NASA confirmed on Thursday that the northern summer of 2023 was the hottest of the last 14 decades, since record-keeping began in 1880.
I’ve written about these new extreme milestones so many times over the past decade that my instinct is to ask myself “what’s new or different this time?” It’s a stupid question, really. What’s new obviously is that it’s hotter, but the fact that it’s hotter isn’t new. It isn’t interesting, and it isn’t really something people like to think about.
So what is new or different about this hotter world we’re living in? In recent years, the extent, intensity and increasing frequency of heat, wildfire, heavy rainfall and flooding events has really struck me. We live in a world where British Columbia exceeded 120 degrees for a few days and a town seemed to spontaneously combust.. What a freak event, right? Alas, no. What’s different this time is how what’s different is increasingly the same. The freak occurrences are becoming normal.
What’s different this time? What’s new? What will make people care? What will make you click on the headline? All essential but stupid questions. Imagine a pot of water sitting at room temperature on a stove. Just sitting there at equilibrium. Let’s give this pot of water a name; how about “1951?” Put a flame under that pot and it loses its equilibrium. It begins to heat and bubble and become less stable until it reaches a rolling boil that literally changes it to a new state of being.
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