The Crisis Report - 34
Tipping points, knock-on effects, and unexpected consequences. They are happening all around us now as the Climate Crisis ACCELERATES.
People still haven’t realized how bad the Climate Crisis really is.
Because we have a high resolution climate record in the Greenland ice sheet, we know with 100% certainty that CO2 levels for the last 800 thousand years have fluctuated between 180ppm and 280ppm. A range of about 100ppm.
This 100ppm range in CO2 levels changes the Earth’s Global Temperature by about +/-6℃.
It has been like this for about 2 million years.
Bärbel Hönisch and other scientists (2009) analyzed a sediment core taken from the bottom of the Atlantic ocean west of Sierra Leone. This provided evidence showing, that atmospheric CO2 levels fluctuated between 213 ppm (+30/-28) and 283 ppm (+30/-32) during the period from 900,000 years ago to 2.1 million years ago.
So if we use 1850, when CO2 levels were about 280ppm as our baseline, how much CO2 will it take to raise the Earth’s temperature by one degree?
This is not a trivial question. It is the essential question of Climate Change and a lot of evidence is accumulating that we got it wrong.
There are a number of ways to look at this question but it boils down to “fixed amounts” versus “increasing resistance”. They sound complex but are easy to understand.
Fixed amounts would be if each degree of warming was the result of the same amount of CO2. If 100ppm of CO2 caused 6C of warming, then each 16ppm increase should result in 1C of warming.
If this was true, then the 140ppm we have dumped in the atmosphere would result in a massive 9C increase in the Global Mean Temperature (GMT). Nobody thinks this.
The evidence indicates that the Earth’s response to increasing CO2 levels is one of increasing resistance.
Which means that when it’s at 180ppm a very small increase in CO2 will raise the Earth’s GMT by 1C. However, each additional degree of warming requires a higher amount of CO2 to attain.
It sounds complicated so here’s an example of how it works.
Starting at a CO2 level 180ppm, the Earth is -6C COLDER than today.
Increasing the GMT by 1C requires 1.56 ppm. (180ppm to 182ppm)
The jump from 1C to 2C requires 3.125ppm. (182ppm to 185ppm)
The jump from 2C to 3C requires 6.25ppm. (185ppm to 191ppm, about 16,000BCE)
The jump from 3C to 4C requires 12.5ppm. (191ppm to 204ppm, about 12,000BCE)
The jump from 4C to 5C requires 25ppm. (204ppm to 229ppm, about 9,000BCE)
The jump from 5C to 6C requires 50ppm. (229ppm to 280ppm, about 8,000BCE)
This is where it “hovered” until about 1850.
Continuing this example, where each increase of 1.0C requires doubling the amount of CO2 to accomplish it.
The jump from 6C to 7C (our 1st degree of warming) should require 100ppm (380ppm).
The jump from 7C to 8C (our 2nd degree of warming) should require 200ppm (580ppm).
The jump from 8C to 9C (our 3rd degree of warming) would then require 400ppm of CO2, taking the Earth to a level of 980ppm.
This argument, using these numbers, is VERY popular in Climate Action Resistor circles. You can see why.
It implies that the Earth’s GMT is “sticky” and resistant to change. That each additional degree of temperature increase, requires a massive increase in the level of CO2. Meaning that Global Warming will happen slowly and probably never get over 3C as a consequence of Human GHG’s.
If you read almost any Climate Denial or Climate Action Resistance material at all you will come across this argument. Usually followed by a “proof” using numbers and simple “commonsense math” that conclusively shows the threat of Global Warming, while real, has been weaponized and overstated by Liberals.
It’s not hard to find people who will argue that we won’t get even 1C of warming until CO2 levels reach 560ppm.
But is this true?
Short answer, not exactly.
This meme still has a lot of traction in Denier circles because it’s old. It goes back to the earliest days of the Climate Change discussion when we really didn’t know the answers to anything.
The “increasing resistance” theory is the best theory for explaining observable reality. The problem is defining how fast that resistance increases, i.e. how sensitive the Global Temperature is to increasing levels of CO2.
When the first Climate Models were being built in the 60s/70's. They tried to reduce the scope of the problem by limiting it to the question of “how much will the Earth warm if the CO2 level doubles from the 1850 level of 280ppm?”
Here’s the best answer as of September 2020.
2.6–3.9C — 66%
2.3–4.5C — 95%
2.0–5.7C — 05%
An Assessment of Earth’s Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence
Which says, “there is a 95% chance at CO2 levels of 560ppm that the GMT will increase at least 2.3C and possibly as much as 4.5C, there is a 66% chance that the GMT increase will be between 2.6C and 3.9C”. There is a 05% chance that the GMT could increase as much as 5.7C.
