How Will El Niño Impact Ireland This Autumn?

0:00Some lyrics do not just live in a song. They live in conversations, memories, and moments. That's what makes the sprite live in track lists so interesting. Of course, limited edition collectible sprite and sprite zero sugar bottles and cans, you will see lyrics entitled from songs that shape hip-hop culture, including me, myself and I, California Love, Big Papa, and BoDak Yellow. Then, when you go to the live in track lists, you can dig into the stories and impact behind those tracks. Check it out through the link in our show notes. Play it, debate it, collect it. Some lyrics do not just live in a song. They live in conversations, memories, and moments. That's what makes the sprite live in track lists so interesting. Of course, limited edition collectible sprite and sprite zero sugar bottles and cans, you will see lyrics entitled from songs that shape hip-hop culture, including me, myself and I, California Love, Big Papa, and BoDak Yellow.

1:00Then, when you go to live in track lists, you can dig into the stories and impact behind those tracks. Check it out through the link in our show. Play it, debate it, collect it. The last word with life pharmacy. Over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help. Life pharmacy. Live better together. Last word of the environment time with John Gibbons. Now, John, we heard from Tom during the five or five that met Aaron, say that it was two degrees warmer than the long-term average temperatures in Ireland this summer. Six of the ten hot summers of comms since 2001 this summer was also drier than average. So, June, July and August saw average temperatures of just over 16 degrees Celsius. Just 16 degrees is nothing, isn't it? I mean, like, wouldn't we love it to be 16 degrees in more months now? Wouldn't we love it to even warmer than a 16 degrees average? It's a nothingness.

2:00Yeah, well, good evening, Matt. I suppose the people who've been experiencing drought conditions in much of Ireland over the last couple of months might disagree. And of course, that's 16 degrees. I assume we're talking about a mean temperature. In other words, that's a 24-hour temperature. So, it would take into account the night as well, because your listeners will be going, hang on a second, it was a lot warmer than 16 degrees. So, just for clarity, you're looking at a mean temperature. Although, I think it was about 16 degrees and an hour was hold of the night in June, July and August. That's exactly right. And it's one of the sort of fingerprints of global warming is nighttime temperatures. And the reason, of course, is that as the atmospheric blanket of heat-trapping gases, tickens, it's the inability at night of the warm air to escape back into the atmosphere. That's why we're finding these kind of tropical nights matter. I think the technical definition of a tropical night is where temperatures don't drop below 20 degrees centigrade. Yeah, but they must have been lower than that because the average for June, July and August is just over 16 degrees. No, sure. But we had an idea. That's not particularly hard, is it?

3:01Well, for Ireland, it's particularly hard. It's like, as the Mediterranean spokesperson said, this is two degrees above the pre-1990 average. So, it's a massive change in Ireland in a relatively short period of time. Now, if it were a once-off, I might say, well, okay. But there's a few things that tell us that the fingerprints here are different. So, for example, we breached 30 degrees centigrade in Ireland in June, in July and in August. Now, we've breached 30 degrees before March, but we have never done it in three consecutive months. So, that tells us that the thermostat is going up. Temperatures are rising. Now, of course, we're very fortunate here because our climate continues to be dominated by our proximity to the North Atlantic Ocean. That is having the effect of giving us a temperate climate. Now, our immediate neighbours in Britain are not so lucky. They have routinely had temperatures in the mid to high 30s in South East England. 38 degrees, I believe, in London. They also, as you know, breached 40 back in 2022.

4:02They're likely to do it again. Move a little bit further down to France. You're looking at temperatures in well into the 40s. So, that's the issue. We're at the edge of this here. Yeah, I know. And we are. And I get, but isn't that also one of the contradictions? And that we have been told in recent decades that for environmental reasons, whether we're better off living in cities rather than having people spread throughout the countryside. But the actual cities get an off lot hotter than the countryside and coastal areas. Sure, I mean, they're slightly different issues. What you're describing there is what's called the urban heat island effect. This, of course, rises from the fact that, say, substances like concrete, they act as a kind of heat traps. They soak incoming heat and then blast it back at you. So, the real issue in cities is where you don't have adequate greenery and cover. So, for example, in Paris over the last decade, they have undergone a huge transitional program to, to climate-proof the city, including planting tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of trees.

