2014, 2015 and the Climate of History

     Not my photo of Clam Beach (it's from here) but it's been this kind of day.

It's hard to complain about our weather here.  It was a rainy December until Christmas, and it's pretty much been sunny ever since.  Warmer than usual for winter, and at times, warm enough to think it might be summer.

Clam Beach is only 8 miles away on the 101, but we don't usually think of it, especially in winter, because it's so open and often windy.  But we've been there twice in the past week or so, two warm, windless golden afternoons, among the families and their sandcastles, kids with kites (new kinds to me, small low-flying ones, shaped and colored like butterflies), dogs frolicking with their humans and each other, (mostly) girls on horseback trotting on the sand.  Though once, at sunset, we saw two horses a-galloping at water's edge, moving silhouettes against the burnished sky and glittering water.  With men in the distance grouped to fish, and some people with sticks down near the waterline with the shore birds, clamming.

Sure, it should be raining. With a rainless January in SF and north, the CA drought is worse than ever. The West in general is unusually hot, and south of us the heat has melted much of the snowpack in the Sierras built up in November and December, all but very high up.  A lot of places depend on that spring melt for their water.

We're hoping here for a rainy February and March, like last year.  But the unseasonable, even unprecedented perfection of our recent weather isn't the only reason it seems otherworldly.  It's that the weather doesn't make sense anymore.

It was apparently a pretty temperate 2014 on the East Coast, too. At least until this snowy winter, including the latest storm, all of which is fed and made more intense by warmer ocean water.

 Unfortunately, the big picture was not so good.  Despite the slowing in the global warming rate that still has scientists scratching their heads (Ocean capture?  Volcanoes?) and despite the temperature neutral bust of this year's El Nino, both NASA and NOAA culled their data to declare 2014 was the Earth's hottest year on record, which means from 1880 at least.  The ten hottest days in that period have all happened since 1997 or 2000, depending on whether you throw out 1998 as freakishly hot.  For the entire state of CA it was also the hottest year on record (by 1.8F), and December the hottest month.

There's more evidence, accumulating faster, is it worth it to recite it? Carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2014, growing at the fastest rate in 30 years. More and faster melting in Greenland.  More land species on the brink.  The crashing of marine life is just beginning.  And so on.

But as Amy Davidson's piece in the New Yorker was headlined: Our Hottest Year, Our Cold Indifference.  Denial and indifference have definitely emerged as factors as potent as greenhouse gases in determining the future of civilization.  It doesn't look great in either category.  No wonder the atomic scientists who used to monitor the danger of nuclear apocalypse in their calculations on the likelihood of doomsday, this year have named the climate crisis as a chief reason they've shoved the Doomsday Clock hands forward to three minutes to midnight.

So that's where we are.  Lots of people are pushing back, organizing, speaking out, acting and trying to act--much of which is coming to a crescendo this year, as the world's nations meet to make or not make serious commitments to address the climate crisis, both causes and effects, but especially causes.

There is a kind of orchestration, you might even call it a chess game beginning.  Two of the major players (both on the same side) are President Obama and Pope Francis.  Obama has already secured some commitments from China.  He made a point of pushing India in the right direction during last week's visit.  And he's done more than any other U.S. president to act effectively here.

The word has been out for weeks that Pope Francis is about to take the highly unusual step of issuing a papal encyclical on the moral necessity of addressing the climate crisis.  For Catholics this is especially serious, because encyclicals invoke papal infallibility on faith and morals.  But it is important beyond active membership.  It has already caused some grumbling, and will undoubtedly be met with vituperation when it happens.  But Pope Francis will have confirmed his status as the most progressive pope since John XXIII, and he will be a beacon and a hero to many.  This issue can never have too many heroes.