Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

James Hansen published a research paper (yet to be peer reviewed) together with two other scientists arguing that we "must expect global warming to continue."

Refering to their forecasts in the late 1980s, the researchers say that "global warming causes wet places to get wetter and dry places to get drier", and in places where the average precipitation changes little, "wet times get wetter and dry times get drier." Also, storms become stronger in a warmer world, they say.

With regard to the rising temperatures, Hansen et al. say that:

"[...] most people notice the change, but that doesn’t prevent a person with a bias from taking the cool June in the U.S. this year as proof that global warming predictions were wrong – and, of course, a loose cannon on Twitter has done just that. That’s nonsense, of course. On global average, June 2023 was easily the warmest June in the historical record."

[...]

"What to do about loose cannons [of climate change denial]? Censor them? Bad idea. Censorship leads to enforced conformity, which has more serious consequences than loose cannons. Conformity leads to dogma, which is anti-science. Science aims to compile real-world data and interpret it without prejudice, including its implications for policy. In a democracy, we must keep the public informed, which requires correcting disinformation. The aim is not to persuade a loose cannon – who likely has prior bias and is unpersuadable – but rather to educate those people who are open-minded."