Por Robert Hunziker
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Bill McGuire, emeritus professor, Geophysical & Climate Hazards, University College London is unique within the scientific community. He claims that scientists have a public duty to tell the unvarnished truth no matter how alarming. According to sources, he embraces the label “alarmist” re the “climate emergency.”
This article is based upon a recent interview with Bill McGuire. Some statements herein are direct quotes. For those who prefer “sugar-coated” analyses, such as: “we still have time” … “transitioning to a Net-Zero future” … “plants love CO2” … “carbon capture technology” this article is not for you. Stop reading now.
Bill McGuire’s recent interview was conducted via Aaron Bastani’s Downstream on Novara Media, 1:26:03: Elites Have NO PLAN for Climate Collapse. Telling it like it is.
Elites?
Anonymous – a person who holds a unique high-level job in the U.S. government: “I post here from time to time to remind people about (1) how deeply ordinary the ‘elites’ truly are, and (2) how fragile government really is. One of the things I’ve had to quickly shed in my professional life is the notion that anyone is in control or coming to save the day. The reality is rooms full of people asking, ‘what the fuck are we going to do?” (Anonymous, not from the McGuire interview)
As for UK’s current climate change and impact on crops, McGuire views the speed of climate change as “just staggering,” headed for trouble; once we get to the stage where we’ve got food rationing, then everything’ll change. As things currently stand, it’s up for grabs; nobody knows how quickly it’ll happen. A warning was issued by the National Farmers Union publicly warning of shortages of food later in the year. This risk of food shortages is therefore common public knowledge.
Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, a farmer from Cambridgeshire: “As a farmer, I’m used to ironing out the bad years with the good, but three terrible harvests in a row is just devastating for my business and the farming sector as a whole. Anyone who thinks that climate change isn’t something to worry about needs to spend a day in a farmer’s boots, struggling to grow crops, feed livestock with no grass or keep animals cool in a heatwave.” (UK Arable Farmers Lose Billions After Three Years of Harvests, Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, 31 Aug. 2026)
Most crops won’t grow effectively over 30C (86F) degrees. Summer 2026 was the UK’s hottest on record, according to provisional data from the Met Office (UK), a spring and summer of persistent heat with five widespread heatwaves and 40 days of temperatures above 30C (86F), smashing the previous record of 34 days.
McGuire has been warning about an out-of-control climate system for years, but now it’s happening so quickly and much sooner than he expected. He was surprised to see how soon ‘peak heat’ started way ahead of time; a heat wave started at 35C (95F) degrees in May, which is flat-out astonishing because it’s always been July/August, but it came two months early this year, signaling a climate system going off the rails.
2027 El Niño Forewarning
Next year could be an especially bad one because of El Niño, which is the second biggest climate signal other than the changing of seasons. That’s how big it impacts the global climate. Essentially, El Niño heats up the Eastern Tropical Pacific, and it has knock-on impact throughout the planet, bringing extreme weather as far afield as Peru and Australia and Europe as well North America, depending upon how and where it gyrates, fierce firestorms, massive mud/rockslides, scorching droughts, barren riverbeds, lashing windstorms, pelting rainstorms, massive flash floods all at unprecedented levels, similar to but worse than 2026, with more glaciers of the world crumbling. Nepal set the stage, at least 1,451 deaths and 5,745 missing persons.
El Niño’s are classified based upon how much hotter the Eastern Pacific gets. The record was +2.7°C in 1877. That was the biggest El Niño on record. But 1877 may soon fall into the dustbin of history as an afterthought because estimates for 2027 are on the order of +4°C. According to McGuire: “That’s just staggering, unprecedented!” It portends a whiplashing climate system that’s brutal enough to put climate denialists on alert, avoid hot rails out of town.
Still, nobody is sure of what the impact of this upcoming El Niño will be but it’s reasonable to expect 2027 to hit +1.7°C globally above pre-industrial, well beyond the ‘danger zone’ identified at Paris 2015 when 195 nations joined hands to do whatever’s necessary to avoid exceeding 1.5C, referred to as “catastrophic.” Alas, they’ve failed miserably to contain the ‘danger zone.’
That was then, now they’ve moved the target (new danger zone) to avoid up to 2C, hmm. We’ve “effectively” been at 1.5°C for a few years now (and it has been catastrophic, especially in Europe) but the IPCC requires it to remain at that level for 10 years to officially be declared 1.5°C! That’s backwards looking and not helpful for policymakers.
COP Conferences
One of the most misleading annual events is COP (UN Conference of the Parties) held every year in November, “claiming we must do our best to keep global average temperature below 1.5 degrees C.” Yet, oil and gas companies are pumping out 40 billion tons of CO2 a year. This is all the proof needed to know 1.5°C will remain dead as a doornail. Along the way, for decades, a faux hopefulness oozed out from within streams of speeches at COPs: “keep the temperature below 1.5°C,” which was merely a delay tactic by vested interests that really want “business as usual,” the scariest three words in climate change lingo.
Truth be told, we’re heating the planet 10 times faster than ever before in planetary history. And this fact alone means that scientific models are hampered, likely incomplete and inaccurate, because there’s no precedent for what’s happening. It’s little wonder that actual climate change surprises scientists with its too-early-stage vigor.
At what point does the planet become uninhabitable for humans?
Based upon the current rate of planetary heat of one degree every 28 years, we’re looking at 2°C arriving in late 2030s, but there is current satellite data suggesting the planet is heating up much more rapidly by as much as one-half degree per decade. Moreover, there was a report last year by a German physical/meteorological society claiming 3°C by 2050 is perfectly possible. And several analyses have suggested societal economic breakdown anytime from the 2040s based upon “business as usual.” McGuire agrees with that societal economic breakdown analysis.
Geoengineering Bailout – Forget It!
McGuire: “None of the geoengineering ideas to combat excessive heat on a global scale are going to work.” However, there is considerable debate about this subject that’s contrary to his statement.
What to do?
Decarbonization is the most critical aspect to understand. According to McGuire, it’s the only solution.
“We need to be on a war footing to transition ourselves incredibly rapidly off fossil fuels, and to do that, you need a mass program of installing heat pumps in people’s homes instead of gas boilers, and a massive push for renewables much, much faster; we don’t need oil and gas.”
The Fate of The World, A History and Future of the Climate Crisis by Bill McGuire, HarperCollins Publishers, August 2026: “So this is where we are today. We have built a civilization that some will laud as a success, but it is one that fails the majority, is utterly antagonistic to the natural world, and – through driving up the global average temperature at an unprecedented rate – is sowing the seeds of its own failure, and quite possibly its ultimate demise. To the extent that dangerous climate breakdown, affecting every aspect of our lives and livelihoods, is now impossible to dodge, we are playing Russian roulette with all six barrels loaded. The only question is, just how bad the consequences will be when we pull the trigger.”
A “dangerous climate breakdown that’s impossible to dodge” what to do?
“What to do” may be a moot point if nobody buys into the truth: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” (George Orwell).
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.
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