The conversation about “we need to be optimistic” will continue to come from those who want to delay action, or those that think technology will save us from the impacts of the advancing climate crisis.

The physics of what is at play here doesn’t care about any of these things. It doesn’t care if you are optimistic or a “doomer” - it is what it is.

The levels of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere ARE leading to an earth energy imbalance which WILL lead to lead to a state of equilibrium being reached at some point in the future.

That state will look VERY different to the one we are in at the moment and the road to that new state is going to be a deadly one for very large swathes of ALL life here.

There really is only ONE thing that MUST happen NOW and that is we must stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. If we don’t, the earth’s energy system will simply continue to self correct whether we want to accept that or not.

The above all clearly set out in the recent Hansen paper.

The truth is not being told in its stark reality and almost EVERYONE, myself included, is experiencing a false sense of security in the face of the shifts ALREADY at play.

The instruments and the data those instruments are producing are telling us a very VERY different story to the one of “optimism.”

Now there are obviously unknowns as a result of the complexity of the global climate system but one thing we can be pretty sure of, CO2 concentrations at the levels they are now were there in the past and that past had temperatures that made life as we know it now impossible.

There is nothing anywhere that shows we are slamming the brakes on CO2 emissions as hard as we should. As a result there is really only one conclusion to draw from this we are speeding off the cliff.

Anyway all of the above is I think pretty well summed up in this piece: Against Climate Optimism—Because “Team Normal” Won’t Save the World.