"I was out at Mavericks this week and it feels tropical."
Punxsutawney Pete Mel’s confirmation that the El Niño hype is real brought a mix of emotions to Bay Area surfers, according to The San Francisco Standard, with this morning’s headline blaring, “‘Surfing into the apocalypse’: Surfers are both stoked and shaken by super El Niño.” The scene opened on the sands of Ocean Beach and I assumed the “apocalypse” and “shaken” bits were related to plus-sized OB terrifying on the horizon.
Have you ever been to Ocean Beach, there on San Francisco’s westernmost edge, when the Pacific had been turned on? It is one of the more intimidating stages around. Icy cold water, no discernible lineup, no channel, no let up in marching walls of whitewash. It is one of the least welcoming surf tableaus on earth.
The surfers on the beach that day were not “shaken” by size, however. They were, in fact, “stoked” about it. The worry lie in the fact that Ocean Beach, icy, had turned trunk-ably warm due Da Niño and with giant high tides plus swells that haven’t even begun to reach full size set to pound all winter long.
Basically the end of the world. Climate activists have long been screaming that if we don’t change our ways, this sort of business would occur. Much death, more destruction.
The Standard interviewed Kyle Ortega, there on the sand, and he announced that he shared, “As surfers, I think we’re really excited (about big ol’ waves). But as a person on this planet who cares about the earth and nature, I’m really worried.”
Big wave legend Grant Washburn was also reached for comment and said the quiet defeatist part out loud in declaring, “Even in the old El Niños, we’ve never seen the water this warm here. I was out at Mavericks this week and it feels tropical. It’s extreme. It feels really weird. … We’re just surfing into the apocalypse, I guess?”
We were warned, we did nothing and now what can we do but shrug and surf while everyone starves and dies and stuff.
Huzzah, I guess.
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OB is a completely fucked place to surf. Can easily take 30-40 minutes to get out the back when there is swell. Snapped a brand new 6’8″ clean in half there once just paddling out. Didn’t make it past the 2nd sandbar from the beach before I had 2 pieces of board to deal with. 6 hour drive and a few hundred $$ later, swore I’d never surf the place on a new board again.
Let’s be honest, If you still believe the anthropogenic climate change scam you’re a bit of a dumb cunt.
Then again, there’s people out there who believe that a man can become a woman by wishing on a star. That drag queens wanting to host “story time” with kids is motivated by education. That importing millions and millions of unskilled foreigners is primarily motivated by “love” and totally not by a desire to push down wages, pump asset prices and anyone opposed is a heartless Nazi….despite the entire mass immigration deal being supported by every single rapacious corporation and duplicitous billionaire media baron on the planet.
Watch out, kids! It’s the sun! Run away! Run away!
Where does the argument for climate change fail for you? Increased CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t cause increased temperatures? CO2 levels are not the highest they’ve been in recorded history? Global temperatures are not increasing? Our use of fossil fuels like oil and coal are not the cause of the increased CO2?
Or is it more you think the people who are trying to push public policy to address this are proposing dumb ideas?
Oddly enough the water hasn’t been as warm as usual around here, maybe even in the low 80’s/ high 70’s. Fuck all for a rainy season, just ended with a wimper, gonna be a long and brutal dry season
El Nino works in mysterious ways.
If here is mainland Mex, isn’t it just always warm with limited change in water temp regardless of year?
Nooo.
Spring upwelling can get into the low 70’s even high 60’s depending on where you are on the coastline.
But for how much extremely warm water is pooled up just to the south of us in the Nino 1-2 region you would think it would be up in the 90’s and the resulting excess moisture into the atmosphere would have kept things more wet, but we got locked into a little dry bubble that lasted most of the season.
Humans only attained our current civilisation because of a naturally warming planet. We should be grateful that this benevolent trend continues.
Meanwhile ….surfers in 5/4 gimp suits, booties and hoods bemoan the coming “apocalypse “.
The “apocalypse “ probably looks a bit like this :
Maybe, but just as likely places could look like this.