Five Curves That Should Scare the World

Jonathan Jeppsson

Dig Manager and Climate Columnist

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Published 09.28

On the dark side of the ongoing crises, things are growing that we no longer seem to want to acknowledge.

Here are five curves that we turn away from – but that should make us both worried and scared.

Remember the movie with a gorilla moving through a group of basketball players?

It was an attention test – the viewer was asked to focus on counting the number of passes that the basketball players in white jerseys made to each other, but then it turned out that more than half of the spectators missed that a person in a gorilla suit was slowly walking through the group.

And when you knew that a big monkey was going to enter the hall and had your attention focused on it, you instead missed that the drapery in the background changed color and that a player on the team with black shirts simply disappeared from the match.

Why? Because we used our intuitive system, the lightning-fast processing in our brain, guided by intuition, emotions and habits. The system that determines much of our actions, unlike the other system – our thoughtful, logical, reasoning thinking.

System 1 is fast and efficient, but sometimes leads to misjudgments. System 2 is sluggish and slow, but can give better results in the long run.

Now we are constantly distracted by new attacks, new moves and new tragedies that cause our fast thinking, system 1, to go into high gear. This makes us ignore the big movements that are happening in the background, even though they are actually unfolding right before our eyes.

Here are five curves that should scare us about its long-term consequences – if only we weren’t so focused on the next social media rant from the US president.        

 

The energy imbalance is growing.

The energy imbalance

The rise of the grey curve is remarkable. It shows the Earth’s energy imbalance, that is, how much energy is supplied to and leaves the Earth. In a stable climate, the incoming solar energy is about the same as the energy that is radiated back. But the latest report from the WMO shows how the Earth’s energy imbalance has reached its highest level since observations began in 1960. Heat is now accumulating in the Earth’s various systems, in the ocean, on land and in the atmosphere. The balance is upset and there is nothing to indicate that it will return to normal.       

 

Warming has accelerated.

The acceleration of warming

For a long time, the rate of warming was more or less linear – but then suddenly something happened. In recent years, warming has accelerated.

After taking into account known phenomena that affect temperature, such as El Niño and volcanic eruptions, researchers from the Potsdam Institute see for the first time a statistically significant increase in warming.

Over the past ten years, the rate of warming has been around 0.35 degrees, compared with an average of just under 0.2 degrees per decade between 1970 and 2015.

 

The oceans are at record highs.

The warming of the oceans

Twelve Hiroshima bombs – per second. That’s how much energy the oceans absorb for us. 90 percent of excess heat is absorbed by the oceans, but they also store carbon dioxide – and as marine heatwaves become the new normal, this ability is at stake. “The ocean has been our greatest ally in mitigating the effects of climate change; the evidence is now clear that rising temperatures and increasingly intense marine heatwaves are weakening the ocean’s ability to store carbon,” says marine biologist Katie Smith.         

The number of low-lying clouds is decreasing.

Fewer and fewer clouds

A group of researchers recently concluded that the reduction in low-lying clouds is responsible for half of the increase in the Earth's energy imbalance. They also found that changes in cloud cover over the past two decades are largely due to human influence, rather than natural variations in the Earth's climate.

But everything is connected, the researchers conclude – 40 percent of the reduction in low-lying clouds since 2003 is due to warming oceans – then carbon dioxide emissions themselves and the reduction in aerosols, which are mostly sulfur particles in the atmosphere.         

Could be a super El Niño.

A new El Niño is on the way

The latest forecasts, the fan-shaped accumulation of curves above, indicate that a very powerful one will develop during the summer. This could have major consequences for both weather and climate going forward – normally all new heat records are set during an El Niño year. The upcoming El Niño event is likely to rival 1982, 1997 and 2015 – and could very well be the strongest in history. “Real potential to be the strongest El Niño event in 140 years,” writes professor and atmospheric scientist Paul Roundy in a commentary.

We turn away

Of course, these curves should receive considerably more attention than they do today. But attention is a limited resource. Because the climate issue is sluggish and slow, our “attention span” is slowly being blunted while it is being outcompeted by other crises.

Climate research, psychology and philosophy have long tried to show how we turn away from problems that are too big, too intractable and too long-lasting. They are overshadowed by other crises such as wars, stock market crashes and gang shootings.

A gorilla moves through the room, but we no longer see it.

          

        “A gorilla moves through the room, but we no longer see it,” writes Jonathan Jeppsson. Photo: Kai            Rehn / Schibsted