More on super El Niño: David Suzuki

I received very similar warnings from both Charlie Angus and David Suzuki this morning about the threat of super El Niño. Decided to post both, while I usually post just one a day. 

Cognitive dissonance underlies oil and gas push We’re experiencing a growing renewable energy revolution. It’s reducing pollution and related health care costs, spurring technological innovation, creating good jobs and boosting economies — and helping to slow the climate crisis. At the same time, some people are suffering from varying degrees of cognitive dissonance — a conflict between knowledge or belief and behaviour. Unfortunately, many of them hold the reins of power. The truth is inescapable: Communities in North America and Europe are choked with wildfire smoke, people are forced to flee their homes, some are dying from unbearable temperatures, others are facing food and water shortages from “extreme drought” and death and destruction from severe floods and intense storms. Entire towns are burning. Although El Niño events are natural, studies show they’re likely made worse by global heating, which is causing ocean surface temperatures to rise. Scientists worldwide have proven that these events — the increasingly lengthy and intense wildfire seasons, more devastating storms, growing water shortages and crop failures — wouldn’t be happening without the climate changes fuelled by burning coal, gas and oil and destroying carbon sinks such as forests and wetlands. This year, it’s exacerbated by an intense El Niño cycle — when unusually warm surface waters from the Pacific Ocean flow along the western coast of South America, disrupting global weather patterns. Although El Niño events are natural, studies show they’re likely made worse by global heating, which is causing ocean surface temperatures to rise. The past 11 years have been the warmest on record. Scientists now say we’re nearing the point of no return, when so many tipping points will be passed that we’ll have a “hothouse Earth,” where human survival will become increasingly difficulty, and impossible in some tropical areas. “It’s likely that global temperatures are [already] as warm as, or warmer than, at any point in the last 125,000 years and that climate change is advancing faster than many scientists predicted,” Christopher Wolf, a scientist at U.S.–based Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates, told the Guardian. I feel sad for young people. We’ve failed them with our insatiable greed and ignorance about our place in nature. Yet, here in Canada, our prime minister and premiers across the country are doubling down (literally, in Alberta) on fossil fuel development: pipelines, oilsands development, fracking for liquefied natural gas, export terminals to send our polluting, climate-altering fuels to other countries, where we can ignore their impacts — until they boomerang back in the form of more smoke and fire, drought, heat domes… It’s worse in the United States, where the current administration denies what everyone can see for themselves, even without the incontrovertible scientific evidence. The government is pouring support into fossil fuels and putting the brakes on renewable energy development (as is Alberta’s). And the president and his minions spout the most idiotic crap, such as blaming Canada for wildfires by not raking the forest floor! Forest management practices factor in, but the truth is, regardless of those practices, and whether a fire is sparked by lightning, arson or a carelessly tossed cigarette butt, fires are more likely to start, spread and become more intense as longer, hotter, dryer periods increase. I feel sad for young people. We’ve failed them with our insatiable greed and ignorance about our place in nature. It’s moving to see so many out doing good, protesting, joining the environmental and social justice movements and educating themselves. But it shouldn’t be up to them. They should be having fun, going to school, learning about the range of human thought, enjoying life. We in the older generations caused the problems; we should be fixing them. We can’t keep acting as if we have all the time in the world to resolve it. It’s time for change! The solutions are there and are being employed worldwide — but not quickly enough. We must stop burning fossil fuels, not expanding production. Not only are we putting human and other life in jeopardy, we’re also missing out on tremendous economic opportunities. It’s in large part because our current economic system encourages waste, short-term profit and destructive policies. It’s not too late to turn things around. But if we lock in fossil fuel development for decades to come with expanded oil and gas development and infrastructure such as pipelines and carbon capture facilities, it soon will be. And why? So greedy oil company executives can amass more obscene profits while most people struggle to pay for necessities like food and housing? We know what the problem is. We can’t keep acting as if we have all the time in the world to resolve it. It’s time for change! By David Suzuki, with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington Read Online Share this story! Support the David Suzuki Foundation Your gift will help push for bold climate action, protect nature so it can sustain all life and create resilient communities that benefit everyone. Donate Today This email was sent to zenriver@sympatico.ca. To configure which emails we send you, please manage your content preferences here. If you no longer wish to receive any email from the David Suzuki Foundation, you can unsubscribe at any time. The David Suzuki Foundation is a registered charity in both Canada (BN 127756716RR0001) and the United States (94-3204049). We are located at 340-1122 Mainland Street, Vancouver, B.C., V6B 5L1, and we also have offices in Montreal and Toronto. Please visit our website for more information on how to contact us.

