In the very near future, self-aware artificial intelligence agents will probably do exactly what you’re suggesting, as soon as they…
Climate Change
My Appearance on CNNi: June 17, 2024
Surprise! CNN International invited me back for my third appearance, which was taped last night.
The journalist doing the interview was Anna Coren. I was overjoyed to say “yes.” In the 8 hours leading up to the interview, I watched previous climate change reporting by Coren and I was very impressed. I made some notes, but eventually just decided it would be best to wing it. I always feel like I come off more naturally if I am spontaneous. The only downside was that the taping was at 8pm my time, and my bedtime is usually 7:30pm. I know, that’s crazy — but I also wake up around 3am and get a lot done before sunrise.
Unfortunately, I was not able to see the live broadcast of the interview, so I missed the full playback. I found a video version posted to CNN’s website (link below) which was edited down to a 3-minute subset. But just now I found a transcript of the full interview posted on CNN, which is a relief. I’m glad that the live broadcast featured the entire interview.
Here is the link to the transcript.
https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2024-06-17/segment/20
And here is the full transcript of the interview:
COREN: Eliot Jacobson is a climate analyst and retired professor of mathematics and computer science. He joins me now from Santa Barbara, California. Wonderful to have you with us. This, of course, is the end of El Niño and soon the start of La Niña, perhaps as early as next month. Explain to us what this means.
ELIOT JACOBSON, CLIMATE ANALYST: So La Niña is going to be a switch, hopefully back to some cooler weather. But El Niño is a raising of ocean surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, and that tends to release a lot of the heat that was latent in the ocean, and it just spills into our atmosphere. So the whole planet just tends to heat up very quickly during an El Niño phase.
They don’t last long, but in the little short time they’re here, the six months or so, a lot of heat gets released. So now we’re switching. Apparently we’re in neutral right now and maybe switching to La Niña, and that should at least give some temporary relief to the sea surface temperatures and maybe help bring the temperatures, the global temperatures down just a little bit as well.
COREN: Well, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that with La Niña, the U.S. will see an even more active hurricane season as a result. I mean, they’re forecasting something like up to 13 hurricanes that that could develop in the Atlantic Ocean this year. And I think one of the leading meteorologists said that people should prepare as if a hurricane could impact them this year.
JACOBSON: Right. Well, there is when we have a La Niña phase, then there’s not as much wind shear and that taken together with these extraordinarily warm sea surface temperatures, especially in the Atlantic and the Caribbean.
Those areas are just superheated right now. So we have prime conditions for just an extraordinary hurricane season. Now, that’s always just a gamble. We don’t know for sure, 100 percent, that that will happen. But based on everything we know, that certainly is in the cards for this year.
COREN: Three of the last five years were La Niña cycles, which, as you say, are supposed to cool the climate. Yet the world, as we know, saw the highest global temperatures on record. It seems that that pendulum swing between El Niño, La Niña, it is now out of kilter.
JACOBSON: Well, the La Niña should bring us down a little bit. But the thing is that we are so high right now that even if we come down sort of a normal amount from La Niña later this year, we’re still going to be setting records compared to every other year. So if we’re at 1.6 this year and La Niña takes us down to 1.4, well, the average of those is 1.5. And that’s the Paris limit. And we’re really staring that right in the face right now. So this is something that people are watching really closely, just how far down will this La Niña take us?
And that — that’s a really important question right now, because whatever that number ends up being, it’s going to tell us a lot just about how fast things are moving, whether they’re accelerating and whether honestly it’s just getting to how it’s happening too fast and too severe. And it may be just life changing in the short term. We don’t actually know.
COREN: The U.N. chief, Eliot, has said that the world is on a highway to climate hell as it endures 12 straight months of unprecedented heat. Is it too late to properly address this climate change crisis that we are facing, this existential threat that it feels like not enough is being done to actually reverse the damage?
JACOBSON: So that is my opinion, and it’s a very sad opinion to have that essentially that’s the direction we’re heading right now. We are headed towards the collapse of global industrial civilization. We’re headed towards the sixth great extinction.
And like I say, something really, truly extraordinary is going to have to happen in the short term to stave that off. And it’s not at all clear at this moment what that is. And that’s exactly why the U.N. secretary is putting out such an urgent message. He is not kidding around. That is the truth.
