Tag Archives: global-warming

337, The Energy Denial: “Everything Runs Itself”

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A deeper layer of denial sits underneath climate change itself, and it is rarely acknowledged directly: the denial that energy is what makes modern life possible at all.

Most people do not think in terms of energy. They think in terms of systems that simply “work”:

  • food appears in supermarkets
  • heating comes from a thermostat
  • transport arrives on demand
  • goods are always available
  • electricity is assumed to be permanent and invisible

This creates a powerful illusion: that society is self-running, almost natural. In this mindset, energy is not seen as the foundation of everything, but as just another utility, endlessly available and adjustable.

In reality, every part of modern life depends on continuous, high-density energy flows. Food is not just grown, but fertilised, irrigated, harvested, processed, refrigerated, transported, and retailed. Housing is not just built, but heated, lit, repaired, insured, and maintained through vast supply chains. Even information systems depend on large-scale electricity networks, data centres, and global logistics.

Yet this dependence is rarely felt directly, so it is mentally excluded. This is the second denial: not only is climate change softened into something “somewhere else in nature”, but energy itself is erased from the mental model of everyday life.

Climate Change Meets Energy Denial

When Climate change begins to affect crops, water, and infrastructure, it is not experienced as an energy problem. It is experienced as “weather”, “prices”, or “supply issues”.

The connection is broken in perception.

But in physical reality, climate disruption is fundamentally an energy disruption. Heat stress reduces agricultural output. Drought reduces hydroelectric generation and irrigation. Extreme weather damages transport and distribution systems. All of this feeds back into higher energy use required to repair, cool, and stabilise systems that are already under strain.

The article on overheated food prices highlights exactly this chain: rising temperatures do not stay in the atmosphere. They move through land, labour, logistics, and finally into household cost.

Yet most responses remain fragmented:

  • food inflation is treated as monetary or political
  • energy prices are treated as market cycles
  • heat waves are treated as temporary anomalies

The unified energy system behind all of them is rarely acknowledged.

Heat Waves and the Collapse of the “Normal Future”

Heat waves are important because they briefly make energy visible.

During extreme heat:

  • cooling systems strain electrical grids
  • transport slows or fails
  • productivity drops sharply
  • water demand rises
  • infrastructure becomes fragile

In other words, society is forced to spend more energy just to maintain normality.

But once the heat wave passes, the system appears to reset. This reinforces denial in two ways:

  1. It feels like recovery, not escalation
  2. It restores the illusion that stability is the default state

So even as heat waves become more frequent, they are often processed as separate incidents rather than as evidence of a rising baseline energy load on the system.

The Deeper Psychological Pattern

This links back to a broader structure of denial:

  • Climate change is softened into “weather variation”
  • Energy is softened into “services”
  • System dependence is softened into “normal life”

All three work together to preserve a central belief: that the future will broadly resemble the present, with manageable adjustments.

Accepting the opposite would be more disruptive than most people are prepared for. It would require acknowledging that:

  • stability is energy-intensive
  • energy itself is increasingly constrained and stressed
  • climate change is not external to the system, but embedded in it

So the mind does what it has always done under strain: it compartmentalises.

Conclusion: The Invisible Foundation

The real denial is not simply about climate change. It is about the refusal to see that modern civilisation is an energy-dependent structure operating at the edge of environmental stability.

Heat waves do not just test comfort. They briefly expose the cost of maintaining normal life at all.

And when they pass, the illusion returns.

That cycle – disruption, then forgetting – is what allows both climate change and energy dependence to remain widely acknowledged, yet only partially believed in their consequences.

214. Will a Shrinking Economy Make Global Warming Go Away?

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As the economy shrinks, global warming will ease – but it will not disappear, and there is no honest basis for saying when it might.

Economic contraction reduces energy use, transport, construction, manufacturing and long supply chains. These are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. If contraction is deep and long-lasting, emissions will fall sharply. On this point there is little dispute. A smaller economy emits less carbon.

But global warming is not driven by today’s emissions alone. It is driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide remains for centuries. Methane is shorter-lived but highly potent. Even if emissions were cut close to zero, temperatures would remain elevated for a very long time. Some further warming would still occur because the climate system responds slowly.

This means there is no moment at which global warming simply stops. There is only a slowing, then possibly a stabilisation, and only much later a very gradual decline.

Some changes are already locked in. Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries. Oceans will stay warmer and more acidic. Ice loss will not reverse on any meaningful human timescale. These processes do not respond quickly to economic change.

What contraction can do is prevent escalation. It can stop warming from running away beyond human capacity to adapt. That is not a full solution, but it is the difference between difficulty and collapse.

Timing matters, and here certainty is not possible. If global economic contraction were sustained:

  • emissions could fall within one or two decades
  • temperature rise might stabilise later this century
  • climate instability would persist for many decades
  • sea level rise would continue well beyond 2100

There is no credible date at which the problem “goes away”.

