What are the chances the oligarchs have been listening to these less conservative analyses all along, and are not interested in trying to make things better, or less worse, at this point and are just making a mad-dash for the worlds wealth and assets before things collapse full-on?
Until fairly recently they BELIEVED what mainstream climate science was saying. At least, most of them did. This has been changing, particularly over the last five years.
Based on their actions I would say they are indeed in the "mad dash for safety" phase of processing the current reality.
I am still digesting the implications if this one. .... ! .... But, while I wait for my brain to catch up to my heart, I just want to say THANK YOU. Your Crisis Reports are one of the few accessible touchstones around, where the lay person is walked through the science and implications with care. I know this takes a shit-tonne of time and effort. Massive GRATITUDE.
The choice of the word is unfortunate & misleading. A Doomer, also called an Adaptationist, is someone who understands & respects the science & recognises, based on history, that humanity has not cooperated on what what needed to be done to address climate change. Adaptationists, in realising this, make active changes in their own lives & within their own local community because that is all they have left. Many come from decades of science, politics, land & wildlife conservation.
Pretty insane how we just keep having to look at worse and worse math scenarios. A couple years ago to even suggest the idea that 1.0+C could happen in ~10 years would be pure insanity, even to the doomers. Now....
Not sure this is exactly fair, Richard - "Unfortunately, we believed the Moderates for too long. They led us into the CLIMATE APOCALYPSE which as started.".
Pretty sure even the Moderates were calling for GHG emissions reductions from the first IPCC report back in 1990.
The fact that governments and industries DID nothing at all is solely on them.
Sure, you could argue that more alarmist messaging MIGHT have resulted in faster action but
(1) that's an unsupported hypothesis and the alternative "Chicken Little, we're going to ignore you" argument is equally valid and
(2) It's been 34 years for anyone to take meaningful action on climate change, regardless of moderate or alarmist level messaging. And they did nothing.
In this case "liars" is fairly appropriate. Particularly after the 1998 paper when GISS decided that Arctic Amplification was going to be "less than" 2X overall warming.
See my articles:
050 - The Earth’s Climate System - A Short Users Guide. Part 03. Permafrost Melting — The role of permafrost in the Climate System. (07/01/23)
054 - Unclothing the Emperor : Understanding “What’s Wrong” with our “Climate Paradigm”. Part 3 - Latitudinal Gradient Response and Polar Amplification. (11/17/23
056 - Unclothing the Emperor : Understanding “What’s Wrong” with our “Climate Paradigm” - Part 4. The PERMAFROST — is MELTING, “faster than expected”. (11/28/23)
The paper in question is this one: Latitudinal temperature gradients and climate change
“How variable is the latitudinal temperature gradient with climate change?”
Then goes on to tell us that;
“This question is second in importance only to the question of overall climate sensitivity. Our current inability to answer it affects everything from understanding past climate variations, and paleoclimate proxies, to projections of regional effects of future greenhouse warming [Rind, 1995].”
THIS WAS IN 1998!
The same paper in which they dismissed the use of paleoclimate data as "highly speculative" and basically got paleoclimate evidence tossed out of "Climate Science". Doing this, despite NOT having any way of explaining the PETM Arctic fossil record.
In the same paper, choosing to state that at the "climate sensitivity" their models used they foresaw "little change" in the Latitudinal Equator to Pole Temperature Gradient. Despite all the evidence that indicates they were wrong.
They HOPED to be "vindicated" by "future research" which they EXPECTED to prove their "theories".
Yeah. When you are throwing out the evidence that shows you are wrong and PRAYING that evidence "in the future" will justify your decision. That's NOT "Science" anymore.
Mainstream Climate Science started "lying" to us and to itself in 1998. The paper is their suicide note.
"Calling for reductions in GHG emissions" while at the same time stating that +3°C was the most likely amount of warming from 2XCO2 isn't contradictory. It was CRIMINAL.
It convinced everyone that there was PLENTY of time to deal with this issue. When they KNEW that if they were wrong it would result in exactly what's happening now.
If there are degrees of criminality though the big oil companies whose own science experts knew before anyone else the crisis we are now in deserve condemnation. Unless of course the mainstream science folks were accepting research $$ from said oil companies.
