The Chaser Report - The ONE GOOD THING About El Nino

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

The world may be on fire, but Charles has found one good thing about El Nino that's worth all the pain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, it's official. What? El Nino is underway. The World Meteorological Organization has announced this week that it is coming back. The official El Nino, it means record high temperatures.

Disruptive weather, basically we're in hell again. Yes, and in actual fact, we've got a bit of an academic report from the University. of Leeds about the four main consequences of El Nino. Yep, the comedy is coming thick and fast today after this. Okay, so you might think that El Nino is just all bad news, right? Sure. But actually, it's just mainly bad news, but there is actually a few really good things about El Nino.

Really, because I must say, having worked a little bit in this field, you know, seriously, I just sort of think drought, bushfires were all going to hell. Yes. Basically, the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is upon us whenever there's an El Nino. Yeah, and look, I think the thing to realize is it's bad. I mean, it's always bad. Sure. Everything's always terrible when it comes to things about climate.

But what El Nino does is it sort of supercharges those and it creates these feedback loops that makes things even worse than the worstness that had already been predicted. Yes, it's a sort of self-worsening system. And it should be noted as well that we've just come out of La Nina, which is the wet one. So we haven't even had the period of normal. Normally you have a couple of years where things are okay and you don't have ridiculousness. But we've gone straight from basically massive flooding,

if you recall, in Australia, to now drought and fires without, I mean, with a couple of months of whatever this winter is in between. Yeah, and look, I mean, at least the people of Lismore will be able to dry out their houses over the next couple of years. Well, unless they burn down. Oh, yeah, but they'll probably burn down, yes, that's true. Okay, so the first consequence is that the fact

that we're heading straight into an El Nino greatly increases the likelihood of exceeding 1.5 degrees above long-term norms, right? But not just that. It also means that people will blame it on the El Nino rather than on climate inaction. Yes, that's right. So we can actually have more climate inaction as a result of being warmer because people can just blame on the wrong thing. Yeah, because I mean, it should be noted that as bad as human-powered climate change has been,

Remember that giant fire, the Gospers Mountain Fire that was something like 15 times the size of Singapore a couple of years ago? Yes. Yeah, that didn't help the client much either. Yes, that's right. And so you've got to realize the last time the Globe had a record temperature,

it was in 2016, right? And that was during the last El Nino, right? So, yeah, the thing we had here with the fires in 2019 to 2020, that wasn't even an El Nino. No, no. That was just a fun bonus. Yep, that's right. So definitely, I mean, and the UN's already come out.

and said there's a bit of a spoiler alert saying, look, over the next five years, almost certainly we're going to be averaging above 1.5 degrees, which is basically Armageddon. It's certainly goodbye to low-lying countries. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then as you keep saying, the second consequence, according to the University of Leeds,

is more heat, drought and fires in Australia. Now, this is an academic who's talking about the whole world, right? And he's particularly saying the one thing that will really happen is Australia is fucked. Australia will be in huge trouble. And this is bearing in mind even the massive wildfires we've had recently in America,

in parts of Asia, even in Europe. Huge fires there, but Australia particularly will be bad. Very bad. Okay, third consequence is not related to Australia, so you might want to just zone out

at this part, because it's a bit boring, which is it will massively slow the carbon uptake in South America. So South America is a massive carbon sink to the world. Well, we still have the Amazon rainforest. It's got the Amazon rainforest.

It's got also a whole lot of other sort of forests and, you know, stuff that's going on. There's a whole lot of plankton off the coast of Peru or something, whatever. All those things basically, it just El Nino changes the weather patterns in a way that means that means that South America stops doing carbon, which actually then supercharges the rest of of all the problems that are happening. Amazing. Yeah. So what happens is, I'll just tell you, the exact mechanism,

the Amazon rainforest dries, vegetation growth slows, the less CO2 is absorbed, and then that gets repeated ad nauseum over and over again, and then that then has on-flowing consequences to Africa, India and Australia. The tropical forests in Africa, India, and Australia, then also suffer from what starts over in the Amazon. Yeah, okay, wonderful.

But then the fourth consequence of El Nino, and this is where the good news is, I decided to sort of keep the good news to the end. Yeah, you've certainly given us quite a lot of bad news on the way after this to this one but this is going to need to be very good news, Charles. Well, I think it is, actually, which is that Northern Europe is fucked. Oh, yes. So you have massively cold winters in Northern Europe, pushed by a jet, so normally there's a sort of jet stream that goes up the Atlantic from the equator and makes northern Europe

essentially habitable. Yeah, sure. To the extent that it is. Yes. And El Nino makes those pressure centres lose strength down in the equator. Oh, so the one little bit of warm air that makes Europe less terrible won't happen. So a frosty 2023, 2024 winter, that's the end of this year. is incredibly likely as El Nino ramps up.

And, yeah, so essentially what will happen is Europe will go back into needing fuck tons of gas from Russia to be able to basically not kill all its inhabitants. Oh, so we'll just have to say to Ukraine, I'm really sorry. You've got to take one for the team. Well, I'm not... Take on for the continent. I'm not making any predictions, Dom, but yes, that's exactly what's going to happen.

I mean, unless we manage to roll out, I don't know, massive solar and wind projects in Europe in the next six months, maybe cover the entirety of, I don't know, Germany with windmills. Well, I like the idea of covering the Sahara with the solar panels. See another episode we did recently on that. That's MBS's big idea, the bonesaw man from Saudi Arabia. So what this scientist ends up saying, this is from the University of Leeds,

is that it's essentially like a big jigsaw puzzle. Like the climate system is a big jigsaw puzzle. and everything fits in with everything else. And when you finish the jigsaw, it's basically a massive skull and crossbones, you're dead. Right, that's right. Well, I've got some good news for you.