The honest conclusion is this. A shrinking economy does not restore the old climate. It limits further damage and makes adaptation possible. That is not failure. It is realism. It shifts the task from chasing growth-based fixes to learning how to live within new climatic limits, locally and materially.

That is as far as authenticity allows us to go.

141. Southern Ocean current reverses for first time, signalling risk of climate system collapse

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I am in two minds about publishing this. Is it believable? I hope not – Barry

Southern Ocean current reverses for first time, signalling risk of climate system collapse

The reversal of ocean circulation in the southern hemisphere could double current atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ / ICM-CSIC

By bne IntelliNews July 5, 2025

A major ocean current in the Southern Hemisphere has reversed direction for the first time in recorded history, in what climatologists are calling a “catastrophic” tipping point in the global climate system.

The development, which was confirmed by Spanish marine scientists at El Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona, has triggered widespread alarm among climate scientists due to its potential to accelerate global warming and destabilise weather patterns worldwide.

“The stunning reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere confirms the global climate system has entered a catastrophic phase,” said climate activist Ben See in a post on social media.

The collapse involves the deep overturning circulation in the South Atlantic — part of the global conveyor belt of ocean currents, which typically pulls cold, nutrient-rich water up from the ocean floor and drives planetary heat distribution.

The study, published on July 2, identifies a collapse and reversal of the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) in the South Atlantic — a key part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

This current system plays a crucial role in regulating global temperatures and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide in the deep ocean. The ICM’s data show that the flow of the DWBC current reversed from northward to southward for several consecutive months in 2023 — the first such event in 30 years of continuous monitoring.

“This is an unprecedented observation and a potential game-changer,” said physicist and lead author Dr Marilena Oltmanns, who warned the changes could “alter the Southern Ocean’s capacity to sequester heat and carbon.”

According to the ICM-CSIC, the reversal is likely linked to an ongoing weakening of the Antarctic overturning circulation, a deep-ocean process driven by the formation of cold, salty water masses near Antarctica. That system has slowed by up to 40% since the late 1990s, and the new findings suggest it may be destabilising regional ocean dynamics more rapidly than expected.

There has been a lot of speculation that the whole AMOC (otherwise known as the Gulf Stream), could come to a halt. The AMOC brings warm water to Europe from the equator, and when it stops flowing that will lead to a mini-ice age in Europe with winter temperatures dropping by 10-30C. While scientists are 98% certain that the AMOC will stop flowing by 2100, recent studies suggest that the collapse could come as soon as this year,  or at least in the next few decades.

The ICM report warns that the reversal of the DWBC could also unleash vast amounts of carbon dioxide currently trapped in deep-ocean reservoirs. The reversal will undermine the ocean’s role as a carbon sink, which currently absorbs about 25% of all anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

“This could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries,” the report said. Such a release would likely obliterate existing climate targets, as the additional emissions would overwhelm current carbon budgets and render mitigation strategies based on gradual reductions, obsolete.

“The planet is sending us increasingly clear signals that we are crossing critical thresholds,” the ICM warned, characterising the event as a shift from “chronic climate stress” to “acute systemic breakdown.”

The reversal threatens to weaken the ocean’s crucial role as a carbon sink — one of the Earth’s key natural defences against rising atmospheric CO₂ — and will also dramatically disrupt global weather systems, sea level patterns, and marine ecosystems.

The Mediterranean is as hot as bathwater

The event coincides with an unprecedented marine heatwave in the Mediterranean. A Spanish metrological buoy recorded a sea temperature of 31C on July 4 – as hot as a lukewarm bath. The northwestern Mediterranean Sea has recorded a temperature anomaly of +6.21°C above the 1982–2015 average, part of a pattern of record marine heatwaves that scientists say are reshaping entire ecosystems.

The northwestern Mediterranean Sea is currently 6.21°C above the 1982–2015 average, creating what scientists have called “bathwater” conditions in a historically temperate basin. Warmer surface temperatures could further stall or disrupt ocean currents, feeding a dangerous feedback loop of warming and current instability.

While ocean circulations have shifted in the deep past due to glacial cycles, the current reversal is the first to occur in modern times due to anthropogenic climate change. Researchers now warn of increased risk of abrupt changes in monsoon patterns, fisheries collapse, and a rapid sea-level rise in the Southern Hemisphere. They are calling for immediate global attention and a reassessment of climate adaptation strategies in light of what may be a new and more volatile climate regime.

“The stunning reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere confirms the global climate system has entered a catastrophic phase,” said climatologist Ben See on social media.

The reversal of the current will bring cold water up from the deep in which is trapped CO₂. That means the reversal, “could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries,” the El Institut de Ciencies del Mar said.

“The planet is sending us increasingly clear signals that we are crossing critical thresholds,” the Institut added.