underground describes as an "extra-tropical cyclone" caused what would be called Category 1 or 2 hurricane effects if this happened in the Gulf of Mexico. And the extent of it was massive. I saw a clip of a forecaster in Germany saying that they had never seen such a violent storm that affected the ENTIRE country. But it wasn't just Germany--it killed people in England and the Czech Republic as well.

The greenhouse effect does predict storms that arise from the effects of warmer ocean water on air masses and currents. That temperature is additionally increased now by the El Nino phenomenon, which may or may not be related to global heating. Moreover, these storms in Europe were accompanied by relatively warm temperatures.

But parts of Europe are now experiencing cold and snow. Areas of the U.S. are also getting hit with huge snowstorms and frigid temperatures. Global warming? Well, yes. Two points: in some places where it is usually cold, it's gotten cold, but not quite as cold as usual. And some places usually too cold for a lot of snow are getting huge snow storms because of warmer air holding more moisture. Even the suddenly falling temperatures could be an indication. After a December that was the warmest in centuries across the northern hemisphere, the cold is simply coming late--possibly because the Arctic didn't freeze sufficiently until now to generate the cold air carried down to us.

But the point here isn't that everything can be traced back to global warming. The point is that we're well into the early stage of the Climate Crisis, and we're going to be figuring out the details of what's happening and why as we go along. We aren't that smart yet. (Although I guess that's obvious, since we haven't been smart enough to take this seriously in the 15 to 30 years warning of warming.) But we do know the basics, and we know the basic preventive for the future. We've got a lot of learning and doing ahead of us, in a short time. But we have to face what's happening. It's the Climate Crisis, the crisis of our future. And we have to deal with it in our now.