I usually say Eschatozoic, „end animals” or „final animals” as I expect the various toxins & endocrine disruptors & premature dissipation of critical micronutrients e.g. phosphorus to winnow long-term for hundreds of millions of years beyond just Permian-Triassic-level heat.
Yes, there theoretically are “degrees of criminality,” but no, there is no deity in the sky to enforce punitive judgment against evildoers. The earthly human justice system is laughably weighted to encourage, protect, and reinforce the lies and terrorism of the corporate owners of social power.
Systems of judicial or even political retribution against evident imperialist extraction, production, and dissemination criminals and gangsters are incredibly slow and practically vaporous in effect if they are not outright corrupt and mendacious.
The colossal damage/harm is already done and been moved to its final extinction phase - what good would a few selective prosecutions due against the terminal onslaught?
And, of course, there is our own inevitable “degree of criminality” - how do we plead to the charge of having been born to live in the hydrocarbon matrix?
I think it's fair regardless of outcome. It is unethical to lie to populace or not fulfill scientific rigor. That is betrayal. We could have lived our lives differently at least as individuals in a better manner. That choice was largely taken away from many of us because between the Climate Change deniers and the Climate Change hopium peddlers have helped lull the general populace into less alarm. This has made the outcome even faster which is indeed worse from my POV.
If I paraphrase this slightly as "I'd have lived my life differently if I'd have known climate change would have affected ME in my lifetime, and not just my children and grandchildren, and that's all the Moderate factions fault" I'm not sure the moral responsibility sits where you think it does...
Keep in mind the Moderates are not Deniers. They've been saying that we need to change NOW back in the 90s to have a chance of staying below 1.5C (however arbitrary you might see that number). The fact that the politicians we elect and the corporations we subsidise did nothing... Well, hardly their fault IMHO.
If you aren't honest about what you know and what probabilities are you're culpable in my book and I'm not asking permission for that viewpoint. There is very clear standard in integrity.
Additionally I've seen on multiple occasions Moderates push falsehoods against people like Leon Simons and similar.
The moderates may not be deniers, but their high priests are aggressive in thier hopium peddling, shutting down dissenting voices with a viciousness I've not seen in other branches of science, and falsely linking 'doomers' (thier branding, just btw) with oil and gas interests to better serve thier public profile (and sell thier books). They have always advocated a soft, techno, first world change, that leaves the rest behind. They deserve the pushback, to be frank.
The basic point I distilled from this is that "*something*" in the climate system seriously, *very seriously*, came unpinned in 2022. Every year since has been a significant step up from the previous in terms of observable warming, and every year has accelerated over the previous rate of warming. Now we have a La Nina cycle which is having a negligible effect, temperatures are not receding as they should. Whether that "*something*" was solely the albedo reduction from reduced sulphur in shipping emissions regulations is, IMO, not firmly established. My gut instinct is that additional feedback loops we have not identified, or a critical energy distribution system we have overlooked, are also in play here - and we will have another quiet "whoopsie" moment from the scientific community regarding it eventually.
In my entirely uneducated and wholly layman doomer viewpoint, we have perhaps crossed a hitherto unidentified saturation point for oceanic surface energy absorption, with key overturning circuits already shown as beginning to slow in both hemispheres and thus unable to churn that hot water down as effectively - and this is what is causing the overpowering of the La Nina cycle. With water increasingly hot, everywhere, as that graph displays, the ENSO cycle is eventually going to fail to have the temperature difference required to properly "tip" across the pacific anymore. Perhaps the absurd jump in the incoming energy imbalance due to the sulphur fallout simply "overnight" outpaced the effective energy churn rate of hemispheric overturning currents.
Water temp depth readings for the year will eventually determine if my spitballing here is accurate or completely idiotic, since this scenario would mean heat penetrating much deeper into the water strata than it has previously. I am not, after all, in any way trained as a scientist.
I was just was watching James Hansen last night say on a video that 2°C is DEAD, that was a wake up call.
I hope your wrong on your analysis it sounds apocolyptic. However it wouldnt surprise me if it does come to pass given we are now living a dystopian tyranical, autocracy. It's all so surreal. On top of 1.7 for January is bananas. Shifting deck chairs while the music plays and the ship goes down.
