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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/26/the-guardian-view-on-adapting-to-the-climate-crisis-it-demands-political-honesty-about-extreme-weather>
"The record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated
Caribbean islands at the end of October were made five times more likely by the
climate crisis. Scorching wildfire weather in Spain and Portugal during the
summer was made 40 times more likely, while June’s heatwave in England was made
100 times more likely.
Attribution science has made one thing clear: global heating is behind today’s
extreme weather. That greenhouse gas emissions warmed the planet was
understood. What can now be shown is that this warming produces record
heatwaves and more violent storms with increasing frequency.
What we can do to minimise, or at least reduce, the risks to life from such
events – as well as more gradual changes – is what climate adaptation experts
think about all the time. The alarming consensus is that we are not doing
anywhere near enough. The result is paid for in lives: floods and cyclonic
storms across Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia left hundreds dead at the end
of November.
The president of Cop30 in Brazil, André Corrêa do Lago, called for the UN
climate change conference to be a “Cop of adaptation”. But the governments of
the most vulnerable countries went home from Belém angry about an outcome that
saw the projected size of the annual adaptation budget triple to $120bn, but
with the deadline pushed back to 2035 and no clear mechanism to make rich
countries pay up.
Even that total falls short of the $300bn in climate finance overall that was
agreed at Cop29 in 2024. The risk is that without international support,
heavily indebted countries such as Jamaica become trapped, with resources that
ought to be directed towards green energy and future-proofing being spent
instead on coping with disasters.
But the need for preparation is not limited to low-lying countries and those
most affected by extreme heat and violent storms. This imbalance in climate
programmes can be seen all over the world. Last month, a group of UK scientists
organised what they called a “national emergency briefing” in London in an
effort to alert people to the scale of the climate crisis threat – and alarming
underpreparedness."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
