the 2C switch will be flung in the near future. when is "bad" bad enough? I suspect walls will be built to stave the tide of bodies. will we see thousands of miles of barbed wire patrolled by drones with infared targeting systems? the entire US population is "only" 340,000,000. where will these people go? It will be "interesting" to see if the first 500,000,000 people quietly lay down and die without protest. In the game of climate induced migration and subsequent refugees, this is going to be an absoluetly brutal time for everyone (earth) I feel somewhat lucky to be American. that to be an engineer, to have a currently stable job, a house, a car, etc, etc, gives me the chance to sit back and collect the facts. I am extremely privilaged on a global scale. the abismal terror I feel knowing this GIANT dirty secret before almost everyone else is exhausting. the "polycrisis" is here. the starving times are coming. violence is coming.
You are of course spot on. Your readers should be assured that you are not doom-mongering, the situation is very bad and getting worse daily. Hotter than expected, sooner than expected- the world we knew is going away and won't return. Instability is with us and with it will come resource wars, mass migrations, great loss of biodiversity, arable lands, and rising oceans. Even if we do everything right with massive geo- engineering and achieving net zero with total conversion to solar and wind power, the heat rise is baked in and it will take hundreds of years for it to decline. Whether our global civilization can survive is anybody's guess.
Thank you, dear Richard, for an heroic effort at assessing our current climate crisis but I find your estimates and predictions way off, at least according to my study of the data from the gold standard group at C3S. Any suggestion of optimism for the survival of life on the surface of this planet by 2050 is just plain wrong. C3S data set indicates a 0.214 degC ANNUAL GMST increase over the 1991-2020 baseline, and you leave out the all important baselines in your analysis. So, at the current rate of increase, we may well see a 2 degC GMST increase by 2027, a 3 degC increase by 2032 and the lights out 6 degC increase by 2047, as I have shared with you before, apparently to little avail. Yet, we are continuing to mindlessly burn 8 B tons of coal annually and 100M barrels of oil DAILY, and between the waste heat released and the GHG trapping solar heat, we are accumulation the heat energy equivalent of 20+ (NOAA says 13.3) Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND (Eliot Jacobson), where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. This heat energy accumulation is buffered/absorbed by the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice, evident in the rapidly melting 220,000 glaciers and polar ice caps, as well as 321 million cubic miles of warming oceans. Greenland lost 9B tons of water (latent heat energy absorbed) EVERY HOUR in 2020 (Inside Climate News) and is 27 degF on its southern end today (NOAA surface analysis) but has often been above freezing even now in the dead of winter. The surface water temp off Greenland in the North Atlantic is averaging 60 degF and the total ocean heat energy absorption over the past 50 yrs is estimated at 381+/- 61 ZJ ( one Zeta Joule is 10 to the 23rd Joules). New research shows that the oceans are heating to and below 2K meters, so not just the surface. A firehose of competing climate stats only muddies the true nature of our existential crisis. I'm sticking with the apolitical, public funded EU's C3S. Have a blessed day and get ready for another record setting summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Will we ever get "woke" and stop burning fossil fuels? Nah? Gregg
Ya. The exponential curve is something so fucking crazy our minds struggle to comprehend it. Even if we are trained.
I was a little faster with math than my peers when I was younger, but never really went anywhere with it. Failed statistics at a chop shop college a few times mostly for the giggles of it without really pondering the future implications. Whoops. I was however, trained in fourier math by a real fuckin genius professor from Las Cruces 20+ years ago and a lot of that shit managed to stick.
So I'm still pretty much as dumb as the rest of everyone else on average of course, but I grok how fucking wild this is because of a career in systems thinking and systems design.
All that to say, a couple of years ago I started to wonder where exactly we were in the curve. It was obvious we were entering it some time ago, and obvious that we were somewhere within it. So I started digging just like Richard, and also reading everything he wrote and posted about, and ordering old magazines off the internet like Nat'l Geographic from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and Discover from the 80s, etc. Old newspapers too. Of course old peer reviewed papers, IPCC reports, all sorts of shit. Consumed and consumed and pondered, compared, contrasted.