The thermostat analogy reminds me of something Jem Bendell points out in Breaking Together: the atmosphere isn't going to work like a thermostat and magically start cooling because of our hopeful efforts to "decarbonize."
1.) “as” is supposed to be “has” in that final part of the post.
2.) If the climate system really is tipping, I wonder if we see less “La Niña” years and the ratio changes so that perhaps the El Niño period lasts longer or simply doesn’t stop anymore.
At around +4°C they think the Pacific will essentially be in a permanent El Nino state. This is one of the things people don't get about the transition from an Ice House to a Hot House climate. It isn't a case of "things stay the same but it gets hotter".
The ENTIRE Climate System "reorganizes" itself into a new state. EVERYTHING changes, including ocean currents, the atmospheric circulation patterns, and water flows over the entire planet.
When we reach the new thermal equilibrium. It will literally be a "new world" that is fundamentally different from our current one.
If global warming were to accelerate such that we reached 2.8°C to 3.2°C of warming before 2035, then estimating the time to hit 4°C depends on the assumed rate of acceleration. Since you suggested an exponentially accelerating rate, let’s use a basic exponential growth model:

where:
•  is the temperature anomaly,
•  is the initial temperature anomaly at a given reference year (e.g., 2035 for 3.0°C),
•  is the growth rate constant,
•  is the time elapsed from the reference year.
Step 1: Determine the Doubling Time or Growth Rate
If warming is accelerating, one way to approximate k is by assuming past trends and recent acceleration estimates.
1. Current observed warming (2024): ~1.2°C
2. Assumed accelerated warming rate: reaching 3.0°C by 2035 implies a sharp increase.
3. Exponential warming trends suggest that recent warming (post-2000) has increased at an effective rate of ~0.25°C per decade but accelerating.
4. If we assume that warming accelerates at a rate that shortens doubling time, then we can estimate how long it takes for 3.0°C to approach 4.0°C.
Step 2: Estimate the Time to 4°C
• Using a high-exponential growth model, if warming continues exponentially at an increasing rate (e.g., a doubling every ~12-15 years),
• Then going from 3.0°C (2035) → 4.0°C could take as little as 7-12 years, meaning:
4°C could be reached by ~2042–2047 if acceleration continues unchecked.
Step 3: Factors Influencing Acceleration
1. Permafrost & Methane Feedbacks – If warming accelerates due to methane releases (e.g., Arctic permafrost), it could speed up to ~6-8 years.
2. Ocean Heat Uptake – The ocean’s thermal inertia might slightly delay the peak.
3. Geoengineering or Policy Interventions – If drastic action is taken, it could extend the timeline.
4. Carbon Cycle Feedbacks – If carbon sinks weaken, CO₂ accumulation could push warming rates even faster.
Conclusion:
With an exponentially accelerating warming rate, 4°C could be reached by ~2042–2047, possibly sooner (~2040) under extreme feedbacks. If warming follows more of a super-exponential trajectory, then late 2030s would not be implausible.
I would take it with a grain of salt though, but it makes sense, decadence will be popular. in the 2040s and 2050s, modern industrial civilization will end. Mass mayhem, death, rioting, and wars will be all over the world
Hansen doesn't see this scenario happening. He thinks we are seeing heat being "unmasked" by the change in the albedo brought on by the change in maritime diesel in 2020.
In that scenario, there is rapid warming from the shift in the albedo with a new thermal equilibrium being quickly reached. He calculates about +0.5°C of rapid warming as a result of the change. Then the Rate of Warming falling back to something like +0.36°C per decade.
Which is a whole LOT less than the +1.2°C per decade in my "worst case".
The problem is that no one knows for sure. The Climate System is doing things that we have never seen before and "unprecedented" is NOT a word you want to hear when it comes to climate system behavior.
We KNOW now that the GMST can jump as much as +0.35°C in a SINGLE YEAR because we saw it happen in 2023. 2024 increased another +0.1°C and now 2025 is acting like it might do the same.
If it does, then we will have exceeded the point that Hansen thinks warming should have slowed down. In which case my "worst case" becomes more plausible.
At the moment I am still being somewhat conservative and leaning towards Hansen's interpretation. So, I would say no more than 25% to 30% "worst case".
Ask me again in 6 months and I will have a much more certain estimate.
