Don't confuse weather, natural disasters and climate change as being one and the same.
As a recent study analyzing the weather events concluded the frequency and severity of major weather events has not changed, but the encroachment of humans into areas vulnerable to these events has led to a fivefold increase in weather events that meet the natural disaster definition based on deaths and property damage.
Should we blame "the weather" for human stupidity. If you build in a 100-year flood plain expect to get wiped out every 100 years. In fact, the absolute number of "weather events are down. But by using the weather disaster criteria, it can be argued that climate related disasters are up, both a true and misleading statement.
Another example of human induced climate disasters is flooding in Jakarta, where my wife grew up. People keep pumping out the fresh water causing the coastal city to sink. It is not the rising water levels bringing about the disasters, but the human induced sinking of the land, that is causing it. Compounding this problem is that as the population expands like in New Orleans, people are moving into flood prone flood plains.
"There are a number of reasons contributing to the sinking city, the first being groundwater pumping. Over 60% of the city’s population relies on groundwater, providing nearly two-thirds of Jakarta’s water consumption. This is the equivalent of over 600 million cubic meters of water being pumped from the ground annually. Residents of the city are taking water, and as a result, the ground beneath is giving way."
But to your more fundamental question is all hope of handling climate change gone. The answer is yes. There never was any hope of stopping it. It has been a boondoggle costing citizens trillions of dollars that could have been better spent on issues that would respond to higher levels of spending.
On the bright side, the planet is greening according to NASA making it capable of supporting vast more quantities of "life" than it was in the last few thousand years. Furthermore, if you look at your image very closely, do you notice what the forecast is... the hot parts of the globe are barely changing, while those areas least hospitable due to freezing temperatures are warming. That is true. Humans are going to experience a huge benefit from global warming longer term, but it will involve some level of adaptation and migration. We will have longer growing seasons in the more land concentrated northern regions of the planet.
Meanwhile, whether patterns (not climate) are changing regularly as result of both natural cycles and impact of urbanization. California where I live have suffered droughts throughout its history, but never have so many people lived in the area demanding so much water, that when we would normally recover, we can't. And people keep moving in. At some point, if people want to live here, we should build a huge pipeline to Alaska and pump some of the freshwater from its abundant rivers that drain into the ocean everyday down here. Alaska water could be its next "oil" boom. I can see the ads now... California weather with pure clean Alaskan water. Not taking the water from the land, just capture as it drains into the ocean.
Climate change is real. It is not existential crisis. The increase in climate disaster is not due to an increase in climate events but rather how we as humans have not invaded areas beyond that are subject to turning climate events into climate disasters.
The whole animals are dying from climate change is a bit extreme. The argument is that animals and plants can't migrate like humans can... but the truth is they do migrate, and we can help them. More often humans destroy the habitat of animals and simply don't care. That is the real problem.
Regarding fossil fuels, the answer is not government. Anyone relying on government to stop fossil fuel production is being "played" by politicians. The answer lies in technology. Simple example, if the US makes products made in the US expensive because of the underlying energy costs... we will have fewer jobs because the products will be produced overseas... what you might feel good about our carbon footprint, but the global CO2 emissions remain unchanged. Now find a way to make fossil fuels technologically obsolete and the world will abandon fossil fuels for the new cheaper energy source. I am not worried about global warming, but I am worried about running out of cheap fossil fuels, cheap water, and cheap resources.
I do support investing in technology that makes recycling profitable whether that means recycling CO2, water, plastics, rare earth metals used in batteries, solar panels, wind turbine blades, and even human and nuclear waste.
We are being diverted by politicians and the media to a "little" problem... CO2, when the real problem is that human engineering is linear, and we need to make it circular like the planet. The earth has existed for millions of years, because it learned how to recycle itself. Humans have only begun to build our own "ecosystem" and so far, our "ecosystem" is linear and ends with us dumping our waste somewhere... the air, landfills, the oceans, etc.
Mother earth figured out how to close the circle, now it's our turn. Trillion spent on handling change is wasted money... but trillions spent on figuring out how to recycle everything is what building a sustainable planet is all about.