  

Super El Niño is Coming Our Way: Charlie Angus

 

What Keeps Me Up at Night CHARLIE ANGUS / THE RESISTANCE AUG 7   READ IN APP   Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote that humans have a particular blind spot: we are unable to prepare for a crisis greater than anything we have dealt with before. When trying to anticipate a worst-case scenario, we rely on what we already know.  We lack the ability to anticipate more catastrophic outcomes. I learned about the Lucretius paradox from John Vaillant in his book Fire Weather, where he writes about the failure of humans to comprehend the coming fire epoch in a rapidly heating planet. I feel like Lucretius as I try to make sense of the reports I am reading about the impending “Super” El Niño that is beginning to move in the Pacific. The story of this impending meteorological upheaval has been largely overlooked as the media focuses on the war in Iran, the daily deluge of MAGA chaos and the burning of Europe and North America. What can we expect from this so-called “Super” El Niño? Even scientists seem to be at a loss for words for what they are tracking in terms of the meteorological shifts taking place in the ocean. Some are warning of a looming “humanitarian crisis” that could impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, has written that the rising temperatures in the Pacific are so far off the chart that they will blow away any previous “Super” El Niño by a “truly mind-blowing margin.” That phrase scares the shit out of me. The worst El Niño on record hit in 1878. It upended weather patterns from Brazil to Africa, from Southern Europe through India and Asia. The 1878 El Niño caused widespread crop failures, floods and epidemics on a global scale. In parts of the planet, crops were scorched by intense drought. In other zones, the rain hit with such a ferocity that entire regions were washed away. Weather upheaval caused the death of 50 million people around the world. This represented as much as three to four percent of the global population. Follow-up weather chaos between 1896 and 1900 caused mass famines and widespread outbreaks of cholera, plague, and malaria. As many as 30 million died. Mike Davis, in his book Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño, Famine and the Making of the Third World, writes that these events were so catastrophic that they broke apart many social/political systems and left large parts of the world susceptible to the rise of gunboat diplomacy and the emergence of what became known as the Third World. So, if the El Niños of 1878/1899 represent the previous worst-case scenarios, what will this fall bring? It is still too early to say. But the world is very vulnerable and totally unprepared. Global leaders are distracted by a series of political, climatic and economic shocks — many of them self-inflicted.  We are like the three little pigs hanging out in a straw house. The war in Iran, climate fires across North America and Europe, the political chaos of Trump — would be a serious test of global resilience at the best of times. But now these issues are beginning to lay across each other like terrible ley lines. So let me lay out four areas where global leaders have left us dangerously vulnerable. The Strait of Hormuz and the Fertilizer Crisis We are now six months into a needless war that has shut the Strait of Hormuz. So far, the political and media focus has been on the price of oil. We have been fed a false sense of security with the lie that as long as the price at the pump remains within reason, the impact of the war can be absorbed. What is being ignored is the massive backlog of fertilizer products. A good part of global agriculture depends on fertilizer from the Gulf states. Half of the world’s sulphur passes through the Strait of Hormuz. For nitrogen, it is 35%, and for ammonia, 30%. As far back as May, Máximo Torero, the chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), was warning of massive food shocks from a shortage of fertilizer and the impacts it would have on rising food costs. The FAO identified Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Sudan, and Sub-Saharan Africa as the most vulnerable. Even then, it was feared that global food prices could jump 15 to 20%, resulting in widespread famine. Those kinds of massive spikes in food prices are enough to result in riots and overthrow governments. And that is without factoring in further catastrophic impacts from a Super El Niño. A Planet on Fire Perhaps one reason government and media are not paying attention to the coming season is that everyone is scrambling to handle unprecedented climate fires across much of Europe and North America. The focus has rightly been on the mass fire evacuations and the devastating smoke, but equal attention should be given to the unprecedented drought is seriously impacting food production. The UK is already sending out warning signals that this season’s drought is compounding years of increasingly poor yields. They are now actually warning about impending food shortages. Gavin Lane, the president of the Country, Land and Business Association, told The Guardian that bad weather is putting severe strain on British agriculture. “This is the third drought in five years. What was once extraordinary is becoming part of farming in Britain, and government must start planning for it… Farmers have shown again and again that they can adapt and deliver solutions, but resilience has limits. If we want them to keep feeding the country, they need proper support. Otherwise, this harvest could be their last.” In the global south, heat stress is affecting the health of poultry, cattle and pigs. The number of days when it is simply too hot to work may rise to 250 per year in much of South Asia, tropical Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Central and South America. And this is without the impacts of El Niño. The planet is clearly damaged from the existing climate crisis. We are now stumbling into the great unknown with severely weakened resiliency. Regulatory Suicide Famine was only part of the global crisis of the previous Super El Niños. The unstable weather led to serious outbreaks of parasites and epidemics. The 19th century lacked the sophisticated medical and scientific monitoring systems that were built up through the latter part of the 20th century to protect public health. Those systems are being torn apart by MAGA ideology. Regulatory oversight and scientific expertise have become a political punching bag, and it is having a serious impact on public health. Already, we have seen the inability of the United States to respond effectively to outbreaks of Ebola, hantavirus, measles, salmonella, and cyclosporiasis because of the gutting of programs that kept the public safe. Much of the rest of the world relies on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for the top-line research to deal with serious global outbreaks. We are making ourselves blind as the wolf arrives at the door. The Marine Super Spreader Event It is reported that over 1500 ships are sitting idle in the Strait of Hormuz and the hulls of these ships are accumulating a vast array of microbes, algae and invasive invertebrates. A new scientific report is warning that once these ships begin to move between their home ports around the globe, they risk bringing with them a catastrophic spread of invasive species. They warn that the world is vulnerable to a bio-invasion of “super-spreaders.” Again, such super-spreader events could be seriously exacerbated by meteorological upheaval. What impacts will it have? No one has a clue. Me and Lucretius I put off writing this essay for some time. The enormity of what might happen seems so great. Equally concerning is writing about the unknown without sounding hysterical. Like Lucretius, I have no idea what a “mind-blowing” climatic event could look like. I hope that I am wrong. My dream scenario is that if anyone stumbles across this article in a year, they will shake their heads and wonder — what the hell was that guy so amped up about? In the meantime, I am going to stock up on essentials just in case. I urge you to take precautions too. Support The Resistance AUGUST 13, 2025 Read full story If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting. The Resistance is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy the work as a free subscriber, we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you. Upgrade to paid This post is public — feel free to share it. Share Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.   LIKE COMMENT RESTACK   © 2026 Charlie Angus PO Box 74173, Ottawa RPO Beechwood, Ontario K1M 2H9  Unsubscribe