Started to get a little clearer last year as I had been gardening for about 6-7 years on and off with friends and paying attention to how the growing season played out, and also how bug lifecycles worked here, how the various wildlife responded and interacted. How our weather patterns have been shifting. Practical, lived, reality.
2020 was this really weird fever dream. Where we were then and where we are now in our climate system are two entirely different fucking places now. It's so insanely wild to think about, to observe, to recall.
*IF* we are actually on a trajectory that is going to see 2C before 2030 and 3C in under 10 years from that point, then our location in the curve is confidently at the very end of the curve where shit starts going completely vertical, parabolic. Just like Dogecoin in 2021.
Every data point that matters right now is pointing to this trajectory being the reality. Like Richard points out from Hansen himself, the acid test, the real deal acid test for us, is happening right now, this year or so, short term. Presently. It'll show us what's up, and I guarantee you nobody is gonna like it.
Yeah. Sorry everyone, we fucked up, but also this was always going to happen because we're all addicted to more, more, more. The human condition, the life condition. Expand till shit is used up then die. That's the entire show, ad nauseum, for millions of years, and a lot of us will experience the curtain dropping.
I believe grain production has reached the top end of the diminishing returns curve. Early gains were due to mechanization and fertilizers, then we got big on genetics. There is only so much we can squeeze out using genetics as there are physiological limits with energy acquisition by the plants being the main limit. We are about done with most research where I work now looking at water stress tolerance and root traits to go deeper in soil profiles to suck up water along with plant microbiome interactions to "engineer" better nutrient acquisition. Farting against thunder IMO - we've made a right mess of things through intensified ag. and without soil 'health' we will struggle to make any more gains. Arguably on current production we could feed 10-14 billion assuming no waste and if we all became vegetarians. I wish us luck with that... Also, arguably, the biggest gains in food production can happen in Africa with simple interventions like irrigation. Again, I wish us luck. Hasn't happened so far as nobody seems to care... fun times ahead.
I should have added "the most useful research being conducted" where I work. There is a lot of other first world hubris research going on like vertical agriculture, digital agriculture, precision agriculture... the list goes on. Other projects like folk trying to understand non-rhizobial nitrogen fixation or fungal-root interactions barely get funding. No money to be made there I suppose as working with nature can't be sold.
Made an account just to thank you for your well written reports. A lot of people are either putting their head in the sand or pretending it won't be so bad. Not to mention, most are trying to survive month by month. It's a sad reality, but I truly believe we are headed towards a doom scenerio and what is happening in the world really proves me right. Looking forward towards your new crisis report!
Corn and soybeans are grown to feed through the energy inefficient bodies of farmed animals, so if crops are grown for direct eating instead there is some slack in the system before people start starving.
Indeed, the White people don't believe or if they do they don't mind as most of the starving will be Black, Brown or Latino. The rich'll carry on with bacon for breakfast and steak for tea.
I'm not sure if I'm reassured or terrified at seeing some reputable sources (insurance adjusters) finally converging on what my beliefs have been for a few years now (and what your analysis covers excellently). I hate advocating for hard launch of AI, but at this point new materials that permit low cost and rapid roll out of fusion power seem (to me) to provide the only real tangible hope of blunting the worst of this crisis. If we can decarbonize our energy generation and move most farming indoors then we might have a chance to struggle through the near future, but my guess is that societal upheaval from increasing resources scarcity will catch up with us before those techs mature.
Fantastic and terrifying, thank you for your insight! There is one section that I have trouble understanding (I’m on the autism spectrum and I’m deeply interested in “visualizing” what is happening). You mention the heat in the oceans as if they are Hiroshima bombs. Conceptually I understand what you mean but I was wondering if you might have another metaphor you could share? Perhaps I have a mental block that bombs are immediate and violent whereas what we are seeing is slower. I was just curious but please feel free to ignore - I know you have a lot on your mind. :)
I can’t remember which report it was but he detailed it very nicely not too long ago. IIRC he showed the total amount of water in the oceans and the average amount of energy the receive daily/yearly from multiple heat sources such as thermal vents/underwater volcanoes and the sun. There were also some figures related to energy loss from albedo and radiation. The hiroshima bomb reference was shown as the total amount of energy released from that amount of megatons on TNT exploding as a measurement of the atom bomb total energy output. It’s basically a way to visualize the amount of energy it would take to warm up the earth’s oceans in the rapid timescale they have been warned. Energy is energy so you can convert the joules per kilogram of TNT(atom bomb energy total of hiroshima bomb) to the joules per sq kilometer or mile of Ocean water that it has warmed by. That probably doesn’t make a ton of sense but the report where he shows the conversion to total hiro bombs was an awesome way to visualize the total energy imput.
