Living under exponential change
A recent preprint claims terrestrial carbon sinks trapped much less atmospheric CO2 than in previous years. Patrick Greenfield, covering it for The Guardian, reports:
“The issue of natural sinks has never really been thought about properly in political and government fields. It’s been assumed that natural sinks are always going to be with us. The truth is, we don’t really understand them and we don’t think they’re always going to be with us. What happens if the natural sinks, which they’ve previously relied on, stop working because the climate is changing?” says Watson.
Reflecting on living through 2020, I remember just how quickly everything changed. First, a few months of reports of a new SARS in China. Then, a couple of weeks when Seattle nursing homes became infected and US caseloads were in the hundreds. It took less than a week in mid-March for the virus to spread to a point where we collectively recognized lockdown as a necessity. In just days, everything became upended.
The exponential changes within the system are already changing life in a matter of days, if not weeks. We’re seeing this in Asheville after a monstrous amount of rainfall. Nobody could imagine this scale of impact—in the mountains, no less—until it was already happening. Witnessing meteorologists grappling with the size and intensity of Hurricane Milton—struggling to communicate the strength of the storm—is a sign of how hard it will be to adapt our thinking to exponentially-worsening circumstances.
8PM EDT: This is nothing short of astronomical. I am at a loss for words to meteorologically describe you the storms small eye and intensity. 897mb pressure with 180 MPH max sustained winds and gusts 200+ MPH. This is now the 4th strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure on this side of the world. The eye is TINY at nearly 3.8 miles wide. This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth’s atmosphere over this ocean water can produce.
Part of that rapid change will be fed by systems breaking down unexpectedly, instead of remaining in a stable, predictable state. Carbon sinks already aren’t behaving like we expected. There’s a chance the Gulf Stream could break down. These changes feed one-another, accelerating climate change. We won’t have time to adapt. We live precariously.