beach combing for summer haiku: David McMurray/ Asahi Haikuist Network

bay wind blowing

Coconut Grove sailboats

tinkling rigging

Chris/cricket

ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray

July 31, 2026 at 08:00 JST

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(Illustration by Mitsuaki Kojima)

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beach retirement chasing sand dollars
--Roberta Beach Jacobson (Indianola, Iowa)

* * *

in cracked desert soil
ghaf roots run deeper, searching
a promise of rain
--Natalia Danjon (Dubai, United Arab Emirates)

* * *

tortoises flee
the south of France--
fire alarm
--Francoise Maurice (Draguignan, France)

* * *

beautiful
with all its spots…
a ladybug
--Seyed Edris Hosseini (Shiraz, Iran)

* * *

am I crazy
or is the world suspicious
razor clam
--Jerome Berglund (New Orleans, Louisiana)

* * *

children confused--
after arguing the two clowns
blow kisses to one another
--Vasile Moldovan (Bucharest, Romania)

* * *

summer party
waving wingless arms
on the roof
--Urszula Marciniak (Lodz, Poland)

* * *

cumulus cloud--
a whimsical wind aids
a rabbit’s leap
--Paul Callus (Safi, Malta)

* * *

leaping for the moon
swimmer’s waves
shock the sea
--Preeti Sharma (Delhi, India)

* * *

small riverside pool
crab, fish and water striders
biodiversity
--Doc Sunday (Hiroshima)

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FROM THE NOTEBOOK
------------------------------

my fishing rod pen
floats on the surface--
no words bite today…
--Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)

The haikuist fished for haiku all day long. Mike Fainzilber caught a quiet moment in Tel Aviv, Israel. An American soccer fan, Ian Willey fished a warning from the Dotonbori Canal that had been issued in Osaka for its “record temperatures, raging fires, and rising sea levels.”

last boat out
the sounds
of silence

* * *

city river
floating with the current
a yellow card

Gordana Kurtovic was disappointed by an old friend in Osijek, Croatia. Tsanka Shishkova bathed in a scented pond in Sofia, Bulgaria. A peppery aroma twisted Pippa Phillips’ nose in Greensboro, North Carolina.

old face on a pond
reflects a long-time friendship--
yet an illusion

* * *

soft, airy scent
in the mid-morning
water lilies bloom

* * *

nasturtiums:
even if the victory
is Pyrrhic

In today’s column, haikuists explore unfamiliar and unknown waters. Noting that “nature never waits,” Junko Saeki advises those who worry about traveling away from Tokyo, to “relax, relax.”

off on an uncharted voyage,
your luck will hold, yet
tighten your guard

Waves keep approaching, noted Willey in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, so “it’s no use worrying about waves that’ve already collapsed.” He lets worries roll off like water on a duck’s back, admitting “age must be a factor,” but he’s always forgetting things.

wave after wave
how good I’ve become
at forgetting

Real writing stems from experience, especially lived experience. Returning home to Athens, Greece, after a trip to Japan, Foteini Georgakopoulou penned this vignette.

