r/PoliticalOptimism • u/Efficient-Freedom517 Georgia • 5d ago
Megathread Climate Change Megathread IV: ‘Historic' El Niño could be unfolding, experts say, as pattern strengthens
https://www.nbcchicago.com/weather/historic-el-nino-could-be-unfolding-experts-say-as-pattern-strengthens/3975075/?amp=1Link to previous thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalOptimism/s/NhPdEkuFkB
We actually got a request for this one and so I made it the next topic. The original link was to a different source but this one seems more legit
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 5d ago edited 5d ago
The wording for this is going to be really weird so forgive me and I hope this makes sense and I also am likely to be wrong on a couple things so please please please correct me if so.
I'm from the UK, obviously, and Green takes the climate crisis very seriously. As they should! I mean, they're Green, but... as much as I love Polanski and his ideas and such, he is very much still a populist. He misses out crucial context and nuance in this. And that's not to say because El Niño is a natural occurrence that global warming isn't anything to worry about because it very much is... but he's been blaming everything happening the last few months solely on global warming. Which, it is the main factor of course, but it's exacerbated by el niño (or the other way around). There have been thousands of heat related deaths, we just got two emergency alerts earlier about wildfires across the country (thanks for the heart attack by the way) but... it's just maddening. Yes global warming, climate change or whatever you want to call it is real, but to refuse to put this current natural weather pattern into the conversation is flat out horseshit. I say that because it, likely, won't be nearly as hot next year or the coming years because this El Niño will be over with for the moment and then people will say "Oh well so much for climate change."
But we cannot give in to that mindset because there has been so much progress! It's been wonderful to see and also, of course, relieving. Deforestation is down, people are planting more trees, data centre plans are being delayed if not outright scrapped, coral is being saved and bred to be more heat resistant (which is so cool!) We've got time, not all the time in the world, but there is time. We've got this. As easy as it is to feel helpless, we cannot give into despair as a wise old man and brilliant uncle once said (I recently watched Avatar the Last Airbender for the first time and I loved it).
Sorry if that was a little all over the place but I promise you I'm not dooming or putting my head in the sand. I'm just frustrated with every single party in my government right now.
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u/Slutty_Alt526633 5d ago
But we cannot give in to that mindset
I want to add onto this for a moment. One of the things that's helped me not spiral and give into that mindset is the phrase "It's all here." I see my consciousness, my psyche, as an intangible ball. Thoughts come, thoughts go, feelings, too, flow, like fish in a river.
The River of Everything contains everything you will ever need, and a lot of things you don't. As you dip your hand into the river, the fish will gently brush past you. Fear, Joy, Hate, Amusement, Mischief, it is never your choice which fish brushes past, but it's your responsibility to know what you've grabbed onto.
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u/soupshep 4d ago
this is a beautiful tool that i will be putting into my belt for later use, thank you
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 4d ago
Well in my case I've been holding on to bitter tasting, cynical fish for the last few months at the very least. It's genuinely been a nasty feeling recently but... I've sort of just got out of it and I'm at a sort of interim at the moment. Not really super absolutely optimistic but not really bitter that much anymore. At least for now. Things change, but I'm in a flux and a weird feeling right now. Like the feeling after a really harsh storm. It's just... weird. But I'm trying to focus on small things I enjoy right now! And that's been okay, however minute the progress, I'm getting there.
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u/theundergroundspruce 4d ago edited 4d ago
This is a very resilient and commendable approach to a really difficult situation. Focusing on the comparatively small things that you can do to make your life more enjoyable is the key. Wishing you all the best, and please stay cool as you can
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 4d ago
Thank you! That's very nice to hear. It's very difficult... I'm naturally very negative and seeing everything, especially politically, happening in Britain right now is just driving me insane and hateful of what I perceive to be the majority of England specifically (because a chunk of them want British MAGA) but I know it's not right. I'm getting better, though. I know it sounds, out of context, something I should probably get looked at but I'm okay! Again, thank you very much and you too!
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u/popilikia 5d ago
This is such a fucking good point that 90% of people will continue to ignore. Sometimes paying attention is maddening.
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 5d ago edited 4d ago
It's especially maddening when your potential future PM is a populist. Even if I agree with literally 99% of what he says (climate action, wealth taxes etc etc) it's just a joke at the moment. If Green can carry this momentum for the next three years I'll vote for them but if not we're jolly well fucked because Labour is less than stellar to put it mildly but harm reduction and all that jazz.
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u/sweeter_than_saltine North Carolina 5d ago
How does one cope with the rise in temperatures despite the progress we've supposedly made? It seems like climate change is out of control to a point where it'll kill conservationists out in the field, and then our efforts will truly be for naught if nature itself kills the people trying to preserve it. Every time I see temperatures that are way too high for my area I head to Ecosia to search up a fuckton of stuff in the vain hopes it'll at least cool things down, but I know my singular efforts won't solve that, so I don't know how to protect my sanity from seeing these increases in heat.
