Since the kick off of this blog four years ago, the many manifestations of climate change are finally moving the lines, as seen through the satements of so-called experts. Their assertions change according to weather happenings which invalidate more every day their previous assumptions. Thus, faced with the risk of being discredited by the news, the IPCC finally decided to consider climate change from the angle of weather disturbances and their consequences in its latest report, while the increase in global average temperature was so far the alpha and omega of his speech.

There is no longer a day without the press revealing the seriousness of the phenomenon, with for example this week the record average global temperature at the beginning of June, the disappearance of the glaciers of the Himalayas by 2100, the accelerated and unprecedented warming of the ocean surface or the alarming temperature increase of 2.3°C in Europe since the pre-industrial era.

Last year in France, we have experienced a unprecedented drought – at same time of a new record for annual global average temperature – which confronted us with the tangible consequences of climate change and no longer just the idea of this phenomenon. This winter, the imbalance is increasingly confirmed with a water shortage leading in the Eastern Pyrenees, in Spain or in Canada, to agricultural impotence and a new increase in forest fires. At the end of spring, I noticed that the area burned in Spain in the first quarter was equivalent to that in France over the whole of last year while in Canada, it was ten times higher. In June, the birded acreage in Canada had been multiplied by 15. The current French Minister of the Environment Christophe Béchu even admits that 2/3 of our groundwater levels are below the norm.

A few weeks ago, this representative of the people went so far as to contradict the reassuring and irresponsible litany of the IPCC which no longer has any other choice while facing the facts above, than a change of discourse. This organization – though the voice of Valérie Masson-Delmotte – now state an increase in global temperature at the end of the century which would no longer be 1.5°C but 3.4°C. Furthermore, Valérie Masson-Delmotte dare to say that the IPCC had underestimated by half the quantity of CO2 necessary in the atmosphere, for a warming of 1.5°C – just that!

How is it still possible to believe the are so cheeky that they constantly issue new forecasts denying the previous ones? I would like them to have the humility to recognize that what they know is they know nothing. From there, politicians should act based on the precautionary principle instead of taking in account the sayings of experts who are clearly overwhelmed by the complexity of climate change. As spokesperson for the climate cause, the IPCC should alerting civil society to the seriousness of the climate change instead of hazarding risky predictions, and no more.

Suddenly, ski resorts as well as farmers and the energy sector to a lesser extent, raise the issue of water deficit which today threatens their respective activities.

Given the lack of snow this winter in the Alps, it is clear to the first that the white plan launched in France the 60s is clearly hitting the wall of climate change. The current shortening of the ski season sounds serious in the very short term for the winter sports economy which will have made it possible, for a time, to repopulate our mountains disqualified by productivist agriculture in other regions before being affected by deindustrialization. This part of the leisure economy will have to reinvent itself at a time when it is facing a reduced range of use of its infrastructures which goes together with the difficulty in mobilizing the required amount of labor at the right time.

The threat of water shortage also threate our agriculture of which certain productions will suffer from an increasingly erratic rainfall pattern. As an informed whittness of this sector for which I have been involved for thirty rears or so, I have been expecting for years an increase in the cost price of foodstuffs and beyond that, shortages which threaten certain production with, in a rising number of countries, food insecurity and in Africa recently, even famine. In the field of plants since the beginning of the year, it looks like the media report the concern of scientists who become aware finallly, to the threat weighing on the future of forests.

At last, the weakening of the flow of surface water now prevent the production of hydroelectric energy while downstream of the rivers, the reduction in the low flow of our rivers no longer allows us to cool down our nuclear power plants.
We can assume that with the deficit in groundwater supply which is more and more important under the effect of a first winter drought which followed that of last summer, the drinking water supply sector will be impacted by climate change soon.

For the moment, it is the rainfall pattern which is the main issue, while extreme temperatures are relatively rare in France where it is still possible to feel spared by climate change. This seems logical as temperatures are under the influence on the one hand of variations in radiation dictated by the immutable position of the earth in relation to the sun and on the other hand, of a now disturbed balance between amounts of energy – characterized by their inertia – which are distributed on the surface of the earth’s crust. On the contrary, precipitation which also depends on temperature, is mainly influenced by local factors such as relief, vegetation or the proximity of water. In other words, the water regime is the first climatic parameter to suffer from climate change.

Despite the above, humanity remains mainly driven by harmful behaviors motivated by capitalism and finance, while opposition is now becoming visible in the ambient cacophony that has taken over the media space.

Just out of the covid years, today’s world is back in full swing, as showed by the hectic recovery of air transport and hotels whose erratic prices no longer have any relation to their real cost. We may be witnessing the last convusions of yesterday’s world with, for example, the hasty construction of the latest swimming pools, as their market is about to diseappear on pressure of restrictive laws. Some lobbies are taking advantage of the general panic – with the complicity of politicians who release subsidies indiscriminately – to build white elephants. While the Zero Net Artificialization law has just been promulgated, huge quantities of concrete cover the territory wherever it is possible. It is crazy to notice that cement manufacturers make lot of profit on the financial market for CO2 emission permits, which has become very lucrative by a strange irony of fate.

On the front of the fight for the environment, violence is now taking place in protest struggles where public opinion comes up against authoritarian regimes throughout the world and even in France, as in Sainte Soline where a big pond is to be dig up for irrigation purpose. Our government has just dissolved a movement called “Amis de la Terre » after promulgating a moratorium on measures that would hinder economic growth with aiming to defend the environment. Opponents of the Lyon Turin railway line are opposed to a project owner who justifies his project under the pretext that the work has already started, just like his counterpart in charge of the construction of the A69 which should connect Castre to Toulouse.

Year 2023 seems to be that of a general awareness which will undoubtedly mark a turning point. Let us hope that recognition of the seriousness of the phenomenon will be followed by adaptation proportionate to its scale.

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