5:07And they have a local cooling effect. And you see it, you know, that the so-called leafy suburbs, Matt, people like to live near trees. It's always the mark of a neglected neighborhood where you don't see trees. And what we're going to need to see in order to keep our cities and towns and our streets cool is as many trees as possible because they're, they're excellent. First of all, obviously, they provide shelter. And second of all, they also release water vapor into the air, which has a cooling effect. So, yes, the heat island effect is real, but there are ways of moderating it. However, simply having everybody out in the countryside creates other problems as we've discussed on many occasions here. This is, says here in North Mayo, we got no heat wave. It was sea fog for most of the summer. We got green fields where you got yellow fields. There was a 12 to 15 degrees, either a difference either side of the shalan, global warming for the selected few. Let's talk a little bit more about climate change. A few things in relation to this. Tell us about the El Nino, which is approaching us.

6:10Yeah, well, first of all, the first thing to say about the El Nino effect is that it is a natural phenomenon. It's part of a, this was a pair. There's the El Nino, which tends to deliver warmer years and there's the Lanninia, which tends to deliver cooler years. So to briefly explain where they come from, as I say, they're a natural cycle. And what happens essentially is that there's an upwelling of warm water in the eastern Pacific region during an El Nino event. That warm water releases colossal amounts of heat energy into the atmosphere. That energy is then transferred all around the world. It can have all kinds of deleterious effects. So, for example, it can disrupt the monsoon as far away as India. It can disrupt weather patterns all over the world. Now, the last really powerful El Nino match was in 1987 to 1998. That delivered the hottest year of the 20th century. Now, if you were to find, if I was to present another one of my radio

7:12charts for you, you wouldn't be able to locate the hottest year of the 20th century in the top 20 hottest years of the 21st century. That's how quickly heating has taken off. So 1998 is no longer even in the top 20. So, that was delivered in 1988 because of an El Nino. We're now heading into what scientists are describing as a Godzilla-sized El Nino. Now, what we're getting here is that while I said it is a natural effect, which it is, what we're seeing is that the El Nino itself is being super charged by global warming. So, what is developing in the Eastern Pacific Ocean is a monster. This is going to play itself out over the next few months. By the way, the extreme heat of the summer of 2026 in Europe is at least partly attributed to the El Nino effect. So, it's already kicking in. It will intensify by the into the autumn, but it's likely to peak in early 2027. But hold on. Yeah. But the impact is not going to have because that's winter. The thing is, we're looking at a global system. And of course, you've got winter going on right now

8:16in the southern hemisphere. In fact, Matt, if we could do a whole other segment on why we're getting temperatures in the 30s and the high 30s in the southern hemisphere in the middle of their winter. So, so winter is basically disappearing in the southern hemisphere. And this is really scary because there should be in much cooler temperatures right now, but they're not. So, what we're likely to see, number one, in 2027 is almost certainly going to overtake 2024, which again was a minor El Nino year as the hottest year on the instrumental record. And that will play itself out in extreme events like we've seen this summer in Europe, Asia, the Americas. And it'll play itself out in the deaths, which are likely to go from the tens of thousands we've seen across Europe this year, probably into multiples of that. That's these are the impacts that come with it. The event, the tragedy. Hold on, the El Nino for Ireland. What's it likely to mean? Because we still have the Gulf Stream. Are we going to see a warm winter, which might have lots of

9:19major rainstorms? What's going to happen? Okay. First of all, way more energy floating around in the system. That's probably the most important thing to say because you're getting this transfer of heat energy from the oceans. Think of the oceans as a sort of a huge reservoir of energy, like an energy kind of engine. That energy is being released during the El Nino cycle. That means, for example, it's very likely that we're going to get unusually warm, particularly night-time conditions throughout the winter. Not every night, by the way. You see, there's always weather variability, which will make a fool of all of us. But underlying this, this huge scale El Nino is likely to deliver here in Ireland. Certainly effects, we will feel a warmer, wetter, probably winter, and possibly stormier winter. Storminess, again, is very difficult to get. But we're not going to get some of the things like beast from the east. So, we won't have snow and ice and things like that happen. It's highly unlikely. Again, there's so much variability. I heard an analyst use a wonderful analogy when he was talking about weather variability the other day.