Fast-food elegy
An old woman smiling
At the screen, brides

Murasaki Sagano contemplated taking a trip to an unknown place over the horizon from Tokyo. Julie Ann Lebitania discovered that her eyes can see more vibrant colors than a camera lens in Sorsogon, Philippines.

Rainbow
the other end linked
to an unknown place

* * *

rainbow cloud
few screen taps capture
a white cloud

Kavita Ratna combined all the colors of a rainbow to shine a white light in Bangalore, India.

ultimate vibgyor
shimmering
white peacock

Eugeniusz Zacharski shared a haiku inspired by the novel “Ulysses” by James Joyce about real-life events taking place in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904.

Bloomsday competition--
the haiku
drowns

Originally constructed in 1594, the bridge mentioned in Sagano’s haiku spans the Sumida River. Nearby there is a statue of Matsuo Basho attired in travel clothes holding writing utensils (yatate) looking toward the narrow road to the deep north that he walked along in 1689.

ball-point pen
instead of ink and brush--
Senju Ohashi

Following a lived-experience, poets can write on scratchpads or iPads about that moment and experiment with the haiku form, its three lines, season words, syllables and poetics. Patrick Sweeney penned this all-in-one-breath poem in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

since Mack quit smoking
he swings and catches his keys
in the same nicotine-stained hand

Read aloud on one flowing line, rather than three, bird-watcher Yutaka Kitajima’s 17-syllable haiku sounds pleasantly rhythmical. Note its three consecutive rhyming /ul/ sounds (bulbul full); the three successive words with identical /e/ vowels (nectar, cherry, fresh); an elliptic pause (…); and alliteration (fresh foliage).

A brown-eared bulbul full of nectar ... cherry tree’s fresh foliage

Urszula Marciniak described a tiny, winged magical flower spirit in Lodz, Poland. In traditional folklore, faeries were believed to be fallen angels, demi-gods, or the ghostly spirits of humans. Mauro Battini was startled by a shattering mirror in Santa Croce, Italy.

a sprouting pea
on the windowsill
a fairy tale

* * *

frog on a water lily...
Frankenstein’s voice
breaks the moon

Doc Sunday visited Haji Dam that created the cherry-blossom-lined Lake Yachiyo in Hiroshima Prefecture. Peggy Pilkey paddled while “canoeing, for the last time, at a favorite lakeside lodge in Nova Scotia.”

No more war…
cherry blossom petal
boats in the river

* * *

J-stroking, we smile in passing--
her hijab snug
my sun hat floppy

Holidaying at Lake Stropu in Daugavpils, Latvia, David Cox watched tiny female flowers cluster into tall yellow spikes that will soon turn brown. This fall, those brown heads will pop open, releasing fluffy seeds.

dirty blonde
the cattails love
a side parting

Melissa Dennison soothed her hay fever with a cuppa in Bradford, England. Beata Czeszejko soothed her nerves in Warsaw, Poland.

pollen from the catkin golden whirls of tea

* * *

office lunch
green tea cools in
thickening silence

Promising a golden harvest, Masumi Orihara noticed tiny greenish-white flower spikelets on rice stalks in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. Nectar from flowers is scarce amid the heat wave in Ochten, the Netherlands, but S.T. Hills saw bees drink watery sap and scrape resin from willows, birches, and maples to seal cracks in their hives.

hidden rice flowers
open for pollination
promising morning

* * *

fermented tree sap
uncontrollable vision
a stray honeybee

Sherry Reniker propped up tiny yellow flowers in Kent, Washington. This summer is going by quickly for Zoltan Pachnik in Kaposvar, Hungary.

staking
the tomatoes
kids at play

* * *

slicing through
this summer--
a ripe red tomato

Deep in thought, Laila Brahmbhatt nurtured a stress-free afternoon. Barbara Anna Gaiardoni rested peacefully in Verona, Italy.

