Weather: Niwa confirms 2021 was NZ’s hottest year on record
What was New Zealand’s costliest year for flood damage was also our warmest – sending a grim reminder, if we still needed one, that our planet is heating at an alarming rate.
Niwa today revealed that 2021 was the hottest year in more than a century of records, with a mean land surface temperature of 13.56C – or just shy of 1C above the 1981-2010 average.
That placed it above our previous warmest, 2016, as well as 2018, which began with a record-hot summer, and 1998, the year a severe El Nino fuelled a nightmare drought.
‘A stark reminder’: 2021 the world’s fifth-hottest year on record – EU scientists
Last year was the world’s fifth hottest on record, while levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere hit new highs in 2021, EU scientists said.
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a report on Monday the past seven years were the world’s warmest “by a clear margin” in records dating back to 1850 and the average global temperature in 2021 was 1.1-1.2C above 1850-1900 levels.
The hottest years on record were 2020 and 2016.
In 1980, the time between billion dollar climate destruction events was 3 months.
It’s now 18 days.
There is a point where the next destructive weather event strikes before you can rebuild from the last one.
The rapid melting of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica is the final evidence that we can’t stop what’s coming and that radical adaptation will be the only option.
Expect to hear a lot more about the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation as its weakening will trigger irreversible environmental collapse.
There is no optimism on the climate front, just consequences now.
Meanwhile we continue to focus on the big issues like cancelling people for tweets sent a decade ago and shadow banning everyone who is friends with Ani O’Brien and Rachel Stewart on Twitter.
You know, the BIG issues.
Watching Climate Strike For Students Auckland cancel itself last year because of ‘white heteronormative cis male privilege’ (I’m not joking) sums up the current climate crisis protest movement perfectly. A middle class asthetic for social justice virtue signals tied into woke dogma that believes all white people are racist, all men are rapists and anyone supporting free speech is a Nazi.
Woke Identity Politics is as alienating as a Spin-off dinner party where everyone is arguing over who hates white men the most.
Woke Identity Politics is perfect for free the nipple rallies with cycling militant Trans ally mommy bloggers, not so good on the economic neoliberal hegemony that is melting the planet.
As we squabble, midnight arrives, and ultimately, that was the true problem with Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up‘.
The pitiful shallow political leadership, the Aspie Billionaire rocket club, the banal celebrity obsessed public, the inarticulate scientific community with zero capacity to convince the apathetic voters – in the end you just started cheering for the fucking asteroid!
And that’s the true problem with ‘Don’t Look Up’, you are so sickened by our collective response that the only justice left is in deserving what comes next.
The petty low hanging fruit of neoliberal identity politics is the only value the progressive left can espouse because individuals no longer see themselves beyond the identity of their social media profile. We have lost collective solidarity via class for skin colour, gender and self selected identity.
And while those identities scream for social hierarchy in a never ending outrage Olympics and victim virtue signaling cacophony fed by Facebook hate algorithms, the corporations pretend they are blameless, Billionaires build bigger rockets and the Planet melts.
It’s hard not to support the asteroid.
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It was all over 20 years ago. We experience the climate effects of actions taken decades ago. Like trying to turn a supertanker.
Death…….the Great Leveller.
To the smug middle class: your smartphone, hybrid SUV, and phony degree ain’t gonna’ save ya.
Party now if you can – especially with Long Covid ready to ruin the lives of 10 percent of us (https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-public/about-covid-19/long-covid).
Times up! everything has a beginning and an ending.
All the sinful ways of mankind have colluded to bring about the ending that many cultures have predicted would eventually come.
Mars was probably green and inhabited but look at it now. The Middle East and Northern Africa was once a fertile green place, but look at it now.
All the science says going vego is the way and love of flesh eating ruined the Egyptian’s too. It aint rocket science. The reasons India and China grew and were sustainable was because they limited meat.
Luke 3:16
John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Psalm 104:4
He makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.
Luke 12:49
“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!
Ah… sinful ways my arse.
God bothering is two things.
Thing One. is it’s bullshit.
Thing Two. is that it’s a means of controlling people dumb enough to believe in an invisible psychopath spirit watching us wank to on line porn and so condemning us to Hell and Damnation.
Thing three. God bothering is behind every single conflict you can name. The capitalist yanks are all about God Bless this and God Bless that while shooting innocent black people so praise Jesus and Pass the Ammunition because we’re all off to Walmart.
Thing four is there were three things not two. So raspberries.
I started questioning the medias coverage of climate change after ‘climate gate’ email scandal, where the media/political animals threatened climate scientists jobs if they did not tow the climate change will destroy us line
When was that?
About 10 – 15 years ago
Google it for more details
Mike the lefty, those people probably don’t have to worry about the extra few thousand. It will be more like which colour to get.
Meanwhile, back to the important issues of the day……….pro nouns (sarc).
The boomer replacement generation members that decide not to have kids–for whatever reason–are doing humans a service, because really what reasonable person would want to put more people through what is coming?