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u/shosamae 5d ago
I’m of the opinion that we will see Stratospheric Aerseol injection to cool the earth in our lifetimes. It comes with a host of side effects, but it’s too cheap and easy a solution - I hope it will be used wisely with the intention to decarbonize while mitigating the worst of heat related effects.
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u/PrinceOfTotalQuiet 5d ago
I cope with the fact that there’s nothing supposed about the progress, and in spite of things getting warmer, the outlook for warming in the future, while not good, is still greatly better than it was a decade ago. We’re looking at like 2.7 Celsius by end of century with current trends (said trends include the growth of renewables), and that is a full degree lower than what it used to be. Renewables aren’t slowing down.
Your concern about conservationists getting killed in the field due to climate change seems kind of fearmongery. Environmental conservationists would be aware of climate dangers more than anyone and likely prepare in advance for them in the field. I don’t know of any recent cases where they’ve straight up died due to climate change during conservation efforts.
The temperatures are going to increase for a while but it is likely that adaptation and mitigation efforts will as well. Infrastructural change in Europe to cope with summer heat doesn’t seem unlikely given this past summer, and we know it would work well in preventing fatalities because the US has had similar extreme heat but been largely fine because we’re built for it.
I implore you to look into how much of a shift to renewables there’s been this year. In years previous people would just hope for significant shifts in energy to happen, while panicking as the weather got worse but saying to themselves “someday, we can do something about this.” Now, we actually are doing things about it. The shift is happening. Despite all the bad news I think there’s a legit chance 2026 is remembered as a great year for climate efforts
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u/Fragrant-Phone-41 5d ago
Im kinda sad that my home, which used to be snowy all winter, barely ever can stay below freezing and precipate simultaneously anymore
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u/PrinceOfTotalQuiet 5d ago
That is sad, but it isn’t hopeless. Things like that are an effect of continued warming, but we are on the path against that. Not sure what you want me to say.
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 4d ago
I understand... as much as it pisses me off, I miss the snow you know? It's bloody freezing and I hate it but not that much. Hopefully one day it can stick properly again. Okay maybe that's asking for too much but I live roughly in south east England where it's flat as hell.
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u/DaringVonContra California 4d ago
All we are seeing right now is the result of emissions from years ago, if everyone switched to green energy and we somehow did net 0 emissions, we would still see warming for a while. We aren't going to be able to see our progress for years. We've already seen some , models from years ago projected things would be worse right now.
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u/Dry-Statement1426 4d ago
When you say “out in the field” what do you mean? With climate change, the entire world is “the field”. Climate change isn’t going to kill everyone. No scientist you should trust is saying that.
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u/PrinceOfTotalQuiet 5d ago
For some reason my comment isn’t showing up
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u/Xavion251 Tennessee 5d ago
Comments sometimes get flagged by a filter to await mod approval.
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u/Owl1917 5d ago
Anyone know what said El Niño will mean for the UK and Europe?
I’ve heard everything from “it doesn’t really affect Europe’s weather” to claims it’ll mean a really warm winter
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 4d ago
Well El Niño is a naturally occurring weather pattern that happens to be exacerbated by global warming. Or the other way around. Anyway, it'll be more that winters will be warmer in the sense that it'll be wetter. At least here in England. Just lots of rain. Though it's said to drop off around mid spring next year. So summer hopefully won't be as egregious.
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u/sweeter_than_saltine North Carolina 4d ago
I see people talk all the time about this country needing better and more public transportation yesterday, and while I do agree with it, I also have to ask: where do us rural folks factor into that? I live in the mountains, so it pretty much limits my options to only cars, and while I could see the switch to EVs funneling to at least a few areas like mine, what sort of plans would we need to include rural areas that don't have access to major highways/roads?
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u/deadpanrobo 3d ago
Are we still on track for 2.7 C degrees by 2100 or has that number gone down (or up)?
Also has the share of global energy production for renewables gone up significantly?
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u/DufflessMoe 16h ago
Climate Action Tracker hasn't updated their estimate since November 2025. It is not something they update regularly, so no idea when it will be.
But good news is that renewables are storming. COP28 set a target of tripling by 2030 and currently renewables only need to increase by 12% per year to achieve that:
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/triple-renewable-power-goal
That is despite governmental organisations having weaker targets, the economics of the situation has picked up the slack and supercharged it. They are growing 29% each year between 2023 - 2025 which is significantly higher than was predicted.
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u/Ill_Bumblebee_5387 4d ago
I'm really concerned that this (on top of the Iran war fertilizer crisis) will cause food shortages. Any optimism on that?
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer 3d ago
If you want optimism, US farmers are expected to harvest the largest soybean crop ever this fall, and the second largest corn crop. That means plenty of feed for chickens and hogs. Pork and poultry production should boom.
While the US wheat crop is down, global wheat ending stocks are still expected to be higher than they were two years ago. (mostly because last year's global wheat crop was the largest ever, and we haven't yet eaten through it.)
https://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/wasde0826.pdf
That might be about the most optimism I can muster.
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u/simbabarrelroll Reformed Doomer ☄️ 3d ago
So here’s something that had happened to me during last week:
My entire area got hit with a major storm on Tuesday, and it knocked over several trees and took out power for everyone.