Horribly confusing, dear Richard. I'll just stick with James Hansen's recent paper relying on the gold standard C3S reporting of a 0.4 degC global ave. surface temp mean o.4 degC for the past 2 yrs. So, in plain speak, which you seem incapable of, this is a 0.2 degC increase EVERY 5 YRS., so life ending 3.04 degC increase by 2032, 7 yrs. from now. Plain enough?
It seemed pretty straight forward to me.... lol Remember there might be "unknown, unknown" as this unfolds. For example what happens if AMOC shuts down? (a know unknown). Models only work if you are in "steady state" and have tons of data to calibrate them with.
I never read much about the 'exponentiality' factor in climate change. As everything warms, more and more methane is released from ocean floors and perma frost , whether it's in Siberia, arctic, and now I'm reading that a Spanish team is measuring columns of methane released in Antarctica, and the voids left behind under water are collapsing and causing landslides/tsunamis.. Methane goes into the atmosphere of course , leading to more warming, and then more releases etc etc etc
I'm glad I didn't read this when it first published. I was very depressed (for no good reason) and it may have pushed me to Whiskey again.
Now, I feel really good and it doesn't matter. Micro Plastics is all I'm going to worry about. Maybe I'll get killed on one of my motorcycles (having two doubles your odds) and nothing will matter. I feel depressed again . . .
What are the chances the oligarchs have been listening to these less conservative analyses all along, and are not interested in trying to make things better, or less worse, at this point and are just making a mad-dash for the worlds wealth and assets before things collapse full-on?
Until fairly recently they BELIEVED what mainstream climate science was saying. At least, most of them did. This has been changing, particularly over the last five years.
Based on their actions I would say they are indeed in the "mad dash for safety" phase of processing the current reality.
So basically what I argue here https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenthair/p/collapse-vs-project-2025?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=wxx11 and here https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenthair/p/what-if-the-trumpists-really-believe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=wxx11?
Yup. Scarcity = Fascism.
I am still digesting the implications if this one. .... ! .... But, while I wait for my brain to catch up to my heart, I just want to say THANK YOU. Your Crisis Reports are one of the few accessible touchstones around, where the lay person is walked through the science and implications with care. I know this takes a shit-tonne of time and effort. Massive GRATITUDE.
The choice of the word is unfortunate & misleading. A Doomer, also called an Adaptationist, is someone who understands & respects the science & recognises, based on history, that humanity has not cooperated on what what needed to be done to address climate change. Adaptationists, in realising this, make active changes in their own lives & within their own local community because that is all they have left. Many come from decades of science, politics, land & wildlife conservation.
Well said. I thought of you as my eyes slide over the words.
Pretty insane how we just keep having to look at worse and worse math scenarios. A couple years ago to even suggest the idea that 1.0+C could happen in ~10 years would be pure insanity, even to the doomers. Now....
:(
Not all of us doomers
Not sure this is exactly fair, Richard - "Unfortunately, we believed the Moderates for too long. They led us into the CLIMATE APOCALYPSE which as started.".
Pretty sure even the Moderates were calling for GHG emissions reductions from the first IPCC report back in 1990.
The fact that governments and industries DID nothing at all is solely on them.
Sure, you could argue that more alarmist messaging MIGHT have resulted in faster action but
(1) that's an unsupported hypothesis and the alternative "Chicken Little, we're going to ignore you" argument is equally valid and
(2) It's been 34 years for anyone to take meaningful action on climate change, regardless of moderate or alarmist level messaging. And they did nothing.
In this case "liars" is fairly appropriate. Particularly after the 1998 paper when GISS decided that Arctic Amplification was going to be "less than" 2X overall warming.
See my articles:
050 - The Earth’s Climate System - A Short Users Guide. Part 03. Permafrost Melting — The role of permafrost in the Climate System. (07/01/23)
054 - Unclothing the Emperor : Understanding “What’s Wrong” with our “Climate Paradigm”. Part 3 - Latitudinal Gradient Response and Polar Amplification. (11/17/23
056 - Unclothing the Emperor : Understanding “What’s Wrong” with our “Climate Paradigm” - Part 4. The PERMAFROST — is MELTING, “faster than expected”. (11/28/23)
The paper in question is this one: Latitudinal temperature gradients and climate change
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 103, NO. D6, PAGES 5943-5971, MARCH 27, 1998 (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/97JD03649).