10:23He said, trying to describe exactly where these things are hit is like getting a pan full of popping corn and trying to guess which one will pop first. There's a huge amount of system variability. So, your corn could pop right here in Ireland. It could pop in the UK. It could pop somewhere else. So, there's still a weather variability, Matt. But what it's riding in on here is this hugely increased heat. And to give you a listen, there's a sense of how much we're talking about. We see, for example, in the El Nino region, ocean surface temperatures are four degrees, are heading for four degrees above normal. Now, for the ocean. Is that included the Atlantic? No, this is in the Pacific. This isn't related to the Atlantic. So, this is where the system arises in the Eastern Pacific. And so, four degrees centigrade is the projection. That would make it the biggest El Nino event in approximately a thousand years. Now, what that takes us into is uncharted territory. So, my short answer to you, Matt, is I don't know what's going to happen.

11:26Meteorologists, scientists, climate scientists are racking their brains and running their models to try to figure out just what we're in for. Okay, what we do know is, remember, I think it was that the Paris Accord of 1995, which set a target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, that that ambition has already lost. We've breached that particular limit. Sure, first of all, that was 2015. It was 2015. Also, there have been various UN conferences, but that 2015, you had 92 in Rio. 2015 was the Paris Accord. I was there. Okay, so yeah. Now, in the space of a decade, we've already breached the 1.5 Celsius target. Yes, we have. I mean, effectively, the UN are now saying that the door has, for all intents and purposes closed, and the 1.5 degree horse has bolted. And I've had people ask me recently, well, you know, what does that mean? Again, as we've often said, 1.5 doesn't sound like a lot, but it's changed in the fundamental conditions for life on Earth. And it isn't so much the size of the

12:28temperature change, Matt. It's the rate at which it's happened. These type of changes tend to happen normally a change of 1.5 degrees in global temperatures, in average temperatures, surface temperatures, which by the way, include the surface of the ocean, which comprises 70% of the Earth's surface. Normally, a 1.5 degree temperature shift would probably take anywhere between a thousand and 10,000 years. We human actions have compressed that into a couple of decades. But, you know, bet you there'll be people texting and say, what does it matter? We'd be better off 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer doesn't mean an awful lot, does it? I'm glad that that question has been asked because I'll explain briefly what it means. 1.5 degrees, first of all, means that you're approaching certain critical tipping points. So, for example, we know that the West Antarctic eye shelf is fundamentally unstable. And scientists through the IPCC have calculated that anywhere above 1.5 degrees, West Antarctica comes into play. Now, West Antarctica has locked up 7 meters of sea ice. Now, we do not want that 7 meters of ice that is capable of changing global

13:37sea levels. That is land-based ice in Antarctica that is at risk of ending up in the sea. So, just be very clear about the difference in sea ice and land ice. So, West Antarctica at 1.5 degrees comes into play. In other words, we could wake up someday to the news bulletin to say that gigantic glaciers like the twatts glacier in West Antarctica is on the move and we're seeing rapid sea level rise and evacuation of cities. This is not science fiction, Matt. This is what's possible once you move above 1.5. There are other critical thresholds. At above 1.5, the likelihood of the Amazon rainforest is completely drying out and switching to Savannah is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 degrees that's going to happen. You also have the destabilization of the Greenland ice pack above 1.5. And also, you have what's called a blue ocean event risk in the Arctic, which means that the Arctic Ocean is sea ice. So, it doesn't directly affect sea level. What it does is it bounces

14:37back colossal amounts of heat energy back into space. If the sea ice melts in the Arctic and you get what they call a blue ocean event in the summer, you're going to jumpstart global warming by more than a decade. So, these are the type of tripwires. Now, let's just say for a moment to stay with your listener. Let's say that we fail on this and we slide on to two degrees. Two degrees unfortunately then in turn, it gets three degrees. Now, various analysts have looked at what happens in a world of three degrees. Now, I don't want to be alarmist, Matt, perished the thought, but a world of three degrees centigrade average surface temperature rise is a world in which approximately four billion people will die. So, that's roughly half of today's world population will not be able to survive in a world of three degrees centigrade. And you might ask, well, you know, how can something so calaclysmic happen? The main reason is in that three-degree world, global food systems collapse. And we have mass starvation and mass death. Now, the last time we've