Gotcha, thank you. If I understand this correctly- the Hiroshima bomb metaphor is appropriate because the heat being trapped is happening fast. On a historical timescale it’s like a bomb.
I’ll go find his other article. Ty for your insight!
As someone else on the autism spectrum, I would like a more indept report on this aswell, it's hard to imagine. I do think what we see now is the first few domino blocks falling slowly until you hit a point where it hits and hits one after another.
And it may well take most higher life forms, including us, with it. Maybe now we know why we've never seen any signs of alien life. This seems to be one of The Great Filters.
Does your forecast take into account the decreasing fossil fuels [conventional oil peaked late 2018] used to pump the declining groundwater for irrigation, and the use of fossil fuels to produce the fertilizers and sprays?
I find Art Berman's analysis of conventional oiling peaking in the 1970's much more believable but that really isn't a factor here one way or the other. US and a few other countries are either at or very near peak production but they will be able to maintain such production levels for quite some time.
Most news articles that promote the sort of news your comment alludes to are click baiting feel good stuff that is not reflective of current human behavior. Best way is to look at raw GLOBAL data, national/regional data is engineered to make high tech regions look better than they actually are by off-shoring manufacturing of high emission goods such as solar panels.
A communist system could operate with enough cohesion and intention to save lives. The capitalist west is too disorganized for any such collective action. China is now the only hope in the world.
Mate the east of China is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Open Google maps and you'll see the road network. That is all predicated on multiple in a year rice harvests. That's the system you have to look at not the so called communism thing you mentioned.
3 years ago I became collapse aware and did some hefty grieving before accepting what is to come. I still cycle through utter sadness during hot summers, but for the most part acknowledge what is happening as surreal as it is. Until........Jan 20, 2025. Climate collapse has just been thrust into complete overdrive, warp speed, you name it. I have been in one long absolute panic attack and utter grief as our public lands are about to be sold off! Every day I wake up and feel like I am in a nightmare. I honestly think things are going to get very, very, very ugly here much much sooner than anyone anticipates, on so many levels. It is mind blowing that climate collapse now seems secondary, SECONDARY! to what is unfolding in our country. Of course climate collapse and the breakdown of society gonhand in hand, but i never would have imagined it would unfold like this.
Hi Richard, i've had people tell me that Siberian warming will mean that Russian wheat production sky rockets. What would your response be? Here's mine.
The time frame we are talking about is 5 to 10 years. Not long enough for the Arctic ice and permafrost to melt, for 1000s of acres of land to be prepared, planted and cultivated to feed millions. People can’t eat potential. Especially as these people are not in Russia. Even with warming causing loss of productivity from existing land, Russia will have no problem feeding herself. And she has plenty of lucrative raw materials and goods to trade without going to the trouble of making a wheat surplus to sell to the world’s poorest people in developing countries. Though if she did, whom she chooses to sell to would have huge strategic importance.
All in all, millions (more) starving in the 5-10 years and no one’s talking about it.
the 2C switch will be flung in the near future. when is "bad" bad enough? I suspect walls will be built to stave the tide of bodies. will we see thousands of miles of barbed wire patrolled by drones with infared targeting systems? the entire US population is "only" 340,000,000. where will these people go? It will be "interesting" to see if the first 500,000,000 people quietly lay down and die without protest. In the game of climate induced migration and subsequent refugees, this is going to be an absoluetly brutal time for everyone (earth) I feel somewhat lucky to be American. that to be an engineer, to have a currently stable job, a house, a car, etc, etc, gives me the chance to sit back and collect the facts. I am extremely privilaged on a global scale. the abismal terror I feel knowing this GIANT dirty secret before almost everyone else is exhausting. the "polycrisis" is here. the starving times are coming. violence is coming.
