This echoes the title of a Robert Benchley anthology I grew up with as a kid. AFTER 1903 WHAT? Published in 1938, I suppose it was a satire on the hinky apocalyptic things being circulated by evangelicals who (as we know with hindsight) were wrong. Anyone alive in 1903 (or 1938 for that matter) knew that the predictions of the tent-revival types hadnt come to pass. We had a world war and a Flu epidemic and a huge economic crash, but we’d muddled through somehow. The things I predict/project in this page are not locked in. Or maybe they are, but there’s no agreement on their passing or coming about. I’ve been echoing the projections made over the past decade by climatologists and researchers about our coming fate, and I’m shying away from such dire predictions here. I could be wrong. I got seduced by the language of apocalypse shared by the Naval Postgraduate College a few years ago and I shared some thoughts here: https://brooklynculturejammers.com/2018/08/23/did-we-just-dodge-the-extinction-bullet/

My point is, don’t go by me… maybe. I’m going to throw out some of the reasons you should think this is the time to cash in all those gift certificates and use the AARP card you just got. I went on tour last July to argue (a la Prince) we should party like it will never be 2029. If you were in Florida, you might have seen it. I posted about it here:

I offered to bring you my little presentation last summer. There was bad news about wildfires and droughts and I thought my play HOW TO PARTY LIKE IT WILL NEVER BE 2029 would be a reasonable, prescient look at our prospects. I was also more optimistic than many of my doomer friends, stretching out the end time to 2029. But as you know if you’ve been following me on this blog I AM THE SIMPLE ARTIST. I SING I DANCE I PERFORM THE SIMPLE MONOLOGUE. My science background is pretty lousy. I’d say I want this on my tombstone, but as I think about it, I plan to be cremated so what’s the point of a tombstone?

Anyway, these are the stories that haunt me about our future. I must credit Dr. Guy McPherson for my leads on this, as he and his friends and colleagues have posted about these issues for most of the last two decades.

Dr. Guy McPherson. You can follow him on his own website NATURE BATS LAST. He’s smarter and more credentialed than I. fair warning.

So why post this now? I’ve been wrong before and the world is still here, and I’ve been gracious enough to not give you misleading links.

A young woman at a climate protest in NYC a few years ago, she’d never heard of Guy… Oh well…

So with this warning, this is the news I want to share. Again, I’ve been wrong before. The second link however is new and from Sam Carana who’s gotten these things right before.

First, the Anderson prediction:

Rather than drag this out, I should just leave the prediction as I wrote about it back in 2018. Anderson is the man who worked on the protocols that helped save the Ozone layer. But his news for the future is rather sad

and there’s this: This is from Sam Carana

This comes from his page in Fb

Temperatures are currently suppressed as we’re in the depth of a persistent La Niña event. It is rare for a La Niña event to last as long as the current one does, as illustrated by the first image.

The blue line added in the image highlights an increase in peak ONI (strong El Niños) over the years. The image was created using data up to September 2022. La Niña has since continued.

Chances are that we’ll move into the next El Niño in the course of 2023. Moving from the bottom of a La Niña to the peak of a strong El Niño could make a difference of more than half a degree Celsius.

The upcoming El Niño looks set to coincide with a high number of sunspots. Recent observations are higher than expected, as illustrated by images adapted from NOAA.

Observed values for December 2022 are already very close to or above the maximum values that NOAA predicts will be reached in July 2025. If this trend continues, the rise in sunspots forcing from May 2020 to July 2025 may well make a difference of more than 0.25°C.

Accordingly, the joint impact of a strong El Niño and high sunspots could make a difference of more than 0.75°C. This rise could trigger further developments and feedbacks that altogether could cause a temperature rise from pre-industrial of as much as 18.44°C by 2026.

A combination of further developments and feedbacks could cause a huge temperature rise. An example of this is the decline of the cryosphere, i.e. the global snow and ice cover.

Antarctic sea ice extent is currently at a record low for the time of year, as illustrated by an image adapted from NSIDC. Antarctic sea ice extent reached a record low on February 25, 2022, and Antarctic sea ice extent looks set to get even lower this year.

Global sea ice extent is also at a record low for the time of year, as illustrated by another image that shows that global sea ice extent was 16.67 million km² on January 5, 2023.

Another image shows a forecast for September 2023 of the 2-meter temperature anomaly in degrees Celsius and based on 1984-2009 model climatology. The anomalies are forecast to be very high for the Arctic Ocean, as well as for the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, which spells bad news for sea ice at both hemispheres.

Loss of sea ice results in loss of albedo and loss of the latent heat buffer that – when present – consumes ocean heat as the sea ice melts. These combined losses could result in a large additional temperature rise, while there are further contributors to the temperature rise, such as thawing of terrestrial permafrost and associated changes such as deformation of the Jet Stream and additional ocean heat moving into the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

There are many further developments and feedbacks that could additionally speed up the temperature rise, such as the (currently accelerating) rise of greenhouse gas emissions, falling away of the aerosol masking effect, more biomass being burned for energy and an increase in forest and waste fires.

These developments and feedbacks could jointly cause a temperature rise from pre-industrial of as much as 18.44°C by 2026. Keep in mind that humans are likely to go extinct with a rise of 3°C.

full article here: https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-huge-temperature-rise-threatens-to-unfold-soon.html?fbclid=IwAR1G-aDg8XjZM0HM36HnspcAm0WdSD8VlJt5ODpOThmtG30rHL4HYhPDkng

… Short story–if the patterns of La Nina are followed by El Nino as is expected, this might be our last summer. This is my interpretation, based on multiple texts from sources I follow. Hoping I’m wrong (and I have been a lot–TAKE HEART!) have a great year.