The first sentence of this paper asks.
“How variable is the latitudinal temperature gradient with climate change?”
Then goes on to tell us that;
“This question is second in importance only to the question of overall climate sensitivity. Our current inability to answer it affects everything from understanding past climate variations, and paleoclimate proxies, to projections of regional effects of future greenhouse warming [Rind, 1995].”
THIS WAS IN 1998!
The same paper in which they dismissed the use of paleoclimate data as "highly speculative" and basically got paleoclimate evidence tossed out of "Climate Science". Doing this, despite NOT having any way of explaining the PETM Arctic fossil record.
In the same paper, choosing to state that at the "climate sensitivity" their models used they foresaw "little change" in the Latitudinal Equator to Pole Temperature Gradient. Despite all the evidence that indicates they were wrong.
They HOPED to be "vindicated" by "future research" which they EXPECTED to prove their "theories".
Yeah. When you are throwing out the evidence that shows you are wrong and PRAYING that evidence "in the future" will justify your decision. That's NOT "Science" anymore.
Mainstream Climate Science started "lying" to us and to itself in 1998. The paper is their suicide note.
"Calling for reductions in GHG emissions" while at the same time stating that +3°C was the most likely amount of warming from 2XCO2 isn't contradictory. It was CRIMINAL.
It convinced everyone that there was PLENTY of time to deal with this issue. When they KNEW that if they were wrong it would result in exactly what's happening now.
A CLIMATE APOCALYPSE.
If there are degrees of criminality though the big oil companies whose own science experts knew before anyone else the crisis we are now in deserve condemnation. Unless of course the mainstream science folks were accepting research $$ from said oil companies.
From the Anthropocene to the Protistacene we go.
I usually say Eschatozoic, „end animals” or „final animals” as I expect the various toxins & endocrine disruptors & premature dissipation of critical micronutrients e.g. phosphorus to winnow long-term for hundreds of millions of years beyond just Permian-Triassic-level heat.
I like the “if” construction of your sentence.
Yes, there theoretically are “degrees of criminality,” but no, there is no deity in the sky to enforce punitive judgment against evildoers. The earthly human justice system is laughably weighted to encourage, protect, and reinforce the lies and terrorism of the corporate owners of social power.
Systems of judicial or even political retribution against evident imperialist extraction, production, and dissemination criminals and gangsters are incredibly slow and practically vaporous in effect if they are not outright corrupt and mendacious.
The colossal damage/harm is already done and been moved to its final extinction phase - what good would a few selective prosecutions due against the terminal onslaught?
And, of course, there is our own inevitable “degree of criminality” - how do we plead to the charge of having been born to live in the hydrocarbon matrix?
Seuss & Revelle were already enough to know better in 1953 or thereabouts. They’ve been lying for a good long while.
I think it's fair regardless of outcome. It is unethical to lie to populace or not fulfill scientific rigor. That is betrayal. We could have lived our lives differently at least as individuals in a better manner. That choice was largely taken away from many of us because between the Climate Change deniers and the Climate Change hopium peddlers have helped lull the general populace into less alarm. This has made the outcome even faster which is indeed worse from my POV.
If I paraphrase this slightly as "I'd have lived my life differently if I'd have known climate change would have affected ME in my lifetime, and not just my children and grandchildren, and that's all the Moderate factions fault" I'm not sure the moral responsibility sits where you think it does...
Keep in mind the Moderates are not Deniers. They've been saying that we need to change NOW back in the 90s to have a chance of staying below 1.5C (however arbitrary you might see that number). The fact that the politicians we elect and the corporations we subsidise did nothing... Well, hardly their fault IMHO.
If you aren't honest about what you know and what probabilities are you're culpable in my book and I'm not asking permission for that viewpoint. There is very clear standard in integrity.
Additionally I've seen on multiple occasions Moderates push falsehoods against people like Leon Simons and similar.
> "Keep in mind the Moderates are not Deniers."
Sure they are in their own way.
The moderates may not be deniers, but their high priests are aggressive in thier hopium peddling, shutting down dissenting voices with a viciousness I've not seen in other branches of science, and falsely linking 'doomers' (thier branding, just btw) with oil and gas interests to better serve thier public profile (and sell thier books). They have always advocated a soft, techno, first world change, that leaves the rest behind. They deserve the pushback, to be frank.