You are of course spot on. Your readers should be assured that you are not doom-mongering, the situation is very bad and getting worse daily. Hotter than expected, sooner than expected- the world we knew is going away and won't return. Instability is with us and with it will come resource wars, mass migrations, great loss of biodiversity, arable lands, and rising oceans. Even if we do everything right with massive geo- engineering and achieving net zero with total conversion to solar and wind power, the heat rise is baked in and it will take hundreds of years for it to decline. Whether our global civilization can survive is anybody's guess.
Thank you, dear Richard, for an heroic effort at assessing our current climate crisis but I find your estimates and predictions way off, at least according to my study of the data from the gold standard group at C3S. Any suggestion of optimism for the survival of life on the surface of this planet by 2050 is just plain wrong. C3S data set indicates a 0.214 degC ANNUAL GMST increase over the 1991-2020 baseline, and you leave out the all important baselines in your analysis. So, at the current rate of increase, we may well see a 2 degC GMST increase by 2027, a 3 degC increase by 2032 and the lights out 6 degC increase by 2047, as I have shared with you before, apparently to little avail. Yet, we are continuing to mindlessly burn 8 B tons of coal annually and 100M barrels of oil DAILY, and between the waste heat released and the GHG trapping solar heat, we are accumulation the heat energy equivalent of 20+ (NOAA says 13.3) Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND (Eliot Jacobson), where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. This heat energy accumulation is buffered/absorbed by the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice, evident in the rapidly melting 220,000 glaciers and polar ice caps, as well as 321 million cubic miles of warming oceans. Greenland lost 9B tons of water (latent heat energy absorbed) EVERY HOUR in 2020 (Inside Climate News) and is 27 degF on its southern end today (NOAA surface analysis) but has often been above freezing even now in the dead of winter. The surface water temp off Greenland in the North Atlantic is averaging 60 degF and the total ocean heat energy absorption over the past 50 yrs is estimated at 381+/- 61 ZJ ( one Zeta Joule is 10 to the 23rd Joules). New research shows that the oceans are heating to and below 2K meters, so not just the surface. A firehose of competing climate stats only muddies the true nature of our existential crisis. I'm sticking with the apolitical, public funded EU's C3S. Have a blessed day and get ready for another record setting summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Will we ever get "woke" and stop burning fossil fuels? Nah? Gregg
“Any suggestion of optimism for the survival of life on the surface of this planet by 2050 is just plain wrong.” So we’re 100% fucked?
Ya. The exponential curve is something so fucking crazy our minds struggle to comprehend it. Even if we are trained.
I was a little faster with math than my peers when I was younger, but never really went anywhere with it. Failed statistics at a chop shop college a few times mostly for the giggles of it without really pondering the future implications. Whoops. I was however, trained in fourier math by a real fuckin genius professor from Las Cruces 20+ years ago and a lot of that shit managed to stick.
So I'm still pretty much as dumb as the rest of everyone else on average of course, but I grok how fucking wild this is because of a career in systems thinking and systems design.
All that to say, a couple of years ago I started to wonder where exactly we were in the curve. It was obvious we were entering it some time ago, and obvious that we were somewhere within it. So I started digging just like Richard, and also reading everything he wrote and posted about, and ordering old magazines off the internet like Nat'l Geographic from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and Discover from the 80s, etc. Old newspapers too. Of course old peer reviewed papers, IPCC reports, all sorts of shit. Consumed and consumed and pondered, compared, contrasted.
Started to get a little clearer last year as I had been gardening for about 6-7 years on and off with friends and paying attention to how the growing season played out, and also how bug lifecycles worked here, how the various wildlife responded and interacted. How our weather patterns have been shifting. Practical, lived, reality.
2020 was this really weird fever dream. Where we were then and where we are now in our climate system are two entirely different fucking places now. It's so insanely wild to think about, to observe, to recall.