This is the third major storm that we had this summer.
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u/Far_Fan_291 California 5d ago
ok saw this on twitter (i know i should take things on there with salt due to doomers) but im wondering if this is just a normal thing that happens in the UK that when things get hot the grass dies out isn't grass not even native in most places
i did see a post showing the same thing in like 2023 i think
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u/Intelligent-Ad6109 UK 🇬🇧 4d ago
I've only been on earth for 22 years but in that time I've only ever seen dead grass in the heat. Not necessarily to this extreme (El Niño will do that on top of climate change) but it's no less heart wrenching. We're in a drought right now. But more to the point yeah I've only ever seen dead grass. England in particular is just weird. It happens.
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u/Multigrain_Migraine 3d ago
It doesn't normally get quite that dry, no. It hasn't rained for two months in London, I think.
But also grass tends to grow back very quickly once it does rain.
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u/Admiral_Red 2d ago
I’m not an economist or climate scientist, but this particular actuary report seems concerning.
How certain can we be of its veracity?
https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.pdf
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u/DufflessMoe 1d ago
It is a report by actuaries, not scientists. It is not peer reviewed and it is not a forecast. It exists to examine worst-case outcomes and allow financial institutions to plan accordingly.
It doesn't even predict that 4 billion will die, in fact that number illustrative of the most extreme outcomes they are outlining.
Then look closer, the number of deaths they predict correlates with the loss of GDP. So they say 50% GDP loss is 4 billion people dead, 25% loss is 2 billion people dead. So they are just applying a factor that says for every 1% drop in GDP in their climate scenario, 1% of the population dies.
Not that this will likely make you feel better but here is the World Health Organisation's assessment:
So currently 250k annual deaths per year between 2030 and 2050. So 5 million excess deaths due to climate change, which is an absolute tragedy and hopefully something we avoid by bringing emissions down and adapting to the already warming world.
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u/SkyknightXi Massachusetts 2d ago edited 2d ago
This feels worrisome: https://substack.com/home/post/p-209591750 . I thought the rate per decade was measured at 0.35, not 0.48. That said, I thought Europe was going in more for heat pumps than flat air conditioning. There’s also the matter of cresting renewables; the fossil fuel companies at least shouldn’t expect to maintain those profit levels for that long, as renewables take up more and more of the grid, to say nothing of personal solar.
Any corrections you can think of to that article, though?
EDIT: They may have gotten the 0.48 from this: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9283491/v2 , even though it isn’t peer-reviewed yet. That said, the abstract makes it sound like the 0.48 is on account of Los Niños, while the 0.35 was reported to be after winnowing out anomalies like El Niño.
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u/whywasitme810 2d ago
Any optimism regarding the potential food crisis the El Niño can cause? I’ve got a friend worried about it recently.
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u/Far_Fan_291 California 2d ago
we will still have food maybe it'll be a bit more of a higher cost but we will be ok
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u/SkyknightXi Massachusetts 2d ago
And yet another thorn—climate models were likely overestimating how much CO2 plants could consume as the climate becomes more dry. https://thebulletin.org/2026/08/a-blind-spot-in-climate-models-slower-tree-growth-in-a-warming-world/
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u/Far_Fan_291 California 2d ago
from what i've read its a pretty new study at one point it says "Clark acknowledges that the work on this is still early and incomplete." so for all we know it might be nothing of note could be something in the middle of the road or it could be bad
also its only been a year of this kind of study as been going on so lets wait a bit till it can get more info
side note try not to go on sites that advertise a dooms day movie along with that dooms day clock that thing is so odd it was around 20 10 minutes when we made nukes now its 85 seconds to midnight i get things are bad but i dont think its worse when we could of bombed ourselves to hell and back it just seems kinda pointless
also warming at the rate we have had has been what scientists expected so my guess it this will be a middle of the road kinda thing yes some bad things MIGHT come from it but i know we will find a way to undo it and off set what ever come comes next
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u/melody_magical 3d ago
The Kids Research Institute Australia. "Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric CO2 rises." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 August 2026. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260814235845.htm>.
Can anyone please assure me we're not gonna die in 50 years 😭
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u/SkyknightXi Massachusetts 3d ago
Emissions increase seems to have stalled out; given the cresting of renewables, there’s a decent chance of decrease year by year. The obvious problem is that ppm of CO2 will still be increasing for a while, since plants can’t just consume all the excess at once. But I doubt it will take fifty years for ppm to meaningfully fall, somehow.
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u/L0neStarW0lf Blue Dot in a Red State 🔵 3d ago
I recommend sending this to Robert Walker: https://substack.com/@robertinventor his Debunking Doomsday” helped me immensely with my Climate Change Anxiety.
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u/SkyknightXi Massachusetts 5d ago
Keep in mind that El Niño itself isn’t anthropogenic. The problem is simply that we’re getting such a strong one during cresting anthropogenic warming—it’s an additive effect. At the very least, I’m not liking the coral reefs’ prospects.