Mad Max Or Waterworld? Why Not Both?!? Australia's Two Intertwined Futures W. Michael Mann

[hatrack]

The climatologist, not the director, that is . .

A year ago I lived through the Black Summer. I had arrived in Sydney in mid-December 2019 to collaborate with Australian researchers studying the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events. Instead of studying those events, however, I ended up experiencing them. Even in the confines of my apartment in Coogee, looking out over the Pacific, I could smell the smoke from the massive bushfires blazing across New South Wales. As I flew to Canberra to participate in a special “bushfires” episode of the ABC show Q+A, I witnessed mountains ablaze with fire. One man I met during my stay lost most of his 180-year-old family farm in the fires that ravaged south-east New South Wales near Milton.

My experiences indelibly coloured the book I was writing on the climate crisis at the time called The New Climate War. I returned home to the US last March, my sabbatical stay cut short by coronavirus. But just a year later, with memories of the hellish inferno that was the Black Summer still fresh in my mind, I must painfully watch from afar now as my Aussie mates endure further climate-wrought devastation. This time it’s not fires. It’s floods.

EDIT

In a scientific study I co-authored a year ago, we demonstrated that climate change is causing the wet season to get wetter and the dry season to get drier in many parts of the world. NSW is one of those regions, and we’ve seen the consequence in the whiplash of fires and floods that have plagued the region over the past 14 months. Australians can’t seem to catch a break. But it’s not too late to forestall a dystopian future that alternates between Mad Max and Waterworld.

Adapting to the harsh new reality Australia now faces will be hard, but it will be possible with sufficient government funding and infrastructure to support climate resilience. If, however, we allow the planet to continue to heat up, many heavily occupied parts of Australia will simply become uninhabitable.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/24/catastrophic-fires-and-devastating-floods-are-part-of-australias-harsh-new-climate-reality

[mountain grammy]

1. Excellent book..

The New Climate War..