*IF* we are actually on a trajectory that is going to see 2C before 2030 and 3C in under 10 years from that point, then our location in the curve is confidently at the very end of the curve where shit starts going completely vertical, parabolic. Just like Dogecoin in 2021.
Every data point that matters right now is pointing to this trajectory being the reality. Like Richard points out from Hansen himself, the acid test, the real deal acid test for us, is happening right now, this year or so, short term. Presently. It'll show us what's up, and I guarantee you nobody is gonna like it.
Yeah. Sorry everyone, we fucked up, but also this was always going to happen because we're all addicted to more, more, more. The human condition, the life condition. Expand till shit is used up then die. That's the entire show, ad nauseum, for millions of years, and a lot of us will experience the curtain dropping.
:\
I believe grain production has reached the top end of the diminishing returns curve. Early gains were due to mechanization and fertilizers, then we got big on genetics. There is only so much we can squeeze out using genetics as there are physiological limits with energy acquisition by the plants being the main limit. We are about done with most research where I work now looking at water stress tolerance and root traits to go deeper in soil profiles to suck up water along with plant microbiome interactions to "engineer" better nutrient acquisition. Farting against thunder IMO - we've made a right mess of things through intensified ag. and without soil 'health' we will struggle to make any more gains. Arguably on current production we could feed 10-14 billion assuming no waste and if we all became vegetarians. I wish us luck with that... Also, arguably, the biggest gains in food production can happen in Africa with simple interventions like irrigation. Again, I wish us luck. Hasn't happened so far as nobody seems to care... fun times ahead.
I should have added "the most useful research being conducted" where I work. There is a lot of other first world hubris research going on like vertical agriculture, digital agriculture, precision agriculture... the list goes on. Other projects like folk trying to understand non-rhizobial nitrogen fixation or fungal-root interactions barely get funding. No money to be made there I suppose as working with nature can't be sold.
Made an account just to thank you for your well written reports. A lot of people are either putting their head in the sand or pretending it won't be so bad. Not to mention, most are trying to survive month by month. It's a sad reality, but I truly believe we are headed towards a doom scenerio and what is happening in the world really proves me right. Looking forward towards your new crisis report!
Thank you so much for your well-researched reports, Richard.
Corn and soybeans are grown to feed through the energy inefficient bodies of farmed animals, so if crops are grown for direct eating instead there is some slack in the system before people start starving.
who's gonna be in charge of stopping rich people from.earing meat?
Soylent Green is people.
I was thinking that same thing.
Indeed, the White people don't believe or if they do they don't mind as most of the starving will be Black, Brown or Latino. The rich'll carry on with bacon for breakfast and steak for tea.
I'm not sure if I'm reassured or terrified at seeing some reputable sources (insurance adjusters) finally converging on what my beliefs have been for a few years now (and what your analysis covers excellently). I hate advocating for hard launch of AI, but at this point new materials that permit low cost and rapid roll out of fusion power seem (to me) to provide the only real tangible hope of blunting the worst of this crisis. If we can decarbonize our energy generation and move most farming indoors then we might have a chance to struggle through the near future, but my guess is that societal upheaval from increasing resources scarcity will catch up with us before those techs mature.
Fantastic and terrifying, thank you for your insight! There is one section that I have trouble understanding (I’m on the autism spectrum and I’m deeply interested in “visualizing” what is happening). You mention the heat in the oceans as if they are Hiroshima bombs. Conceptually I understand what you mean but I was wondering if you might have another metaphor you could share? Perhaps I have a mental block that bombs are immediate and violent whereas what we are seeing is slower. I was just curious but please feel free to ignore - I know you have a lot on your mind. :)
I can’t remember which report it was but he detailed it very nicely not too long ago. IIRC he showed the total amount of water in the oceans and the average amount of energy the receive daily/yearly from multiple heat sources such as thermal vents/underwater volcanoes and the sun. There were also some figures related to energy loss from albedo and radiation. The hiroshima bomb reference was shown as the total amount of energy released from that amount of megatons on TNT exploding as a measurement of the atom bomb total energy output. It’s basically a way to visualize the amount of energy it would take to warm up the earth’s oceans in the rapid timescale they have been warned. Energy is energy so you can convert the joules per kilogram of TNT(atom bomb energy total of hiroshima bomb) to the joules per sq kilometer or mile of Ocean water that it has warmed by. That probably doesn’t make a ton of sense but the report where he shows the conversion to total hiro bombs was an awesome way to visualize the total energy imput.
