The end is nigh for another year, which means yet more televised rituals of popping corks, fireworks and people embracing, moving in time with the beat and giving every appearance of being happy.
It’s just a show. The world – at least the human part of it – continues to screw up with worsening effects, and the past year has been truly hideous.
Leaders here and abroad, accustomed to rules to prevent overreach by state and capital, were blindsided by Donald Trump’s second go at ruling America. Formal, established limits to power mean nothing to a president focused squarely on the one who in his eyes embodies the state – himself.
American democracy and by extension democracy everywhere is vulnerable as never before. What is most likely to push it beyond repair is something Trump and his minions, flying in the face of everything science tells us, persist in calling a “hoax”. That is, human-induced climate change.
“There is nothing new under the sun,” says the Book of Ecclesiastes. That used to be true, but not any more. Unlike our regular New Year rituals, what we now confront is utterly new. They can say we’ve heard it before but we haven’t.
And this applies whichever country or hemisphere we live in, regardless of our political power and however large or lacking our wealth. Climate brings all people together, globally. It’s just that the knaves and fools in power today don’t yet know this. Or more likely, they close their ears to anything that might spoil their party.
When Trump came to office, the study of climate was front and centre in his gunsights, and Trump 2.0 has been devastating for US and global science. But it’s not yet terminal. Those around the world who do climate science for a living (or in many cases for nothing) continue working, albeit with less support as public funding dwindles or dries up entirely.
Exercising their minds now is not whether the world will pass the 1.5C Paris warming mark, but by how much. Behind only 2024, this year’s 1.5C of warming was the second highest on record. They expect 2026 to be slightly cooler, about 1.4C above pre-industrial, before the world starts hotting up again.
Veteran climatologist James Hansen, 84 years old and still able to make sense of the data, expects a developing El Niño to drive warming to 1.7C in 2027 – “further confirmation of the recent global warming acceleration”.
With the world currently on a high-emissions trajectory, that “safe” Paris limit will be vanishing in the rearview mirror by the end of this decade. Today’s global warming is more rapid than any previous such episode over millions of years. Or if you prefer, since well before Adam woke up to find himself in the Garden of Eden.
Without official US support, governments in Europe, the UK, Canada, Australia, China, Japan and the rest must now step up to ensure the continuity of observations – essential to any effective climate response.
Of all the components of the climate system, the hardest to monitor and measure is the global ocean. Europe is deeply concerned about the part of it that laps its shores and defines its temperate climate – the Atlantic – and especially about a weakening Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The warming Gulf Stream, part of this system, allows Europe to sustain a large population. Without it the continent is in deep trouble.
AMOC and another connected system centred on Antarctica form a global circulation system driven by heat and salinity differences between water masses – essential to sustain marine life and a massive influence on the world’s weather. Both circulations are slowing as melting ice sheets dilute surface waters, and there’s a danger one or both of them will collapse to a much weaker state.
Recently a multinational European team including the eminent oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf, of Germany’s Potsdam Climate Institute, found a growing likelihood that AMOC will collapse this century, triggered by a rising influx of freshwater from Greenland’s melting ice sheet.
AMOC’s influence extends globally. For the east coast of Trump’s America its loss would mean rapid sea-level rise and intense heatwaves, storms and rainfall. In many parts of the rest of the world including East Africa, South Asia, Australia and the western US, an AMOC shutdown would radically alter rainfall patterns, bringing widespread drought.
Said Rahmstorf: “We have already left behind the stable Holocene climate in which humanity has thrived… A full AMOC collapse would be a massive, planetary-scale disaster. We really want to prevent this from happening.”
We really, really do. If you’re in need of a New Year resolution, this is a good place to start looking.