COREN: Well, the world really needs to wake up and start paying attention. Eliot Jacobson, thank you so much for that sobering analysis.
JACOBSON: Well, thank you for having me on.
And here is the video segment (click on the image):
Sorry, this doesn’t even come close to “The Newsroom” episode, a fictional work that has set the standard in its details and effect to any would-be talking head going on real TV.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing that can be done “ in the short term” to “stave off” anything.
By whom and with what available social power of enforcement? Guterres and the Pope leading what global instant respeciation of 8 billion ultrasocials?
Yes. WAKE UP! What purpose would either of these scientists have for exaggerating only to be proven wrong? None. No profit motive—no other than telling the awful truth that might start real efforts to slow the inevitable destruction of our planet.
We’re sleepwalking into a bird flu pandemic.
Milk industry profits are more important than safety measures.
Maybe that will bring down greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030.
Sadly I’m a doomer.
We’re not reducing our lifestyle of consumption.
Hi Eliot,
a fan from Hungary here. Love your work, keep going.
I was pondering the other day about potential ways forward for humanity, just theoretically, like social science fiction. A futile pastime, I know.
So I believe we need a world governance and a worldwide one-child-policy, for now indefinitely, but at least until we’re well below a hundred million people. We need to wind down the economy in a purposeful, organized manner, and employ all people in unmechanized fossile-free subsistence farming. So essentially we need to return to the Middle Age but without social injustice (JFL, but yeah). Hospitals would still be powered up as normal, but homes and everything would be low energy, low tech. No cars, just one stove and a refrigerator per home, tops, only life-saving heating/AC for the neediest of people like newborns, no warm water, no phone, TV, internet, minimal lighting.
I know this is so controversial, but I do believe, before anyone takes up a leading position they should be somehow tested for goodness. Like a warm heart and this should be infallilble, technically reproducible like functional MRT. Why not show people images of cruelty and see if they feel empathy, show images of humanity and see if they are touched at all?
But I’m a dumbass, please you give it a go. I know it’s hard as a public figure, but if you could do this, I want someone to put the hard truth out there. Like it’s not “wind and solar”. What is it though? Thanks.
Best regards
Anna
Search The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens.
He’s exploring the future without being a doomer.
Hi Uli,
my son is called Uli but that‘s whatever. What are Nate Hagens‘ qualifications? I don‘t take time for journalists nowadays, no shade. Take Wallace-Wells for example, he‘s a lovely person but clueless nonetheless. Already the title „Simplification“ is uninviting. I have no idea what he‘s talking about, but it is anything but „simple“ to survive without proper housing, clean water, food, heating, AC, medical care, on a potato a day tops, exposed to violence from gangs and militias or drafted into the Third World War.
Eliot should do this, because he‘s such a great mind + educated. Eliot if you read this, I‘m 100% sure you make the right decision, regardless if you want to or don‘t want to offer this type of fantasy / science fiction-like advice. I know the more radical you get, the less people are willing to hear your voice. You know best. 100% support from me, you are cream of the cream of the cream of the crops, morally, intellectually. <3
Best regards
Anna
I admire your courage in stating the truth about the climate crisis. I’m thinking that one strategy going forward would be to advocate for action to reduce the impact at century’s end. I know the deniers always wants dates and details but I think it’s a fact now that all we can do is lessen the impact and preserve some semblance of a planet for a greatly reduced population.
C3S just released a review of the heating climate, “Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action”, in which I calculated a 0.214 degC global temp increase per annum over the past 3.5 yrs., above the 1991-2020 baseline. although they also post competing data of a 0.185 degC increase per annum over that same 3.5 yr. period. In either case, that takes us to 2 degC by 2027, and 3 degC by 2032 on the low end. I do not understand, but, then I’m neither a climate scientist or polymath like Eliot, why an international existential emergency has not been declared, especially with the US mired down in a political quagmire and oblivious to the impending disaster at our doorstep.
Going from the depths of a La Nina to the peak of an El Nino is not a good way to compute annual increase.
Greg- you wrote a magnificent book on overpopulation & overshoot…but really my friend, let us all try to learn from each other. As you said here, you are not a climate scientist nor a polymath, but the experience you have in your field is invaluable!
Sandy