Year-End 2023

The year 2023 was a doozy.

The news started to heat up when the planet recorded its hottest June in history. Then came July, and the news burst into flames because not only was it the hottest July in history, it was the hottest month in history, and perhaps the hottest month in 120,000 years. It turns out Earth tends to be hottest in July; with most of its land area in the northern hemisphere, the global average tends to follow our northern-hemisphere seasons.

Then August was the hottest August in history, September the hottest September in history, October the hottest October, November the hottest November, and December the hottest December in history. September was, for scientists, most remarkable because it was the hottest temperature anomaly in history. Anomaly is the difference between a given month’s temperature and its average during some reference period, which represents how different the month is from “normal” — and September was farther from normal than any month yet seen. In the scientific nomenclature coined by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, it was “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.”

The heat wasn’t just felt in the news. Heat waves struck around the globe, in some cases rather remarkable heat waves, like in Arizona. The city of Phoenix has always been hot in July, but this year they reached 110°F for 31 days in a row! Meanwhile, the whole state of Arizona had a July which didn’t just break the record, it obliterated it:

Of course, that didn’t stop idiots and liars from setting new records for stupidity/dishonesty with statements like “This weather is normal.” No, it’s not, AZ Republican state senator Justine Wadsack.

As for wildfires, it wasn’t a terrible year in the USA or in Australia, a repeat of what we’ve seen in the recent past. That’s because it was Canada’s turn. They didn’t suffer that many wildfires in 2023, but boy oh boy did those fires burn big; Canada saw more than twice the burn area of any previous year, and here in the USA, a lot of us were breathing the smoke from the fires scorching our neighbor to the north.

The weather in the USA went a bit off the rails in 2023; we saw more billion-dollar weather disasters (even allowing for inflation) than any previous year. It wasn’t the costliest year due to weather; that usually happens when one or a few exceptionally huge disasters (usually hurricanes) wreak destruction. But even though none of 2023’s weather disasters fell in the “exceptionally huge” category, there were so many of them that the year’s weather cost put another sizeable dent in our economy. Most worrisome, both the number of such disasters and the total cost are trending upward (with statistical significance).

This was also the year that James Hansen, arguably the world’s best-known climate scientist (the Godfather of climate science?), published another paper with numerous colleagues claiming some rather remarkable things, not all of which I agree with. He has caused quite a stir in the scientific community with two claims in particular: first, that global warming has accelerated recently so the rate of warming now is faster than it was over the last several decades; and second, that our chance to keep global warming below the 1.5°C threshold is “deader than a doornail.”

Lately, Hansen seems to promote ideas which are hard to swallow scientifically, but he has turned out to be right often enough, that one is ill-advised to dismiss him out of hand. As for acceleration, we all seem to agree that there is evidence of it but we disagree on whether or not the evidence is conclusive. As for our chances to stay within the 1.5°C threshold, some point out that there’s no physical reason we can’t do it, we just need to institute massive greenhouse-gas emissions cuts right away. Others point out that there’s no way we’re going to institute enough emissions cuts soon enough, and that 1.5°C is dead for socio-political, not physical, reasons.

In other climate news, we witnessed COP28, the 28th “Conference Of the Parties” to address the climate change problem. This time it was hosted in Abu Dhabi, and led by the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. In moves which are heralded by some as marking a genuine breakthrough, they finally agreed to admit to the need to “transition away from fossil fuels,” while others were highly critical of the wheelings-and-dealings going on behind the scenes, among the truly vast number of participants who were there to represent the fossil fuel industry.

Meanwhile, CO₂ emissions keep rising and so does the amount of CO₂ in the air:

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