The Crisis Report - 13
If you want to understand what's happening with the Climate System, you have to look at it in a different way. We have been monumentally stupid.
I’m going to be blunt. We have already locked in 4C-5C of warming.
It’s right there in the charts. We were just too slow to understand it.
You want to understand what I see when I look at these charts.
Let me ask you a question. The question we should have asked in 1850, and 1976, and 2000, and 2016.
Assuming you start at a CO2 level of 280ppm like in 1850.
How much additional CO2 will it take to raise the Earth’s temperature by one degree more?
Do you think you know the answer to that question?
Really?
This is not a trivial question. It is the essential question of Climate Change because it defines what your “carbon budget” is going to look like.
Imagine we are in 1850. The atmospheric CO2 level is 280ppm. You want to power an Industrial Revolution by burning coal, oil and gas.
But, you want to be responsible. You have heard that too much CO2 in the atmosphere could warm up the entire planet. So, you go to the great universities and you ask, “how much of this stuff can I safely burn powering my Industrial Revolution”?
“Assuming, I don’t want to warm up the planet by more than 1C.”
What do you think they would tell you?
Consider carefully why you think that.
If your answer was larger than about 30ppm you aren’t seeing what these charts say when you consider them as a whole.
What they tell us, is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is in an inverse relationship with the atmospheric CO2 level.
When CO2 levels are low — Climate Sensitivity is HIGH.
When CO2 levels are HIGH — Climate Sensitivity is low.
In simple terms, it means that the “first” 100ppm is the critical one. That’s the one where CO2 levels are the lowest and Climate Sensitivity is the highest.
It means that Global Warming is “front-loaded”. The biggest surge of warming happens at the beginning.
It’s a trick question. There never was ANY safe level of CO2 we could dump into the atmosphere. We didn’t know we were starting at such a low level of atmospheric CO2 in relationship to most of the planetary climate history.
This is the coldest the planet has gotten in 300my. We didn’t know that.
Because we didn’t know that, we did not understand that we were living in the -
CO2 levels low — Climate Sensitivity HIGH
-end of the Earth’s climate spectrum of warming response.
The 140ppm we have already put into the atmosphere has “locked in” around 4C of warming. The only question now is how fast the planet warms up.
Still not sure about that?
Here’s what the paleoclimate record tells us. It tells us that:
The Earth’s climate system never seems to go below 180ppm of CO2. At that level of CO2 the Earth is about -6C cooler that it was between 1950–1980. Our Climate Baseline.
The First 100ppm of CO2 added to the atmosphere increases the GMT 6C.
This is the “Zero Line” on the Temperature graphs. This is where we started in 1850. A CO2 level of 280ppm.
In the paleoclimate record:
Going from 280ppm to 420ppm increases the GMT by an additional 4C.
Going from 420ppm to 560ppm increases the GMT by another 2C.
Going from 560ppm to 900ppm increases the GMT another 3C.
Going from 900ppm to 1800ppm increases the GMT another 5C.
The Climate System “front-loads” Warming. The biggest gains in temperature happen from the smallest increases of CO2. That’s what I see.
This means that we have “locked in” 4C-5C of warming.
It means we are going to 4C very quickly.
As of 2015 the rate of warming has accelerated to 0.36C/decade.
That’s 2C of additional warming by 2075. At the latest.
It’s going to get hotter and hotter very quickly for the next 60 years.
We are on the brink of Collapse if we do not act now.
Think of it this way. If we knew we were about to be invaded by aliens and they would kill 90% of us. Do you think we could declare a global emergency and work together to defeat the common foe?
Because that’s the level of commitment it’s going to take from all of us. We have waited to do anything about Global Warming until the very last minute.
I’m telling you. Now, is the last minute.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
rc -
If you want to read more of my climate articles on Medium from the last two years.
Click here for my “Living in Bomb Time” Series.
For my back catalog of Crisis Reports on Medium.
Click here for my “Crisis Report” Series.
For a collection of great articles from writers sharing their accounts from the front lines of a Changing World on Medium.
Click here for “Reports From the Front”.
As I get to know people here on substack I will expand this list to include them.
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To everyone else. Look, deciding who you regard as a “trusted voice” in the Climate Crisis conversation is difficult. There is a lot of misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, and misreporting out there. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s important.
When you try to study the issue, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the flood of information available. Because of the toxic politicization of Climate Science a lot of what’s happening in the field is only really being discussed among the scientists themselves. It’s often difficult to understand what they are talking about if you don't know all the “backstory”.
Content is free, informed analysis is expensive.
This has been true since the dawn of time. Experts get paid for their expertise because “being informed” about a topic comes at a cost. It takes time, a lot of it, to know what you are talking about.
If you haven’t been staying current on the Climate Crisis a LOT is happening right now. What’s happening right now, and in the next few year’s will shape how the rest of your life plays out.
We are in the final days of the 20th Century Climate Optimum. What’s coming is MUCH WORSE than you think. Our understanding of the Climate System has gotten dramatically better in the last ten years. We have been monumentally stupid.
If you want to understand the “Climate Crisis” this is analysis you are not going to get anywhere else.