No more bland pussyfooting lingo about climate change from now on. On Monday, climate scientists released a paper showing that the world’s “carbon budget” — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions humans still emit without boosting global temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius — has shrunk by a third. Also, the world only has 6 years left at current emissions levels before racing past that temperature limit. According to Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London:
“There are
no technical scenarios globally available in the scientific literature that
would support that that is actually possible, or can even describe how that
would be possible.,”
Meanwhile, Tim Lenton, one of the co-authors of a new paper on the state of the climate system (“Entering Uncharted Territory’) and a professor of earth system science at the University of Exeter, said that 2023 has been filled with temperatures so far beyond the norm that “they’re very hard to rationalize.” Adding:
“This isn’t fitting a simple
statistical model,”
My take is that the difficulty in rationalizing and the lack of fit to a simple statistical model is because we are at a climate tipping point, e.g.
Five Major Climate Tipping Point Manifestations
So no wonder, to get attention, we now see references to “climate emergency” and “climate crisis,” terms once used primarily by activist groups like the U.K.-based Extinction Rebellion or the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement.
Take a step back. Around 2007 Mensa stopped printing any letters about global warming in The Mensa Bulletin. They were deemed too divisive, too rancorous for the organization. Meanwhile, in academia, during the 2000s and even early 2010s, most climate scientists shied away making any statements that could be seen as “political” in nature. Jacquelyn Gill, a professor of climate science and paleoecology at the University of Maine, averred that when she was doing her PhD in the late 2000s, senior academics warned her against deviating at all from the science when interacting with the media or the public.
So what's going now to alter the informational landscape? It's not merely the fact that emissions still aren’t going down — or that policy hasn’t responded quickly enough to the challenge. (Carbon dioxide emissions related to energy use have continued to climb, even following the brief downturn of the covid-19 pandemic.) As the impacts of climate change escalate toward emergency level, e.g.
Is There A Climate Emergency? All The Indicators Point To A Serious Crisis Nearing Emergency
Climate scientists say that their language has simply changed to meet the moment. Still, they aren't sanguine it will make a difference in time. Certainly the arrogant high IQ lot won't be impressed, given they fancy themselves smarter than most climate physicists - despite never having taken a single semester of thermodynamics in college level General Physics.
Then there are the unapologetic (and indolent) millions whose innate inertia and addiction to easily accessible fossil fuels will not soon be checked. I mean, cripes, look at the polls when the price of gas goes up by even $1. Can you imagine the reaction if a single bold politician and his party managed to pass a $5 /gallon gas tax to stem the CO2 atmospheric injections? The country would go bonkers and the Reeps would call that party "communists".
The chance for practical reduction was actually in the early 2000s when climate change and CO2 concentrations weren't yet at the level of an emergency. So at that time, if world governments had acted, we'd only have had to cut emissions by 3 percent per year. But now, having let inaction prevail for over a decade we're at the stage of having to cut emissions 9 percent a year. Impossible? No, not if a $5/gallon gas tax is imposed world wide.
The only other "remedy" is to use assorted Rube Goldberg techno schemes to try to keep Earth from boiling, e.g.
"Re-Engineering the Planet to Limit Effects of Global Warming" - Not A Good Idea!
Which I already examined in several posts and showed why it's not the best idea to solve our climate crisis. So for now, we will have to likely adapt as best we can to a rapidly warming world which may well become close to uninhabitable by the end of the century. To that point, in a paper published last Thursday, Prof. James Hansen and colleagues made several alarming claims that all point in the same direction: that the world’s climate is significantly more sensitive to carbon emissions than scientists have acknowledged or the public appreciates, and that as a result, even those most focused on climate risks have been systematically underestimating how much warming the planet is likely to see over the next couple of decades.
See Also:
Global Warming: Prof. Rich Wolfson - YouTube
And:
by Thomas Neuburger | October 31, 2023 - 6:05am | permalink
Image source. Click for interactive version.
I’ve written quite a lot about this lately (for example, here), but it can’t be said enough. Global warming is accelerating. 2023 is the warmest year on record, and by a lot.
And:
by Katelyn Crews | October 31, 2023 - 6:22am | permalink
1. Within the next 2 decades, global temperatures are likely to reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That is terrifying.
In its highly-anticipated Sixth Assessment Report in 2021, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that a certain amount of global warming is locked in and is irreversible. They reported that from 2011-2020, the global temperature had already reached 1.1°C Celsius above 1850-1900 levels.
It is also predicted that within the decade, global temperatures are over 50% likely to rise to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial levels, the so-called “tipping point” of climate change.
And:
Another Bonkers Idea To Moderate Climate Change: Iron Saturation of the Oceans
And:
And:
by Jane Patton | November 1, 2023 - 6:23am | permalink
As our planet's temperature rises, so does the hype around hydrogen. But hydrogen isn't the climate savior it's made out to be. Hydrogen is a dangerous distraction, and we should not fall for it.
Technological fixes to climate change are tempting, and the Biden administration has not resisted the lure of hydrogen: The Department of Energy recently announced a massive $7 billion buildout of seven hydrogen hubs nationwide, the first of several such investments.
Hydrogen is dangerous, partly because it distracts from the real climate solutions we so desperately need. The world's best climate scientists have been clear that to maintain a livable planet, we must phase out fossil fuels and transition to truly renewable energy now. Hydrogen hubs take us in the opposite direction by further embedding us in the fossil fuel economy.
A staggering 99% of hydrogen production relies on fossil fuels, primarily methane, or "natural," gas. Notably, oil, gas, and petrochemical companies produce the lion's share of the U.S. hydrogen supply: approximately 10 million metric tons. Once produced, more than two-thirds of hydrogen is used for petroleum refining.
And:
by Debra Rowe | November 4, 2023 - 6:06am | permalink
Last month, Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell hosted a question and answer 'economic education' town hall with teachers from across the country. As an educator worried about an uncertain future wrought with climate disasters and economic instability, I joined over 120 of my peers and colleagues in writing a letter directly to Chair Powell, asking him to answer our questions on how the Fed plans to protect teachers, our students and the U.S. financial system from the biggest threat facing financial stability and our economy — climate change.
And:
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