It’s gonna be cooler than we thought! — NY Times, Oct. 26

Beyond Catastrophe A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View By David Wallace-Wells

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html

You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.

Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)

Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range….)

This NYT article is awful in many ways. On the one hand, emissions have not dropped. On the other hand, we can thank human responsiveness for the reduction in predicted temperatures. Duh. But the bottom line is that the climate won’t heat up enough to destroy humanity.

Here is a quote from another NYT article on climate published the same day.

Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100.

Did you catch that? Compared to preindustrial levels—using a baseline from 150-200 years ago? Is this a CYA because they expect little to no warming for the next few decades?

Then the article repeats the usual climate hyperbole, in spades:

With each fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would disappear.

Hedging their bets? Editors not all getting the same memo? Is the NYT trying to get in front of major battles at the climate conference? Get in front of rapid cooling?

Or is it an admission that countries are no longer willing to shoot their populations in the head with fossil fuel restrictions; are the apparatchiks seeing pitchforks?

This is just a heads-up that the climate narrative is changing in real time. Let’s see where this goes—but watch what comes out of the UN climate conference.