Change, Crisis or Catastrophe?

This morning Red Baron stepped out of the front door to do some grocery shopping well before 8 a.m. The temperature was already 24 ⁰C (75 ⁰F). They say today, Freiburg may break its temperature record of 40.1 ⁰C (104.2 ⁰F) established on August 13, 2003. So better be out of the house early and keep the blinds shut.

In their texts, I already told you that German journalists changed from Klimawandel (climate change) to Klimakrise (climate crisis). Still, I had not read the word Klimakatastrophe (climate catastrophe) until this morning.

Warm nights keep people awake, so climate activists posted stickers on the somewhat "bigger" cars parked in the streets around my apartment.

Here is a collection of photos.

Don't worry; scratching ice will soon be history.

Climate catastrophe? So what, I am driving a bus.

Climate catastrophe? I am guilty.

Again: German guilt mixed with German angst.

Still convinced that the present climate crisis is just a normal climate variation and not man-made?

I just read about an additional argument for the man-made change published in Nature by some Swiss scientists from Bern University.

They show that the Little Ice Age gradually changed different regions of the earth over several centuries." So in the 15th century, the lowest temperatures prevailed in the central and eastern Pacific, in the 17th century in northwest Europe and southeastern North America, and in the 19th century in other regions of the world again."

"By contrast, we see that the warmest period of the past two millennia we are currently living in takes place on 98 percent of the earth," they write." This is a strong indication that the global temperature increase caused by humans is unprecedented - not only in terms of absolute temperatures but also in terms of spatial distribution."

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