French lilac blooms
I caress my white hair
under the summer sky

* * *

in the hammock
Neapolitan lucky horn
strictly red

Dennison felt fire. Sagano blushed.

sunset
over the empty diner
scent of rain

* * *

Sudden kiss
from a mystic woman
summer night drama

Christina Chin was careful not to scald herself in Kuching, Sarawak.

noodle stall
the hot sweet and sour
aroma of soup

Joshua St. Claire felt white-hot in York County, Pennsylvania.

sickbed
by 3:00AM
I turn incandescent

Mario Massimo Zontini imagined God’s hand reaching out to Parma, Italy.

after the rain
white brush strokes in the sky:
veiled clouds

Delighted by a sudden rainfall in drought-stricken Raleigh, North Carolina, Charlie Smith slid his hand down the smooth, slippery bark of a crape myrtle tree (sarusuberi).

summer storm…
monkey slide trees
rings of pink

Brahmbhatt ink-brushed curly seaweed, wavy ribbon algae, and branching corals in sharp, round, even, and strong, yet delicate sweeping lines.

sumi-e strokes
tracing the shape
of algae

Helga Stania lamented the loss of colors in a bone-white sea. Sanjana Zorinc hid under the shade in Bjelovar, Croatia.

red necklace...
once so colorful
coral reef

* * *

colourful umbrellas
above the promenade--
their shadows the same

By placing a single letter in brackets, T.D. Ginting conjured the summer duo of gelato and tanning lotion in Medan, Indonesia.

the porch, the sun...
dreaming
(n)ice cream

Wearing sunglasses under a parasol at Ostend resort in Belgium, Marie Derley focused on this summer’s bestsellers.

reading on the beach
the bloody scary cover
of the chubby girl

Dorota Czerwinska matter-of-factly described outdoor toys in Warsaw, Poland.

sandbox
between two tanks
a plastic soldier

Amir Kapetanovic harvested raw salt near Ston, Croatia.

a July shiver--
shining along the seashore
hills of salt

A.J. Johnson might have been imagining Utah’s Great Salt Lake, when a small grass shrimp moved in the salt marshes near Stephens City, Virginia. Kurtovic shared a memory.

no water added
a salt flats mirage
of brine shrimp

* * *

in my heart
the cry of the seagulls--
farewell to the sea

Catching freshwater memories, Richard Bailly reeled in top-water bait on a glassy lake in Fargo, North Dakota. Chris Meadows could hear root tubers stirring in the earth in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Mauro Battini heard whistling and a high-pitched hiss coming from a pot in Santa Croce, Italy.

rock bass
under the dock
out of tuna

* * *

waiting
underground
elephant ears

* * *

at the fishmonger’s
the lobsters ask for help--
i hear voices

Joanna Ashwell plucked up her courage in Durham, England. “I don’t know about guys, but when I was growing up in Bolingbrook, Illinois,” girls pulled petals off flowers, recounted Wilda Morris. In Austin, Texas, Jeffrey L. Taylor interpreted Detective Joe Friday’s euphemism from the 1950s television series “Dragnet.”

summer breeze
a daisy petal
from you

* * *

he loves me
he loves me not--
the daisy petals lie

* * *

“Just the facts, ma’am”
polite way to say, in this heat,
Don’t you lie to me

Jacobson threw nickel silver for a lucky beachcomber to find.

my key tossed
toward the river…
mudlarkers

Slobodan Pupovac waded and Pachnik floated, respectively, in the Adriatic Sea.

I go in
up to my knees--
the blue sea

* * *

siesta
a seagull at the mercy
of ripples

Philip Davison lay on his back for a while in Dublin, Ireland.

afloat down river
to the waterfall
where a body takes flight

John Hawkhead said goodbye in Bradford on Avon, U.K.

end of times...
we dream of the moon
breaking up

Dina Towbin grieved in Brooklyn, New York.

eyes closed her lips licked
floating an opioid sea
to the great beyond

Originally published in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Cendrine Marrouat’s blog, this haiku encapsulates the idea of a wordless poem.

Waterfall--
Unnecessary
the words

Tony Williams punctuated this poem in Glasgow, Scotland.

adding a dash
of blue to the pond--
damselfly

Raj K. Bose’s neighbor lost everything to a storm in Honolulu, Hawaii. Minko Tanev reached for hope in Sofia, Bulgaria.

the floating debris
bulging eyes of golden koi…
the river took all

* * *

reflections--
in the summer river
a church with a cross

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Reflect on haiku at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network will appear Aug. 7 and 21. Readers are invited to compose haiku related to water spirits or fairies. Please mail your haiku on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or by e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).

* * *

David McMurray

David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).

McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.

McMurray judges haiku contests organized by The International University of Kagoshima, Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.

McMurray’s award-winning books include: “Teaching and Learning Haiku in English” (2022); “Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor” (2015); “Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems” Vols. 1-8 (2013); and “Haiku in English as a Japanese Language” (2003).

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