The diagram at the left shows a final position. In this case, seeing that he was lost, the white player had resigned the game before all of the frontiers between the opposing groups had been filled in. If the game had continued to its conlusion, and the score tallied, black would have won the game by a margin of about 11 points (black had captured and removed five stones during the game, while white had captured and removed 2). GO makes chess seem simplistic. At 13 I was winning chess tournaments around my state. Then I discovered Avalon Hill wargames and Go.
Is generally when players start making ENDGAME moves.
Let's consider the board and the moves the players are making.
THE CLIMATE CRISIS.
2025 is starting off with the global ocean about +0.25°C HOTTER than 2023. It takes a MASSIVE amount of energy to warm up the oceans that much.
The GREEN line is 1998. The hottest year of the 20th century. The YELLOW line is 2016. 2016 was the back half of a MONSTER El Nino. It started off hot and then got about +0.25°C hotter. However, by the end of the year the oceans had cooled about -0.5°C. 2023 (PINK line) started off cooler than 2016 BUT averaged about +0.5°C hotter. 2024 cooled off about -0.25°C by the end of the year but still averaged about +0.6°C hotter than 2016.
“How much?”, you might want to know. This being something of CRITICAL importance to what the rest of your life is going to be like.
Well, the Ocean Heat Content (OHC) numbers for 2024 came out today (January 10th) and it is NOT GOOD. Wow, it is so “not good” that it changes the rest of my article. Take a look at this.
Remember, 2023 represents an increase of about 15Zj (Zettajoules) of HEAT added to the global oceans. That works out to about 3.4 Hiroshima bombs (HIROs) worth of HEAT for every square mile of open water on the planet. Now consider the line for 2024. The amount of HEAT in the oceans is RAPIDLY INCREASING.
Even worse, 2024 was an El Nino year. The Global Mean Surface Temperature, the part we mean when we say +1.6°C over baseline, went up in part because 2024 was an El Nino year.