The last line… and I think you would agree… it is already too late.
The basic point I distilled from this is that "*something*" in the climate system seriously, *very seriously*, came unpinned in 2022. Every year since has been a significant step up from the previous in terms of observable warming, and every year has accelerated over the previous rate of warming. Now we have a La Nina cycle which is having a negligible effect, temperatures are not receding as they should. Whether that "*something*" was solely the albedo reduction from reduced sulphur in shipping emissions regulations is, IMO, not firmly established. My gut instinct is that additional feedback loops we have not identified, or a critical energy distribution system we have overlooked, are also in play here - and we will have another quiet "whoopsie" moment from the scientific community regarding it eventually.
In my entirely uneducated and wholly layman doomer viewpoint, we have perhaps crossed a hitherto unidentified saturation point for oceanic surface energy absorption, with key overturning circuits already shown as beginning to slow in both hemispheres and thus unable to churn that hot water down as effectively - and this is what is causing the overpowering of the La Nina cycle. With water increasingly hot, everywhere, as that graph displays, the ENSO cycle is eventually going to fail to have the temperature difference required to properly "tip" across the pacific anymore. Perhaps the absurd jump in the incoming energy imbalance due to the sulphur fallout simply "overnight" outpaced the effective energy churn rate of hemispheric overturning currents.
Water temp depth readings for the year will eventually determine if my spitballing here is accurate or completely idiotic, since this scenario would mean heat penetrating much deeper into the water strata than it has previously. I am not, after all, in any way trained as a scientist.
I’ve wondered about this myself ever since I read about the increased ocean stratification that some temperature measurements seem to be indicating.
I was just was watching James Hansen last night say on a video that 2°C is DEAD, that was a wake up call.
I hope your wrong on your analysis it sounds apocolyptic. However it wouldnt surprise me if it does come to pass given we are now living a dystopian tyranical, autocracy. It's all so surreal. On top of 1.7 for January is bananas. Shifting deck chairs while the music plays and the ship goes down.
The thermostat analogy reminds me of something Jem Bendell points out in Breaking Together: the atmosphere isn't going to work like a thermostat and magically start cooling because of our hopeful efforts to "decarbonize."
Two additional thoughts:
1.) “as” is supposed to be “has” in that final part of the post.
2.) If the climate system really is tipping, I wonder if we see less “La Niña” years and the ratio changes so that perhaps the El Niño period lasts longer or simply doesn’t stop anymore.
At around +4°C they think the Pacific will essentially be in a permanent El Nino state. This is one of the things people don't get about the transition from an Ice House to a Hot House climate. It isn't a case of "things stay the same but it gets hotter".
The ENTIRE Climate System "reorganizes" itself into a new state. EVERYTHING changes, including ocean currents, the atmospheric circulation patterns, and water flows over the entire planet.
When we reach the new thermal equilibrium. It will literally be a "new world" that is fundamentally different from our current one.
And likely utterly, utterly uninhabitable.
Anyone wanna fact check this ChatGPT math?
If global warming were to accelerate such that we reached 2.8°C to 3.2°C of warming before 2035, then estimating the time to hit 4°C depends on the assumed rate of acceleration. Since you suggested an exponentially accelerating rate, let’s use a basic exponential growth model:

where:
•  is the temperature anomaly,
•  is the initial temperature anomaly at a given reference year (e.g., 2035 for 3.0°C),
•  is the growth rate constant,
•  is the time elapsed from the reference year.
Step 1: Determine the Doubling Time or Growth Rate
If warming is accelerating, one way to approximate k is by assuming past trends and recent acceleration estimates.
1. Current observed warming (2024): ~1.2°C
2. Assumed accelerated warming rate: reaching 3.0°C by 2035 implies a sharp increase.
3. Exponential warming trends suggest that recent warming (post-2000) has increased at an effective rate of ~0.25°C per decade but accelerating.
4. If we assume that warming accelerates at a rate that shortens doubling time, then we can estimate how long it takes for 3.0°C to approach 4.0°C.
