The Crisis Report - 02
If we are going to have meaningful votes on Climate Change policy, people need to understand it. Right now, that’s not easy.
Do you remember the Mount St. Helen’s eruption?
People wouldn’t leave their homes around Mount Saint Helen’s even when it was clear that the volcano was going to erupt. They were sure that the danger was being “over-hyped” and “exaggerated”. They were confident that they could “ride it out”.
Then the volcano blew off half the mountain in an instant and they all died.
From the bodies that were found, it was clear that some of them finally realized they had been wrong, and tried to flee. Of course, when you wait until the last minute to try and do something about a deadly situation, it’s usually too late.
I’m sure there’s a parable in there somewhere about human nature because we do it over and over again. Right now, as a species, we are doing it with global warming and climate change. That’s not going to be possible for much longer.
These are the last years of the 20th century climate optimum. By 2030 we will be well into a new climate energy state and things will be much, much worse.
Global Warming and Climate Change have been topics of interest for me since the mid 80’s. Two years ago, when I saw an article about Greenland’s melting being “locked in”, I thought WTF is going on. This is happening much faster than anyone projected.
So, I started updating my understanding of Climate Science and the current “state of play”.
While most of what I thought two years ago was accurate in a general sense, many of my positions have evolved. There have been huge advances in climate science over the last 10 years.
Improved monitoring of global climate influences has generated a vast amount of data on the global climate system. Research into the earth’s paleoclimate has produced a record of past global climates going back over 500 million years.
Thanks to ice cores we also have a high resolution record of the climate for the last 800K years. We know more about the earth’s climate system than we ever have.
So, after two years of reading a dozen books, dozens of reports, over a hundred papers, and close to a thousand articles I feel ready to make an analysis of the “Climate Crisis” unfolding around us. I’m going to be direct.
The climate situation is much worse than you think.
Even if it doesn’t get much worse than it is now, the existing world order would be stressed and pushed to its limits. Unfortunately, it’s going to get a lot worse and it’s going to happen quickly. This decade is our last chance at both the societal and personal levels to try and “get in front of the situation”.
At the societal level we are currently squandering this time.
On the personal level, the next 3–5 years is your last chance to make a clean transition if you need to sell your home and move to a better place. Because once everyone understands what’s happening the world will shift abruptly into a new state of being.
The next 3–5 years are your last chance to get in front of the climate disaster that’s coming.
Now, if someone makes a statement like that, they should back it up with a convincing argument. Their analysis needs to be fact based and compelling. It needs to be clear, easily understandable, and built around data that is available to everyone.
After two years of immersing myself in the currently available climate science, climate data, and climate politics here are the five most important things I think you need to know about Global Warming and the Climate Change it is causing.
A majority of climate scientists think that warming is going to be at least 3℃ or higher.
The amount of global warming since “the late 19th century” has been agreed on as 1.2C. It’s actually 0.4–0.6C higher than that.
There was a huge pulse of unexpected warming between 2010–2020.
The climate sensitivity models and forecasts are off.
The arctic is going to continue warming rapidly, this is catastrophically bad.
All of these points are grounded in available research papers, data sets, and articles. I make no claims to any “secret knowledge”, genius, or uniqueness in reaching these conclusions.
There are other analysts who are reaching similar conclusions based on the same information. This is not “click-bait” or “doom porn”. This is the same analysis I would present if I was being paid to write up an assessment of the climate crisis or if I was writing a national security briefing paper.
With that in mind, let’s look at point number one.
77% of climate scientists actually think that warming is going to be 2.5℃ or higher.
A majority think it’s going to be 3C or higher.
Out of everything that was said and done at the COP26 event, the single most important thing I read was this article in Nature which was released just before the event: Top climate scientists are skeptical that nations will rein in global warming. As an analyst I found it significant for two reasons:
-It reveals what climate scientists, those with the best information and data, think about the climate crisis.
-It shows how skewed the current discussion of the climate crisis is towards the most impossibly optimistic outcome.
Of the scientists who responded to the poll, 88% think global warming constitutes a crisis and nearly as many said they expect to see “catastrophic impacts of climate change in their lifetimes”. Just under half said that global warming has caused them to reconsider major life decisions, such as where to live and “whether to have children”.
More than 60% said that they experience anxiety, grief, or other distress because of concerns over climate change.
This information should concern and scare you. These are the most informed people on the planet on the topic of global warming. You should want to know why they think this is the most likely future. What do they know, what do they see, that the rest of us don’t?
We should all want to understand this, because they think we are going to have at least 2℃ more of “observable” warming by 2100.
That means they are forecasting warming of roughly 0.25℃ per decade for the next 80 years. If you think that doesn’t sound too bad let’s put it into context.
Between 1850 (the start of the Industrial Age) and 1980 (the 0℃ baseline we measure warming against) the Global Mean Temperature (GMT) increased at a rate of 0.07℃ per decade. Between 1980 and 2010 the GMT increased at a rate of 0.18℃.
The “normal” interglacial warming rate for the last 800,000 years has been about 0.1℃ per century.
A 0.25℃ per decade rate of warming is 25 times faster than any recorded rate of warming in the entire geologic history of the planet with one exception: the Chicxulub Impact Event 65mya, aka “the dinosaur killer”.
Consider this as well, do you really think the world’s intelligence agencies, militaries, and governments aren’t already aware of what the world’s climate scientists think?
The world’s leadership already knows that 4 out of 5 climate scientists think that 2.5℃ of warming (or more) is going to happen. Yet at COP26 they celebrated themselves for “keeping the goal of 1.5℃ alive”.
This year, after COP27, we are still seeing ridiculous articles like this from the Washington Post.
It’s the world’s most important climate goal: limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). We looked at 1,200 possibilities for the planet’s future. These are our best hope.
Since 1.5℃ is they only number they talk about, it has become the number that most of the public associates with how serious “Climate Change” could become.
Globally, the public is vastly underestimating the seriousness and dangers of global warming because global elites are vastly understating how much warming is likely to occur.
This is not surprising. It is estimated that there are 11–14 trillion dollars tied up in fossil fuel assets that will be lost if an immediate shutdown of the fossil fuel industry begins. The fortunes of the fossil fuel elites would be lost if we started taking immediate steps to decarbonize the global energy systems and economy.
Faced with the possibility that they waited too long to transition out of fossil fuels and could lose everything, Global Elites are choosing to believe the 1 out of 5 scientists who are generating the most optimistic projections. The 20% who think that warming will be held between 1.5 and 2.0℃.
This is the medical equivalent of having 4 doctors tell you that you have cancer and need immediate surgery but choosing to listen to the 5th guy who tells you that if you lose weight, take vitamin supplements, and drink probiotic smoothies you’ll be fine. It could happen, but it seems unlikely, and they are gambling with the lives of billions.
If you knew nothing about Global Warming and Climate Change, but found out that 80% of climate scientists think 2C of further warming is the most likely outcome, what would you think?
As an analyst, I find it extremely alarming.
This is what I see.
This is my analysis.
This is my Crisis Report.
-rc