This article appears in the Witness section of the Autumn 2018 issue of the New Humanist. Subscribe today.
An exceptionally hot summer in Britain left ordinarily green grass scorched yellow, a visible sign of the unusual temperatures. Moorland fires raged outside Manchester. The UK was not the only place to experience an extreme weather event this year. In Japan, 65 people died and over 20,000 were admitted to hospital over the course of a single week in July, during an “unprecedented” heatwave. Montréal posted its highest temperature ever, with the deaths of 33 people in Québec attributed to the heat. For a full 24 hours in June, the town of Quriyat in Oman never went below a frightening 42.6C – almost certainly a global record. Wildfires ravaged the mainland of Greece, triggered by a combination of temperatures of over 40C and lower-than-expected rainfall over the winter months. Indeed, much of Europe became a tinderbox. At one point, more than 60 wildfires burned across Sweden, with sites also ablaze in Norway, Finland and Russia. At least 11 wildfires raged inside the Arctic Circle.
It has long been predicted that climate change would increase the frequency of extreme weather incidents. Leading climate scientist Professor Michael Mann at Penn State University recently told the Guardian: “This is the face of climate change. We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.” A new analysis by the World Weather Attribution group found that climate change resulting from human activities made the current Europe-wide heatwave more than twice as likely to occur. Scientists say this demonstrates an “unambiguous” link between the increased temperatures and global warming.
Whether heatwaves, wildfires or other extreme weather events are “caused” by climate change may be the wrong question. A more appropriate one might be: is climate change having an effect on these events and making them more extreme? To this, the answer from scientific research appears to be a firm “yes”.
As we see the impact of climate change play out in real time around us, we might do well to shift the conversation away from arguing with those who maintain that the phenomenon does not exist. As Will McCallum argued in the cover story from our Spring 2018 issue: “The challenge, then, is to do both – to adapt to an already changed world and to take action against it getting worse. Collectively, we have some difficult decisions to make about what we choose to save and what we should accept we are going to lose. We need to reflect on what the changed world we are facing is going to look like.”