Step 2: Estimate the Time to 4°C
• Using a high-exponential growth model, if warming continues exponentially at an increasing rate (e.g., a doubling every ~12-15 years),
• Then going from 3.0°C (2035) → 4.0°C could take as little as 7-12 years, meaning:
4°C could be reached by ~2042–2047 if acceleration continues unchecked.
Step 3: Factors Influencing Acceleration
1. Permafrost & Methane Feedbacks – If warming accelerates due to methane releases (e.g., Arctic permafrost), it could speed up to ~6-8 years.
2. Ocean Heat Uptake – The ocean’s thermal inertia might slightly delay the peak.
3. Geoengineering or Policy Interventions – If drastic action is taken, it could extend the timeline.
4. Carbon Cycle Feedbacks – If carbon sinks weaken, CO₂ accumulation could push warming rates even faster.
Conclusion:
With an exponentially accelerating warming rate, 4°C could be reached by ~2042–2047, possibly sooner (~2040) under extreme feedbacks. If warming follows more of a super-exponential trajectory, then late 2030s would not be implausible.
Here is this interesting tidbit from the Daily Mail, . It talks about the rich elite who know there is no stable future ahead of us.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14314191/global-elite-Davos-high-class-escort-spills-beans.html
I would take it with a grain of salt though, but it makes sense, decadence will be popular. in the 2040s and 2050s, modern industrial civilization will end. Mass mayhem, death, rioting, and wars will be all over the world
Richard you say this is a worse case scenario. It’s terrifying. What odds would you put on this? 1/10?
Hansen doesn't see this scenario happening. He thinks we are seeing heat being "unmasked" by the change in the albedo brought on by the change in maritime diesel in 2020.
In that scenario, there is rapid warming from the shift in the albedo with a new thermal equilibrium being quickly reached. He calculates about +0.5°C of rapid warming as a result of the change. Then the Rate of Warming falling back to something like +0.36°C per decade.
Which is a whole LOT less than the +1.2°C per decade in my "worst case".
The problem is that no one knows for sure. The Climate System is doing things that we have never seen before and "unprecedented" is NOT a word you want to hear when it comes to climate system behavior.
We KNOW now that the GMST can jump as much as +0.35°C in a SINGLE YEAR because we saw it happen in 2023. 2024 increased another +0.1°C and now 2025 is acting like it might do the same.
If it does, then we will have exceeded the point that Hansen thinks warming should have slowed down. In which case my "worst case" becomes more plausible.
At the moment I am still being somewhat conservative and leaning towards Hansen's interpretation. So, I would say no more than 25% to 30% "worst case".
Ask me again in 6 months and I will have a much more certain estimate.
The odds are now 100%. The only question left is when exactly.
Thanks for your well-researched summary even if it's scary. Especially thanks for focusing on the hard data of accelerating global temperatures.
Horribly confusing, dear Richard. I'll just stick with James Hansen's recent paper relying on the gold standard C3S reporting of a 0.4 degC global ave. surface temp mean o.4 degC for the past 2 yrs. So, in plain speak, which you seem incapable of, this is a 0.2 degC increase EVERY 5 YRS., so life ending 3.04 degC increase by 2032, 7 yrs. from now. Plain enough?
We're all a little acoustic around here. :D
2.8, 3.0, 3.2, whatever the number it is, it's clear we're going for the gold fuckin medal lmao, and every road leads to billions of deaths.
:\
It seemed pretty straight forward to me.... lol Remember there might be "unknown, unknown" as this unfolds. For example what happens if AMOC shuts down? (a know unknown). Models only work if you are in "steady state" and have tons of data to calibrate them with.
Which part in particular did you find confusing?
I never read much about the 'exponentiality' factor in climate change. As everything warms, more and more methane is released from ocean floors and perma frost , whether it's in Siberia, arctic, and now I'm reading that a Spanish team is measuring columns of methane released in Antarctica, and the voids left behind under water are collapsing and causing landslides/tsunamis.. Methane goes into the atmosphere of course , leading to more warming, and then more releases etc etc etc
I'm glad I didn't read this when it first published. I was very depressed (for no good reason) and it may have pushed me to Whiskey again.
Now, I feel really good and it doesn't matter. Micro Plastics is all I'm going to worry about. Maybe I'll get killed on one of my motorcycles (having two doubles your odds) and nothing will matter. I feel depressed again . . .