I woke up at night on Tuesday two weeks ago. The hailstorm was over in ten minutes. The feeling remained that I had never experienced anything like it.
Mojib Latif: I often hear people say they have never seen anything like this before. And we see at some measuring stations that extreme precipitation has actually increased.
What makes this extreme weather?
I am convinced that your subjective perception has something to do with global warming. This is physically plausible and was predicted many years ago on the basis of theoretical considerations and models. But the database is bad.
why?
Because we measure precipitation, but not how long and with what intensity it rained. Above all, not nationwide. This data has only been around for about 20 years. We have longer series of data on temperature.
In the past two weeks, the rivers and lakes in Switzerland swelled up in a short time due to the huge amount of rain. Threatened many people’s homes. In North America, meanwhile, there was scorching heat. And then the pictures from Germany. Over 170 people who lost their lives in a flood. – Again: Is global warming to blame or is it the weather?
We’re talking more about the climate here.
What are you up to?
If we look at the last few decades, we see extremes and records. And now in Germany this flood with so many fatalities and in North America hundreds of heat deaths because temperatures were up to 50 degrees. We had a very stable climate for thousands of years. Of course there were regional fluctuations, like the little ice age. Viewed globally, however, there was hardly any change. That is why human civilization has developed so well. I am convinced that humanity is just leaving the comfort zone.
ZEqually, there have been storms like the one in Zurich two weeks ago, and the flood in Germany is described as the worst in 60 years.
That’s not an argument. One can easily refute that.
Please?
Imagine you have a dice and you number it on the six.
So I now roll sixes a lot more often.
You could now say: The die has already rolled sixes before, it cannot be that something is wrong. This reasoning makes no sense.
They say that we are leaving the comfort zone. What do you mean by that?
I wonder how many floods of the century we’ve had in the past 30 years. I’m a little older now, and I can’t even count how many specials I’ve been on because there was a flood of the century. The inflationary use of this word shows that a new world is emerging.
Are you surprised?
In no way. 2018 was the year we woke up in Germany: these extreme temperatures in summer for such a long time that we have never had before. Something has happened in the perception of the population. I believe that we are just reaching the planetary limits. Now after this flood, politicians are standing up and assuring those affected that they will get help quickly. But we will also reach our limits financially. We cannot spend billions of euros every year on eliminating climate damage in agriculture or on those affected by natural disasters. Therefore we have to consider: How will we live in this new world, how do we want to deal with it?
I.is it too late?
What do you mean too late? We can only do damage limitation anyway. Since the CO2-Emissions cannot be stopped overnight, the warming continues. The only thing we can do is limit this warming to what is written in the Paris Climate Agreement. There it says: well below 2 degrees. That in itself is a huge challenge. Today we are already at a little more than 1 degree. But it’s possible. To do this, however, the world must be climate neutral by 2050.
Let’s start from the beginning. Greenhouse gases are basically good.
Exactly, there is a natural greenhouse effect. It has a magnitude of over 30 degrees. That means: If we had the water vapor, CO2 and methane not in the air, our earth would be an ice desert. So nothing against the greenhouse effect! This guarantees us the life-friendly conditions on earth. But it’s like healing medicine: if you overdose, it can have disastrous side effects. Too many greenhouse gases inevitably lead to global warming. Scientists wrote that down more than 100 years ago.
The Wissenschaft speaks of the cascade effect. What is it?
If a certain warming is exceeded, processes occur that can no longer be stopped. Even if we don’t have a CO2 emit more. This happens at so-called tipping points. A tipping point could trigger further tipping points, which accelerated warming or sea level rise. Similar to a game of dominoes: you tap a stone, it tilts – until all the stones are in place at the end.
In your latest book «Hot Time» you describe that climate change is too complex and threatening and that our brain protects itself from it by ignoring these facts. What to do?
We have to show people that they can win something. We can’t just say: I’ll make petrol expensive now and people will have to pay more. Nobody likes that. The moment you do that, there have to be alternatives. For example, inexpensive local public transport. You have to make offers that people willingly accept. And then we all know that the future belongs to renewable energies. Anyone who develops technologies there now also secures the future economically.
Can technical progress be our CO2-Solve problem?
One hoped for it even with nuclear power. We thought: We’ll think of something with the nuclear waste. We couldn’t think of anything. We cannot make the mistake of the CO2 problem. Anyone who recognizes a problem has to get to the root of it. So if we think we have a problem with CO2 we shouldn’t put it off. That would be the simplest, but also the most dangerous solution.
In June, the Swiss population voted against a CO2– Law voted.
This is a pity. Was it clearly rejected?
No, scarcely. 51 percent were against it.
In my experience, such votes often mix up a lot that has nothing to do with the actual question. Many people then simply vote against it out of principle because they distrust politics. An example from Germany: There was a coal commission that decided to phase out coal in 2038. One of the chairmen of the commission was the ex-Prime Minister of Saxony, Mr. Tillich. He later switched to the supervisory board of a lignite company. It’s legal. Such things can lead to a loss of credibility. That is why many people no longer trust politics.
What is your concern as you look to the future?
There are so many tipping points. We do not know at what temperatures that will occur. There are limits to predictability. The earth system is so complex. I think that’s part of being honest. Because we as scientists also know exactly what we don’t know. In that sense, it’s like Russian roulette: it’s about avoiding every tenth of a degree. Because this one tenth of a degree could overflow the barrel.
If we continue as before, we will be at plus 3 degrees in 2100.
From the point of view of a climate researcher, that would be a catastrophe.
Where are we today
The last few weeks have personally confirmed that we are on the threshold of a new world. This flood in a country like Germany with so many victims was never believed. The surprise of politicians after this flood shows that we are still not taking climate change seriously.
The sub-Sahara is particularly badly affected by climate change. The increasing number of extreme droughts threaten the lives of many people. Madagascar, which is currently suffering from a hunger crisis due to a drought, has CO2 emissions of 0.16 tons per capita per year.
In the USA it is 16 tons per capita, in Germany 8 tons, in Switzerland 4.3 tons. With CO2 there is a decoupling of cause and effect. Temporally, but also spatially. The damage is delayed, and those who emit a lot do not bear the greatest consequences.
What to do?
We need systemic changes. Driving a little less or flying a little less is not enough. We have to think from the ground up and try to generate as few emissions as possible and to achieve a circular economy in the long term. We are currently using the atmosphere as a landfill.
You are being attacked for warning of the consequences of climate change.
That’s why I’m not on social media either. But I get such messages every day by e-mail. There were a few less during the flood. But it will definitely increase again. I won’t let that deter me, the topic is too existential for that.