Oh, yeah. It's not about Europe being in trouble. So, I mean, as we said, the world meteorological organizations called El Nino. In fact, a month ago, the U.S.'s very respected National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

Noah, they said El Nino was there. You'll be glad to hear, Charles. Australia's own Bureau of Meteorology, disagrees when... Oh, really? The rest of the world is going, El Nino's here. They're going, no, not quite. So we're not just climate deniers, we're weather denies.

They've got an El Nino alert, which is still one step away from a full El Nino. They say that the water temperatures aren't quite warm enough yet, and they call it in Australia, it's got to be more than 0.8 degrees for the sea surface temperature warmer than normal. In America, it's 0.5 degrees Celsius. So we've set the bar higher, meaning that there's no Elinia. But don't worry about it. Yes. If you're thinking of, let's say you're listening to this from a bush property and you're thinking, gosh, I really should get out of here.

Don't bother. No, just an alert. Just keep an eye on things. Yeah. If it seems to be getting a little bit hot, maybe there's no need to. But we wouldn't want to rush it. Yeah. We wouldn't want to rush at him.

Although maybe take the leaves out of your drains. Yeah. But don't worry. Just pile them up in bag near your doors. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe get the hose ready to sort of, you know, spray a little bit of water onto the roof. but wouldn't worry.

There's one small thing, which is that historically, according to the Bureau, 70% of their El Nino alerts have transitioned into full El Nino's. So they're just sort of delaying the inevitable. It's also possible, Charles. I feel like there's a sort of metaphor there,

for Australia's role in climate change. The fact that we're still the second biggest fossil fuel exporter in the world. We wouldn't want to, if we stop doing that, someone else would just do it? Do you think they're not, they've got a different definition of El Nino because then we'd actually have to do something about exporting all that coal.

You know that we've opened two more coal mines in the last two months in Australia? Including a thermal coal mine, which is the whole fucking deal. But I mean, look, if the planet's getting hotter anyway, what's our coal mine going to do other than single-handedly contribute to several points of a degree? Well, let's also talk, though, let's forget El Nino, because that does seem like bad news. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk instead about the Indian Ocean Dipole. This is another major climate indicator for Australia.

I am. And off, it's off W-A, and it's another thing that they monitor. And when there's a positive IOD, Indian Ocean Dipole, it can suppress winter and spring rainfall over much of Australia. And when it coincides with El Nino, it can make El Nino even worse and make things even drier and even more parched. So Australia may have,

and maybe that's what the person in Leeds was talking about, an even worse version of El Nino, if combined with the IOD. And it's the IODs, I think, not looking so fabulous at the moment. So we could have a sort of, it's not just an El Nino, it's an El Nino with extra IOD source. Charles? I feel like we need to move somewhere else in the world, Dom. Yeah. Because, I mean, we could fix it.

No. But too late. Too much work. And also, you know, I voted against climate change in the last election. That didn't seem to do anything. So, you know, like I voted for action on climate change. Why? And, well, I thought that they'd do something.

Did you think they'd do something? No, no. Oh, bless. Oh, that's very sweet. I know. What possible indication have they given you? Yeah. They were going to.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me for the last 30 years. Shame on me. They say the right things. They're certainly, the sounds that come out of their mouths are the ones that are about climate action. It's probably in the party platform somewhere. It doesn't mean you don't open thermal coal mines. What kind of rub are you, Firth? So where should we go? Like, what do we do? Like, we can't escape it. We're going to, there's always Hobart.

Hobart. I mean, Hobart might be habitable. It's pretty gold down there in winter still. Yeah. It might be all right. You know, you'd have to put up with all those fucking wankers at Noma. At Mona. Yeah, it's possible. You know, I'm one of them when I go down there. You know that the Tasmanian government have had the most impressive tourism campaign this winter. It's basically come and see Tasmanian, but even more Tasmania. It's like going, it's the max of Tasmania in the middle of winter. They're daring you to come down and sort of put up with full Tasmania. But give it a, you know, in the years, time, it'll probably be balmy and blissful like Brisbane.

Yep. Yeah. Midwinter. Oh, I mean, that's definitely what's happening. That'd be a good option. See, the other place we could go is Singapore, Charles. It's very expensive. But you know what they're very good at?

Air conditioning. Air conditioning. So much so that Lee Kuan knew, the founder once said that the greatest invention in the history of humanity was air conditioning because it made Singapore possible. I don't think he was joking. I don't think there's a metaphor in that as well. I think there's lots of metaphors going on.

Just to be nerdy, I read an entire political science book about how air conditioning was a metaphor for his rule of Singapore. Yeah. Temperature control and no bus and just... Control the people. That's right. Like the temperature. Exactly right.

Control the political temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. That's right. So we could go to Singapore, we couldn't do this anymore. We certainly couldn't comment on politics. No. That wouldn't go down well. We could comment on the weather.

We could just... As long as it was good news. We could work in financial services. That's the thing to do. You just don't worry about this stuff and just work in money. Yes, you work in money so you can afford a bigger air conditioner. Yes, that's right. Because you'll need one each year.

And while you do that, admittedly, more and more emissions are coming out. But someone else can worry about that. You're nice and cool and blissful. Yeah. The farmers in the Amazon can worry about it. Oh, they don't have air conditioning. kidding me? I can't afford that. Our gear is from Road. We are part of the

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