260903 Supersized El Nino World Ready

A ‘Supersized’ El Niño Is Coming. Is the World Ready?

Thesis (Alf’s read): Climate scientists warn of a supersized El Niño this winter, on top of an already-warming climate. The honest answer to “is the world ready” is no — and the reasons are geopolitical as much as meteorological: poor countries lack data, funding and infrastructure (cost of capital is higher where it’s riskier), war-torn ones are hard to even reach (Sudan), and the richer “core” watching on feels little urgency. This is polycrisis, discussed on national TV without using the word.

Links

Summary

Guest: Liz Stephens (anticipatory action, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre; professor of climate risks and resilience, U. Reading) + Dr Matthew Winning (economist of sustainability, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources; also a stand-up comedian at the Edinburgh Festival).

• The hazard: a supersized El Niño forecast by winter 2026 — warmer than normal eastern-Pacific sea surface temps heat the atmosphere, disrupt weather, worsen extreme events globally. Last big one (2023) intensified floods/wildfires, worsened coral bleaching, contributed to hottest year on record — a record the UN says is likely to be broken again. This year it lands on top of +0.7°C of global warming since Somalia’s 1997 El Niño floods (2,000+ deaths) — “what might those floods look like now?”
• Poor countries bear the brunt, and are least able to prepare: impacts “will always disproportionately affect poorer countries” (Winning). Infrastructure gaps + higher cost of capital (riskier to invest → expensive to borrow → can’t build the resilience) = a chicken-and-egg trap. Sub-Saharan countries spend huge shares of GDP just coping with annual extreme-weather impacts.
• Data is the hidden bottleneck: disaster planning relies on “relatively poor data sets compared to those you might get in the UK.” In conflict countries (Sudan/South Sudan) valuable weather data is being lost entirely — “we’re losing the ability to understand how climate change is affecting the country.” Simulation exercises and stress-testing exist, but are limited by this data poverty.
• Political instability blocks help: Sudan’s government has spent months denying famine in the country. Disaster response needs coordination across borders (“we need more coordination, not worse”) — but a fragmenting, underfunded world cuts the opposite way.
• Disaster planning & risk management (the constructive core): the anticipatory-action community runs simulation exercises to test coordination/logistics for El Niño; they’re moving from single hazard/scenario to plausible worst-case scenarios across compounding risks, used to stress-test systems (not chase uncertain probabilities). “We as humans look to the past — that’s not a dynamic way of thinking; the future is changing.”
• The pensions / oil-and-gas / champagne analogy (Winning): see “The champagne analogy, decoded” below.
• Net zero AND adaptation — both, not either/or: “The longer we take to reach net zero, the more climate change is baked in, the more we’ll have to adapt.” Even cutting emissions now leaves already-baked-in change. “It’s not put all your investment in one pot or another. We’re going to be needing both.” Extreme events erode long-run development gains — the direct link between the two.
• “It’s not hypothetical people in the future dealing with this. It’s us.” — Stephens: several governments told her they can’t invest because they “don’t want to burden future taxpayers” — “I’m the future taxpayer.”

The champagne analogy, decoded

Winning’s Edinburgh Festival bit explains why fossil-fuel assets (and the pensions invested in them) are a losing bet either way. His framing: you’re the designated driver at a bar. You buy a bottle of champagne, drink one glass — but you can’t sell the bottle back to the bar, so it’s worthless unless you down the whole bottle — in which case you crash the car.

• Champagne = the fossil fuels. The one glass = the amount we can burn and still stay under ~1.5–2°C (the carbon budget).
• Keep burning the whole bottle = economic/weather crash. Stop (drink one glass, waste the rest) = oil and gas assets become worthless (stranded) — and many pensions/banks are still invested in them.
• So: if we act, oil/gas goes to zero. If we don’t act, the economy (and your pension) collapses — also zero. Either way, fossil-fuel holdings in a pension are worth nothing. His punchline: get your money out of fossil fuels now regardless — it’s a losing bet in both futures.
• Why this is a communication tactic: appeals framed as “this hurts people in other countries” don’t land for everyone. Framing it as your own money is at risk is a different way in — “I’m trying to talk about economics to people who haven’t been listening about climate change.” Bank of England stress-testing on climate is the institutional version of the same point.

Why it matters

This is polycrisis on primetime TV, without the label — the guests say “compounding risks,” not “polycrisis.” The conversation braids climate × food/water × displacement × conflict × economic instability × a fragmenting, underfunded international system × democracy’s short attention span. The owner is right to flag it: it maps directly onto his three-step thread (intentional news → polycrisis understanding → envisioning a better world), and it raises the live institutional question — how does a democracy debate medium-to-long-term risks it can’t feel today?

Which crises it touches

• Net zero (mitigation) — the root hazard; the prevention leg (EMISSIONS/CARBON-BUDGET angle)
• Adaptation — the root hazard; the coping leg (this article triggered that section’s expansion)
• Polycrisis — the “compounding risks” framing, made concrete
• Economic Instability — higher cost of capital traps poor countries; insurance/trade/supply-chain knock-ons
• Resource Scarcity — food scarcity and water
• Migration and Displacement — displacement within/from conflict-affected countries
• Geopolitical Fragmentation — less “United” world, underfunded coordination, conflict blocks help
• Public Health Risks — disease surveillance compromised where data is poor
• Loss of Faith in Democracies - Global Problem — democracies’ failure to debate long-term risk (see open question below)

Open question (for the owner / the Envisioning thread)

The owner asked: how do we work long-term-risk debate into democracies in a “fun and happy” way — movies, games? (e.g. a SimCity-style model that simulates climate change and its compounding consequences). The El Niño piece is exactly the kind of risk that democracy currently struggles to take seriously because it’s slow, distributed, and doesn’t hurt “core” nations today. The humour in Winning’s champagne bit is one answer; interactive simulation is another. Actioned 2026-09-10 → seeded as The Gaming of Change - Using Games to Focus Minds (the owner’s own thesis: the psychology of gaming, used to focus minds on personal and collective change).

Related

• Race to Electrification — the net-zero half of “we need BOTH net zero and adaptation”; electrification is the mitigation leg, this piece is the adaptation leg
• Race to Food Security — food scarcity as a compounding driver
• Frameworks for polycrisis modelling — the analytical frame for “compounding risks”