While there is certainly no place an airmass is supposed to be, this framing makes it sound like the problem would go away if we just updated our expectations.
Do you think the problem would go away if we updated our expectations?
There is a fair argument to be made that most of the "problem" concerning the environment is a problem specifically /for humanity/. The planet, and likely most of our peers on the planet, don't care.
So yes, an El Nino is "supposed" to be <here> /for us/, but an El Nino is only "expected" or "just so happened to always be" <here> for the planet at large.
What makes you think that animals and plants are less affected by unusual weather than humans? Most species have a lot less technology to help them cope with the change.
For example, plants which leave dormancy (or proceed to a new phase such as flowering) during the unusually warm periods, only to be severely damaged when the cold returns. Species may be maladapted to the new weather patterns.
We also see the less direct ecological effects such as new pests thriving in area -- new weather patterns create an ecosystem to which the species is no longer adapted. E.g. fungi killing trees. Or for humans, "tropical diseases" becoming common in more northern areas.
Life has existed long before humans ever came onto the scene, and life has experienced environmental highs and lows that would make humanity shriek in absolute horror.
Life will go on and the Earth will continue to spin and orbit, whether humanity does or not.
Evolution has made most lifeforms care about their wellbeing. In my ethics causing unnecessary suffering and loss of diversity is not okay just because ultimately the universe will reach a state of maximum entropy and everything will have been without meaning.
So what's your point? That we shouldn't care about climate change because "life goes on"? That's a pretty low bar.
Personally I would like to preserve a future both where humans can survive and some of Earth's great ecological diversity is maintained. Those systems can't "care" because they're not sentient, but I am.
My point is that the concept of "El Ninos should happen <here>" is specifically a human perspective. As far as the planet and our peers are concerned, it doesn't really matter where such phenomena occur. Nature gonna nature and life gonna life.
Besides that, personally I have no attachment to humanity in particular. Objectively, the planet would be much better off without us around. That's not to say I would go out of my way to not exist; I'm already here, might as well enjoy my time here. But I'm not going to go out of my way to "preserve humanity" or whatever either. Life has persevered without us before we came around, and life will persevere whether we exist or not.
Is it? In terms of how much we get along with the enrivonment compared to our peers, we do pretty horrible. The planet wouldn't care since it doesn't care about life one way or another, though; I grant you that.
I think the real distinction I’m unsure about is if the problem is the earth finding a new equilibrium point potentially on the order of hundreds to thousands of years or if the problem is we’re overall making the earth worse at supporting human life. I’d guess a mix of both, but certainly the adjustment as areas that once had a consistent climate x move to a different climate y is pretty bad by itself
My understanding is that a new equilibrium can only be found, in general, when the net new input(s) to a system have stopped changing.
The amount of atmospheric CO2 continues to grow linearly[1] at best. The earth's climate may find a new equilibrium when CO2 stabilizes, or it may not. The resulting equilibrium may be conducive to human life, or it may not. But until that number flattens, we can only expect more change. And, of course, that is only one of the many stressors on the climate.
You're implicit assumption is that the system's response to ever increasing CO2 is indefinitely linear and proportional?
If you believe that I've got some beans you can buy.
This equilibrium you're chasing is much more transient than you'd like to think. Especially in the face of more and more accurate/precise observations.
I think you misread my comment, I made no such assumption.
The commenter I replied to said "I’m unsure about if ... the earth [is] finding a new equilibrium point potentially on the order of hundreds to thousands of years..."
I pointed to NASA measurements showing that atmospheric CO2 is increasing linearly and has been for some time. Whether its increase accelerates or decelerates or remains flat depends largely on many unpredictable factors (primarily humans).
Consequently (I tried to answer) - no, the climate will not find an equilibrium ("a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces") as long as one of the primary forces driving the system out of balance continues to change (i.e., we keep dumping more CO2 into the air) without some countervailing force changing at roughly the same rate. Today there is no countervailing force, so there will be no equilibrium.
I don't see how your comment ("this equilibrium you're chasing"?) relates at all.
CO2 may momentarily be one of a convoluted set of factors that contribute to the dominant harmonic component of the system with the output "global temperatures", but it is not in and of itself stable in it's relation to the output of the system. Clearly due to the afore mentioned "convoluted set of factors" having their own internal period/fluctuations/harmonics of convolution.
CO2 will rise, but it will eventually necessary uncouple from it's relationship to temperature at which point some other factor we are wholy unaware of will probably do something as equally disturbing to our environmental "equilibrium".
If you transform the system in respect to time, you'll find that from some perspective almost nothing ever happened, and from another the whole thing was wildly unstable and unpredictable.
It already doesn't matter what CO2 levels are doing now. Up and to the right and how hard is probably completely irrelevant. What matters is the flux of the system, and everything points to the fact that weve already left the station. There's no unwinding this thing, and it's not going where anyone thinks it's going.
The truly conservative thing to be doing would be to prepare ourselves for the most violent future, but instead what we're trying to do is grip onto the past with our already dying hand. Weakening our heart at the very moment we need to bolster it.
Everything is going to be fine, but you and I will be dead. I assure you of that.
Looks like someone else went out arguing, but I do actually agree with this. Maybe where I’m optimistic is that I think we are on track to stop adding more co2 within the next few hundred years or so (hopefully much sooner). Though I do think it’s worth knowing the natural environment also introduces co2 to the atmosphere at a roughly linear rate (via volcanos)
A major problem is the rate of change. The climate changes naturally all the time, but these processes usually take a couple of millennia. In that time frame the biosphere has time to adapt; species can migrate etc. We're in the process of compressing millennia of change into a hundred years.
If "the problem" is that we're expecting an unnatural level of consistency, yes, it would. (If you consider "the problem" to be that weather is chaotic, then of course the answer is no)
Do you think the problem would go away if we updated our expectations?