This is much worse than the Denier\Resister numbers but again the question of “how accurate is it?” comes to mind. Are we “over” or “under” estimating the effect increasing levels of CO2 will have on the Earth’s GMT?
The Paleoclimate data suggest that the Earth was 4C warmer at a CO2 level of around 400ppm.
We are now at 420ppm.
Today's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than at any time in the last 23 million-years.
A 23 m.y. record of low atmospheric CO2. Geology, 2020; DOI: 10.1130/G47681.1
This research, published Geology, is a next-level study measuring the relative amount of carbon isotopes in fossil plant materials and calculating the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere under which the ancient plants grew.
This new CO2 "timeline" reveals no evidence for any fluctuations in CO2 that might be comparable to the dramatic CO2 increase of the present day, which suggests today's abrupt greenhouse disruption is unique across recent geologic history.
Another major point noted in the paper is that major evolutionary changes over the past 23 million years were not accompanied by large changes in CO2. This indicates that perhaps ecosystems and temperature might be more sensitive to smaller changes in CO2 than previously thought.
As an example: The substantial global warmth of the middle Pliocene (5 to 3 million years ago) and middle Miocene (17 to 15 million years ago), which are sometimes studied as a comparison for current global warming, were associated with only modest increases in CO2.
In the paleoclimate record.
Increasing CO2 levels from 400ppm to roughly 550ppm takes us to 6C of warming.
Increasing CO2 levels from 550ppm to roughly 1000ppm takes us to 9C of warming.
Increasing CO2 levels from 1000ppm to roughly 2000ppm takes us to about 15C of warming.
Which is the hottest the Earth has gotten in the last 500my.
The paleoclimate data indicates that up to 9C of warming is possible at CO2 levels of 1000ppm.
The paleoclimate data suggests that the Earths “Climate Sensitivity” looks something like this.
It also indicates that we have already locked in 4C of warming.
The paleoclimate data indicates that we underestimated the Climate sensitivity of the Earth for the 280ppm to 1000ppm CO2 range. That our “worst case” estimate of 5.7C at 560ppm is actually the most likely.
This represents an underestimate on the effect of increasing CO2 concentrations on the GMT by about 40%. It is supported by studies like this one in 2019,
Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition
Which found that since 1991, the oceans have warmed about 60 percent faster than the average rate of warming estimated by studies summarized by the IPCC.
Climate Change: 5 Things to Know About Rapid Ocean Warming
Emissions will need to be cut faster and deeper. November 3, 2018
A new study by scientists in the United States, China, France, and Germany estimates that the world’s oceans have absorbed much more excess heat from human-induced climate change than researchers had estimated up to now. This finding suggests that global warming may be even more advanced than previously thought. Atmospheric scientist Scott Denning explains how the new report arrived at this result and what it implies about the pace of climate change.
All of the hard physical data we are gathering indicates our models were biased towards underestimating the effects of increasing CO2 levels.
All of the hard physical data we have gathered, says our climate models were “timid”. We have been fooling ourselves.
What’s about to happen isn’t going to be a “Climate Disaster” it’s going to be a “Climate Apocalypse”. We are going to 4C by 2100, possibly as early as 2080.
China and Russia have realized the Climate Models are off and how bad things are about to get. They are making “endgame moves” because they think that the endgame has started.
In 2020 the GMT was an “observable” 1.2C warmer than it was in 1880, the hottest year of the 19th century. It took about 140 years for the Earth’s GMT to increase that 1.2C.
At the current rate of Global Warming (0.36C per decade) we are on track to get to 2.0C of warming by 2040. At the latest.
Final Thoughts
If this makes sense to you, congratulations you are a “Doomer”.
If you disagree with this, ask yourself why you disagree.
If you reject my argument because the models say it won't get that hot by 2100 then you have a LOT more confidence in the models than I do. You remember how there is the one ‘outlier’ model that resulted in warming of 5.7C at 560ppm levels of CO2.
The inclusion of that model represents the first crack in the Old Climate Science Paradigm. Because that model changes the way it models clouds. When you tweak the model so that warming doesn't “increase cloudiness” but “decreases it” a LOT more warming happens. Models that do that tend to produce high levels of warming.
Those models have been rejected from inclusion in the past. Because everyone could see that they were “obviously flawed”. Sixty years of paleoclimate research says they're not.
It’s about to get HOT.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
— rc 04202023