15:40seen something on this scale was, of course, the black death back in the 12th to 13th century. So, that's the type of scale of event that we're hurtling towards. And I personally find it really difficult to be in a country where our politicians have effectively given up on tackling global warming. Here we are, a rich, prosperous, highly polluting country, Matt, and we have thrown in the towel. It's an absolute outrage. And those politicians who've given up on climate change should address their constituents and their constituents' children and say, look, we knew this is coming. This isn't just something that obscure, you know, environmental journals are, we know all about it, and we did nothing. What you make of the story, we started the program at a half-four that public transport fairs should be increased by an average 15 percent, but something like, for example, what I would use the leap card for a 150 journey is going to go up to two-year or 33 percent increase. That's right. I mean, it's incredibly disappointing and

16:41demoralizing. And of course, the money that they claim to have to be saving in this, you know, to be recycling is pretty much directly marked as the money that has been given away to the bully boys who shut down the motorways demanding cuts in exile's duty. So their initial payout I think was 750 million. The next tranche of that is another 400 million. So we've just handed over a billion euros in exile's duty, as I say, to bully boys who wanted to shut the country down and hold us all to ransom, shut down ambulances, you name it. And what they have told us is, in this country, if you want to affect political change, go on the street and break the law. Now, the people sitting listening to us today on the top of the bus heading home, the people who are reducing carbon emissions by taking public transport, the people that are reducing congestion in our cities by taking public transport, they're feeling like schmucks today, Matt. They're saying, we did everything right. We were told, this is the right thing to do. And the thanks we get is that the government

17:43takes money out of our pocket and puts it into the pocket of the guy with the large diesel engine who couldn't be bothered changing. Can we talk about the public transport increases? Because people, a lot of times, have no options, sorry, a lot of people have no public transport to use. And not like people who use public transport have no option but to use it because they can't afford cars or whatever. I mean, the argument put forward by Shane Moynihan, a few and a fall earlier, was that prices haven't gone up since 2018. Inflation in that period, since this from 22 percent. So for most tickets, they won't even be catching up with the inflation since 2018. People will still use the public transport. Well, they'll use it because they're stuck, right? And I think they know they're shooting fish in a barrel here. And that's why they're doing it. They know that this is a soft mark. These people are not going to get out in their tractors and their trucks and blockade the M50. So they're only on the bus, Matt. They don't matter. That's the, that's the bond. That's what the government is saying to the people here. They simply don't matter. And if it was the case that we could say for sure that this money was going to mean more buses,

18:47more trains, I would have... Well, that's where we were been told, but as I was pointing out, and we were promised lots of... We were actually buses with no chargers. I mean, it's outrageous incompetence. So the transition that we want to see happening towards public transport. And I would say Matt, in other European countries, we've seen a situation where they have actually, in some cases, completely phased out charges or reduced them to minimal. For public transport. And the reason for that is that the costs imposed on a city like Dublin for congestion runs into hundreds of millions a year, is in congestion costs, in lost productivity, in absenteeism, and of course in fuel that has simply been smoked up as people are sitting in traffic jams on the M50. Now, it appears that the current government thinks that's absolutely fine. And in fact, if someone is sitting at home today and they have a car on the front drive and the bus is down there, what the government is saying, do mind the bus, should maybe you take the car, get in the queue, we'll give you a cheater. You'd love more expensive to run your car in

19:48it. It's right that it is to get the public transport. And so it should be Matt, but the issue really is that we need a vastly better public transport system. And I don't think you and I are going to argue about this. Dublin is the only city, capital city, in Europe that has no metro system whatsoever. The Dart blessed is there since 90 years. What about the emissions that will come from constructing the metro, just standing in the dirt? I mean, can you do a trade-off between the emissions caused by the construction and not doing it and the emissions then caused by the vehicles on our roads? Yeah, I mean, these type of studies are done as part of the environmental assessment. And generally speaking, they work out pretty well. It's a bit like the emissions associated with building a wind turbine, right? You tend to pay them off in the first few years. So I would expect, for example, in the case of a metro, these roads cause electrified systems. You get your money back in terms of emissions very quickly. And I will say this Matt as well, for all the financial probity that we keep hearing about and from your phenophol spokesman earlier, I don't recall him explaining how he is

20:52going to square with the electorate when the EU comes looking for their fines for failure to achieve the emissions cuts that we are legally obliged to comply with. Thank you very much, John Gibbons. The last word. With life pharmacy, over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together.