Eco Socialism is what was needed years ago, and may still happen in little outposts as the tipping points “tip”. I disregarded Martyn’s Fortress NZ argument for a long time, but grudgingly accept a version of it will now have to kick in sooner rather than later. COVID has shown the way with supply chain blockages, and less migrant labour, tourism and general exploitation–and shock horror–the country did not collapse!
Futurist movies from WaterWorld, Mad Max, Hunger Games, The Quiet Earth, and Blade Runner to name some mainstream ones, have illustrated what we are in for.
I know of 1 way to delay the crashing of capitalism by the climate chaos. People have invented a UCC a universlal ‘carbon’ credit whereby everyone gets an equal ration of a second currency which has to be paid for everything that includes greenhouse gas pollution. That implemented for businesses would function like GST. People would be able to reduce their pollution in their own way without choices made for them. Excessive users (the rich) would have to take drastic action. They would be able to buy UCCs from the poor who dont pollute thus the rich would help the poor out of poverty.. There is an organisation working on the details.
Run!!! We all gonna die!!!! We all gonna die!!!! We all gonna die!!!
you first mein Krautenstein…
…some more brutally than others 🙂
People have been running around saying the end is nigh since Eve, Adam, the snake and the apple all got together.
We’re still waiting. Sure things seem crazy but this could carry on for ages yet
You’re right. Previous timelines stretch out millions of years. Carbon in the atmosphere doesn’t look good however. Things are surely going to go crazy.
If so it is no more than we deserve.
We gave ourselves the title of curator of the planet then we systematically crapped in our own nest
The planet will be fine when we are gone
Excellent Post @ MB.
And scary, frustrating, maddening and enraging. I’m now having one of those ‘I want to drink a bottle of vodka then go back to bed’ kind of mornings.
When one can see The Guardian photographs of Giraffe who’ve died of thirst as wee kids scavenge for a sip of diseased sludge at the bottom of a hole dug in the desert you know shit’s getting real.
Last Friday I drove to Lakes Hauroko ( the 16th deepest lake in the world, reportedly ) then on to Lakes Monowai, Manapouri and Te Anau. Each lake has crystal clear, unpolluted and drinkable water ( Apart from the odd dead thing and the panic-shit it no doubt did prior to dying. )
Those lakes are vast in area and deep and they belong to all five million of us.
That’s why four or five Royal Navy aircraft carriers covered in the RAF’s best fighter bombers please?
Have you watched ‘Death to 2021’ ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_2021
It’s deeply chilling and hilariously funny.
What I’m trying to write is that we’ll be ok, I think. The problem with that, though, is that, that will make us a target for invasion. ( I know. Mad talk. ) Is the future going to be all about cock shaped rockets and hypersonic space to ground missiles launched from Starlink satellites?
if anyone is gonna ‘help stabilise democracy through regime change’ in NZ it’s the yanks or the aussies…
Sleeping Dogs anyone?
If this short video, (4.48 mins) narrated in the past tense, doesn’t scare the shit out of everyone with half a brain or more, then I don’t know what will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJZR2-nI04&t=4s
It’s imperative we act now if we’re to have any chance. And planning to become carbon neutral by 2050 is not going to cut it!
“A visualization of near-term human extinction”. Hmmm…what a lovely cartoon programme. I’m not scared at all now.
As a keen kayaker I’m more than pleased to note that kayak rolling practice this summer has been less daunting. I’m still hanging out for coral top begin forming up in Northland though.
I have just read the plot. It reads like it’s a ‘Shark-A-Geddon!’ movie!?
Climate Change is real, but, FFS. Focus on the things that you can fix now like…Housing! Homelessness! Poverty! Health and definitely EDEWKASHON!
Crisis movies are boring!
Just watched it. It’s just another ‘End of Days Armagedon’ Mellinial Horror movie.
Who’s worse? Mels, GenZ or Evangelical nutjobs?
I’m loving your writing Martyn, you sound more like the Babylon Bee every day 🙂
Andy
Yeah…Run!!! We all gonna die!!!! We all gonna die!!!! We all gonna die!!!
The true problem is that for century’s industrialist bastards have clear felled the worlds forests so it cant breathe. You know?…. like riparian edges and wholesale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and earlier, North Africa and the Mediterranean? And you wonder why ???!!!
Huh!
There was a documentary[ David Attenborough?] that showed exactly what I’d been saying to my family weeks before; A country [ West African?] was using cheap and simple irrigation techniques to revege step by step areas of desert and in doing so, creating farming and animal habitat oasis’s. Kilometer after kilometer. Huge employment, huge crop growing benefits and food production. They were harvesting grain and root crops, and planting fruit trees. Using plants native to that area as well as lupins and other nitrogen fixing and humous making plants as the advant garde.
How simple is that? , if all these high falluting conferences singled out a country to be developed with aid, then the next one – then the next one ,- we could clear this global warming crap up and provide for a healthy well nourished global population.
But no. Always the wankers who see their profit margins plummet if people worked together. And that’s the way its always been. A pox on them and the curse of 1000 cattle ticks under each of their armpits. Bloated, of course.
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