Gotcha, thank you. If I understand this correctly- the Hiroshima bomb metaphor is appropriate because the heat being trapped is happening fast. On a historical timescale it’s like a bomb.
I’ll go find his other article. Ty for your insight!
As someone else on the autism spectrum, I would like a more indept report on this aswell, it's hard to imagine. I do think what we see now is the first few domino blocks falling slowly until you hit a point where it hits and hits one after another.
Humanity has triggered a rapidly accelerating mass extinction. It is unavoidable. Remember, you asked for it.
And it may well take most higher life forms, including us, with it. Maybe now we know why we've never seen any signs of alien life. This seems to be one of The Great Filters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7
Hi neurokin - sorry we are meeting under these circumstances but glad you’re here. ✌🏼
Thank you.
Does your forecast take into account the decreasing fossil fuels [conventional oil peaked late 2018] used to pump the declining groundwater for irrigation, and the use of fossil fuels to produce the fertilizers and sprays?
I find Art Berman's analysis of conventional oiling peaking in the 1970's much more believable but that really isn't a factor here one way or the other. US and a few other countries are either at or very near peak production but they will be able to maintain such production levels for quite some time.
Most news articles that promote the sort of news your comment alludes to are click baiting feel good stuff that is not reflective of current human behavior. Best way is to look at raw GLOBAL data, national/regional data is engineered to make high tech regions look better than they actually are by off-shoring manufacturing of high emission goods such as solar panels.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?stackMode=absolute
Fossils fuel usage isn't going down now nor will it until humans start doing less things, one way or another.
How well do you think the world will react (adapt) if it temperature rises as you predict? Will we be able to keep people from dying in these numbers?
A communist system could operate with enough cohesion and intention to save lives. The capitalist west is too disorganized for any such collective action. China is now the only hope in the world.
Mate the east of China is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Open Google maps and you'll see the road network. That is all predicated on multiple in a year rice harvests. That's the system you have to look at not the so called communism thing you mentioned.
well we'll see how it unfolds i guess. Population density is likely to be an advantage
3 years ago I became collapse aware and did some hefty grieving before accepting what is to come. I still cycle through utter sadness during hot summers, but for the most part acknowledge what is happening as surreal as it is. Until........Jan 20, 2025. Climate collapse has just been thrust into complete overdrive, warp speed, you name it. I have been in one long absolute panic attack and utter grief as our public lands are about to be sold off! Every day I wake up and feel like I am in a nightmare. I honestly think things are going to get very, very, very ugly here much much sooner than anyone anticipates, on so many levels. It is mind blowing that climate collapse now seems secondary, SECONDARY! to what is unfolding in our country. Of course climate collapse and the breakdown of society gonhand in hand, but i never would have imagined it would unfold like this.
Agree, sadly.
Hi Richard, i've had people tell me that Siberian warming will mean that Russian wheat production sky rockets. What would your response be? Here's mine.
The time frame we are talking about is 5 to 10 years. Not long enough for the Arctic ice and permafrost to melt, for 1000s of acres of land to be prepared, planted and cultivated to feed millions. People can’t eat potential. Especially as these people are not in Russia. Even with warming causing loss of productivity from existing land, Russia will have no problem feeding herself. And she has plenty of lucrative raw materials and goods to trade without going to the trouble of making a wheat surplus to sell to the world’s poorest people in developing countries. Though if she did, whom she chooses to sell to would have huge strategic importance.
All in all, millions (more) starving in the 5-10 years and no one’s talking about it.
where did you get this from "In order to keep global warming below +3°C, net-zero has to be reached “no later” than 2060.
If warming is “unconstrained” and follows the RCP8.5 scenario then we get the BLACK line or +5°C of warming by 2100." not doubting you just curious