Meanwhile, in Existential News

With people riveted to the outrage in Ukraine or the Covid rollercoaster or the pump price of gasoline, the existential threat facing humanity has become an orphan.

It isn't that climate change isn't drawing us to the abyss, it is. It's just that we have other priorities. We always have other priorities. We'll get to it eventually or "they" will think of something.

Here's the latest. A bi-polar heatwave. We've had them before when in the dark of Arctic night surface air temperatures got into the double digits. But heatwaves at both poles, at the same time? Oh dear.

Startling heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles are causing alarm among climate scientists, who have warned the “unprecedented” events could signal faster and abrupt climate breakdown.

Temperatures in Antarctica reached record levels at the weekend, an astonishing 40C above normal in places.

At the same time, weather stations near the north pole also showed signs of melting, with some temperatures 30C above normal, hitting levels normally attained far later in the year.

30C and 40C heatwaves. That's far higher than the record setting "heat domes" that savaged British Columbia last June. 

Even the climate science types didn't see this one-two punch coming.

The danger is twofold: heatwaves at the poles are a strong signal of the damage humanity is wreaking on the climate; and the melting could also trigger further cascading changes that will accelerate climate breakdown.

Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science at University College London, said: “I and colleagues were shocked by the number and severity of the extreme weather events in 2021 – which were unexpected at a warming of 1.2C. Now we have record temperatures in the Arctic which, for me, show we have entered a new extreme phase of climate change much earlier than we had expected.”

We've been warned all along that climate change is not a linear process. It's a matter of tipping points, positive feedback loops and knock-on effects.